Freaky Friday Four-Miler

You know, I don’t ordinarily walk in the door from a four mile run and think, “Damn, I should blog about that!”  Because, you know.  Four milers aren’t usually all that exciting.  But today was definitely an exception to that rule.

Let me backtrack a few days first.  After Sunday’s awesome half marathon, I was wiped out.  Like, surprisingly beat up – sore legs, sore butt, tired enough to take a nap, etc.  When I got up Monday, my lower back was all tweaky, too.  I have to say, I didn’t expect to feel like that at all!  But, the show must go on, so I went about my normal Monday routine, running with a client and filming a YouTube workout.  It was a busy enough day that I didn’t go back and check my Garmin or Strava until I was ready to head out for my run on Tuesday morning.  And there were Monday’s stats still onscreen.  Okay.  That was odd, but not entirely out of the usual lately – my Garmin has been acting like a moody teenage girl for a while now and I’ve been staying in firm denial about it, so no need to change courses now.  But then Tuesday’s run didn’t upload.  And neither did Wednesday’s.  Not cool bro.  When Strava still shows the number 0 on a Thursday morning, there is a big problem!

Seriously.

The silver lining here is that UltraIronHubs had ordered himself a late Christmas/early Birthday gift of the brand spankin’ new Garmin fenix, which meant that I would inherit his old 620 (the watch I gave him for his last birthday and secretly coveted for myself – see how that worked out for me??).  So all I had to do was wait for UIH to get his new watch, which thankfully arrived yesterday afternoon.  *whew*

So, this morning, I was trying to figure out my new Garmin while I was doing my warm-ups.  It’s a totally different everything from my old 310XT, and I didn’t even know how to turn the darn thing on.  It’s going to take some fiddling to get the screens right and learn how to read it quickly without tripping over myself.

As I was getting ready to head out the door, UIH and the boys and I were talking about the gigantic list of Shit That Needs to Get Done before we have guests for Easter and I was doling out jobs and deciding how many miles I had time for, when it occurred to me that as of yesterday, I have a new source of help for running errands:

That’s Big Boy.  Driving.  I remember the day I got my license – I drove over to my friend Sarah’s house without my mom’s permission and got in trouble.  Big Boy got to drive to Walmart and pick up toilet paper.  I am the worst mom ever.

Needless to say, I was a liiiiiiiiiiiittle bit distracted while I was out on my run, picturing most of the worst case scenarios you can imagine and probably a few you can’t.  He was fine, though my heart did stop in my chest around mile 1.3 when his name showed up on my caller I.D.  He just wanted to tell me that he didn’t have enough money for everything on my list.  No biggie, and I was okay with taking a walking break just then anyway.

I also enjoy taking a walking break to take pictures of BABY DUCKLINGS!  You have to look really hard, they blend in really well with their environment.  I think there were six of them.  So stinking cute!!

There were a lot of people out and about today.  I saw a friend out on his bike (while I was on the phone – he’s probably going to tease me later about being a slacker).  There were a few other runners and cyclists and several people who may or may not have been homeless.

Conquering the overpass.

And then there was the person lying down right in the middle of the nature trail.

At first, I was all “lone female on a path” looking for the nearest escape, and then I wondered if I was the jogger discovering a body.  I paused my electronics and approached carefully, trying to decide what exactly I was seeing – pile of clothes?  Actual person?  Random mannequin?  Threat?  Or medical emergency?

It was a kid, maybe 18 years old.  Lying on the ground.  He twitched a little as I got close, so I started thinking seizure, but no.  He was just really, really, really fucked up.  He never looked directly at me enough for me to decide if he was drunk or high, but I asked him if he was okay and he mumbled something about waiting until it was light outside (this was in broad daylight, by the way, around 9 am).  I asked him what he was doing and he said something about being okay, just hanging out.  He was clean, and there was no obvious sign of trauma, and his clothes and his phone were newer than mine, so I asked him again if he needed anything, and after he told me he was “all good” I continued on.

Needless to say, that bothered me.

I re-routed for the trip home, going out to the main road in search of a police officer I could flag down (the police station was less than half a mile away and I see black and whites on this street all the time).  As I got to the station, there happened to be two officers just getting out of their cars, so I raced across the street to tell them what I’d seen.

I don’t imagine I looked like too much of an upstanding citizen myself right then, sweaty and out of breath, but I mentioned more than once that I had been out running.  At the very least, they took notes and thanked me for my concern, so I feel like I did what I could.

I can’t stop thinking about that kid’s mom.  I know that I’ll never know the circumstances of his situation, so my mind is just filling in the blanks and sometimes that gets a little wild, you know?

Freaky.

What’s the strangest thing you’ve seen on a run??  Ever run into a person having a medical or pharmaceutical issue??