It’s a few short weeks before the Arizona Super Spartan Race, which means that I need to start the running portion of my training.  The unseasonable warmth on a Saturday morning, combined with the severe restrictions on my strength training made this the day.  After 30 minutes of strength training and another 15 for core work  I laced up the running shoes, donned my P90X hoodie, and turned on my iPod, greeted to the cheerful beat of “Move this” by Technotronic.  Yes, I’m an 80’s music kind of guy and I’m not ashamed to admit it.  As I made my way around my neighborhood I thought back to my early morning running sessions in preparation for the Vermont Spartan Beast.  Those runs were filled with suspense and intrigue.  Well, not really, but there was at least a good story or two that came from them.  I was slightly disappointed that this run would have none of that.  Really, what can happen mid-day in a sleeply little subdivision in the middle of rural Kentucky?  Well, let me tell you…  On my route down the winding hill to the Kentucky River, I was chased on two separate occasions by 4 different dogs.  Both of those resulted in me grabbing a stick from the ground and screaming at them as they rushed toward me.  I’m not sure, but I think 1, maybe 2 of those dogs would have eagerly bitten me had I not wielded the wooden weapon.  As if that was not enough, on my run back up that steep hill, I heard a crashing sound about 3 yards behind me.  I turned quickly toward the commotion and watched a couple of small boulders and hundreds of smaller rocks bounding over the hillside into the path I had just vacated.  A rock slide.  That was a first!  If I had been 3 seconds slower, I would have been trying to leap over the flying boulders to prevent being smashed.  As I’m writing this I wish that would have been the case because this story would have been that much better.  Who knows what the Arizona Spartan Race might bring….maybe there will be rock slide obstacles and I will have a leg up on the competition.