running blind date. rublate?

what to do when you have twenty miles scheduled and you have never actually "run" that distance before in your entire 27 years on the planet?

you recruit. i know i've said it before, but i will say it again. the power of social media is amazing. a friend of a friend was running twenty miles saturday. conveniently the same day i was running. so i typed her a response to her message about running, closed my eyes, and clicked send.

just like that i was going on a running blind date. (thanks court for the terminology :) )

twenty miles is a long way. and her pace is slower than my normal, but it's twenty miles and i didn't want to break anything so i figured it was better than not running anything at all. right? right!

now that means 4+ hours of running with someone i have never met before. my friend hilary did run part of it with us which was awesome. and she is a rockstar because she ran 4.5 miles over her intended distance.

but it turned out to be just a-okay. anything to keep me entertained. as it turns out, i don't actually let the other person/people entertain me as much as i think, because i realized that i do not shut up when i am running with people. to be honest, i don't actually shut up that often when i am not running, so it shouldn't have been too much of a surprise.

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 fairly positive that is me.

we ran what is deemed the hardest part of the Publix Marathon course. that may actually just be my opinion, but i like to think there are people out there who hate it as well. hills. so many hills.

anyhowsies. seeing a city on foot is a great way to check out all the sites. and when you have a twenty mile run. you see all of them. well at least a good majority of them.

decatur.

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agnes scott:

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decatur town square:

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your friendly neighborhood publix (water stop)

emory university:

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giant houses in grandiose neighborhoods.

the lovely firemen at fire station 19 in the virginia highlands. (second water stop).

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and i am sure many other things, but i was freezing and it was 20 miles. so my brain turned off at a certain point and was over it.

so that's how i ran twenty miles. one foot in front of the other. except when i was distracted and forgot about looking where my feet were....