Ok, "Still Alive" is a bit of an exaggeration but not too far. To compound last week's "embarrassingly low" mileage we have this week's cold, illness, whatever you want to call it. I had hoped by Monday to be back on top of things and starting a steady progression of mileage and runs to discuss here but no such luck. After struggling to make it through last night's choir rehearsal (read: ears plugged, head oscillating between being stuffed up or running like a faucet), I couldn't wait to go to bed.
The upshot of this is that I have been doing a fair amount of very focused practicing and even read a really cool book about the subject. "Music Practice Coach" by Lance LaDuke is a very good read. There are many funny stories and lots of reinforcement with his "SMART" system. I am excited to share it with my students and hope they enjoy it as much as I did. This is a required text for next semester.
So the coolest part of my day? I think I taught my dog to catch mice. Living out in the country, in an 1890's cabin is very cool. Lots of trees, deer, elk, beavers, bears, and, unfortunately, mice. We put out a great deal of those green cubes, traps of varying sizes, and the landlord put screens over most of the cracks between in the floor. None of this has had the decisive effectiveness of Hannah Banana, or Hannah the Fearless as she is now called. (For those who haven't met her, Hannah is a 9 year old short-haired Dachshund). As I was sitting on the chair, drinking my coffee, a mouse ran across the floor. She looked at me as if to say "Look Dad, a mouse, what do I do?" To which I replied "Get it, Hannah!" In the blink of an eye she jumped off the chair and pounced on the mouse. Without even a twitch, the mouse was laying belly up, covered in slobber and clearly dead. I told Hannah "Leave it!" and she looked up at me and wagged her tail. Much praise, doggie snacks, and the best belly rub of her life followed as I disposed of the critter. To my knowledge, Hannah has never killed anything but I couldn't be more pleased. I'm all for "respect life" and "every life is precious" (my parents are kind of hippies) but when the possibility of Hantavirus or plague come waltzing in my house and leaving little "presents" every morning, it's search and destroy. To make matters worse, when it's not frozen outside, there is a very healthy snake population on our little side of the mountain and the last thing we want is a rattlesnake colony under our house. I am very proud of our little ball of fur. I am truly surprised by how quickly she dispatched it too. She really just ran up to it, bit or squished it (I'm not entirely certain which) and left it. That's my girl.
Hopefully I'll be back up and running (literally) this weekend or early next week. Since there's nothing really on the horizon, I'm ok with taking this week off, setting some goals, doing some planning, and getting back to it next week. In the meanwhile, I'm off to do a bit of strength training indoors. 1-2 sets of 100 pull-ups, any style. I find that pull-ups do a decent job working abdominal muscles as well. Perhaps its the tightening the core to engage the larger movers. Good luck. Don't forget the hand sanitizer!
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