Harpoon Race

Columbus weekend was eventful to say the less. Friday afternoon we loaded up the truck and headed to "camp" in Greensboro, Vermont. Greensboro for those of you who haven't visited, is a tiny quaint town in northern Vermont via a lot of back-roads. The town surrounds Caspian Lake and the beautiful rolling Barr Hills.

With fall here and almost gone, we had to do some summer clean up. Tylan and I scrubbed and winterized all the lake toys. Luckily, we left the aluminum canoe out to play with. As the sun started to set, Tylan and I enjoyed a fantastically relaxing canoe paddle across the lake.

Saturday evening we celebrated Carol's 65th birthday with quite a feast of a meal! Our standing rib roast took forever to cook, but boy was it worth the wait! Carol took great delight in not taking part of the cooking this one day of the year we celebrate her.

Sunday morning Tylan and I woke semi early to head south to the Harpoon Brewery. There we meet up with Paul and Kristen (plus Anya) as we psyched our selves up for the morning adventure, a 5k race through the hills. We all did pretty well considering the physical shape we were in. Tylan (~28 minutes) finished first out of us all, with myself (31 minutes) and Paul (~40 minutes) finishing shortly behind.

My one of my favorite parts of the race was the adrenalium you get running in a pack. You felt you could never just stop and walk. It was a silent selfish "hurray" whenever you passed someone, but boy did it feel good! The pack also helped you maintain a constant speed which was nice when you're tired and being timed.

In addition to that, I really enjoyed that the last ~0.5 mile was ALL DOWN HILL! I knew my legs could move that fast, all I had to do was just let gravity do it's work. (And hope when it came time to stop, I could do it safely!) Which was good in my case, because the rib roast in tummy from the night before was still painfully trying to be digested. I willing to except whatever help was out there.

Though, as I made the last turn, gravity plus a girl walking blindly on the edge of the crowd almost made my face have a date with the pavement. I'm happy to say my face is in the same condition today as it was when I started the race... no road rash scars made to create daily memories of the race.

The race concluded with us drinking our free beers and eating tasty brats. The sun had officially come out to play, and it felt almost like a early summer warm day. I bet a few of us walked away with some unexpected sunburn. Luckily Kristen, the good mom, remembered even in October you should bring sunscreen for the beautiful Anya.

We spent the night in Ludlow after the race and eventually made our way home Monday. With fall in the air we craved those delicious baked goods that come out this time of season. This is how we came up with the great idea of stopping at Alyson's Orchard on the way home.

I felt like I was in heaven being surrounded by all types of different apples as far as the eye could see! (For those of you who didn't know, apples are my FAVORITE FOOD in the entire world, I do believe I could live off of apples.)

We have great intentions now of making all kinds of delicious baked goods... though, another race might be in order after eating all of them! (haha)