4 legs v/s 2 legs

The dog had the physiological advantage today: higher VO2 max (roughly 4X mine), and an extra set of legs which apparently do not grant an advantage in some situations, such as extremely long runs in hot weather, but definitely help him get up the hills. I was gratified, however, to hear him breathing more forcefully than usual at one point. This was during the beginning of the run on a bunch of little hills. I was feeling pretty good at this point.

Essentially, I decided to run a slightly larger loop that still hit the largest hill in town (with the option of doing the 2nd largest and steepest). I thought I knew what was coming up.

The sidewalk situation was excellent. I've gotten used to running on the road on a bunch of the streets here, but there are a few that are pinched in between hills with hardly any shoulder. None of those were on this run. When the sidewalks ran out, I was left on a wide and straight suburban street with fields in the distance. We were sort of on the edge of town. The street was appropriately named: Limit.

My favourite environment is probably open fields; I'm also intrigued by deserts, but I feel most energized among a bunch of different grasses under a large sky. Right now, there is some green but still a lot of dead vegetation and the humidity is low...it's my kind of climate. I am aware that spring will come and turn everything green and eventually steamy, which should be ok if I manage to have the same easy attitude toward summer running this year as last. But, for now, I get to gaze at miles of dead grass and hopefully I will soon get around to running fully out of town and into it (my ambitions are pointing in that direction, which is several directions actually, and I still have to figure out which will be the best).

Anyway, we saw fields in the distance and ran up the street to the major street with the wide footpath and the hill. We'd gone up and down a bunch of hills by this point and I wasn't sure if we were close to the top--at first, we appeared to be, and then we rounded a slight curve which hid the truth.

My legs died. It wasn't painful or especially bad, more comical, really. I just couldn't move very much. At one point, I felt almost as if all the energy had drained out of my legs in one swoop. If my legs could faint, they did then and there. What was really going on? Some sort of mass muscle revolt or spasm? Some large-scale electrolyte upset? Would this actually turn out to be beneficial in some way? I kept jogging ever so slowly. There was a guy walking ahead of me and for a while I doubted I would catch him. Meanwhile, the dog was trying his best to jog extra slowly for my sake. He was doing fine.

We eventually got to the top and I almost recovered during the jog down to other inclines; I appreciate more and more how the large hill flattens all the other hills. I was feeling beat by the end of the run, too beat to really distinguish between a slighter uphill and slighter downhill. Funny how getting kind of broken can make it easier to keep going.

Total 8.15 miles.