The weekend before Thanksgiving, we all ventured to New Boston, NH to celebrate the 70th Birthday of Katie’s dad, Tex (aka Peter). We celebrated at Tex’s own Swallow Ridge Farm where he raises cattle. The Farm, as we call it, has been a place of many memorable events including holiday celebrations, a large family reunion, and my favorite, Maple Syrup Making weekends. It is an amazing place to visit and even more amazing is that Tex (with some family help) has rehabbed a once long abandoned property into a working farm virtually on his own. Some images of this great place:

That truck is especially awesome. It’s a 1948 (not sure of make and model) that Tex bought and had customized for the Farm.

Running in New Boston is always beautiful, but it does have a couple of drawbacks. 1) The roads are quiet, but mostly lack a shoulder which can make things scary against oncoming traffic. 2) New Boston puts the HILL in hilly. A great workout, but some of those climbs are soul-crushing! The route I took is a peaceful run mostly along one of the many dirt roads in the area. It was a chilly morning, but I was thankful for my new Smartwool PhD running tights (more on them in a later post). Things were so pleasant that stretched the run to 5 miles, which I had not achieved on some time.

It doesn’t look it, but that the road in the top picture is up a seemingly endless hill. One bonus: I hit my fastest pace of the run on the way down.

See you on the road!