Day+5+Journal

=Colin's Journal= 5 January 2006 45 miles Coolidge --> Phoenix 13 miles run, 32 biked

Woke at 6:30, planned on getting to the ruins and eating breakfast there, but we discovered that the tire pump we had bought yesterday at Walmart was totally useless. I used some CO2 to fill the tires with presta valves, while the others struggled with our broken tire levers to replace a tube. We ended up having most of our breakfast at Larry's house, and not leaving until around 9am. We stopped and looked around at Casa Grande for a while, watched a funny video about who built the village and the ruin ("Where did the Hohokam go? The most obvious answer is 'they are still here.'"). The ruins were really impressive, we spent some time checking them out (apparently the water table in the area dropped from ~10 feet under the ground to over 100ft), then said goodbye to Larry, who had biked out to the ruins to see us off. We stopped at Walmart (across the street from the ruins), traded in the broken pump for a working one, then got rolling. Rogo was back running, and made about five miles before we switched. We changed right in front of a house with three mangy dogs, one of which was blind, all of which were barking. My run was entirely on dirt roads after the first mile. I did a workout, switching from 5k to 3k pace, trying to simulate 1000m-200m, 800m-400m, 600m-600m, with 2mins recovery between. This was done on an Indian reservation road, which we had to go through a barbed wire fence to get into. A sign said that vehicles, horses and material could be confiscated, but we didn't see anyone all the way through the reservation. I stopped about 8 miles into my run, and we had lunch at "Granite Knob", then climbed it and looked around. All we could see in any direction was the dirt road we followed, and the old railroad bed next to it. We clowned around there until about 1pm, then I put in two more miles. Soon we got to Rt. 87, passing the time by playing "What Are They Doing Now?", where you pick one or more people, and describe what they are doing at that exact moment. We followed 87 to South of Phoenix, where we cut around on some semi-major streets. It took longer than we had planned, so we enlisted Bill to run, even though it was his off day. With five miles to go, Grant spoke on the phone with his hosts, and when we heard him say "Chicken fajitas? Yeah, that sounds fine." everyone broke into a wide grin, anxious to get going. Corey and I split the distance to Grant's relatives' house, which was like a dream: green grass after the desert, fruit trees, a pool, and then inside was great friendly people with the best fajitas we had ever eaten, then cookies, gingerbread and ice cream for dessert. I sent out postcards to some Williams folks and my parents, and we sent Richard Williams an update. The outside of my quads felt pretty sore while running, but fine biking. Also, I think I popped a blood vessel in my hand while looking for Corey yesterday. I need to calm down.

Line of the day: Richard Williams: "The money is in the bank."

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