With only a day or so left in the month, and just coming down off of food poisoning and a head cold, I thought I’d set up October to be something of a challenge month for myself, trying to get back on the cart with regard to my foreshortened fitness plan, et cetera.
Starting October 1, [...]

Need any more proof? Someone posed a link to Discover magazine who’s archives have a beautiful article on the work of two researchers who postulated that the course of human evolution has shaped us as ideal runners:
From our abundant sweat glands to our Achilles tendons, from our big knee joints to our muscular [...]

I’ll spare the deepest details, but I’ve been having a heckuvatime with my health lately. As such, there are a couple things on hold at the moment:
1) Running. In my current state, it ain’t gonna happen.
2) Coffee. Sigh. Well, it’s been two weeks without, so it’s fairly a moot point now.
3) Spicy food. [...]

This is a follow up to: Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Poor planning on my part — or not — but the long weekend played havoc with my running plans.  Ideally, I should find myself running wherever I happen to wake up on any given morning.  On this instance it happened to be in Red [...]

This is a follow up to: Parts 1, 2, 3 & 4
The last week has shown a marked improvement in both my times and Sparkle’s attitude. Would you believe that she nudged me out the door on Monday, pulled all the way to the park, and was running before we hit the asphalt. [...]

This is a follow up to: Parts 1, 2 & 3
Not counting my five kilometer road race on Saturday, Sparkle and I are completed eight runs to date. And things continue to improve. For myself, I’ve had one of my best weeks ever, completing a total of nearly twelve kilometers over three runs, and [...]

Karin and I were watching the Olympic ten thousand meter race this morning, and I couldn’t help but think — as the soon-to-be winners sprinted their way to the finish line, legs a blur of surreal strides — that until I get a little more advanced I should probably be using the word “jog” to [...]

This is a follow up to: Parts 1 & 2
Six runs down, Sparkle continues to do well (with the exception of one messy Friday morning — check out the comments in Part 2, link above.) Our focus has improved and my endurance is increasing for these early morning jaunts that used to be sheer torture. [...]

This is a follow up to: Part 1
Three runs down, Sparkle is taking to the jogging business quite well. I updated in the comments of Part 1 that our biggest issue has been her reluctance to de-bowel upon command. The result of that is she goes out full and the impulse to clean [...]

I’ve been thinking on the topic, I’ve decided to post some of my research and (eventually) observations from starting a running program with a dog. Hopefully this will be useful to someone digging through Google searches one day. This is “part one” of many. (Though if I get more than five official entries [...]

Sparkle and my morning routine now includes some jogging. I’ve decided to steal back a small fragment of my day and by getting up a half an hour earlier I’m hoping to squeeze in a longer stroll — or three times a week — a five kilometer run in the nearby park. Tomorrow [...]

I was feeling guilty. I skipped my running class last night for the simple (and valid, I think) reason that it was hovering around thirty degrees for most of the day yesterday and I don’t want to die of heatstroke — especially while wearing running gear. The alternative was a humble promise to [...]