Go, you chicken fat, go away!

Trying to get back in to it.

A little bit longer, and a little bit faster.  Today's run was kind of weird.  There were high school students everywhere.  And they were running in all different directions.  School's out, so it must be a summer running club or the cross country team training through the summer.  It just seemed weird that they were coming from all different directions and headed in different directions.  No rhyme or reason.  Anyway, it was a nice run.
 

I didn't go running yesterday due to the chicken crisis of 2017.  A couple of weeks ago, my brother-in-law decided he wanted to get chickens.  But he didn't want to keep them at his house because of the HOA, so he brought them to our house.  Naturally my daughters fell in love with them.  There were 6 of them.  Were.  I was stretching out ready to run when my daughter came outside to check on them.  I thought I would got check on them with her right before I left.  I went back there and she was in a panic because they were all missing.  Somehow that had gotten out of their coop.  Abby was worried that the cat got them.  We started searching for them and she spotted one of them huddled up by the wall.  We looked for the others and I spotted one in the pool.  It had drowned :(  Abby started crying.  We kept looking for the others and one by one we would find them.  I went back to the pool and I happened to notice what looked like a set of chicken legs inside the skimmer ledge.  I said, "Oh no.  I found another one in the pool."  I removed the lid and expected to have to scoop out another dead bird, but it wasn't in there.  I could have swore I saw some chicken legs!  So I leaned over the edge and sure enough, there was the runt with its eyes closed.  I blew at it and its eyes opened!  I yelled, "It's alive!!"  Abby yelled, "Get it, dad!!"  I yelled, "I've never picked one up before!!"  So she reached in and grabbed it out.  We ended up finding all of them and put them back in the coop.  I went back inside the house and Abby said, "Did we put the tarp back on?  If we didn't, it's going to happen all over again."  So I went back outside to check if the tarp was on and they were all out again.  And one was in the pool!  The tarp was on.  There were two gaps in the wooden enclosure that I'm pretty sure they were squeezing through.  So I plugged them with bricks.  The runt was still shivering, so I took it inside to get warmed up.  Anyway, that ruined my morning and I didn't run.  This morning I got out, but half a mile in to it my knee started hurting.  This is why I stopped running a few months ago.  So I walked home.  The End.

The first couple of steps felt pretty good.  It was all downhill from there.  Actually it wasn't too bad until I got to the halfway point.  All of my leg muscles just tightened up.  My knee was hurting a little, too.  It's amazing how quickly I get out of shape.  I must have a yeast infection or something.

I'm supposed to do group runs as a Ragnar Ambassador.  So I chose to run with this group that goes out every Tuesday night at Cadence Running Store in Chandler.  Yesterday when I ran it was in the mid 80's and wasn't too bad.  Today it was a lot hotter and the forecast shows it's going to be 117º within a week.  I took it nice and slow to try and not aggravate my knee and too not overheat.  I managed to jog the entire distance at a snail's pace.  I even beat a couple of people.  But those people won the raffle, so I shoulda let them beat me.  Afterwards I talked to the store owner about hosting a Ragnar 101 clinic.

My phone said it was 77º at 8am.  I thought, hey, that's sounds perfect to get a few miles in.  I stepped outside and the very fires of hell itself consumed my soul.  My phone is a liar.  Needless to say, this didn't go too well.