Salt-ry Medal Presentation

If you follow NPE (and you SHOULD if you don’t!) you know we had quite the adventure this weekend; a 5K run in a working salt mine! That’s right; over 600 feet below the Kansas grasslands is an ancient ocean floor from whence comes the rock salt used on city streets to make them safe for winter driving. Once a year they turn off all the lights, map out a 3.1mi course with a blue rope snaking through wide tunnels of salt., and set us crazy runners loose in there, decked out in bike helmets and headlamps, determined to follow that blue rope as fast as we can; in the dark, over rutted, wavy, mounded, bumpy, valleyed, loose, rocky, moon-like terrain, in still and heavy air that smells and nearly tastes of salt, in a perfectly comfortable running temperature around 60 degrees.

Running in the dark is no big deal to me. As a blind runner I do it all the time. The challenge with this race was the terrain. Putting in a flawless performance as first-time running-guide was my long-time friend NPE. Not only is a guide required to physically guide a blind runner through a course via a tether both runners hold on to (I use tug toys for dogs), but they must also verbally guide by alerting the runner to direction and terrain changes. This course required almost non-stop narration due to the roughness of the terrain and the maze-like turns of the tunnels. All I had to do was follow. NPE had the true challenge. No words can express my thanks to him for taking up that challenge and sharing this amazing run with me.

And so, as is tradition, I have once again put together a few artful nudes embellished with the spoils of the run; a medal!

As NPE so artfully pointed out in his blog post this particular medal lends itself ever so nicely to naughtiness! You should see where he put it! I bet you can guess!