Monday, November 26, 2007

Trail Nerds Have Been Busy, Busy, Busy

This past month, the Kansas City Trail Nerds have had a lot of fun.

On Veteran's Day, November 11th, we had a little 4-mile race in Wyandotte County Lake Park. Sixty runners showed up to honor our veterans and to raise money for the Nathan Jones Recovery Fund.

Nathan Jones, a third grader from Gardner, KS had extensive surgery recently after his optometrist discovered a large white mass that was later determined to be a brain tumor. Nathan is presently experiencing paralysis on the right side of his body and his prognosis remains unknown. Nathan continues to make improvements but it could be a very long and expensive process during his stay in the hospital. His father is taking an unpaid leave from his job to be with Nathan but still needs to pay his monthly insurance premiums. Proceeds from this race went toward off-setting the cost of the insurance premiums.TRAIL RUNNERS ARE GENEROUS! We raised $609 dollars for Nathan's cause.

More information and photos are here.

On November 16 & 17th, the Trail Nerds helped set up Nathaniel's Run Ultramarathon, a 24, 12, and 6-Hour Solo & Relay run. A few Nerds participated, also.

It was a Trail / Cross Country Run that began on Friday, November 16th at 6pm. The course was a 1.3-mile loop course in Shawnee Mission Park on grassy, rooty, easy to moderate difficulty with some hills in mainly open, slightly wooded area.


Proceeds from Nathaniel's Run Ultramarathon benefitted the Flint Hills Therapeutic Riding Center, Inc. (FHTRC). The center is dedicated to improving the quality of life for anyone with a physical, mental or emotional disability through therapeutic riding and hippotherapy. Hippotherapy requires licensed and trained physical, occupational or speech therapists using the horse to influence the client’s movement, and combines therapeutic riding with formal therapy exercises that help clients improve confidence, strength, flexibility and balance.

You can see more here.

On Sunday, November 25th, a few Trail Nerds participated in Lou Joline's and the Blue Springs Runners' "Dude, Where's the Trail?" run. This run is a "fun run," and not a race. You leave with your team in wave start, and have to follow 4 pages of instructions and maps for the not-so-well-marked course. In this fun endeavor, there's a lot of bushwhacking involved (with no trail). Last year, my group put in an additional 4 or 5 miles from a wrong turn. We did pretty well, this year.

Our team this year consisted of Kyle Amos, Patrick Perry, Trish Williams (for 18 miles of it), and me. Rick Mayo, Gabe Bevan, and several other Nerds were also in attendance.

My photos are here.

Come out and join us for a trail training run, sometime. We have up to eight scheduled runs per week.

1 Comments:

Blogger Journey to a Centum said...

You guys are just a bunch of NERDS! Oh but then you already know that.

It's a bummer about me not getting into WS 100 but I'm looking at the Canadian Death Race up in Alberta Canada. I've looked at this run before and I think I'll do it since WS didn't happen. Bighorn was suggested and TMT but WS is the 100 that is in my sights.

Thanks for your comments.

9:24 PM  

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