Go, you chicken fat, go away!

I wasn't feeling great today.  Too much Cinco de Mayo food yesterday.  I was using the RunKeeper app again.  Kira was telling me how slow I was every five minutes.  At the three mile mark I got a phone call which I took.  I started walking.  It was Jeff Wimmer.  He wants me to start an engineering group with him.  Not sure I want to at this point.  He's going to really have to sell me on it.  Anyway, it didn't register the distance that I walked, but I've run this route before, so I knew it was 3.91.

Ok, maybe it 3.73

Well, I'm thinking this actually is 3.73 miles.  Last week I ran this same course and thought it was longer and that it didn't record properly because I walked a portion of it while I got a phone call.  I did get two phone calls today, but they were short and I basically stopped each time.  I'll have to go back and edit the distance on last week's run.

A former co-worker of mine from RWCD used to play this game with me where he would snap a picture, usually of a screw up made by a contractor, out in the District somewhere and ask me where it was.  Today I snapped a picture of a pile of horse poop on the side of the canal and asked him where I was.  He got it right :)
 

I had to go to the printing company this morning to pick up some plots.  So my wife and I took two of our younger daughters to school and went to Mesa Blueprint.  It's exactly 7 miles from my house.  My wife also had to take a dress to the dry cleaners so I told her I would attempt to run home and for her to be ready if I called.  She wasn't ready.

About half way through this became a zombie march home.  So I'll tell about the part that I remembered before losing rational and conscious thought.  The most enjoyable part was the smell of the Backyard Taco.  I know that sounds like a skanky brothel, but it's not.  It's a restaraunt now owned by a family that used to make Mexican food in their backyard.  They would make it for free, and if you wanted to give a donation, you could.  That's how they were able to get away with not having to follow typical regulations of running a business and having to comply with health code standards.  Well, I guess "business" got so good for them that they finally decided to do things right.  They've opened up shop on University.  I've gone there once.  It's pretty good.  But it smelled great this morning.  And I had one lady say good morning to me before I could say it to her.  That's all I can think of.  Goodbye.

I took Ginger with me for a recovery run.  I just took my time and took it easy.  But the reality is it ended up being just slightly slower than yesterday's pace.  I was crashing pretty hard yesterday.  Ginger was a good girl.  She saw a bunny.  She run towards it and it scampered off into the bushes.  She got real bouncy.  Not sure what she would've done if she'd caught it.  Looked more like she wanted to play.

I have some friends, Marc and Marianna, that are also Rangar Ambassadors.  They wanted to put on their own race.  It sounded like a neat location, so I decided to support them.  I think this was their first event.  They want to do others and maybe turn it into a full time job.  This event was a 5k run/1 mile walk held at the Japanese Friendship Garden in Phoenix.

I wasn't feeling great, so I decided to run with my friend, Lisa, who was the captain of my McDowell Mountain Ragnar last year.  She always takes off real fast and dies out.  So I let her get out ahead of me for the first quarter mile.  Then I caught up to her, but she started slowing down.  Slower than even I wanted to go, so I kept going at my 10 min./mile pace. 

The race wound its way around a downtown Phoenix neighborhood.  It was an urban trail race.  We had some "hills" climbing up and over the freeway and back.  Marc said to be on the lookout for a painting of Homer Simpson and a yard with a life-size chess set in it.  I didn't see either.  The course wasn't marked great.  Marc had taped pink pieces of paper with arrows to the sidewalk.  Someone or someones removed some of them.  He was out on the course to help guide us, but everyone, and I mean everyone got lost!  Funny stuff.  There was probably less than 30  runners that attended.  I had a couple of gals ahead of me in my sights, but after I came over the bridge and back through a park, I lost sight of them.  I went straight through the park and didn't see any signs.  I figured I'd better stop and try to find where I was.  I realized I was on the other side of the park that we already ran through.  At this point I decided to just keep going to the other side and run the course backwards to the finish.  I figured I'd be pretty close to a 5k anyway.  3.09 miles is what my Runkeeper recorded.  Close enough.  Not long after that Lisa finished.  Hers said 2.6 miles.  The race wasn't chip timed or anything, so it wasn't a big deal to me.

After the race we got to enjoy the gardens.  I never knew this place existed.  I guess Marc and Marianna come here often to meditate and stuff.  It's a pretty place.  Enjoy the pictures.

Marc, Marianna, me, and Lisa

This is their mascot.  In their sister city of Himeji, Japan, the Shachi, not to be confused with Chachi of Happy Days, sits upon a hill protecting the castle.  I mean honestly, who is going to mess with a fish dragon?

Each one of these rocks was brought over from Japan and handplaced along the bank of the pond.

You can see the koi fish, which are the same kind of fish RWCD uses to control aquatic vegetation in their canal.

After I dropped my girls off at school I drove over to Usery Pass.  I brought some ice water in a water bottle.  It stayed pretty cool for most of the run even though it got pretty warm.  Often when I run this the wind is blowing south against my back as I climb the hill.  Today it was blowing against me as I went up.  It was kind of nice because it provided a cooling breeze.  I could definitely feel the difference as I ran down.  But it was down, so it was ok.  At mile 6 I remember saying, I've had a pretty good workout.  I'm happy with it.  I wish I was done.  But I still had another mile and a half to go.  There were some construction workers parked in the parking lot by me.  I contemplated asking them for water, but saw that one guy just had a jug.  I didn't want his jugs.  I always park in the parking lot in front of the sherriff's office.  I probably could have parked in Salt River Tube Rentals parking lot if I'd been paying attention.  It's usually closed.  But since school gets out this week, they have it open.  The funniest part of the workout was when I was leaving there were some workers controlling the traffic with their slow/stop signs.  They were staring at girls in bikinis going to rent some tubes to float down the Salt River.

I stopped once to take a picture.  The saguaros are in bloom.

I went to Usery Pass again, but this time I had in mind that I would turn off at the three mile mark where there is a horse trail.  I really want to be ready for the McDowell Mountain Trail Ragnar this year, so I though I'd check out the trails.  The three miles up was nice and steady.  I only saw one cyclist out today.  Kinda weird.  I guess everyone must have jobs or something.  Then I got on the trail to go exploring.  Only it wasn't a trail.  It was a very sandy wash.  You people make your horses walk through this?  Mean!  So, I said to myself, "This is no fun.  Why don't I go try to climb that steep hill?  Bag a peak, as they say."  I changed my Runkeeper to hike mode.  Then I proceeded to go up this steep slippery hill.  It looked high from the bottom, but it wasn't that high.  I realized when it only took me 5 minutes to get to the top it just wasn't as high as I'd like to brag about.  Then I had to scoot on my butt to get down.  That wasn't fun.  From now on I'll stick to the road.  Enjoy the picture show.

On the way back down my right nipple started to bleed.  I noticed it right as I saw a lady cyclist coming up the hill.  So I lifted my shirt up and pretended like I was fanning myself because it was so hot.  I think she bought it.  Then I ran the rest of the way without a shirt. I saw three more cyclists and lots of ladies in bikinis at the tube rental.  While I did not take a picture of the ladies in bikinis, I did take a picture of my nipple.

I got up at 6:30am and piddled around for an hour and a half before I got out the door.  (I just looked up the definition of piddled.  I did not do that for an hour.)  It was already 78°.  I brought a water bottle with me and stashed it at the bridge by the RWCD Canal.  I felt real good at first, but the heat seemed to drain the energy out of me after the first two miles.

Crikey!  I almost forgot to blog today!  My phone battery died right when I hit save for my Runkeeper activity.  But it looks like it saved, so I'm good.  I ran up to McKellips today.  Don't know why I don't do that more often since it's uphill to there and downhill back.  Actually I do know.  It's because there are more roads to cross.  It was 82º by the time I got out the door.  I brought another water bottle which fit comfortably in my pocket.  When I started running, it felt like a recovery run.  So I went with it.  Nice and slow.  And hot.

Emily wanted to go running with me this morning, too.  She didn't make it very far, but she did pose for a bunch of fake running pictures :)

What can I say?  I like my bed.  I finally rolled out of bed at 8am.  Got out the door at 8:30.  Started running at 8:45.  It was hot and I got real sweaty.  I saw a bird with a lizard in its claws.  I'm not sure what kind of bird it was, but it didn't look like a bird of prey.  It looked more like a dove.  I ran my normal route down the East Maricopa Floodway and back up the RWCD canal.As I approached Adobe St. I could see half a mile away on Brown Rd. a slow moving white truck.  I guessed it was an RWCD zanjero truck.  I was right.  I did a 180° and met him at the radial gate.  It was Rion, who was my lead zanjero for most of the time that I worked there in the field.  We had a nice short talk.  Which is saying something because that guy likes to talk.  And to tell truth, I used to love to listen to his stories.