The Awesome Run That Almost Wasn't

Because of Race's and Bike Rides I have been having to do my long runs on Sundays. It has been fine and I have enjoyed my Saturday activities the last few weeks, but this week I had 18 on the schedule and I really, really wanted to get it done on Saturday so I that I could at least enjoy part of my weekend.
Today was the Brick Fest 5K, it is a Grand Prix Race and it was at this race a year ago that I met "Susan From Benton" of course now she's not Susan from Benton anymore :( I am so glad that I overcame my shyness and introduced myself to her last year :) we had some great runs together last summer and Fall.

So what to do what to do... I had thought about running with Cheryl and the Little Rock group, but they don't start until 6:00am and Michele and I really wanted to start at 5:00. The thought of another long run in Cabot was more than I could bear so we decided on the River Trail. Several others had semi long runs and decided to join us for the first part of our run. Everything was set in place and then.......
Michele calls, he husband has gone out of town and she can't run tomorrow. Actually she left a voice mail, poor Arland the words that came out of my mouth actually scared him... I really don't normally say those words!! well I say them just not very often.
I was SO upset.. of course I wasnt' going to do my long run without Michele, so we decided we would just have to go to the River Trail by ourselves on Sunday. I had just been on the phone with both Kelly and Brenda earlier and I was going on and on about how happy I was to be getting my long run done on Saturday!!!
I immediately thought about my neices Katie and Rachel, they have been coming to Cabot the past couple of weekends so I started calling Tracy.. no answer.. the house phone..no answer.. Livia.. no answer. I tried several times and gave up and resigned myself to running on Sunday. I called Brenda and gave her the bad news. Just when I was ok with running on Sunday I finally got ahold of Livia and my neice Rachel said she wouldn't mind babysitting for Michele... woo hoo the Long run was back on for Saturday!
Rachel spent the night and then I took her over to Michele's at 4:15am.

We met Brenda, Andrea, Nick and Heather at the old Huddle House parking lot and headed to Burn's Park when we arrive there is a gate across the road that say's closed.. hmph what's up with that?? Last year we ran most of our long runs at the River Trail and then I remembered we started at the Skate Park so I never realized that you couldn't get into Burns park at 4:55am. Oh well we turn around and head over to the Skate Park, we probably only lost 15 minutes.

It was really humid this morning, but cloudy and not terribly hot, around 75 degrees... but it was humid!
Andrea and Brenda were running 11 and Nick and Heather wanted 4 or 5. We all ran together for the most part, I would occasionally back off but they were always close. It was really nice to have a big group like that for the first part of our run!! Heather and Nick turned around at the Dog Park which should have given them exactly 5 miles. I didn't even have to stop at the port a pottie, a huge victory!! I was good and I knew there was another one about 2 mile down the trail at the Big Damn Bridge.
When we got to the Bridge I did go to the potty, but no stomach issues and no poop. Andrea and Brenda didn't stop with us, they just needed to go over the bridge and up a little bit before it was time for them to turn around.
Michele has had IT band issues in the past pretty much the whole time we trained for Chicago last year, so we decided to take it easy up the bridge and mostly walked it.
It was so nice on top, very nice breeze, I said why can't it be like this the whole way???
There were a few people out this morning but not a ton.. not as many as we usually see.
We were running the River Trail loop this morning but that is only 14ish miles so we added on the trail that goes out to the I-430 bridge, we actually run past it to a boat launch... there is a port a potty there but once again I didn't need it.
This stretch of the run was probably the hottest and is kind of boring, but there were lot's of bikers out so we didn't feel along.

We stopped at the restroom at Murray Park and once again no stomach issues leading up to it and no poop when I got there. Michele had mixed up some Propel water and I took a drink, well this is crazy but we hadn't been running very far, probably only a few steps past the Murray Park bathroom when all of a sudden I had to "use" the bathroom :( luckily there was another one really close. This time there was poop, and this is way too much TMI but at the earlier bathroom break I had to take care of "women" issues.
Finally everything is settled down and we get back on the trail. We notice the sky has been getting darker and darker, but there is a wonderful cool breeze and we are pretty much in heaven!! I did get a little worried when the breeze picked up into a pretty good wind and I noticed the way the leaves were swirling, but we were too far to turn back now. We passed a runner who smiled and said "you are gonna get wet" Oh well we actually were looking forward to a little rain.. and it started out "a little rain" but soon enough it really started raining hard and it was thundering and we saw some lightening... we were on I think it is River Front drive?? the road that goes from Murray Park to Cantrell... We had around 12 mile by this time and I was starting to feel it, my big toe was hurting, kind of underneath the big toe, and there were times when I was tempted to walk but I really just wanted to get off that road. I kept thinking if we can make it to Titus trail then we can take refuge under the overpass if it gets bad.
When we did get to the overpass it was still pouring down but we just kept thinking if we can make it to the River Market then we can take shelter and have some toast!
So we just kept running, it was pouring rain and when we were running up Dillard's hill cars were throwing even more water on us, but we just had to keep going.
Finally we were on Markham and headed to the River Market, by this time we had 16 miles so we felt good about the run, plus we knew we were going to get 18 regardless of how because we had to get back to our car. I always get a little high or thrill whenever we are running down Markham into the River Market, I don't know exactly what it is, but it was even stronger this morning, and I sang a few refrains of "Raindrops keep falling on our Heads" to Michele.
The storm had brought in a cold front, we were soaking wet and once we stopped running we were freezing!!! Not something we are used to feeling in June in Arkansas! LOL
We went into the bathroom I used the hand dryer to dry my phone out and I called Arland and Brenda to let them know we were ok.
I'm still laughing to myself over some of the looks we got when we were in Boulevard Bread! We ordered some toast, filled our water bottles with ice and lemons and headed to the Farmers market to get out of the rain and eat our toast. OMG it was delicious!! we had quite a few people ask where we got it and one guy said we were supposed to wait until we got home to eat it??? I was in such a good mood I didn't care, although that was a weird comment, but he was smiling so.. whatever.
Seriously Michele and I other than being freezing at that point were just so happy, we loved running in the rain, it just felt so refreshing... I was a little bit stressed about the thunder and stuff but in the end it was all ok.
It was still raining but the sky had lightened up so we headed towards the new Pedestrian Bridge and took the elevator up.... we only thought we were cold at the River Market.. it was FREEZING on top of that bridge and so slippery that you really had to walk or end up busting your ass!
Once we got down to the "submarine" we started running again, we only had about 2.5 miles left so we just ran and got it over with.

I was sad to miss the Brick Fest 5K this morning, but what an awesome run!!!

I know i'm leaving something out, but I've been up since 3:15am and I'm starting to get a little weary!!

So glad that everything worked out and we were able to get this over with today!!