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Week 12: Watson Lake to Highway 267

This week we had Martha Kreig join us for this very special run that was dedicated to her son, Max Kreig  who lost his life at the age of 5.  With Martha came many girlfriends who love and support her every day as running buddies.  So, for this run, she brought Katie Benty and Jenny Wilson, and we also were joined by Laura Brown, Executive Director of Excellence in Education!  So, we had 4 guest runners this week!  We were ready to have some fun out on the trail.

We all gathered at the end of the trail (6 cars, 2 dogs, and 6 women) ready to run.  Luckily Jenny had a car that could hold all us all so we only had to take one car to Watson Lake where our run would begin.  After getting acquainted in the car, it took Jenny some time to sort out the 3 different Katies.

It was a perfect day to be out on the trail running with bright blue skies and the sun just warming up.  We started off around a trail that skirts around Watson Lake before turning right into the woods.  We kept a good pace line for the first couple of miles with one stop to take it all in. Lots of chatting!

Through the first golden meadow filled with crispy Mules Ears we found a Tahoe Rim Trail crew.  We are lucky for the volunteers that keep this trail in good shape for our enjoyment.  They all got 6 ‘thank you’s’ as we trotted by.

As we hit mile 3 and 4 the trail began to go up and Katie T. kept pace with Martha and Laura in the front as Katie C. was dragging behind and Katie B. and Jenny held back to keep her moving. The trail kept inching up and up as we kept wrapping around Lake Tahoe. A bit further along we were looking off to Diamond Peak Ski Resort where we will be heading to in the next couple of weeks. Wow, that looked far away then.

The trail crossed the Fiberboard Freeway and then we had a very steep but short pitch before it was all downhill to the car.  For the whole downhill we could see Lake Tahoe in the distance  across skeletal trees towering over beds of manzanita bushes.  The Tahoe National Forest has so much beauty to be enjoyed!

And there we were, we made it!  6 miles, 6 girls, and 600 feet climbed! We shared hugs all around to remember the fun loving, charismatic, thoughtful, funny, smart, loving boy Max.  We love you so much Max, and think about you every day. 

We will proudly be sending a check to Excellence in Education in celebration of another section completed!  Thank you for making the Tahoe-Truckee Unified School District better with classroom enhancements, teacher awards and training, specialized programs to help grade level literacy and much, much more!  We appreciate all that you contribute for our children.

The next section we will be running for a very dear person to us, as well as the rest of Truckee’s animals and humans, Dr. Brooks Bloomfield. Meeting someone like Brooks is a very rare occurrence, he has such a big heart and kind soul- his connection with the animals he treats (our pets!) is so evident and his compassion and caring attitude is refreshing in a time where sometimes people seem like they are on auto-pilot. Brooks has been diagnosed with Multiple System Atrophy (MSA) and at this time there is no known cure. Brooks treated my dear dog Jasper (a Weimaraner) through an aging disease, and gave us his constant care, attention, love, and nightly emails to see how Jasper was doing, all while he was battling MSA and having serious personal struggles. It amazes me to this day that he cared so much about what we (and Jasper) were going through when he had so much pain and discomfort to deal with. That’s just who Brooks is, though, thinking about others before himself.

Click here to read this touching article about Brooks, his dear family, and MSA.

Next week we will be sending a donation to The MSA Coalition to further support, education, research and advocacy for this rare disease.