2016 Fast and the Furry – Guest Post by Mesa

Since my owner has been slow to update this blog-thing of hers, I decided to take over and write about the Fast and the Furry!

This is always my “A” race for the year, and I know Nichole considers it her favorite 5k of the year as well. We’ve done it the last 4 years together (the race is 5 years old… somehow I didn’t hear about it the first year).

This year I knew I would be pulling Nichole at 18 weeks pregnant, so I told my owners I wanted to be extra tapered. They were pretty busy that week anyway so I didn’t log a lot of mileage. By Friday I was twitchy with energy.

Perhaps I was a little “too” tapered. Even though I my coach tells me I shouldn’t go crazy with my extra taper energy and instead just try to rest & eat well, I couldn’t help myself and tore into a few things around the house. Nichole was not happy to see the green fluff flying through the air one morning as she came down to me un-stuffing my sleeping pad. I ignored her sigh as she picked it all up and sewed it back together. I knew this meant I was ready.

Then RACE DAY came. Finally! After Nichole warmed up alone (I apparently pulled too hard the first couple minutes of her run and caused her stomach to hurt a little, oops), she hooked me up to our Stunt Puppy Stunt Runner leash and we headed to the start line. I figured it was only polite to greet every single dog on our way.

“Did you know it’s race day? Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! Are you as excited as I am?” I’d greet one dog, then pull Nichole over to meet the next friend. So many furry friends to greet and smells to take in, and so little time!

The gun went off and Nichole was apparently worried about me getting tangled with other dogs and runners. I’m not sure what she was so worried about because within a minute I had pulled us into 3rd place overall, behind Cali from Northfield (who brought one of my friends, her fast owner Marco) and a dog I’ve never met before. We went through the first mile in 6:10, which included a brief water stop. I’m glad they have water every mile for me & the humans. It was hot out.

After the second mile, which was in ~6:35 (I had to drink from all 4 of the water containers they had out at the half way point!), I could see the 2nd place dog about 30-40 seconds ahead of us.

I became extra excited when I saw my owner and sister out the bike and chariot, cheering for us. Nate said, “Go Mesa!”, and I pulled harder!

I was able to narrow the gap on the 2nd place dog to just ~10 seconds with just 1/4 of a mile to go. Then his owner looked back and saw us and bolted ahead.

We were no match. I couldn’t pull any harder anymore and Nichole was pretty tired. I was still so happy to see us cross the line in 19:36 (clock in picture was off). That’s almost 2 minutes faster than when Nichole was pregnant with Greta! Nichole’s race recap for that race is here.