The one drawback – a wide open sky, fresh air, and a cool breeze, yet only accompanied with a 1/11 mile track. The cruise is no place to run.

One major benefit, my rest days are accounted for the remainder of the month.

MapMyRun allows you to chart your run route elevation.

Here is the elevation view of my most traveled route.

I don’t always feel like I’m progressing – especially when I am out on the road or trail on a hot summer day sweating like crazy and feeling exhausted; sometimes it is necessary to take another look from a different angle.

When I first started running, any sort of incline put a halt to my forward momentum; it is encouraging to see my progress.

Not bad, keep it up!

Snakes rank high on my list; ants a close second.

Like the great Indiana Jones, a trail runner’s true nemesis is the snake.

It is not the bear, mountain lion, or off leash dog that most freightens me on a hot afternoon day. It is the coiled strike of pain and venom that could take me down mid stride.

Indy never cringed at the enemy in human form; nor should we at a menacing steep hill or conquering a late mile – it is part of the job.

For Dr. Jones much like us, snakes rarely enter the equation of the quest for the rare antiquity or finish-line tape, but when they do it sends shivers up our spine.

Recently, I came across this sign in the reptile exhibit at the zoo. It helped temper my loath of these scaly creatures.

I have successfully demonstrated controlled tests on the trail (at dusk when the bats were out) with dryer sheet on (no bites) and not on (three bites on my right leg and one on my left).

I heard from our local hardware store that the forrestry service and firefighters pin them to their lapel when out in the brush.

As an additional experiment I hosted an outdoor evening party and invited some my most bug-bitten friends. The party of nearly fifty people were polled a few days after with no indications of bites. To be fair, there was only one party and it was with multiple dryer sheets. I am happy with this set of friends for the time being so a second party (sans sheets) has currently not been planned.

Recommendation: save money on fancy candles and bug zappers (unless you are short on entertainment) and go for the dryer sheets.

P.S. – I am still a proponent of bug spray, especially the stuff built into sunscreen and cortizone, just in case. The dryer sheets are an extra measure of protection against those pesky creatures.

Many times it boils down to preference. Vanilla, chocolate, perhaps even strawberry, or some combination of all three (Neopolitan).

Choices must still be made even though an optimal way doesn’t present itself. So how do you decide when there is no clear or obvious choice?

Remaining still is a choice that some people make, whether out of fear or indecision. This may be interpreted as a wrong or bad choice, but who knows that person might be waiting for just the right time to reach their verdict or need a chance to catch their breath before moving on.

The only other option then would be to go forward – left or right, and accompanied solely by our own devices with little to no indicators to point us in one direction verses the other, I’d say our choice is rational if there is something that sways us more than 50% in either direction.

Point is this. We don’t have to know everything about an outcome before making a rational decision; we just need to come to terms with the realization that we will never know what our day, year, life would be like if we took the other route.

Beauty of it though is that we do get to know and experience what the day, year, and our life brings on the route we do choose.

Today, I went left.

Your body feels heavy and bloated, fatigue seems to set in quicker, pace is slower than normal yet you are exerting more effort, and breathing is noticably shorter and more difficult.

During runs when the heat is more intense than normal and my body starts to produce signs of dehydration or exhaustion, I have learn from experience to slow the pace down, fuel up appropriately and preventively, and shorten and even stop a run.

Thankfully, I haven’t hit a wall recently, well one that isn’t scalable. I am attributing this to both pre-run preparation and the awareness and action taken when the warning signs present themselves (the subtle and not so subtle).

At a lunch outing to California Pizza Kitchen I ordered the entree with the highest calorie count – the dish may suprise you, it certainly did me.

Meet the Thai Crunch Salad. At a whopping 2238 calories (with the avacado add), it beats out even their most decadent dessert, the Turtle Sundae, by over 700 calories.

Speaking of colors check out these new designs on the Brooks Cascadia 4s. Wonder how they’ll look after a few months off the beaten path?

Only one way to find out.

The Cascadia’s have always received phenominal reviews. These pairs were purchased to get me through the rest of the summer season.

completion of today's run dropped me out here

Today’s post run treat Trader Joe’s dried fruit bar (raspberry) – 50 calories, no fat.