Happy face!!

I will give you 2 guesses to figure out why this Lucy puppy face is so ridiculously happy.

Ok, go.

What's that?  Did she just expend all her energy eating the world's largest, tastiest baby carrot?

Nope, try again.

You're not very good at this game.  No, I did not just let her lick her butt for as long as she wanted without yelling at her, poking her, or slowing tipping her over from the top curve of her back.  If you knew me at all, you would know that would never allow that to happen.

Ok, guessing is over.  She is fantastically amazingly smiley faced because she got to do this today:

She may not look as happy here, but I think
that's because she was confused about why
I kept sticking my phone in her face.

See the high step of the paw?   The angled flap of the ears?  That, my friends, is no walking step.  That is a run!  Yay!!  Lucy got to run!  Guilt assuaged.  Satisfaction with spending time with my dog heightened.  Life good.  Incomplete sentences over.  For now.  Oops, now.

A number of circumstances aligned in order for Lucy and I to finally run again together.  The main reason is because I will be missing my Team in Training long run this Saturday morning in order to attend a training.  Now that I'm officially a National Board Certified Teacher, I get invited to exciting conferences where I get to learn about how to be a "leader."  I remember learning how to be a leader in Girl Scouts back in elementary school.  Hopefully this conference will be a little more sophisticated.  Nonetheless, it is causing me to miss my regular Saturday run.  Normally, if I miss a Saturday run, I'd make it up on Sunday.  However, this Sunday, I have another 50 mile bike ride planned, so running won't be happening.  The next option used to be Friday evening long runs, but I've been working Friday nights as a hostess at a local brewery for about a year and a half now (yay free shift beer and half priced dinner!), so that's not an option either.

So, I get pushed to a Thursday evening long run.  The regularly scheduled bike ride for Thursday was effectively cancelled because I wasn't the only one who couldn't attend.  Long runs after work are particularly difficult.  When I was training for the Victoria Marathon, I had a week where I had to do a 14 mile run on a Thursday after school, and it was miserable.  I remember my legs refusing to work.  Today wasn't that bad (I made it 9.52 miles according to my watch), but it wasn't my best 90 minute run by far.  Here are the splits from the run today:

My pace is incredibly up and down, which is pretty much how the run felt.  I started out with Lucy knowing that she wouldn't run the full 90 minutes with me.  It's been several weeks since we ran together, and dog conditioning is like human conditioning--I just didn't know how far or fast she can handle right now.  I never take her on runs longer than 7 miles and typically, she doesn't like running fast anyways.  When we were both running together fairly frequently, I could coax her into a sub 9 minute pace, but I think she's much happier trotting along at a 10 minute pace.

You can see though that she trucked right along with me the first mile.  I think she was just ecstatic to be out there with me.  When I got home from work and started putting on running clothes, she actually got depressed and went and lay down in the bedroom.  But then once the empty poop bags started getting folded and stuffed into the water belt, she was crying and running laps between the living and bedroom to warm up.

In mile 3, we had fun figuring out how to get pictures of dog running in action.  This was fun and entertaining, but did slow our pace.  Here are the results of the photo shoot:

Weird close up of my hand, water belt, and
a prancing paw way down in the corner.

A little better after I remembered I can push
the volume button on the side of the phone
to snap the shot.  Half a smiley face and
an in action human foot.

A little better, but she could easily be walking
here with a very disturbed looking ear.

After many more of these fun shots, we finally settled on the good one posted up above.  And then there's smiley face, which I will post again.

Because it's just awesome.

At mile 4, we hit some pretty tough hills, and I can't blame the slow pace entirely on Lucy.  I live at the top of Phinney Ridge, and to get back home, we have to climb the ridge.  Then once we got to the top, Lucy was pretty spent, so I kept it at a slow pace for her until I could drop her off.  We made it back home in exactly 4 miles.

After dropping Lucy off, I went back out for the remaining 50 minutes of my run.  I ran around the zoo and hooked up with the outer loop of Green Lake.  I have a love/hate relationship with Green Lake.  I've run it a ton, so sometimes I get sick of it.  But it's a good flat loop for tired days.  On nice sunny days though, it gets packed with runners, walkers, and people who feel the need to come outside only when it's sunny.  I looped a little over half the lake in miles 6 and 7 and you can tell I was anxious to get through there.  I entertained myself by observing the odd selection of clothing runners choose to wear around the lake.  First of all, there's a lot of cotton.  The first lesson I learned as an endurance runner: cotton is not your friend.  Invest in a tech tee (or run a race where they give you a free one).  You'll love it, I promise.  There was also one 20-something looking guy who sped by me wearing minimalist shoes and cargo pants (ouch?).  I'm also baffled that people are still wearing long sleeved running shirts.  Put them away!  Don't you know that if it's above 55 degrees in Seattle you are supposed to wear shorts and t-shirts?  It's the rule.  And then there's the big basketball looking guys wearing big basketball shorts and shoes, loping along as if their knees can't bend.

I'm sorry, I'm not judgmental.  Really.  Just trying to occupy my mind on the longest run I've done by myself in what I can safely say is probably over a year.

After speeding through Green Lake, I slowed the pace a little to make it back up the hill towards home.  As I climbed, I fought the good fight again, telling my legs to keep moving.  I'm certainly feeling a strength in my legs I haven't felt before, but they are tired.  I've pushed them through many miles on foot and pedal in the past couple weeks, and I think they are happy to be tapering in the running at least.  

I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that my bike rides aren't going to ruin the good effects of my marathon taper.  San Diego is 2 weeks and 2 days away.  I'm thinking after the 50 miler this weekend, I'll go easy on the bike the week before the race to give my legs the full rest and recovery time they need.

For now, I'm going to continue filling my bottomless pit of a stomach with food, try to get some good sleep, and look forward to another run with Lucy on Saturday after my conference.  Because then I will get to see this face again:

Yes, again :)