June 18 to June 24

An interesting week lies ahead as I came home to a very sick dog. Katie, one of the mini dachshunds, was bitten by a brown recluse spider AND developed diabetic ketoacidosis all at the same time!

Monday; June 18: After a long, restless night, it was a day off.  Jim arrived in town and we were preparing to say our goodbyes to Miss Katie. She is really sick and not doing very well.

Tuesday; June 19:  A quick 6 miler in the dark with Traysen and then off to the animal hospital. She is doing better....we think! Mean ole spider! No track workout this evening since we had to transport Katie from one vet to another late in the day.

Wednesday; June 20:  Out the door quite early for a 10 miler and then Jim and I actually made it to the gym during the early afternoon. The weight lifting session was less than "wonderful" but it was good to get in there.
Katie is improving. The diabetes is somewhat stable but not glucose levels are still very high. The spider bite effects are very ugly....the poision has spread from the bite (on her little butt) all the way up her belly to under her front legs! Luckily, she is enjoying a nice cocktail of pain meds.

Thursday; June 21:  A somewhat cool morning produced another nice 11 miler, partly solo and partly with Traysen. (he gave up at 6 miles). Then back to the gym for another odd ball weight lifting session. It is amazing the difference in how running first and then weight lifting changes the quality of the gym outing. Sometimes when lifting first, the run goes very well and sometimes it does not. But it seems that lately a run followed by weight lifting produces a blah weight lifting session. Who knew?
We did see a lady ??? in the gym that could  kick both our little butts! OH MY! That is the interesting part of working out with the rest of society. You just never know what hangs out in the gyms! On the other hand, by seeing what others are doing, it opens our minds to try to new things so our routines and bodies do not stale.

Friday; June 22:  Oddly enough Katie is coming home today. It has been a very expensive and emotional week but she is doing well enough to come home. Not sure what the whole day holds, Traysen and I opted for a run in the dark at 5am. A quick 7 miler and we were in the shower.

Saturday; June 23:  This was a different 515am out the door! I walked 15 minutes to volunteer at the Peachtree City Marathon Relay! Usually volunteering at a race involves driving at least an hour! A quick setup for the race and then I was recruited to run one leg of Team 9, aka..Perfect Strangers. In a marathon relay there are four team members with each person running one 10K leg. Leg #3 was the assignment and according to several other Leg #3 folks, it was the hottest and hilliest (is that a word?) leg! Very nice! So, with about two hours til Leg #3, it was back to the house to walk and feed dogs. Once back at the race, the missing member of Team 9 had appeared and she was now going to run her own hot n hilly leg. Wooo Hooo....I was now free to go run in the shady trails of Peachtree City and only needed to return to help clean up after the race.

https://sites.google.com/site/ptcmarathonrelay/

The race website for those that want to participate next year!

And with that, off I went...in the 9am heat of a hot n humid June morning. A fairly decent 7 miler ensued and then back to the race to socialize and help clean up. Traysen even got in on the fun with visiting many admirers.

Sunday; June 24:  As Traysen and I walked out the door at 545am, the hot n humid air blasted us right smack in the kisser! He looked as though wandering back to his bed would have been higher on his list than trotting through some portion of a 17 mile run! But off we went! First sticking to the lonely roads since it was still dark and then venturing onto the trails with some daylight. After the first hour, ole Traysen was done and did actually go back to bed while ole, not so smart Mom here grabbed the water bottle and took off again! Hoping to explore some new trails near Lake Kedron, the run took me north west for awhile and somewhere along the way a turn was missed and I ended up heading back south onto some known trails near the golf course. Not a big deal since there are still miles and miles of trail to explore. At about the 1:30 mark, one toe forgot to join the rest of the foot and the left elbow was one with the pavement while the right knee was one with the dirt! That is one danger of running along side the paved trails.....a digger usually means some road rash! After dusting the grime off, it was back to work for another 1:45. The day was heating up nicely and the water bottle was empited with about 25 minutes to run. Nevertheless, the distance was covered easily and another 17 miler is in the books!
Now a day in the air conditioning!

Summary:  A good week of running despite the distraction of dealing with a sick dog who may not be with us much longer. As we all know, our running often is a stress reliever and when times get tough is when we need the running even more. Sometimes when the stressful event is also a time consuming event we lose sight of the need to get that exercise done for the day. But if we can find even 30 minutes to get out, we know it will help with the coping skills.

Total for the week: 58.0
Total for 2012: 1439.0; this is 130 fewer miles than last year at this time when I was training for Leadville 50 miler.