Beautiful Run Around Colleen Lake

I took a couple of days off because my calves were hurting more than I thought they should. But today was perfect, about 55 degrees with a good strong mosquito removing cooling wind. I really enjoyed my 5 mile run around Colleen Lake.  I love that run because I can keep looking slightly to my left and only see the lake and not the big trucks and industrial buildings on the other side of the road.  Just the geese and blue water.  It looks like almost all of the ice is finally gone.  A few 70 - 80 degree days took care of that pretty quickly. I even saw a few little flowers.  Finally some color other than brown around here.

Dwarf Fireweed

Colleen Lake

I've been reading Eat & Run by Scott Jurek. What an amazing book and amazing runner.  I can only dream of running a 100 mile race, yet he wins them over and over.  He does it on a vegan diet too.  I'm working towards that.  Not quite there yet, and may never be there completely.  But as he found, I have also found that I feel better when eating only a plant based diet.  There is something so heavy about eating meet and dairy products.  I discovered that my cereal tastes just as good with soy milk as with cow's milk.  Imagine that! I kind of hate to cook so my big worry is that I won't be conscientious enough to make sure I get enough nutrition if I go 100% vegan.  But when I stop and ponder what humans do to animals in order to feed themselves, I feel guilt every time I bite into something that was once part of a living breathing or even swimming being.  The worst part is when I think about how cruelly most of our farm animals are treated.  Maybe on some tiny farm in the Midwest, the animals raised by one family do have fairly happy lives.  But I have seen the huge feed lots while driving through California.  There is no way the poor animals are anything but miserable and suffering while huddled together in outrageously crowded and filthy conditions.  If we an get our nutrition from plant life that doesn't have an sophisticated nervous system able to suffer and feel pain, it just seems like a much better way to live and eat.  I know it has been proven to be healthier too. I'm going to keep striving to improve my diet.  I know it will help my running too.  I'm often a lazy runner and almost always a lazy eater!