Yawn! Another all-nighter (no I'm not talking about one of those late girls nights out full of laughing, dancing and great girl times!) Actually...there was a little dancing or should I say waltzing with my favorite little man to the tune of mommy's froggy rendition of Rockabye Baby at midnight, 1:00 a.m, 2:00 a.m., 3:00 a.m. and then up at 5:00. I jokingly told the hubby yesterday, the last time I felt this tired was at Christy's bachelorette weekend in Vegas! The little guy now almost 9 months old is trying to sprout his two front top teeth - one of them is already poking through, but the other one is still hovering on the brink and driving him nutso. He already has two front bottom teeth and compared to the last few days - those were a piece of cake to get through. This time around, he's had a fever and has been absolutely miserable unless he's being held or within arms distance of mommy. Any of you running mommies have any tips or advice, please send comments?! I must sleep soon, especially now that I am ramping up the mileage for the fall marathon.

The long run on Saturday went well, other than being cut a bit short on time. Val and I planned to run our favorite woodsy trails in Midhurst for 2 hours at a comfortable pace. We headed out early at 6:00 a.m. and were almost an hour into the run when we heard a thunderstrom in the distance. For my California friends, thunderstorms out here are nothing like thunderstorms at home....the lightning here literally strikes the ground. Last year we saw an actual lightning bolt strike and split a big oak tree in half next to our car when we were driving. When a thunderstrom is coming here, people pretty much stay indoors until it is safely passed. With that said, there we were 1 hour into the wilderness from where we parked the car to start the run when we started to hear the first rumblings in the distance. We decided to head back to the starting point a bit early instead of waiting until we reach the one hour planned turnaround time.

We have been running these trails for a few months now, but it never fails, every week on our way back to the car, we seem to get lost. Wouldn't ya know it - we did it again! Took a wrong turn somewhere and nothing was looking familiar. Granted, this getting lost on the trails has been a bit of fun and adventure for us in previous weeks as we were always discovering new places...lakes, rivers, old wooden bridges, etc. that we had never seen before. Saturday, with the ligtning storm moving in quickly, being lost was not even slightly amusing. We immediatly turned on our Garmin 305 "return to start" feature to assist us in navigating back to our car. (This is a really cool feature btw). With each roll of thunder, we silently agreed to pick up the pace a bit in search of familiar landmarks and trails. After 20 or so minutes of strange trails and "didn't we already cross that log a few minutes ago?", our Garmin got us back to familiar territory. At this point it was raining pretty heavily and we got into the discussion of how being in a tall woodsy forest is the last place you are supposed to be during an electrical storm. Pace getting faster. The last 5k of trails to the car are full of some good steep hills and we normally save a little gas for that point in the run, but those hills on saturday were not even a concern as the thunderstorm was now practially on top of us and we were caught in the downpour. As we scrambled up last of the hills the lightning and thunder were very close & I started thinking about the metal car key in my running skirt pocket and whether the garmin on my arm would attract lightening....at this point we were running full speed toward the car. I'm not gonna lie, my panting mantra was "Please God, Get us to the Car, Please God Get us to the Car, Please God Get us to the Car". At about 800 meters out I missed the turn to the parking lot and somehow wound up running right back into Val - the look on her face was priceless. She must have been thinking why on earth is Cindy running back away from the car now? I laughed and turned myself around and followed Val back down to the trailhead. We both were cheering as we sprinted for the car. Whew! Post run Tim Hortons has never been better!