Karen!

I have a new running buddy / partner in sweat!

Karen, who reads my blog for reasons I have not yet discovered, emailed me about a month ago after I posted about running Green Lake in my bright yellow Lululemon shirt. She had run by me that morning! She was training for the Portland Marathon on Oct. 6, and did I want to run together sometime?

Heck. Yes.

So we met up for our first run two weeks ago and ran just over eight miles together. It was really fun to make a new friend completely out of the blue and get to know her through running and chatting!

Blue moon sunrise, ya’ll.

We intended to run together again last week, but I called her at 4:45 a.m. (we planned to meet at 5:15) and was like “NOPE” because it was absolutely pouring rain. I can handle darkness, and I can handle rain, but I can’t yet justify running in the darkness AND the rain when I have the opportunity to run in the daylight after work instead (which is totally what I did).

Alas, our schedules did not line up again until yesterday morning, with eight miles on tap for me and 17 miles for Karen. That’s 17 MILES BEFORE WORK ON A FRIDAY. WHAT.

Again, we met at 5:15, but this time, the sun didn’t rise during our run. It was still fairly dark when I finished (and she kept going) at 6:30 because the sun doesn’t officially rise until 6:35. Yayyy for running buddies who make it safer for each other to run in the morning!

Karen is really fast, with years and years of cross-country and track under her belt, but she’s doing her marathon training at an easier pace that I can hang with. (I think she holds back a bit for the miles she runs with me, but that’s cool! Thanks, Karen!)

She is super-cute and we have lots in common, with just enough differences to make our conversations interesting. The miles fly by as we chat, which is fantastic, and I’m already looking forward to our next run.

Today, Karen is off backpacking with her boyfriend, and I have 20 miles to run. Thankfully Zoe (of Nuun and Labor Day Half Marathon fame) is going to run with me for six miles near the end! Score!

Do you like how I went from zero running buddies to ALL THE RUNNING BUDDIES?? Yeah, I do, too.

OK. Time to stop run-crastinating. 20, here I come!

(My Hood to Coast recap is still in the works… yeah, I know.)