Where the Sidewalk Ends

Today was the day I took Henri out on the new route that I found on my long run on Sunday, one that I hoped would be less stressful and anxiety inducing for him. He had seemed okay with our route for a few runs, but maybe he had had his fill of the busy street. What I have found was much quieter with plenty of straightaway. One tiny glitch was along this one stretch of road, there is not even a quarter of a mile where the sidewalk ends and you have to run in the road until you get past the cornfield where the sidewalk begins again.

Henri was curious as we began our new route. It was different from the beginning. There are still sprinklers, unfortunately, but there is much more sidewalk and the sprinklers are much deeper in the yards, so less water action, if Henri can just get past the hissing of them. He followed my lead with little hesitation as we went places he had never been before. I think he was enjoying himself quite a bit...until we hit the spot where the sidewalk ended. He followed me out onto the road easy enough and while he was confused, he kept going. Then a car pulled out of the neighborhood onto the road. We were running into traffic, for safety, but Henri was not a fan of the idea of a cars headlight pointing towards him. The sun was up at this point. We were easy to see and I was going to move into the grass along the road, but Henri decided a dead stop seemed like a better option. The car was plenty far enough away and I was able to move myself and Henri safely off the road and even keep Henri moving. He did better with the car that came from the other direction. As we stepped back onto the sidewalk I had to slow down, either because I had tried to pick up the pace to hurry Henri along this road that I knew he would find questionable, or I was holding my breathe in anticipation of Henri's reaction and I needed to catch it a little. Either way, I'm proud of him. He continued on the rest of the run with little fuss or anxiety. Maybe a normal amount of anxiety for Henri experiencing new things. Time will tell how he will handle the approach of this scary edge of the world on our next run, but if he's struggles, we will just have to dip into the neighborhood and run around the corn field, sidewalks the whole way.

I wasn't sure how much of a run we would get in this morning. It's warmed up quite a bit the last few days. It was really humid when we went to bed last night. My glasses steamed up when I let Henri out in the morning. A nine mile run was on the plan, which I know I can't get done before work. I thought we'd be lucky to get four, five or six with the heat. It turned out to be much cooler than I thought it would be. Still warm, but a breeze kept it comfortable enough. We actually got seven miles in and it was a perfect route, aside from the scary parts ;)