Sweating away during a 6 a.m. workout

100 participants huff and puff their way through calisthenics

The early morning came in a sweatsuit of fog as the Red Dog regulars arrived at Allen Fieldhouse for the 6 a.m. start of the May 10 workout.

Don “Red Dog” Gardner, organizer and namesake of Red Dog’s Dog Days, the community workout sessions that grew out of a high school football conditioning program, asked whether there was too much fog to take the group outdoors. The consensus was that almost any outside weather was preferable to the stuffy conditions inside. As it turned out, by the time the group had finished calisthenics and exited for its run, the fog had lifted considerably in the valley area around Kansas University’s basketball arena.

The nearly 100 participants huffed and puffed their way north along Naismith Drive, turning west on Irving Hill Road up to Daisy Hill. At the top of that climb, they caught their breath as they ran north on a flat stretch of Engel Road. At 15th Street the runners headed downhill east back to Naismith. The route’s final challenge was up the tough hill to Crescent Road, where the group reversed direction and savored the downhill route back to a finish at the fieldhouse.

It was the final Dog Days session of the week and brought the “doggies” closer to the June 5 start of Summer Dog Days.