Go, you chicken fat, go away!

It's a holiday.  No school for the kids.  I felt like doing a longer run than normal even though it was 7am before I finally got out.  It rained last night so I knew it would be humid.  I kept a nice easy pace.  There were a lot of walkers out and a few runners.  And a couple of cyclist, one of which was crusing pretty fast.  This was on  the Canal path so I don't know how he was going that fast.  I thought maybe he had a motor on his bike but I couldn't hear anything.  Anyway, I saw a pack of condoms on the side of the road when I crossed McKellips.  They looked like they were two to three sizes larger than I would need, so I left them there.
 

Today's run was eventful.  And by eventful I mean full of events.  First, I almost got attacked by a dog.  But I'm not afraid of dogs.  I saw a lady up the path, but then she disappeared.  When I got closer I could see that she had got off the path and went over to the bank of the Floodway.  Her dog was not on a leash.  By the time she saw me and realized that her dog was running up to me, she had that, "Oh, crap" look in her eye.  (BTW - I've always felt like crap is a cuss word, so I never say it.  Typing it is different, right?)  Well, the dog just ran up and sniffed me.  The lady, after seeing that it didn't bite me, started nervously laughing and assured me that the dog doesn't bite, although she sounded like she was trying to convince herself.  All in all, I saw a total of four unleashed dogs.  Two of them sniffed me.  I felt like I was running stronger than normal today.  I think I was.  More on that later.  Right before I got to Greenfield I could see someone running on Greenfield.  But they stopped and walked right before I crossed.  Luckily there was a break in the traffic right when I got there so I didn't have to stop.  I kept going and I think it was him, maybe it was someone else, caught up to me and left me in the dust.  After a mile I could tell they were about a quarter mile ahead of me.  So, my son is a pot head.  He likes to go in the "sun room" and do his thing.  Sometimes I walk in there after he's recently been in there, and it stinks.  This morning it smelled like pot outside.  Maybe it was just the orange groves.  Or maybe that smell was stuck in my nose.  Anway, I crossed McKellips and I could see this guy coming down the path sitting on a cart being pulled by a horse.  He waved as we passed each other and I recognized him.  He was this 80+ year old man that lives down the street.  He's a real good friend of my wife's best friend, Dartell.  The reason I know that is because I had a run in with him while I worked as a zanjero.  Apparently one night I short changed his order.  I didn't think I did, but later looking back, I realized that I had.  Someone else had ordered water downstream of him, so I pulled the board early that I needed to split the water for the other customer.  When that happened it took a while to build the water level back up in the canal and he lost probably 15 minutes worth of water.  Well, the next order he had two weeks later, he really let me have it.  I mean he was just running me down telling me how crummy of a job I was doing.  I could have ignored him, but he was being a total jerk, so I had words back at him.  Anyway, it wasn't pleasant.  But two weeks later, when I had realized what I did and it was indeed my fault, I apologized to him and he apologized to me.  He said that's not the type of person he is.  I was going to take a picture of him before I realized who it was, because it's not often that you see a horse and cart on the Canal path.  But I opted not to.  I kept running and got to the turn around point which is a chain link fence.  I always touch the fence as I turn.  Today I didn't really look at the fence as I reached for it.  I almost missed it.  I spent the next quarter mile contemplating on whether or not I would have turned around to touch the fence if I had missed it.  I think I decided I would not have.  I was heading back south and I could see old man Hatch coming back.  This time I decided I would take the picture so that I could send it to Dartell.  As we were passing I asked him if he knew Dartell.  He didn't understand me so he stopped the horse.  I had gone a few strides past him, but I stopped, too.  I had to ask him a couple more times before he understood.  Dartell is an uncommon name.  He said he did.  They shared the same birthday.  We talked for about 10 minutes.  I told him that I used to work for RWCD and that we had met before.  But I didn't tell him that it was me that he ran down.  I think we got closure on that already.  So, he said he needed to get going and I looked at my phone and saw that it was 6:30am and I needed to be home by 7am to wake up my daughters for school.  I was only 2.25 miles from home, so it wouldn't be a problem.  But the whole time I was praying (not literally) that my Strava's autopause was working.  I think it did, but my overall pace is probably off by a few seconds.  Maybe.  I ran a 10:01 pace per Strava, so maybe it was slightly under a 10 pace?  Oh well.  With just under three quarters of a mile to go this lady runner was coming up on me.  I waved and said hello.  The way she said hello back to me made me think she was deaf or partially deaf.  With about half a mile to go I could see two more runners coming up on me.  They were kind of chuckling.  I wondered briefly if they were laughing at me.  After they passed I looked down at my shorts.  These were my shorty shorts that I don't wear very often, but there weren't any other clean ones.  I was sweating so bad that it looked like I had peed myself.  So, maybe they were laughing at me.  Can't blame them.  I got home and had to go through a bunch of screens in my Strava to get back to the stop mode.  It had turned on again in my pocket, but at least it didn't stop like last time.  I finally have put a lock on my phone now, so hopefully it won't happen anymore.  The time that it took me to finally stop the recording allowed me to see that my wife was coming home from her run/walk.  I went down the street and ran the last 100 yards with her.  Then I jumped in the pool.  So, that's it.  And if you read all this, you must have a lot of time on your hands.
 

I got the jump on Mike again this morning.  I was ahead of him for the first 0.6 miles.  Then he caught up to me.  But then he had to stop to tie his shoe so I passed him.  He passed me again at 0.9 miles.  His first mile was 8:57.  Mine was 10:50, almost 2 minutes slower.  I think he was running fast to catch up to me because his second mile was 10:40 and mine was 11:48, barely a minute faster.  Again his third mile was 10:26 and mine was 11:36.  So I was able to keep him in my sights almost the entire way up the hill.  When I finally lost sight of him about half quarter of a mile from the top, I could see a couple of runners coming down.  I wondered if one of them was Mike.  But it was two girls.  Mike was about a tenth of a mile behind them.  I was hoping I'd be able to see more than just Mike on the way down.  But the thing about Mike, he's very competitive.  He made sure to catch up to the girls and pass them.  I only saw momentary glimpses of them on the way down.  This was my fastest time on this route this year, but it seems it may have been Mike's also.  He even went sub 8 on one of his downhill miles, while my fastest was a 9:21.  But progress is progress.  So as we were driving up the hill to go home we saw this girl running down.  About a half mile later we saw this other girl.  Mike was like, "Didn't we just see her?"  Later while looking at my Strava Flyby's I realized they were twins.  So I text Mike, "Those girls were twins!"  Except I sent it to my elder's quorum group instead of Mike :(