Running... away from home... a story about running on the road... but off the road...

Last weekend, I left New York City to go back to my Alma Mater, Penn State University. I get to go back to my college town once a quarter since my business partner and I began operating The Bicycle Shop just off College Avenue about 5 years ago. I enjoy going back and seeing the students and watching the campus grow beyond its boundaries. On top of that, I usually get to spend a good part of the day on Saturday hanging out around town with crowds of students in relative anonymity. And, last Saturday, that is exactly what I was doing - enjoying lunch at Panera Bread with a bunch of college kids and no one who knew me… no chance, really, of bumping into anybody else either since I was more than 250 miles from home. As I began to eat my lunch, I heard someone say, "How's lunch?" I looked up expecting to find a friendly Panera employee making sure everything was okay when, what to my wondering eyes did appear but… a friend from my running club in New York City! As usually happens when Runners get together, our conversation turned to running. We were discussing running in and around the State College, area and I told my friend that my business partner and his girlfriend and I were heading out on Sunday morning for a long-ish trail run and that he should join us. We planned to leave at 9am on Sunday morning and head over to a trail that offers a good climb up a mountain and then a nice run along a ridge with beautiful views of "Happy Valley Pennsylvania". On Sunday morning at 8:45am, my cell phone rang. It was my New York City friend asking if we still planned to do the trail run. I began to wonder why we would not, until I looked out the window to discover that it was raining buckets. But, it was Sunday morning in State College and there was a trail that needed to be run and, "You can't pick the weather on race day!" The first mile of the run was straight up hill. It was a good way to work out the kinks and by the time we got to the top of the ridge we were soaked through. Then, we ran across a ridge for about six miles. The beautiful views I had promised the day before were replaced with wispy clouds and plenty of rain and even a slight breeze. Finally, we began our descent and came out to a nice paved road that would lead us back to our cars and some shelter and warmth. But, we decided to avoid the road and take "Longenberger Trail" back to the cars. Longenberger Trail proved to be the muddiest and wettest part of the run. With each step, my foot sank four or five inches into the ground. At first, we attempted to avoid the three inch deep puddles but after about a half mile, we were just running through them. Finally, after an 8+ mile run on the trails, we arrived back at our cars. Our Sunday morning run could only be described as "Epic". All that was left to do was stuff our shoes with SNEAKERDRY and then drive the 250+ miles back to New York City where I could eat my lunch in relative anonymity…

SneakerDry's First Blog Post

After lots of miles run, time developing our product, web site development, and initial testing... SneakerDry has finally arrived. Good thing too... because you can't pick the weather on race day!