Yesterday morning was our ninth-annual Easter Bunny Hop. The tradition started when my Cruiser friend Jerome and I planned an excursion taking us off the W&OD Trail, winding along smaller neighborhood trails until we arrived at Bill’s and my back yard where we’d hidden bottles of Gatorade and plastic Easter eggs filled with packets of GU (affiliate link) and Sports Beans (affiliate link). Despite miserably heavy rain, the Cruisers loved the idea, and a tradition was born.

Backing things up to earlier this week, I hit the hills for repeats on Tuesday, followed by an easy run on Thursday. Tuesday’s hill repeats went fine; however, just after 4.5 miles on Thursday’s run, my knee started bothering me… a lot. It was a completely new and unfamiliar pain, and as soon as I quit running the pain stopped. I’m closely monitoring it and hope it doesn’t cause problems on my hilly and technical trail race on Saturday.

On Friday night I put together the Cruisers’ Easter baskets while waiting for our kids to get into town for the weekend. I also had two Speedy Bunnies to give out as random prizes.

 

Saturday morning the Cruisers and I gathered at the W&OD Trail at 8 AM and took our obligatory pre-run GoPro (affiliate link) selfie.

 

Since my dear friend Beth is moving to North Carolina in a couple of weeks, our Bunny Hop also served as a going away party for her. The previous week, I’d put together a special poster commemorating Beth’s many runs with the Cruisers. Cutting it close, I tracked it all week as it left Texas via UPS, arrived in North Carolina, crossed over Virginia in route to New Jersey, spent an extra day in New Jersey being transferred from UPS to USPS, and finally arrived at our house two hours after our Cruiser celebration ended.

Not wanting to send Beth off empty handed, I presented her with… an empty frame.

 

The girls and I had a delightful six-mile run. My knee started acting up again around mile four, but didn’t hurt badly enough to stop and walk. Chuck, who had ACL surgery a few weeks ago to repair an injury caused by a skiing accident, walked and finished up at about the same time as us. Joe and his daughter walked/ran, but were gone by the time we got back to the parking lot and missed the post-run picture.

 

After our run, most of us headed to a nearby restaurant for breakfast and gave Beth an appropriate send-off. As I mentioned earlier, Beth’s poster arrived a couple of hours after I got home.

 

Back at home, I spent a very relaxing afternoon and evening with my family. Pablo was as cute as ever and loved his Nats scarf the Easter Bunny brought him. I think he likes me because he followed me around, even conquering the scary stairs leading from the main level to the basement (he doesn’t have stairs in his house). The previous evening he had graduated from Level 1 Puppy School and was happy to show off his new tricks in exchange for treats.

 

Happy Easter from Pablo and our entire family!

 

In case you skipped checking in on my blog this past week, here’s what you missed…

Looking ahead to this coming week, on Wednesday please be sure to join me for my monthly Wednesday Word linkup where this month’s word is deliberate.

 

In addition to what I mentioned above, here’s a complete run-down of my workouts (completed mostly in our home gym) from this past week…

 

  • Questions:
  • If you run with a group, do you have any fun traditions that I should adopt for the Cruisers?
  • How was your week?
  • Did you race this weekend? 

 

Have a great week!

 

Disclaimer:  This post contains affiliate links which means if you click on the blue product link and then make a purchase, I will receive a commission for referring you. You will pay no more or less for the product; however, Amazon will show their gratitude for my referral by paying me.

 

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I’m linking up with Holly at HoHo Runs and Wendy from Taking The Long Way Home for their Weekly Wrap. Be sure to check out not only the hosts’ posts, but the other great bloggers joining in on the fun!