Racing the Humidity

We just barely beat the heat to run this morning. In fact, Elly would beg to differ with my assessment, but I wouldn't expect anything less. Poor girl. It has to be awful lugging around a fur coat in the summer!

It really was fine for both of us when we began, though, so off we went! It was a strange feeling to get up on a weekend and have a much shorter run than usual. It was nice, though, for two reasons. First, I got to sleep longer. Hooray for sleeping longer!  And, second, it gave last night's artichoke consumption time to get on through the system. Hooray for a healthy operating digestive system! That's for real, too, I'm not being sarcastic in my cheers for either of those topics!!

With all systems up and running or cleared out ewww  or just raring to go, we headed out! Elly set the tone early on with her potty prowess (yeah ... one of those  runs ...). At her first one, she didn't notice she had an audience:

Don't you know this kitty believes s/he is totally hiding behind
those seven blades of grass?

Our first mile is a flat one (yay!) but it also has absolutely zero in terms of shade or other break from the sun (boo!). Elly not only did not appreciate the onset of heat, but she was also concerned about our route as this first mile leads right into that stretch that always scares her (because the sidewalk gets so close to the street and big trucks are scary). Of course, as there's no reasoning with the girl to let her know we weren't going to the very scary place, she did her best to completely annoy me passively resist our direction. She seemed a bit relieved at a nearby stop light especially when we changed direction:

"If I keep looking this way, maybe we won't go that way. I'll
even get my tongue in on it and have it indicate the direction
I desire. It's just got to work!"

It was in the second mile where I, too, was over the sun. It was beating in our faces, and that's never good. (I was smart enough to utilize one of my handy-dandy wicking headbands today, though, unlike Friday's eyeball disaster. By the way, it's AMAZING how well those headbands work!! Not one drop of sweat in my eyes the entire time!) Just before having about all of the sun scorch I cared to endure, we got to our turnaround point. It's crazy how much of a difference it makes to have the sun blaze into the back of your head ... it's just not as tough to take! Even Elly found a better groove at this point. All was going to be well on this increasingly hot run!

And, can I even complain about a run that features this?!

These are home owners after my own gardening heart!

I saw other cool things, too. Like this:

And, this:

Oh, and do you remember this from a few weeks ago?

Check out what it looks like now:

Okay, soon after the flowers-have-died bush, there was only a mile to go. Within that mile, I came upon this:

Intriguing human behavior story about that picture. It's like this ... Elly and I were on the sidewalk when I spied this poor creature in the bike lane. Because that's where I'm always looking. For money. Anyway, it being totally in tact, I stepped over to look at it and, of course, take this pic. When I backed myself back to the sidewalk, between myself and Elly and her leash, we pretty well hogged the width of the walk. I did not immediately see the dude on his bicycle coming toward us, but I did catch him in plenty of time to pull Elly out of the way, without incident and in enough time to say to the biker (who was looking at me like I totally sucked), "Oh! I'm so sorry!" But, then, it hit me. I looked to my right -- you know, where the dragonfly was -- then back to the sidewalk and put two and two together. "Um, hey ... bicycler ... I see the bike lane right there ... any chance you  do? Just wondering."

We were wonderfully close to home at this point. The humidity was kicking up, and we were ready for some water and to be finished!

We did it! I love my girl!!

This week has a really crappy forecast in terms of running weather, so I am more likely to run solo more often than with Elly! That sweet girl gives it everything she has (whether that's effort or attitude, just sayin'), and I need to be particularly watchful of her in the heat onset! I, on the other hand, will keep on keepin' on! Do what you need to stay safe and motivated, and I'll check in from tomorrow's Rest Day!!