A Boy and His Dog

Meet Moose.  He's a poodle in the guise of stuffed animal.  He also is apparently invertebrate, based on the way he stretches out for a nap.  Like his spine is a slinky.




So the way it works in Spotted Dog Land is that after dinner I return to my lair (aka studio) and Clark and Moose stretch out downstairs on the sofa to watch a little television.  And in order to keep our marital bond strong, we occasionally text back and forth.  (I know!  You're blown away by the romance!)

Clark's favorite topic for the nightly check-in is the Sleeping Moose Selfie   You'll notice a certain pattern in Clark and Moose's night.






After a while I commented on how serious they both are.  So the next few nights Clark added some enthusiasm to the project.  Makes all the difference.

January Run

I went running in Bent Creek yesterday morning - 6 miles (more or less), with the first half pretty much up hill, and the last half pretty much downhill.  That's the beauty of Bent Creek - you kind of get fit in a hurry.

It turned out the weather was amazing.  Cold but not freezing, with the bluest sky I've seen in days.  So I tried to commemorate it - but the sun was so bright, and the leaf-less trees so not-really-appealing, that I wasn't all that successful.  As you'll note:

In fact the best pictures were no doubt of my running partners:

 They are the best.  I swear Moose grins at me the whole time, and Eli is on constant alert. (True story - he scared the beejezus out of a pit bull mix that was chasing Moose, and ran the pit back to his owner.  And Eli is the little one.  Except he's a terrier, and thus the normal rules of canine size don't apply to him.)

I also added the obligatory self portrait, although turns out self portraits taken after running in the cold for a half hour are not the most flattering option.  But still, I'm sure you can tell how much fun I was having.  And I'll keep telling myself that's the point of the running self-portrait.

But, the biggest point of this post, and I'm playing it cool so I waited until the end to really point it out, is that I RAN 6 MILES YESTERDAY!!  And my foot was pretty cooperative.  Couldn't be happier about that.  (ok, I could be happier - I could be happier if I hadn't thought my heart was going to explode going up that first climb on Ingles Field Gap - but that's the part about Bent Creek getting you fit in a hurry, and also that small wrinkle did not overshadow my general very-happiness to be running.)

Wrecked

I was planning on the Hot Chocolate 10-K being a blip on my screen - one hard fun day that slipped seamlessly into my training plan.  Except that's not exactly how it's turning out so far.  Because I'm *still* not quite right.  (If you ride horses, you'll understand when I say I'm NQR.)  I was so sore I could barely walk through Tuesday (Sam had to slow down in the grocery store so I could keep up), and I was semi-mobile by Wednesday, but mysterious aches and pains keep cropping up as the soreness recedes.  First a weird low back/backside thing that felt strange and buzzy like a pinched nerve, then it migrated around to my hip, and has now settled rather painfully into my hip flexor.  Does that make any sense?  Not really.  And my left calf is still reallllly sore/painful.  So I think it was maybe a blessing in disguise that my new pup has been up most of the night every night this week with an upset stomach - because I've been too sleep-deprived to care all that much that I wasn't getting my workouts in.  (Seriously, I'm grasping for silver linings here.)

Obligatory pictures of cute new pup:

But today I went out for a bit of a jog, and things were definitely not ready to run again. The hip hurt running downhill, and the calf hurt running uphill, so I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say the big hill did me in.  Which is bizarre, because yes it's a big hill, but I thought I was in decent shape, and I run a fair number of hills.  But - I guess that's the thing about the human body, I find it's often somewhat hard to predict.  So I suppose I'll take it easy for a few more days and see how things are feeling.  I'm hoping it doesn't take too much longer to feel better, because I'm reallly hoping to run the Myrtle Beach Half-Marathon on Feb. 19.  We'll see.

In other unrelated-but-still-athletic news, I'm now on the Board of the Asheville Triathlon Club.  I'm co-chair of the events committee, so if anyone has any ideas let me know.  We're definitely putting on some tried-and-true favorites, like the Indoor Tri and a transition clinic, but I'd be interested to hear any new ideas.  Check out the Tri Club blog to see the current cast of characters.

Just Call Me Eastman Kodak. . .

Because I can finally take pictures again. But rather than buying another cheap camera, we instead bought semi-expensive phones that take pictures. Good multi-tasking, right? I figure this way we only have to worry about breaking one thing.

So here's (part of) our weekend in pictures. I don't have any City Market pics (partly because I didn't have time to play with the new phone, and partly because it was so windy I was afraid we were going to blow away like Dorothy. We actually saw a tent lift up and turn over - scary.)

But fortunately I didn't have to worry about the wind too much, because it was my turn to head to baseball instead. Hooray! Here's our baseball player (though he looks a bit more like a chipmunk in this picture than he does in real life.) Little League is soooo fun. They're so flipping cute. Plus the game was tied in the bottom of the last inning, and Sam scored the winning run. So he was feeling quite happy when this picture was taken.

After market and baseball were over, we headed over to the farm. It was the prettiest day:

Here's the regal beagle (also known as the current spotted dog of Spotted Dog Farm):

My two favorite boys in the world.

Sam showing exactly how big my Dad's prized flame azalea is. It's really, really big. I think only about half of it is actually in this picture.

Today was spent in equally beautiful settings - Bent Creek this morning (where my bike legs decided to return! Hooray! I don't know where they went last week, or why they decided to return, but I'm really happy about it.)

And then we went on the funnest adventure ever - which is going to warrant its own post once I get the pictures our friends were taking. But here's the teaser - check out Navitat Canopy Adventures. It was AMAZING! And I'll have the photographic proof in the next few days.

All Bikes, All the Time

Last week I was feeling like I couldn't remember the last time I had really ridden my bike. I had a few trainer rides in, but it seemed to aggravate the achilles that was originally aggravated over Christmas, so those weren't even particularly impressive rides. This week - I feel like the bike saddle has become permanently attached to my bottom. Ok, that's a little exaggeration, but I've ridden my bike every day since last Friday. Yay bike! Yay me.

The weather is finally back to normal NC winter weather - 40s or even 50s during the day - so Friday I rode Pippi on my normal hour loop around here, Saturday I met Robin and rode my mountain bike (sweet Bertha, she's a trouper), Sunday back on the road bike, Monday I took Bertha back to Bent Creek (which was dreadful - I knew it was going to be muddy so I was mainly on the fire roads, but even the fire roads were a quagmire), and today Robin and I are going to ride again. Maybe back at Bent Creek - hope springs eternal, and I'm hoping the last two days of 50s and sunshine will have dried it out some. Of course first it would have to melt the ice that's still on the ground. But I'm sure that goes hand in hand with drying. Or not.

Anyway, it's lovely to be back on the bike. I'm eyeing up a few mountain bike-ish things for the first events of the year, so it seems like a good idea to actually ride the mountain bike.

In other news, a friend of mine just got a new standard poodle puppy:

I'm in love. Isn't this the sweetest face you've ever seen??