tired today

Ugh, I am weary today. I think everything is catching up with me and now I'm ready for a day or so of really slobbing out and doing nothing. I'm pretty good at maintaining quite a frenetic pace for a while - getting up early, keeping busy all day and most of the evening before falling into bed. I can and do live like this week after week. But now and then I just have to stop. One morning I will just not get up (usually a particularly grey, rainy unpleasant morning) and I inform Mr J that all the morning canine routine that I usually do (being first up) is his problem. Then I'll spend most of the day in bed with a book with occasional forays for food and water - and by that I mean meals and a bath.

Mr J, being the supportive wonderman that he is, just delivers a cup of coffee to my bedside and takes care of everything. I am lucky. I do know.

On second thought, I'm not all that lucky today. Not because Mr J is turning over a new, mean leaf or anything. It's just that I could really do with one of those lazy days but there is just way too much to do. We're still playing catch-up at work, and that's going to take some time.

Besides, I have walking to do. The Lappies and I set off in the pre-dawn, blue-sky frost this morning with good intentions but we made less than 5 miles. I really must get my pedometer up and running (pardon the pun) so I can actually keep a record of how far I'm going. Driving the length of my walk in the car is a particularly inefficient and eco-unfriendly way to track my progress. And guessing at my improvement - or otherwise - is not really very useful in terms of hard, cold facts. And it's cold, hard facts I'll be needing to plan my way up to 20 miles a day from my current 20-ish miles a week.

The dogs were both unusually naughty this morning and I was more than usually tired. The worrying thing is that the dogs are getting fitter far more quickly than I am. This means their energy levels on our walks are increasing which makes things tough for me when, for example, I have to keep them on a lead as they try to career down the hillside. And, yes, I do need to keep them on a lead. Most of the fields we trek through are full of sheep & their lambs at this time of year. I don't think they need to have my dogs practising herding skills on them. And I'm quite sure their farmer would not be impressed if my dogs attempted to inspire a game with one of his sheep.

I'm thinking maybe I'll take one dog a day, alternating between Neka and Keskiyo. That way they both keep getting the longer-distance practise without feeling increasingly like I'm holding them back from fulfilling their potential. At least until I decide who's coming on the hike, anyway. It should also improve my downhill traction considerably.