Saturday was Mer’ s day, although she was gracious enough to let me carve out my Saturday morning long run on the Towpath (sixteen miles, in this case). Running turned out to be the theme of the day, because after I got back home and ready for the day, we jumped in the car and headed an hour southeast, to McDonald, to see the CVCA cross country team at the Billy Goat Invitational.

The Billy Goat invitational is held in a park, and runs (roughly) the same course twice to get in the five kilometers. It is a perfect spectators’ race – we were able to see the runners seven times with minimal walking on our part. The race ends with an infamous hill into the finish line. Saturday was dry, but I have heard tell of people pulling themselves up the hill using hands when the hill gets muddy. It is a rough ending to a hard race. CVCA’s guys ran well, coming in second out of thirteen teams. The girls’ team had a harder time, with some of the top runners out because of injury. It was a great day to watch a high school race again, and we got to catch up with the junior high coach (and our friend) Jordan.

After the race, Mer had us head to West Branch Reservoir. I was shocked that on such a beautiful day there were not more people at the beach, but that was the case. It was by no means empty, but it was not crowded. We only went to the beach after we had to give up on hiking the trail system, which was mosquito-infested because of the recent rains. The beach was a fine place to stroll, though – we took off our shoes and wandered the whole length of the beach and back, wading in the water. It was not a huge beach, but it took about ten minutes to walk it in each direction.

We then headed home, where Mer decided we should play Jeopardy! on the Wii video game console. That worked out well for Mer- she won handily. All hard feelings were taken care of with a trip to Handel’s for ice cream.