Way to go, Mom.

Not! 

Ok, not MY mom! My mom is awesome, great (love you momma!!)! I’m talking about the mom who almost plowed me and RED over this morning.  So Not-My-Mom, if your you’re reading this please refer to Here in America Part I and Part II…

RED and I set out for 15 miles this morning!  You all should be so proud, on my bachelorette morning I got up at 6:15 to go for a run at 7! After we started going we got to discussing next weekends run.  It will be a crazy busy weekend for both of us so we decided to do 16 today instead of the planned 15 so we can drop our mileage down next weekend to a more manageable All-By-Ourself-With-No-Partner-Run. So we quickly recalibrated our thoughts to prepare for 16 miles. 

Here we are before the run! 

 

And off we go…..

 

 

Here is where Not-My-Mom enters Scene 4 Take 1.  We were probably about 4 miles or so in when we came to a pretty ridiculous intersection.  How ridiculous?  Well, take a look below:

  Three streets here have a stop sign. The yellow street does not. RED and I were plugging along, minding our own business on the yellow street.  Some crazy lady, with her TEENAGED daughter in the front seat of her Minirunner smasher…Minivan came flying to the intersection on a street WITH A STOP SIGN.  RED and I both slowed considerably but as you may recall I love to see the shocked look on the faces of drivers when they realized they almost killed me.  Priceless.  We slowed enough to not get smashed on the street but I could have reached out and touched her van. I believe her daughter noticed us first then the mom glanced to her left and BOTH hands went up to her face as she hit the breaks.  Simultaneously I had a devilish grin on my face and was pointing at the stop sign a good 15 ft (seriously a car and a half length) behind her. RED had both hands up with a very exaggerated shoulder shrug.  I am certain we ruined this woman's trip to the salon….or shopping, or whatever it was that was so important.  I mean really? Was she going to plow through that intersection?  What a moron! Oh and AWESOME example to set for your teen daughter.  A new generation of awesome, considerate drivers.  Sweet.

Well, we survived that and I believe it was our only near death experience during our 16 miles (aside from running up a horrible killer hill, all the prickly bushes, tree branches growing over the sidewalk that almost took both our heads off and eyes out,  blackberry bushes with human flesh eating thorns, and the gas station that poisoned us with lemonade instead of sweet water). Pretty good I must say. About a mile and a half later we were nearing Ruston Way to hit up a few miles of flatness along the waterfront when I heard my name!  I turned to see Jill and her friend Andrea!!! They were out for a nice 10 miler! We chit-chatted for a minute (or two) then ran a little bit when I remembered I  had my iPhone so we snapped a quick pick:

 

It was great to see her again! I hadn’t seen Jill since Rock n Roll!  (Man I’m going to miss running into my friends when we move.)

We wished each other well on the long runs and set off again.

 

 

By this time RED and I realized that G. Money was way off on his mileage.  It would only get worse.  I did a quick MapMyRun this AM to get an idea of where to go so I had a clue about how far we had gone and my Garmin was off by about .8 when we were a good 8 miles in.  WHAT IN THE WORLD? And more importantly, HOW LONG HAS THIS BEEN GOING ON!?  He is measuring short.  We were at 7.7 or so and he was registering only 6.9. No bueno.  I wonder how many EXTRA miles I have run without knowing it.  We finished the run going off of RED’s Nike Plus.  I know hers was accurate because we did about two miles on the track and it was right on.  Mine was 1.1 miles off by the end of our run. Crud.

Stats from RED’s Nike Plus:

16 miles/9:33 pace/2:33

RED and I are excellent running buddies.  We haven't’ always been.  When we first started running together she was way faster than me and her running-while- jogging-singing- and dancing irritated the heck out of me.  But now I know it was only because she was trying her darndest to hold it back to run with me…I get it now.  I also find it mildly entertaining these days when she busts a move on a street corner!  Now we are pretty evenly matched. It only took me losing 15 pounds, gaining a good amount of cardiovascular endurance and her having stress fractures (and other leg issues) that laid her out for a year to get us to an even playing field.  It is hard to find good running partners and I have been SO lucky to have a few!  I am going to miss each and every single one of you come October.  I am trying not to think about it just yet. I’m not ready to deal with the move from West to East…

So, today was a great run! 16 miles checked off the schedule and my first 30+ mile week during this training cycle! During my training for OKC I hadn’t had a 30+ mile week yet. It wasn’t until the Marathon Month that I hit that mark.  So I am so happy to be right on track for an amazing marathon!  I think I will shoot for sub 4.  That seems to be my goal.

Here we are after the run:

Thanks for the great run this AM RED!! As always it was a pleasure sharing 16 miles with you!!  I cherish every single mile we have together!  Ok, I’m going to eat a tub of ice cream and cry now…

Happy Long Run Saturday!!!