Wednesday, March 16h - 2011
Hello everyone - I hope everyone is ready for our first 2011 east nasty run in the daylight. That's right daylight savings time has come and gone and we finally get to run with the sun still out. Maybe now you can actually see what the person who has been running next to you for the past 3 or 4 months looks like. So clean up east nasties - shave off that beard, put in some hair gel, take off that beanie, comb your hair, put on some make up, dress to impress in your best technical gear and come join the best looking and law abiding running group in the U.S.A. We will be running route #11 tomorrow - please take a look at the route as we will need some pace group leaders out there and you need to know where to go. Rules of the Road -
So last Wednesday we had some big announcements about Mark & Rachel's meeting with the cops. Everyone last week did a great job staying on one side of the road and crossing the street at the appropriate places. We will need to keep this up of course and it is up to us to police ourselves. I am reposting Mark's comments from last week in case you missed them. If you did read them last week then go ahead and read it again --- this is important stuff.
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On Monday, I had a great and terrible meeting with the city. Great because they love what we are doing in terms of promoting fitness, and community involvement. Terrible because they had received 2 complaints over the last 3 weeks about runners jumping out in front of cars. Remember, our mission is to make East Nashville a great place to live and to run – and if we are causing traffic problems, we’re not being good neighbors.
At the end of the meeting, they city wants us to have Wednesday night runs – they were extremely supportive, but there are some things that we have to address if we want to continue.
The bottom line is this: Runners need to obey the rules of the road, and if we don’t follow these rules, the city can require us to hold a special permit every week! Which would force us to cancel Wednesday runs.
Specifically:
Cross streets at appropriate times and places. For example, don’t run through traffic signals without a green light (that was the incident that caused a complaint.)
Run on the sidewalk when available.
Don’t run in the middle of the road. If you do have to run in the roadway, run on the far left side, and no more than 2 abreast.
(If you are interested in more, here is a link to the pedestrian laws for Tennessee.)
If you’re not prepared to follow these rules, please don’t join us! I know this sounds harsh but the future of our Wednesday night runs depends on each one of us.
Shirts
We still have some east nasty shirts that have not been picked up yet. This includes both the nike dri fit shirts and the lululemon tanks. So if you ordered a shirt please bring your money tomorrow to pick yours up as we will be putting the shirts up for sale to anyone who wants them starting next week. The nike dri fit shirts are $15 and the lululemon tanks should have already been paid for. We accept check or cash.
Thought of the week
So since east nasty is under going some changes I thought it would be nice to re-visit a topic that we forget sometimes. We need to look out for our fellow runners. We have some newbies and some veterans out there running every Wednesday night and that is what makes east nasty so great. With that said though we have some big numbers and we need to do a better job of keeping an eye out for each other. Not everyone out there knows the route that we are running and not everyone out there is running a sub 10 minute pace. So keep an eye out for those around you and make sure that no one is running alone. Anytime you make a turn look behind you and make sure that others no where to go. Its also a good idea after the run to walk down to 3 crow and leave with a group instead of by yourself. East Nasty is a great thing and it means a lot to a lot of people so do your part and look out for your east nasty brothers and sisters :-)
Drew