Running crasher

You've heard of Wedding Crashers? Well, on Saturday I was a Running Crasher. Here's what happened. After my TWM run on Thursday (I'll explain TWM a little later), my friend Theresa told me she would be running six on Saturday morning with her husband Jason. Eladio wasn't having a group run on Saturday and I wanted to get in some sort of long run, but was really hoping for 8-10 miles. I wasn't sure what I'd be able to do though since my family and I had been sick all week. We had fevers and lots of congestion. I knew running over the weekend would depend on us feeling better so I didn't want to make definite plans until Friday afternoon.

By then, Alex was running a fever so I took him to the doctor. Diagnosis...double ear infection. We got him on antibiotics and pain medicine. Eladio was also on the mend, so I called Theresa and decided to meet her the next morning. She sent an email out to our TWM group to invite everyone. Not knowing the response, I showed up bright and early Saturday morning.

It turned out to be just me, Theresa and Jason. Very quickly, I felt like the third wheel. I started thinking, "What if they had just wanted to run by themselves and I pushed my way in? This could have been planned alone time with just the two of them." I voiced my concern and Theresa and Jason assured me it was okay. Well, I guess she did send out that email. We ran a beautiful, low-traffic, hilly course. The conversation was so good though, I hardly even noticed the hills.

We got done right about 8:00. I hopped in my car and was about to head home for "mommy duty," but then I thought - "Hmm, my friend Ann and her group were planning to meet at 8:00 just a mile or so away from here. Maybe I should try to join her for a few more miles." I had really wanted to run more than six anyway.

I called Eladio to make sure it was okay. He said it was fine so I followed his directions and figured out Ann's meeting spot (long story short - he knew where that was). It was a new access point for me to a trail I have run many times. I was a little unsure where I was going, but I kept following the main trail like Eladio had instructed. I knew they had about a 10 minute head start, but I was hoping I'd run into them at some point and could join them for at least a couple of miles. A mile and half later, I still hadn't found them. I had just about given up hope and was ready to turn around when they appeared in front of me on the trail. They were surprised to see me, but welcomed me to join them. I got in my final mile then turned around to head back to my car with just one woman from the group. The rest were going on to do some more miles.

We finished up with some nice, easy cool down miles. By the time I got back to my car, my Garmin read just over 10 miles. Not bad for really not planning it all out. I just had to laugh that I was able to do it all with friends and by crashing their already well-planned runs.

A quick explanation about TWM - it stands for "Tuesdays with Myra" - adapted from Tuesdays with Morrie (a good, sentimental book and movie). A group of originally five women from Runner's Edge who all live nearby wanted to get together to do some speed workouts and semi-long runs on Tuesday and Thursday mornings last spring. After we met a few times, Ann and I started joking that we needed to call ourselves something. There was already a group called "5 at 5" and we were really "5 at 6" (five women who met to run at 6 a.m.) Didn't have quite the same ring. After playing around with a few things, we came up with Tuesdays with Myra. It's now abbreviated since we also sometimes meet on Thursdsays. Over the summer and early fall, we met sporadically, but now that we're heading into our off-season, we're starting to meet more frequently. I love these ladies! Without them, I'm sure I wouldn't be running quite that early or doing that many miles during the week. See you in the morning!