A 10 mile run full of mystery and suspense...

I am sorry I didn't get to post this sooner...it's been a crazy few days around here!
Before I get into my story, I wanted to post a recipe for the "breakfast cookie" that I ate for breakfast before the run. It was yummy!

Chocolate Cranberry No-Bake Breakfast Cookie
1/3 cup rolled oats
1 tbls peanut butter or almond butter
1/2 scoop chocolate protein powder
splash of milk (to hold it all together. maybe 1/8 cup)
1/2 mashed banana
cranberries
mini chocolate chips (dark choc. if you can find)

Mix it all together in a bowl. Spread on an appetizer/salad plate and wrap. Let sit overnight in fridge. I needed to use a fork to eat mine the next morning but it was super tasty. You could mix in any favorites (raisins, nuts, dried cherries, peanut butter chips).

So after all of our hemming and hawing (would that be the correct spelling?), the weather wound up being perfect for our 10 mile run on Friday. Cloudy, no rain, even a bit warm (we all overdressed...mental note for this Friday when the temps will be in the 60's...can you say SHORTS???). We did our new "normal" 10 mile route and after battling the traffic on Old 27 (which is a 4 lane fairly busy road with a nasty gradual hill) we turned onto Dill Road looking SO forward to the water Sara dropped for us earlier. For every long run, we always have a water stop. Someone typically leaves 4 water bottles in a grocery bag and we are *usually* very good about picking them up following our run. We usually put the water (to appease my girl Sara's neurosis) exactly at the 1/2 way point. We stop, guzzle water, chomp on a package of Sport Beans, and start back to it, waiting for our "bean high" (which I don't think I have fully experienced yet!).

Anyway, we get to the stop sign and lo and behold, there is no Meijer bag filled with our liquid love. We all sort of stare at each other, dumbfounded. Where the F is our water?!?!? Who the heck would have stolen our water? Peg, who does not possess the potty mouth that the rest of us share, blurts out "A$$HOLES!!!!". Peg really loves her mid run water, can you tell ;o) Sara accuses, "I think it was that guy across the street, he watched me as I dropped the water earlier" and she points to an interesting looking gentleman who is missing several of his teeth. So we ask him and he mentions that the woman that lives on the corner where we placed the water may have taken it.

Now that's just not cool. So picture 4 crazy runner women, a tad sweaty, a bit pink in the face, and just a little bit stinky marching up this woman's driveway and standing on her porch. The sign on her front door read something like "NO SOLITICTORS, NO RELIGIOUS PEOPLE, NO POLITICAL PEOPLE. DOORBELL BROKEN". Inviting.

So I pound on the door, ready for confrontation, flanked on either side with the rest of the girls. An older woman answers the door, mildly disturbed (clearly being interrupted from her daily dose of Guiding Light and/or Y and R). We ask her about the water. And she is as nice as can be, explaining she finds everything from whisky bottles to beer/soda cans by that stop sign so she figured it was another round of trash for her to clean up. Why she thought 4 unopened, full water bottles with initials on them were trash I am not sure. She grabs the water for us and returns into her house, probably to see how her "stories" turn out for the afternoon. And we happily gulp our treasured water, hoping it isn't tainted by anything.

The rest our run was full of suspense. I won't get into the details, as it's not really my story to tell. But, let's just say one of our runners had to really go to the bathroom. I mean REALLY go to the bathroom. And it wasn't going to be something that could be done squatting in the bushes, either. So our last 3 or so miles we ran at a pretty quick clip, with our poor running friend wishing her bodily functions away. By the time we got to the entrance of my subdivision, we were at a full sprint for the house.

Needless to say everything turned out just fine that 10 mile run. No rain. Water to drink. A runner that made it successfully to the bathroom. Success on all accounts!