Friday Night Lights & "The Beast"

There are a few things almost all Texans look forward to during the fall....The State Fair and football! I definitely grew up where Friday nights was football night and you were pretty much wrong if you didn't go to the game. Once I got to college Saturday became football day and again, you were wrong if you didn't go. So Todd and I decided to go to one of the biggest west Texas football games of the year last night- Abilene High vs. Abilene Cooper. It was a GREAT game and so much fun to see boys play football who still love the game for the game and not the money and they still have dreams of leaving their small town to go to Austin, College Station or, God forbid, Lubbock to play division 1 college ball. The game was played at Shotwell stadium on the east side of town. The stadium holds 15,000 and was pretty much sold out! We got tickets on the Cooper side and therefore decided to cheer for the Cougars but after a hard 48 minutes, Abilene High ended up with the win. The only downfall of the night was the realization of how much older we are than high schoolers and how different "kids are these days". It was kind of shocking. Overall, it was a great $12 spent.

We couldn't make it too much of a late night since we made plans to run Steamboat Mountain at 6:30am this morning with the Abilene Runners Club. Steamboat Mountain, also known as "The Beast" is an actual mountain (or really tall mesa according to Todd) about 10 miles south of Abilene in Buffalo Gap and is a nice 13 mile route up and back down the mountain. Not having run many hills since leaving San Antonio we were in for quite the climb...a 14% grade for a quarter mile to the summit with a few "smaller hills" on either side. It was quite a run! It was nice to run with about 10 other runners, all training for the San Antonio Marathon, of all different running levels, ages and backgrounds. We think we'll stick with the Club and run with them some more.

By 11:15am it has already been a great weekend.