Go, you chicken fat, go away!

What better way to start off 2018 than by putting another (ex) blogger on my list of BIMIRL?  Slow Joe happened to be in AZ for the new year and on his way back to the airport from Tucson, I was able to meet him face to face for a few minutes.  He looked just like I imagined he would from the hundreds of pictures I've seen him in.  He thanked me graciously for driving out to meet him, and I thanked him because it would give me the opportunity to run South Mountain.  You know the run, Tracy.  So after the warm embrace of a handshake, we parted ways; he to the rental car return facility, and I to South Mountain.  But guess what, Clark?  Florida was closed!  How can you close a mountain?  So instead of running there, I went all the way to Usery.  It was a bit brisk this morning, but not bad.  Still shorts and T-shirt weather.  The air is bad in the Valley from all the fireworks last night, but it was clean out here on the outskirts.  I saw one runner coming up as I was driving down.  I was jealous that someone was running my route, because there aren't a lot of runners that do this.  There were a couple dozen cyclists out too that I had to share the shoulder with.  My legs felt ok, but after a while I really started to wear out, so I decided to turn around at 2 miles.  Downhill was faster, but it still felt like I had to work it.  On the way down one of the cyclists said, "Good job.  Keep pushing it."  Now normally you don't push it on the downhill because the hill does the work for you.  But he was right.  Today he was right.

Today was cool.  I got up at 5am because Mike was going to pick me up at 6am.  I sat on the toilet for half an hour, but no bowel movement.  So I got ready to go.  Right at 6am I texted Mike to see how far away he was.  I wanted to give it one more try.  I sat down and managed to expunge a little, so I felt like I would be good during the run.  Nevertheless, I packed some wipes to take with me.  At 6:10am I looked out the window and there was Mike who had been waiting about 5 minutes.  Apparently we weren't getting each other's texts.  He brought his daughter Megan with him.  Last year was Megan's first Ragnar and this will be her second.  Today would be Mike's first attempt at running since his shoulder surgery.  He was also sporting a knee brace.  About two miles before we arrived we saw some serious runners out doing the entire loop.  I think it's about 17 miles.  I had a feeling they would catch us.  Sure enough as we crossed the intersection we saw two of them right behind us.  They caught us in short order and I said good morning to them, but they were having a conversation, and they completely ignored me.  Douches.  Mike and I stayed together for the first quarter mile and I asked him how he felt.  He said he didn't like it, meaning he didn't like the knee brace.  He started to inch away from me, but at 0.38 miles he stopped.  He said, "I can't do it."  I didn't know if that meant he couldn't run with his knee brace on or he just couldn't run.  He took his knee brace off while I supported his balance.  He then proceeded to find a hiding place for it over by the barbed wire fence.  By that time Megan had caught up to us.  She offered to carry the brace for her dad, but he said it would be fine.  We started running again and shortly after that the next guy caught us.  He did say good morning back to me.  He was a sweet guy.  Mike started to pul away from me again.  He was running with a handheld light that would illuminate the trees on the side of the road every time he swung his arm.  When Mike got two miles up the Pass he turned around.  He mentioned beforehand that he would probably do that.  But I really wanted to get all the way to the top today because it's been a while since I've done that.  I told him to just go down and get the truck.  I would continue going.  I figured with only 1.7 miles to go to get to the top I should be able to make it there even though he would be going downhill and I would still be going uphill.  I was right.  About a tenth of a mile before the top the next set of runners, a guy and a girl, passed me.  I put my hand out to give them five.  They guy only gave me two, so he felt obliged to slow down and make sure I got the entire five on the second attempt.  I made it to the top and kept going straight, now downhill.  About 0.15 miles later another set of runners, another guy and a girl, passed me.  They also accepted my five on the side.  It's a good feeling to make it to the top of Usery Pass, so a high five, a low five, or a five on the side is completely appropriate.  I got to 4.01 miles when Mike pulled up.  Even though I've been sick all week, I felt pretty good.  But then the most amazing thing happened.  We were driving back home and we turned on McDowell Road.  We passed the runners that had passed us.  Then I saw two other runners running towards us.  As we drove by I was like, "That looks like Nan.  But it can't possibly be Nan.  She lives in Utah."  Guess what.  It actually was Nan.  It was amazinnnnng.  I'm glad I can spot her as she's running down the road and I'm cruising by 40mph in a vehicle.

I'm still not 100% healthy.  As Emily would say, I have boogers in my throat.  But today was nice.  I felt great during the run.  And I actually got faster as I went without trying.

My legs are a bit sore.  I noticed that I was speeding up just like yesterday, but then I started slowing down.
 

I tried out a new pair of shoes today.  Well, it appears I've put 10.89 miles on them already.  Anyway, I didn't do my normal stretching routine.  I just stretched a little and took off.  I got to 0.29 miles and felt a sharp pain in my knee.  I immediately stopped.  It felt like it might be a muscle strain or something.  I didn't want to risk going any further.  I did run back home, but very gingerly.
 

I got a text from Mike yesterday about picking me up this morning at 5:45am.  I said no problem.  Only there was a problem.  My alarm didn't go off.  Or it did go off and it was turned down low, so I didn't hear it.  That doesn't explain why it went off last week in church when I thought I had all my volumes turned down.  Anyway, luckily this week I immediately got his text and it woke me up.  I texted him back that I would be right out.  I threw on my clothes and went pee pee.  I grabbed my wife's headlamp and I was off.  We drove out to Usery like we always do.  About five minutes before getting there, Mike got a text.  It was mine.  Grr!!  Anyway, our goal was to make it to the top today and back down.  Except we didn't tell each other that was our goal, I just assumed it was both of our goals.  I asked Mike if he had any fancy napkins just in case I needed them.  Luckily he did.  We began our ascent.  I was running right behind Mike and he slowly started putting distance between us.  I was surprised at the number of cars out on this remote road this early in the morning.  But then I remembered that it's a holiday weekend, so maybe a bunch of people are headed to the lake or something.  I felt pretty good, even though my breathing was labored.  I felt like I was breathing while in a deep sleep.  Kind of like that guy in Sunday School last Sunday.  Only he wasn't running.  He was just sitting there.  It stayed dark almost all the way to the top.  About a half mile before I reached the top I could make out the sillouhette of a lady running down at high speed.  She was on the other side of the road, and I said good morning to her.  She either had ear buds in or just ignored me.  I figured with her behind me now I could start talking to myself.  I was just mentioning how much I had to poop when here she came again, still on the other side of the road, still at high speed.  I sure hope it was ear buds.  About a quarter mile from the top I saw Mike coming down, which means he put about a half mile distance in between us.  I still felt good, and even though I had to poop, I was confident I could hold it in the rest of the way.  But then the downhill came.  I knew I was in trouble.  I looked for a place to pull over that wouldn't be too conspicuous.  I found some large trees that looked like they would do the trick.  It was getting light now, but I still turned off my head and butt lamps so as to not draw attention to myself.  I hate having to do this.  It's so disgusting.  And stinky.  And dangerous.  Well, it took all three fancy napkins, but I finally finished.  Now Mike would be well ahead of me.  I started back down and was feeling good.  At one point my knee gave another sharp pain similar to Thursday's run.  I slowed down a little and it was fine for the remainder of the run.  With about six tenths of a mile to go, Mike pulled up in his truck.  He asked if I wanted to finish.  He wasn't sure because last week I told him to keep going.  I said that if it was all right with him, I'd like to finish.  He said no problem and drove back down to wait for me.  It's been a while since I've gone all the way to the top and back down, so I was glad I did it.  I'm  feeling more confident about being the first runner for the Del Sol Ragnar.  My first leg is 8.7 miles mostly uphill.

I didn't go running until 10am.  So that's 50 hours since the last time I ran.  Still, my legs were pretty sore.  I'm pretty sure my pace today was about the same as Saturday's.

My Runkeeper alerts me of my pace and distance every five minutes.  Today my pace was exactly the same for the first five times that it went off.  After that it got faster.  So that was nice.
 

I've always shunned away from having to run the first leg of the Del Sol Ragnar Relay.  That very first leg is extremely difficult. 8.7 miles, mostly uphill.  But we have a few injured runners and a few novice runners in our van, so I decided to finally run it.  Earlier this week I asked my wife if she'd be interested in going with me to Wickenburg and being my support vehicle while I ran it.  I really wanted to gain some confidence that I could do it.  She said yes.  The plan was to leave at 8am.  That would put us there at 9:30am.  I figured it would take me about an hour and 45 minutes to run.  Then we could go to our favorite restaurant, Anita's Cocina.  Well we after getting up a tad late, cleaning up dog poop, packing a bag so I could change my clothes, dropping stuff off at Good Will, and gassing up the Kia, we finally got on the freeway at 10am.  Still, it was cloudy out and the weather was beautiful.  About 30 miles outside of Wickenburg we drove through some heavy rain.  But when we got there it had cleared up and stayed dry the whole time.  It was cooler than I thought it would be, but it was nice.  I stretched out and started to run.  The first 1.75 miles is actually downhill.  Then you turn south on Vulture Mine Road and you start the climb.  It was around mile 2 that I saw my wife for the first time.  She went to a Walgreen's or something to use the restroom, but they didn't have a public one.  She didn't think I had made it to Vulture Mine Road yet, so she drove back down looking for me.  Then she turned around and found me.  She asked if I wanted water, but I didn't take any until mile 3.  I was feeling pretty good.  At about 4.1 miles I told her I was almost half way there and I still felt good.  But right about at mile 5 it started getting difficult.  I knew I only had 3.7 miles to go, so I pushed on.  At mile 6 I contemplated throwing in the towel.  But then I thought, "I didn't drive all the way out here to only run a partial amount."  The hardest part was at 6.7 miles.  My wife had stopped to get me some water, so I started walking.  I probably only walked about 30 feet, but it was a steep incline.  I said to myself, "I only have 2 miles to go, and I know the last three quarters of a mile is downhill."  So I powered up and kept going.  At mile 7.7 I imagined seeing the One Mile to Go marker.  I could also see the top of the hill I needed to get to.  I kept plugging along and got to the top.  It didn't seem like it was really dowhill until the last 0.3 miles.  I made it.  It was difficult, but I'm glad I did it.  I'm still real sore, so I hope I can get some quality runs in over the next three weeks so that I have no problems running my next two legs.

This was a recovery run.  From what I hear, the elite Kenyans run their recovery runs at an 11:00 minute pace.  So I must be doing pretty good.

Well, the plan was to run 1.5 Tuesday, which I did, 2.5 Wednesday, fail, and 3.5 Thursday, also fail.  I got dressed Tuesday but I wasn't feeling good, so I never made it out the door.  I'm a little embarrassed to say that I wore that same outfit for the next three days until I finally ran today.

Mike and I decided to run 9.2 miles today.  That means running all the way to the top of Usery Pass and continuing down to the Usery Park entrance, then turning around.  I couldn't find my headlamp this morning, but usually Mike brings an extra.  His daughter Megan came today, too.  She was just going to do 5.4 miles which she says she did.  I told Mike I couldn't find my light, but maybe he tought I was looking for it and couldn't find it, but then I found it, because he never offered to let me use the flashlight he always holds.  So he literally had two, and I had none.  Anyway, we started running together and I thought it might be a good idea to stick with him so I could run in the protection of his soft glowing haze.  But he was much too fast for me.  I would have to be extra cautious since all I had was my blinky LED light on my back.  I kept my head up as cars were coming.  And man, there was a lot of traffic today!  It was a bit annoying.  One scary part was when a vehicle had just passed me and I could see another one coming.  I could also hear voices coming out of it.  I wondered if they were having a good time yelling at Mike up the way.  It looked like they were in the bike lane so I moved over.  Just then I realized they were bikes and they were yelling at me to get out of the way.  It was weird.  Usually it's easy to tell the difference between an bike and a car.  Anyway, after that I would just get off the road into the dirt any time I saw a pair of headlights coming at me.  I figured a pair of bruised knees was better than a broken body or a crushed skull.  That turned out to be a great decisision as one jack wagon was driving in the bike lane and would have wiped me out.  I was feeling good just taking it nice and easy.  I got to the top no problem and started heading down.  Not long after that a guy passed me running on the other side of the road.  Not sure how far he had gone, but he was cruising.  That's when I realized I probably should've been running on that side of the road.  There was far less traffic and they would at least be able to see my blinky light.  Oh well.  At 0.4 miles before the turn around I saw Mike.  That means he put 0.8 miles in between us.  A little before I got to the park entrance I saw the fast guy coming back towards me.  I contemplated giving him five, but he went way over in the dirt.  When I turned around I could feel a significant headwind.  Bleh!  0.9 miles of uphill into the wind.  But I just kept going.  I kept seeing more and more runners.  There's hardly ever this many runners out.  They're probably training for the Phoenix Marathon.  The downhill was nice.  My legs were getting tired, but I kept reminding myself of how much I'd already ran and how little was left.  I had to stop once to dump a rock out of my shoe, but I felt relatively comfortable the whole way.  Did you hear what I said?  There was no discomfort!!  But when I finished Mike said, "Burt, are you bleeding?"  I look down at my shirt and sure enough, I was bleeding.  Body Glide, you have failed this city!

Recovery run.  It's nice to see that when I'm purposely trying to run slow, I'm about the same pace as I was a few months ago when I was trying to run fast.  I guess that's something.  Although it's more likely that I haven't tried very hard.  But today felt great and it's a beautiful day out.

I tried to run faster today.  I picked up the pace early, but my knees started to hurt, so I stopped and stretched.  After 3/4 miles I sped up again and tried to maintain the pace for a half mile.  I'm not used to running fast, so it was difficult.  Then I slowed back down for another half mile.  Then I was going to pick it up again for 1/4 mile, but I didn't get very far before my calf muscle started to hurt.  So I stopped again and stretched some more.  Then I ran slow all the way back.  The End.

Nice and slow.  Just trying to get a few miles in and not injure myself by overdoing it.

Mike wanted to pick me up at 5:30am this morning.  I was fine with that.  I set the alarm for 4:40am and hit snooze a couple of times.  I sat on the toilet for about half an hour.  I got some out, but not nearly enough.  I packed some TP, grabbed a towel, my butt lamp, my headlamp, and two bottles of water.  I told Mike yesterday that I was contemplating having him drop me off at the top of Usery Pass and I would just run home.  That would be about 10.3 miles.  But since Ragnar is less than a week away, I thought it would be best to do some more uphill running.  So I told him let's do the same thing we did last week.  On the drive down we saw 3 horses and 1 pony.  It was dark, but they were pretty close to the road.  They were on the side that we run up.  I hoped I would see them while I was running.  We got to the Sheriffs' station and started to stretch out.  We both had to poop.  We were twinners.  So Mike found a roll of TP in his truck and I used my stash.  I was annoyed at how easy it came out now.  30 minutes on the toilet and barely anything.  30 seconds in the woods and, well, you don't want to know.  Anyway Mike took off thinking I had already left.  So I flashed him.  With my headlamp.  He waited for me to go around the barb wired fence so we could start together, but he immediately left me in his dust.  I was running faster than last week, but so was he.  That's a good sign.  There were lots of cars and cyclists again so I employed the same strategy as last week to move off the shoulder whenever they would zoom by.  I saw a few runners, but not nearly as many as last week.  Maybe because we started earlier?  The run was good, but I never saw the horses.  When I finished Mike was talking with some guy and the parking lot was full.  Apparently a mother and her daughter went missing on their hike yesterday and they were forming a search party.  I hope they find them and they're ok.  Mike said he saw the horses when he was coming back down.  They had crossed the road to the other side.  We slowed down to look for them where he had seen them, but they weren't there.  I kept looking though.  Then I spotted them behind some brush.  We pulled over and took pictures.  Pretty good morning.

Just a few nice and easy miles to keep my legs fresh for Ragnar this weekend.

Ragnar #26.  This was a fun Ragnar.  I was slow, but I never needed to stop.  That doesn't mean I didn't stop; I just didn't need to.  What made it really fun is that one of my favorite (now my all time favorite) blogger's, Tracy, flew in from Illinois to run with us.

We had a start time of 6am.  We have to be there an hour early to go through safety training and pick up our gear.  It takes an hour and a half to get there.  So we should have been on the road by 3:30am.  The plan was for me to pick up Mike and his daughter, Megan, swing over to Glen's father's house and pick him up, head over to Tracy's cousin's and get her, then cruise into Scottsdale and get Kristie.  Tracy texted me the day before to ask what time I would pick her up, and I said 3ish.  The night before I was up until 11pm trying to finish a work project and finishing packing.  I went to bed, but I couldn't sleep.  I don't think I fell asleep until after 1am.  My alarm was set for 2:40 am.  I got up when it went off and quickly jumped in the shower.  That's when I realized I had told Tracy 3ish, and it was 3ish.  So I texted her and told her what a Ragnitiot I was.  (Ragnitiots was our team name this year.)  I picked her up first, then Mike and Megan, then Glen, then a bag of ice at the convienient store, then another bag of ice because that wasn't enough, then some Arthur Fonzarelli hits to my headlight that wasn't working, and finally Kristie at the Target off of the Loop 101 in Scottsdale.  We were now running a little behind.  We got to the start line at 5:30am.  The first thing I did was run to the porta-johns.  As fate would have it, when I exited the honey bucket, Tracy was next in line.  I held the door open for her and told her that it was already stinky in there before I got in.  That was the first time she told me I was "so disgusting."  It warmed my heart and I knew it was going to be a good Ragnar.

During the safety training I overheard the announcer calling for our team.  I looked at Mike and said, "That's us."  One of the volunteers saw my concern and motioned me over.  She said, "Here are three important rules I need to go over with you and you can go get your gear."  One of the rules was do not follow runner #7 when they leave the exchange or it's an automatic disqualification.  Runner #7 was in the other van, so I didn't pay it much mind.  We quickly grabbed our stuff and checked in with just enough time to take a picture.

I have no idea why my belly button is glowing.  Maybe alien resurrection.  Our group, which was about 20 runners, took off, and I quickly found myself in 15th place.  One by one, they all passed me.  I mentioned this a few weeks ago, but I have never wanted to run Leg 1.  It's a beast.  But I committed to it and even did a practice run 3 weeks back.  My pace 3 weeks ago was 11:55 min/mile.  I figured I would run at least that pace, probably faster.  However, the lack of sleep was causing me stomach cramps.  They weren't terrible, but they certainly slowed me down.  The first mile and a quarter is slightly downhill, and I kept it nice and easy, saving my energy for the uphill.  I got hosed at the stop light, just barely missing it, and had to wait for both phases (east and south crossing.)  Had I not just barely missed it, I would have been caught up with a couple of the runners.  Waiting there I realized I was in last place, unless someone started walking a long time ago, which I highly doubted.  This was the only time I stopped during the race, which is a moral victory.

After finally crossing, I started the ascent.  The cramping was still there, but I just pushed through.  There's no van support for the first 4 miles, so I finally saw my van right at mile 4.  They asked if I wanted water and I told them I would be fine for another mile.  After the mile Mike asked if I wanted to take the bottle with me and they would meet me at the finish.  I asked him to stop one more time at the top of the hill, which would be at 6.7 miles.  Right around one hour and 5 minutes into my run, I could hear someone coming up behind me.  Knowing I was averaging around a 12 minute pace, I figured that if they started half an hour before me, they must be running a 6 minute pace.  It was a girl.  I said, "Wow!  You must be running a 6 minute pace."  She laughed and said, "I haven't seen a soul in ages."  I said, "Well, I'm very glad to accommodate you."  She didn't really look like she was running a 6 minute pace, so I figured she probably missed her start time like we almost did, and just started late.

My van was stopped at 6.2 miles (not 6.7.)  They handed me the water bottle and I began the hardest half mile of the race.  It gets real steep here, so I just put my head down and headed up.  After the hill, I was averaging a 12:20 pace, but I got it down to a 12:15 pace by the time I finished.  That's 20 seconds slower per mile than 3 weeks ago.  Around mile 7 I started getting passed by runners from the next group.  I want to say about 5 of them passed me.  But I also passed three ladies that must've started in the group before us.  That was nice because those were the only people I passed the entire race.

With a little under a mile to go, I saw my van driving back toward me.  I waved and then put my hands up like, "What are you guys doing?  I know I'm slow, but surely you don't think I died.  It wasn't too long ago that you saw me."  When I finished, Mike told me that they were heading back to the start line because we forgot our slap bracelet.  Oh, you mean the slap bracelet that I've been wearing for the last 8.7 miles?  Hmmm...what a bunch of Ragnitiots.  I called Tracy and had them turn around.  The remainder of the runs for our first legs were all downhill.  Everyone did good, including Tracy who was running around noon when it was starting to warm up.

We went to the motel and I was able to get a couple more hours of restless sleep.  Mike received a text message from race headquarters that we had been issued two violations.  One more and we would be out.  Apparently the other van did indeed follow the runner out of the exchange #7.  Instead of disqualifying us, they gave us two violations.  Mike was mad, but we managed to follow the rules for the rest of the race. My next run was at 8:15pm.  Rebecca had just finished up her 11.5 mile leg, which earned her the special medal.  This was 4.3 miles flat.  The only problem was that I thought it was my 4.0 mile leg.  I estimated my pace to be 11:00 min/mile.  My first mile was 10:09.  A little too fast, as I started to slow down after that.  As I was approaching 3.8 miles, I started speeding up, just a tad, thinking I was almost done.  But that finish line just never showed up.  After a while I started getting angry.  Ragnar has been known to be off on their mileage before, but I didn't think they'd be off by this much.  I finished at an overall pace of 11:01.  When I realized it was my fault for mixing my final two distances up, I couldn't be mad at Ragnar.  In fact, I was happy that I only had 4.0 miles to go.

Tracy hands off to Victoria, Rebecca's daughter.  At some point during her second run, she stepped on the edge of the pavement and twisted her ankle.  She was done for the race.  Bryan, from her van, took over for her.  Back at the motel, I got another couple of hours of sleep in and it finally felt like sound sleep.  My last 4.0 miles was up in Anthem; mild rolling hills.  I estimated my pace to be 11:30, but it was 11:52, and I didn't care.  It was 5:40am, which means all of my runs were night runs.  I'm ok with that, too.  I was just wanting to be done.  The rest of my van finished their legs, but we had planned on running Victoria's final leg.  Tracy had just finished up 6 hot sucky miles.  They really sucked, or so I hear. Victoria's final leg was 5.1 miles.  Throughout the whole race we kept leapfrogging these two ultra teams that were wearing bunny ears the whole time.  They were running together, always a man and a woman.  We decided we hated them and made it our mission to pass them.  Knowing they had just come in a few minutes before Tracy, we were off to the chase.  Glen ran the first mile.  He then handed off to Kristie who ran the next two miles.  She came close to catching them, and was a bit upset when she realized how close.  Mike ran the final 2.1 miles, and he caught them!  Was it cheating?  No.   Maybe.  Was it cheap?  Yeah.  But that's ok. 

So, we were done running, and just had to wait for Van #2 to finish.  Kristie's husband picked her up, and the rest of us drove back to Mesa to go home and shower.  I got another hour nap.  Now I was really missing Emily who had stayed the night at our friend's house because one of my other daughters, Katelynn, had her birthday party the night before at Castles and Coasters, and it would have been too hard to keep an eye on Emily.  Since our friend lives less than a mile away from Mike, and since Mike's other daughter and brother-in-law were coming with us to the finish line, I decided to pick her up.  I really love her, and for the most part she behaved herself.  She took this picture of me and Tracy.

There was a petting zoo at the finish line which kept her occuppied for a little bit.  I bought her some mac and cheese.  Then we waited for Rebecca to finish so we could run across the finish line together.  Another Ragnar done, another sticker to add to my window.  Thank you team.  Thank you Tracy for coming down.  Thank you to my wife for staying up all night and decorating the van.  Can't wait for the next one.

Even though Ragnar is over, Mike still wants to run on Saturday mornings.  Fine by me.  But this was my first run since Ragnar.  Mike picked me up at 5:30am.  I was able to get my business done beforehand, for once.  But he asked to use my bathroom.  I made him use the one that only gives you one ply at a time and you have to hold the handle down until all the water empties out. 

It was foggy out.  That means humidity.  That means sweat.  Mike got out in front of me like he always does.  The nice thing was that I could still see his LED light briefly right at mile 2.  Traffic wasn't too bad today and the drivers seemed courteous.  Right after mile 3 I heard the horses on the other side of the road.  Of course I had to cross to go see them.  This is where this entry is no longer family friendly.  One of the horses was trying to mount the other.  She wasn't having it, so she started bucking and she kicked the "happy" horse right in the chest with both back legs.  I took a couple of pictures and then my glasses started to fog up. 

I had made up my mind that I would turn around when I saw Mike coming back.  Because I had stopped, he was a little more ahead of me than what he usually is.  So it was right at 4 miles when I turned around.  He caught up to me and I asked him if he had seen the horses.  He said no, and I told him that they were about a half mile down.  I kept my eyes open, but as I was going down, a cyclist was coming up and he spotted them and pointed them out to me.  I'm sure I would have seen them anyway, but appreciated it.  I stopped again and took more pictures as it was a little more light out.  Now Mike was way ahead of me again and I never saw him for the rest of the run.  About three quarters of a mile before the bottom there were two girls running up.  They said good morning and then the one closest to me looked down right as I put my hand up for a high five.  Desperately I yelled, "High five!"  She felt bad for missing it.  Oh well.  Then about a quarter mile from the bottom I saw pieces of shredded tire all over the road.  The largest piece was right in the middle of the bike lane.  I kicked off to the side without losing my stride.  A cyclist was zooming down and I heard him yell, "Thank you."  Turns out he was coming straight back up once he got to the stop sign, so he made sure to thank me again as we passed the second time.  It was a nice run, but I need to get out more next week. 

Oh, and this next weekend is the Phoenix marathon, half and 10k.  Sasha and two of his boys will be staying the night at my house.

Haven't run in weeks.  Decided after reading Tracy's blog that I better.  I felt ok for the first few minutes.  The the wheezing started.  Sometimes it only lasts a little bit.  But today it got worse and worse.  I'll have to remember to bring my inhaler with me next time.

First run in forever.  Totally ruined by a text message I received while running.  In retrospect, I shouldn't have read it.  Ha!  But I did.  Basically I've been working on this project for the County for a while now.  The reviewer won't approve it no matter what I do.  And I do exactly what he tells me to do!!!!  So I had thoughts of wanting to destroy this man for the rest of my run.  Anyway, it's almost 2pm now, and I got another text that my client went to the supervisor and the supervisor approved the plan.  So now I can concentrate on other things besides kidnap and torture.

My legs have been incredibly sore over the last few days since my last run.  Incredibly, because I only ran 1.45 miles and it was at a 12 min. pace.  How does that happen?  Anyway, today was about 7 seconds faster than last time.  Now my knee hurts.

I took Herbie with me for the first time today.  He did pretty good.  Up until he saw a pitbull and wanted to play.  Now he's playing too rough with Cupid, our pig.

I usually put Emily on the bus and then I go running which is right around 8am.  But last night I "finished" a project, and early this morning I got a text asking for some changes.  So I made the changes and checked some emails, and listened to messages, and then I got another text about some more changes.  I made the changes and finally got out the door at 10:30am.  It was quite warm.  As I made the turn towards the canal I saw four RWCD workers.  Two of them I knew, but the other two were new.  I stopped and talked for a bit.  Somebody had called in a complaint about some vagrants in the area.  They were waiting for the sheriff's deputy to open the gate and let him in.  I ran my loop and as I was coming back they started yelling at me, "Pick it up, Burt!  Pump those arms!!!"  Even though it was a bit condescending, it made me feel good.
 

So I was telling my wife about the vagrants in the area, and she said her friend told her that they had set up a huge white tent.  Curiostiy got the better of me, and I decided to run over by where they had been.  I ran south down the east side of the Floodway.  I could see Rich Porter running on the west side of the Floodway in the opposite direction, but I didn't know it was him at the time.  The coast was clear on the east side, but I saw something on the west side.  A body mabye?  When I got to the west side I ran over to what I spotted earlier.  It was a table cloth.  Weird.  I kept going and saw this tote full of food underneath a tree.  I looked around, but didn't see anybody.  I kept going and saw another tree with shards of toilet paper.  That must be their poop tree.  As I came back out to the main road, I finally saw the vagrant.  Now, who knows, perhaps he's perfectly harmless and just a down on his luck guy with no where to go.  But there's always that element of the unknown.  So I watched him as he crossed the road and I saw Rich running back.  But I still didn't know it was Rich, so I waited just to make sure he/she didn't get attacked.  Sorry Rich for briefly thinking you were a woman.  As I was waiting I realized there was a woman on a bike on the east side of the floodway.  She was yelling for Joe, the vagrant pulling all their belongings in a huge suitcase.  So she probably knew I was watching him inconspicuously.  Oh well.  So when I finally realized it was Rich and that he wasn't in any danger, I waited for him and he ran with me the final quarter of a mile to my house.  The End.

All of the teachers in the state of Arizona are participating in a walk out so they can be paid more money.  #redfored.  So, since my kids didn't have to go to school, I slept in.  I don't know why that makes any sense since I still have to get up to go to work.  Anyway, I didn't get out the door until around 9:30am.  Luckily it wasn't that hot.  I was a little faster today.  Also, I'm on a diet.

My diet's been going well.  I've lost a few pounds already.  Today was beautiful out.  I saw a vacuum now with the tote of food.  First of all, where are you guys getting your electricity from, and second, why would you be vacuuming the dirt??
 

My back was hurting all day yesterday and still this morning.  I use my muscle roller on it and it always seems to help.  In fact, I haven't had the kind of back pain that used to put me out for a day or two.  Anyway, I wasn't sure if I should run, but I did.  I just did a one looper.

I always stretch before I go running.  I usually can touch my toes if my feet are about shoulder width apart.  But this morning my legs were sore and I couldn't.  I ran this a little slower.  It's still nice out, but it's supposed to warm up.

So I've noticed something.  When I look at my shadow, my tummy doesn't stick out as far as it used to.  It's still a phat shadow.  I have an alert from RunKeeper that goes off every 5 minutes to tell me my time and pace.  It went off 5 times today and each time my pace kept getting lower.  Not by much.  But that doesn't happen very often.

I'm making this entry two days after I ran.  Nothing notable about the run other than my foot was hurting prior to it.  That's why I took a few days off.  Feeling fine now.

Less than 100 miles to go on these shoes 'til I retire them.  At the rate I'm going it will be 2024.

I was only going to run one loop today, but as I approached Adobe Rd. I saw Rich Porter with whom I go to church approaching from the other side.  He had a pretty good pace going, and I was going to give him five.  Right when I was about to put my hand out he swerved way out of the way and got off the canal road.  My first thought was, "Did he know I wanted to give him five, but he didn't want me to, so he swerved?"  But I thought it was too dramatic of a swerve, so maybe there was someone or something coming up behind me.  So I looked back and saw him doing a 360 so that he could run with me.  That was nice.  He asked which way I was going so I said, "I might as well do one more loop."  We ran together for the last loop which means I probably slowed him down.  Truth is, he sped me up.  We talked about the recent announcement our church had about withdrawing from the Boy Scouts and focusing on other things for the development of our youth.

Usually I run after I put Emily on the bus which is right around 8am.  I got earlier today and went before she woke up.  It's getting warmer out, so the earlier, the better.  3 weeks in to my diet and I've lost 15 pounds.  We're doing the ketogenic diet.  I wasn't really sure what that was until I looked it up this morning.  I've just been eating whatever my wife gives me.  Apparently it is a low carb diet designed to put your body into a ketonic state so that it burns your body's fat instead of the glucose from carbohydrates.  I guess.  I have noticed that I've lost weight in one place in particular.  My tushy.  As I started running today it felt as though my shorts were going to fall off.  Probably because I no longer have a rump to hold them up.
 

I got up early again today.  I saw the same two people that I saw yesterday walking their dogs without leashes.  They seem to be well behaved dogs.  Yesterday the lady was throwing a stick in the canal for it to fetch.  Today it was a tennis ball.  With less than a quarter of a mile to go I saw my wife.  She said she had one more mile to go on her walk.

I got up early again and got dressed, but then I got a text from a client that they wanted to come by and pick up their plans, so I delayed my run until he came.  I'm glad I did because Emily woke up and she's still sick.  I gave her a breathing treatment and spent some time with her.  I didn't get out the door until around 10am.  Since it was hot out, I decided to just do one loop today at a slow pace.

Emily is still sick.  I got out a little after 8am this morning.  I pushed the first half mile.  Then I slowed down for the rest of the run.

Today's a month in to my 3 month diet.  I wanted to get a "longer" run before weigh in.  I did three loops today.  Slow pace.  I'm down 21 pounds. 

I was informed that I missed my 10 year blogiversary.  I can't believe.  No there will be no celebration.

Just a short one today.

My family went up to Kingman for my niece and nephew's high school graduation.  I couldn't go due to how extraordinarily busy I am at work.  I tried to sleep outside on one of our pool chairs, but our dog and pig wouldn't leave me alone.  So I slept on the trampoline instead.  It was nice out and I just listened to the sounds for a while.  I finally fell asleep around 3am.  I got up at 7am and got ready to run.  I did my stretching routine and I saw Emily's bus pull up.  They didn't get the message that she's still sick.  And in Kingman.  Anyway, it was 8am by the time I started and it was warm.  I saw that guy that walks bare foot pushing his bike down the dirt canal road.  He was talking on his phone again.  He's a mystery.

My family's coming home today.  I've slept on the trampoline 3 nights in a row.  It was a beautiful morning, and I got out about 7am.  I ran 3 loops today, but I went north instead of south.  I saw the Relief Society President and her husband and their 9 year old son that used to be in our Wolf Den on the other side of the floodway.  I hollered at them, "Hi Lee's!!!"  Later I texted them both and asked them to join my Ragnar team.

Weigh in day.  I'm down 25 lbs. 

I was about 0.4 miles in to my run when I saw this sweet old lady walking down the path towards me.  I said good morning as is customary.  She said good morning back.  I ran up to the turn around point on my first loop.  Technically, it's not a turn around point if I'm not taking the same path back.  Ok, I ran as far north as my first loop goes and then I went to the other side of the Floodway.  Coming back south I saw two bunnies.  They took the "frozen" position and they were staring at each other.  I figured they were just waiting for me to go by so they could "unthaw."  Turns out they were facing off.  The one bunny charged the other one and the other one hopped about 12 inches straight up in the air while the first one went right under it.  Then they turned around and faced off again.  I thought it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen.  Then I thought about what a boring life I lead.  Oh well.  I ran south three loops and as I got to the "turn around point" I saw the sweet old lady again.  She said, "Wow!  You went all the way around."  I said, "Yep!"  Then I was able to run the last 1.25 miles knowing that I had impressed a sweet old lady.
 

Had a busy morning, so I had to do a short run.

I did a 3.2 mile hike up to the Wind Cave with my wife and Vanessa.  I've never been before.  It was a fun hike.

Today my friend was trying to get rid of some of her civil engineering books because she has to move and needs to get rid of a bunch of stuff.  I went over to see if there was anything I could use.  She's older than I am and still had a bunch of her college text books.  So, yeah, I left those.  But I grabbed a few things.  She lives right off of Ellsworth Rd., which is essentially Usery Pass.  So I decided to run from her house up to the Usery Park entrance.  Normally I run to the park entrance from the other side of the hill.  It's steeper on the other side.  And it's a 9.2 mile loop.  This was only 166 feet of elevation gain and a 3.1 mile loop.  A nice little 5k.  Anyway, by the time I was done rummaging, it was almost 8am.  So it was getting pretty warm.  I had a water bottle in my pocket, so I was good.  It was a nice run.

It's been a while since I've run 5 miles.  Sounds crazy.  I began at 7am.  Still not early enough.  I just decided to run north up the Canal until I hit 2.5 miles, then turn around.

I got up way too late this morning.  I think I might start setting my alarm again.  It's so nice working from home and not having to.  But it's summer, and if I want to keep running, I'm going to have to get up early.  I just ran one loop today.  As I was coming back I could see an animal figure up the way.  I originally thought it was a bird.  But then I started seeing other birds and I realized this one was rather larger than the others.  So I thought it might be a dog.  Then I thought it might be a shadow from the overhead electric lines.  When I finally got within range to make out what it really was, I realized my first guess was right.  It was a large vulture chewing on a dead bird (dove or pigeon) that I've seen for the last couple of runs. What happens is the owls come out at night and the swoop down and grab the smaller birds and snap their heads off with their sharp beaks.  And you know what vultures do.

The bottom of my foot hurts.  Feels like a strained a muscle.  Almost feels like plantar facisits, but it really feels like a muscle strain.  Hopefully it's not a stress fracture.  Can a stress fracture feel like a strained muscle?

I finally got out again this morning.  I felt all right.  Just a few niggles.
 

Two of my daughters are at Girl's Camp this week including Abby, who shares a room with Emily.  Emily doesn't like being alone, although she's not too afraid.  And when she gets an idea in her head, there's no stopping her.  So she told mommy that daddy was sleeping in her room last night.  My plan was to sleep for a little bit and then go back to my room, but I slept all night in her room.  I got up nice and early at 5:30am, but wasn't able to get out the door until 7:30am.  It's already hot by then.  Also, it was a little bit humid this morning.  I took it nice and slow.  Last night there was a group run at Cadence that I planned on attending until my foot started hurting last week.  I'm kinda glad I didn't go because it was 109º.  Also, although I felt good after my run yesterday, as the day went on I could feel my legs getting more and more sore.

Since my wife and I started our diet she has told me that we should do a 5k at least once a month.  I held her to it this month, and we did the 22 too Many 5k.  This race is organized  by local race director Shawn Chambers and his Run Your Race AZ.  Shawn does a lot of good for our veterans.  I really enjoy his events because the people that come are genuine and good people.  22 is the number of veterans that take their own lives each day mostly due to PTSD.

We got up early and discovered that it was raining outside.  It rained on us all the way to the event and then stopped right when we got there.  I saw a couple of my friends including Andre, Kim, and Sarah.  There were 317 participants in the race and the chute is pretty narrow.  They told everyone that the competitive runners should start at the first taped off area and the walkers/stroller pushers/ dog owners should start at the next taped off area.  My wife and I lined up right at the front of the 2nd taped off area right behind Kim.  The race started and it took a while before I could even get running due to the crowd.  The first thing you do is take an immediate right and run half a mile.  I stayed right behind Kim and Andre wanting to catch up, but having no intention of pushing it.  When we made the turn around the corner, somehow they both got way in front of me.  I started running back and saw my wife.  After a while I saw Kim stop and start to walk.  I patted her on the back and encouraged her.  She started running again and stayed with me for a bit.  We kept running down the path until we made another 180 turn around another set of cones.  Then we ran back to the start/finish line.  On the way back I saw a dead scorpion on the path.

I picked up the pace the last half mile.  It's an interesting dynamic when you purposely run slow.  All the people you are running with are not that fast and can't maintain the pace they started at.  So you really don't get passed at all.  When I finished I got my medal, caught my breath, picked up an American flag that someone had dropped, and headed back out to meet my wife.  I found her at the scorpion.  She had run the entire way, which was great for her.  We stayed for the award ceremony and the raffle, but we didn't win anything.  Afterwards, we were going to have lunch with Andre, Kim, and Sarah, but on the way there our grandson's mother called to see if we could pick him up.  I forgot to say that Andre had started at 3am because for the last three years he runs 19 miles in advance and runs the remaining 3 with us so that he can have 22.

It was warm today.  I just did one loop.
 

Last week was not a good week for my diet.  First of all, I took a cheat day on Father's Day.  I'm sure that would have been fine being just one day, but my wife and I went on our anniversary vacation starting Thursday and ending Sunday.  Subsequently, we made all those days cheat days, too.  I gained 5 lbs this week.  The first 5 weeks of my diet I was averaging losing 5 lbs a week.  So it's almost like two weeks lost.  Oh well.  We went to Colorado.  When I ran Ragnar Colorado a couple of years ago, we went through some cute little towns that I thought would be fun to take my wife through some day.  So I finally decided to take her there this year.  She found that it would be cheaper to fly into Colorado Springs than Denver, so we ended up doing mostly things around the Springs.  We actually never went to those cute little towns.  But there was plenty to do and see.  Who knew?  The first day we immediately went to the top of Pike's Peak.  In hind sight that wasn't the smartest thing.  I got elevation sickness and had a bit of a headache for about a day and a half after that.  But it wasn't too bad.  Just bad enough to make me not want to run any while I was there even though I had packed running gear.  The next day we went to the Royal Gorge.  I had my first ziplining experience, and that was pretty fun.  The next day we went to 7 Falls and the Garden of the Gods.  The last day we went to Cave of the Winds.  We did a lot of hiking and stair climbing, so I was hoping it would help with the days off I've missed running.  My legs weren't sore except for my ankle joints from hiking on unsteady rocks and stuff. 

I got out the door at 7am this morning to run.  I planned on running three loops so that I could hopefully lose some weight before weigh in.  It was already hot.  When I got to exactly a mile I had to stop and stretch a little.  My sore ankles were starting to bother me.  I decided to just do one loop.  I'll try again tomorrow.
 

I failed to mention yesterday that as soon as I turned on to the Floodway path, I saw my wife and Vanessa on their morning walk.  I was able to grab a drive by smooch.  Today as I approached the Floodway I saw a lady walking towards me, and my first thought was, "Do I get another kissy today?"  But I immediately noticed that it was not my wife.  Then I saw another figure up the way, but could tell that it was a runner with a dog.  And it was a man.  But then I saw two females approaching.  One of them appeared to be my wife, but the other did not look like Vanessa.  So as they got closer I could definitely tell that it was my wife, but who was this other mystery woman?  It wasn't until I was right up to them that I could tell it was Sister Green from the ward.  I stole another smooch from my wife and continued on my way.  I could see that the other runner had moved over to the RWCD Canal road.  He stopped to catch his breath or for his dog to catch his breath.  He started again and now I wasn't too far behind him.  I wondered if I'd be able to catch him at my incredibly slow pace.  Then his dog stopped to take a look in the Canal.  The owner only let him stop for a second before he got him going again.  But about 20 feet later the dog said, "I need a break", and it went down in the Canal to cool off.  So I passed them.  I was feeling better than yesterday, so I did another loop.  When I got almost to my house I saw two birds in the road.  One of them looked like it had a broken wing.  I felt pity on it so I scooped it up and brought it home.  I laid it in the shade of a tree.  Then I went inside and grabbed a scoop of chicken feed so that I could feed our last remaining chicken.  (Either our dog or our pig killed the other one about a week ago.  They were both eating it.)  I gave the bird about 5 pellets and continued to the backyard to feed the chicken.  When I came back I grabbed a gallon of water that we had randonmly sitting in the front yard.  I was going to pour it some water.  But when I got to it, it had rolled over on its back like it was about to die.  The other bird was there, too, but it flew away as I approached.  I noticed the pellets were gone.  I turned it back over and tried giving it water.  But the poor thing died right there in front of me.  Now I have a couple of theories about how it may have died.  The most obvious is that I poisoned it with chicken feed.  I think if that were the case there would be more dead doves around.  My second theory is that the other bird came and ate all the pellets and pecked at the injured/dying bird to the point where it couldn't recover.  My third theory is that it had been struck by a car which caused the broken wing and some possible internal injuries which it succumbed to.  Luckily today was trash today and I was able to lay it to rest...in the top of the trash can.

Yesterday when I woke up I got a terrible calf cramp.  The kind where it just hits you all at once, and you can't remember if you're supposed to point your toes up or down.  It hurt so bad, I struggled to walk, let alone think about going running.  But it got better as the day went on, so I was able to get out this morning.  I went real slow (as usual.)  Actually slower than usual.  I saw a zanjero up at the RWCD Canal and Brown Road (or Lateral 3, as they call it.)  I wanted to see who it was, but I wasn't fast enough.  That has happened a lot lately.  I did see that it was Truck #5A, which generally means it's a lead zanjero's truck.  I did my loop turning around at Brown Road and heading back down the Canal road.  After a while I could make out a vehicle parked on the west Canal road in front of the gate at Lateral 3-1/2.  Occasionally people do that, but they're not supposed to because it blocks the access for the RWCD workers.  Then I saw the RWCD truck pull up and I wondered if he would ask them to move.  Getting closer, I was able to see that the vehicle was actually the 5A truck and the other truck was the 1A truck.  The 1A truck is just the regular zanjero truck, which is what I was for the year that I worked there.  I was able to get there in time to stop and talk.  I didn't know the regular zanjero.  He was a new guy.  He must've thought I was a crazy guy when I approached them.  And the lead zanjero was just a regular zanjero when I worked there.  He said the guy he replaced was "asked to leave."  That's too bad.  Well, I didn't talk to them long, and I went to finish my final loop.  I noticed that my pace increased.  I guess my body wanted to run at the speed it's used to running lately.

Just one lop today because it was 7:30am before I got out.  I tried picking up the pace today in short intervals.  It felt good.
 

I texted Mike yesterday to see if he wanted to go running.  Mike has an air conditioning company, so he's super busy in the summer.  He told me we'd have to go super early.  I said that's fine by me.  He came and got me at 4:00am and we got to Usery at 4:30am to start our run up the hill.  Mike hasn't run since two weeks after Ragnar when he did the Phoenix Half Marathon. But he still is faster than me.  I had to borrow one of his headlamps.  I actually think it's my old headlamp that I lost.  Hmmmm...  Anyway I stayed close to him for longer than usual.  I felt pretty good until about 1.75 miles.  Then I started to feel a little sluggish, but I know that after 2.5 miles, it gets easier.  But I still had thoughts about turning around when Mike was coming back.  The only problem was Mike was only about a half mile ahead of me, which means when he came back, I was only a quarter mile from the top.  So I went to the top, and turned around.  It was a nice run, but my legs werer feeling it.  The sun came over the top of the mountain at about 5:30 am.

It felt nice today.  Just a nice recovery run.

Happy Independance Day.  I ran with Herbie today.  He did all right for the most part.  I had to tug on the leash a couple of times.  I finally let him have a break when we reached the Canal.  Surprisingly, he went chest deep into the Canal.  He won't even get in the swimming pool.    Speaking of swimming pool, I then spent an hour cleaning it so that it would be ready for the day.    I took most of the day off from work and spent a lot of time splashing around with my family.

I got up a few minutes after 5am this morning.  I was anxious to get a few miles in while it was still relatively cool.  But then I had a thought.  What if nobody cleaned up that mess we made in the cul de sac last night with all the fireworks?  Sure enough it was a mess.  At least the big stuff was picked up, but there was little papers all over the place.  I fed the animals, grabbed a broom and dust pan, and got to work.  I finally was able to run at 6:30am and I had already worked up a pretty good sweat.  But that's ok.  I need to since I took another cheat day yesterday.  I felt pretty good.  Maybe from all the carbs I had that I'm not used to consuming for the last few months.  Nothing too exciting happened other than seeing a couple of sketchy looking dudes by the Floodway.

It was just straight up hot this morning.  I left about 6am.  My legs are sore.  Should they be this sore?  Nope.  Unless it was all that street sweeping I did yesterday.  Anyway I got to almost Brown Road and I saw a zanjero truck driving down the Canal.  As I turned the corner I saw half of a watermelon that had been halfway eaten.  I was really admiring it when I heard a woman's voice call out.  I looked around expecting to see someone by the Canal.  But then I heard the voice again, and she was calling my name, and she was behind me.  It was my wife on her walk!  I was not expecting to see her there.  So we smooched.

Another early morning with Mike out at Usery Pass.  It was 94º already at 4:30am.  Despite my best efforts yesterday to baby and stretch my left calf muscle, it was still quite sore this morning and I questioned my ability to do this run.  I figured I'd just have to give it a try.  As soon as I started it immediately began to hurt.  But I just changed my stride slightly, and I was able to go, albeit slower than last week.  I could tell because Mike was putting some serious distance between us, whereas last week I managed to stay in sight of him for quite some time.  Anyway, it was hot, too, so that was another reason for me being slower.  I always have to talk myself into not turning around before I get to the top.  It was so hot that there weren't very many bikers out.  I didn't see the first two until 2.7 miles in to my run.  I counted a total of 7.  On the way down I saw one of them coming uphill towards me, but then I noticed he wasn't pedaling.  He had an electric bike.  So he doesn't count.  6.  The last half mile always seems to be the hardest because I'm tired, thirsty, and the slope starts to level out.  I was glad to be done.  The sun broke the horizon at 5:37am.
 

Less than 20 miles to go before I can retire my shoes.  They're long overdue.  Anyway, I usually use RunKeeper to track my run, but today I decided, for no particular reason, to use Strava.  But as I was running, I realized more people see my Strava workouts, and I didn't want everyone to see how slow I am, so I tried to go faster.  That lasted for about a mile.  Today is a weigh in day, so I did 3 loops.  The Floodway and Canal paths run at a diagonal and they intersect with the intersection of Main St. and Higley.  As I was approaching the intersection, I saw a guy riding his bike down the sidewalk.  He had a Gatorade in his hand and a duffel bag on the back of his bike.  The duffel bag fell off and he cruised to a stop.  I decided to be a good Samaritan and pick it up for him.  Holy heavy!  I think it might have been everything he owned.  Also, I may have broken the zipper.  It rained last night while I was sleeping, so today was very humid.  I was very sweaty when it was all said and done.

Got up at 3:30am again for another Usery Pass run with Mike.  It was humid again.  I was ready early and went outside to wait for him.  I was sweating just sitting there.  As we were heading north towards our destination we saw some lightning bolts.  They never got too close.  I left a few seconds before Mike.  He caught me just before the intersection.  I was feeling pretty good this morning.  After the first half mile, the road curves.  Then it stays straight for another half mile before curving again.  After that it gets progressively more curvy.  That's why I usually lose track of people I'm running with around 2 miles.  But today I was able to see Mike right up until 2.75 miles.  Then I thought I lost him for good, but I saw him once more at 3.25 miles.  He was coming back when I was about a quarter of a mile from the top.  That means he was only ahead of me by half a mile.  When we do the 9.2 mile loop, he's usually ahead of me by a mile.  He said, "Good job, Burt."  Some good job Burt's mean, "I see you struggling, but I know you can do it!"  And some mean, "Wow!  You're really doing good today."  I could tell that his good job Burt was the latter.  When I turned around there was a nice breeze.  With the cloud cover I never saw the sun break the horizon.  But there was a little sliver of a rainbow.  It made me think my mom had died.  Luckily, she's still alive.
 

I wanted to get another long run in this morning since it's a weigh in day.  Next week is the final weigh in.  As I was heading west towards the Floodway I could see that it was raining hard in the West Valley.  It also appeared to be raining in North Phoenix and Scottsdale.  No sooner had I turned in to the Floodway when I felt some cold drops on my arm.  Even though the cloud cover wasn't very dense, there was a light sprinkle.  I looked in the western sky again and saw another partial rainbow.  Then the light sprinkle became a light rain.  It felt prettygood.  I think it made me feel overly good as I was running faster than usual.  The rain stayed there all the way until half way through my second loop when I turned to head north.  That's when the faster pace caught up with me and I decided three loops would be enough.  I'm down about 33 pounds.

I'm getting a little faster.

I tried running yesterday, but I got about 40 yards down the road when my knee started to hurt.  I said, "Nope.  Not today."  Today I took it nice and easy to baby it.  It felt all right.  It was also very humid again, and I was soaked to the bone in my own sweat.  I saw some of my regulars today.  The old man that looks like he runs real slow, but in reality probably runs the same pace I do.  The lady that throws the stick in the Canal for her dog to fetch. Et cetera.  Et cetera.

My alarm went off at 3:30am this morning, but I somehow knew in my deepest subconscious that Mike was out of town, and we weren't going running today.  I managed to turn it off and went back to sleep.  I woke up again around 5:00am and witnessed a fantastic lightning storm going on outside.  Nope.  No running in that.  I stayed awake and finally went running around 8:00am.  It was still cloudy out and felt nice.  I decided to run to the top of the RWCD Canal, which, as you can see, is a 7.3 mile round trip.  It took me 2 miles to be completely drenched in my own sweat.  Well, 2 miles until my shirt was completely saturated.  And the sweat kept coming.  I saw a few other runners out today, too.  I saw an RWCD zanjero at the 1/2 lateral.  I didn't stop to say hi.  There's a little hill at the turn around point that I ran down, touched the fence, and ran back up.  But when I got to the top, I stopped for a potty break.  I don't usually do that.  As I was heading back south I realized that I was not going to make it home before the sun came out from the clouds.  Right around mile 5 is when it poked its head out.  The warm rays started pushing the cooler air around, and it actually made a nice little breeze for a little bit.  But then it warmed up, and the sweat kept flowing.  I slowed down a lot those last two miles.  I thought about calling my wife to come get me, but I talked myself out of it.  If I can do this, I'll have no problem next Friday doing the Ragnar Chase the Moon.
 

Saturday's run caused me to get a painful blister on the bottom of my left foot.  Probably a combination of the long run and the new shoes.  Anyway, I wanted a long run today because it's the last weigh-in of the weight loss challenge, but 3.73 would have to suffice.  After Saturday's run where I lost quite a bit of weight, I ate too much the rest of the day.  So I'm about 7 lbs heavier than I was Saturday.  Which sucks, but oh well.

Even though Friday's Ragnar event will just be a liesurely 6.7 miles, I'm playing it safe by taking it easy this week.
 

Ragnar #27.  This was a special event run hosted by Ragnar for some charitable cause.  My buddy Mike and I signed up for it.  You know Mike.  The guy I run Usery with every Saturday morning.  Anyway, we thought we were supposed to run at midnight, but I read through the website and it just said to run under the moon and stars.  So we decided to run at 10pm instead.  However, it was still 98º out.  Maybe we should've waited until midnight.  Mike had mapped out a course that would be just under 8 miles.  We were only supposed to do 6.7, but we were feeling ambitious in the extreme heat.  I guess.  We parked in a Walgreen's parking lot on Power and McKellips.  The route was to run 1 mile north to McDowell, 3 miles east to Usery (Ellsworth), 0.8 miles back to McKellips (McDowell curves), then 3 miles back to the parking lot.  We had our reflective vests, head lamps, and blinky red LED butt lamps.  We got to the stop light together and Mike immediately took off.  He wanted to break an hour.  I did not.  After a quarter of a mile I realized I couldn't see Mike anymore.  How could he have gotten so far ahead of me so fast???  Then all of the sudden I see this light behind me and I realize it's Mike.  He stopped to tinkle.  He got ahead of me again, but the nice thing was that since the road is mostly straight, I could see his butt lamp for most of the time.  The first half is al uphill.  Strava says there was a 318 foot elevation gain, so not terrible, but at night in the heat, I took it nice and slow.  I really felt like I had picked the pace up once I turned the corner and started the downhill, and I did, but I was surprised at how slow my pace was.  Oh well.  7.8 miles seems like a lot to me lately, but I felt great.

It was so humid out this morning. 
 

I ran three loops today.  I put on a shirt that has chaffed my nipples pretty bad in the past, so I applied some body glide.  It worked great.  No problems.  My pace was a little faster than usual, but I still haven't broken a 10 min/mi pace.  Getting close.  I took a week off of my diet, but now I'm starting again.

I got another smooch from my wife this morning about a tenth of a mile in to my run.  I also saw a woman who appeared to be looking for her pet, and I'm pretty sure she didn't have any pants on.  So, that was exciting.  I just did two loops today.

Just a nice and easy one.  Hopefully get a long one in tomorrow.

I texted Mike yesterday to make sure we were going running.  He said he would see me at 4 in the morning.  I went to bed early and got up with my alarm at 3:32am.  I got dressed and looked at my phone to see that Mike had texted me at 3:23am to say that he wasn't feeling good and wouldn't be able to make it.  But I still wanted to get a good run in so I decided to try and do something I've wanted to do for a while.  If I start from the top of Usery Pass and run home, it is just over 10 miles.  I woke my wife up and asked if she'd take me.  She wanted to sleep.  So I just played Boggle on my phone and sat on the toilet until 4:40am when her alarm went off.  She got up, got ready, and we finally went over to Usery.  I started running at 5:24am.  It's pretty much downhill the whole way so I was feeling great for the first 4 miles.  I was just trying to cruise along without pushing it too fast, but I noticed that mile 2 was under a 10 min. pace.  The sun peeked over the mountain right at 6:00am.  It didn't take long for it to warm up, as it was already hot.  When I crossed Brown Road and turned west I texted my wife to say that I had completed 4.1 miles and was on Brown.  She texted back that she was at Hilltop.  That's a little hill she likes to climb.  Probably a 200 feet ascent, but fairly steep.  I was very close to Hilltop so I texted back if she could see me.  She said no because she was still at the base.  I was only about a quarter of a mile from the base so I kept an eye out for our car.  Then I got a text that she could see me, but I couldn't see her.  She had parked away from everyone else and then I spotted her.  She texted me asking if I needed anything.  She had extra water.  By that time I was all texted out and had passed her, so I tried to hand gesture to her that I didn't need anything.  I kept running and saw that I was coming to an uphill as Brown Road goes over the 202 Freeway.  I knew I would slow down, but like always, I told myself it was just an uphill.  You're not crashing.  But once I got to the downhill side I realized I was crashing.  It was getting warmer and warmer.  By this time I was over 5 miles in so I kept running.  By about 6.5 miles I decided to text my wife to say that I would take that water from her.  I had some water left in my water bottle in my pocket.  Oh, that reminds me.  About three quarters of a mile in to my run I heard a car behind me.  I turned around to look and I guess the contortion I made allowed my water bottle to fall out of my pocket.  Naturally it rolled right out into the street, and now the car was too close for me to go grab it.  Luckily the driver saw it and swerved around it.  Okay, back to me telling my wife I wanted more water.  That was just a ruse.  I really wanted her to pick me up.  She hadn't started her ascent up Hilltop yet because she likes to walk around the base first.  So she drove back to me.  By the time she got to me I was at 7.3 miles (about 3 miles from home), but I was done.  So I hopped in the car dripping with sweat.  My wife dropped me off and said she had to go to WalMart to pick up a new basket for the pool.  When she mentioned pool, I thought, "the pool sounds really nice right now."  So I jumped in with all my sweaty clothes on.  It was quite refreshing.

I tried not to take a nap yesterday.  It just happened!  So I went to bed late.  Watched a movie on Netflix called the Boy.  I think that's the name.  It had that girl from the Walking Dead.  It was decent.  I've seen similar movies, so it wasn't too scary.  Anyway, I got up a little after 7am, and it was quite hot out.  I decided to just do one loop today and make it a recovery run.  My legs are a little bit sore from Saturday, but not too bad.

I dozed off on the couch last night.  Not for long, but whenever I do that I find it hard to go back to sleep once I've crawled into my bed.  I finally fell asleep after 1am, but I still managed to get up shortly after 6am.  I wanted to get done before 7am because that's what time we wake up Emily for school.  Today is the first day of school.  She's a 6th grader now.  Queen of the elementary.  When I turned south on the RWCD Canal road I could see a man with his dog up the way.  When I got closer the man got a hold of the dog's leash and waited until I had run past.  Not long after that I hear the man yelling, "Roxy!  Get back here!"  I realized the dog was chasing me.  I'm not afraid of dogs so I just kept running.  I looked at it out of the corner of my eye and it got to about 10 feet away from me and stopped.  It turned around and starting heading back towards its owner.  He said, "Bad dog!"  Then he started yelling at it again because it had turned back around and started chasing me again.  The same thing happened.  It got to 10 feet away and stopped.  The dog looked like a wimp anyway.

I woke up at 5am and got out before the sun was up.  We had another nasty wind storm last night, but there have been awesome lightning shows for the past two nights, also.  The temperature was manageable.  There were some clouds, so I'm not sure the exact time the sun broke the horizon, but I'm guessing 5:85am was pretty close.  It made for a beautiful sunrise.  I see a lot more runners than I usually do.  I guess they know something about getting up early that I don't.  My pace was the fastest it's been so far this year, and I wasn't really trying.  So that's good.  Still not under 10 min/mile, but I'll get there.  I think.

I didn't feel well on Saturday.  I guess it was my turn.  However, Mike never texted me to see if I wanted to go running anyway.  I was feeling better this morning so I decided to do a longer than normal weekday run.  I ran north up the canal until I got to McDowell Road.  Then I turned around and came back.  There were a lot of runners out.  I saw one guy enter the trail with a dog running behind him.  I was pretty sure it was the guy's dog, but he never looked back to make sure it was following him.  I said good morning and he said good morning back.  Then I said, "Your dog?"  He didn't answer.  I saw another couple on the other side of the canal and they said good morning to me.  I've been using Strava a lot more lately since I'm not as embarrassed for people to see my pace.  Strava has a cool little feature called "Flybys" which allows you to see other Strava users' workouts if they come within close proximity to yours during your workout.  It turns out that the gentleman was using Strava.  When I turned around at McDowell I saw them coming back and said, "Great job guys."  I thought they were running faster than me, but I looked at their pace on Strava and I was running faster.  They also had a dog, so maybe that slowed them down.  Then I saw the other guy with his dog.  They had moved to the other side of the canal.  He was definetly running faster than I was, but he wasn't using Strava.  Anyway, the run felt pretty good up until the last mile when I could tell the blister that had formed on the bottom of my left foot a few weeks ago was starting to get aggravated.  I'll have to try and doctor it up tonight.

I wanted to run 3 loops today, but I never doctored my blister yesterday and it started to bug me.  Also, I took my dog for a walk last night and it's been so humid that my areolae (is that the plural for nipples?) have been getting irritated.  Despite putting on Body Glide this morning, they were not happy.  So I just did two.
 

I got up nice and early.  Yesterday was a nice day, but I didn't run.  Today was a bit warmer.  I wanted to get a long run in so I decided to do the same route as Monday.  I was a bit slower today.  28 seconds per mile slower.  I failed to put on Body Glide this morning and I paid the ultimate price.  So I got home and my shirt is soaked with sweat.  My wife has hung a couple of hooks up at the end of the shower.  I'm sure they were supposed to be for her spongy thingies.  But I use them to allow my sweaty clothes to dry out.  So I took off my shirt and hung it up, then proceeded to go out back and feed the pig.  By the time I got back in the bathroom to take a shower, I noticed a streak of red running down the bath tub.  MY SWEATY SHIRT WAS DRIPPING SWEAT AND BLOOD DOWN THE SIDE OF THE SHOWER ALL AWAY ACROSS THE BATHTUB AND INTO THE DRAIN!!!!

Alarm went off at 3:30am.  Hit snooze once.  Got up.  Sat on the toilet for quite a while due to Mexican food yesterday.  Got a text from Mike at 3:50am that he was here.  Told him I'd be out shortly.  Got on the road at 4:00am and started running at 4:26am.  I noticed a large amount of moths flying around and getting plastered against Mike's windshield.  I wondered if they'd be attracted to our headlamps.  They weren't a problem.  This was my fastest run on this route this year.  First time being under 11 min. pace.   Mike got to the top of Usery about 0.4 miles before me.  As I approached the top I could see another headlamp.  I thought it was a cyclist, but it kept going out, then it would come back on.  I realized it was a guy getting ready to run.  There's a place where you can park on the side of the road about a tenth of a mile from the top.  He took off before I got to the top and turned around.  How do I know?  Strava.  I never caught him.  But I did get caught by three other runners on the downhill.  Only one of them was a Strava user, but I wondered if they were all in the same group because they all started from the top and ran down.  The first guy was huge.  Like very muscular.  Looked like a defensive end.  The next guy was also huge, but not as muscly.  He looked more like a lineman.  They caught me within the first half mile of the downhill.  Mike said they almost caught him, but he sped up so they wouldn't.  The last one was a girl.  I kept hearing footsteps behind me and would turn around to look but couldn't see anyone.  Finally I saw her.  She was wearing all black with very little reflective gear.  She had headphones in, but she said hi.  She passed me with just over 2 miles to go and I kept her in my sights the whole time.  With about 1.2 miles to go a runner was coming uphill.  He said good morning to me.  Turns out, thank you Strava, it was the husband of one of my former Ragnar teammates. 

I felt real good this morning except for wanting to drink some water and thinking I needed to go potty again during the last half mile.  It was nice to finish before sunrise today.

Did my 3 loops today.  I saw so many ants.  I wondered if they were getting ready for it to rain.  But it hasn't rained yet.  My wife, who got out before I did, said it rained a little on her.  So maybe they were doing damage control.  So humid.

3 Loops again.  My lower back was hurting a little bit today.  I passed these two ladies walking together.  I'm guessing they walked along the Floodway trail up to Brown Rd. turned around and walked to University, then turned back.  I passed them again later on the way back and said, "Good morning again!"  That means they covered about 1.75 miles in the time it took me to cover 3 miles.

Usery Pass.  We got there a little earlier than normal.  I took off a little before Mike.  I beat him to the stop sign, but then he went ahead of me.  He ended up beating me by 10 minutes.  But this was my fastest pace this year on this route.  I guess I'm getting more and more in shape.  I paused once to take a photo of the moon.  I don't know what phase it was in, but it looked pretty full.  I enjoyed watching it go down.  I beat the sunrise.  The run felt very good and doesn't seem like that big of a deal anymore.

Tried taking Herby on a run with me.  He's the worst.

If I were to guess, I'd say this is the first time I've run over two miles in under a 10 minute pace this entire year.  Maybe even for a couple of years.
 

Yesterday I purposely ran fast and today I purposely ran slow.  Hoping for a nice run tomorrow.  For the last week I've seen a gaggle of men's socks strewn all over the path.  I think a frustrated housewife must've given up on finding their matches and decided to get rid of them.  Her husband must be a slob.
 

I went to bed early and had no problem getting up when the alarm went off.  There were a lot of bugs out this morning.  One flew in my mouth.  I started about a minute before Mike and was ahead of him for the first mile.  I thought about what I'd say to him when he caught up to me, but when he did it was just awkward silence.  There was a lot of runners and cyclists out this morning.  All of the cars seemed to be coming in groups.  I guess that makes sense because they all probably get stuck ath the stoplight together.  Anyway, I would tell the other runners I saw good job and they all seemed pretty friendly.  Runners.  Gotta love 'em.  So when I got to almost the top, my sweaty pocket stopped my Strava.  As I was running back down I could hear my phone making noises so I pulled it out and didn't think to look to see if my Strava was stopped.  About a half mile before the bottom I finally looked at it and realized it had turned off.  So I turned it back on and it only recorded 4 miles.  Boo!  But I think I fixed it.  I just would have liked to have been able to compare my times from last week.  I guess it's time to put a code on my phone.

It's a holiday.  No school for the kids.  I felt like doing a longer run than normal even though it was 7am before I finally got out.  It rained last night so I knew it would be humid.  I kept a nice easy pace.  There were a lot of walkers out and a few runners.  And a couple of cyclist, one of which was crusing pretty fast.  This was on  the Canal path so I don't know how he was going that fast.  I thought maybe he had a motor on his bike but I couldn't hear anything.  Anyway, I saw a pack of condoms on the side of the road when I crossed McKellips.  They looked like they were two to three sizes larger than I would need, so I left them there.
 

Today's run was eventful.  And by eventful I mean full of events.  First, I almost got attacked by a dog.  But I'm not afraid of dogs.  I saw a lady up the path, but then she disappeared.  When I got closer I could see that she had got off the path and went over to the bank of the Floodway.  Her dog was not on a leash.  By the time she saw me and realized that her dog was running up to me, she had that, "Oh, crap" look in her eye.  (BTW - I've always felt like crap is a cuss word, so I never say it.  Typing it is different, right?)  Well, the dog just ran up and sniffed me.  The lady, after seeing that it didn't bite me, started nervously laughing and assured me that the dog doesn't bite, although she sounded like she was trying to convince herself.  All in all, I saw a total of four unleashed dogs.  Two of them sniffed me.  I felt like I was running stronger than normal today.  I think I was.  More on that later.  Right before I got to Greenfield I could see someone running on Greenfield.  But they stopped and walked right before I crossed.  Luckily there was a break in the traffic right when I got there so I didn't have to stop.  I kept going and I think it was him, maybe it was someone else, caught up to me and left me in the dust.  After a mile I could tell they were about a quarter mile ahead of me.  So, my son is a pot head.  He likes to go in the "sun room" and do his thing.  Sometimes I walk in there after he's recently been in there, and it stinks.  This morning it smelled like pot outside.  Maybe it was just the orange groves.  Or maybe that smell was stuck in my nose.  Anway, I crossed McKellips and I could see this guy coming down the path sitting on a cart being pulled by a horse.  He waved as we passed each other and I recognized him.  He was this 80+ year old man that lives down the street.  He's a real good friend of my wife's best friend, Dartell.  The reason I know that is because I had a run in with him while I worked as a zanjero.  Apparently one night I short changed his order.  I didn't think I did, but later looking back, I realized that I had.  Someone else had ordered water downstream of him, so I pulled the board early that I needed to split the water for the other customer.  When that happened it took a while to build the water level back up in the canal and he lost probably 15 minutes worth of water.  Well, the next order he had two weeks later, he really let me have it.  I mean he was just running me down telling me how crummy of a job I was doing.  I could have ignored him, but he was being a total jerk, so I had words back at him.  Anyway, it wasn't pleasant.  But two weeks later, when I had realized what I did and it was indeed my fault, I apologized to him and he apologized to me.  He said that's not the type of person he is.  I was going to take a picture of him before I realized who it was, because it's not often that you see a horse and cart on the Canal path.  But I opted not to.  I kept running and got to the turn around point which is a chain link fence.  I always touch the fence as I turn.  Today I didn't really look at the fence as I reached for it.  I almost missed it.  I spent the next quarter mile contemplating on whether or not I would have turned around to touch the fence if I had missed it.  I think I decided I would not have.  I was heading back south and I could see old man Hatch coming back.  This time I decided I would take the picture so that I could send it to Dartell.  As we were passing I asked him if he knew Dartell.  He didn't understand me so he stopped the horse.  I had gone a few strides past him, but I stopped, too.  I had to ask him a couple more times before he understood.  Dartell is an uncommon name.  He said he did.  They shared the same birthday.  We talked for about 10 minutes.  I told him that I used to work for RWCD and that we had met before.  But I didn't tell him that it was me that he ran down.  I think we got closure on that already.  So, he said he needed to get going and I looked at my phone and saw that it was 6:30am and I needed to be home by 7am to wake up my daughters for school.  I was only 2.25 miles from home, so it wouldn't be a problem.  But the whole time I was praying (not literally) that my Strava's autopause was working.  I think it did, but my overall pace is probably off by a few seconds.  Maybe.  I ran a 10:01 pace per Strava, so maybe it was slightly under a 10 pace?  Oh well.  With just under three quarters of a mile to go this lady runner was coming up on me.  I waved and said hello.  The way she said hello back to me made me think she was deaf or partially deaf.  With about half a mile to go I could see two more runners coming up on me.  They were kind of chuckling.  I wondered briefly if they were laughing at me.  After they passed I looked down at my shorts.  These were my shorty shorts that I don't wear very often, but there weren't any other clean ones.  I was sweating so bad that it looked like I had peed myself.  So, maybe they were laughing at me.  Can't blame them.  I got home and had to go through a bunch of screens in my Strava to get back to the stop mode.  It had turned on again in my pocket, but at least it didn't stop like last time.  I finally have put a lock on my phone now, so hopefully it won't happen anymore.  The time that it took me to finally stop the recording allowed me to see that my wife was coming home from her run/walk.  I went down the street and ran the last 100 yards with her.  Then I jumped in the pool.  So, that's it.  And if you read all this, you must have a lot of time on your hands.
 

I got the jump on Mike again this morning.  I was ahead of him for the first 0.6 miles.  Then he caught up to me.  But then he had to stop to tie his shoe so I passed him.  He passed me again at 0.9 miles.  His first mile was 8:57.  Mine was 10:50, almost 2 minutes slower.  I think he was running fast to catch up to me because his second mile was 10:40 and mine was 11:48, barely a minute faster.  Again his third mile was 10:26 and mine was 11:36.  So I was able to keep him in my sights almost the entire way up the hill.  When I finally lost sight of him about half quarter of a mile from the top, I could see a couple of runners coming down.  I wondered if one of them was Mike.  But it was two girls.  Mike was about a tenth of a mile behind them.  I was hoping I'd be able to see more than just Mike on the way down.  But the thing about Mike, he's very competitive.  He made sure to catch up to the girls and pass them.  I only saw momentary glimpses of them on the way down.  This was my fastest time on this route this year, but it seems it may have been Mike's also.  He even went sub 8 on one of his downhill miles, while my fastest was a 9:21.  But progress is progress.  So as we were driving up the hill to go home we saw this girl running down.  About a half mile later we saw this other girl.  Mike was like, "Didn't we just see her?"  Later while looking at my Strava Flyby's I realized they were twins.  So I text Mike, "Those girls were twins!"  Except I sent it to my elder's quorum group instead of Mike :(

I ate too much junk food over the weekend.  I wasn't feeling great, but I trudged through my miles anyway.  My pace was about the same as my pace from Saturday.  There were a lot of people out this morning.

We had the full time missionaries from our church over for dinner last night.  My wife asked me what she should make and I told her to make her world famous stuffed french toast.  She said it's not keto.  I said that's ok.  So I was feeling it this morning.  Again.  The run didn't feel great, but I realized when I was done that my pace was decent.  A little faster than normal.  Definitely faster than yesterday.

Yesterday was my lovely wife's birthday, so I didn't run.  We went to this sushi bar that has conveyor belts that run along the seating and you pick the food off that you want to eat as it goes by.  I had some chocolate cakes and other goodies, too.  I felt kinda blah again today.  As I was heading north on the Floodway, I could see Rich Porter on the Canal road.  He was walking.  I ran up to Brown Road and turned south down the Canal road.  We said hey and then he turned and started running with me.  I was just going to do two loops today.  Emily has been sick so I haven't had to get up as early and it was already after 8am.  In fact, my wife didn't call the school early enough to cancel the bus, so I actually stopped the bus on my run and told her she was still sick.  Anyway, we ran down to Adobe together which is where I planned on continuing south down the Canal road, but Rich turned to go back into the neighborhood.  I decided I would run with him to his house.  He asked me which way I was going.  I told him I was only planning on doing 2.5 miles, but I would do whatever.  He was only going to do 3 miles, but we passed his house and went down to Higley Road.  I figured we'd just turn around and go to his house, but he again asked which way I was going so I said, "Let's run down to University, then down to the the Floodway and come back around.  That would be about another mile.  It was a good talk.  I didn't know he'd been out of work since January.  I pray that he finds something soon.

I stretched out and had a nice liesurley jog today.  But I finally ran 10:00 even pace.  So it's good to see that even when I'm not trying.  It's also kinda funny to think that 10:00 is a good pace for me.  I'm old.

I got sick Friday afternoon.  My wife got sick Saturday.  That covers everyone in the household.  I texted Mike Friday evening telling him to check with me in the morning before coming over because I wasn't sure if I'd be able to go.  I wasn't.  I still did things Saturday, like going to the baptism of one of my scouts and then out to eat at Applebee's with the family for my wife's birthday celebration.  I was going to stay home from church Sunday, but I still went.  I was feeling better this morning and thought about getting a long run in to make up for Saturday.  But I didn't get out the door until after 6am, so I thought about just doing the 5 loop course.  I changed my mind and decided to do the 3 loop course.  But after a mile I changed it to the two loop course, and honestly would have been happy with the 1 loop course.

I was able to do my "5 Loop" run today.  I got up early and sat on the toilet for a while.  A long while.  Glad I did.  I finally got out the door just shy of 6am.  I ran north on the Floodway trail.  I saw that deaf lady again.  I think she's deaf.  Maybe some day I'll ask her.  I crossed Brown Road and right before merging on to the RWCD road I saw a little thing hopping across the trail.  I thought it was a bug or something.  Turns out it was a little toad, about 3/4" long from head to haunches.  I don't see a lot of those while I'm out running.  This very well may have been the first time.  I paused to take a picture.  The cute little guy wouldn't hold still.  I started running again feeling decent.  There were a lot of people out running today.  One guy was running without a shirt on.  He was tan and muscular.  But he was running with his arms straight down.  I thougt maybe he was carrying weights or something.  But I think he may have been crippled.  Good for him for getting out and getting some miles in.  Right before the fence where I turn around at, this girl came through the other side of the fence.  Her arms were flailing around.  I thought she might have been dancing.  Turns out she was talking on the phone with someone and she's the type of person that talks with her hands.  I wondered if I could catch her.  I touched the fence and turned around and noticed there was a young guy with mauve (maybe maroon, I'm not good with colors) hair that was running pretty fast.  I knew he would catch me and the girl, too.  He did.  As he passed me I said, "You're pretty dang fast."  He said, "Thank you.  It's a beautiful morning."  It was a nice morning.  I'm glad it's been cooling down at nights somewhat because we're still getting over 100º days here.  I wasn't able to catch the girl, not that I was trying.  She was putting some distance between me even though sometimes she was weaving across the trail.  But she stopped and turned around about an eigth of a mile from McKellips.  I waved again at her and told her good job.  I saw a few more runners on the way back.  Some of them were using Strava and I am getting familiar with their little profile pic icons.  The last mile was a bit of a struggle, but I maintained a decent pace most of the way.  Most of my miles were under 10, and I haven't seen that for a while.

Herbie woke me up at 5:30am to go the bathroom.  Well, to go potty.  Dogs don't really use the bathroom.  I didn't really want to get up, but I kinda did want to get up, but I really didn't.  So it was still dark out and I took him out back in my underwear.  He went pee, but the pig, Cupid, always bothers him.  Then he ran around to the side of the house.  Apparently he was trying to poop, but Cupid wouldn't leave him alone.  I heard some growling and some scuffling, so I called to him, but he wouldn't come.  I had to go over and make sure he was all right.  I finally got him back in the house, and he went straight to the front door.  I'm still in my underwear, so I don't want to take him out the front door where people might see me, even though it's dark, but there's the porch light and street lights, etc.  But he starts squatting down in front of the door, so I tell him no, no, no.  Then I take him outside because it's obviously an emergency.  I'm also barefoot and we have rocks in the front.  So I walk across the bricks and sit down on them so I won't be seen by any of the neighbors.  Herbie finishes up, and I have a hard time getting him back in the house.  That's when I notice that he did drop a load on the welcome mat inside.  So now I have to clean that up, but first I have to drop my own load.  20 minutes later I'm finally ready to clean it.  I just took it outside and sprayed it with the hose.  It's now 6:30am and I really only have time to run two loops.  That's probably all I should have run anyway.  I took it nice and easy and could feel some minor stomach cramps.  Half way into the run I noticed a few sprinkles.  By that time I was so sweaty, that they weren't bothering me at all.  When I turned back north on the Floodway path, it started sprinkling a little harder.  It felt nice.  I saw Sis. Booth from the ward walking down the path.  I put my hands up and said, "I love the rain!"  She said, "Isn't it awesome?"  The End.

I woke up around 2:30am.  I couldn't get back to sleep.  I was sitting on the toilet when my alarm went off at 3:32am.  I was still sitting on the toilet when Mike got to my house at 3:50am. Luckily I had just finished up, so all I had to do was throw my clothes on.  And grab my lights.  And grab a towel.  And grab some water.  He brought Brian Stradling with him today.  Brian has run a handful of Ragnars with us.  It was his first time running Usery with us.  His brother, Tyler, had run with us a few times.  But Tyler lives in Texas now.  Their parents have also been on some of our teams.  In fact, they've got another brother and a sister who were on our Vegas team one year.  Their father has accepted the invitation to be on next year's team.  But Brian has not as of yet.  I think he will.  Why else would he go running with us? 

Brian is a pretty good runner.  But he was worried because he hasn't been running regularly.  I told him he'd do fine.  I started before both of them.  I was in the lead for about 0.4 miles.  Then Mike passed me.  I asked myself, "Where's Brian?"  I took a quick glance back and he was right behind me.  Not making a sound.  No footsteps.  No heavy breathing.  Just very relaxed and quiet, unlike Mike and myself.  He soon passed both me and Mike.  Knowing how competitive Mike is, I wondered if he'd pick up the pace.  Of course, he did.  This was my fastest time of the year.  I'm getting dangerously close to breaking that 10:00 min. pace. 

There was very little traffic this week, and zero runners.  I can remember only seeing two cyclists.  I wonder if it's because it's cooling down a little, so people aren't coming out quite as early to beat the sun.  I felt good running up.  I could see Brian coming back down the hill when I was about a quarter of a mile from the top.  Maybe more.  I finally saw Mike with about a tenth of a mile to go.  I found at later he stopped at the top to catch his breath.  I figured he must've.  Then he was off to the chase.  His goal was to catch Brian.  He caught him right before the bottom.  About a half mile from the bottom I saw Brian coming back up.  It was still dark out, but I recognized his reflective vest.  Looks like he wanted some extra mileage.  Mike and I weren't sure if we were supposed to wait for him or go get him.  We decided to get him.  Oh, I also saw the other Brian right at the bottom where we always see him.  He tends to take a break there before climbing the hill.  He runs a 20 mile loop.  I said, "Good morning, Brian!", and totally scared him.  He was on one of my Ragnar teams once, too.

Did my 5 loops today.  I saw old man hatch again on his stage coach.  I call it that now because come to find out, he was the model for the Wells Fargo bank years ago.  I saw the shirtless muscular guy again that runs with stiff arms.  I said good morning to him.  I finally ran under a 10 min. pace.  That includes the stopping at roads, so maybe it was a little less.

Yesterday I was helping my daughter and her husband move in to their townhouse they just bought.  I was up later than I wanted to be.  I only got about 4 hours of sleep.  So I hit snooze once this morning and decided I didn't have time for my weekly ritual of sitting on the pot for 20 minutes.  I'd have to excercise what we big boys call -self control.  Because of that I made it out the door a little earlier than usual.  When I walked outside I heard the neighbor's chickens in distress.  I went over to their wall and looked over.  But they've moved their chickens to the other side of their yard so I couldn't see anything.  Then I walked over towards the street and saw a coyote running down the road.  It was dark out, but I was 90% sure it was a coyote.  I couldn't tell if it had anything in its mouth.  I went back inside and put Herbie on his leash so I could take him outside to go potty.  After doing his business, I put him back inside and that's when Mike pulled up.  I told Mike I wanted to go check on Cupid real quick.  Cupid, our pig, was fine.  He'll make a fine meal some day.  For us.  Not for coyotes.  I hope.  So we drove down the road and we both spotted the coyote under the light of the street lamp in the retention basin on the corner.  Mike could tell it had something in its mouth.  So we drove closer and it was indeed a chicken.  It darted off with the chicken in its mouth over to the Floodway.  I got out to see the pile of feathers in the grass.  They were black and grey, so it may have been one of my chickens that went over to live with my neighbors.  Anyway, now I would be thinking about coyotes during my run.  Truth be told, I'm not afraid of them.  I'm sure I could take one in a fight.  We were driving down the street and I see this face of a Mexican in the back of a truck.  He was laying down like he was trying to hide.  It was kind of creepy, but not uncommon. 

I felt all right during the run.  I was over three minutes slower than last week.  But I'm ok with that.  I only ran once this week and with the Taco Bell, Barro's Pizza and lack of sleep, a slower run is to be expected.
 

It started raining last night.  If I had to guess, I'd say it's been raining most of the night.  I woke up this morning at 4am.  I stayed in bed until about 5am.  Since it was raining, which is different, I decided to do something different.  I ran along the streets instead of along the RWCD and/or Floodway paths.  I noticed a bit of a wheeze when I first started.  It didn't last long, but it did worry me that I was wheezing while it was raining.  The run felt decent.  The miles seemed to be just clicking away.  I regretted the way I went because it would mean I'm finishing on a slight uphill.  But that's ok.  Because it was dark and raining I wasn't expecting this to be a fast pace.  But it was by far the fastest I've run this year for a 5 mile run.  It's nice to see triple digits.  Instead of quadruple :(

I got up a little late this morning.  It rained all day yesterday.  No excuse for me to not go running, but I didn't go running.  Anyway, it wasn't raining this morning, but it was after 6:30am when I left.  I always wake up Emily right at 7am.  Still I wanted to get my 3 loops in, so Emily would get some extra Z's.  It was real humid, but it looked like it wouldn't rain today.  However, an hour and a half later, it dumped on us.  This isn't typical, but the tropical storm in the Pacific is doing weird things for us lately.  Or hurricane.  Or whatever it is.  I don't pay attention.

I planned on running the same loop I ran Monday only instead of going west to get out to the main streets, I would go east.  I was taking it nice and easy.  I was about 2.25 miles in when I heard my phone ringing.  It was my buddy Greg New.  Greg has worked at RWCD for many years.  He said he was at the Red Mountain Cafe and I needed to turn around so he could buy me breakfast.  By that point I was drenched in sweat, but he said not to worry about it.  I went in feeling a little sheepish.  He was surprised at the amount of sweat.  I warned him.  Anyway, we were able to catch up and I got a nice breakast of pork chops, eggs, hash browns, and toast.  Broke my diet, but oh well.  I was about a mile from home and he offered to drive me.  I showed him our pig, and he let me know that it's a Yorkshire pig.  The best pig for eating.

Yesterday I texted Mike and asked him if he wanted to do the 9.2 mile route.  It's basically continuing down the road to the McDowell Park entrance, turning around and going back.  He texted me that he would let me know in the morning.  He showed up with Bryan again.  Mike asked what we wanted to do.  I basically told him that if he wanted to turn around at the top, I would also turn around.  He usually beats me by 10 minutes, so it would be another 20 minutes on top of that for him to wait for me, and I'm not that mean.  But Bryan was running pretty fast this morning, and he went to the park entrance, so Mike followed. 

There seemed to be a lot of cars going up the hill this morning.  Usually you see more cars coming down, because people are going to the lake.  Maybe it had something to do with it being Fall Break.  I didn't see any cyclist until I was running back down.  It's staying darker out and it's actually cooled down some.  I noticed my ears were a little cold.  Knowing today was also the St. George Marathon, I knew I wouldn't see the other Brian.  He ran about a 3:30 something. 

My run felt okay, but I was a little surprised to see that my pace was noticeable slower than a couple of weeks ago.  It was faster than last week's, but last week was not a good night's sleep and helping my daughter move.  But we did tack on an extra 1.8 miles.  Mike's pace was also slower.  I told him not to worry about it.  When I had just under a mile to go, I saw Bryan running back up the hill.  He ended up running 11.2 miles.  Mike called him a show off.  It's nice to get the run done early to be able to enjoy General Conference for the rest of the day.

I was  kinda sore all weekend.  Who knew an extra 1.8 miles added on to my regular Saturday route would make that much of a difference?  I was just going to do a nice easy 2.5 mile cool down.  But I got about a half mile in and had to stop because my knee was hurting.  I stopped and stretched.  I ran another quarter mile and had to stop and stretch again.  I decided to just do one loop today.  Hopefully I'll be feeling better tomorrow.

I felt better this morning.  I had one brief moment where my knee felt a little funny.  Then on the home stretch my right leg tightened up some.  But overall it was good.

I wasn't feeling well yesterday.  I wasn't sure if I wanted to run this morning.  When Mike texted me yesterday to see if we were on, I told him to text me in the morning.  I also told him the forecast was calling for rain.  So he texted me and said that we would take this week off.  When morning rolled around I saw my wife getting ready to go out.  It looked like it had rained a little during the night.  I asked her where she was going.  She said Hilltop.  I said that I wanted her to take me to the top of Usery Pass so that I could try that run again.  I still wasn't feeling great, but figured I could do 4.5 miles easy enough and that would get me to Hilltop.  So we hop in the van and realize we need gas.  We get gas and start heading east.  I could see some rain clouds in the distance but hoped that they were far enough away where I wouldn't get a whole lot.  Well, it was moving towards us quickly.  By the time we got to Hilltop it was dumping buckets down.  My wife said she didn't want to hike in this rain.  I still wanted to run so we kept going.  There is a property close that we've looked at before.  Vickie suggested we drive by while it's raining and see how much water goes through the washes.  We drove to it, and I hopped out.  I took a look, and it wasn't a whole lot, but it was some.  It would definitely need to be re-routed, which could be expensive.  Then I jumped back in the van and we drove to the top. 

I was hoping that the rain would die down some.  It might have a little, but it was still coming down pretty good.  And I noticed a couple of washes running across the road that I would have to run through.  I got out of the van and stretched out a little.  I got my water bottle in one pocket and had my Strava running on my phone in the other.  My wife asked me what I wanted her to do.  I said just drive down a mile and see how I'm doing.  I figured I'd know within the first mile if my sickness from yesterday would impede me from doing a 10+ mile run today.  So she drove about a half mile down the road.  I was feeling good when I got to her.  Just some tightness in my legs.  I gave her the thumbs up and told her that it wasn't a mile :)  I kept going and she drove on.  That's when I saw a rattlesnake on the shoulder.  I could tell that it was smooshed.  I actually passed it, stopped and turned around and took a picture of it.

Other than a couple of stop lights, this was the only time I stopped during the run.  Vickie stopped again at the 1 mile mark.  I was still doing good.  The next mile was the steepest downhill mile, so I was still feeling pretty good other than the tightness.  But my vision was getting impaired because not only were raindrops falling on my glasses, but they were fogging up.  So I handed them to Vickie and ran the rest of the way without them.  My feet were pretty soaked from runnning through the washes.  The deepest one was probably only about 3-inches deep, but enough to cover my feet.  I hoped that wet socks wouldn't equate to blistered feet later on.  About mile 3 I felt a stinging feeling in the scrotissory area.  You know, like when an ant crawls up your pant leg and bites you.  We've all exprienced that.  I tried making adjustments and pinching my shorts just in case. 

Vickie was stopping about every mile after that.  It was nice that she spent her morning waiting for me.  I got to Brown Road which is about the 4 mile mark.  Probably a little over because I actually started about a tenth of a mile from the top because there's that nice place to park on the side of the road, and since it was raining, it made sense to stop at a safer place.  Anyway I was feeling good.  The rain actually felt great and made me happy.  The tightness was going away, but it would soon be replaced with soreness.  I figured I'd done 9.2 miles last week, so as long as I could do that again, I'd only have about a mile to go to get home.  And this was all downhill, so I remained optimistic.  I talked myself through the uphill of going over the freeway.  I think that's where I started to fall apart  last time I attempeted this.  But I told myself that it was the heat that made me give up at the 7 mile mark.  I knew I was at least half way there and kept on plugging away.

My overall pace was 10:07.  But looking at my splits I was really slowing down.  My wife says I was looking good.  She snapped this picture of me.

I think I finally took my first drink around mile 5.  I still had some left over when I finished.  I got to mile 7 where I had given up last time.  I knew I could make it.  Just two and a half miles to go west and then I turn and run 0.6 miles south.  That last mile seemed like a bit of a struggle, but I pushed myself.  Right before I turned I saw a lady walking her dog on the other side of the street.  I could hear her trying to talk to me, but wasn't exactly sure what she said.  The gist of it was - Great job.  It's a great morning to be out running.  I agreed.  I turned and ran past my wife one last time.  I got home and was soaked!  I asked her to help me take my shoes and socks off in the entrance way.  She's the best.  I then went to the bathroom to take a shower.  That's when I noticed that the ant bite was actually chaffing.  Yowza!  I missed that spot with the Body Glide.  I showed my wife, in a manly fashion, and she cringed.  I started the shower and she asked if I would be all right.  No sooner did she ask then all the sweat started running over my wound, and I screamed like a little girl.  But I was all right.  I know I'm going to be sore for a few days.  It's still raining.  But it was an epic run and totally worth. it.

I was still sore this morning, but I didn't want to miss another day.  Emily is sick again today.  I didn't get out until 8:30am.  It's actually kinda chilly today.  Right as I started, it began to rain.  I'm okay with that, but it did seem colder than Saturday.  I just took it nice and easy.  I wasn't sure if I was going to do 1 loop or 2.  I decided on 2 since I was feeling good.  I saw a couple of ladies pushing strollers.  I wonder if they didn't realize it was going to rain and just got caught in it.  Anyway, with a little over half a mile to go, I saw a walking stick in the path.  I stopped and took its picture.  Then I decided I wanted to keep it.  So I picked it up and carried it home.  At one point it crawled all the way up my arm and on to my shoulder.  That's when I had to stop because bugs on my shoulders tend to creep me out.  I have this recurring nightmare about it.

I wanted a mid distance run today, but I was limited on time.  So I did a run that I haven't done before even though I've done it a million times.  I ran up the Floodway to Greenfield Road.  Usually I cross the road and keep going.  But today I turned around and ran down the other side of the RWCD Canal, all the way to Main Street, and then back home.  I felt nice and comfortable the whole way despite eating some goodies last night, and my pace was well below 10 min/mile.  When I first got on the Floodway path, I could see a woman up ahead.  I assumed it was a woman because of the skirt.  As I got closer I started to question (short hair and baseball cap), but it was indeed a woman.  It took me a while to catch her though because she was walking along at a pretty nice clip.  She turned around at Brown Road and walked down the RWCD road.  It's probably about 0.4 miles from Brown Road to Greenfield, so by the time I got back to Brown Road she was way ahead of me.  It was a beautiful day out and there were a lot of people out walking.  I saw this guy on the other side of the RWCD Canal.  It looked like he was wearing an old Ragnar shirt.  The closer I got, the more I was convinced that is what it was.  He ended up saying good morning to me, and I asked him if he was wearing a Ragnar shirt.  He looked down at it, and said, "Yeah it is.  But it's a really old one.  Like 10 years ago."  I said, "I know.  I have that same shirt." 

I crossed Adobe and wondered if I would be able to catch the skirt lady.  She looked like she was too far ahead.  I was making some ground on her, but she got to University before me.  I saw her turn east and thought she might live in one of the 55+ communities and that would be the last time I saw her.  But she moved over from the Canal road to the Floodway path.  I got to Main Street and started heading back north.  When I passed her I said, "You sure are walking fast!"  I don't know if she recognized me from before, so she probably thought I was being condescending.  Right after that I saw this lady with a dog.  I don't think the dog was leashed, but when she saw me she leashed him.  As I approached her she said, "I should just give you the leash and let him run with you."  I said, "Sounds like my dog except my dog stops on a dime every 10 seconds."  Then she said, "Would it bother you if I let him off his leash?  He's not a biter."  I said, "I don't mind.  I'm not afraid of dogs."  So she let him off, and he started galloping toward me.  He got about 5 feet in front of me and stopped.  He just wanted to beat me.  I said, "You win!"

A nice and easy run today to keep me fresh for tomorrow.  I don't know if fresh is the right word.  But I'm going with it.

When you have Filiberto's the day before, you make sure you pack some TP with you.  It was a beautiful morning, but I didn't have a bowel movement beforehand.  I got a headstart on Mike.  He caught me right around 0.55 miles.  I told him I didn't know if I could hold on for the entire run.  I said, "Luckily I brought some toilet paper with me."  He said, "You did?"  The way he said it made me think that he might need some.  But I wouldn't be able to afford any so I said, "Yeah.  Just a little bit."  He continued past me, but he wasn't running as fast as he usually does.  Or I was running faster than normal.  I thought I might actually pass him, but it I enjoy having him in front of me.  That way the traffic sees him and is more aware of me.  Selfish?  Maybe.

Right at 1.2 miles the pressure was too much.  I found a nice tree to go behind.  I popped a squat and well, you know.  I had just enough TP, so I'm glad I didn't share.  I got back out on the road and Mike was well ahead of me, but I could see his butt lamp from time to time.  He was now half a mile ahead of me. 

At one point I could see a headlamp pointing in my direction.  I wasn't sure if it was Mike, a cyclist, or another runner.  Then I saw the butt lamp, and figured it was Mike.  I was thinking maybe he was going to ask me for some TP.  I felt a little bad, but I have to take care of numero uno.  Or numero dos, depending on how you look at it.

I was actually gaining on Mike.  Looking at Strava, I can see a couple of times that he had to stop.  I reached the top and stopped briefly to pull my briefs up.  By which I mean retie my shorts.  As we were running up, there was plenty of vehicles coming downhill, but not one that came uphill.  I finally saw one at the 2.75 miles to go mark.  That's always nice.  I felt like I was running pretty well and pushing it a little.  But that last mile seemed to drag.  Mostly the last half mile, but that's usual because the slope starts to flatten out.  I finished and Mike was upset at how poorly he had run.  The truth is, it wasn't that bad.  His pace was still a minute faster than mine.  He told me that his shins were killing him and that he was glad we only did the 7.4 (to the top and back) today. 

The reason we only did the 7.4 is because I was going on a 1 mile hike later with my Wolf den.  All 4 boys showed up and 1 father.  I'm glad he came because Vickie started feeling real sick after her walk this morning.  He was able to substitute for her.  We went to the Riparian Preserve in Gilbert.  I think the boys had fun.  Well, they certainly enjoyed the doughnuts when we finished.

I've decided I want to try and hop on a Ragnar McDowell trail team here in the next couple of weeks.  I better join a team within the next couple of weeks because the race is in less than two weeks.  So I need to start doing more hill training.  I run up Usery Pass every Saturday, but that's a long gradual climb.  The hills in McDowell are shorter and steeper.  Ergo I chose to try and run Hilltop for the first time today.  My wife hikes it all the time.  I started the morning out by running my usual 2 loops around the Floodway/RWCD Canal.  Then I took my daughter to school and continued on to Hilltop.  My wife told me that it was 1.5 miles round trip.  I recorded 0.8 miles.  But it was quite steep and I wheezed the whole way up.  But I made it without stopping.  I'm going to try and do this as much as I can between now and the race.  I might even try doing doubles as soon as I feel I'm ready.

I did Hilltop again today.  I did it twice.  I guess I was ready.  I wasn't able to run all the way up like I did yesterday.  I stopped a couple of times.  So maybe I wasn't ready.  I brought my inhaler today because of all the wheezing yesterday.  I started out and immediately was wheezing again.  So I took a hit.  By my second ascent, I wasn't wheezing anymore.

I fell asleep early last night.  I knew that I had left my phone charger in my office, but thought I might get up during the night and get it.  I was awakened by my wife moving my phone and thought I saw her putting it on the charger.  I thought, "How sweet.  She got my charger for me."  Only she didn't.  There is another chord next to my outlet, but it's not the right one.  So I woke up to my phone being at 27%.  I was up pretty early, too, but I didn't go running.   I thought maybe I'd do a 5 mile loop, but my two youngest daughters are staying home again from school, and my wife said she had to take our other daughter to school early for some testing.  She said she was going to do Hilltop afterward and asked if I wanted to come.  So I agreed to.  As we drove through the second roundabout crossing the freeway, I saw a chicken in the road.  The poor thing was trying to make it to the side.  Where my wife parked was only about 0.4 miles away, so I decided to run back to it to see if it was okay.  I crossed the road (no jokes, please), and ran back to the roundabout.  I couldn't see it.  I slowed down and started running back looking for it everywhere.  That's when I heard a car on the other side of the road stop and start honking.  I quickly crossed over to the median. where the, not chicken, but rooster, had gone to the other side.  It tried to run away from me, which I figured it would, but it was in pretty bad shape.  I tried to pick it up, but it wriggled away from me.  I let it walk a little more across the road.  Luckily there wasn't a whole lot of traffic, but the few cars that were coming were being courteous and driving around us.  I tried picking it up again, but it wouldn't let me.  Then I heard a lady hollering that she had a box.  I looked down the sidewalk and a the lady and her daugher were hurrying up the way with a box and a towel.  By now the rooster had gotten to the other side of the road, and had stopped right at the curb.  And there were a lot of cars coming.  So I reached down and got a good hold of it, picked it up, and put it in the box.  They covered it with the towel.  She wasn't sure what she was going to do with it.  She said she was a teacher and was going to bring it to school.  I said I hope it survives.  They said they saw it get hit by a car.  It probably has internal bleeding and I'm afraid it won't last much longer.

When I got back to where my van was parked, it was gone!  I briefly entertained the idea that my wife was hiking up the hill and it had been stolen.  I called her to see where she was.  She was having tummy issues and went to the local grocery store to relieve herself.  So, I decided to start without her.

I started running up the hill.  I had forgotten my inhaler, and I was wheezing a bit.  I had to stop like three time going up.  Right before the top I saw this guy that looked like a real mountaineer.  He had a long scraggly beard and those mountain poles.  He was booking it down.  I got to the top and decided to wait until my wife came back so I could wave at her from the top.  At least 5 minutes went by.  I was just about to call her again when I saw the van pull up.  I waited another minute or so until she finally got out of the van.  She started walking around the base of the hill.  I waved, but she couldn't see me.  So I called her.  As soon as she heard the phone ring, she looked up and waved.  She answered and I asked what she planned on doing.  She said she would do whatever until I was done.  Well, I was hoping she was going to hike to the top and back.  I was going to tell her that I would just run down the road towards home and she could pick me up when she was done.   But since she was hiking around the base, I decided to just run down and try to find her.

When I turned around to go down, the mountain man had reached the top again.  He was running around the plateau, and I started running down.  It wasn't long before he was running down and hot on my tail.  I moved over and ran in the sand so that he could pass me.  The last stretch down the hill is very rocky due to the recent storms we've had.  At least, that's what my wife says.  I've never seen it any different, so I'll take her word for it.  But it's rocky enough where I'm gonna slow way down, so that I don't trip.  Mountain man just kept cruising.  By the time I had gotten to the bottom, he had already turned around and started back up.

I wasn't going to do doubles today, so I ran down the dirt road that I had seen my wife walking on.  I ran all the way around the west side of the hill and saw that the road was about to dead end.  I looked around for my wife, and spotted her up on another trail on the hill.  I hollered at her, but she had her ear phones in and didn't hear me.  That's when I had the idea to sneak up behind her and scare her.  I started running up the trail which went up and as it turns to go around the north side of the hill, goes back down.  I saw that she covered this part pretty quick, but she was walking and I would be able to catch her soon.  I tried to run on her left side because I figured if she turned her head, it would be to the right.  When I was about 20 feet away she turned her head to look up the hill to see if she could spot me.  Unfortunately she spotted me behind her.  I scared her a little.  But I really wanted to make her pee her pants.  Oh well. 

I walked with her a little bit until the trail ended at a golf course.  I said where now?  She said that sometimes she cuts through, which is tresspassing, and sometimes she walks around and turns back around to follow the trail back.  I told her that I would meet her at the van.  I then finished up my run by going back to the locked van.  I sat down on the bank of a small wash and waited for her.  My phone was down to 5%, but it lasted.  When I got home and looked at my Flybys on Strava, I realized that the mountain man was my old friend Brian that I see all the time when I'm running Usery.  How embarrassing.  I didn't even recognize him behind all that scruff.  I sent him a message apologizing.  But overall it was a fun morning.  Prayers for the rooster.

My legs felt completey wrecked yesterday from all the hill work the first three days of this week.  So I took yesterday off.  I did a nice and easy run today to shake them out for tomorrow.  I averaged a 10:01 pace.  Nice to see that my easy pace is now what my fast pace was a few months ago.

Woke up to a text from Mike saying that he wasn't going to be able to make it today.  But I had already texted Glen yesterday to see if he was coming.  After I saw Mike's text, I texted Glen to see if he wanted a ride.  He said - sure.  I picked him up, and although it's only been a couple of years, we had a lot to catch up on.  We ran together for most of the way up chatting the whole way.  Mostly about our pets.  A little bit about our kids.  Right before the top we saw this other couple running down.  They didn't have headlamps or butt lights, and very little reflective gear.  We got to the top and turned around.  It wasn't long before we had almost caught the couple.  I think one of them must've stopped for a tinkle.  But we couldn't catch them.  When we reached the Bulldog Trailhead, I told Glen we had 2.9 miles to go.  He asked how our pace was.  I said, probably a little slower than usual, but not bad.  He then started to pick up the pace.  I could see that he was about to catch the couple.  But it was hard to tell because it was still dark and they had no lights.  Glen ended up finishing about 3 to 4 minutes ahead of me and said he wasn't able to catch the guy, but he got the girl.  He ran pretty well for not having run that much in a while.

I felt pretty good this morning.  My legs are almost back to normal.  I was running to the Floodway when a truck pulled up alongside me and the driver said, "Hey-ay!"  It was Vanessa, my wife's walking buddy.  It was just getting light out and there weren't a lot of people out yet.  When I got to two miles I saw a runner coming toward me.  He was the same guy I saw a few months ago that let's his dog follow him, but it's hard to tell if it's his dog, because of how far away it always is from him.  He seemed pretty fast and I expected him to run over to the other side of the RWCD Canal when he turned back north at McKellips.  I didn't think he'd be able to catch me before I got to McDowell.  I got to McDowell and turned around and I saw him coming back to me on the same side of the Canal that I was on.  There is a bridge at the Canal gate about a fifth of a mile from McDowell.  He crossed the bridge right when I got to him and was quickly in front of me on the other side.  He then proceeded to run a quarter mile and turn back around.  I knew I was running faster than I have in a long time, but I'm still slow.  I was happy that I averaged well under a 10 min. pace today.  As I approached Greenfield Road I saw a lady on the east side of the Canal.  She crossed over to the west side and started running.  I wasn't able to catch her and I thought she might just be doing this little loop that I see a lot of people do who work out at the gym there on the corner.  But she crossed Brown Road and kept going south.  I still wasn't able to catch her until she stopped right before Adobe.  I told her good job, but she didn't say anything back to me.

3 easy loops on the Floodway/RWCD roads.  I saw some bunnies, ducks, and dogs. 

Ragnar #28

I haven't run the last three Ragnar trail races that are held here in AZ at McDowell Mountain Park.  Mostly for health reasons.  But I've been training pretty regularly this year and felt pretty good, so I decided to jump on a team at the last minute.  I saw a couple of teams that had posted on the even Facebook page that they were looking for runners, and I messaged them both.  One never responded.  The other responded right away.  Turns out they were one of the many RWB teams that ran this year.  This group was out of Sierra Vista, AZ.  They had three teams.  I kind of knew one of the team members as she was also a Ragnar ambassador.  So, they were all mostly veterans, and I'm a mere civilian.  But I've found that as I've attended various RWB events over the years, they are some of the most genuine and nice people.  They welcomed me with open arms, and I had a good time.

We had a pretty slow team, and we were slotted to start with the very first group that started at 9:30am.  I was runner #5 and it was 1:36pm when I started my first leg.  I had to run the yellow loop, which in my opinion is the hardest loop.  It's listed as 4.7 miles, and it has the steepest climbs.  If you haven't trained on running hills, this loop will get you.  Luckily I had done some hill training last week, and I really feel like it helped me.  However, even though it's November, it was stinkin' hot out!  It must've been in the high 80's.  I knew I would need to take it nice and easy so that I would have some energy left to run my remaining legs.  I was running at a nice relaxed pace, and I was surprised at the number of people I was passing.  That hasn't happened for me in a while.  I mean, I was passing A LOT of people.  I didn't even think to count them.  I got passed a fair amount of times myself, but I passed a lot more than people passing me.  Anyway, the uphills and the downhills were steep.  The first real steep downhill, I heard this weird noise like I had just stepped on a metal plate or something.  I was quick to think, there are no metal plates in the desert.  So I turned back and saw that my water bottle had fallen out of my pocket.  I had to turn around and get it because there was no way I was going to run without water in this heat.  The second time I ran down a steep hill the same thing happened.  After that, I learned to take it out of my pocket and hold it until I reached the bottom.  I was doing all right up until the third mile.  Right around where the water station was.  It took me a while to get going again.  But when I did, I was able to run all the way back in.  The yellow loop merges back with the red loop, and one of the red loop runners ran with me for the last three quarters of a mile.  She asked me if I was camping or "glamping".  I asked her what glamping meant.  She says it's when you pay extra to have Ragnar set up and take down your tents.  Glamour camping, I guess?  I told her I was just camping.  After a while she said I'll see you, and she picked up the pace.  I was running right behind her.  The green loop merges with the yellow and red about a quarter mile from the finish.  Then you run up this hill to the finish line.  Very cruel, Ragnar.  I passed that girl on the uphill.  I wasn't trying to purposely pass her, but I wanted to finish strong.  According to my Strava, I ran 4.89 miles at an 11:27 pace.  For the heat and the hills, I'll take it.

My next loop was the green loop, the easiest one.  The green loop is 4.1 miles.  Even though you actually climb to a higher elevation than the yellow loop, it's just one climb.  So the overall elevation change is less than the yellow loop.  It was 10:35pm when I started.  Well, I was oblivious to the fact that there were runners leaving both ends of the tent to start their runs.  The yellow runners leave one side of the tent, and the green and red runners leave the other side.  Nobody told me, and apparently I'm too dumb to notice, so I ran the wrong way.  I ran down the finishing hill, got to the bottom and asked the volunteer which way I was supposed to go.  He said, "I think you're supposed to go out the other side of the tent."  Whoopsie!  So I ran back up the hill and was thinking, "If I cross the timing pad, I'm going to screw all of our times up."  So I ran on the outside of the chutes and got back on the course.  This added at least another 2 tenths of a mile to my overall distance.  Since it was no longer hot out, I found myself running pretty well.  Really the only thing slowing me down was the dark.  I was once again passing tons of people.  The red and green loop are the same for about the first mile.  Then they finally split.  I was listening to my teammates talk about their experience on each loop, and as I was running, I was really questioning when the hill was going to start.  It was hard to see it in the dark, and it was very gradual.  It did seem that I was running slower in that 2nd mile, so I figured I was running up it at that point.  I knew that once I reached the two mile mark it would also be all downhill.  I could once again feel myself running faster.  I just wished that I could've run this leg in the early morning when I could see and when it wasn't hot.  But anyway, I averaged a 10:13 pace for 4.43 miles. 

My final leg was the red loop, the longest distance.  It's listed as 6.6 miles.  My Strava got 6.67, so pretty close.  I was scheduled to start around 6am.  Unfortunately, my team was way behind schedule, and I started at 8:11am.  It was already starting to warm up.  It wasn't terrible, and there was a breeze at first, but by the end I was feeling it.  This time I decided to count how many people I passed.  I don't like to call them 'kills' because sometimes people actually die.  Anyway, my mind goes in a million different directions while I'm running so it's hard for me to remember what number I'm on.  But I think the total was 20.  I'm sure I passed a lot more than that on my first two runs.  I was slowing down, because after three loops, I'm pretty tired.  But I never stopped except just briefly at the water station to fill up my water bottle.  The red loop had the highest climb.  Immediately after the green and red loops split, you start the steepest part of the ascent.  I was still feeling good, and had no problem going up.  I also knew that once I reached the top there were some more ups and downs.  This discouraged a lot of the runners, but that's why you've got to look at the map before you run.  After 2.75 miles it starts going downhill.  It's a nice trail, and you can pick up some speed, but this is where I started feeling fatigued.  I wanted to walk at times, but I knew that I didn't need to, and if I just maintained the pace I was running, I wouldn't have to.  There were a few more steep short hills that were heartbreakers, but I prided myself in being able to run up all of them.  I finally got to the last hill before the finish and was able to sprint up it.  I'm glad I decided to do the race.

On a side note, I used to be able to see a lot of people that I know at these types of races.  But I think that there are just so many people that don't want to run Ragnars anymore, and so many new people that do.  I saw two former teammates of mine, Elizabeth and Brian.  I also saw Kelli and Scott.  They were volunteering.  Kelli used to be a prominent blogger, but she has since disabled her blog.  Our team finished around 1:30pm.  We took our picture and my wife picked me up at 2pm.  I had her stop at Wendy's on the way home for a Frosty.

I was going to take Monday off just because.  Then while I was feeding the pig, my back tightened up on me.  So I spent the next few days trying to loosen it up and stretch.  I finally felt like I could run today.  I just took it nice and easy.  Other than some tremendous soreness in my right shin, it felt good.

Another early morning Saturday run with Mike.  Glen did not want to come today.  20 minutes is not enough time for me to get ready in the morning.  I can get dressed in that time.  But I can't poop.  I packed some TP with me because I had a feeling, oh boy did I have a feeling.  Right before we were about to take off, my bowels loosened up.  I wandered off in the woods and found the same place I did the deed last time.  Mike was kind enough to wait for me.  After I was done I walked back to the parking lot, took one last stretch and started to run.  I had a slight lead on Mike and he didn't catch me until about 1.6 miles.  When he did, he was breathing real hard.  It sounded like he was snoring.  I almost asked him if he was okay, but it would make for a better tale if he would collapse and then I start chest compressions on him to save his life.  But alas, that didn't happen.  I stayed right behind him.  Around mile 2.6 he completely stopped and hunched over.  Was this my chance to perform life saving maneuvers?  Nope.  He started running right before I got to him.  I kept him in my sights for the rest of the run.  He runs so much faster than I do on the downhill.  I wanted to break the 10 min. pace this morning.  I would occasionally check my Strava to see if I had a chance.  I could tell it would be close, and I tried picking up the pace.  I would have to run it under 1 hour and 14 minutes to do it, (or very close to that.)  Right before I turned to enter the parking lot, I looked and I was a few seconds over.  I wondered if I'd make it.  But the final pace as recorded by Strava was 10:00.  I was kind of bummed, but Mike encouraged me that it's still progress.  He's right.  It was a good run.  Not a single cyclist this morning.

For some reason, I really wanted to run under the freeway today.  I didn't even know it was a thing until about a month ago when I saw one of the guys I follow on Strava had done it.  The route is the same as my normal Canal run, but I've never gone past the gate at the Main Pumping Plant.  I knew that it's a 7.3 mile route to the gate and back, so I figured I might end up running 10 miles.  But I felt up to it, and being that it's Veteran's Day, and I don't have to get any kids ready for school, I decided to go for it.  I got to the gate no problem, and then I was in uncharted territory.  Although I have actually been there before, just not running.  I ran out to Val Vista and got on the other side of the Canal.  From the pictures my friend took, I knew there was a tunnel that went under the freeway.  I just wanted to run under it and maybe a little beyond.  After I ran under the freeway I looked at my mileage and I was at 4.4 miles.  I felt like I could do more so I kept going.  I wanted to at least go to the bend in the Canal and see what there was to see.  Turns out there wasn't much more to see.  I stopped at a canal gate and took a couple of pictures.  I tried to see if there was a way to get back on the other side of the canal without getting my feet wet, but there wasn't.  So I decided it was as good of place as any to turn around.  I just kept a nice easy pace and talked myself home.  It was kinda cool out this morning.  I might have to start wearing more layers soon.
 

I took yesterday off and opted to do a nice, easy 3 loops today.  The City of Mesa, like other cities, has started this thing where you can rent a yellow bicycle for an hour or a day or whatever.  This morning I saw what I assumed to be a vagrant, trying to push a shopping cart filled with all of his worldly possessions and straddling one of these bicycles.  He seemed to be struggling and was stopped to adjust things in his cart.  Just as he started again, one of his jugs fell out.  I ran over and picked it up for him.  He seemed grateful.  I don't know what was in it.  Maybe drinking water?

Just one loop today.  I felt good and ran fast for me.

I planned on running with Mike like I do ever Saturday morning.  I went to bed at 8pm.  But I couldn't sleep.  And I couldn't sleep.  And I couldn't sleep.  At 1am I texted Mike to tell him not to come by.  I finally fell asleep around 2:15am.  I think I was stressed out over a project I'm working on.  Anyway, I got up around quarter to 8 and my wife was already home from her walk.  But she went back to bed and fell asleep.  I wanted her to take me up to the top of Usery Pass.  But she just wouldn't wake up.  So I wore my running clothes all day.  I finally decided to run at 5:51pm.  I wanted some good miles but wasn't sure where to run.  I figured it was too late to do Usery.  I thought I would just run up the Canal to the Main Pumping Plant.  As I was running I decided to instead run up to McDowell Road, turn east and run to Higley, then turn back south and run home.  I wasn't sure how many miles it would be, but I figured it would be at least the distance of a normal Saturday run.  I brought my headlamp with me because it was dark.  I didn't put it on until about a mile and a quarter into it.  Running along the Canal in between McKellips and McDowell, I saw some creepy guys walking down the path without any lighting.  Could they be any creepier?  I stepped on a rock somewhere along the path and now my foot is sore.  Turning east, you start to head uphill, but I flet decent.  I knew from riding my bike along Higley that the first half mile south was also uphill.  But it's not steep, so I just kept plugging along.  When I got to a mile and a half to go I got a call from my wife.  She was worried about me.  I told her I was fine.  The last half mile was kind of a drag, but I made it.

We left Mesa for my sister's house in Enoch, UT around 6pm Tuesday.  I am the lucky one that gets to drive the RV the entire way.  We arrived around 4am Wednesday.  I slept for about 5 hours, but didn't feel like running.  I had mapped out a course earlier that I wanted to do, and I decided Thanksgiving morning would be ideal.  I left at 8:49am.  It was cold for me, but I still wore just shorts and a T.  I had no trouble finding my way.  The map was in my brain.  However, I didn't realize that part of it was on a dirt road.  My feet haven't completely healed from all the bruising they took at the Ragnar trail relay.  So, when I step on a rock, it hurts.  And there were plenty to step on.  I saw some sheep and some cows so I stopped to take pictures.  I kept going down the dirt road until finally I came to the end and there was a gate with a lock on it.  So I had to climb over it.  Then I made my way out to the main road.  I assume it was a highway.  The speed limit was 55mph.  I had to run on the shoulder and there wasn't much room, but most people would move over to the middle lane when they were coming by me.  Then I saw a racoon.  It was dead.  You don't see a lot of those in AZ.  I made it to the frontage road of the I-15 freeway.  I knew I was about 3 miles from my sister's.  By this time my hands were completely frozen.  But I was no longer running in to a head wind, and that was nice.  I knew that my sister's road was right next to a couple of huge water tanks.  I could see them from 2 miles away, but they didn't seem to be getting any closer.  I was headed back uphill again, but I just kept plodding along.  The elevation is around 6600, and I'm used to running at about 1300.  But running slow seemed to work.  As I approached the crest of the hill, I started feeling good.  I knew once I turned on my sister's street it would be only about a half mile to her house, and it's all downhill.  But my legs were shot.  So I just kept running at the same effort I was for the entire run.  It's  now around 2pm.  My legs are still sore, but I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving dinner with my family.  Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

After stumbling around all day Thursday with heavy legs, they seemed to have healed up yesterday.  But I wanted one more recovery day.  So I went out this morning.  I brought three running outfits with me, but I only ran twice.  And that's ok. 

On Thursday's run I saw this tunnel that went under the freeway.  I didn't want to run as much as I did Thursday, and I knew that the tunnel was about 3 miles away from my sister's.  So I thought I'd run under the freeway, and maybe a little more to explore.  Immediately my legs felt super heavy.  I thought, "This is going to be another slog fest."  But the important thing is that I'm getting miles in, so I slogged away. 

The first half mile is uphill.  I was running the opposite direction as Thursday's run.  After a half mile I reach the frontage road.  Then it's downhill for a mile.  I was running on the shoulder again.  For the first mile there were no cars coming my way.  But then a few started to come, so I decided to count them.  I lost count after 3 or 4.  It was all uphill to the tunnel, but not as much elevation gain as the loss in that first mile of the frontage road.  So I had that to look forward to on the way back.  But I did it Thursday and survived.

As I approached the tunnel, I could see a hill on the other side of the freeway.  I decided that it would be nice to run up to the top of it and maybe take some pictures.  I ran through the tunnel and got to the other side.  But I saw a sign that said - Private property - no hunting, no fishing, no trespassing, etc., etc., etc.  I could've crawled under the fence, but after thinking about if for a minute, I decided to just turn around and run back.  This time I ran on the other side of the road where there is a dirt track next to the road for quite some way.  I ran on it because it's safer, but I had to avoid the rocks. 

There is one part of the road that is real steep.  I charged up it and my breathing was really labored.  But the rest wasn't bad because of all the hill training I've been doing.  My pace was about 30 seconds faster than Thanksgiving's run.  So I'll be heading back to Mesa tomorrow.  So long, Utah.
 

I must've pulled or strained my right hamstring in Utah.  I had to go to pack meeting tonight, but my wife wasn't able to go.  Right before I needed to leave I got a text from one of the boy's mother asking me if I could give her son a ride to the meeting.  Since there's no one on one ineraction allowed my wife said she would drive us, but that I would need to get a ride home.  I figured I could just run home. 

Pack meeting was fun.  All four of our boys advanced; three of them got their Wolf and one got his Bobcat.  I threw my running clothes on and my scout clothes in a drawstring pouch/backpack.  I didn't stretch like I usually do because I figured it was less than two miles and I would take it easy.  But immediately I could feel the strain.  I kept running because what else was I going to do?  I made it home fine, but I'm really worried about my race the Saturday.

I attempted this race last year, but only managed to eat 4 donuts.  I knew that I would need to bring some water with me to help bed the donuts down.  My wife offered to let me wear her fanny pack which I loaded with 3 bottles of water.  Just a few minutes before 9am they decided to take a picture of us all.

So the race started shortly after 9:01am.  The weather was beautiful, but I saw a lot of people wearing hoodies.  I had stretched out my leg pretty well and rolled it.  It didn't bother me very much during the run, but I could feel it.  The runners seemed to settle into packs and I was the last one to arrive at the Bosa Donut store from the faster pack.  That's where you're supposed to eat 6 donuts before heading back. 

The course was slightly different than last year, and I thought it might be closer to 3.0 miles instead of 3.1 miles.  But my Strava recorded 3.12.  On the way there this speedy kid just zoomed by everybody.  I thought, "He must've got a late start."  With about half way to go to get to the Donut shop, I was passed by this guy running with his wife and kid.  His wife was on a bicycle, and the kid was on a scooter. 

I ran up and grabbed a plate of donuts, confident with my strategy that I would be able to down them pretty quickly.  I didn't want to sit down, so I found a bush that I could set my plate on whilst I ate.  I opened up my first water bottle and started eating the first one.  It tasted great.  I would take a small swig of water each time I took a bite.  I ate my second one and kept an eye on the rest of the competition to see if anyone had left yet.  Still good.  I finished my third one, and this young teenager had finished all 6 of his and started to head back.  My hopes and dreams of winning were crushed.  Unless he were to puke on the way back!  I finished my fourth one and two more runners left including the speedy kid that had passed me before.  Also it seemed that other runners were heading back, but I couldn't tell if they had all finished their donuts or not.  I knew some of them had not.  Also, that fourth donut tasted like the bush as it must've been hanging off the plate a little.  The fifth donut went down, but I was starting to feel it.  That same feeling from last year when I knew I was reaching my limit.  I stuck to the strategy.  I got half way done with the last one and knew I could do it, but I knew it wasn't going to be a piece of cake.  I really had to chew.  It wasn't going down as easily.  I finally got the last bite in my mouth and headed over to the trash bin to throw my plate away. 

I then very cautiosly started running back.  There were a few stragglers still coming in and I, of course, made puking noises at them.  After a few burps and deep breaths, I felt like I could hold it down.  There was a couple that passed me shortly after I started again.  I wondered if they had eaten all of their donuts.  I'd be surprised if they did.  If they did, you know they were meant for each other.  If they can eat donuts at the same pace, there's nothing they can't do.  Anyway, they beat me to the finish line.  But the guy with the family that had passed on the way there was right behind me.  I thought for sure he would pass me again.  As I made my way south through the neighborhood, I found myself feeling pretty good, so I decided to up the pace.  I caught a few more runners, but I could see they were carrying donuts with them.  That man was still right behind me and catching up.  I made the final turn and with about a quarter mile to go I really started to kick it in.  Then I realized I might actually vomit at this pace, so I slowed down.  It had looked like I put some distance between the two of us and should be able to finish ahead of him.  But I wasn't going to take any chances, so I sped up again and finished strong.  If I were to guess, I'd say I came in 5th place, but it's hard to tell because they're just doing it for fun, and they don't count.  The speedy kid ended up catching the other kid, like I knew he would and won. 

I wasn't sure if they were going to do a raffle like they've done in the past, so I stuck around for a little bit.  I had drunk a bottle and a half of water while eating the donuts, so I finished the other half and decided to leave.  It was fun, and I'm proud of myself for having eaten all 6 donuts and not ralphing.  It may be my finest accomplishment in this life.

My leg doesn't feel like it's getting any better, so I decided to just run on it anyway.  It seems I can run fine, but I can feel it.

I got the flu or something last week.  I finally went on a run this morning.  I actually felt pretty good.

Nice morning.  Run was good.  My shoes are already falling apart.

I texted Mike and Glen yesterday to see if they were up for a run.  I guess it's been a few weeks since we've run together.  I suggested we don't go so early since it's cold out now.  Glen said he'd like to go in the afternoon.  Mike said for us to go without him.  I then told Glen just to meet me at my house and we'd run along the canal since I haven't run a lot in the last couple of weeks and prefered to run on a flat surface.

Glen got to my house at 4:30pm and we stretched out and headed out.  I felt like I was running faster than I should have for that first mile and knew that this was going to be a workout.  Glen was staying close to me even though he could have left me in the dust.  Good thing because I needed to let him know which side of the canal to run on whenever we crossed a road.  There are a lot of roads to cross so most of the time he would turn around at the road and run back to me.  He shared his water bottle with me since I forgot to bring one.

We were running north along the Canal.  The plan was to run to the top of the Canal.  There is a fence at the bottom of a hill that I touch and then turn around.  It's almost the same distance as our typical Usery Pass Saturday run, but there's only one tiny hill.  Glen was having fun spotting the fish in the Canal.  About a quarter mile from the turn around we saw this old couple out walking their two dogs.  One of them was secured on a leash and the other wasn't.  The one that wasn't barked at us, but kept its distance.  We reached the fence and Glen didn't realize it was the turn around point, so he went around and kept going.  I hollered at him that he can keep going if he wants, but I was turning around.  On the way back the couple had let both of their dogs loose, so the other one came running up to us.  The couple seemed worried that it might bite us, but it didn't.

I was starting to lose steam, but I still tried to push it.  It was starting to get dark.  I saw this beautiful owl swoop up into a tree.  Is swoop up a thing?  Or can you only swoop down?  Anyway, Glen had put some distance between us.  I could see that he had reached the two mile to go mark and it appeared that he had slown down.  In fact, it seemed like he was getting closer to me at an alarming rate.  He was running backward!  I thought he was going to offer me another drink, but he said that there was a coyote on the path and he thought it would be safer for us to run together.  How cute.  I never saw it.

We finished up the run.  He probably ran closer to 7.8 miles with all the back and forth he was doing.  He likes animals, so I showed him our pig.  He was surprised at how big it was and decided not to get too close.  Probably a wise decision.

It was dark out this morning.  And cold.  A bit cold.  But I still refuse to wear anything other than a T-shirt and shorts.  So, the shorts I was wearing were brand new.  I got them for my birthday.  They didn't fit well.  The problem was that they have this lining in them much like swim trunks.  The lining only allows you to pull them so far up your waist.  So I tried to tie them as tight as I could because I was afraid they would fall off.  As I was running north on the Floodway path I could feel them starting to slide.  I kept pulling them up.  When I got to the RWCD Canal road and was heading back south I decided to see if they'd really fall down or perhaps they were just riding a little low, but they wouldn't actually go beyond my hips.  I ran as far as I dared withouth touching them.  I kept looking back because two of the RWCD trucks was parked up at Brown Road with their headlights on.  I was hoping they were checking canal readings or putting a drop through and that it was someone I knew.  I would have a chance to see them once the finished at Brown and drove over to Adobe.  They always just drive through the neighborhood because it's faster to do that than to unlock the gate, drive through, lock the gate, drive down the dirt road to the next gate, unlock it, drive through, and lock it again.  I finally saw them leave when I was about half way in between the two streets.  After a while I determined that my shorts would indeed fall down if I didn't pick them back up, so I did.  I saw the RWCD trucks pull up to Adobe and wondered if I'd know who they were.  When I was almost to Adobe, I heard someone running behind me.  I turned around and it was a lady running with her dog.  Every time I turned around to look at the RWCD trucks I never saw her.  Must be because of the glare of the headlights.  She caught up to me and said, "Man, I've been chasing you the whole length of the canal!"  I said, "Oh great.  You probably saw my shorts fall down, too."  She laughed and said, "Nah.  You're all right."  Then she turned right on Adobe and I continued south down the Canal road.  I was too embarrassed to say hi to the zanjeros.  I just kept running.

Another 2 loops along the Floodway/RWCD Canal.  The highlight was seeing this old lady that I've seen many times that I always tell good morning.  She always says good morning back to me, so I know she has an accent.  So this morning I said, "Buenos dias."  She said buenos dias back to me :)

I texted Mike yesterday.  He said for me and Glen to go on without him today.  Glen wanted to run in the afternoon again.  I much prefer the morning.  But I don't really have a choice when Ragnar rolls around. 

Glen picked me up at 4pm.  It's about a half hour drive out to Usery Pass.  I had packed my LED blinky light and my headlamp.  We saw all these new paint markings that had been installed on the road and also the new warning scores carved out in the road.  WATCH    FOR    HORSES.  We saw a couple on the top of a hill.  I told Glen about the time I saw a dead one on the side of the road that someone had covered with a blanket.  We got to Usery right around 4:30pm.  I told Glen I was bringing my lights with me, but wasn't sure if I'd need them.  It seemed pretty light out with the sun still above the horizon. 

We briefly stretched out and we were off.  Glen immediately left me in his dust.  There was so much traffic.  I'm not in as good as shape as I was about a month ago.  I was kind of struggling.  It seemed like each half miles increment was taking forever.  After two miles I could see the sun was going behind the mountain.  Maybe I would need my lights after all.  After another quarter mile I could see the traffic slowing down.  Then I could see all these sheriff vehicles with their lights on.  I wondered what was going on?  An accident?  A dead horse?  A dead person?

I kept running past them all and looking to see what was going on.  I couldn't tell.  Most of them were on the other side of the road.  Maybe I would build up the courage to ask what was going on when I was running back down.  That would be another 2.5 miles as I was 1.25 miles away from the top.  After I passed them I saw three more horses, so I started to think it might be a dead horse from their pack. 

After that, I decided to pull my LED light out of my pocket and hook it to the back of my shirt.  The 2.5 mile point is where the slope is not as steep anymore and it felt easier for the rest of the way up.  I saw Glen coming back down.  He must've had at least a half mile lead on me.  I made it to the top and decided to put my headlamp on, but it wasn't terribly dark, so I set it on the lowest setting. 

I was making my way down the hill and my tummy wasn't feeling great.  I prefer running on an empty stomach in the mornings.  I made it back to the sheriff vehicles.  But I was to nervous to ask them what was going on.  What if it was a murder?  The people who ask about it become suspects.  I didn't want to be a suspect.  With less than two miles to go I turned my headlamp on all the way.  Mostly so drivers could see me.  We only saw one cyclist.  But gee the traffic was terrific.  I was running slow.  I looked back on my Strava and saw that I hadn't run this slow here since July.  Glen was waiting for me at the stop sign.  We ran the last couple of hundred yards together.  He said he got there about 10 minutes ago.  I told him that sounded about right.  I'm glad we got to go even if it was in the afternoon.  I've got some work to do to get back where I was.
 

First of all, Merry Christmas to everyone who reads this blog.  Which is about two people per week, if I'm lucky.  Second, it's not even close to being cold.  Is it really Christmas?

I ran two loops today.  When I turned the corner on to Adobe, I saw a young kid turning on to the Floodway path.  He looked like he was moving pretty fast.  I was looking for him when I got to the Floodway, but I couldn't see him.  But out of the corner of my eye I saw some teenage boys hanging out under the culvert bridge of the Floodway.  I thought they looked suspicious, so I kept turning around so that they would know I was on to them.  It felt like I was running super slow.  I guess I was, but not as slow as I thought I was.  I had turned around and moved over to the RWCD road and was looking for those teenage boys again, but they were no where to be found.  I wonder if they were tagging the culvert.  I haven't really paid attention to the spray paint so I wasn't sure if it was new or not.  I continued south down the RWCD road and saw this couple that I had seen earlier on Adobe.  They were walking their dog and the man had on Jack Skellington pj bottoms.  I told him I liked his Christmas pants.  At University I turned and headed north back up the Floodway path.  I saw an old cheerful man carrying a pack over his shoulder.  He told me Merry Christmas.  If it was Santa, he shaved his beard off.  Then I saw a lady walking her dalmation in the bottom of the Floodway.  I said Merry Christmas to her, but wasn't sure if she heard me.  She did and said thank you.  Then I decided to go down to the culvert so that I could see if the paint was fresh.  It looked kinda new.  I ran my finger across it and it smudged a little.  Then I sniffed it, but couldn't smell anything.  I then went to the other side of the road because that's where I saw the boys.  I did the same thing over there.  There was no conclusive evidence that they had spray painted the graffiti on the culvert.

I had a pebble in my shoe from the get go.  I hoped that it would shift somewhere in my shoe where it wouldn't bother me, but it never did.  After a half mile I stopped at the Nancy K. Daugherty memorial rock and took my shoe off.  I had sliced open my thumb on Christmas Day trying to open this egg shaped toy for my grandson.  So putting my shoe back on was difficult.  Once I finally got it back on, I decided I needed to tinkle.  I went behind some bushes by the bank of the Floodway, but I saw someone walking on the RWCD path, so I waited 'til they went by.  I hope no one saw me.

I ran the same route as yesterday.  I've been seeing this beautiful falcon the last couple of days.  It doesn't like to be on the same side of the Floodway as I'm on, so it always flies over to the other side.  Today's run was slower than yesterday's, but if felt faster.

I'm trying to eat all my Christmas goodies as fast as possible so that I can start another diet.  This plan is not helping my running.

I texted Mike yesterday to see if he was still up for running today.  Earlier in the week he said he wanted to pick me up at 6:00am.  He finally texted back late and said that he had been moving furniture around all day, so he would text me at 9:00am.  Around 9:30am he texted to say he was too sore.  So I texted Glen, knowing that he likes to run in the afternoon anyway.  He never texted back.  So after eating 4 pieces of pizza, I finally decided to run on my own at 7:30pm. 

Since it was dark, I decided to stay on the main streets.  That way, if I suffered a massive heart attack from all the pizza consumption, someone might find me.  But as I was running, I felt like such a fatty, that I almost changed my mind because I didn't want people seeing my fat belly hanging out of my shirt.  But I went on the main roads anyway, and felt totally blah.  I went west down Adobe, turned south on Greenfield, east on University, north on Higley, and west again on Adobe.  When I turned north on Higley, I could see a police helicopter circling around with its spotlight.  It looked like it was in my neighborhood, or at least on Adobe.  The closer I got to Adobe, the more I could tell that it was definetely circling around Adobe.  I wondered if it would be safe to turn on the street.  I made the turn and saw a couple of police vehicles parked on the side.  Then, as I passed the first road beyond Higley, I could see an officer with his gun drawn, waiting for the suspect to come around the corner.  I just kept running and hoped that the police helicopter wouldn't think I was the suspect running away.

Glen finally texted me back yesterday in the middle of sacrament meeting.  I may go to hell, but I did text him back.  He aplogized for just barely seeing the text, so I asked if he wanted to go today.  He said sure and asked what time.  I said I'm free any time, thinking he would want to go in the afternoon.  But he said he would come by my house at 6:00am to run along the Canal again.

My alarm went off at 5:00am, and I hit snooze the max amount of times.  I think it was 4.  Anyway, I finally dragged myself out of bed around 5:30am.  I was happy to get a bowel movement, and got ready.  But with just minutes to go before 6:00am, I had to go again.  So Glen texted me to tell me that he was here, and I texted back saying I'd be out shortly.  I had wanted to stretch out before he got here, but that didn't happen.

After stretching out for about 5 minutes, we were ready.  Glen was all bundled up, and I was wearing shorts and two T-shirts.  It was a little bit cold, but not too bad.  I also thought that the sun would come up soon, so I didn't bring my headlamp.  Glen had his.  He started putting distance between us right away.  I know the Floodway path pretty well, so I didn't have any problems running in the dark.  Glen was still within eye sight when he crossed Greenfield.  I was glad to see that he went to the right side of the Canal (which is the left side.)  But once I crossed Greenfield and went through the fence, I couldn't see him anymore.  It was too dark, and he was too far ahead.  I looked in the Canal to make sure he hadn't fallen in.  I was able to see him a couple of times as once he turned his head and I could see his headlamp, and whenever he would get to a street to cross. 

When I got to a quarter of a mile away from the turn around point, I figured I'd see him coming back soon, but I never did.  Right before the fence, there is a steep drop.  I thought maybe he was waiting there at the fence, so I coudln't see him.  Or perhaps he kept on going to Val Vista and would turn around.  I stopped briefly at the fence and drank some water.  Then I saw his headlamp coming back, so he had gone on to Val Vista.  I started back up the small hill and was able to keep him behind me for three quarters of a mile until I got stopped by traffic at McDowell.  Then we basically ran the remaining 2.85 miles back together.  We didn't talk much because we were both tired.  I thought he was purposely slowing down to run with me, but he was crashing just as hard as I was.