Goat-head doesn’t flatten the spirit of Bella…
It’s official. The plug has been pulled. I had a great time racing cross last Friday, but I am tired. It was a good time to line up and not put pressure on myself to have a perfect race. The only problem with that is you have already allowed yourself to slack off just a touch. Racing is racing and that lack of putting a bit of pressure on myself makes the race not feel quite right. Thinking about it all Saturday and Sunday and talking to SkinnyB helped make the decision. It was already decided based on my race season plan, but it had to be decided again after remembering how fun it is to eat dust and get muddy on a cross bike.
SkinnyB’s recommendation is to sit on the couch for a month. While that sounds appealing, I just can’t help myself. The doggies have been waking up a bit too much at night so I decided I would work on wearing them out once I got home from work. Rocco and Bella go nuts whenever the collars and leashes are out. They know it’s time for some freedom from the backyard whether it’s a walk/run or a trip to City Pet Club. It’s tough to get the collar on Rocco because he’s jumping up in the air and running around in circles. We finally were ready to head out and the moment we made it to the front yard they turned on the watts.
Rocco has the Nordic dog build, square and powerful. Bella is just a big girl and could probably run all day. So for the first 15 minutes of the run we were going nearly twice as fast as I had planned. Any of you runners out there: if you need some speedwork, come get my dogs. It was just like motorpacing on the bike behind Anheuser. We were rolling along the Porter Rockwell trail towards 1300 and I could see that Rocco was finally settling down a bit. Bella did her typical scan of trail ahead of us and then looking over her shoulder to see what was behind.
When we turned around just shy of 1300 I noticed Bella was favoring in her stride. We stopped and I lifted up each paw. One of her rear paws had a goat-head stuck in it. Good thing she’s loaded up with Tufo sealant. I pulled it out carefully and she was ready to rock. Both of the doggies just kept on going, making me want to keep on going. We finished things off with a loop up onto a trail between the neighborhood and the new section of Bangerter up towards Traverse. It was nice to get out and do a nice run with the pups. Turns out, they put the hurt on me.
Back to doggies motorpacing runners, I remembered Skijoring, doggies motorpacing skiers. Check out http://www.skijornow.com/skijornowhome.html for some cool information. Make sure to look at the photo gallery. Looks like a lot of fun!