Summer is here. And so is the hot.

Aside from the seemingly endless rain, we've had a pretty good spring this year. The temperatures have been pretty mild and not too bad to deal with. Well, summer officially arrived yesterday and with it came the heat and yucky humidity.

Steve at AgilityNerd posted on Facebook Thursday that he was having a little contest of sorts. To celebrate reaching 5,000 likes on his page he was going to pick one comment at random and do a video analysis for that person using that super awesome Coach's Eye software. He wanted this person to pick one drill out of the 72 he posted on this page: http://agilitynerd.com/blog/agility/courses/steve/72-backyard-sequences.html

It was 87 degrees when I came home from work that night, but at least it wasn't humid yet and I knew it wasn't going to get any better. On the off chance that I'd find myself picked, and because it was as good a time to do agility as any, I decided to go ahead and take a little video.

We didn't get picked, even though Steve was awesome enough to pick two people instead of one. That's totally okay, though, because I am well aware of my handling faults and where I could improve.  :o)  That's the entire reason why I try to video so many of our practice sessions in the first place; it's very helpful to see what I'm doing right AND wrong. Without this I'm sure it would be much harder to do this whole "train at home by yourself" business.

Who can pick one drill out of 72??? So of course I went ahead and did a second one.

We've managed to keep ourselves pretty busy this last week. Hopefully that will stay pretty consistent in the coming months because I've officially reached the panic stage of, "Holy crap, I'm so out of shape and have to get ready for Champs in three months." I also stepped on the scale on Monday for the first time in WAY TOO LONG and was a bit horrified at how I've managed to ignore a "growing" problem for so long. So.... Boot camp for me in the coming months...

The dogs think it's great! Basically this just means tons of trail hikes and rollerblading for them. We went out Tuesday, I believe, and did 2.6 miles in a not super impressive time, but I "ran" most of it. Secret was nutso on Thursday, so after running all three dogs in agility I took her out for a spin on the rollerblades -- It's helped, but she's still nuts. Yesterday I did the 2.6 mile loop again and bettered my time. This morning we went out for just over 3 miles and I somehow managed a 13-minute mile; which is awesome because it's way better than the last two times out, but sad because I used to be so much faster (several years ago when I was up to running 6+ miles at a time).

I have a fairly lofty goal by the time Champs roles around, but I'm stubborn determined that way.  :o) I think it's doable.

Speaking of... No, I still haven't entered. I might need to get on that one of these days. I'm still waffling on entering Secret. I feel like she needs to come along so that one dog is never left alone in the stall, so in that case she may as well run, right?

Kaiser-bomb! Sorry, had to end the post with that.