Weekly Wrap-Up

John building a fire perfect for chasing away skunks. Or not.

Weekly Wrap-Up

A camping trip on the weekend had me rearrange my running schedule.  On my Friday morning run I felt the difference between running and training. If I wasn't training for something I would have shortened my long run or skipped it all together.  

Monday- I should have got up and run but with it being the holiday and I was lazy I didn't.

Tuesday- 8x 800's at track.  Overall good but an eye-opener to how far I need to go.

Wednesday- 4 mile easy run in the morning winding through the neighborhood.  Had I run on Monday I wouldn't have had to run Tuesday night and again Wednesday.  It was a long run weaving along the streets but managed the 4 miles.

Thursday- 4 mile goal paced run in the morning with a mile warm-up and cool-down.   Pretty close to hitting the paces but not where I need to be yet.  Realize that perhaps a Nov half may not be the time to get a PR. I'll have to see what these next weeks bring.

Friday - I needed to do my 10 mile long run before work since we were camping this weekend.  Got up at 4:30am to be out the door at 5am.  After what seemed like 30 minutes of running, I hit the 1/2 mile mark.  Boy, it was going to be a long run.  After 3 miles I passed the Chevron station and was now in an area I only ran when running longer than 6 miles.  It was nice to have new road to trod on.  I managed to speed up on the way home and run under 9's.  I was late however getting to work and rather tired in the morning but felt like I accomplished something.

Saturday- off from running but hiked around.  We went up a hill to discover a ranger house with a fire watch tower.  The guy manning it invited us up and we were able to see for miles. 

Sunday- 3 miles by the campground with lots of hills at elevation of 7800.  

Total Miles 29.22.  Almost the same miles as last week.  I should start to increase some as I build up my long run.

Eating:  I was actually down in weight due to my excellent eating this week.  That is, up-till Friday.  When I camp I eat and drink foods that I don't usually have. Tasty jalapeño potato chips were opened with minutes of arriving at the campsite chased down by my Sangria Barcardi drink and Chips AHoy cookies followed dinner.  Now that it's Sunday night, I have a couple more hours of poor eating and tomorrow I'll resume being good again.

Core: Crap.  Non-existent this week except in thought.  

Completely un-related to running we had  visitors last night at our campsite.  I heard something and grabbed the light and was looking for something big, like a deer ( or a human serial killer lurking in the dark), and saw a feather looking thing by our trash bag.  The black and white wispy tail had me stare in amazement.  A skunk was rummaging through the trash bag we had forgotten to put away.  We stood and watched with the flashlight shining on it wondering what action to take if it came near us.  I caught a glint of eyes from another direction and a 2nd skunk came towards the first one to check out what it found. They immediately started to wrestle for the goods and little grunts came from the skunks.  The winner stayed for more rummaging and the loser walked away stopping at a bush with its tail up.  I think it was marking its spot as compared to a warning to us. It showed zero fear of us.  After the 2nd skunk left a bigger skunk (dad maybe) sauntered through but didn't go for the trash bag but wandered around for a bit.  Finally, I felt safe enough to grab the trash bag, throw it into the truck and zip myself safely into the tent.  I was done waiting to see if the skunk was going to come my direction.  John said he saw a skunk in the morning on the road wandering around. Since skunks are nocturnal was it stumbling home after a long night out with the boys?  Or was it a rabid skunk looking for a victim?

Sunset on the Pinal Mountains

View from the pinal mountains. At night, you could see the Phoenix city lights

Happy Running!