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| Hard to beat that dog's grin. |
Flawless event. Had I no dog, I’d still go spec this event,
purely for the comedy of watching all these people run with their dogs. Some
people are far superior runners to their dogs and some dogs far superior to
their owners. Either way, I love dogs and there’s no race where people are
smiling as much as this one. Even the volunteers on poop patrol are smiling... no, but seriously, they are- it's kinda weird. I’m pretty sure there’s more mollycoddling for the
dogs than the people.
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| Sneeze? |
Here’s a little story about the endurance history of Parker
& I: When I started running, back in 2009 (like.. running without chasing or
kicking some ball, or rounding a base, or thru a campus late to a class), I ONLY
ran with Parker. Lately, I’ve been getting a bit emotional running with him-
looking back at all the milestones we’ve hit together; My first 20 or so runs
were all with Parker, he was with me the 1st time I broke an
8-minute mile, a 7-minute mile, a 6-minute mile, a 5-minute mile, a sub 18 minute 5k, a sub 17
minute 5k (he missed out on the 1st sub 16, but I have full confidence he can
do it)… Up until recently, Parker has always been there to lead and push the
pace each time we run together. Unfortunately, as a combo of him aging & me
getting faster (& sequentially not being able to workout as much with him)
the weight has been shifted slightly. It was simultaneously good and bad; In
the last ¾-½ mile of the 5k9, Parker started to fade when I wanted to go faster.
It was almost at the same exact spot last year that the roles were reversed and
Parker wanted to go faster as I was feeling like passing out. Regardless, I can
read Parker pretty well and he didn’t have anything left, so I wasn’t about to
break out the bit and whip to get him to stay with the dude who took over the
lead. He was as happy as a dog can be and even though we ended up 10/15 seconds
behind the eventual winner, guaranteed, we had more fun hard charging up front
& alone for 14 minutes. I think we ran a mid 16 minute 5k, which was a great
time for that guy considering his lack of endurance runs as of late. Even
though we ended the day in 2nd place (overall), places don’t matter
to a dude that is running with his best friend (and vice versa).
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| Tired pup. |
