Go, you chicken fat, go away!

I convinced my wife to go run Usery with me.  Truth be told, she's been wanting to do it for quite some time.  I finally feel like my ankle is strong enough to do it.  Well, some of it.  The plan was to just run 2 miles up and 2 miles down.  Vickie is going to Kingman today to see her friend whose husband just killed himself.  So we got out there as early as possible.  Certainly not as early as we used to do with our group runs, but earlier than we normally go out to run on a weekday.  Well, since everything is on lock down, people aren't allowed to go into the park/recreation areas.  I guess they can, but they can't drive into them.  They have to park on the road and walk down to them.  So there were a bunch of cars and people out.  We pulled up to the little parking lot in front of the sherriff's station where we usually park and there was a sign that said, "Sherriff parking only."  So we turned around and started driving up Usery Pass.  But there were signs that said "No parking anytime."  There were a bunch of these signs for the first half mile.  So a little after the half mile mark we finally found a place to pull over.  We stretched out and headed up.  There were a lot of cyclists and vehicles out today.  I had to move off the side of the road a lot.  Since I knew we parked at the half mile mark, I had a pretty good idea where the turn around would be.  I got to where I believed it was, and looked at my Strava.  2.0 miles.  I waited for Vickie to catch up so we could turn around together.   She was only about a tenth of a mile behind me.  I gave her a little head start and quickly caught up to her.  Or down to her because we were going downhill?  Anyway, I saw a group of cyclists coming up and one of them said, "Good for you!"  I was like, "I think that was Jennifer Hall."  Jennifer was on one of my Ragnar teams years ago.  She's got to be in her mid 60's by now.  I follow her on Strava and she usually just runs, so I wasn't sure if it was her.  I made it back down to our Jeep and waited for Vickie.  I beat her by a quarter mile this time.  When I got home I checked Strava.  It was Jennifer.  I sent her a message and asked if she remembered the fat guy wearing neon yellow shorts that she said hi to.  She did.

I woke up at 5am, and got out the door at 6am.  There were a lot of people out so early.  I guess it's not that early, but still.  I saw Sis. Ray.  I gave her an air high five.  I also saw the Schumacher's again.  The hobo that Herbie and I saw last night with all his stuff packed on a bicycle cart was still there.  He was in a sleeping bag agains the wall at least a tenth of a mile away from his cart.  I'm guessing the cart didn't fit through the gate.

Oh the days when my wife used to only walk.  She would get up so early.  There would be no quarrel over who was using the bathroom.  Those days are long past.  At least it's comical that we both go at least two rounds before we're ready to run.  So we both got out the door at the same time.  Well, I got out before her, but I stretch out before I run.  She doesn't.  She got about a 10 second head start on me and I caught up to her at the stop sign.  We ran together up 'til the Floodway.  A kid and a mom were heading toward us on their bikes.  The kid was on the sidewalk.  There were poky weeds on the other side of the sidewalk, so I hid behind a bush so he wouldn't run me over.  But he got off the sidewalk and my wife said, "He's off."  So we parted ways.  I did my regular route.  The one I've done 124 times since using Strava.  I'm so glad that the people I see are so nice.  I always get a wave back or a smile.  I'm hearing lots of stories about bad attitudes at the grocery stores and stuff.  But I pretty much only ever leave the house when I go running. 

I thought Vickie would be ahead of me by the time I got to University, but I looked toward the west and there she was.  I crossed the Floodway, stopped and waited for her.  She got a big smile on her face and said, "You stopped to give me a kiss?  You're the best husband ever!"  There's probably a lot of truth to that.

I took yesterday off.  I didn't mean to.  I just went upstairs to feed the dog and saw the puzzle.  We started the puzzle on Easter.  It usually doesn't take us this long to put one together, but this was a mosaic Star Wars puzzle.  It was quite difficult.  There were so many images that were repeats.  Actually I wonder if there were.  Some of them looked very similar, but I wonder if they were just maybe a frame different.  I actually think that's the case.  But I would stare at a puzzle piece for minutes and stare at the finished image to try and find where the piece went.  I was usually successful with this method, but of course it would only give me an approximation of where the piece went.  So I would try and carefully put the piece near where it went.  The problem was, my daughters were also putting pieces where they thought they went based off of color schemes.  I finally had to just start going through all the pieces one by one and moving them around.  When I did this, it really started to come together.  Well, we ended up finishing it yesterday and I never went running.  I wore my running clothes all day, which wasn't great.  I sweated in them and got a rash.  But the rash was mostly gone by this morning, so I put on a bunch of Body Glide and went out.  I know I give too much personal details, but luckily nobody reads my blog anymore. 

It's  supposed to be 104º today.  I'm glad I got up early while it's still somewhat cool.  I wasn't feeling great this morning.  I have really been struggling with sleep lately.  I think because I've gained so much weight.  I just snore all night, and I feel more tired when I wake up than when I go to bed.  So, I think I'm going to try and do better at not overeating.  I don't feel like I do, but my enormous gut says otherwise.  The run was fine.  I saw some familiar faces.

I got some good sleep last night.  I cut back on my portions.  I'm sure that helped.

My alarm went off at 4:02am this morning. Of course I turned it right off because we don't do group runs anymore on Saturdays.  About 40 minutes later my wife and I were woken up to a thud.  I was like, "What was that?"  She ran upstairs.  In the bedroom above us our grandson had fallen out of the bed and busted his eye open.  It's almost 11am now and he's just now on his way home from getting stitched up.  I went running.  There weren't as many people out today as there usually is.  Don't know if it's because it's getting hotter, or parts of the economy are opening back up, so more people are at work.  I saw Sis. Bishop running.  I decided to run up the RWCD Canal today since my wife and I wouldn't be running Usery.  She took my grandson and our son to the hospital, but she had to wait outside.  She texted me a few times during my run to give me updates, but she only knew what our son was texting her.  Anyway, I wanted to run further than I did two weeks ago, so I decided to go up to McDowell and turn around.  I knew this is a 5.8 mile route, and I haven't run that long for quite some time.  But I should be able to do that, right?  I felt okay, but kept it nice and slow.  My pace is the pace I used to consider my recovery pace.  I guess all my runs are recovery runs now.  I got to McDowell, but didn't touch the Covid-ridden fence.  I was taking it a quarter mile at a time.  The Walgreen's sign said it was 93º, but it didn't feel quite that hot.  When I got to Brown Rd. I saw this old man on a bike.  He said, "Don't get run over!"  I jumped in the pool when I got home.

So I'd been working on this project for my top client.  He wanted it Thursday so that he could take it to the Town of Cave Creek and get it submitted.  Because of Covid, you now have to call and make an appointment to submit plans.  I let my client know that there was no way I was going to get it done Thursday, and if I did that it wouldn't be until late, so he wouldn't be able to submit anyway.  They're closed of Friday, so that gave me until Monday to get everything done.  Well, I worked on it all Thursday, Friday, took Saturday off, and of course Sunday was Mother's Day.  I don't like to work on Sundays anyway.  It's rare that I do, but I kinda had to since I took Saturday off.  But I waited until after dinner and Mother's Day was pretty much over by that point.  But I still had a lot of work to do to finish the project.  I worked on it all through the night and finished it at 6 in the morning.  So, no running Monday.

I got up early today and my wife was getting two of my daughters ready.  They were both taking a bowling class at school.  We didn't have bowling classes when I grew up.  I guess it's an alternative to PE or something.  Well, since all the bowling alleys are closed, they had to find a replacement.  They decided to do hiking.  I wanted to run, but I kinda wanted to go hiking, too.  So the plan was to hike up to the top with them and then run down.  That's what I did.  The hike itself was a pretty good workout.  I took it easy going down because I didn't want to fall.  But at one point I slightly rolled my ankle.  Under normal circumstances it wouldn't have hurt, but since I'm still recovering, it did hurt a little.  I shook it off and kept going.  When I reached the trail head I looked up and saw my wife, two daughers, and their friend.  I waved at them and my wife hollered at me.  Then I got to the road and kept running.  I wasn't sure how far I'd get.  When I used to ride my bike, this is the road I would go on.  It's the Usery Pass loop.  There's one hill that I like to ride my bike down because it's so steep.  It's scary, but it's fun.  Well I reached that hill and had to run up it.  I've ridden my bike up it once.  It's hard.  I've never run up it.  I didn't know if I'd get to the top or not before the girls picked me up.  But I did.  Strava says I got 3.44 miles.  I think that's probably accurate, but it did glitch.  I know it was a mile up the hill for the hike, which makes it a mile down, and it seems reasonable that I ran another 1.4 miles on the road.

As soon as I started running this morning, my ankle started to cry.  I guess that ankle roll yesterday hurt more than I thought.  So I just did one loop today, real slow.  I saw someone running on the opposite side of the Floodway.  They passed me up.  I was pretty sure it was Rich.  It was.  Strange because I've been seeing his pace on Strava lately and it's slower than mine.  So he turned around at Brown.  I went over to his side of the Floodway and followed him.  He continued to put the distance between us until he stopped and started walking.  Now it makes sense.  I was never able to catch him, but I wasn't really trying to today either.

I felt a lot better today.  There seemed to be more people out today.  One man said to me after seeing me huffing and puffing, "What we do to our bodies!"
 

So my wife asked me to send out a group text to see who wanted to go running this morning.  I got one reply right away.  It was from Maggie.  Come to find out, Maggie had told my wife to tell me to send the text out.  Conspiracy!  Anyway, it ended up just being me, Vickie and Maggie.  We picked her up at 5am and drove out to Usery.  Again the sign for no parking at the sherriff's station was still there.  So this time we kept driving to another parking lot down by the river.  Luckiy we had a Tonto pass.  This parking lot was 1.1 miles away from our regular parking spot.  We decided to do 5 miles, 2.5 up and 2.5 down.  Vickie and Maggie got a small head start on me.  I caught up to them before a quarter mile.  At a half a mile with Vickie and Maggie just behind me I ran past a truck parked on the side of the road.  As I approached I saw this head pop up from the back.  Someone was sleeping in it and had just woken up.  I also saw a girl sleeping in the passenger seat.  Even though they looked harmless, I made sure to watch that Vickie and Maggie got by them safely.

At three quarters of a mile I stopped to take pictures of the wild horses.  There were a bunch of them just north of the Salt River Tube rental parking lot. 

I checked my Strava when I passed our regular parking lot to see how far I'd gone.  1.1 miles.  So now I had an idea of where I'd need to turn around to get 5 miles done. 

It was a busy day.  Lots of cars.  Lots of cyclists.  And even a handful of runners.  I saw the first two runners when my Strava said I was at 2.3 miles.  They were running downhill.  I was worried that I'd reach 2.5 right when we got to each other, and it would be creepy to them if I turned around with them.  But they were fast and it still said 2.4 when they went by.  Then I saw another runner.  She for sure would have been 2.5.  So I just kept running.  There is a little hill right before a dip in the road where I know is usually the 1.5 mile mark.  So I ran to there, which would give me a little over 5 miles.  Oh, I forgot to say.  I kept looking back to check on Vickie and Maggie.  They were never too far behind.  But one time I turned around and they were gone.  I wasn't sure if they stopped to walk or what.  Anyway, after I turned around and still couldn't see them, I checked my phone again and saw a text message that Vickie had sent me 6 minutes ago.  She said they turned around at two miles.  So I ran down and while I was running I turned behind me to look at a vehicle and saw another girl runner about to pass me up.  Where did she come from?  I found out later from Strava that there were a group of girls that had started at the top and ran a 10k downhill. 

As I approached the intersection I could see the girl that passed me and two other girls up ahead beyond the stop sign.  I figured they had all parked at the same parking lot we had.  But then I was like, "Where's the other girl?"  Then I realized that the two girls way up ahead were Vickie and Maggie.  I wasn't sure if I would catch them right away, but they were walking.  Apparently they ran the two miles up and walked the two miles down.  I thought about cutting through the desert to beat them to the van, but I didn't. 

When I got home I finally gave myself a hair cut.  I did not trim my beard, and I gave myself a mohawk.

I was dragging to get out of bed this morning.  I didn't sleep well.  But I finally got dressed and went outside.  It's warm, but not terrible.  I shaved my mohawk off yesterday.  One day was enough.  But it was weird seeing my shadow today.  I was listening to some YouTube clips today as I ran.  When I was running south I saw someone coming toward me.  I realized it was Rich so I turned the podcast off.  He did his patented swing around and ran with me again.  We talked about doing Rim to Rim.  I think he's got me convinced to do it.

Terrible sleep last night.  Probably the Taco Bell dinner I had.  I got out the door around 7:30am, I think.  It felt a little warm, but there was a nice breeze while I was running, so it wasn't bad.  I felt good, and if I had been able to get up earlier, probably would've gone 3 loops today.  Right around mile 2, I got a phone call.  I took it and walked for about a minute.  When I hung up, I picked up the speed.  I haven't tried to run fast in a looooong time.

So, this is kinda gross.  For the second time in my adult life, I've had to get my ears cleaned out.  I try to wash them every time I shower.  I turn the shower on massage so that it's jetting out high pressure water and I stick it right up to my ear.  Alas, the build up was too much, and we had to resort to irrigation.  It was so gross, but bless my wife's heart.  Anyway, now I can hear again.  What I noticed most about my run this morning was how much I drag my feet.  I could sure hear that.

Another benefit of being able to hear is getting woke up by our rooster at 3am.  And then 4am.  And then 5am.  That guy has got to go.  Anyway, I needed to be up early this morning because Mike, yes, the same Mike I run Usery with, was coming over to work on our air conditioning system.  Since we bought our house a few months ago, we've been trying to do the home rennovations ourself.  The first thing they've been working on is one of the upstair bathrooms.  They tore everything out, but they still need to put it back together.  They've also been removing the wall paper from my office.  But before they removed it, they wrote poop, fart, and diarrhea all over it.  They're funny.  Never mind that sometimes I have clients come over.  Also, we wanted Mike to get in and work on our terrible A/C before it gets too hot.

Luckily today is nice and cool.  I noticed when I took Herbie for a walk last night how much cooler it was down in the bottom of the Floodway.  It's crazy the temperature differential.  So at 5am, I got ready to go.  Mike had told me yesterday that he would be here at 6am.  That gave me time for two loops, but I likely wouldn't make it back before 6am, and knowing Mike, he would already be there. 

I was running on Adobe towards the Floodway, and I saw someone running towards me.  I recognized him as Jesse Lee.  He was running with his dog.  He turned and ran on the west side of the Floodway and I on the east side.  He's much faster than me so he got to Brown way before I did.  Then he ran to the east side of the Floodway and started heading back.  We said hi to each other as we passed.  I ran south down the west side of the Floodway and saw some real fast runner coming towards me.  After he went by I saw two more guys.  I gave them both kudos on Strava and one of them started following me.  His last name is Moody.  Maybe he's related to RAD.  Then I saw two people riding bikes about to cross the street.  It was Dan Brinkerhoff and his daughter.  I said good morning to them, but I'm not sure he recognized me.  Must be the beard.  I went to University and back to the east side of the Floodway and headed back north.  I'm pretty sure I saw Edythe Ray walking on the other side.  It's always nice to see so many people you go to church with out being active.

I almost had this crazy idea to have my wife join me for that 11 mile loop I did earlier this year.  Glad I didn't do that, because this 7 miles just about wiped me out.  I didn't run Friday or Saturday or Sunday.  The reason why I didn't run Friday was partly because Mike was over finishing up working on our new AC, but also I was a bit sore and wanted to be fresh for our Saturday group run.  Mike was going to join us but he had dropped our unit on his foot and wasn't able to.  At quarter to 4 in the morning we got his text.  Then a few minutes after 4 we got a text from Maggie saying she was feeling good.  So Vickie and I just slept in and I never went.

That's why I wanted to do a long one today.  After entering the Floodway I looked to the other side and saw a coyote!  I haven't seen one since February when I twisted my ankle.  I thought maybe someone came by and hunted them.  I guess they're still around.  It was on the opposite side of the Floodway and we ran together for a while.  I started to video it.  Then it started running down the bank of the Floodway into the bottom.  I realized there was another human on the RWCD road, so it was trying to avoid him.  I stopped and watched it, then tried to run with it again, but it stopped near the well site. 

I ran up to McKellips and could see a truck that had pulled out onto the RWCD road in front of me.  I figured it must be an RWCD truck because who else would it be.  But I had to run 3/4 of a mile to reach it.  It was my favorite zanjero, Mosiah.  I stopped and talked to him for about 15 minutes.  He's such a good guy.  By this time I was 3/4 of a mile away from the turn around point.  I crossed McDowell and ran the last half mile to Junior.  Junior is a small little pump that pumps water out of the Canal into the first drainage lateral.  It's called Junior because it's just downstream of the Main Pumping Plant, which is where they pump water out of the Arizona Central Project Canal into the RWCD Canal.  A bit of useless trivia for you.

I turned around and headed back.  I was getting tired and thirsty.  After a mile I saw Mike Norberg, my Strava friend, leaving his neighborhood.  Every time I run this far north it seems like I see him.  We said good morning to each other.  He's so friendly.  I got to McKellips and was able to run through the vehicular gate because Mosiah had left it open.  Right before reaching Brown I had to stop and start walking for the first time.  I ended up walking quite a bit in that last mile.  I even called my wife and asked her to have a cold water waiting for me.  I got home and drank two bottles of water.  Then I cleaned the pool, and now my legs are dead.

I was only going to run one loop today because my legs have been wrecked the last few days.  I started running and felt good enough to do two.  It is warming up!

I felt better today.  A little faster today.  But I didn't get out 'til 8:30am and it was hot.

I texted the group yesterday afternoon.  Mike responded immediately to say that he had to work.  No replies from Glen or Alyssa as usual.  Maggie texted my wife to get more details.  She decided she would go with us, but didn't say so until after we had gone to bed.  Some time during the night my wife's phone turned off.  I was up at 4am, but since Maggie had not replied, so we thought, we didn't leave.  When my wife finally realized her phone was off, she turned it on and realized that Maggie had been waiting for us, and since we never came, she went back to bed.  It was around 7am now, and I decided we should go on a hike/run.  I drove over to Bulldog.  We hiked a trail that Vickie had done a few times.  It was steep and not conducive to running up or down.  So I mostly hiked.  We saw a couple of groups of firefighter trainees going up while we were coming down.

I felt bad for flaking out on Maggie, so I texted her to see if she wanted to go hiking with us today.  I figured she could bring her kids and stuff.  She was going to come, but at 1am she texted to say that she had just got done playing 007.  So now she's the flake.  So it was just me and Vickie.  We hiked Wind Cave.  I saw Tom Haws as he was coming down and we were going up.