Who moved my cooler?

Million Dollar (maybe Gazillion) Moment #15

My running partner Jen and I are training for the Detroit Marathon this October. This past weekend we reached a new milestone for us – 16 miles. It was a gorgeous early evening run and the best I have felt in a few months.

When we run that many miles, we’ve discovered that we need a drink about every 2 miles. We planned ahead and dropped coolers with drinks, banana slices, sports beans and power gel (a refueling substance) every 2 miles along our 6 mile loop. Our route was out in the country on dirt roads. We rarely rarely see cars on these roads, but we still stashed our coolers in the tall grasses so they weren’t visible from the road.

After we had finished the run, stretched and showered, we headed out in the car to go pick up our coolers. That’s when things got interesting. It was dark by this time, and we could not find our second cooler. We hunted and hunted and shone the headlights on the corner where we were sure we had left it. About the time we gave up and decided Jen would go back and look for it in the morning, the young Amish man from across the street came over and asked us if we were looking for a lunchbox. He then told us that the neighbors down the street had picked it up. They had seen it on the corner and saw that it was full of stuff and just couldn’t understand why it was there so they took it home. Jen explained to him that we were training for a marathon and need drinks every couple miles so we had left it there to use during our run. The conversation had a hilariuos loop to it because he just kept saying over and over that they didn’t understand why it was there. Finally, Jen got out of him which neighbor had picked it up, and thankfully she happened to know who they were.

The next morning she headed down to the neighbor’s house to get the cooler, and sure enough they had it. The lady said they saw it sitting there and that it looked like someone had put it there and not like it had fallen off a car and she had picked it up because it didn’t make any sense to her. Oh my. So Jen explained to her about our training for a marathon and asked her that if she saw anything like that again to please leave it because it would be ours. The lady smiled and said she would.

That same morning Jen was unloading the other coolers when she found a surprise in one of the larger ones. She opened it and on top was a note that read “Sorry I got your cooler greasy. I wanted to see what was in it and had been working on a tractor. Put some extra goodies in there for ya.”

Now if you found a cooler full of drinks, banana pieces, sports beans and sports gels, and if you decided to leave treats for the athletes in said cooler, what might you put in it? Cookies? More water? Or how about a package of pink peeps, a bottle of A-1 steak sauce, a packet of hot chocolate, a McCormicks Grill Mates Hawaiian Luau spice packet, and an onion? That is exactly what she found in our cooler. She called me, and I have been laughing all day long.

We’ve decided that we’d better start hiding our coolers better. We had no idea that her country neighbors would be so creatively nosy.

And in case you are worried about us, because I know some of you are – we always run in daylight, with a cell phone, and most of the time with pepper spray.

I have a picture of the cooler and its contents, but I can’t get it to upload. So sad!