sunday randomness

wasn't sure what the plan was this morning when i woke up to rain. should i wait until it stops raining then go mountain bike? should i just ride on the bike trainer (again!) and weight train? should i wait until it dries up then go ride the road bike? and all of a sudden i remembered, i'm supposed to be training for the gasparilla half marathon and i haven't done a "long" run in over 2 weeks. as soon as the last bit of rain moved out, i was out the door for a 12 mile run. my last long run was on january 2nd and it was just a tad bit over 10 miles, so i needed to get this run in. started off not feeling too great...must have been that whole wheat bread with natural peanut butter. gross! i usually run my best on an empty stomach but i ate the above mentioned breakfast prior to making the decision to do the long run. my bad! it took a good 2-3 miles and then finally one really good burp and i felt much better and my favorite running song came on, so life was good for the rest of the run. my pace wasn't too shabby either~1:30:34, which was a 7:33/mile average pace.  most of my run was in my personal disney world (flatwoods park). i must say, after running in such cool weather lately, today felt really HOT. my face was beet red when i got home. but i'm not complaining because it really felt good to sweat and taste the salt on my tongue everytime i threw water on my face at the water stations.

on our ride yesterday with the group (see previous post), i noticed signs posted on some of the trees that read something like this: warning: hunting boundary. hunting? never, ever has this park had hunting allowed in it, so i thought maybe someone posted those as a joke. however, on this mornings run, as i ran thru my secret passageway into my personal disney world, i saw this sign posted:

interesting sign, huh? hog hunting!! and what a coincidence that i just blogged about this. see my other previous post from friday, january 15th for more details. apparently, the traps they were setting weren't the answer to this overpopulation of hogs. for every one or two i saw them removing, there were probably 10-20 babies being born so it was like 1 step forward, 4 steps back. next time i go mountain biking, i will take my camera and take a picture of the destruction these hogs can do. you would think a huge piece of farm machinery had plowed thru the area. bad for the ecosystem and other living creatures in the area that need food too and bad for cyclist : )

here is another common sight in this area:

this cute little guy was at our local post office pond this afternoon but you can pretty much see one or two in every pond in this area. i never saw gators growing up in florida (i know, hard to imagine) but as soon as i moved out to this area, they've become common to see and i look for them constantly. my only fear is that one day i'll be running in the dark and one will have lost it's bearings (they do that a lot in mating season) and will be on the path and i won't see it until i trip over it or step on it...yikes! i do try to be hyper-aware when i run though so hopefully that never happens. remember this picture the next time you do a triathlon in a lake in florida. they are there even if you don't see them. how's that for making you want to swim as fast as possible?

go vikings! go brett favre! hope everyone had a nice weekend and maybe you have tomorrow off too...which means more fun-more time to train! i'll be riding and swimming tomorrow for sure and very much looking forward to it.

much love and peace out ya'll!