Grace has been enthusiastic about running this fall, so when a somewhat elusive town I hadn’t run in yet came up, I invited her to come on the 90 minute drive, about as far away as you could get from Woodbridge without leaving Connecticut.

I’m not sure I knew it was a full trail race when I suggested we do it, but it turned out that it was indeed all-trail, though some of the flat sections in the woods were a little more developed. We parked on the edge of a road, walked across a muddy section, got our feet wet and our places registered (where I picked up the statistically inevitable bib number 169 to boot). The race started on the same path we’d come in, so we ran over the same water obstacle we’d negotiated before.

We headed out and into the woods, and Grace not only kept up, but, when she was ahead of me, pulled me along. I had a vivid image of her being faster than me inside of two years. The course was twisty, up and down, over roots and rocks and downed logs. The last half mile felt longer as we tried to get in in under thirty minutes, which we barely missed. Grace did great—and ended up coming in second in her age group. After a cider donut and some cider, we awaited the awards, and Grace got her medal.

Centreville Bank Thompson Turkey Trot | 5K | 11/14/21 | 31:21 | 97/169