Running Chick

Here’s a gigantic picture of me & Zoe, our new dog.

Zoe was living in Negaunee with her foster family but she came from a shelter in Texas where she was picked up as a stray.  We’ve been wanting a dog for a while, but our old place was small and had a small yard, not exactly dog appropriate. Now that we’ve moved out to BFE and have a bigger house with a lot of land, it was time. We adopted her through the Because of Mandy shelter in Calumet.

Zoe is about 8 months old and is some sort of shepherd mix. I’ve been told she looks like a miniature German Shepherd, but I don’t know what else is in her mix. We picked her up last night and spent most of the evening cleaning up after her. Not exactly as housebroken as I would have liked.  I’m hoping that was just because of the new environment and all the excitement. Fortunately, she is crate trained, so she stayed in there in the night and didn’t have any accidents.

I took the day off to spend some quality time with her, so off we went shopping for a new leash, collar and harness, then we went running. Zoe’s primary job will be to accompany me on my runs. I’m not an overly paranoid person, but what with living out in the boonies where there are wolves and bears and cougars and creepy looking dudes, it was either get a dog or get a gun.  I would probably shoot myself if I ever had to use a gun, so yeah. Dog.

I had four miles on the schedule and since this was Zoe’s first run, my plan was to do them slowly. Our run started at the Houghton waterfront park and we went to campus to visit Josh, then we ran back.  Our first mile was a little rocky with lots of getting tangled in the leash, stopping to sniff stuff and attempting to eat random things, 13:53. Second mile was better, she started to get the hang of running (or, trotting, really) beside me, less tangles, less sniffing, no eating random stuff, 12:06.

After a quick stop on campus to visit with Josh and other random IT nerds who happened to walk by (Uncle James!), we started our journey back to the park. She ran right by my side, no random veering in my path, no stopping. I did discover that she seems to be pretty skittish around cars and seemed a little freaked out at the lunchtime traffic on College Avenue so we worked our way back down to the waterfront trail. We did 12:02 for this mile.

Our final mile was the fastest and the best. Either she’s a really quick learner or she was just too tuckered out to care, but she stuck by my side or a little bit ahead of me and we just cruised along. She got a little distracted by the guys setting up the Kiwanis chicken barbeque at the Dee Stadium, but I don’t blame her, I did too. It smelled so good. Anyway, our final mile was a speedy 11:19.

She had a quick dip in the canal afterwards (ice bath!) and did some stretching in the grass (injury prevention!).

Now she’s sacked out in her crate (recovery!)

Check out those long legs. Wonder if ProCompression makes socks in her size?

I finished up my last run of July tonight.  8 miles around Houghton & Hancock.  It was super windy and my legs felt like lead.  Not my best run, but it is what it is.  I calculated (erm, SportTracks calculated) my totals for the month and I was surprised to see that I ran 110 miles in July.

June's total was 68.33 miles so that's quite a jump.  My mileage is only going to go higher because...

So, yeah.

I finally made it back on track this week, (mostly) hitting my allotted miles.

Monday was 5 miles accompanied by Josh, who hasn’t done any running since ... March? He’s busy training for RAGBRAI (next week!), so I guess it’s okay.  Check out this elevation profile:

That’s 2.5 miles out & back on the S. Superior/N. Superior Roads.  I was able to make it the entire way up S. Superior Road without stopping, something I’ve been trying to do since April when we moved out here.  It’s pretty challenging, especially the last mile or so on S. Superior Road.  That portion’s in red on the chart because it’s OMG STEEP.

Wednesday was a boring 5 miler around the neighborhood. Nothing interesting to report other than the neighbor down the street is building a garage.  Thursday was a cautious 1 mile run to see how my knee did on back-to-back days. It felt a little stiff, but pretty good overall.

Saturday I did my long run of 11 miles which turned into 12 miles because I ended with 11.68 miles at the driveway. This is unacceptable! So I ran up & down the street until I got to 12 miles. My OCD alter ego felt smug afterwards.

Josh accompanied me on his bike and our route took us down Cole’s Creek Road to Old Mill Road, back to Atlantic Mine via the snowmobile trail, then back home.  The snowmobile trail has seen a lot of ATV traffic, the surface was churned up to the consistency of beach sand. I’m pretty certain quads had flames shooting out of them at several points during that stretch and Josh hit a particularly soft section that had him proclaiming that he needed a fat bike.  Not until you sell one of of your other five bikes, Mister. 

The weather was much more cooperative compared to last Saturday. Temps in the low-mid 70s, overcast and a little breezy.  We got rained on a couple of times, but nothing lasting longer than 10 minutes.

Weekly recap:  Monday 5 @ 10:57, Wednesday 5 @ 10:27, Thursday 1 @ 10:07 and Saturday 12 @ 11:03 for a total of 23 miles.  Plus one 13 mile mountain bike ride with Josh thrown in on Thursday.  Next week I have 26 miles on the schedule, my long run will be the Canal Run half marathon, which I’ll be running with this dude.

Behold my sexsay orange socks.  I’ve been having some lower leg achiness after my long runs, so I decided to wear my ProCompression socks and see if they helped.  I usually wear them around the house after my long runs because, well, they’re a little goofy looking, but I already look like a doofus when I’m running, so why not go full on?  Not only were they comfortable during my run, I didn’t have any soreness or aching legs/ankles at all during the rest of the day or Sunday morning.  Hm, there might be something to this compression stuff.  Time to go shopping for more colors.