Go, you chicken fat, go away!

The plan was to go easy and just run in the 10's.  Mission accomplished.

I had to go to the bathroom three times this morning before my run.  Also, I'm no longer in last place on the mileage board for the year.

I'm dog sick today.  But I figured I could at least do 1.44 miles.  Plus, I just had to wear this cute little number.

Still a little sick.  Stayed home from church yesterday, which was a bummer.  I love church.  Got a priesthood blessing of health from my home teacher.  He's a great guy.  I visited one of my sites this morning, a few miles from my house.  I wanted to walk the watershed, but there was a gated community.  I guess I'll have to rely on aerial photography.  Probably got about 2 miles.  Maybe a little more.

RWCD is in their "low-flow" period, also known as "dry-up."  They used to completely dry up the canal once a year to perform maintenance on it.  Now that there's fish in it, they can't dry it out anymore.  But they still have to do the maintenance.  I'll saw one zanjero in the canal wearing a pair of waders tacking on a depth gage.  His fat lead was on the catwalk telling him what to do.  That's the pecking order at RWCD.  Zanjeros are the lowest of the low.
 

Who uses more than 30 GB of data in 20 days????  Apparently the people on my plan!!  Grr!  Well, I decided not to use Runkeeper because I'm afraid it uses data to track my run.  I don't know for sure.  Maybe some of you tech savvy people can tell me.  So I just ran the same route as last time and used the stop watch on my phone.  I finished my run just before noon and I hadn't had any breakfast, so I was pretty much done.  I was running along the canal and I was noticing a bunch of tennis balls and pine cones in the water.  So I started counting to see which one would have more.  It was 3 to 3 when I started.  It ended up being 20 pine cones, 3 tennis balls.

Let's hear it for SlowJoe, who barely missed another 3 hour marathon.

Am I ever going to retire these stinky shoes???  They smell so bad!!!  Anyway, this was about 8 seconds faster than the last time I ran it.  And I saw Zanjero David.  He is the lowest of the lows.  But he's a sweet guy.

Such a beautiful morning.  There were tons of people out.  Mostly old people.  I got a lot of good mornings in.  I ran to the Floodway, went south for a mile, turned north for a mile and a half, then back home.  When I first got there, a young lady was running with another lady that I assume was her mother pacing her on a bike.  She was running the opposite way of me and looked like she was going at a pretty good pace.  When I turned north and ran half a mile, she passed by me again right after I crossed the street.  She ran to the opposite side of the Floodway and got to the next street half a mile away before I did.  I followed her for another half mile and she was putting some serious distance between us.  She turned around and passed by me again.  This time I finally said, "Looking good, ladies.  Keep up the good work."  At least her mother smiled.

Took me all day before I decided to get out the door.  It was cold and windy this morning.  Midday was warm and windy.  Evening was just right.  Except it got dark.  And that slowed me down a lot.  The last 3.7 miles were about a minute slower than the first two miles.  I stopped and talked to Bud for a little bit.  He used to be one of the lead zanjeros.  That means he's in charge of taking phone calls and supervising the other zanjeros on the shift.  He stepped down to be a regular zanjero so they could train one of the other zanjeros to be a lead.  Sweet deal for him because he gets to keep the same pay rate and have none of the responsibilities of a lead.  He's a nice guy.

I went to visit another site about 8 miles from my house.  It was up near Usery and Las Sendas, so kind of a hilly area.  I got 1.25 miles in hiking and running.  I wanted more than 1.25 miles, so I kept my running clothes on.  Did I stink?  Yeah.  I was supposed to get a call from my daughter to let me know if they had student council today.  She never called, so I went to pick her up at the regular time.  They did.  We live 4 miles from the school, so I didn't want to drive all the way home and wait for half an hour and drive back.  So I ran laps around the school.  Each lap was just over a mile.  After the third one they were out.  My daughter was worried because I wasn't there when she got out.  And she said she was waiting a LONNNG time.  Whatever.  I'm not that slow.

I waited until a little after 11:30am to go out.  I didn't have anything to eat or drink all day.  I took it nice and easy which was good because my legs are a little sore.  Beautiful day out.

I think I bit off more than I could chew today. I was dragging after 4 miles, so I stopped and walked a bit.  Then when I started running again, I thought I was going faster, but I was going slower.

I did a cross fit workout today at Road Runner Sports.  I'll tell you one thing.  I suck at burpees.  And push ups.  Need to work on those.  Later.  They had an obstacle course of sorts.  The first thing you did was either pull a heavy tire out until the rope was straight, then you pulled it back by the rope, or you did a burpee on top of a sandbag and you lift the sandbag over your head instead of jumping in the air.  Next there were more sandbags that you bend over on one leg, lift to your waist, and try to keep your balance.  5 times on each leg.  This was the hardest thing for me.  Next, you lifted a regular car tire over your head, did a squat, then pressed the tire over your head, 5 times.  Piece of cake.  The last one was dragging these tires filled with cement around a cone and back.  I got a lot of compliments about how well I could drag these tires, and for good reason.  I was awesome.  That was one loop.  You got a raffle ticket for every loop you did.  I did 5 loops.  My SIL got double raffle tickets because she was carrying around a 40 lb sandbag on her shoulders between each obstacle.  Too bad she didn't win anything in the raffle.  I won two free entries to the Shamrock Run.  Unfortunately I'll be out of town that weekend for Emily's baptism.  She turns 8 in less than a week.