ONLY in Arkansas....

Old McDonald had a farm, and this afternoon-Kelly and I experienced all the animals on McDonald's farm...
It all started with a man named MIKE RUSH Kelly and I went to visit our favorite running coach last weekend to get some tips for our up coming runs. Mike suggested that we try running on the county roads.. they are dirt, nice n pretty, and not much traffic. So, Kelly and I set off for our afternoon run.
*side note we had tried to run on Saturday, our normal running day, but that didn't so much work out! There is a family that goes to church with us, the Townsand's, and they have a nephew that lives in OK, he is 19 working his way through college, and he was diagnosed with a very aggressive form of cancer..the Dr.'s are not hopeful, so our church did a 24 hour prayer vigil. Kelly and I took the 5am shift thinking, "this will be great, we will pray for an hour then go and knock out our run before 9!" Well 5am is early and it was only a friged 40 degree's out at 6am, so we deicide to head for the house and just take a "baby nap" for an hour until it warms up! HA! 8:30am we finally got up and looked at each other only to say in unison, "I don't feel like running" So we went to garage sales instead!
Back to the old country road though, we get about 5 miles in ( we are only doing 12 this week cause we have the race next week-a whole nother side note!!!) and we hear this LOUD crash bang, look over and there are goats jumping off this metal pile. Not one, not two, but at LEAST 10-12 goats. So I am thinking ok, i can handle this and i begin to pick up the pace a little bit and move to the other side of the road as to not anger them.. well that didn't so much work and they started chasing us.. and let me tell you they are not slow...

I of course start to panic and pick up the pace a little more catching up to kelly. The ravenous beasts just keep coming. Then kelly starts thinking, should I tell her to climb a tree now as I attack them with rocks and sticks, or should we run a little faster and maybe they will get bored with us? Well after about of a mile of these things hot on our feet they were chased away by dogs.. WHICH leads me to my next thing, we got chased by dogs, I guess that no one sees the need these days to keep you animals contained? Needless to say we had to pick up the pace again in order to run away from these savage animals as well!
After that i was all sorts of worked up, and from that point on it was like I had an extreme case of paranoia! Even these stray cows that kept moving towards me along the road seemed to have a crazy look in their eyes.. i even had to move to the other side of the road again to get away from the hostile holsteins!

By this time, we have lost all sense of direction and can only see miles and miles of farms and smell miles and miles of manurer, so what do we do when we are lost? keep on going in the same direction! FINALLY we see some signs of civilization only to realize that we are about 8 miles away from our house...
So we finally gave in, went to the Centerton Inn and called for reinforcements.. Jimmy & Kelsey! They live in Centerton and were wiling to come and rescue us... Only after laughing hysterically at us!
So that is the end of Old McDonald's farm and the Carlson adventure....
*** oh the other side note... We are training for a marathon in December, December 5th actually at the Memphis St Jude. Well next week we are supposed to run 18 miles, so wanna know what we are doing to make sure and get our miles in? Oh we are gonna run 5 before the race even STARTS then finish er up with the 13.1 to make sure we get 18 for the day.. Dang.. i'm nervous just thinking about it!