"He won't bite"

While I have been neglecting my blog, I have not been neglecting my running.  Running, walking.  Intervals.  I am up to: run a mile, walk a minute, run a mile, etc. for a total of 4+ miles run.  Yes, I am slow & I built up slowly & this means the neighborhood has had ample opportunity to observe my....fine physique ambling about.  Ditto I have had plenty of time to learn the routines of the dogs in the neighborhood & label the deadbeat owners.  & now I will list them, for the benefit of all of you & the Dumb Ass Dog Owners Blog Hop (hosted by Tales from the back road & Heart like a dog) I found at The poodle & dog blog.

I begin mile one all too often trailed by the long legged beagle things that live in the opposite direction up the road.  That's right, the guy whose dogs have attacked our stock, killed one of our cats, sent the other for an extended stay on the roof, & generally made a nuisance of themselves are still around.  Animal control makes almost weekly visits to this guy but there does not seem to be much that can be done unless the dogs are caught red-pawed. 

I lose these dogs once I get to a row of yards with fenced yards & dogs in them.  One has an elderly back mutt of roughly lab-size.  It was out once (someone must have left a gate open) & I ended up crossing the street because it clearly did not want me crossing its driveway, but I would not flag this as dumb-assery; anyone can forget to close a gate once in three years. 

After the old black not-quite-a-lab, there is a pair of corgis who are kind of hilarious.  Their house is off the road but down a straight drive, so I can see them clearly, barking theirs head, off running slightly faster than me, but not much.  They invariable stop ten feet before their closed gate & make sure I know this is their house & then they run home again, as fast as they can.

It stays quiet until I turn on to the dirt road & start past the larger horse farms.  Farm number two has what has to be a full blooded Cane Corso.  This thing is HUGE.  He (yes he, no question) has only barked at me once (I passed another runner & we said "morning" or some such & maybe he was just saying "morning" too but I could live a happy life not hearing that dog-voice again).  He has the gravely bark that goes with an Ancient Roman dog of war.  Mostly he does the other thing he is bred to do, he courses.  He easily keeps pace with me, inside his fence, escorting me from one end of his territory to the other.

Another turn & another largely dog-free stretch, mostly because the houses move further off the road, until I make my final turn & move past Grayson, The Slinker. His family really does call him Grayson, I call him The Slinker because he once climbed to the top of a five foot gate, crawled through the gap at the top & slunk after me.  When I turned & yelled "HEY!" he took off back into his yard.  I saw his people & told them & the very next day there were bungee cords wrapped across the gap & a few weeks later a new, much narrower-gapped gate.  Grayson lived with the most majestic Doberman I ever saw.  I don't see him anymore; I suspect he is sleeping away/has slept away his old age because...Grayson now has two Rottweiler puppies keeping him busy.  I wish they made less noise, but they stay in their (fenced) yard; some days they do just sit & watch me go by, no noise at all.

While I am on the road I might meet the guy next door who I am pretty sure has undiagnosed Asperger's walking his big male German Shepherd whom he adores & is pretty much the only way to connect with him. Also the dog is wonderful to behold, beautifully cared for & trained.  I may also meet the other German Shepherd guy who USED to walk his dog off-leash until it took of after a little girl on a bicycle (she's fine, I'm not sure she knew it even happened, but her father saw & chewed a hole through every ear he could find & actually got the sheriff to issue a ticket-no easy feat) & now clips the leash on grumbling about leash laws whenever he sees someone heading towards them, because the rest of us using public roads is a huge inconvenience to him.

Finally, I might meet K****** who walks a faux-German Shepard she found abandoned in the parking lot at K-Mart & a boxy headed lover boy who look like they could yank her arms right off her body but actually seem more interested in tripping her than anything else.  We usually talk a bit, often about those first long-legged beagle things (the owner CLAIMS they are Walker Hounds but they are the scaredest,  scrawniest, most swayed-back walkers I have ever seen) as they often trail her home, giving her the credit for not scooping up after her dogs, which she does do but if you see a lady walking two dogs & a pile of poop a minute later it is hard not to connect the two.

I never see Bishop anymore.  After that documented encounter, I saw him once or twice being walked on a leash, but it has been well over a year since the last Bishop sighting.  I pass his house twice on my 5-6 times a week run, so I am confident if he still lived there I would know.  I guess when it became clear they could not just send him out the door (they were new to the neighborhood in those days & plenty of people not from around here think all dogs roam free in the country), he had to be relocated.

Which might leave you wondering where is the Dumb Ass Dog Owner?  After all, there is only one continuing problem & I don't go into any detail.  Well, there is a new dog in town, a short timer, as I am pretty sure it belongs to a contractor working on a sizeable addition on one of the houses on my route.  Every time I pass, this dog goes nuts.  Most of the time, it is sitting on the seat or in the bed of a pick-up & seems happy just to bark its face off but this week-end things were different.  I started this same stretch & I could hear the dog, as I often can.  I realized the sound was getting closer & looked up.  A smallish (30-40lbs, maybe), scruffy cute dog was bearing down.  I stopped.  Then I heard a guy saying "He won't bite".  The dog was still running towards me, barking.  It cleared the end of the driveway.  I shouted "HEY" for the dog really, but the guy seemed to think I was trying to get his attention & said something along the lines of "He's just being friendly.  He won't bite".  I started looking around for a rock or stick or something.  When I came up with a chunk of cinderblock, the guy decided it was time to maybe bring his dog to heal (in all fairness the dog was now less than three feet from me & had made no attempt to bite, but it was barking & lunging & barking & lunging & looked ready to settle in for a long game of bark & lunge).  We had a brief chat in which DADO made it clear that I was being completely unreasonable & I offered to smash his dog's skull in there on the public street & then we could wait for a sheriff to sort out who was in the wrong.

I meet a DADO fairly regularly (usually the same one, yep the guy with the free-range mongrel hounds), but I am often impressed by how many I DON'T meet.  There are many red-flag dog breeds on my route (& in my house:  a German Shephard, a pit-looking mix, two mini-dachshunds -the bitingest breed of all & a cocker spaniel, another breed no stranger to nips), but mostly people who get "dangerous" dogs know it & take care.  It is the people who think their little angels would never hurt a fly that are the real problem. 

Holi

Like everyone who saw it in Outsourced, I was charmed by the celebration of Holi.  Also I was so glad not to be there, pounded with powders of whatever, leaving stains & shooting dust in my eyes &...OKay, maybe a little bit of Holi-with some advance notice-would be just the thing.  The more I think about it, the more I want Holi to happen here.  & of course minutes after I had that though I realized we kinda already do.  I mean, what was Mardi Gras if not a festival of color?  Although the only the only color they seem to fling are those beads...

Even more like Holi are the color runs popping up all over the country.  There are several an hour or so from here but I am not one of those people who can be an hour away first thing in the morning.  The horses don't like it, for one.

In a world made small with coincidence, the first set of rainbow connection quilt blocks are due this Saturday, just after Holi.  I for one am very excited.  Because when I come right down to it, I would rather quilt than run a 5k.

Last but not least, today I finished the blocks for my own rainbow rolling stone quilt.  I plan to add the narrowest of narrow sashing (like maybe 1.5", tops) & zipping it up as quick as I can.  I have wanted this quilt for a long time & I managed not to get sick of it while I made it.  Big blocks helped, I suspect. 

One bad apple

Now that I am breathing clearly again, mostly, I have started running again.  Kinda.  I have been scaling up slowly (one minute run, one minute walk for a mile & the walk back a mile).  I have also rearranged my route somewhat.  Let me go back a bit:

Last year I had a couple mildly unpleasant encounters with one particular old man; I honestly cannot remember if I blogged about it or not.  The gist of these encounters was he would tell me something I was doing wrong such as running on the wrong side of the road (which was odd as I was running against traffic, as I should), or running on road instead of the shoulder (where he started talking about this there was actually no shoulder, the road went right up to a tree line so I don't know what he expected BUT I often do this even when there is a shoulder because of the litter, especially broken glass & when the grass gets long it see hard to see holes that would be happy to trip me or worse), or he would drive by (in a gold extended cab pick-up) & honk & zoom way out around me, like I was in his way.  He was just generally be someone I wanted to avoid. 

Apparently this guy was a well known neighborhood grumpy old guy.  One day after passing the Marine Corps. Flag House (many places along my route have names like this), Grumpy Old Guy jumped out at me (really) & stopped dead in the road & started talking about....something.  I don't know what because I veered out into the road & just went around him without otherwise acknowledging he was there at all.  When I came back down that road, the Marine Corps. Flag House Husband...or Uncle I suppose, was there & beginning with an "excuse me", flagged me down to ask if Old ?Jack?Tom?Billy? (I really don't remember) was bothering me.  I said well, yea, actually he was, whenever I see him he has some unreasonable complaint.  I don't know if I said I thought he was harmless, but the truth is I did & mostly still do.  I suspect he is lonely & has no idea how to interact with people, so he opens with something anti-social & then cannot understand why people avoid him (I m not so very insightful, I have relatives who behave this same way & then complain their grandchildren never call). 

Marine Corps. Flag House Man said he would talk with Grumpy Old Guy's son (our neighborhood is thick with family farms; we might be the only people totally unrelated to anyone in the area).  He also indicated his own children (I have only seen one ?10?11? year old boy tearing round the fenced yard with the dogs, but apparently there are more) had been harangued by Grumpy Old Guy.  I said that would be great actually, as I don't know who this guy is, but some of the things he does are dangerous, like zooming up behind me & slamming the brakes & the horn.  Turns out he had been doing that to Marine Corps. Flag House Kids when they rode their bikes.  Sweet guy. 

I went back to my run & Marine Corps. Flag House Man walking across the street.  Since that day I have only seen Grumpy Old Guy a few times.  I have seen his truck, but he hasn't been behind the wheel (I don't know if this is a new development, the only time I really noticed it before was after he had done something obnoxious).  I sometimes see him in one of two front yards & although he has shouted at me (!), he has never started walking towards me & he certainly hasn't jumped out like he used to.  On the other hand he often shakes his fist at me, one of those "get off my lawn" gestures. 

& now that I know roughly where he lives, I have changed my route to not pass it.  This change isn't permanent; it is along nice shady bit of road & en route to my favorite stretch & once the summer sun hits, I will want to run down there.  On the other hand I hear Grumpy Guy got quite the corking last week, so maybe it won't be that big a deal.  Have I ever mentioned Running Girl?  Running Girl is pre-teen, bone thin & lives for speed.  Foot-speed that is; one run she passed me three times, that is three different points along my route she zoomed up from behind me & went on by.  I have never seen her without Bicycle Boy, who I would guess is in his mid-teens.  Running Girl RUNS, flat out RUNS, she RUNS like a bear is after her & Bicycle Boy rides just behind her, usually in a weaving sort of pattern.  It is very clear he is her escort.  He almost never gets ahead of her, but sometimes he rides up alongside her & they have brief conversations.  Their interactions are familial, there is no other way to describe it; they are either siblings or close cousins or something.  They are clearly both fond of & frustrated with each other.   Neither of them is ever discourteous, but when I see them I move over.  Running Girl hates to stop & it's not like my running is a speed event.  There is one other thing about Running Girl & Bicycle Boy:  Bicycle Boy is black & Running Girl probably isn't.  She has golden skin, but straight loose blondish hair.  The color means nothing, I know, but it is floppy white person hair; she usually wears a pony tail that swings around in a way black person hair just doesn't.  Because of this racial/ethnic/whatever combo, I am 99.9% sure I know which house they belong to; there are plenty of mixed race families in our general area but only one white spouse/black spouse couple near my route. 

So Running Girl & Bicycle Boy are fairly regular fixtures  I don't usually see them when school is in, but week-ends or holidays I am likely to run (no pun intended & not literally) into them.  So it should not have surprised me that Grumpy Old Guy had seen them as well.  & of course, why would his interactions with them be any happier than with me.  Or with Marine Corps. Flag House Kids.

The version I heard was that Grumpy Old Guy shouted at Running Girl & Bicycle Boy & I believe it.  It was implied that is was racial, but no one I talked to knew what was said exactly & given Grumpy Old Man's history I am not sure it had to be, but maybe it was.  Then he threw something at them & maybe he did.  On the other hand I have seen Grumpy Old Guy shake his fist like a Scooby Doo villain which could look like throwing.  It doesn't matter really, except to Grumpy Old Guy who got a visit from the sheriff's department.  A complaint had been made that he threatened two local children & he has been under much closer watch by his family since then (this I have from Marine Corps. Flag House Woman who had it from Grumpy Old Guy's daughter-in-law who has historically been in sympathy with the neighborhood).   Apparently if you yell & jump up & down, that is one thing, but the minute you throw even a newspaper that can be called assault.  Toss in a few racial slurs & you have a legal problem. 

So Grumpy Old Guy got a stern warning.  It was made clear that, given his history in the neighborhood (apparently there had been there had been other calls to the police, specifically about the aggressive driving, but no formal complaint), he could expect a charge next time.  His family does seem to be doing their best to keep him under wraps.  When I drive by either of the two houses, I sometimes see Grumpy Old Guy well away from the road, sitting in a chair, looking around.  He might still yell & throw things but no one walking by would know it.  Whether this will continue to be the case, who knows.  If he does jump out at me again, or shout something or whatever I'm not sure if I want to be the one who calls the cops again.  & for me, the first time.  For now, I am just avoiding that part of the route. 

Getting going

In addition to all the year-end doldrums, & the get out of town for the holidays & then the come back blahs stuff, I have been knocked off my ass by a major respiratory inflammation.  It started as what I now know was influenza B, which is apparently the one to have if you want to get up again with no real long lasting effects so Go Me!

I know what it likely was because about ten days after I started feeling really really sick, my husband started feeling kinda sick.  Then we both went to the doctor.  He tested positive for influenza B; I did not.  But after all that time, the conclusion was I had more or less fought it off.  What still lingered though, was almost worse.

While I do have allergies, they are not-so-much the breathing kind.  Yes, I am allergic to pine pollen & other things that get breathed in & make me sneeze, but the real reason I get allergy shots is insect bites.  If it were just garden air allergies I would be fine with an over the counter, as needed type antihistamine   Because of this, I have very clear lungs for a long term immunology patient, as in crystal clear-I don't think anyone has ever even thought I might have bronchitis before.  Well, I had bronchitis this time.  & the past two weeks have been about treating that, & coping with the symptoms of the treatment& then detoxing.

Which brings us to a week ago Sunday.  It was the last day of my prednisone, a most welcome friend in the beginning, & one I was very glad to see leave when it went.  My skin still hardly feels like my own.  It itches & wiggles & I have bumps where I have never had them before.  & that is the least of the irritants.  After the prednisone I was still so weak I got out of breathe getting up & going to the bathroom.  I broke into a sweat & had to sit down after going for the mail, but I was no longer coughing until I puked, or got so dizzy & fell over & hit my head (yes, that happened -- I know, right?).  My appetite has been so poor that despite this complete inertia, I have actually lost weight since the holidays began (& sure was not on a losing streak as we headed north for christmas), which also explains the lightheadedness.

By mid-week I was walking to the end of the driveway & then the dirt road (a whopping 1/10 of a mile, maybe even a bit more but not much).  I figured I may as well bring one of the dogs, which he has been enjoying as well.  On Sunday we made it almost all the way to the one mile mark before we both were very happy to turn around.  I honestly don't know when I will be back to my 4+ miles of intervals, so I guess that 5k at the end of this month is out of the question.  Now I am looking on to the next one; at this rate it really will be more than a year from when I started before I run my first race.   I'm not sure, but this might be the slowest warm-up ever.

The 17 minute mile

It has been a long haul (& I am quite sure it will be longer to the next minute less), but yesterday morning I posted my first ever (less than) 17 minute mile average for the whole route.   Recently I expanded the route to cover more than 4 & 1/2 miles.  I had originally been thinking I would run a 5K, so I was more interested in getting faster within very specific parameters; after I realized a 5K in October was unlikely, I started trying to stretch the distance & thinking less about MPH.

In thinking less about speed I have gotten much faster.   This isn't so odd as you might think.  Part of my gaining speed has been extending my running intervals to 10, 11, 12 minutes with 1 minute walking intervals between.  When I limited myself to just 1/2 mile or so longer than the 5K I was targeting it was hard to really extend those times. 

The timing of this has also been good.  I try to get out before 10 to be sure to be home by 11 so I avoid that time of day when the sun is right overhead (I worry if I am squinting, chances are good drivers flying by me are also squinting & I don't want this to end badly), but the days when I would try to get wrapped up before the temperature was over 90F are gone; yesterday it was in the mid-70s in the middle of the day (brrrrr).

& that's it really.  Weight loss is stalled, but I am also eating pretty much whatever, whenever I want without guilt.  Hallowe'en is almost here, & the candy started coming into the house last week.  Then Thanksgiving, then holiday cookie swap, & then, & then...  When it is all over, I hope to be circling the 16 minute mile.

Running without

I know I have said before what stuff I run with that makes the whole thing more bearable (lime popsicles, Boudreaux's butt paste, etc.), but I thought I would tell you the things I do without.  Specifically, those things that many a running book, magazine, you name it would imply are commonplace or even necessary:

iPod or playaway or anything that gets between my ears & the sound of the world around me.  This was a new one for me, actually.  Whenever I had used our elliptical I made sure I had something to listen to.  Running in the world, though it turns out things go better when I pay attention.  A big part of this is becasue of the sheer number of people out there with me who are themselves not paying attention.  As most of them are behind the wheel of a car, the odds are in their favor surviving-a-collision-wise, so I like to know when someone is flying up behind me & you can only know that by listening.  //here's a handy little physics trick- if you hear a vehicle behind you but cannot tell if it is getting closer or farther away, listen to the pitch.  If the overall pitch gets higher, the vehicle is headed your way.

light weight running shoes.  My goal has never been to get done faster.  In fact I run with weights in my hands so light-weight would never interest me anyhow.  That aside, I don't seem to have delicate feet that require specialized shoes that do whatever those shoes are called upon to do.  In part this is due to the interval nature of my running (& by running I mean walk 1 minute, run 9-12 minutes.  Or rather stroll breathing deeply 1 minute & then jog chanting I hate this I hate this I hate this 9-12 minutes).  Or even the reality that most of my route is on dirt road so I don't have that jarring pavement-pounded feeling at the end.  Whatever the reason, whatever the cause I have 3 pairs of $50 sneakers & rotate through them depending on how wet it is outside (the oldest pair is for days I know I will run through deep puddles).

a heart or blood pressure monitor.  When it feels like my heart is going to pound right out of my chest, I slow down (don't worry mom, this hasn't happened in months & it was just that one time).  It turns out that the target heart rate for my age is almost certainly 5-8 beats per minute too fast so it is just as well I never aimed for any rate in particular. 

a pedometer.  I admit I would cruise past those displays of snazzy watches that also told you how far you had gone, but I run more or less the same route every day (adding a bit every now & then as my run sets get longer & I need to cover more road).  In the end it was easy enough to drive the route & look at the truck's odometer.  I was glad I did, too, because it turned out that the point on one stretch that mapquest & run keeper & google maps & all of those said was the mid-point actually isn't, if you drive (or run or walk).  This is because one side of that point is very flat & the other side of that point goes up & down what used to be fairly substantial gullies.  When the road was first created, it did not actually connect the two paved roads it now does; it dead ended at the last house.  The road was leveled & lime rocked to that point, but the dirt track that connected this point to the farmers field just a but further on got pushed further still until it came out on the county road.  This extension is not for the faint of heart or faint of suspension, as it can still wash out in a bad storm.  Running-wise, what with having to go down the side of one gully & then up the other side, & then do that again a couple more times, this 1/2 mile is actually more than a tenth of a mile longer than the other half.  Yes, yes, if I had a pedometer I would have known this sooner, but I still haven't bothered to get one.

& last but never least, Nike.  I have managed to avoid plonking down my money on what used to be the premier women's running brand & is now & will forever be those Michael Vick supporting corporate whores.  I know what they said, that they supplied equipment to the league & did not have any control over who used it within the league & my response is if Abercrombie & Fitch can ban fat people from working at their stores & the Situation from wearing their label anywhere in the rest of the world, it seems to me Nike could have said "while we appreciate the league doing us this huge favor of wearing our apparel at no charge to them, we would like you to stop handing it out to every felon on the payroll".  But Nike didn't & they have since gone on to sign Michael Vick to an endorsement deal.  That was Nike's call & they are entitled to it..  Walking quickly past every Nike rack in every sporting goods store everywhere is mine.

The race I will not be running

So.  Shortly after my 47th birthday I decided to start moving my ass (& not just from the kitchen to the tv room, etc.).  As of this morning, I am covering approx. 4 & 1/2 miles in walk-run (stroll-jog) intervals in just over an hour.  It is no the best hour of my day but the results are worth it.  No I am not losing weight hand over fist, but my hip (& all my joints) feel much better, I have more energy, blah blah blah. 

But back to the beginning.  I had decided, when I started-as part of my starting actually, that I wanted to run a 5K before the end of the year & it really looked like doing this was going to happen.  I was unlikely to win anything, but I could certainly finish.  Maybe finish last, but finish for sure.  & the race I had decided on was the first (& maybe last) Run with the Wild at Carson Springs Wildlife Conservation.

Up until maybe two weeks ago, I had every intention of running (with the wild or more likely trailing behind everyone else running with the wild).  Then a series of things happened here at home.  The short version is somehow we have two different significant yet not-emergency medical procedures scheduled in the ten days before the race & that the race is scheduled on the same day as the annual arts festival downtown (a festival I never remember happening in October before; all I can think it their usual weekend is homecoming this year & in their shoes I would find another weekend, too). 

Unrelated to my decision there are not one, not two, but three other running events scheduled for that same day.  Something called the Hustle for Humanity at Boulware Springs.  Another unknown-to-me called The Pickin' Patch with no links, but I am guessing might be the Florida Track Club's own autumn holiday event (it's on the calendar, but not being a member I know no details). & lastly the Halloween Hobble on campus. 

So for a number of reasons, I will not be running with the wild.  Or hobbling for Halloween.  Or hustling for humanity.  & I feel bad about it, the wild running one.  I hope they have it next year.  If anyone does run with the wild, let me know how much fun it was?  Please?

The 9 minute 1/2 mile

I still have not broken the 18 minute mile consistently; I can average it but not maintain it (there is always one set that runs a shave longer & one or two that run so much shorter).  I am still doing walking intervals every 4, 5, 6, 7 8 or 9 minutes though, so that probably explains the drag.  What I do know is that the two quickest half miles are absolutely covered in 9 minutes or less....each.

I realize of course that predicting the miles in general by the fastest half mile is absurd.  A funny thing about that--many many years ago (yes, we can say decades) I was briefly involved in collecting data about how children learn (specifically how they learn to express themselves).  My end of things was interviews designed (not by me) to elicit precisely the same response in terms of perspective, but record the different ways it was expressed.  By the parents.  I asked questions & parents answered knowing full well they were being recorded & these recordings would be seen & heard by the people who cared for their children & so, naturally, we expected lies about the home routine & BOY-O-BOY did we get them.  Seriously parents, the people who take care of your kids upwards of 4 hours a day know more about your life, including details of your sex life, than you do; they don't WANT to know, it just happens.  There is almost no point in telling these people anything that isn't true..

That is all an aside.  I am more interested these days in the data collection that was going on in the next office & by "office" I mean cubicle & by "next" I mean we shared a computer table that had a cardboard screen propped between the two monitors; our chairs were side-by-side.  There was roughly the level of privacy between us as there is between your child & the person changing your child's diaper.

What they were tracking was standardized test scores.  In those days, standardized tests were just a blip on the horizon.  When I was a high school freshman, our class was given a test along with a handful of other districts around the state.  As I understand it, the schools involved largely volunteered.  I have no memory of ever being given an all-students style test again.  Anyhow, the results of the annual volunteer tests were being gathered together & used to determine averages, highs, lows, etc.  I remember one memorable fall semester when for whatever reason a certain chunk of the test taking schools failed to forward their tests in time for the scores to be calculated & entered into the system before the student slave labor let for winter break.  Someone made the ingenious decision to just go with the test results they had in-house & for several years (& maybe still, I graduated after all & never looked back), it was the high water mark of standardized testing, as the averages of the class of  1988 were noticeably better than all the others.  It turns out, though, that schools that can turn in paperwork on time generally have higher scores on these things than schools that get bogged down.  Also shocker of shockers, schools that volunteer for these kinds of tests often have significantly higher scores than schools that don't.  Soooo, it seems that basing an average on the higher end of the performance scale may not be the best way to motivate everyone else to do better.

& we are back at my 9 minute 1/2 mile.  In short, it does not an 18 minute mile make.  Still, I am covering more ground in less time. 

The 19 minute mile

The original title of this post was The 19 minute mile.  Then on Sunday, A took my actual run-time divided by my actual distance & came up with just under 18 minutes, so I changed it.  & then on Monday I upgraded my hand weights & it is back to 19 minutes a mile. 

In other two steps forward/one step back news I have now officially lost four pounds.  Naturally that does not include the ten pounds I gained & then lost when I first started (seriously, I still don't know what was up with that).  & I still think the runner's high is an emperor's new clothes style myth; the only people I know who claim to have experienced it have later back tracked & said "it is not so much a high as a felling you could just keep going".  Uh huh.  I have been high & I have felt like I could just keep doing whatever it was I was doing; I am confident I would never confuse the two. 

I have, however, gotten to the point where my overriding thought during my run walk intervals (more accurately described as jog stroll intervals) is not how much I hate what I am doing, how much I hate that I will probably have to do it for the rest of my life, etc.  Now during the longer stretches my mind can wander to all sorts of things & sometimes I can kill whole minutes.  Trust me, this is a good thing.

I have discovered a few other good things that make the ordeal more bearable:

Edy's Fruit Bars, especially the lime ones.  I spend the whole second half of the journey fantasizing about the lime fruit bar I am going to have when I get home.  One time, we got back from a run & A***** declined her fruit bar because she was avoiding the sugar-carb-thing.  I was appalled. 

& I was glad to refer her to the next good thing I have found, The First 20 Minutes by Gretchen Reynolds wherein there is possibility that the ideal post-workout beverage just might be chocolate milk.  I don't actually like chocolate milk, but I don't like Gatorade or other sports beverages either (they feel slimy) & I felt qualified to make the substitution.  There is a whole host of really good information in this book.  If you don't want to buy a copy, get it out of the library.

I have also renewed my acquaintance with Boudreaux's Butt Paste.  Why was I already acquainted with this stuff, you ask?  Because one of my horses has a really fat ass.  I mean big round monster fat.  She has the upper-butt cleavage of a Kardashian (seriously, she has this long thick pony tail hanging down across this thing.  I point to it & ask what celebrity it reminders whomever of & no one has ever guessed anyone else).  & while I have no idea how the Kardashian's deal with it (& I am not asking, if anyone who reads this knows, please keep it to yourself), I have used Boudreaux's whenever Coco gets sores from one cheek rubbing against the other.  I will spare you the details, but I too found a use for Boudreaux's before I discovered compression running tights/capris/shorts. 

There is one thing I have found no use for & that is an iPod or playaway digital book player or whatever.  Having your ears covered by headsets while running is a mistake.  I run on a country road with very little traffic & I have had enough encounters to know I am safer if I can hear the car/truck/doberman/really unpleasant old man walking up behind me.  Also, if I wore headsets I never would have heard the birds or the frogs or the cicadas or any of the other wonderful things about running where I run.  I would not have gotten to know my neighbors (we have lived here since 1998 & I am just meeting half of them) & if I hadn't met them I would never have learned that one unpleasant old man was also the driver of the two different vehicles that honk at me when they drive by or that the ex-marine on the corner had a talk with the old man's son to get him to stop.  I probably also would not be trying to find homes for stray kittens, but they are worth it too.

Bishop strikes again

A few weeks ago, I related an encounter with a neighborhood doberman who scarred the crap out of me.  A day or two later, when I ran by the same house the woman made a point of coming out & talking to me, letting me know they were very sorry, he was a young dog it would never happen again, etc.  She seemed very contrite & I believed her.  She also insisted Bishop would never hurt anyone & I believe she believed it.

Since then I have been alert when I go by that house, but there was never another problem.  Until this morning.  While I was running on the opposite side of the street, I saw the front door open & a younger (I am guessing teenage) woman hauled Bishop out by his collar into the unfenced front yard & then quickly, so no one could see she was wearing nothing but pink underwear & a t-shirt, scooted back inside & shut the door.  Bishop started to sniff a bush or something, saw me running & took off after me.  I screamed HEY HEY, the door opened the girl called Bishop back in (& he went) & that was more or less it. 

Actually she called out "Sorry, he has never done that before" & I answered "Fuck you, this is the second time he has done that to ME".  I guess those years in Joisey never really left my psyche.  The woman/girl looked quite startled (I don't think she was used to complete strangers talking to her like that, never mind at 8:30 in the morning).

I did my usual run & when I went back past Bishop's house there was no people visible & no Bishop.  There was also no street number on the mailbox or I would have made a call to animal control when I got home.  We live in a rural enough area that the houses while more or less numbered in order, the numbers don't follow one another very closely; we are 1713, our immediate neighbor is 1805.  Further up the street where the lots are closer together they are numbered, I kid you not: 727, 729, 713, & 733.  The lots were renumbered in the 1980's to make ambulance service faster but, well, someone screwed up. Once when 713 actually needed an ambulance, the crew spent precious minutes looking for the house along the stretch of road where 713 would be if there was one (there isn't; it's a field); now when she calls for anything from the county, she gives the number of the house next door & someone goes into the street to flag it down.  Big improvement.

So.  A thinks I should go to the house, knock on the door & explain why this business of letting a doberman run free is not the best plan.  I feel like that has 1) already been established & 2) they don't actually believe it is a problem.  I don't expect animal control will do a damn thing until they get complaints from several people over time, but I also think it needs to start some where. 

Running with the girls

I am a 36 C.  Not small, but not big really.  Just enough to be very uncomfortable during anything bouncy; when I go horse back riding I wear not one but two high impact sports bras.  That's in Florida heat, on top of a sweaty horse.  Believe me, I wish there was a better choice.  Turns out, there is.

Flash forward to my 47th birthday when I decided I was going to run a 5k later this year.  I started by walking away from home for 30 minutes & then walking back along the same route (one of my goals throughout this has been to take no more than an hour a day for this & mostly that has been do-able).  By the second week, I was ready to do one minute run/one minute walk intervals.  That first time was brutal.  I had only a moderate impact bra that fit comfortably & it was far from adequate.

Once I got home I had the struggle that is getting out of a heavy-duty, strap-them-down-like-a-bullet-proof-vest style bra.  I tried to avoid looking at myself in the mirror during the whole thing.  More than once I have come in from the barn & needed A's help to pull one of those things over my head (seriously, if it gets twisted under one arm & pins the other, you are screwed); trying to pull two off, one over the other is quite the operation.  One wrong move & you are trapped in a sequence that looks more like a snake regurgitating a belly dancer than anything else.  It feels like that, too.

Later that same day, I trucked down to Sports Authority & against my nature plonked down $30 for a new high impact bra.  It is also a zip-front bra, a style I have seen of course but always thought was too stoopid to be worth the extra $$; I only got it this time because it was on a clearance rack & marked down (that's right, marked down to $30).  When this thing is on it makes me look flat-chested, except for the strange ridge that is the zipper itself. 

So the next day, I put it on & went for my intervals.  Let's just say it was not until I got all the way to the last set that I remember I had ever been bothered by bounce bounce bounce.  This gave me more opportunity to concentrate on all the other things I hate about running, but still an improvement.  When I got home & ready to shower, zzzzzzzzzzzzzip & I was free.

Since then I have gathered up all the old style, zipper free sports bras & sent them off into the world.  I have no idea if Goodwill sells slightly (too slightly) used sports bras, but there they went.  I wore & washed that first zip-front bra every day for a couple weeks until I found them (much cheaper) on-line.  I would have paid full price at Sports Authority but they have a policy against stocking anything that might sell well; I know this because I asked the cashier if this was the case & she said it does sometimes seem like that yes.

My first near miss dog attack

I have been running for, well, weeks now.  I don't know how long exactly.  Since between April & May bookclub, like that clears it up.  Mostly it sucks.  But overall it sucks less than it did; I do not imagine there will ever be a time when it sucks not at all.

One thing that does not suck is my route.  It is mostly well shaded, mostly on dirt road, over all scenic & pleasant.  There is not much traffic except during melon or berry harvest & even then I am a familiar enough sight that most of the drivers slow down so as not to bury me in sand (I still come home, brush my teeth & spit sand out, but that is like on a dirt road during a drought; that would happen whether I ran the route or just weeded the roses in the front yard).

Recently I added a bit more distance & as it happens this takes me not even 1/4 mile down a paved road, past 1/2 a dozen ordinary neighborhood houses.  Yesterday in front of one of these houses I almost got much too close to a very fit, very well cared for, very well trained Doberman Pinscher.

I was running past the house.  I was in the street (there is no sidewalk & I only go up on to the grass when there is a car coming towards me or the water level is over the tops of my sneakers).  I do not run with ear buds.  I did not have either of my "dangerous breed" dogs on a lead with me.  I heard a small yappy dog, turned my head & saw a white west highland looking terrier type coming across the lawn & maybe 4 feet away, getting into a crouch position was a garden variety doberman.  It was not particularly large, but it was less than two full bounds away.

I screamed "Hey Hey" & ran backwards towards the center of the road & the lady of the house came either around the side of the house or out of the open garage (you can imagine what I was looking at & believe I was not scanning the background for people).  She called the dog by name, both dogs IMMEDIATELY stood down & walked back towards her.  After she had them she kept calling "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry" as I continued my run around the corner & away.

& that was the whole thing, attack-wise.  The scariest part is of course the complete silence of the attack dog.  Funnily enough, I run past (twice actually as this part of the route is a double back) another house with a doberman & a different breed (bigger breed) of very vocal sidekick every single run.  That dobie is also the strong silent type, mostly hangs back but occasionally lopes to the fence.  That's right, those people have 5 foot high fence.  All of us, me the dogs, we are all clear what side of the fence we belong on & I am sure that makes all the difference.

Running, so far

Sometime after the second Tuesday in April & before the second Tuesday in May, I started running.   Kind of like Forrest Gump, I just started.   I did however have a particular reason:  & I didn't just start running, I started one minute intervals.  Eight of them, which took me not quite a 3/4 of a mile, but since I went in one direction for 1/2 a mile, I ended up walking back whatever was left over after the 8th run.

After a couple weeks, I went to the end of the dirt road, just a shave under one mile, & then back, still one minute running, one minute walking.  Then I started pushing some of the sets to two minutes (the running sets, not the walking ones), then added another 1/2 mile to the loop.

That is more or less where I am right now.  I have also gained 4 pounds since I started; if I lose another pound I will be where I was when I started running.  The sloooooooow scale up means no shin splints or post-running pain of any kind (except mild muscle soreness, I mean c'mon). 

My goal is to run a local 5k in October & so far, so good.  I don't care if I am dead last, but I want to finish.  I need to add a third mile by the end of June, & a fourth by the end of July while pushing the running from one to two to three etc. minutes at a stretch. 

As for the running itself?  I mostly hate it.  I ran right after tropical depression Beryl, on a dirt road when a good bit of my route was under water well over the tops of my sneakers; this run was not significantly worse than any of the others.   Actually, the rain pouring down my face, behind my glasses, while not exactly fun, was kind of cooling.  What I like is the pain I used to have in my hip when I sat for a long time is gone.  Also, I feel free to eat anything I want (little window into how I am gaining weight & why I say IF I lose another pound).  yesterday I had a KitKat for breakfast.

The 20 minute mile

I started intervals (1 minute run, 1 minute walk) about 8 weeks ago.   As of this morning, I am up to 2 miles a day & by this time next month, it will be at least 3; my goal being to run a 5k (3.1 miles) later this year.  It will come as a surprise to no one who has ever started this sort of thing that when I first started I was walking/running about 1 mile & it took more or less the same amount of time it takes today: 45 or so minutes door to door.

During this training I have learned a few things, not the least of which is while I don't exactly feel better, I certainly don't feel worse-joint pain & muscle ache wise.  Every book I have read tells me this means I am scaling up exactly right.  A was telling me I should be "a bit more ambitious".  The last time he said this to me he was running from side to side in front of me, trying to get me to pick up speed.  He hasn't run with me since because he hurt his knee.

There is also a lot of new gear on the market since the last time I did anything like this &, not surprisingly, most of it is crap & some is so wonderful I don't know how I lived without it.  Naturally, if you were to start running with me, you would feel the same way, but probably about different things.  For example, shoe technology has passed me by.  It turns out I have ALWAYS run in the barefoot style (while wearing sneakers, conflicted I know) even when someone was trying to correct me.  As a result, high tech cushioning or impact absorbing treads are make a negligible difference to me.  I realize I am in the minority; too many runners will talk for too long about what shoes they had when they ran which course.

One new thing that I mocked (MOCKED) was the zip-front sports bra.  What a ridiculous notion.  That Ice Loves Coco is dominated by this particular wardrobe item did not add to its cache as far as I was concerned.  But I had to buy a new bra & the only one on the clearance rack that met other requirements (size, high impact) happened to be a zip-front style & since I could not bring myself to pay full-price for a different style...  To make a long story short, if you have ever been sweaty & sore & become entangled while trying to get out of your sports bra, zip-front is the way to go. 

Next week, I start with my new super skin tight leggings.  Not because I am getting chills or even chafed, but because all the sunblock on the market is not keeping me from getting burned.  I will let you know how it goes.