Walsingham Running Path Ribbon Cutting Set for Wednesday, Oct. 28

by Rick Platt

For the past few years, runners participating in the Colonial Road Runners Wednesday afternoon interval sessions at Walsingham Academy have had to contend with about a sixth of a mile per lap of medium-sized rocks, used to cover the maintenance road from the far end of the track, along the woods line, and to the baseball backstop and dugouts. While run-able, the rocks were not fun to run on, and slowed down the pace for that section.

That inconvenience is now history. Back in March Walsingham agreed to purchase a dump truck-load of finely crushed stone, which was left in four large piles. The Colonial Road Runners agreed to provide all of the labor in moving the existing rocks to the side to provide an even base, then loading and dumping countless wheelbarrows full of the crushed stone, before smoothing out the finished running path.

Led by project coordinator Rick Platt, the regulars (with at least three work sessions) included Frank Caruso, Andrew and Mercedes D’Amico, Frank Faykes, Jim Goggin, Ian Hawkes, Ed Irish and Ann Jurczyk. Also putting in at least one work session were MacKenzie Carnes, Greg Dawson, Rex Hoover, Ashley Hoover, Steve Menzies, Paula Pickering and Daniel Shaye.

The finished smooth, flat surface is wide enough for two runners abreast, and is similar in condition to running paths at Noland Trail, Warhill, or Newport News Park. Try it out sometime!

So if you’ve been avoiding the Walsingham intervals in the past year or so, because you didn’t like running over the rocks, that excuse is gone! Come on out, and join us for the official ribbon-cutting ceremony, which will take place at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, October 28th, in a ceremonial lap around the “short loop”, before the regular interval workout. Even if you can’t make the ribbon-cutting session, we hope as many of you as possible will become regulars at the Wednesday workouts on our new path.

Note that the October 28th interval session will be the last one at the regular March-through-October 5:30 p.m. starting time. With daylight savings time ending on Sunday, November 1st, all workouts from November 4th through the end of January will be at the winter starting time of 4:30 p.m.