Mmmmm...Pizza.

...Author's note, this first section was written yesterday on my phone and I don't care to change the date references and such...

This here was arguably the best pizza I've ever made.  Dinner last night, couldn't help but gloat.

I'm currently stuck in Santa Cruz awaiting the magic hour of 2:30 at which time I'll be able to pick up a piece of paper which I needed renewed. Then I'll go wait in another line and hopefully, finally get my residency paperwork finished and off to La Paz.

My run today is a sacrifice to the gods of bureaucracy.  Yesterday though I got a number of running things done.  One thing I've never done is to really work on my form. So I Googled about and found some form drills for barefoot runners. The first link had a bunch of good stuff which isn't terribly surprising considering the author.  While I'm not a fan of his shoes, I am a fan of his philosophy...

The drills consist of things like running in place with a focus on high cadence or knee lift,  butt kicks and jumping rope.  So I spent quite some time chasing and/or being chased by Deneb around the house all the while doing these silly drills (except the rope jumping). He thought it a good time.

I also set up a track consisting of thirty bricks in an oval which I then proceeded to do laps around barefoot. I had thought Deneb would dig this too, but I was mistaken, he rather quickly decided I was working in the (author's note - end of stuff written yesterday) yard and complained "No Ayu-u-da"...

Speed work done, I put on my vffs and got out and ran another 5.5 miles slowly while I thought about picking up my foot rather than pushing off with it.  I actually got in a mile more than I had anticipated because, even though I was tired from the previous 2 days efforts, it just felt good to be running.  I didn't really want to stop.

This photo was taken about 2.5 miles into my run, and the one below is at about mile 3.

Much of my running here is on sandy dirt roads.  Depending on what the weather has been like, the sand can be pretty deep.  Makes for an interesting workout.

Yesterday (really), I finally got my paperwork approved and off to La Paz.  In 3 weeks I'll have a sticker which says I can stay in Bolivia unmolested for a full year.  I was done with that finally around 6PM.  When I called Nataly to hopefully have her pick me up, instead she said, "I've got a few more things to do could you come over here?"

I ran.

Pretty nice spectacle too.  Tan dress slacks, blue cotton button down short sleeve wide open, dress shoes.  More than one person actually laughed at me.  Whatever.  I got 31 minutes running on a day I thought a run would be sacrificed to the gods of bureaucracy - should that be the name of a band?

thanks for reading

J