Go, you chicken fat, go away!

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.