Training for 5/28/20

Today is the 25th anniversary of Bobby Labonte’s first win in NASCAR’s Cup Series, the 1995 Coca-Cola 600!

The week after this race was the spring Dover race. I didn’t get to go to that race, but I washed my parents’ Aerostar in exchange for a souvenir from the track. My mom was surprised when I said I wanted something from the souvenir hauler for my new favorite driver, Bobby Labonte — a Chevy driver. I came from a dedicated Ford family and I’d not owned up to secretly rooting for Bobby since Daytona precisely because I knew I’d catch a ton of flak for it, and I was right.

It’s weird to remember how important Ford vs. GM was back then, because no one really cares about it anymore since the cars are all pretty much exactly the same now. But that was practically turning my back on my family in those days haha.

Back to the current day.

Yesterday, after Clark and I did a virtual strength training class, we took Pepper to Vista to meet our run club for the first Wednesday night group run in weeks.

It wasn’t a huge turnout, but it was nice to see some other people for once! Here we are, socially distancing before the run:

When we started running, Clark and I had no trouble remaining socially distanced from the rest of the pack, because Pepper was moving soooo slowly. We were supposed to do about 3.3 miles, but it was taking us so long to drag him along, we took a shortcut back to the meeting spot. In the end, we did 2.3 miles at a 13:25/mile average.

The best part was the restaurant we met at recently reopened for dine-in service, and dogs are allowed on the patio, so we got to sit down and have a couple draft beers right after. We had to wear a face mask whenever we weren’t sitting at the table, but other than that, it felt almost normal again for a few minutes!

We went home, made some dinner, watched a little TV and went to bed. I really thought we’d worn Pepper out enough he’d sleep through the night.

I could not have been more wrong. He made it to about 12:30 a.m. and then he just would not lie still. He kept wanting to go out on our balcony for no reason — it wasn’t like he was sick and throwing up or going to the bathroom. And if he wasn’t out there, he just paced around the apartment, his nails clicking on the flooring.

Eventually Clark shut the doors to the bedroom and stayed in the living room/kitchen area with Pepper so I could sleep, which was very nice of him.

Around 5:30 a.m., Pepper finally went to sleep. Other than moving from the bed to the couch after Clark left for his office, he has been dead asleep all morning. He has completely switched his sleep schedule and I don’t know how to switch it back, but it needs to happen soon because he is driving us both insane!