I saw the signs early....

After that faithful day in April of 1998 when Walt and I went for our first run, we ran around the block. I knew at that point, I hated running, but the weather was nice and it was actually fun to run with Walt. I had more cardio stamina than he did so that alone drove me to run a little bit faster than him.

As the weeks went on, we would go out for a run every few days. There were times that we would not run together but we both ran, nonetheless. But the funny thing, is when Walt would go for a run by himself, he would come into the house, grab his keys and tell me he would be right back. I assumed he was going over to 7-Eleven for a Slurpee and hoped he grabbed me a cherry/coke mix. But he would come back in about 10 minutes later, toss his keys down and move about the rest of his day. Hmmmm.....where was he going?

I would guess that Walt and I were running about a month and a half when on a Saturday afternoon, after a 7 mile run, of which I almost died (I still hated running), when we got back home Walt grabbed his keys and said "come on, let's to see how far we ran?" Are you kidding me? All I could think about was prying off my shoes, grabbing a beer and taking a nap (after I drank the beer and Walt wanted to go "GPS" his running route. I decided to go, for we needed to pick up some more beer at 7-Eleven anyways, and as that day in April changed my life, this little road trip, also would change my life and my life as a runner.

As Walt pressed the little button on his odometer to set it to zero, he drove around our neighborhood, vividly remembering he ran to make sure he accounted for every stride. I on the other hand, glanced over at him wondering "why are you sucking the fun out of this?" and realized Walt had changed. Walt was no longer the Jersey Shore guido who lifted weights and put them down. He was taking this running far more serious than I ever wanted to and at that moment, I remember looking at him and saying "I am done running with you. You just sucked all of the fun out of this." And that is the day when I became a "running widow".