Go, you chicken fat, go away!

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.