Back from the Retreat

Hey there everyone, as some of you may know, I went on a retreat last weekend (Friday, November 7 - Sunday, November 9) with my church to Deep Creek (Garrett County), Maryland. We stayed at a hotel at the bottom of the ski slopes of the Wisp resort. We had an excellent time fellowshipping (we mainly discussed Truth found in God and the Bible), and even though it was cloudy and a bit cool, it hardly rained. Great weather for being up in the mountains. We had some nice weather for hiking (I went with a couple of buddies to Swallow Falls State Park right by Deep Creek Lake in Garrett County, and it was the first time I had been there). Swallow Falls has a sixty-three foot-tall waterfall right by the Muddy Creek Falls area, and it's the highest waterfall in Maryland. I have some photos and perhaps I'll get some up here on this blog.

Although, I didn't do a race last weekend (which seems quite uncommon for me these days), I did get a couple of nice runs in on Saturday and Sunday mornings around the mountains. These runs involved me running up the grassy and fairly slippery ski slopes (which were much more grueling than they appeared in my opinion). I ran for most of it, even though at some points I felt like I was slowed to having to get on alll fours to get up some of the steeper and more slippery parts of the slopes. I ran to the top of this one slope and ended up at the Adventure Sports Center International (A.S.C.I.), the start and finish area of the inaugural TEVA Adventure Games 10K Trail Run that I ran on Saturday, July 26 this year (and so far has been the only Garrett County running event I've run this year). I knew the site of this race was pretty close to the hotel that we were staying in, but I had no idea it was within a mile or so of it! Talk about a "small world" :) Going down the hill was interesting, and I'm glad I made it down without getting hurt adn the number of times I fell I could county on one hand.Later on Saturday evening, we had a bonfire at the base of the slopes behind hte hotel, and it was pretty cold and dark. Some of us decided to hike up the ski slope (at least to the top of the steepest hill on the slope) in the dark, and I went up with one group of about four or five people and it was fun. I liked it because it helped keep us warm. There was this one gentleman, Jake, who was on crutches and he made the hike up the slope on his crutches. I thought that was inspiring. Of course, going down the slippery hill was quite an adventure (especially for Jake, whose crutches I ended up holding on the way down as we slid/rolled/tumbled down the hill), and I thought that was one of the big highlights of the trip.

So yea, it was a pretty fun trip and retreat. I'm glad I got to revisit the Deep Creek Lake area, and this time it was not for a race. And speaking of races, I'm doing my first race in about two weeks tomorrow (Saturday, November 15) at the Meadowbrook Park in Ellicott City (Howard County), MD. This church in Highland (Howard County), MD called Mt. Zion United Methodist Church is putting on the Mission Mississippi Harvest 5K, and I think it's to help benefit an upcoming missions trip to Mississippi to help with hurricane relief efforts. I remember going to Biloxi, Mississippi on a missions trip in the January of 2006 to help with Hurricane Katrina relief efforts through Salisbury University's chapter of B.A.S.I.C. (Brothers and Sisters in Christ) and Samaritan's Purse, so I am definitely excited about a chance to support this kind of thing by doing something I like to do (running a race). I hoep to wear my Samaritan's Purse t-shirt to the race tomorrow. I'm sure it will be rainy, chilly, and hilly on the course, but I'm hoping that they still have it and that I get through all right. My running has been going pretty nice so far since my last race (the Down's Park/Hog Neck Scamper 5 Mile Run in Anne Arundel County, MD) on Saturday, November 1. We'll see what happens tomorrow with it; God-willing it can be a great race and successful in raising funds for a constructive cause.


All right, thank you all for reading. Have a good night out there!