Go, you chicken fat, go away!

I slept a lot this weekend.  I felt pretty good this moring, but still it was hot.  My pace was faster than it has been lately, but still slow.  I saw this one dude.  I'm going to call him Trent Cox.  Thank you Strava.  We both headed north at Adobe at the same time; he on the RWCD east road, and I on the Floodway path.  He was running almost twice my speed!  Geez!  Strava shows him averaging like a 6:45 pace!

I woke up at 5am.  Our landlord wants a realtor to come look at the house this Thursday.  So we've been cleaning and trying to fix things up.  Last night we had someone fixing the flooring in the kitchen, so my wife didn't want to cook dinner.  She asked me if I'd rather want Del Taco or Little Caesars.  Little Caesars usually makes me sick for some reason, so I said Del Taco.  I probably ate one burrito too many last night.  Anyway, I got out the door just before 6am.  It was light out, but the sun hadn't come up quite yet.  Still it was already 83º.  It seems like every time I look at the temperature in the morning it's 83º.  I started running and felt surprisingly good considering the extra burrito.  I decided to do three loops and my pace today was faster than yesterday's two loops.

I didn't run yesterday.  Too busy with work.  We got a thunderstorm yesterday evening.  Some of the thunder was instantaneous after the lightning.  The dog was scared.  Stupid scaredy cat.  It was humid this morning, and there was water in the bottom of the Floodway, but it was a few degrees cooler than normal.  I did three loops, and my pace keeps getting faster.  As I approached Brown I could see this woman walking on the Canal road.  It looked like it was Sis. Lowe.  As I headed over there, I saw a zanjero truck pull up.  It was Eric.  I stopped and talked for about a minute.  Then I ran down the Canal road and as I was catching up to the woman I realized it was actually Sis. Ray.  I stopped and talked to her for about 10 seconds.  When I crossed Adobe my wife saw me.  I did not see her.  Not sure how I missed her after looking at Strava, but maybe the sun was in my eyes.  She thought she would see me because she figured I would head back up at University, but I went all the way down to Main.  As I passed the hobo, I saw him eating another sausage biscuit.  I said, "That was some thunderstorm we had last night!"  He must think I'm a real douche.
 

First time I've run Usery in a while.  Last week I texted Mike and asked when we were going to start running Usery again.  He said today.  I texted Glen and Maggie.  Glen said he already had plans.  Maggie said she would love to join us if it's a weekend she doesn't have her kids.  So I texted Mike yesterday to see if we were still on.  He responded like 4 minutes later, but I didn't see it until I got a text from Maggie asking if we were going.  Then I looked back and saw that Mike had responded and couldn't go.  So I asked Maggie if she wanted to come along with my wife and I.  Have I mentioned that I finally talked my wife into running a Ragnar?  Anyway, I told Maggie we would pick her up at 5:15am. 

Vickie and I woke up at 4:47am-ish.  (For some reason I remember that being the time.  I think.)  I sat on the toilet for the longest time because running Usery and having to go is the worst.  I had texted Maggie at 5am to say - see you in 15 minutes.  But it was more than 15 minutes because it took me a while to have a bowel movement.  We drove to Maggie's and the over to Usery.  I was hoping we'd see some wild horses, but we didn't.  In fact, after we were done running I drove down by the river, but we still didn't see any. 

Vickie and Maggie were talking about divorces; Maggie about hers and Vickie about her sister's.  I started running in the parking lot, and they started running after the crossed the intersection.  I told them to be wary of cyclists.  They're probably moving down the hill at 35mph.  Since it's a holdiday weekend, there was a lot of traffic and a lot of cyclists. 

I was feeling pretty decent running up.  I had a frozen bottle of water in my pocket.  It was weighing my shorts down, and I had to stop to retie them.  I wasn't sure if I wanted to go all the way to the top.  So I opted to just run 3 miles up and 3 miles down.  It was hard, but not too bad.  My pace was comparable to the pace I've been running on flat surfaces lately.  So that's good.  Of course I run faster going down and the cyclists are riding slower going up, so every now and then on the way down a cyclists would tell me how good I was doing.  One lady said, "Lookin' good!"  Another said, "You have a lot more stamina than me!"  And a dude said, "Can you feel the tail wind?"  Well, that didn't have anything to do with how good I was doing, but still.  I had texted Vickie when I got to the turn around to let her know I was going back down.  I took my first drink of water and it was about half way melted.  It would be completely melted before I got all the way down.  Vickie and Maggie continued going up a little more after I texted her.  They wanted to get to 2 miles.  I finally saw them with about 1.75 miles to go.  I passed them with 1.1 miles to go.  It wasn't long after that I decided I better take my shirt off because my areola was getting a little sensitive.  But I didn't want to do it right in front of them because I didn't want them to think I was weird.  I took it off without about 0.75 miles to go and a whole horde of cyclists came cruising by.  I tried to hang my shirt over my shoulder and strategically pump my arms in front of my body so they wouldn't be able to see my fat white hairy gut.  I finished up and Vickie and Maggie got there about 10 or so minutes later.  They were still talking about divorce.  I had sat down on a picnic bench and they came over by me.  After a little bit all these bees were swarming Maggie.  She thought they were flies.  She said she had eaten garlic the night before and was afraid that she would smell like garlic today.  I guess bees are attracted to garlic.  Anyway, I told her she was getting swarmed and we better go.