To accomplish this great feat:
Splits Times
1 Mile: 00:12:54.19
2 Mile: 00:25:48.38
3 Mile: 00:38:42.58
3.1 Mile: 00:40:00

Wednesday, July 30, 7 p.m., Pine Hollow - Summer Fun Run

Tuesday, Oct. 7 6 p.m. Station Bridge
Tuesday, Oct 14 6 p.m. Octagon Shelter
Friday, Oct 17 9 p.m. Kendall Lakes – SPECIAL Full Moon Run
Tuesday, Oct 21 6 p.m. Oak Hill
Tuesday, Oct 28 6 p.m. Boston Store

Do this one: Tuesday, Oct. 7 ~ 6 p.m. ~ Station Bridge Trailhead, Riverview Road

(from the website)

Brisk five-minute warmup walk, then jog 2.5 miles (or 25 minutes). Three times this week.

I can do that. And, I can finally ditch the podcasts! (Not that they are bad! They were awesome for those first six weeks where the intervals are all over the place. But, now, it will be nice to just get into my own zone!)

UPDATE :: I've decided to switch over to distance rather than time for the last three weeks of Cto5k. Right now, I'm pretty close on each, though not quite covering the distance. I've mapped out a half mile warm-up/cool-down segment and a 2.5 towpath segment. I'll run that three times this week with Ellie.

Muddy Paws Run
The Muddy Paws run was fun. It was a really pretty setting and even though the hills were kind of challenging, it was worth it for the views and overall scenic nature of the event. I accomplished both goals that I had for the race: One was to finish in under 30 minutes (29:40 - done) and the other was to not be last. There were a fair amount of walkers and people who ran the first part, then started walking after the uphills started, so not coming in last was fairly easily accomplished.

Ellie ran the two mile with me. She was pulling pretty hard for most of the race, though, surprisingly, she was actually running in a straight line. Not too much zig-zagging to contend with. She behaved really well around all of the other dogs and even tolerated a curious dalmation who came up to visit her multiple times after the race.

I ran into a friend from agility who was doing the run/walk with her daughter and her two dogs - Katy and Kip. I was with them for the first part of the race. They decided to walk after a few of the stair climbs. I kept running, so didn't see them again. It was fun to run into someone that I know.

On Saturday, we got our second leg in Open Jumpers so we were able to move up to Elite Jumpers on Sunday. We NQ'd on both Elite Jumpers runs. Mostly just dropping bars and one off course. We got one Open Gamblers Q on Saturday and one on Sunday for our Open Gambler's title. And two Open Regular Qs today - one a 10pt and one a 5pt. Katy's Regular runs were really nice today. The five points off on the second run was for a dropped double jump.

So, she now has: JS-O, GS-O and RS-N.

Bread!
Tonight! Finally, the bread baking class with Peter Reinhart. I've been anxiously awaiting this class and it will be awesome to learn from the master. Tonight's class is based on white breads from the Breadbaker's Apprentice. Tomorrow we work on whole grain breads. His latest book about baking whole grain breads just won a James Beard award.

I've been trying to make this 30 minute mozzarella forever. Well, it seems like forever. I've tried at least eight times, maybe ten, and it's never come out. The troubleshooting that I did was quite extensive - changing the type of milk that I used, the type of rennet, adding calcium chloride, changing the type of acid that I used to break the curds from the whey. And, still didn't get mozzarella that would actually stretch.

It finally happened. I picked up our first two gallons of raw milk yesterday and couldn't wait to try and use it for cheese. Last night at 10:30, I used half of the gallon to make yogurt and half of the gallon to make mozzarella. And it worked! After all of those failed attempts, I have the recipe and process memorized so perhaps all those failed attempts were not in vain. Last nights cheese-making went off without a hitch and we have a lovely ball of fresh mozzarella sitting in the fridge waiting to grace a bowl of pasta or a home-made pizza. I'm so happy about this!

S took some photos and let's just say that I'll have a couple of nice "before" pictures to compare myself too in a couple of months.

It was a good day, though. Later on, I took Ellie home and brought Katy up so that we could do some counter-conditioning work. She was nicely behaved - similar to how she acts at a trial. Interested in looking around at the other dogs, but not particularly zoned in on anyone in particular. Her lunges are fairly benign - though I wouldn't think of letting her loose.

I was going to run again, but decided to hold off on W3D3 until Sunday.

Tonight I made strawberry sauce and blueberry sauce to mix in with plain yogurt. I used some fresh, local strawberries and some California blueberries. Both sauces are quite tasty - tomorrow I'll try a mix-in with yogurt.

Dog Training
Took Katy down to the station road trailhead to do some counter-conditioning work. Brought some salmon patties and charleebears. We saw about six dogs and she did pretty nicely. We kept to about 40 feet away or so. After that we went down under the railroad bridge to play with sticks and she was able to swim a bit.