Trail to the King, Baby!

While most of the people in my palmy mid-mitten region were inside reinacting that Zooey Deschanel iPhone commercial (pretending their senses can't pick up the fact its raining, not knowing how follow instructions on a Campbell's label to make a simple can of soup, and being messy procrastinators) I went out to run with my friend on the trail. 

We keep incrementally adding mileage to our little runs we're doing together, and the slow, steady, deliberate ramp up is really starting to work.  Remember the 13 miler that was just for fun this past weekend, well tack on another 11ish miler.  With River Bank Run coming this weekend, I'd usually be resting the legs and getting ready to kill that, but right now it's just another run.  Did you get that?  The longest official race I've done to date is "just another run," and we've started to put up double digit runs as just our "regular" runs.  What happened to run 3 to 4 miles and call it good?   I don't even think my legs wake up and know they're running until mile 6...

On top of that, it's not like we were out there dying yesterday, either.  We're taking running jumps over puddles, stopping to rip up some garlic mustard and hold it in our hands whooping like it was a trophy kill (okay, that was just me), talking and laughing pretty much the entire time without ever really being out of breath, and not one complaint about the rain weighing us down (it's mostly water weight!).

Dramatization of my running "Hobo Royalty" at its finest

The small leg we added on from last week runs right by the Burger King, and, feeling bad over all the smack I talked about them in my last entry, I felt the need to make nice with the royal court.  Of course we're training so there's no stopping and eating.  What I did do was pick up one of the abandoned Burger King crowns laying adjacent to their parking lot and put it over my Killian's hat for the rest of my run.  That's 5+ miles of free promotion and environmental stewardship.  I hope that makes us cool.  With the 1/4 mile stretch right before your restaurant and the high traffic, I'm guessing at least one person saw my crown and pulled in, or perhaps that old lady that laughed at me when we headed back into the trail decided to stop in.  While she was laughing I completely forgot I was wearing the crown on my head, and ran very self-consciously for the next 1/2 mile, and I would hope that my insecure thoughts were worth at least a fish sandwich (as we say, regarding the NHL as well, BK..."bring back the whale!").

Oooh baby, blubber on a bun!

Even after realizing it was because of the crown, you gotta kinda wonder if she was laughing, in part, because she thought we were running to and from Burger King.