2 Dogs, A Deer, And A Snake In less than 200 hundred yards from my starting point I had to deal with two dogs. The first only looked my way and gave a bark. I replied with a yell of my own. Turns out he had come loose from someone's yard and it it unusual for this to happen. Two houses down a real little do ran off a porch running and barking towards me. It stopped at the curb and did not enter the road. This is the third time in about a year this has happened. Saw a deer crossing the road about a 100 feet in front of me a few miles later. Too dark to tell if it was a buck or a doe. Then a mile later a car passed, I recognized it and knew it was coming up on its house. Then it stopped, backed up, stopped again, went forward, then back again. I was confused by this. Then she yelled out her window, watch out there is a snake in the road. Sure enough it was in front of her vehicle. Looked like either she or another car had run it over. I think it was a copperhead. It had some black diamond shapes on its back. I could not tell how long it was, but it was pretty big around. I had just come past that same spot about 5 minutes prior and did not see it. But it was dark and I had no light tonight. Workout wise I decided on 8 miles. Wanted to mix in some faster paced miles. Ran a 1 mile warm up. Then tried for this: 7:30, 7:15, 7:00, 7:00, 7:15, 7:30. I missed the splits a couple of times, but the overall average was about right. Depended on the Garmin for my pacing. I am still unable to pick out a pace, then run it without the aid of technology. Holy Cow !! I have my first Half-Marathon this weekend. I will attempt a mini taper towards the end of the week. This will be my first race ever over 10k. And I have only run two of those in the last three years. Also realized a couple of things tonight. 1) I am still shocked when I see anything sub 7:00 pace on my watch. Yet it is starting to become more frequent lately. 2) With a 1/2 mille left in my run I could not believe I had only run 8 miles. A very short time ago anything over 6 miles was a long run. I guess these are just two examples showing that I am making some progress in my running.
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