22.12.10

morning run:
Bette
Gracie
Posey
Godzilla
Truman
Molly
Elewah
(7)

This started out as an A, devolved to a B and ended up as a C, but it was still a good run. This group sort of put itself together effortlessly, and although I intended to take Eve as well I then thought maybe that bit about discretion and valor I was on about before should occasionally be considered before we leave. We were flying right out of the gate, and that was a constant throughout: this was a fast group. We ran into The Brethren early on, and it was hardly a blip: everyone was friendly and caught up with me immediately after saying "hi." From there we did the long and winding road backwards, sort of out of necessity: about 500m west of the junction where you have to turn north to go that way, a van carrying salt workers overtook us on the Au Soleil Couchant access road, and Molly gave chase. The people inside were amused (she is pretty comical), and obviously she couldn't do any harm, but it it is a bad habit and she will have to be broken of it. It didn't help that the driver slowed down to a crawl, so that he was effectively leading us as a kind of parade float. When we got to the junction that heads to the long and winding road he went south and so I naturally went north. Not the best way to make a choice, but whatever - I'm a pragmatist. I did have to lay out a pretty decent sprint to catch the van from the point where I realized what was happening, so we were really flying by the time we turned the corner. Several kilometers later, way out in the middle of nowhere, after we had come to the end of the long and winding road and were heading back on the road from Xixim we ran into a HUGE bull and two cows, just sort of chilling in the wilderness. Again, Molly was one of the bark-leaders, and AGAIN I laid out a halfway respectable 100m sprint to run them down and stop them from being assholes; there's not much they could do to those cows, but it is a bad habit. Elewah, Molly and Posey all contributed to the effort. I put Posey on the leash and once again we flew down that road. Coming home, I was starting to feel all of those sprints, on top of the already high pace, so I decided to take the dead goat short cut and ford that charco, which everyone did enthusiastically. There were a couple more people in various places along the way, and I noticed that I really wished Molly was on the hook, even though she isn't bad - if you didn't know her you might be intimidated by her, and we can't have that. Finally, at the very end, right at our gate Posey and Truman indulged in their old habit of taking off like jackrabbits for the house to the north, which they haven't done in a while. I honestly don't know how they had the energy after a brutal pace for 10k, but that little stunt landed them in the box immediately after coming in, where they stayed for 20m or so. Unacceptable, even though no harm was done. You can't live by "no harm, no foul" all the time. In spite of all of that, it was for the most part a fun, quick-paced tear through the woods. If Molly had been on the harness it would've been much better; she cannot go out without it again, we have to nip this in the bud.
GRADE: C