Roxy training diary month 74

July 2009

Jul 30. Spending more time on Facebook lately than updating the RoxyLog, but that just gives me more to report.

Welcome to those who have ventured over here because Michelle Higgins plugged my blog in her Travel column in the New York Times. I don't fly much with the dogs; if you're interested in Roxy's one and only flight, you'll find an account of it here, in the June 8 2003 entry.

Since you were nice enough to come visit the RoxyLog and have read this far, the least I can do is to provide you with some useful links for traveling with your pet by air, so here they are:

• AVMA Guidelines on Traveling with Pets
• Most of my ideas on traveling with dogs, I've picked up from my agility friends. Katie Greer over at AgilityAbility has a list of suggestions for traveling with dogs. Darlene Woz is amazing, and her list of suggestions is as comprehensive as anything I've seen.
• Dr. Sophia Yin, who is not only an expert in animal behavior but also extra-cool because she owns a cattle dog, offers these travel tips.

One good plug deserves another. Michelle Higgins' Twitter feed is where I first heard about the article that started this whole thing. I whole-heartedly endorse subscribing to her feed if you travel at all, with or without pets. Dr. Yin's Twitter account is here, and of course, Roxy has her own Twitter feed.

If you read the RoxyLog and decide you want to be my friend (despite the Mr. Rogersish implications of that phrase), you can do that here.

I ran the San Francisco Marathon for the second time on July 26. I had been hoping for a better time than last year, in spite of my lack of preparation. Well, as John Wooden said, "failure to prepare is preparing to fail", and I failed to beat last year's time, ending up with a 4:41 (I'm on page 23 of the men's results, or you can search for bib 5261). I did make it further before hitting the wall, but when I hit it, I hit it hard. I ended up walking a good bit of miles 21-24 before running to the finish. If you look at my pictures, you'll see some of the running (even looking fairly good crossing the finish line), but also some of the dejected walking ones.

I'm too cheap to buy MarathonFoto pictures of me hitting the wall just so I can post them up here. Still, a blog without pictures is boring and graphically imbalanced. So I am digging out last year's Denver Marathon photo (where I also hit the wall). At least it's a picture of me running a marathon, so it's only slightly inauthentic.

Now to update my my running calendar and begin to plan for my next marathon. The St George Marathon I ran with my friend Babak Momeni was my PR (best time), and I am starting to think that running marathons alone is a mistake. I'm strongly thinking about the Melbourne, Florida marathon on Feb 7 2010. (Hi, Holly.) That's far enough away to begin planning, and the best part is, there's a shuttle launch scheduled for Feb 4 so I might get to see a rocket launch and run a marathon. What could be cooler than that?

Jul 11. Roxy and Sky both did very well in their agility runs.

It was Sky's first agility weekend. Video of his first Novice Jumpers with Weaves run is here. He was waaay over time, and had the one refusal, so we got an NQ for "not quite".

Roxy won the award for Most Improved Attitude. We came close to qualifying in Novice FAST today, and even got the distance work with bonus, but messed up the point accumulation and didn't quite make it.

I ran the Farmington Festival Days half-marathon in a not-great time of 2:13. I saw one of my students there; she was running her first half-marathon so I ran with her. She did very well and I think she's been bit by the running bug.

This is my last longish run before my taper. I have the San Francisco Marathon in two weeks.

Learning to Weave

I'm in the Contact

Goofy Jim

Happy Weaving

Walking the Plank

Jul 9. Rosemary's followup visit was yesterday, and Dr. Jolles confirmed that she is A-OK and progressing well. That's good news.

Tomorrow, July 10, is Sky's first agility trial. I'll also take Roxy in for her annual "let's see if you still hate agility" run. We are entered in FAST, which allows us to just do any ol' sequence of obstacles and not mess with anyone's plan.