Go, you chicken fat, go away!

I got the flu or something last week.  I finally went on a run this morning.  I actually felt pretty good.

Nice morning.  Run was good.  My shoes are already falling apart.

I texted Mike and Glen yesterday to see if they were up for a run.  I guess it's been a few weeks since we've run together.  I suggested we don't go so early since it's cold out now.  Glen said he'd like to go in the afternoon.  Mike said for us to go without him.  I then told Glen just to meet me at my house and we'd run along the canal since I haven't run a lot in the last couple of weeks and prefered to run on a flat surface.

Glen got to my house at 4:30pm and we stretched out and headed out.  I felt like I was running faster than I should have for that first mile and knew that this was going to be a workout.  Glen was staying close to me even though he could have left me in the dust.  Good thing because I needed to let him know which side of the canal to run on whenever we crossed a road.  There are a lot of roads to cross so most of the time he would turn around at the road and run back to me.  He shared his water bottle with me since I forgot to bring one.

We were running north along the Canal.  The plan was to run to the top of the Canal.  There is a fence at the bottom of a hill that I touch and then turn around.  It's almost the same distance as our typical Usery Pass Saturday run, but there's only one tiny hill.  Glen was having fun spotting the fish in the Canal.  About a quarter mile from the turn around we saw this old couple out walking their two dogs.  One of them was secured on a leash and the other wasn't.  The one that wasn't barked at us, but kept its distance.  We reached the fence and Glen didn't realize it was the turn around point, so he went around and kept going.  I hollered at him that he can keep going if he wants, but I was turning around.  On the way back the couple had let both of their dogs loose, so the other one came running up to us.  The couple seemed worried that it might bite us, but it didn't.

I was starting to lose steam, but I still tried to push it.  It was starting to get dark.  I saw this beautiful owl swoop up into a tree.  Is swoop up a thing?  Or can you only swoop down?  Anyway, Glen had put some distance between us.  I could see that he had reached the two mile to go mark and it appeared that he had slown down.  In fact, it seemed like he was getting closer to me at an alarming rate.  He was running backward!  I thought he was going to offer me another drink, but he said that there was a coyote on the path and he thought it would be safer for us to run together.  How cute.  I never saw it.

We finished up the run.  He probably ran closer to 7.8 miles with all the back and forth he was doing.  He likes animals, so I showed him our pig.  He was surprised at how big it was and decided not to get too close.  Probably a wise decision.