the fox and the hounds
i met up with dana and ryan down at frame park shortly after 6AM. it was still dark and i was a few minutes late because i had to scrape the frost off my windows. we decided to head toward minooka park and zig-zagged our way through town. along the way, we ran by my first house – referred to as the "little yellow house" by my daughters. we entered minooka park on it’s northwest corner and headed down the trails to the back of the park. recently, a monstrous dog walk area was fenced off so dogs could run around without a leash. we ran by these areas and couldn’t believe how much space was fenced off.
we looped around some trails on the south end of minooka park and began heading back in the direction of our cars back in town. wouldn’t you know that some dog owner was letting his dog run around on the trails without a leash? we detoured to avoid the dog and ended running up the sledding hill. turning back onto the trails, we encountered yet another dog that was running unleashed while his owner was huffing along. admittedly, i was very annoyed considering what the park offered for unleashed dogs.
regardless, we headed back into town without incident. once within the city limits, we noticed a fox that had bounded out from behind a house right in front of us. it paused for a moment, sized up the three of us running towards it and turned tail to run away. for me, it was only the second time i’ve seen a fox. neat stuff.
we ended up looping around frame park to add on some extra time and said goodbye to ryan as he headed home. i ended up with 1:48 on my watch but only 12.5 miles recorded on my GPS. after downloading the data to my computer, i took a look at the route that the watch had captured. it looked like it had a tough time syncing to the satellites – likely because i didn’t wait for that to happen before i started the timer. in the end, it was a good run. it helps to have company along to make the miles go by a bit faster.