Jason, my running buddy

One of my least favorite parts of junior high was running in gym. It seems like I ran the mile in about 12 minutes or more, walking part of the time. That's why I often wonder what Coach Downs and Coach Steele would say if they found out that now I run 3-4 miles 3 times a week and I've run a 5K (3.1 miles) in 27 minutes.
Two years and two months ago we moved to Savoy, IL. Having driven through the night, Brittney's dad and I said when we got here that we were going to take a nap before we unloaded anything from the truck, so we did. Brittney couldn't sleep until the truck was unloaded however, so she and her sister, Katie unloaded it while we slept. While they unloaded it, our new neighbor, Jason Wheeler walked by on his way to a meeting and noticed our truck in the parking lot with a Utah State bumper sticker. Being from Cache Valley, he immediately came over and introduced himself and volunteered to help those sisters unloading all by themselves.
Two days later, he was the one we called to find out where the hospital was so that we could take Brittney there to have her appendix out. (Maybe all the work unloading the truck aggravated it.)
About a month later, he and his wife Kara and daughter Brooklyn invited us over to dinner. During our dinner conversation, I found out that Jason liked to run and I told him I did too, so we decided to go running at 6am the next morning. We started doing it every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday after that. We had to take a break for a year a few months later when my experiment started at the dairy and Jason began working on a house for the solar decathlon, requiring us both to be at work before 6am. We decided we'd rather sleep than get a run in before work. However we picked the running back up last winter and have run until now. One of my favorite memories is of running down the bike path south of Prospect road last January and watching Jason run over the hills of snow in his shorts.
We've had various people join us at different times, the most regular one being Talia, Jason's daughter that was born in November after we moved in. She usually sets the pace, leading out in the jogging stroller. Sometimes after we go running, if we haven't run hard enough or long enough, Jason will feel a "black hole" coming on and tackle me and I have no choice but to wrestle him back.
Next Monday Jason, Kara, Brooklyn and Talia will be moving to France for a few months while Kara teaches English there. Jason and I plan to keep running; it's going to be a lot harder to encourage each other to get out of bed at 6am though.
Jason's brother, Justin ran with us last Monday. He told Jason afterwards that he needs to get a running buddy. I agree, everyone needs a good running buddy.