Ready & Willing

Finding a training partner in the Fall is never hard with our fearless hound. All I need to do is get my trail running shoes out and she's suddenly up and ready to go. First she'll smell the shoes, taking in the scent of the woods and the mud and the leaves and the stream water. Then starts the wagging of the tail, whipping feverishly back and forth, up and down, and all around. Finally, as I begin to pull on the layers for the chilly air, she gains confirmation that, yes, in fact we are about to go hit the trails together, and so the spinning of the dog in circles begins. Round and round and round until we depart. She's crazy for the trails, but it's hard to blame her for it.

Anyways, in addition to a nice 7 mile trail run earlier this week con el perro, I took another fine mountain bike ride the other night... 2 hours in the brisk, 35 degree conditions at dusk. The smell of the leaves is changing to more of a stale smell, indicating the rapidly approaching winter here in the Northeast. It's been two weeks without structure to my workouts, and I'm starting to crave it already. Funny how that works, isn't it? You go 49 weeks out of the year with structure to almost every workout, and when you finally give yourself a break, it only takes a matter of 10 days or so before things start to feel a little odd. That's okay. This is a good thing, in my eyes, as a desire for the structure indicates a high level of motivation. And one can never have enough motivation going into the off-season.