10.08.15

morning run:
Truman
Gowron
Lily
Xmul
Mega
Lex
Petey
Murci
Cookie
(9)

Southern route to the beach at Au Soleil Couchant: ~8k. This was another group of serious Running Dogs... nobody wanted to do anything but run their asses off. Since the salt work crews have been hitting the southern charcos pretty hard recently I thought they would be done by now and we could go that way for a change. This was mostly correct, but an additional wrinkle manifested itself early: just as we were arriving at the land bridge heading east I saw another dog running away from us in all haste, heading to the south along the border of the charcos. None of my charges saw him so I held everyone back to give him time to get away and continued south cautiously, watching for him and for salt workers. I thought I'd make sure to lose him by heading east at the tar paper shack but there were salt workers there, so I went the whole way around. As we were heading east the usual way I thought I saw him again, just ahead; again, nobody else seemed to see him so I did the same thing, devoting some thought to an alternate route that would surely steer us clear of him: instead of the palapa road, I took us to the serpentine that runs north/south just to the west of the road I call the middle path. I figured we'd run that road through the crossroads east of the intersection, continue north to the swimming hole and hit the beach on the way home. This worked out well, but I was wrong about ditching the other dog: in fact it was TWO other dogs, and we ended up catching up to them on that same serpentine, just where it branches off to the west... I used to call that a hidden trail but it isn't hidden at all now, as salt workers have obviously driven many large trucks down it recently. There were no people around, at least. Lily finally did see our two shadows and chased them to bark a little; she turned around when I called her, it's just that she's so fast she was already 100m away when she finally circled back. Truman and a couple of others ran out as well but just to greet Lily coming back. I didn't recognize either of the other dogs; they were not interested in a meet and greet nor were they aggressive. Once we were past the two strange dogs there were no more surprises. We ran into two motos and everyone was good about it. It was hot out so everyone was glad to hit the beach; the swimming hole was also not too bad and the water was cool enough to help with the heat. A couple of them rolled in some awful filth some comedian dumped next to the A.S.C. road; I tried to wash them off in the ocean but it obviously wasn't enough... All in all a good run with a bunch of crazy loudmouths who behaved themselves well.
GRADE: A