Urban Cougars

After 6 hours of sleep, the alarm went off at 6:00am this morning! And for a moment, I thought to myself, "Why is the alarm going off? I don't have to work today...they just took their final!" Then I realized it was Saturday, and for a moment, I thought I'd go back to sleep, thinking I'd set the alarm by mistake. That is until I remembered that every Saturday until June 19 I will be getting up at this ridiculous hour of the morning (clue that we have no kids yet is that 6:00 am is ridiculous still for a Saturday, by the way) to meet the rest of the Team In Training hikers and our coaches and mentors to train for our Yosemite hike! So, I, after hitting snooze several times, finally rolled out of bed, grunted an unhappy reply to Phil's "Good Morning!" and got dressed.

We drove down to South Orange County to met the rest of the hikers, coaches, and mentors, and embarked on our journey. To our surprise, this would be what Phil and I are referring to as an Urban Hike (see photo). We went 5 miles today on a mostly paved path, up a pretty steep residential hill, and just as we were about to cross back across the major highway to our cars, we were told "You just missed the cougar!" The two women who told us about the cougar said we'd missed it by 10 minutes(although Phil and I do not think we missed him so terribly much, so much as we escaped his presence)! They explained that they were just finishing their hike when they saw what they thought was a stray dog. One of the ladies was cautious as it ran toward her, thinking, "not all dogs are friendly," and as it approached, she realized it wasn't a lost dog at all, and screamed, "It's a cat! It's a cat!" All of this is somewhat ironic given that prior to leaving for the hike, we had to place "toe tags" on our shoes in case of emergency.

We were out for about 2 hours and it was a good day overall! Although we only meet with them once a week, Phil and I are training on our own the rest of the week. As Phil is still rehabbing from his surgery in December, it is really important that he is cautious with his knee, and is pacing his training accordingly. I will continue with my treadmill walks on random and with bootcamp, and hope to see some more wildlife on our early morning Satureday hikes!

Thanks for keeping up with our training! Thanks to those of you who have donated as well! We still have a long way to go and every little bit counts, so if you would like to make a tax deductible donation, please visit our fundraising site: http://pages.teamintraining.org/ocie/Yosemit110/TeamLostDogs.

Also, we are planning to have a yard sale on of these days (when we trust the weather a bit more)! If you have anything that you need to get rid of and would like to donate the items to our yard sale, we would love to have them (if you live nearby, of course!) Thank you for all of your support as we set out on this journey to save the lives of so many people who are diagnosed with cancer every day!