WWU - Seven Miles, Done!

It is really gratifying to run with someone when they experience a new distance.  I realized, as we were almost finished with our 7 mile run on Saturday, that I haven't experienced that dreaded feeling of "I can't do this" that I used to during our long runs. Obviously focusing on someone else has helped shut off that part of my brain and I'm very happy about that, believe me...this was a long time coming.  But getting back to focusing on someone else, Loretta ran 7 miles for her first time ever!!!  She did great - of course it was still hot at 77 degrees, but the humidity was a bit lower, only around 69%, which makes a difference, believe me.  Step by step, mile by mile, she chipped away at the route until we were finished.  It takes a lot of courage to run that far, especially coming back from such a major injury like she had.  I'm really proud of Loretta, and I know CC is, too.

CC, Loretta and me, looking pretty decent for just having run 7 miles!

Afterward, we went to Blue Baker, where we had the BEST DAY EVER.  We recently made a location switch, and the morning crew at the Blue Baker where we've been going are so friendly and fun.  We've been sitting by the window where we can watch the bakers work; last week, we watched them scoop giant balls of cookie dough onto baking pans, and we were all drooling - there's something about raw cookie dough that is just so good! We were joking with the bakers that they needed to put up a sign showing what they were working on, and then next thing we knew, this was in the window:

Pizza Dough - aha!  Love how responsive they were to us! 

We chatted with the bakers for a minute, and watched as a huge rectangle of toffee blondie brownies were cut.  Holy moly, did they ever look good!  Then we saw the manager gather up the scraps, and for a moment it looked like he might be heading our way with them.  We were all "be cool, be cool, act natural" - we tried to downplay our excitement in case he didn't end up coming to our table, but sure enough, he appeared with a wrapper full of treats for us:

 

There was at least twice this much - we all grabbed a piece before I thought to take a picture.  These were amazing.  Toffee blondies, with a crumb topping?  Yes please!

The manager hung around chatting with us, and Cary mentioned how we were drooling over the cookie dough last week.  He said that it was in the mixer, and next thing we knew, this happened:

Ah yes!  A giant scoop of chocolate chip cookie dough!!  We enjoyed it immensely!

Before the extra treats appeared, I'd had a couple of bites of my cinnamon twist, but after enjoying the bonus goodies, I passed along the rest of the twist to Jeff.  I'm sure I still ate more in calories than I usually do, but hey - this felt like a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory scenario, and who could turn that down??

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Back to the running.  We had 40 minutes on tap for Monday - Loretta came over and ran with Jeff and I.  The higher humidity was back so we were all sweating like fiends, but even so, we ran at a pretty good pace.  And yesterday, we hit the hills - CC, Loretta and I are still doing a couple of walking hill repeats, but we managed to also do four running repeats, so I'm good with that effort.  We did have an armadillo encounter in the beginning that stopped us in our tracks - by the way, did you know that clapping your hands and shouting at an armadillo will not make it move?  Eventually it decided to go back into the wild - sheesh!