This town is going to the dogs

Gingerbread Jog Dog Walk

OK. So, this is getting a little ridiculous. I go out for a workout run and I end up in the middle of a road race or fun walk or both. In today's case, the timelapserunner found himself competing with man's best friends for a piece of the road. Intent on putting in his six miles around the Lakes and City Park this morning, the timelapserunner found himself trading strides with little four-legged racers competing in the Cane's-sponsored Gingerbread 1-mile Family Fun Run and Dog Walk in the City Park area. With most of the mutts tuckered out near the finish, yours truly had little trouble passing them up even though we were more than three miles into our workout at the time. But that encounter was only the half of it.

Perhaps I'd have made a half-decent boy scout

The Path

The timelapserunner thought he had planned it all so well.  After all, it isn't every day you walk out the front door and start a 23-mile run. Therefore, planning was essential. The temperature range for the roughly five hour experience was plotted out, taking into account the time for the start-of-run: 5:30 AM. The start-of-run time was calculated to put the timelapserunner at the never-before-seen-or-run path through the woodlands - the path that would provide the key link between his neighborhood and the LSU Lakes and City Park loop. We wouldn't want to enter that stretch when it was still dark. All was going so well until we realized that there was ANOTHER wooded stretch to be navigated even BEFORE the path. Several miles into the run, only a short stretch from having to enter that darkened wooded stretch, this realization dawned on the timelapserunner. What would he do now?

Do you believe in magic?

The Mississippi River Levee
Near LSU

Can you believe that there are only a scant 49 days left on the calendar until Louisiana Marathon Day? I remember when that number exceeded 200. My how time flies - even if the timelapserunner doesn't quite qualify as flying down the road. I must admit that in some ways this training has seemed like a very long road, one that stretches forever into the distance - much like the view down the levee path just after dawn this morning. There's nothing but vanishing point in the center of that picture, though I must admit that communing with nature has a lot going for it - even if you're running most of the way.