A date I couldn't turn down

Wednesday was Tempo, my absolute favorite workout. < insert extreme sarcasm > Wednesdays are difficult for me b/c I take Elijah to piano from 3:15 - 4:15pm right next to the trail. I drive him home, change clothes, and drive right back down to the trail. I'm a very busy person, and we are a busy family. I'm away from home M,T,W evenings, and it gets old. So, some Wednesdays I just don't go to workout.

Of course, Tempo would be the perfect day to skip workout. Last tempo, I ran on my own during piano and hated it. I vowed to not run tempo alone again, and I fully intended on going to class.

Gilbert spoke to David Wednesday afternoon, and David said I would not be at class (he had heard me moan and groan about how difficult it was and how much I have to do for family, work, my class, etc.). Gilbert made a comment about it being Tempo...how convenient, right? Well, David hadn't talked to me and didn't know that I was adament about going.

I got home from piano (and traffic, yea!) a bit before 5pm. David fills me on the Gilbert phone call. I tell him I'm going to class. He then does something he has never done before. He invites me to run with him. Okay, so it was not a formal invitation, but he said, "Well, you can run with me later at the soccer fields." Whoa a minute. I just got asked out on a running date from my husband. My hubby who normally runs 4-5 minutes/mile faster than me. My husband who has run with me in the past on his "super-slow" recovery runs. My husband who is injured and slowly trying to come back. My husband who I've been worried about because he's so quiet about his injury and even more quiet about how it's affected him and his goal for a sub-3 marathon in December.

What do I do? What do I do?

I call Holmes and tell her my dilemma. I have to go to class, or Gilbert and everyone will think I skipped just because it's Tempo. I tell her all my crap I have to do, and how it's already 5:15pm and blah, blah, blah. She is so wise. I shall now call her Sage Sarah. She simply asked, "So your goal today was just to run?" Well, yes. Then she said she really didn't see a dilemma for me. One should always run with an injured spouse if they invite you on a running date. Ah, so brilliant!

So Sage Sarah goes to class with the instructions to tell Gilbert what's up with me. She ended up doing a really great tempo, btw. Go Sarah! I found out that Gayatri had a rough tempo running with blisters from her inserts she bought last week at Runtex. She finished with a really decent time anyway. And I heard today that Allison ran her same tempo time after being so sick for over a week that she had IV fluids at the hospital. I'm not so sure I'm as tough as those gals.

And me? I ran with David at the soccer fields. I warmed up with Joshua kicking the soccer ball and doing running drills with him to practice passing in front of the person running. David mapped out a mile lap around the Westcreek soccer fields, and I ran two laps. I tried to run fast on the parts where Joshua or Elijah wasn't running with us. It wasn't a tempo effort, but there were a couple of times I was pushing.

One nice thing about the evening was doing things I needed to do before 9pm, but the best part was running with David and seeing him run. True, he's going slow. It's embarrassingly slow according to him. But he's running, and he looks great. I think he plans to stick to the grass for a while longer. I still have my fantasy that he somehow is able to run his marathon in December.