Go, you chicken fat, go away!

Emily woke up real early this morning.  Like 4:00am early.  She kept poking her head in our room.  I would say, "Hi, Emily."  She would say hi back and then leave.  I finally got up while she was on our toilet and had to wait for her.  She wanted to spend time with me.  She wanted me to eat breakfast with her, but I had to explain that I don't eat breakfast before I go running.  And since I missed running yesterday, there was no way I was going to miss it today.  She gets so stubborn once she gets an idea in her head.  And it breaks her heart when she can't have things her way.  And that sometimes translates into throwing a fit.  But I just had to be stern with her.

So I got out and did my normal two loops.  There's a couple I see quite often.  The man has a white beard.  From now on, I will call them the white beard couple.  I saw them walking on Adobe.  My guess is they live in the quarter section north of me.  Then, right before I got to Brown, I saw another couple I see quite often.  The man wears a British cap.  A quick Google search tells me they are called flat caps.  I will now call them the flat cap couple.  I saw them in almost the exact same place that I saw them the last time I was running.  So I knew I would see them again on my second loop.  I made sure to point out that I only had a 3-inch diameter of sweat forming on my shirt so far. 

I looped around and headed south.  After crossing Adobe, I could see a family with children playing in the bottom of the Floodway.  As I got closer I thought I recognized them as the Ray's.  But then the sprinklers turned on in the Greenbelt and they all made a mad dash to go play in the sprinklers.  Maybe I would be able to tell if it was them if they were still there when I looped around again.  So I looped around on University and I saw this shirtless old man crossing the street.  I could hear him running, but he stopped shortly after entering the trail.  The Ray's were just turning the corner, but I know it was them, because I texted their mom later.  Then I saw flat cap couple again and pointed out how much the sweat mark had grown.  They started clapping and the guy called me "Iron Man."  A little bit after that the shirtless guy caught up to me and passed me.  When he got to Adobe, he started walking again.  Anyway, there wasn't any more people out than normal, but it seemed I had more interactions with people today.

Lots of active people out today on the trails.  I saw Edythe and Rhoda again.  I yelled, "There's no sprinklers over here, Rhoda!" 

The high today is supposed to be 111º.  I didn't run Saturday, so I wanted to get about 5 or 6 miles in today.  So I got up early.  As I was sitting on the toilet, I could swear I heard Emily's voice.  Yep.  She was up.  That girl either wakes up before 5am or after 10am.  No in between.  I asked her what she was doing awake.  She said she wanted to spend time with me.  She wanted to watch the sun come up with me, and she wanted to go on a walk.  So that's what we did.  My wife had chalked out a workout routine in the cul-de-sac.  Emily was sad that it's pretty much all gone now.  We walked over by Rhoda's house.  We saw some that someone else had chalked out another workout routine.  So she did that one.  Then we walked around the block and sat down to rest at Adobe.  Every time Emily would see someone walking, walking their dog, cycling, or driving with their window rolled down, she would tell them good morning, or have a great day, or your dog is very cute.  Then she would say, "See?  I'm being neighborly to the neighbors."  We walked home and it was about 6:00am.  I went to the bathroom again and decided to just do one loop.  So that's that.

I've been so busy at work that I put running on the back burner.  I got out and did one loop today.  When I got home I jumped in the pool, shoes and everything.

I did two loops today.  Usually I do one loop from Adobe to Brown and one loop from Adobe to University.  Today I did two loops from Adobe to Brown.  When I got home I checked on the boys to make sure they were getting ready for the survey.  AJ was sick.  I had already notified the property owner that they would be out there, so I decided to go in his place.  It puts me a day behind with my regular work, but oh well.  Luckily Caleb knows how to set up all the equipment, because I don't.  We got there and found out that the battery for the receiver and radio were dead.  So we had to hook the equipment up to my van battery.  That meant we couldn't use the van to go drive around to the benchmarks.  Luckily the farthest one away was just over a half mile.  But that's over a mile of walking and it was hot!  On our way back I decided to survey the intersection near where the wash connects.  Historically the wash crossed the road and went by our site.  But it looks like the road has been built up high enough to divert the flow to the south.  I want to be able to prove that.  So we took a couple dozen shots and went back to the site.  It was still hot.  I walked around looking for property corners.  I noticed I had to pee.  It was so hot and I had to pee so bad, that I couldn't concentrate.  I almost knocked on the door and asked if I could use their bathroom, but I was too embarrassed.  So finally I just peed in my PowerAde bottle that I had finished off.  My pee was so dark.  That means I was getting dehydrated.  And I could feel that I was starting to crash even though I had been drinking lots of fluid.  Or maybe the pee was dark because of the PowerAde.  But I'm sure I was crashing.  I called my wife to have her bring us some more fluids.  She said she would find a place to stop at on the way.  But before she did, we had another battery die in the rover head.  I was like, "You know what.  We're done.  Let's go home."  So, yeah.  I'm not cut out for this type of work anymore.  I've become soft sitting behind my computer all day.

I woke up before 4am.  I didn't sleep well again and David was crowing.  I went to the bathroom and tried to lay back down.  I might have got a few more winks, but not much.  I got up again shortly after 5am and sat on the toilet for a while.  I finally made it outside and started running at 6:18am.  It was cloudy, but still felt hot.  There were a lot of people out today.  They all probably thought it would be nice and cool due to the cloud coverage, but it wasn't.  I did two loops and I saw Amy Spencer as I was leaving the Floodway.  She waved at me and asked how I was doing.

My morning routine usually consists of waking up, sitting on the toilet, laying back down for a few minutes, sitting on the toilet for another half hour until my wife yells at me, taking the dog out back, letting the chickens out of their coop, feeding the dog, and going running.  This morning after feeding the chickens I noticed some bubbles in the pool.  It was actually rain drops.  Had I not seen them, I wouldn't have noticed it was sprinkling.

Today is Wednesday as I write this.  I remember stopping twice on this run, but only remember why once.  That was because I caught a whiff of what smelled like a rotting corpse.  I stopped and looked around but didn't see anything.  It lightly sprinkled during the run, but I could only feel it if I concentrated on it.  I jumped in the pool when I got home.

Vickie and I are going up to Flagstaff this weekend to hike Mt. Humphreys. (sp?)  I hope I'm ready.  After getting dehydrated last week, I felt like I didn't want to ever hike again.  But there might be a thunderstorm.  That should be exciting, right? 

I started running this morning and Vickie left shortly after I did.  She follows the road and I follow the Canal.  I didn't notice she was behind me when I got to University.  I was too fixated on the other hobo that was camped out over by Jeff.  Jeff basically has nothing.  This guy has a shopping cart overfilled with his stuff.  Anyway, my wife took a picture of me and posted it on her Strava.  Creeper.

A few days ago I was missing my last Ragnar van team, so I went and found our group text and sent everyone a message.  One of the messages was for Rochelle to invite me on her next virtual Ragnar team.  It seems like she's doing one every other weekend.  I don't blame her.  They're free.  Or you can spend about $30 and get a T-shirt and a medal.  Anyway, she invited me to be on her team for the virtual Vermont trail relay this weekend

Vickie and I already had plans to join that hiking group again and go hike Mount Humphreys in Flagstaff this weekend.  But Rochelle told me that I could use my hiking miles as my Ragnar miles.  Apparently you just complete your miles wherever, whenever between Friday and Saturday.  So I signed up.  I also got Vickie to sign up.

This morning we I decided that we would do our first leg together.  Vickie usually runs a "3.3" mile loop.  One of our legs is supposed to be 3.1, so that should work.  It was very humid.  We stopped at the 2 mile mark so Vickie could get some rest.  Then we finished up and jumped in the pool.  So, leg 1 done.  I'll mark this as a race after our last leg, since I'm pretty sure we'll be doing a leg a day.  As always, Ragnar is not a real race, but I want to keep track of them, and marking them as a race is the best way.

We stayed the night at La Quinta Inn in Flagstaff.  We got up and drove to a hike that looked like it would be fairly easy and the distance we would need to cover our Yellow Loop leg of the virtual Vermont Trail Ragnar.  The internet was sketchy so we ended up going the wrong way.  We probably got more elevation than what we wanted.  But it was a nice easy hike anyway.  I quite enjoyed it.

Ragnar #34

This was hard.  And not very fun.  But it was beautiful and the weather was gorgeous.  This was our last leg of the virtual Ragnar we signed up for.  It was supposed to be 7.2 miles.  Since we were going to hike Mount Humphreys, the tallest peak in Arizona, with Vickie's friend's hiking group, this would work out great.  We met up with the team the night before at Oregano's.  There were 11 of us including Daylene, Heidi, and Labrae from our Mount Baldy hike.  They first gave us two tables that would only fit 8 people.  So they said they would put us at another bigger table once the other party left.  We could see them leaving so we waited.  There were four guys and 7 gals.  Since one of the tables was bigger than the other, I suggested we split off with a boy table and a girl table.  But I wanted to sit by my wife, so I sat at the girl table.  I ended up sitting at a spot where the corner of the table was sticking right into my fat tummy.  I was very uncomfortable, and my ankle was a bit sore from the hike Vickie and I did that morning.  Then while I was eating, I started to sweat.  So I stopped eating and just asked for a box.  I can count the number of times in my life I've asked for a box on one hand.

When we got back to the motel I ate the rest of my dinner and we went to sleep.  I sweated so much.  It was gross.  I had to flip my pillow over because it was soaked.  We got up at 3:30am so we could get ready.  I tried to eat Vickie's leftover chicken fried steak, but it was chewy, so I spit it out.  I just ate a bananan and some chocolate milk.  We packed up and left and we followed Daylene up to the trail head.  Everyone else was already there, but they had to wait on me to do my #2, #2 of the day.  And the one ply toilet paper in the portajohns wasn't doing me any favors. 

After I finished we were ready to go.  It was 5:15am.  We were greeted by a beautiful sunrise.

We took some pictures and were on our way.  I was feeling good for the first 3.5 miles.  I think the hike we did the previous day helped us to acclimate to the elevation a little bit even though it was about 2,000 feet lower than our starting point.  This hike starts at 9,268 ft and ends at 12,633 ft.  There was a lot of rocks and roots for those first 3.5 miles, but since it was a relatively steady climb, they didn't bother me.  Then we started getting to steps.  And climbs.  They were starting to make me tired.  I'm sure it was the elevation.  Every time I would do something strenuous, I would have to stop to catch my breath.  And the higher we went, the worse it got.

The saddle is around mile 4.1.  This is where we took our second break.  Daylene, who had hiked this once before, said, "Now comes the hard part."  I was thinking, "That was quite hard enough.  I don't know if I want to do anything harder than that."  I could turn around now and still have enough miles for my Ragnar leg.  But I didn't come all this way to not get to the top.  And it was only 1.3 miles away.  So the group got up and was ready to go.  Vickie and I were the last to leave, but then one of our stragglers, Tami, arrived.  We decided to wait with her until she was ready.  There were two other girls that hadn't made it up yet either.  Someone told us that they were coming.  They knew they were with us because they were all wearing funny leggings.

Tami didn't take a long rest, so we were back on the trail not too far behind the rest of the group.  But they soon were out of sight.  We could see Chuck a ways off.  Then we saw Heidi.  We actually caught up and passed her.  But I was moving real slow.  It would seem like I could only go a few feet before I would have to stop and catch my breath after another step up.  And now even the little step ups were making me stop.

From the saddle you could see that there were two peaks before the actual peak of Mount Humphreys.  Having this in mind I just trudged along knowing that the first two were false hopes.  After the second one I could finally see the top.  It still looked so far away.  But I could see people on top, which means it wasn't as far away as it looked.  And even though it was a steep incline to the top, there were no more step ups.  So I was able to get to the top to the cheers of the rest of the group.  Vickie was right behind me.  Heidi followed not long after.  We took another group photo and looked at the view.  It was beautiful, but I was too tired to be able to enjoy it fully. 

I started to see clouds building up and I motioned to Daylene that we should start heading out.  We started down and it was right when Tami had almost gotten to the top.  She didn't want to be left alone, so Vickie turned around and hiked back up to the top with her.  I waited for them.  After about 10 minutes they were back and we headed down very slowly.  Going down was almost as bad as going up.  And my trail shoes weren't working great.  They were slipping on patches of sand, and I almost biffed it several times.  My arms were getting sore from lifting myself down all the rocks.  We finally made it back to the saddle, and the girls wanted to keep going.  Now it wasn't quite as hard, but I knew there were still some more step downs, and they weren't fun.  Vickie had to pee now real bad.  We stopped and took a quick break, but she couldn't wait long.  She decided she was going to hold it until she got down to the bottom where the portajohns were.  At the saddle I had decided to use her hiking poles because of all the slipping I was doing.  They helped.  I didn't slip anymore, but my right arm got real sore to the point where I could barely move it.  I gave the poles back to Vickie.  Luckily now we weren't in the sandy part anymore.

But I did slip once more after that and I was so annoyed that I told Vickie to go on without us.  She needed to pee and I was going to take my time, so it wasn't a good combination.  Tami and I hiked together, but I told her to go ahead of me.  I actually needed to pee, too, and I didn't want her to see me.  I was walking slow and I was stopping probably every quarter of a mile.  I caught back up to Tami and we hiked together again until she was trying to lower herself down a rock and she slipped and fell on her butt, and almost bashed her head against a tree.  She told me to go on without her.  I was thinking, what happens next time when you actuall concuss yourself?  We still had about two miles to go, but I decided we would part ways.  I needed to be done, and the rests weren't helping.  I said a little prayer and then realized that the best thing would be to just keep going without stopping.  The clouds were still building.  I did stop briefly once and then I heard a rumbling thunder crack.  I thought it must be God saying, "I told you not to stop!" 

I was back into the rocks and roots.  If it wasn't for them, the last three miles wouldn't have been so bad.  But they were there and it was bad.  I trudged along.  There were two trees that were fallen over the path.  Luckily only two this time as opposed to the 50+ on the previous hike.  When I stepped over the first one, I didn't see the rock on the other side.  I stepped on the rock, and it rolled, and my right ankle rolled, and my left knee hit the ground all in one motion.  I just stayed there on my knees for about 10 seconds waiting for the pain to go away.  It was the same ankle I had twisted in February.  But the Lord had already listened to my prayer about getting back safely, and to my surprise, I was able to get back up and start walking again.  I was even able to run a little bit of the last mile.  Right before I left the forest and entered the meadow, it had started to rain.  It actually felt so good.  I finally finished and right when I got to the van, it started to dump hard.  Just in time.  But poor Tami was still out there.  She made it too, though.  The other two girls only made it as far as the saddle.  But that's good. 

I am glad that I made it to the top and can say that I've hiked to the highest peak in AZ, but I don't ever want to do it again.  I drove down the hill and we ate lunch at Sizzler's.  Then I let Vickie drive home because my arm was still so sore.  I layed down in the back and took a nap.  Traffic was terrible again, but we finally made it home just in time for dinner.  Here's a picture of Vickie and me at the saddle.

I'm way behind on blogging.  This was a slow run days after my Mount Humphries hike.  It was very slow.  I remember the shirtless old man passing me and saying, "Good job, brother!"