It’s official: After a lovely dinner on Saturday with the new man Fran, then later puking my guts out due to an overdose of gin & tonics and white wine, followed by him gently rubbing my tummy (no wait, I think the tummy rubbing was Sunday morning since Saturday night I was moaning “ooohhhh, everything’s spinning.  I still have to vomit.  Don’t touch me!!“) I am hereby declaring us An Item.

Fran & Flo

Because he’s so different than any guy I’ve been with before (and vice-versa, we both find each other extremely weird), I’ve been reticent to talk about it till I was sure we had a groovy thing going.  I still won’t say a lot about him since he reads my blog, Facebook and I suspect my forum posts, too (I’d do the same if he posted somewhere but that Luddite leaves me nothing to stalk) so I feel self-conscious discussing him, but it’s time.

Facts are: he’s divorced, has a great 15 year-old daughter, a huge heart, is funny, sweet, intelligent, masculine but unabashedly romantic and our chemistry is smokin’ hot.  The only wrench is that his job has such odd hours (he wakes at 2:30-3am most workdays) and he’s got kid duty in the late afternoon, so our dating has been limited to a couple nights a week and some apres-run rendezvous at the park for extra chat time.  We’re figuring out ways to see each other more though, we have too much fun together not to.

The running connection is entertaining, btw, but in an unexpected way (for those just tuning in, we’d been slapping each others palms in the park whenever our running paths crossed for over a year before he asked me out).  We both have this funny observation that nowadays when we pass each other in the park, it’s really difficult to associate our running selves with our “real” selves, it’s as if we transform into other people when in running gear.  Out there, I’m still “that runner chick” and he’s still “that bald dude from the park”.  Kind of cool in its oddity.

One last thing I’m going to mention that I really like about him, and this might sound strange, is that he’s not a hardcore runner.  He does put in solid mileage, 40-50mi/week, but it’s for fitness, not racing.  He doesn’t know or care about technical running stuff so he’s a great counterpoint to my loonyness while thoroughly respecting my involvement in the sport.  This works for me in a very good way.

OK, that’s enough Fran talk for now, he’s going to be a handful after this one. 

Last Week’s Running
51 miles that went like this: 6,8,8,10,7,12,off.  Paces went from 7:53 for a progression run to 9:01 on a cold and windy day that had me feeling creaky.  This week will be around the same mileage, then I’ll kick it up a bit the following week.  No worries, no “should do’s”, just having a good time for a while.

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