Month: November 2006

Since today is a day off, I thought I would put in a longer than normal weekday run. Not that this morning is really any different for those of us who mostly work in the evenings. I have treated this morning as time that I don’t feel pressured to accomplish anything productive. That allowed me to get up late (still before 7:00) and lounge around until breakfast. I normally run before I eat a real meal, though I have a small bowl of cereal most mornings before running. Today I had bread pudding and piled a caramel sauce made with goat’s milk onto the bread pudding.

I was thinking that the goat’s milk caramel would make a great running gel. It has about the same consistency. In some aspects it is good, in others, not so much. Packed with carbs and calories. Twice as much as my PowerGel packs. But no sodium to speak of. But the carbs/calories must have done something for me. I had a great run, even extending it beyond my planned mileage.

After breakfast I lounged around to let the food settle. Since it has been so cool in the mornings, I saw no danger in getting out a bit later. It got down to 55 degrees last night. Second night in a row. I ran at about 65 degrees this morning.

Because of having eaten a bigish breakfast and it not settling completely, I felt kinda sluggish early in the run. Until about mile 3 I was not sure if I was going to do my full 6 miles I had planned out. But somewhere around mile 3 the sugar must have kicked in. I felt great! When I was getting close to home I decided to add at least one more mile onto the run. Because I had told my wife I would be home in about an hour, I did not want to go too much over that. I ended up with a 7 mile run that felt like a short maintenance run. Great stuff.

The dogs around here must all be imported from the USA. In México this is not a holiday since Thanksgiving is a US holiday. But the dogs were taking the day off. I did not have a single dog chase me (very rare). The few that did bark were behind fences. The only dog that was not behind a fence that barked at me was the cutest little schnauzer puppy. He only barked after I went by and he thought I was a safe distance away.

Or, the lack of barking/chasing could have something to do with the fact that I was out an hour later than normal.

But, I think the real reason lies in the fact that most were humiliated. They could not bring themselves to act like dogs this morning. “Why’s that?”, you ask? Well, they were wearing T-shirts. The last two days there have been an increase in dogs in T-shirts running around the streets of Mérida. It got down to 55 degrees the last 2 nights. And everyone here knows that a dog cannot survive in those extremely cold conditions unless you humiliate them and put a shirt on them.

So, I stick to humiliation as being the reason the dogs did not bark or chase me this morning.