#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 imagine two college kids would have