Go, you chicken fat, go away!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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