If you are trying to save a few minutes of your life, don't waste them reading this one

When my three older sisters were all at BYU at the same time, my parents and younger sister nd i would go out to Provo for Thanksgiving and Spring Break and stuff like that. It was always really great and inspired within me a new thirst to attend the school myself, and it also gave me great exposure to what college is like. One thing I always noticed was the innumerable runners dashing about the streets of the small college town. Girls by themselves in spritzy running shorts and swishing ponytails with headphones dangling out of their ears, boys sprinting between each stop light then bending over to wait for the street to signal a go, and, more than anything, boys and girls jogging together, doing more talking than running. It always made me wonder what it would be like to run with a boy becuase I never had and back home there weren't a lot of boys I thought I could get to go running with me. Besides, I didn't need them anyway.

However, there was one boy named Brandon Lange who had a constant goal to be the strongest, fiercest most able marine in the world and he wanted to work on his endurance. He was also the most eccentric individual I knew from Colorado and he was always saying weird things that, had I not grown up with him, would have left me in a state of stunned silence. But I'd known him since we were children and so most the time I just rolled my eyes or laughed along or retorted with some equally strange reply. The point is, the summer after my senior year, after years of doing all of this running by myself or with girls, Brandon asked me if he could go running with me and so we did. It was the first run I ever had with a boy.

He was a strong boy so I thought I would just take him up the street and around the mesa and back down again. I ran to his house and met him there.

"You ready for this?" I asked him as I stepped into his front room, already sweaty and ready to get going.

"Yeah, hold on. I need to put on my shoes." He snorted a huge snort before turning around and scampering down the hall in his mismatched socks.

"This is going to be great!" He yelled from some room down the hall. "Do you think we'll go for a long time?"

I sat down in a chair in the kitchen, shuffling through the newspapers spread across the table. "Eh... you know. We'll just go till we don't feel like going anymore I guess." How was I supposed to know? That's what I always did.

"Yeah, so I'm really going to try and work hard this summer so I can get down to a 7 minute mile pace for lots of miles in a row." He finally emerged from the hallway holding a pair of shoes splattered in what I assumed to be the remnants of paintballs. He was into that kind of stuff.

He sat on the floor and started tying his shoes. My sweat was drying on my head and my muscles were antsy to get going. This is why I never ran with anyone before.

"Have you ever army crawled through a slew of mud?" He asked as he wrapped the lace around his finger.

"Uh... no. I usually just run."

"Ok, well, the other day Matt and I were out in the canyon and we found this huge pit. So we went and put on our camo and we started crawling through it after the Japs." And this boy just graduated high school. I told you he was weird.

Not to mention, I've never seen someone tie their shoes so slowly.

"K, well. Maybe we'll run into some mud today." I said it jokingly, leaning forward in my chair with the hopes of helping him pick up his pace a little.

"That'd be awesome!"

Oh brother. Brandon Lange.

"K. Let's go." He finally hopped off the wood floor, but not before I had stood up, pushed my chair in and opened the front door.

We started running around his cul-de-sac to the other side where the a small trail ran between the houses and out the back into what the neighbor kids called The Gully. We kept a slow pace and I started asking him questions to start some conversation.

"So what'd you do today?"

"Oh, you tried to do backflips off the electric box in your front yard? Hm.."

"Oh, and you worked on your fantasy novel? Do tell..."

We had not run more than fifteen minutes when he fully immersed me in the thickening plot for the sci-fi story he was creating, his words choppy and interrupted by his labored breathing. When sixteen minutes rolled around he stopped talking for a moment.

"Man, I am breathing so heavy! Is this how fast you usually run?"

Oops.

I guess that's why I never went running with any boys before.

Poor Brandon Lange.