Go, you chicken fat, go away!

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.