Ahhhh Friday! It couldn’t come soon enough! Wednesday night we had dinner with some old friends we hadn’t seen in forever. They had a baby in Nov, so their life is quite different now, it was fun to catch up and hear about their little baby Mehir (which means the sun!). Last night Sara and I met at South Chagrin Reservation to run the 5.5 mile loop near Squaw Rock, which basically is straight uphill. It’s tough. Our new friend Karen met us. It was a great run and I feel so much stronger on that hill than I have in awhile. I just billygoated right up it! Now why do trail hills give me such issue! If I keep doing this run weekly I think I’ll be just fine at Akron. Karen is great; we have a lot in common, so I am very pleased to have a new running friend, especially one who lives like .5 miles from my house! Hopefully we can work out a morning run routine once the craziness from the marathon is done. While on our run, the neatest, saddest thing happened. We were up near the top of our run where it flattens out, just running along at a casual pace. You run on a paved path, that has a tree lawn to the right that is about 15 feet wide, and then there is a road. There were 2 female deer standing on the tree lawn, one right by the path eating. They didn’t even run. We stopped running and just stood there watching them. They kept an eye on us, but went about their business. We were literally like 2 feet from the one and about 5 from the other. They were so beautiful and delicate. It was just amazing, you could hear them breathing and munching the flowers. It made me sad that they weren’t scared of us, but it was great to have such a close encounter. I could have reached out to pet the one I think. On the way back, they were in the same area, but on the other side of the path which is woods and one of the deer was near the path and this couple walking their dog were watching it, really close and their dog wasn’t barking, but it was pulling at it’s leash and jumping (I don’t think in a vicious way, just a puppy way) and the deer just stood there! Just stood there munching, what the hell? After the run, we had some major thunderstorms and Mushi had a bit of a fever and I had the worst nightmare, so I really didn’t sleep well at all last night. I hope this day goes by quickly.