Freak Parade

No, I'm not kidding. We seriously got OUT OF BED at 4 something. It's true. Ask our husbands. If they hadn't already been passed out asleep, they would have passed out. We had a gaggle of girls this Saturday. Kristin, Me, Suzy, and Mikelle all braved the elements (ok, the weather was great- the only 'element' was our orneriness) to do an "adventure run". We have grown tired of our regular old parkway freaks. We need new ones. Underwear guy-- almost completely over it. Barefoot man-- How many times can you watch him run barefoot and wonder about his sanity? The Polygamist compound-- we watch for incriminating evidence daily that we should sweep in and do a mass women-and-children-rescue ala Carolyn Jessop style, but so far all we have seen is one of the girls mowing the lawn... wearing an I-pod. Not so suspicious I gotta say. There are the Good ol' boys who we watch for an imminent heart attack. Then there are the matchy-matchy bike riders who we are convinced all call each other every day..."What are you going to wear? The yellow? Ok, yes, definitely the yellow windbreakers". I'm sure all of our buddies have nicknames for us too.... hyena-laughing girls, the complainers, the slow-runners etc. I have no illusion that we ourselves are not a part of the parade. As you can see, when you run the parkway at the same time every day, you basically see your same people every day. Which, when it comes to our cheerleaders is AWESOME, but the cheerers are slumbering away at Vicky:thirty, so we are now each taking a turn scoping out a new place to do our Saturday long runs, and calling it our "adventure runs." (Maybe the exciting name will fool our left brains into thinking we are getting up to do something incredibly fun and new.)
Kristin picked a trail in Riverton that is actually a different area of the parkway. It wasn't until we arrived at the head of the trail that we realized that I had forgotten my 'watch' with the GPS that tells us how far we have run... kinda important when you don't know where you are running. K and I needed 13 miles. Mikelle, 5, and Suzy, 15. We talked two other women into letting us run near them and their watch. I think they left us in the dust when we kept asking "What is our pace?" "What time is it?" "How far have we gone?" So instead we resorted to asking other runners on the trail, "hey- how far have you run?" and then running to where they said and finding another runner to ask again. So yes my friends, we turned into the freaks on a whole new trail. There was an organized 5k that we crashed. That was new. Guys with hunting guns. Scary. There was even a hot spring on the route. It was an overcast day perfect for a long run. The view of Lone peak AND Timpanogas was INCREDIBLE! We talked and laughed and bugged others non-stop.
We have decided that we like it when people cheer for us- of course it stands to reason that we should now cheer for everyone else on the parkway (excluding those only wearing underwear or those lacking shoes.) I think all of our freak friends are used to us yelling at them. "You go girl!" "Keep it up!" ( especially to the matchy-matchy bikers). Apparently the people in Riverton don't feel it necessary to have strangers yell at them to keep running. Weird. They looked at us, blinked a few times, and moved over to the far side of the trail. Huh.
The trail wasn't as long of a loop as our trail, so we had to double back a few times on some portions. I think maybe the Rivertonarians thought we were just there to terrorize their nice, ridiculously early runs.
Because Suzy had to do 2 miles more than K and me, we had brought our little ice-packs, and towels, and post-run drinks, and anything else we could think of that we might want. So we sat on a pic-nick table, barefoot, and sweaty (yes- on our towels), and iced and laughed, and groaned in pain, and took pictures of each other doing stupid stuff. At one point a runner walked next to us and I commented that really we weren't that weird, our other partner was running still. She made a remark back that indicated she had seen weird, and we were it. Which, of course, makes us laugh, and make fun of ourselves, which made us even weirder.

Afterwards, we all went to breakfast at the Left Fork Grill and solved all of life's problems. So see- all is well in the world. And next week is my turn to pick the adventure run!!!