Adventures Make the Heart Grow Fonder

Tee hee hee. Giggling is all I can really do when I think about Saturday's long run. After the AAA/unibomber/super-grocery-bathroom saga we finally got started about 8:20. Almost 2 1/2 hours after we'd planned on being out on the roads. Blast. The late start changed just a few things. First, we had to run less milage, because as Lori mentioned we had less time with Erin's and my crazy Saturday schedule. Secondly, we were much more awake and quite hilarious because of that. And thirdly, there were OTHER people awake too. When we run at the butt crack of dawn we usually don't see many people so the fact that we look like train wrecks and have tendency's to do rather funny things (such as dance, skip, sing, etc.) on our long runs are saved for just us. However, at 8, normal people are awake and getting their days started. This however provided much entertainment for us. Instead of running 16 miles like we had planned, we really only got 12.5 in (I checked on usatf.com). The run itself was nice. We kept mentioning how sad we were that it wasn't the day of the real marathon because the weather was PERFECT. A lot of other people thought so too, because there were lots of people out and about in their yards. Our favorite by far was the man practicing his karate moves with a stick out in his driveway. We figured he probably had hit one of his children with the stick while practicing inside and was therefore banished to the driveway for his further practicing needs. As they day had already lent to adventures, Lori and I after dropping Erin off along the course at her grandma's, decided to wander a bit through a neighborhood we hadn't been in in quite a while. The neighborhood was fun and we were having a great time enjoying the sun and chatting when we suddenly realized that we had come to a dead end. Did we turn around? No! Instead we decided to jump a fence (luckily a low one since I am fence jumping impared) and continued on. We finally wound our way out of the neighborhood and out onto 12th street to head up to the parkway. We LOVE the parkway. Yes, yes we do. Apparently so does the man that was living in his truck down by the river. I'm not even kidding. Seriously there was a man living in his old beat up Chevy with a camper top on top of the bed, parked right by the river. Hopefully he's aware that it's not good to use rivers as your bathroom facilities.....As we ran back up to my house, we came across 2 little girls (about 8 years old) in flip-flops, who decided they needed to race us. Sad thing was by mile 12, I didn't even care. I must say though that I was quite impressed that they could run as fast as they did in those shoes. ;) Overall, it was adventure after adventure, but it kept us entertained, and made for a great run. Thanks for such a good time ladies!
The only downer was that I was more sore after a rather relaxed 12 miler than I was after the 18 miler last week. Go figure.