Fort Wayne, IN

Summit Middle School

Running Time: 52:32

Lucky break in the weather for this run. It had been raining on and off that day, and it rained hard all the next day for my drive into and around Indianapolis. But this cool and breezy afternoon run was a joy. I pushed the pace harder than normal.

I was double lucky in finding a proper track to run on. The big city high school was across the street, and there was some kind of band or drama activity (or combination thereof) going on at the track. I punched in the coordinates for another high school several miles away, and then I saw this track at the middle school. They also had multiple ballfields, which is always a good sign.

Halfway through a second consecutive week in the heartland, and I was getting hardening of the arteries. Road life is both liberating and tedious. I work more hours when I am on the road, because driving is part of work. After I get to the hotel and then go for my run, it’s 3 or 4 hours of laptop work to stay caught up on emails and messages and sales reports.

There seems to be a lot of water in Indiana – standing water, or just below the ground surface. When there is a break in the flatness, there is often water. On the edges of lawns, corners of fields, in gravel parking lots where I have to park. It doesn’t seem like there has been enough recent rainfall to have created a groundwater excess, but maybe there was a monsoon the week before I got here.

Fort Wayne seemed a pleasant mid-size town. It doesn’t appear to have suffered from its loss to Hickory in the 1953 State Basketball Tournament. Go Huskers!