Gaggles Galore...

Today I ran a final long training run with Jenn. Next Sunday I will be pacing her to the finish line of her first official 1/2 marathon. We met early this morning for an eight mile run. The weather was perfect, not too hot and not too cold. Jenn and I make a habit of running a mile past our anticipated turn around point so that we have a mile cool down walk at the end of all of our runs. It really works out well. We had quite an entertaining run today with lots of interesting encounters. There was the older gentleman on the bike that prety much yelled "didn't you see me coming?" Apparently we didn't move over far enough for his liking! Oops! Then around mile seven we encounter a younger gentleman on a bike who did not say a word upon his approach. Not an "on your left" or even a "get the heck out of the way". Nope he just went flying past on our right without a word. It was quite alarming when I realized what was happening and had to side step before I was taken out by him. Just as we were about 1/2 mile from completing our run a "gaggle" of runners was coming right at us. It was so weird, it was like they came out of nowhere. Jenn and I went single file and said our good mornings and all was well with that encounter. During this encounter we also witnessed a super mom pushing her two children in a double jog stroller and she wasn't even out of breath!! You go super mom!! Shortly after this we had completed our eight mile run so it was time for our mile cool down walk. As we were walking along we passed a variety of interesting people. We had the "super happy smiling" runner. Seriously he couldn't have looked more happy to be out there. We also had "ballerina in training" runner. She was up on her tip toes just plugging along at a great pace. Finally we had the "tiptoe prancing, tush shaking" runner sporting what looked to be similar to a wet suit. Perhaps he was doing a brick workout for a triathlon?!? At some point during this a doe and its fawn scared the living daylights out of me. At least it wasn't my OWN shadow this time. If you follow me on Facebook you know what I am talking about! As we got towards the end of our cool down walk, we encountered a "gaggle" of older hikers. Hey, at least they were out there exercising, right?!? As we got back to our cars we passed a "gaggle" of bikers. I said that we certainly had encountered a lot of "gaggles" today and Jenn said except for a "gaggle" of geese. Don't you know that at that very moment Jenn looked over and said "oh wait, there's the "gaggle" of geese." Sure enough the geese were right next to our parked cars! I couldn't make this stuff up people! I had a fantastic time running with Jenn today, the miles just flew by and we certainly had a fun run!!

Keep running, you're simply the best, and you inspire me!!