Bites

Over the span of my life I have been bitten by various animals. Dogs, turtles, snakes, small children and other assorted vermin and such.

Some of the bites have been pretty bad. I spent the night in a hospital one time because I got bitten by a Copperhead snake... twice. It was at a cross country meet when I was a freshman in highschool, and it got blown way out of proportion.

I was also stung in the head by some red wasps when I was around 10 years old and my head and face swoll up like a damn basketball. My face was so distorted that I looked like Quazimodo (the hunch back of Notre Dame). That one hurt.

I also got bit by a Water Moccasin (aka; Cotton Mouth) one time when I was probably 12 or so. It barely grazed my right ankle (luckily! ) and I ran a little fever and my ankle swoll up a little bit. I kept that one from mom...

I've also had less severe, but equally as painful bites.

Ever seen a Cow Ant (aka;  Velvet Ant, which is actually a female wingless wasp. That explains a lot!) Before? Those things are a bitch! Their tougher than nails and make you scream in pain. Geeez... that's some bad memories there.

The Banana Spider (that's what we called it at least, I think it's also known as a Golden Orb Spider, maybe?) Is another pain rendering insect. The leave you with a massive whelp that burns for a few hours.

But now I'm encountering something new. I think they might be spider bites, maybe?

They're concentrated on my lower thighs, just above my knee caps. I'm not even 100% sure their bug bites. I don't know what they are, but they itch a little and are quite tender to the touch.

I've included some pictures below. These were taken at around 5 this morning after a 2 mile run while putting some gas in the truck on the way to work. You can see about 6 of them on my right leg, and 1 big bastard on my left.

A Learning Experience

It's difficult to talk to your kids sometimes. I have a big problem communicating with my son. It's not that we fight or anything like that, it's just that we both get frustrated quickly with each other. He's a very very sweet kid who is extremily kind and wears his heart on his sleeve (it's going to be hell when he starts really getting into girls...), but he gets frustrated with me when I laugh at him for being such a literal person.

I want to have a good relationship with my children, and communicating is the heart and soul of a child / parent relationship. So I have been working on a lot of things.

One thing I've found that works is when we have good one on one time where he gets to do something he enjoys, and learns something new at the same time.

So today after school I decided that we could go on a journey together.

Me running and him on his new bike.

He rides his bike GREAT, and quite fast when he gets the chance. So I want worried about him, I was more worried about me keeping up with him throughout our hilly neighborhood.

I aimed for going about 2 miles, so we strapped on his helmet and I strapped on my Garmin watch and we took off together. Within 2 minutes he's taking his head off about his first day off school. At the house I couldn't get a full sentence out of him!

Around. 75 miles we had a little hiccup.

We were traveling down a pretty steep hill when he somehow ended up behind me. I think he missed the turn I took and had to turn around and play catchup. I called out to him to make sure he was still behind me and he replied with "Daddy, watch out. Daddy, watch out!!!!"....

BAM!

His front tire his the back of left heel just as I'm starting to lift that foot off the ground, effectively jamming the front of my foot back into the cement road where my toes fold under and my foot gets dragged / pushed forward. I skinned 3 toes and had a painful spot on the back of my left heel now.

Great....

My son, being the caring sweet child that he is, freaks out and immediately asks if I'm ok and apologizes repeatedly. Then tells me "daddy, I said for you to watch out. Didn't you hearded me saying that?"

Haha!!!

Then when he sees me foot bleeding he starts panicking a little and asks if I need to go to the hospital.

No bud, I'm ok. It's just a little road rash. No biggie.

Are you sure? We need to find a band aid.

I think it will be ok buddy. Let's just get back home.

Ok.... are you sure it's ok? Your foots bleeding a whole lot.

Yes Bubba, it's fine. Let's just not run into daddy anymore, ok?

....

Funny kid.

But we did have a great time! We did 2.03 according to the Garmin, and we talked the entire time. If we had stayed at home we probably would have just sat on the couch and watched Pokémon or some other nonsense.

I think we will go again soon, but this time we will discuss how to pass before we take off.

Running with music

I love music. I really do. A good song that speaks to my soul is something I really about. I even listen to music when there isn't any playing, there's a constant soundtrack within my mind that seldom stops playing.

But I don't listen to music while I'm running.

You won't find me with headphones on while I'm out on the run. I just don't do it. I have music in my head while I'm running. Hell, sometimes I'm even singing out loud. But I don't listen to music.

I feel like you miss out on too much of the world around you when you intentionally tune it all out. You miss out on the best music of all, the song of Mother Nature.

You can't hear the birds chirping, or the frogs croaking, or even the angry little Yorkshire Terrier drag the little metal chair that he's chained up to across the wooden slats that make up the back porch of his owners lovely home that's just off the Tee Box on hole 7 on the local golf course. You can't hear the Wood Pecker going to town on an old Pine Tree in search of his first meal of the day, or the soft crunch of a small herd of deer just inside the tree line, afraid of being spotted in the days first rays of sunlight.

You also can't hear other runners approaching. So when I pass you and smile and wave and you come across as a total ass hole, don't worry about it, I'm sure the latest Nickelback album totally rocks.... Douchebag...

And then don't look at me like I'm the dick on the road because I scared you when you finally realized that you weren't, in fact, the only person in the neighborhood that goes running early in the morning.

.........

You also can't hear the soothing sounds of the water lapping against the shore as you run out to farthest extent that you body can take you without going for a swim. That's when you look up and realize that you in a beautiful place that you wouldn't have seen any other way... other than maybe a golf cart, but then you wouldn't have as much appreciation for it, would you?

Another Map my ride app FAIL!!!!

Seriously. It's comical at this point.

I went for what is right now a "longish" run this morning and used both my Garmin Forerunner 305 and my Map My Ride app on my phone.

This isn't abnormal. I like to use the app to get my elevation profile along with a map of where I went. Although it's ability to accurately measure distance is about as good as my dogs ability to speak mandarin.

So after my run I compared the 2, and over 7.5 miles they were an astounding .6 miles apart!!!!

Now, I wish the map my ride app was the correct one because it said I ran over 8 miles compared to the Garmin's 7.5, but looking at the rest of the data from this last week of running I'm not sure what the app is doing while I'm running... Maybe it's still asleep at 4 in the morning?

I ran 2 different courses over the 5 day work week, a short one on Monday and Thursday and a longer one on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. My app shows 5 totally different distances, and I dont know if any of them are even remotely close to being accurate!

And just to throw out another complaint in the end of this bitch fest of a blog post, I have to post all my pictures at the END of the post because the Blogger app doesn't allow you to place them in the body of the post. I could do this when I first started blogging on another platform with no issues using a different blogger app that isn't avaliable on my current platform. ANNOYING!!!!!

Grrrrr......

OK. That's all! Have a great day!

I'm walking thru the spider webs...

Well.... Running (more like slowly trodding, fat ass...) thru the spider webs, but that's not the lyrics that Gwen Stefani chose. So ya know.

I've went running 2 mornings in a row and came to the conclusion that whatever poor sap goes for the first run of the day gets the joy of taking out all the freshly built spider webs along the sidewalks and /or trails.

I'm that sap.

On top of that, my damn Map My Run app that I have been using on my phone keeps failing to save my course maps of my runs. The other day it just timed me and didn't say how far I went or my pace or anything. This morning it did all of that, but it didn't save my map or elevation profile although it was clearly all the when I hit the "stop workout" button.

Let's see what tomorrow morning holds!