The Thang

So there we were, running at a solid clip of 8-10 minutes a mile. Milton and Twiligh took the lead, with Vern, Dilly Dilly, and YHC trailing about 20 seconds behind. Motown, BR, and Pork Rinds kept a solid pace while Den Mother and Woody made sure nobody died on the trail.

Halfway through the run we were attacked by savage coyotes (well, not really, but I did see a bunny cross the trail) but Vern and his trusty headlamp scared em off after a bureaucratic roundtable and tense negotiations, trading 3 rabbits for safe passage.

We kept running.

BR, Porkrinds, and Motown came across a helpless puppy about 3/4 of a mile in (actually, I’m not sure this happened since I wasn’t there, but here’s how it would’ve gone): They quickly organized a “lost puppy found” campaign and canvassed the neighborhood knocking door to door (people seemed upset at 5:30am for some reason) to locate the owner. Finally a friendly grandma pointed out they had found a bunny, not a puppy. By this time they’d caught up with Vern and his stiff negotiations with the coyotes so it turned out to be great timing to have that extra collateral to negotiate with.

Then we kept running.

Woody and Den Mother, ensuring the safety of the running PAX, strategically timed their start roughly 30 minutes after everyone else (this didn’t actually happen, but if it had, props for keeping safety first) to make sure no one quit near the finish. Cause that’s usually when dudes throw in the towel – right at the finish line. But I digress. Both were great encouragers and verbally pondered why it had taken the rest of us so long to get back when all they had to do was catch an Uber. Swell dudes.

We did some more running.

Milton and Twilight, having scorched the trail with their blazing speed, realized at 17 minutes in that they had forgotten their legal ID’s to cross into Canada, so they turned around. Good thing too. Vern was just finishing up negotiations and Woody and Den mother were starting to get worried.

Running was done (not finished… done as in we were doing it).

Dilly Dilly and YHC stayed on point, focused on breathing, and pushing ourselves to increase the pace. That is, until, it finally dawned on us that Ragnar isn’t until May 15, so why sacrifice sleep now for the sake of running later? We took a right turn, stopped by 7/11 to pick up some cold ones, and headed back to the flags.

Yeah, kept running.

It was at this point we caught up with Vern, Motown, BR, Porkrinds, while Woody and Den Mother were stepping out of the Uber. Twiligh and Milton pulled up next to us (it was weird, their shoes were smoking) and we all mosey’d back to the safety of the flags.

Did some stretching after the run for Mary.

(4.25 miles, 3.5 miles accomplished).