3 miles!

tonight was my first endurance walk on my calendar. i mapped out the distance with my car's odometer earlier this week as i was trying to get ready for the big walk. although i have been looking forward to it all week, i was a little intimidated at the actual time to head out, so i thought i would take the pup along for company. welcome to shelby's first and last endurance walk....

although i wasn't going for speed but for distance, i wanted to gauge my progress by timing the walk and checking in on heart rate. during the 3 minute warm up, i started to rethink my decision to take the dog with me as she was very interested in pooping on any surface that wasn't moving and i was, much like the bah bah black sheep, already carrying 3 bags full. i considered taking her back as we hadn't gotten very far, but she has been pretty naughty lately, getting into trouble when i have been gone to work (she decided today to chew up a $20 that was in a pocket of some pants....i only found 3 of 4 pieces) and i think she is pretty mad at me for adding another thing into my already overly busy schedule, so i just decided to keep going so we could spend some time together. for the first half mile or so she was interested in walking in the grass rather than on the road and kept stopping to sniff, squat, or graze. she was still up for walking, in fact she wanted to be in the lead, but every 10 feet or so she would try to wring out a few more drops of pee. as we made it almost to the turn around point i started to notice that she was losing enthusiasm for the walk. as she is pretty old and chubby and does have a heart murmur, i decided that we would slow down the pace a bit to keep her safe and rather than get annoyed with her frequent pee breaks, i started to talk to her and tell her that we were almost home and what a good doggy she was.

nearly to the cool down landmark, i was about to break into a jog just to finish up with a good time. As i was about to let shelby's leash a little looser, a catastrophe was narrowly averted. Fortunately, I have really good eyesight. Even more fortunately, at this point of the walk shelby was basically no more than a giant lolling tongue with legs and lousy eyesight. Just as we cleared the cool down marker i noticed another member of the woodland creatures that call lake monticello home. unlike the bucks that occupied my lawn on my first big walk, this creature was less bambi and more flower. that's right, a skunk. i'm really not sure if she didn't see it, or if at that point she just didn't care, but i quickly pulled her leash in tighter, made a beeline for the other side of the street and quietly waited for the striped fuzzball to find a hiding spot. fortunately, it went into a storm drain, and we quickly made our exit. Had we had to find another route home we would have been completing about 5 miles tonight since the only other way home would have included almost a mile of doubling back and then taking a wide path around to the other side of the house.

needless to say, we made it home safe and relatively stink free, i don't smell great, but at least not skunky, and shelby came in to get a few laps of water and crash out on the tile in the kitchen. although it was nice to spend time with her, i think she will only be coming with me on the recovery walks on the day after the endurance walks from now on, i don't want to put too much on her old lady heart and there is the additional factor of possible woodland creature attacks. thank goodness that didn't happen 'til the end or who knows how this story would have changed

oh, and by the way, the whole adventure took 52:58 minutes, of which 45:27 was the actual 3 miles, so even with a dog in tow i am keeping around that 15 minute mile average :)