Toe-Shoes Tina: Four Legged Friend

Distance:  2.45 miles (this was a bonus run, I boxed for an hour this morning)
Pace:  10:30
Heart rate:  136
Wine consumption last night:  None.

Yay!  My new toe shoes came in the mail today!!!  I arrived home at 7:15 (following a parent teacher organization meeting -- yep, envy my coolness) to find husband #1 walking around in flashy new toe shoes.  Since I ordered mine the same day, I rushed to the entry way, tore open the box and aaaaaaah (cue heavenly choir of angels) new orange Vibrams!

(Can you tell I like to stand out in a crowd?)

All of a sudden, a night run was appealing.  I live in the suburbs.  I'm more likely to be recruited to serve Jesus than I am to be the victim of violent crime.  That being said, I don't like to run alone in the dark. I have two two year old Belgian Shepard (mix, I think) dogs with tons of puppy energy to burn. They are rescue dogs.  One of them had a traumatic experience with the dog catcher and considers leashes her mortal enemies.  As a result, it takes 15 minutes to get her on the leash.  This is why I put the other one on the leash and headed out for my night run.  

It was mid 80s, but with a nice breeze.  And it was long-since dark, so the pavement was cool for the dog.  I know from prior jaunts that she runs a 10 minute mile. I guess tonight she was tired.  By the end of our first mile, she was lagging behind me like I was the one being walked.  I made the unfortunate choice to do the 2.6 mile loop instead of the 2 (or 1.5).  At 2.45 miles, she just stopped.  She looked at me like if she could talk, profanity would have been involved.  We had averaged at 10:30 pace.  I couldn't tell if she was being a wimp or about to keel over, so I turned off my MapMyRun and we slowly meandered the remaining .15 home. She collapsed on the floor and stared at me until I brought over a bowl of water. So much for a four legged running buddy.  

(Taken during a daylight walk.  We were on better terms.)

So what's up?  My dog is an excellent runner when she bolts out the doggy door with one of my expensive shoes.  Now all of a sudden she's a couch potato?  Slo Jo's dogs run well.  How can I get mine up to speed?  As you can imagine, there's a Runners World article on this.  Evidently dogs need a 5 minute warm up and you should start them out with 15 minute runs (in fairness to me, 15 minutes is 2.6 miles to some runners).  Then you can add 5 minutes a week.  I guess when the weather cools, I'll start bringing her on shorter runs where I don't have aspirations of speed.  The good news is that my average heart rate was only 136.  Maybe running with the dog will help me find my marathon pace.