Go, you chicken fat, go away!

I took yesterday off because the bottoms of my feet are pretty torn up and sore from the trail running.  I have a couple of blisters.  But I dont' want to lose any of my fitness, so I went out today.  I coughed up some gunk, but that's a good thing.  My feet were feeling fine while running.  I was looking for coyotes, but didn't see any.  They're good hiders.  I did see a lady cross the Floodway with her unleashed dog.  I thought that wasn't a good idea, even though the coyotes generally leave you alone.  But that have been following some people, I hear.  Anyway I got about a half mile in, and I heard a siren.  This made a coyote start to howl.  Normally they yip, but I would consider this a howl.  So, I immediately stopped and looked for it.  I still couldn't see it.  I could see the lady walking on the other side of the Floodway and hoped she would put her dog on a leash now that she could hear the coyote.  But she didn't.  I continued running and crossed over to the other side of the Floodway heading towards her now.  I couldn't see her dog anywhere.  I'm like, are you crazy lady?  She started to head back in to the Floodway, and I was afraid I'd have to chase the coyotes away from her dog, and hoped it wouldn't be too late.  But when I finally saw her again, both she and her dog were safely on the other side of the Floodway.  So that's good.

When I got done running, my lower back started to hurt.  I hope it doesn't get worse.  Sore backs are the worst!
 

I have not been able to run the past few days because my back has been hurting so bad.  I texted the team yesterday.  Only Maggie said she was going to come.  And she ended up cancelling this morning due to "woman issues", whatever that means.  So my wife and I headed up to Usery shortly after 5:30am.  I wasn't sure how my back would do, so I went as slow as possible.  Vickie had a minute or two head start on me.  I didn't catch her until after a half mile.  She stayed pretty close to me as I was afraid to run very fast.  I decided I would do 2 miles up and come back, but my back started to hurt.  I kept pushing myself, and then I saw some wild Salt River horses.  I crossed the street and took some pictures.  My wife caught up to me.  I figured this was a good place to turn around.  She wanted to keep going so she told me to call her when I was done.  I slowly made my way back down.  When I was done, I called her and she said she was feeling good and wanted to keep going.  So I hung out in the Jeep for a while playing Words with Friends.  Then I went for a hike in the desert to see if I could find more horses.  I couldn't.  My wife texted me when she was 3/4 of a mile away, so I turned around.  She ended up beating me back to the Jeep, and we drove back home, but I kept my eyes open for horses.  I spotted some by the new stop sign they installed.  We stopped to take more pictures.  Then we drove back and saw some more about a quarter mile down the road.  We stopped again and followed them until they reached the other group of horses.  There was 22 total.