University of Richmond Athletics
Inside the Loop with Conor Phelan
10/11/2011 | Cross Country
Oct. 11, 2011
Editor's Note: Cross country junior Conor Phelan will take some time over the course of the 2011 season to share his thoughts and experiences in an ongoing blog that offers readers an inside look into life as a Spider both on and off the course. Below is his sixth entry of the season.
At long last, Fall Break! As many of you may already know, the University of Richmond enjoys a four-day long weekend known as Fall Break. This highly anticipated time off from class offers everyone at the university an opportunity to relieve pent up stress, catch up on sleep and favorite TV shows and explore the beautiful and historic city of Richmond.
The weekend started off well with a group of my teammates and I traveling to Kings Dominion, which is a nearby amusement park. We enjoyed being startled in haunted houses, experiencing terrific g-forces on roller coasters and having a good laugh all the while. Each year, Kings Dominion goes all out to put on their famous "Fright Nights".
What must be thousands of fog machines create a thick blanket of dense fog that permeates the entire park and allows hundreds of dressed-up monsters to scare visitors walking from attraction to attraction. The only time you are able to see more than 25 meters ahead of you is when you are lifted 305 feet above the park on the famous "Drop Tower". But your time above the opaque mist is short lived as you suddenly find yourself plummeting downwards more than 70 miles per hour to the ground. After a few hours of thrills, we headed home to get rest before our long runs the next morning.
The past few days have been unbelievably relaxing. Last night, what started as a trip to Martins to pick up some groceries wound up as an awesome evening out exploring downtown Richmond's "Shockoe Bottom" district and nearby canal walk.
The first stop for Kyle Ragan, Matthew Groff, Andrew Valenski and I was Bottom's Up Pizza. This unique pizzeria is tucked underneath a matrix of highway overpasses and between rusting factory buildings and the imposing concrete floodwall. What sounds like a dreadful location for a restaurant is what made it so wonderful.
Sitting outside on the pizzeria's second story, we enjoyed amazing pizza (since it's not quite Chicago deep-dish or New York style, we settled on it being Richmond style pizza) amid the buzz of the city, the waning sunlight painting the metallic buildings in a brilliant tone of silver and gold, and our own relaxed congenial conversation (constituted highly of Andrew's hilarious antics). Afterwards, we wandered over to the canal walk, a craftily restored historic region of the city with monuments and plaques dating back hundreds of years. The light-colored stone walkways, walls and arches of the canal walk contrast with the plots of grass and the glass-like canal water just inches below the edge of the walkway.
The canal walk is an area of the city that we all know about but never really get the time to experience until a weekend such as this. Matthew Groff put together a wonderful video (see below) of the footage we all took from our night exploring the city. We hope you enjoy it!
Tonight is our annual Scavenger Hunt, and the whole team is very amped up about this. We are looking forward to racing at UVa. this weekend and I will be sure to keep everyone updated in a week's time. Thanks for reading!
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