So, I’m down for 3 miles, easy, today. I decided to take Bear out for a nice light run, since that’s well within his comfort zone - especially now that its cooler outside. The outside temperature makes a huge difference when you’re a black lab, I guess. We walked down to the park, and then did a mile at 8:00, a fun slow romp through tall grasses, then two more miles at 9:00 and 10:00 respectively. He was getting a little tired (and I was only supposed to be doing a 9:00 easy pace anyway), and it was getting pretty dark by the end of the run.

Once I was home, I swapped dogs and took Sabrina out. I hadn’t been able to run with her before, but I figured that the problem was partially that she didn’t want to separate from Stephanie and Bear the last time I tried it. She’s put on quite a few pounds too, so I really wanted to get her out and working those fuzzy little buns. She did fine, and seems to have a fairly comfortable 9:00 speedwalking pace; we did a 10:15 pace overall, with stops for sniffing and bathroom breaks, for 1.25 miles.

The only problem that we had, other than the fact that it was dark outside, was that she had a bit of a habit of speeding up with me and then cutting across me, leading me to jam my knees trying to stop quickly enough so that I wouldn’t tread on her paws. She had a whole lot of fun though, which was a big part of my goal. On the way home, we did a 6:00 pace for the last tenth or so (slightly downhill), and she gave every indication of loving it! If her endurance improves, and I can’t see why it wouldn’t, I may be able to split my neighborhood runs between both dogs for extra canine mileage.

Ending on a high note, this was the first time I’ve made it out for a Monday run in five (five!) weeks. Hopefully the (re)start of a beautiful habit.

Overall: 4.5 miles

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