I don’t care what scientists say. I don’t care what the general public says. And I definitely don’t care what Punxsutawney Phil says. Today was the first day of spring. After breaking out the tank top on yesterday’s long run I heard rumors of sixty degrees and clear blue skies in today’s forecast. For those of you who may have seen me biking on campus today, you may have noticed me disappointingly toting around my pink and white plaid shorts underneath the slightly chilly grey skies. I had been duped by mother nature, and it was just another Monday morning in march.

Then came 4:50, a much appreciated new time to get ready for the best part of the day and, lo(h) and behold, nothing but sunshine! Nothing, not even the Rec-Well audit, could get in my way of a great run now. After a particularly beautiful announcements speech by Colin, there were some desires to run Hills for Days. A decent idea in my opinion. Brian had just finished running it and I do appreciate the nature views on such a nice day, but it seemed a little short. Rylan offered that we could always add on after – I was down. Another circle, clearly more powerful, headed by Colin sauntered over to us and declared that they were doing Metro. I was down with doing a Greenbelt Metro. It’s a solid run with some nature and I’m sure it would be a chill run. Turns out, they were doing Metro Metro, like College Park Metro. I was very disappointed and pushed hard for Hills For Days. It was pointless, I had no sway.

Taking my first, uneasy steps down Wellness Way (I had to look up the name of that street) Rylan came up to me and we began talking about trying to get to Greenbelt Lake. When we got to the Cherry Chill path we decided to send it. My question of “Greenbelt Lake?” was only answered by the same question with an entirely different inflection “Greenbelt Lake?” By the end of Cherry Chill Rylan and I realized we didn’t really know where Greenbelt lake was, so we were gonnna do a Cherry Kill, or maybe it was reverse, either way it was new and exciting to me.

The new bridge at the end of the Cherry Chill path looks done, but a chain link fence blocked our path. Luckily I saw the adjacent road with a wide shoulder about 10 meters away when Rylan was about to ford the crick. After this shaky start the rest of our journey was quite successful; the apparently previously sus bridge was moderately friendly to runners and we didn’t have to play frogger across the pre-rush hour beltway. Within 4 miles of campus we were already running through scenic fields and up never before seen hills. The new scenery combined with the beautiful weather put me in awe. A few turns and a few miles later we were already at Route 1, albeit a part unfamiliar to me, but much to my happiness we decided to continue onwards towards the “ag fields” as Rylan continued to call them. We ended up running through more fields that were very much worth the high speed limit on whatever road we were on. The juxtaposition of the open fields, the aging infrastructure, and the nearby urban route 1 was very notable and interesting.

Nearing mile 8 neither of us really knew where we were, but we were reassured when we turned onto Cherrywood Ln. It was aptly named and we slowly realized that we were, ironically, coming up on the Greenbelt Metro station and thus running by Greenbelt lake. We then got to walk through the, now rush hour, Greenbelt Metro station and we found our way to familiar Rhode Island ave. Our biggest disappointment on the run came when we were in the area of the historic Berwyn Metro walking tour. We were looking for a giant lima bean? Maybe it was a soybean? Either way, the bean was not to be found. The final stretch was notable for the beautiful, now dropping, sun and some really annoying gust of wind that came on the sidewalk up the parking lot and lasted strangely long.

In the end, did we run too far? Probably, but I also got to experience a beautiful new run on the day with the best weather of the year so far. I’m proud that Rylan and I did not give in to the peer pressure of the easy run. I appreciate anyone who has made it this far in my completely random post. I thank Rylan for taking me on this run. And mostly I don’t want to write my english essay. I have included a map of the run for anyone who wants to experience the awesomeness that is this yet to be named run because I will totally be running it again (I tried to upload the picture but I kept getting some weird error?). Only 4 more days till break.

Peace,

Matthew Stasiukevicius