Rocket's First Run!

Easter is tomorrow. I have a full day planned, a 10 mile sunrise run at Horsetooth with some of the Fort Collins Running Club runners and then afterwards, I'm meeting Paul for another 10 miles at the lakes. Dennis and I are doing an Easter brunch afterwards with some friends. And I will need a nap. Getting up at 4:30 am is not my favorite thing to do. But the coffee is ready to go.

I did a "race pace" run at the track today, trying to see how slow of a pace I could run and still maintain comfort. It's so hard to force yourself to run super slow. I was incorporating a few walking laps just to get an idea of how my walking pace feels. I haven't been doing any walking at all in my training so far this spring, so I need to remember to do a little of that. A 10:20 pace felt just about right for as slow as I could go- I was comfortable there without forcing myself to go any slower. I will need to do a lot of walking in the first half of the 24 hour to keep myself from putting too many miles in too early.

After my workout today, I pulled the "Rocket", the Batmobile, out of the box and put it together. It was so easy, even I, in my incredible mechanical ineptitude, could figure it out and get it together without Dennis's help. I was extremely proud of myself.

I tried taking the girls for a test drive, but they wouldn't stay in the seat. Isabelle did bettter than Iris. They got claustrophobic when I pulled the canopy down, even though they could see through it.

I adjusted the handle on Rocket the Batmobile to my height and that worked great. It's lightweight and comfortable, and easy to steer even with the awkward swivel wheel in front, which we will get rid of. I didn't load any weight in it to push it except for Isabelle, and she's 55 pounds. That was easy to push. She didn't stay in there long enough for me to really test it, so I'll have to put a loaded cooler in there next time.

I think the handle can adjust high enough for Ed, but he'll have to try it himself before we know. The problem we're going to have to solve is the swivel wheel set that came with the package. We need to replace the front wheel with some kind of a fork that will allow us to put a fixed-axle wheel on there (Gerry Z's). But figuring out how to do the fork will take someone with talent for these things, and that's not me. So I have my next project cut out for me.

Iris found the peeps with no problem and tipped the trailer over to get to them. She got the yellow one.

We were playing with Siri the other night on Dennis's iPhone and we got Iris into a conversation with Siri. Siri is clearly going to need some instruction in Australian Shepherd-ese.

That's all for now, and just three peeps left for Easter tomorrow.