The Time Has Come...

Workout: 9 miles, 10:09 average

... to rethink this whole "run with Bailey at all costs" mindset I seem to have developed. But more about that later.

Today was a truly spectacular day!

EXHIBIT A

EXHIBIT B

Yesterday's snow left everything looking all pretty and fairy land-ish and the bright sun was a welcome surprise (except for when it was blinding me-I had kind of forgotten that was a thing).

I was dallying back and forth on whether I'd actually do 9 today or if I'd do some today and tack some onto tomorrow's run for Bailey's sake (Christ, reading that makes me want to vomit-I'm one of those dog freaks now!). Once I saw the sun shining, however, I knew we were in it for the long haul. We started from the dog park and ran farther on the miraculous trail I discovered a couple of weeks ago and completed a glorious 9 miles. Except not really. Which brings me to the title of this post.

Oh, Bailey, Bailey, Bailey, how you cause me so much emotional pain (note: "so much" is relative). I feel incredibly guilty not taking her with me on my runs because I'm pretty much the only person who walks her. She always has a grand ole time and usually the main annoyance comes from holding the heavy leash the entire time. She gets her exercise, I get my dog bonding time, she loves me best-everyone's happy. Except I think the golden days are over (unintended pun success: she's a golden retriever).

I knew 9 miles was probably pushing it. She did really well on our 8 miles a couple of weeks ago, but I had a bad feeling about 9. Call it ESPN (Mean Girls, anyone? Bueller?). There was so much stopping today so she could sniff things and pick up sticks and do whatever it is that dogs do. It was extremely frustrating. She also caused me to get a death glare from a woman when she (the horror!) started running towards her.

We need to stop and talk about this woman before we move on. Bailey was on a leash, and she's the least vicious dog ever. She does not bark (I repeat: DOES NOT BARK. I don't even know what her bark sounds like because she's never done it in front of me) and she is terrified of other dogs, including tiny puppies and little weenie dogs. There's your background. So this woman is moseying along the path with her stupid little weenie dog (wearing a sweater-duh), and Bailey shies away from the dog because she's scared. We pass the dog and Bailey gets excited about the woman, so she skips towards her. She's on a leash and so I immediately pull her back. The woman makes a snorting noise, causing me to turn around to apologize, only to be met with THE WORST look I've ever gotten in my life. This harpy would have put Medusa to shame. No words, just a stare. Like she wanted me to drop dead on the spot. What a bitch. This is a gross generalization, but 9 times out of 10, when a fellow dog owner gets pissed about your dog being a dog, they own a tiny yappie dog. Take from that what you will.

So anyway, no one gets pissed at my dog but me. Which I was, but just because she kept making me stop. I don't want to force her to move on every time she stops because I worry about whether the run is too hard on her, but this was ridiculous. We were stopping for 30+ seconds probably every half mile. Plus she was running right in front of me and going slower than I would have liked.

I do believe it took much longer than this is claiming.

Anyway, I think the honeymoon's over-no more dog on long runs. Turd. That last mile, free of annoying dog and annoying dog leash, was bliss.

So how'd it go apart from these non-issue issues? Really well! I felt fine the entire time. I think I could have gone a lot faster than I was going, and it wasn't until the very last mile that I started feeling any fatigue. And my shins felt great! Perhaps it's the layer of snow padding my footsteps (although there's been at least one study that found that impact forces are surprisingly higher on softer surfaces than on cement. I'd link to it, but I'm entirely too lazy. Go find it for me and report back), or just Hal's plan paying off. And now that I said that I'm probably going to report back with one billion fractured tibiae (is that really the plural, Merriam-Webster?) in like a week.