A new race to train for

After taking several months to heal my leg injury and to not worry about training for any running event, I am now "in training" for the Des Moines 1/2 marathon.  It came about rather strangely and I have to give my friend Rachel all the credit.  She has been running this spring and summer and entered her first race in early August.  I went to run the race so she had someone to be there in the beginning since she hadn't done it before.  Although I've run in dozens of races, it can be nerveracking for me, so I totally understood why she wanted someone there. 
Honestly, I dreaded going to that race.  I didn't want to get up early, I didn't want to be tired, I didn't want to compete and see all these other really fast runners in great shape, I didn't want to at all.....until I got there.  My competitiveness returned from vacation that I never realized it took.  When I got home, I was all energized about racing again, which is the last thing I expected myself to feel like! It didn't hurt that I got first in my age group and 8th overall (ok there were only 50 runners!!).  I decided (with Andy's help of course) to train for and run the race in Des Moines.  Talk about a change of attitude.  The 5k I ran with Rachel went well and I felt good about it.  It's a pretty boring course, but it's flat and there's not very many competitors.  If you want to feel good about your times, I always suggest running in the Pioneer Days 5k!  And speaking of running well, I have to give kudos to Rachel for beating her time goal by 3 minutes!  She rocked it!
I'm still in good shape from torturing myself with the marathon at the end of May, so I picked up the training pretty easily.  I've already had two 90 minute runs and have impressed myself with the speedwork.  I ran hills last week (if anyone here in town is familiar with 33rd St, that's my hill) and before that, I went to the track to run 400's.  I did 8 of them that morning and averaged 1.5 minutes per lap.  Not too shabby.  The goal of this 1/2 marathon is to prove to myself that I can run it in the time I would need to qualify for the Boston full marathon which is 1 hr 52 minutes.  Considering the bad races I've had this year, I certainly expect this to be a challenge, but I'm up for it.  I realized that I have to push myself past the uncomfortable zone and get over the discomfort.  Quit being a pansy and just DO IT!  As usual, we shall see!  And I don't know why I have to have a goal for this.  Why can't I just go out and run and have fun like I used to do? 
As for any other news, I believe Paw Prints is still going to close.  It's really hard to see it happen, but I honestly don't know how we can continue....it's heartbreaking really.
My foster cat, Daytona, is such a sweetheart and I would LOVE to keep him.  It can't happen but I guess I'll just have to keep him until we find the perfect new owner for him!
Well, I'm sure it won't be weeks upon weeks before I write again.  I hope not anyway. Enjoy the 700 mph wind and heat today!

Daytona thinking about his life...

Paw Prints closing

Noodle- currently available for adoption!

Isn't it interesting that it's been EXACTLY a month since my last post?  Complete coincidence for sure!

Changes. Sometimes change is good, sometimes it’s even better. But when this change will come, it’s going to be a sad ending to a great thing. Paw Prints is going to close their cat adoption center. There are a lot of reasons why, but I just don’t feel it necessary to explain the main one, mainly because it isn’t about me. Let’s just say that we suffer from a lack of funding and volunteers….good, reliable volunteers. We need dozens of them and we just don’t have them. We do have some great ones though: Leah, Rachael, Mary, Sharon to name just a few. But it’s not enough. Same as the funding. We do have funds, but it just isn’t enough. So we are going to now concentrate on getting grants to continue our population control issue.


Did you know that a female cat can produce over 4,000 kittens in her lifetime? No, that doesn’t mean she will give birth to that many, but would include her kittens, her kitten’s kitten’s, and so on and so forth. So spaying and neutering is our goal to prevent the thousands of euthanasias per year in Siouxland.

Paw Prints has been the subject of very negative and bad talk from other agencies in the area. These other places go so far as to bash what we do to vets that we use. I just don’t understand. Since when is it bad that we’re taking in homeless cats, getting them vaccinated and fixed a bad thing? We certainly don’t understand where the negativity comes from and we just carry on with it. But it could be so different. Wouldn’t it be nice if when the Humane Society is low on cats, they call Animal Control, who always has a surplus of cats, and take some from them to prevent them from being euthanized? Currently, they ship cats in from Sioux Falls instead of getting them from their own city. Isn’t it called Siouxland Humane Society???? I guess Sioux Falls is close enough. I guess.....

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could send people to each other’s adoption centers if they had a certain cat that we didn’t offer? It will never happen. Ever. And it doesn’t make any sense. These other agencies work so hard to keep to themselves and to put everyone else down. They don’t get the main focus, which really should be the health and welfare of the animals. The cats of Sioux City will pay the ultimate price for the things that go on and I hate that.  I hate that I can’t change people, knock some sense into them.

I wish I could win the lottery. A huge portion of the winnings would be put into a fund and we could provide a very nice adoption center with cleaning staff. We could spay and neuter any cat that we could and we could make a bigger difference faster. I wish a lot of things, but I really wish we could find a way to get people to care more. More people to put in a few hundred bucks, more people to come in once a week to clean. But they aren’t there regularly. So we face turning cats away, which has been done the last few weeks. We face knowing that they may face the ultimate when they get sent somewhere…animal control, humane society, a ditch. It’s a hard decision, but I know that some decisions have to be made.


So if anyone reading this would like to adopt a cat or kitten, now is the time to do it. Once we run out of cats, we will close our doors and concentrate on spaying and neutering and getting more grant money to work with.

Oh, I have more I could bluther on and on about, so I shall save that for another day. I guess I'll start a-singing.  CH-CH-CH-CHANGES....