#16 2021 Heart Warrior Half Marathon, part 1
A black ice start! The freezing rain peppered my windbreaker jacket and my running shoes slid a little bit with each step down the driveway. It's New Year's Day 2021, day of the Heart Warrior Half Marathon! WHY would I decide to do something crazy like this? It seemed like a good idea last Fall, when we had beautiful running weather here in Ohio. Everything was uncertain in 2020`, so I should have expected that we would be confronted with some of the most challenging weather a runner can face for this event. With my earbuds paired to my phone, I joined a call to my running friend, Matt, a college teammate with whom I have shared thousands of miles. He was running the Heart Warrior Half Marathon virtually that day and we decided to link up for the first time by phone during a run together. During our runs, our topics of conversation have greatly varied over the past couple decades. We no longer have the same discussions that one would...