I woke up even before the alarm, a little nervous about missing it. Today’s run would be the first early morning run in a long time. I was excited.
There wasn’t any breakfast to be had, nor coffee, as we were staying at the guest house on the convent property. Our meals all seemed to be out, leaving the guest house purely as a place of rest. I liked it that way. It meant that we would have little cleaning up to do. I hoped my lack of fuel would not prove detrimental. Just in case, I packed a couple of packets of GU in my CamelBak.
Having seen the bright red Mini in Jeff‘s recent blog posts, I knew the car immediately. It seemed a little funny to know so much about a person, and yet never have before. You should have seen the nun’s eyebrows raise during our dinner conversation discussing today’s meet up. I was a little embarrassed because I couldn’t even recall where he said that we were going to run. I could not convey why, but "trust" was not an issue for me. Seriously. I trusted this guy to coach my marathon training for a full year; it felt as if we’d known each other for years.
Still, after he arrived, I felt a level of reserve that I had not anticipated. I had imagined that we would exchange hugs as if we were old friends meeting up after a long time, but we did not. It was more like long time friends getting together to run just like ever other weekend.
Jeff took me for a run out at Saint Peter’s. When I had told him that I had immediately forgotten where we were going, remembering St. Joseph’s instead, he laughed. "Well, they both were disciples," he said. It sounded good, but I am certain that this was not why I got the saint wrong.
We went out for the flatter of the running options. I was happy to be off the pavement, and happy that my ankle and knee seemed to behave for a slightly less than 6 mile run. A short while later, we were back in the mini and heading back to the convent. I arrived home before anyone had awoken and packed up for the long ride home.