15.11.14

morning run:
Posey
Blue
Eve
Elewah
Xmul
Luna
Hazel
Tori
Murci
(9)

The long and winding road (the hard way): ~10k. This is probably Xmul's last run with us for a little while; her Canadian moms are back in town and she'll be going with them soon so I wanted her to have a nice run. This group was built for both speed and distance, we left early and it is cooler now than it has been for a while... all of this added up to: HAUL ASS. We didn't think of stopping for water until well past the 2k mark and our stops in general took no more than a few seconds: everyone just wanted to run. I had not completely made my mind up about going the full distance but when we got to the turn where the decision must be made Posey turned the corner north and shot me a look that said "LET'S GO DAD!"; everyone else was obviously in agreement so that was pretty much it. The monte was beautiful, silent, still damp with morning dew and, amazingly, not too full of mosquitoes. We left via the blue bag trail and it was my intention from the beginning to come home that way as well for Elewah's sake. She is obviously still a bit paranoid from the leash incident; in fact she was hanging back and acting strange way out on the most distant part of long and winding road. I resigned myself to the idea that she would probably want to dart off close to home and come home by herself but I wanted her to stay with us for most of the run so I just encouraged her verbally and kept moving; she got over her paranoia in a kilometer or so. The deep monte is still plenty flooded and there were isolated groups of flamingos in several charcos out there but no large groups in the big charcos like I thought there might be. We took the long way down the Au Soleil Couchant road coming home, split off to the south on the parallel access road and came home as we left. Elewah stayed with us until the shrimpery, which I counted as success. When I looked back for her at the turn onto the final trail she wasn't there; she took an alternate route in the last 200m and arrived at the gate about 10min after the rest of us. Everyone else was angelic and stayed with me. The pace of this run was really high and everyone had a great time. I certainly hope they're tired.
GRADE: A