Saturday Morning Run

My morning started by discovering that while I had set my alarm clock to the desired 5:30 AM wakeup I had failed to slide the bar to the proper setting. Fortunately Michelle was already up for her 6:00 AM run so she threw a bucket of cold water on me just before she left to meet Jenny and Melissa. Shivering cold and still half asleep I stepped out of bed onto our cat’s tail. Our cat is about 400 years old but showed exceptional cat reflexes by spinning around and wrapping her front paws around my right knee. No big deal, she’s an indoor cat and has had her front claws removed so she was just kind of boxing me with her paw pads. I looked down and asked her if she was done which was my second mistake of the day. You see this is when her ears laid back and she became the Tasmanian devil with her back claws and started the blood dance around my ankle spinning completely around my leg as she sliced and diced my flesh. I managed to remove the cat from my leg and stumble to the master bath for medical supplies then dress for running.

I ate a good breakfast as I waited for Steve to pick me up for our 6:30 AM run. The plan was for Steve to meet me at 6:20. Steve is one of those computer geeks that works for a bank. His biorhythms are not measurable early in the morning. At about 6:29 I see lights swing into our driveway, the sound of screeching tires and the impact of metal against metal. I went out to find Steve trying to pop the dent out of my company car angry that I had parked it in the driveway. He forgave me so I tossed my gym bag in his car, grabbed my hot cup of tea, and we headed off to the YMCA to start our run. On the way to the Y Steve slammed on the brakes unexpectedly to test the ABS brakes on his Honda. He told me he does a test like this every so often to make sure the ABS system is functional. I asked him if he had any burn ointment for my legs since his little test caused me to spill my steaming hot tea all over them. I apologized for spilling my drink as we pulled into the Y.

As we emerged from the car we noticed Rob and Lisa preparing to leave for a run too. We joined them to begin a nice five-mile loop. It was dark so no one noticed my glowing red legs and bandages. You need to understand that Lisa is not your usual runner. Lisa is most assuredly from some other planet. Running is cross training for her real talent as a soccer player. She has played on 5 national championship teams and eats guys like Rob, Steve, and I for breakfast. The scary part was that it was morning and she seemed hungry. As I said it was dark and it had become slightly foggy as we ran the first mile. I couldn’t hear very well because of the loud heavy breathing I was doing trying to keep up with the others. That’s probably why I didn’t hear the clackity clack of the dog’s toenails behind me before he jumped up and bit me on the ass. I think he had barbs on his teeth or something because he stayed clamped onto my left butt cheek for the next three miles before Lisa felt sorry for me and pulled the dog off. Rob and Steve made me apologize for disrupting their run with laughter therefore slowing them down.
We rambled into the Y from our first loop to meet up with the 7:30 runners for another 5-mile loop. I managed to take some Advil to help manage the pain from my morning injuries and I was ready for a second loop. Lisa did not join us for the second lap due to a soccer game latter in the day. Barb, Gaye, Elaine, Monica, Rick, Linda, Lori, and Jamal all headed out. Lisa may not be from this planet but Jamal is not from this Solar System. Jamal is fast, how fast? The guy has ceramic tiles on his running clothes so he won’t burn up when he reaches maximum velocity. That’s right, just like the space shuttle. We inspected his tiles prior to the run and everything checked out OK. As we started our run I edged out in front of Jamal at a fairly fast pace when one of my bandages from the wounds received from my cat came undone. A piece of the foam gauze got blown off my leg and struck one of Jamal’s protective ceramic tiles. Fortunately for all of us the tile cracked causing Jamal to slow to a pace that Rob, Steve, and I could barely keep up with.

Yes it seemed like my day was finally coming together as we cruised along at a nice clip on the roads. The last two miles of our run were on a trail around a small local lake. As we approached the start of the lake trail on a new road that serves the local community college we met up with Michelle, Melissa, and Jenny coming from the other direction. We waved at them and as I passed Jenny she popped her arm up with a well-placed forearm shiver to my throat causing me to immediately slam onto my back in the middle of the road. I didn’t know that she put her way through college playing professional woman’s roller derby. She smiled at me and pointed toward the boys saying I’d better hurry up, they were getting away. Jenny complained about some elbow pain so I apologized for running into it. As I scrambled to catch back up I stepped in a big pile of dog poop that stuck to my shoe and then flipped up onto the back of my calf. I was hoping it was just mud but the smell soon proved my worst fear. One more loop around the lake and we headed back to the Y for the finish of our run. Total miles 10.5.

I have included some fictional events in my blog today but I’ve had bloggers block and felt like I needed to do something to get writing again. One of the events did actually happen but I’ll leave that up to you to determine. I’ve tried to spice up an otherwise uneventful but fun 10-mile run. On the serious side of life I give my hopes and prayers to Elaine who has been on a two week leave from Iraq and heads back tomorrow morning. I thank her for taking the time to run with us on her break. We have missed her from our running group as she has been serving for our country and we look forward to August when she returns from her deployment. Keep your head down Elaine!

Thank you for visiting my blog.