hoka hooka hicka HIKE

yesterday i got to go w/my friend christy (my fellow teacher, the high school cross country coach, for her birthday!) on the fog run in bakersfield. we left the hill at ungodly dark-thirty to register, go potty, stretch. she even had me jog an extra mile to warm up. once we started, in a gigantic group of runners, we had a good clip going, were passing ppl, feeling pretty good. grabbed a cup of water @ the halfway point, dropped cup in trash box, hit a rock w/my extra-large super-fantastic hokas, did a swan dive onto the dirt: BAM! i hit chest-first, therefore saving my knees & wrists, but knocking the air out of myself. the last stretch was much harder w/less wind. i came in 7 seconds behind christy: a 10:20 mile. slow compared to the old days, tho i've never been fast!! ...now i have a bit of a resolution: to get back to a sub-10 minute mile.
i want to think the fall slowed me down, but just to be sure, i will work on developing speed... realistically. i'm old, but not yet old enough to be that slow!
today the dog-girl (outside yelling her head off right now) & i did 4.88 tough miles. turns out my knee IS a little injured. down the dirt path, out on the highway, down to the park, around, around, around (saw lisa & arestina, which was nice, as well as students at the skatepark, as usual), then back UP for the steep climb home.  i decided to explore coming back, so cut off the main road down into the riverbed. i mean DOWN: you really descend, & the hills climb steeply, ever more steeply in all directions. we got snarled in thick trees for quite some time, snapping dead branches off on the leash, meandering, branches & stickers tearing my shirt, my pants, my hair, my yushenka... i saw no way back up for quite some time, feeling quite isolated, staving the deliverance thoughts, bearing in mind what i read today about john muir and "sauntering" (see https://vault.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/life/palmer_sauntering.aspx. )... finally i spied an extremely steep way out & climbed, slid, & scrambled my way out (penny had a bit of a struggle as well) into... more thick scrub brush, no road, more bushwhacking. finally we came to a barbed wire fence, but no real way to approach except through more thicket. crap.
after much struggle, i located a semi-break in the fence that necessitated me lifting penny & gingerly threading her through, then doing the same with myself, careful not to touch hair or flesh to barbed wire. i felt some tearing in my pants & shirt, but they're both home garments, so no problem...
she is barking her head off again, so i'm gonna go. dang beast!!
tomorrow school resumes. i'm not ready, but i will be.
happy birthday tomorrow, elvis!!!!