run this amazing day

That phrase has been in my post-workout notification comments at least three times in the past few weeks.  "I don't know what's wrong with me." "I'm a mess." Training isn't going poorly.  In fact, training is going far better than I would expect for January (well, now February).  I'm really not a fan of doing comparisons, especially to myself, but if I think about how I was running in January of last year and how I'm running now, it's better.  Not a lot better, I'm not suddenly running sub-7s at MAF, but slightly better.  A noticeable amount of better.  Especially when I consider the double-slammer of recovering from pneumonia (lungs are clear, most days I don't need a shot from the inhaler) and moving a mile up (still see black spots if I get out of bed too quickly but I don't have to breathe every stroke AND off the wall in the pool anymore).  I know I'm not adjusted to the altitude yet - the common consensus is that...

In general, puppy life is pretty sweet.  It's a constant rotation of love, eating, pooping, and sleeping, with lots of emphasis on the sleeping.  Ours have been adapting pretty well to life a mile high. I've gotten to take Molly running a few times, and she does really well off-leash.  She loves to tear ahead of me and dig around in the bushes, but she never gets too far and she always comes bounding back. We took all three on a long walk yesterday, on a trail where cattle roam pretty freely back and forth.  I run there quite a bit, and I've had to stop a few times to get around a cow in the middle of the running path. Molly in particular was really curious about the cows, and kept running up to one in particular and barking at him.  But as soon as he took a step towards her, she freaked out. Graham had no idea what to do, and just stood about fifteen feet away, growling and barking his fool head off until we moved along. So in general, puppy life...

I've been trying to find a way to talk about the running I've been doing over the past month, what's been going on as I've eased back into training after healing from pneumonia , and I just feel stuck.  Calling this a race report seems like cheating, but there was a bib on my shorts and a chip on my shoes, so here we go. I planned to run a marathon this spring, but that isn't in the plan for me anymore.  By the time we were done moving and I was done coughing my brains out, there just wasn't enough time to build to it, and half-assing a marathon for a medal and a pair of extremely sore and unprepared legs isn't on my list of things that seem either fun or smart.  So I'll drop to the half, I'll run a marathon later this year, and I won't lose even a blink of sleep over it.   Rebuilding my fitness from what I thought was zero has been a vaguely interesting process.  I had a couple of good weeks of training at the beginning of December after a l...

It's been about six months since Graham was in the hospital, and I wanted to check in with an update on how he's doing. The overall answer is, pretty good.  He's still at the lean end of what a healthy weight is, despite the fact that we're feeding him more than we used to.  The vet thinks that because he lost so much intestine, his body can't hang onto as many nutrients.  So his morning and evening meals are a little bit larger, and he gets a little bit of peanut butter as a treat most days.  He isn't technically underweight, but he's still about 5lbs less than he used to be.   He isn't allowed to run, and that's sad but a fact of life.  I know that he misses it, because his eyes and ears perk up when we take the girls out.  The vet told us that he's welcome to run around in the backyard and exercise at the dog park, but extended runs we should probably avoid.  That's partially because of how easily he could become dehydrated, and part...