Strange couple of days running.

Running the last few days has been odd.  I took 3 days off over the weekend, and when I returned to work, my heart rate was through the roof.  This often happens when I take some time off, but I was surprised to see it this time.  Things seemed to be returning to normal today though, I'll be checking the garmin file against similar workouts from the last couple of weeks to see how normal.

There are a couple likely reasons for the odd behavior in my chest.  The first is mentioned above, but it's also been quite hot here.  We're in the 3rd or 4th week of winter and the only reason I've been wearing a shirt while running is to keep my skin attached to my corpse (it's been fantastically windy the last several days).  Wednesday I suffered from a pretty hideous bonk and yesterday I was challenged by a fierce headwind on my way back to the house.

Other than the weird internal goings on, there's little remarkable to report on the running front.  It's been a sort of a "day at the office" kind of week, with the exception that I saw a little (perhaps even tiny) owl today.  I'm not sure if it was a juvenile or full grown adult, but it was no longer than 10 inches from the tip of it's tail to it's beak.  It may have been a burrowing owl, but the image I dug up just feels a little off.  Will be keeping my eyes out for the dude.

Once past the owl, as I was coming into the final mile of my run, I heard some strange footsteps behind me.  I regularly get chased by dogs down here, but they're always barking and being generally hideous.  This thing wasn't barking.  I turned around and what was chasing me, but a freaking pissed off lamb and it's younger sibling.  Thing was jumping into the air and butting it's head at me.  Really kind of surreal.

Anyway, thanks for reading and be careful with the wildlife.
J

Run Bare?

I started running again last week, but I was slowed by some gimpiness.  Early, it was the knee, later some real tightness in my hamstrings (?).  Pain manifested itself as a significant decrease in flexibility and actual excruciation in my lowest back.  It's worst when I wake up in the morning, and actually got me out of an afternoon of work on Friday, but the symptoms faded over the weekend and acetaminophen takes out the morning gimpiness very quickly.

I ran a few miles and actually really stretched one out on Saturday.  Not sure how fast it was because I haven't been wearing my watch since Friday, but Homey was having trouble hanging on...

It is kind of nice not having that thing strapped to my wrist.  Toward the end of the Stb50, I was feeling encumbered by it.  It actually hurt my wrist enough to where I took it off and clipped it to my waist pack.

Western Grebe
Image from vancouverislandbirds.com/Journal211.html

On Saturday, we all (my mom, Nataly, the Bean, Homey and I) went for a walk around McIntosh Lake.  The lake was really low, and there were tons of birds out - pelicans, geese, a heron and grebes.  I'm not 100 percent on the grebes, they were far off and I didn't have binocs, but the coloring and behavior made sense.

Anyway, the Bean was in his chariot and Homey and I were pushing it, sometimes jogging, sometimes walking, and sometimes chasing his Mom.  He seems to think riding in that thing is about as much fun as he can have sitting down - that's good because I'll be picking him up with it tonight.

Anyway the "running" I did without the watch seemed more fun and less like work without my GPS, so I think I'll start going "bare" there too, at least when a workout doesn't have a specific purpose.  Unfortunately, that won't be the case for today's lunch run, because I've got an agenda - work on speed...
Thanks for reading,
J