Friday in Fort Dodge

COVID-19, “The Rona Era”

This was my week: Monday -Strength training, Tuesday- Trackworkout- Wednesday- rest, Thursday- flying all morning to get to Iowa and now it’s Friday. I’ve never been to Iowa in June, normally I’m here in December. I made sure to pack my running gear.

Normally when I’m in Fort Dodge, I run to Loomis Park, see the painted silos, and run along the Des Monies River. This time, I stepped outside of my comfort zone to explore more of the park. For my Friday morning 5 miles, I ran to the park. Saw several deer. It was the deers and just me. Then saw the painted silos. They have new signage that explains the creation of the silos. That made me happy.

Normally, at this point, I turn right towards the river. I saw a bunch of cyclist going left and I decided to follow them. I knew I wasn’t going to catch up with them. If they were riding that way, I wanted to check it out.

I didn’t realize how big the park trail went. 13 miles or so. It was so green. I saw a skateboard and frisbee golf area. There were benches, a walking/running path. Oh and more cyclist. This was nice.

I was aware, that I was alone. This is still an unfamiliar place to me. I’m a black woman, alone, on an Iowan trail. I turned around.

The most company I had was deer . As I was running back, I felt like the bugs started to come out. Even though it was a cool 71 degrees, I felt like I was getting bit.

Running back to the house, it was perfect that Kendrick Lamar’s Not Like Us was playing on my Pandora. That was the extra push I needed to finish 5 miles .

Overall it was a good first run in Iowa.