Running on my Off Day

I ran last night when I got home. I wasn’t scheduled to run, but I did anyway. Normally I love those scheduled off days or cross training days as my schedule prefers to call them. I love getting home at night and knowing that I don’t have a run scheduled almost as much as I love Hot Waffle Ice Cream Sandwiches, so what made me go run last night? This did:

How could I say no to that face? He just kept looking up at me with those big brown eyes, and then he’d jump up and go run to the back door. He was like Lassie trying to tell me that Timmy was stuck in a well, except he couldn’t have cared less about Timmy, he just wanted to sniff things and pee on them.

He hasn’t been able to run with me for a few weeks now because he can’t handle running further than 3 or 4 miles (he’s 8 years old) and all my training runs of late have been longer than that. He’s an Alaskan Malamute, just like those canines in Snow Dogs or Eight Below, except those movies are full of crap. For example, did you know that an Alaskan Malamute can’t run for more than 30 minutes without starting to drag way behind. I once took him on a 5 mile run with me and thought I was going to have to carry him home, and he weighs 90 lbs. Also, I’m not sure why they are classified as a ‘working breed’ since he’s never worked a day in his life. Of course there’s really not much time for it in between the 18 hours of sleeping, the licking oneself, and the dreaming of licking oneself. It’s a pretty busy schedule he keeps.

Nevertheless we went running last night. We ran 2 easy miles, and he acted like he was exhausted afterwards. He barely had enough energy to stick to his evening agenda, which looks like this:

• Circle.
• Lick self.
• Go outside.
• Come back inside.
• Go outside.
• Come back inside - continue ad infinitum (word score 4 points – take that Nitmos!)
• Wait until ‘Dad’ starts watching TV, then play with loud squeaky toy.
• Sleep.

Leap Day

Tomorrow is February 29th, and just like the Olympics and trips to the dentist it only happens once every 4 years. In my opinion that makes it a free day, almost like it doesn’t exist. In fact, I heard that if you race on leap day and you PR it doesn’t even count, you can’t legally claim it as a PR.

How you treat your free day says a lot about you. Are you the kind of person who says that it’s an extra day to get a run in, that your mileage should be higher this year than last year because you’ve got 366 days instead of 365? Or do you think that you can take February 29th off and still have 365 days left in the year to accomplish your running goals.

If you are in the middle of a running streak can you take the 29th off and still continue the streak on March 1st? This is probably a question for Just Your Average Joggler as I believe that he is in the middle of a running/joggling streak.

I am of the mindset that if they are going to throw in an extra day every four years it should at the very least be a holiday or a weekend. I propose that every four years we add our leap day as an additional Saturday after the last Saturday in February. In other words, this past weekend we would have had 2 consecutive Saturdays and 1 Sunday. It doesn’t seem fair to have an extra work day thrown into the year just because the earth can’t quite make it all the way around the sun in 365 days. Can’t science do something about this?

Needless to say I am of the mindset that I only need 365 days to get all my running done for the year, so I will probably not be running tomorrow. If I do run tomorrow however, I will not run some other day that I’m scheduled to, just to make up for it. Also, I will not be working tomorrow. I will be at work, but I will not do any work because I’m protesting this extra day that was somehow thrust upon me without my consent. Now, if I could just figure out an excuse as to why I don’t do any work the remaining days of the year I’d be all set.

How will you spend your extra day this year?

Inspiration

I try to post here at least once a day during the week, but I'm sorry to tell you that I'm just going to phone it in today. Hey, what did you expect from a blog named half-fast. I'm feeling pretty half-fast about everything right now, so it's a good thing that today is scheduled as an off-day. Is there any better feeling than checking your training schedule on a dreary Friday and realizing you don't have to run that day? Nope, I’ve checked my ‘feelings chart’ and it says there isn’t. It's like getting a permission slip to be a lazy bum all day. My apologies if I’m bringing any of you down and you were planning to do some speedwork or a long run today. Don’t mind me, I’m just going to be reclining over here with my feet on the desk. "Hey, somebody pass me that bag of pork rinds!"

Just because I would hate to be the reason you didn’t run today here’s an inspirational quote to get you out the door:
"Somewhere in the world someone is training when you are not. When you race him, he will win." - Tom Fleming's Boston Marathon training sign on his wall.

Nothing else to see here. I'll post my weekly running log sometime over the weekend, whenever I feel like getting around to it. Thanks to Copacabana Runners which is where my lazy butt stole researched the quote.