Day 4 of Training Part 2

OK. I've had people ask about the grasshopper, duck & car. I thought I'd elaborate on the day I had yesterday.

Yesterday was Saturday so I slept in until 8:30am and didn't actually get out the door until around 9:00am. I started out with my normal stretching and warm up and eventually ended up walking very fast (for me) up the road. I turned a corner and started walking against traffic off to the side. I'm doing pretty good, there's a car coming, she starts to edge closer and closer and more off to my side. Then I can finally see her and she's texting or dialing or something on her cell. She doesn't even see me! I noticed this as her car is swerving my way and I kind of do this (extremely graceful) leap/run/dive off the side of the road. She looked up at the last second, corrected and just missed me. Whew!

Usually the mornings are very quiet. Things usually seem clean as if the dirt, heat and exhaust were somehow washed away by the night. Today is different, probably because of the time I started. I feel the heat from the sun now and it's much different. I'm sweating a bit more, there's a lot more noise outside, we live in a neighborhood that still has a few houses being built so there's a lot of noise as construction crews go about their work. I feel like I'm breathing too much of the dirt that's been mixed up into the air from all of cars and construction.

I turn onto the last street and I pass a lot of land that has overgrown weeds. The weeds are almost like bushes they're so huge and I think I hear something weird coming from them. Just as I look over this huge, vicious, tiger like... grasshopper attacks! It comes right at my face and my arms are flailing all over while I try to swat away my attacker! I almost trip and fall and I kind of do a couple of circles while my hands are frantically swishing anything in front of me. The mutated grasshopper disappears. I back carefully away from the weed bushes and start walking again.

I'm now by my friends house and she has a pet duck. ( I think his name is Crackers or Quackers... not sure.) Anyway... the duck crosses their fence and starts waddling along the side of me as I walk. It is SO cute and I kind of laugh a little to myself because he's so adorable. I remember my friend just recently telling me how he has started biting & nipping at people and can't really imagine that this cute little thing would bite anyone. Then it waddles (it's waddling faster than I'm waddling now) right behind me and starts making these really loud squawking noises while ruffling it's wings at me. The duck goes into a full waddling sprint and is right on my heels! It's kind of goin' all freaky on me now! I panicked and picked up my pace. I keep glancing over my shoulder as I try to skip a couple steps ahead of the duck and it's gaining on me! Just then a dog barks and catches the ducks attention and it immediately turns and runs/waddles towards that noise.

I'm so glad nobody follows me around with a camera. Just walking, breathing & not falling are hard enough without all the spastic diving away from cars, swatting away mutant insects and ninja ducks. I think I'll try to stick with the earlier times. There's a lot less commotion at 6:00am.