July 2008 Archives

Last night I ran from Jose's apartment. The street that runs alongside his complex dead ends into Clear Lake, so it's a fairly scenic route -- when I'm not enjoying the water view, I'm admiring the million dollar homes at the end of the road. There's one piece of land that has been cleared in prepartion for building a dozen more of those expensive homes, but construction hasn't started yet. There are no frames, and not even a hint of a foundation yet. I'm sure this will change soon, but for now there is only this bit of land, a view of the lake, and two paved but emtpy streets awaiting their future neighborhood. It was fun to run there, even though it's such a small neighborhood that going to the end of each street and back covered less than a mile. The lack of any houses or structures made me feel oddly free. I got rained on, but only for a couple minutes. In the end, I covered 3.3 miles. Thanks again, Hurricane Dolly, for the brief respite from our normal summer temperatures. If only we could get that benefit without the destructive tendancies of a hurricane...

(Side note: One of the streets that already hosts pricey homes is named Carina Court. I suppose at some point we'll have to steal that street sign for Gavin and Jen. Or Carina can steal it herself when she turns into a teenage hoodlum.)

After 3 straight days of running (the most consecutive days in a while, not to mention a bit longer mileage than I've been doing lately), my shins are sore. I may take today off, or I may ride my bike on the trainer for a bit since it's so wet outside. We'll see. I'm taking tomorrow off work even though our flight doesn't leave until the evening because I know I'd be useless in the office anyway. Let's face it: I've been pretty useless all week. Vacation thoughts have taken over my mind...

If I didn't tell you that I took this composite photo on Saturday, what would you imagine the weather to be like? I think of a cool fall morning. Sadly, of course, it was warm and humid, just like every day in the summer here. But sometimes we get a slight break, and that break is now. The difference between Monday night's sweltering, hot, and generally miserable run and last night's breezy, warm and much more pleasant run can be summed up as follows: Hurricane Dolly. Yep, even though it's hitting way down in Brownsville, the outer bands of the storm are bringing us clouds and some rain. Last night it was still almost 90 degrees, but it was overcast and breezy, so the weather felt much more bearable than Monday.

I ran another 4 miles out on the trail, 3.5 easy and the final 0.5 at 10:00 pace just to remember what that feels like. I walked for about 5 minutes to cool down and then headed inside to see if Jose was still in the gym. (He has always done the elliptical machine, but this week he decided to give running a try. He's starting out slow -- i.e. run/walk method and avoiding the heat by staying inside -- which I think is a good way to begin. I'm excited he is running, even if it is mainly because he says he feels like running gives you the most bang for you buck. Which is pretty true.) He was still there, and had 15 minutes left on the treadmill, so I hopped onto the treadmill next to his and ran another 1.2 miles. Hurrah! 5.2 miles for the day, with a 10 minute break between the first 4 and the last 1.2.

We'll see what the weather is like tonight (and what time I get out of work, since I have a load checkout at 4:00), but if I had to guess, I'd say I won't be bricking tonight. This is unfortunate, since it's been a week since I've been on my bike. But I'll run instead, and probably tomorrow too. I know it probably doesn't make any difference, but I feel like I need to be diligent in my workouts this week since I'll be on vacation for 10 days. While I'll be quite active on vacation, I definitely won't be swimming (too cold) or biking (except slowly on a rented cruiser bike). And though I'll have a pair of old running shoes, I probably won't be running, though there is a 10K in Anchorage on August 2 that is tempting.

Oh my good googly moogly, it was SO FREAKING HOT outside when I went running at 5:00 yesterday. I made it 4 miles, but I really don't know how. If I hadn't had to cover the final 2 miles to get back to my car, I would have been sorely tempted to stop earlier. It was still 87 degrees at 8:00 p.m. according to my thermometer, so I'd guess that it was about 95 when I was out there, with a heat index of who knows what. One of the hottest days of the year so far. Gotta love Houston. I'll try to look forward to another hot run tonight, but it may be a treadmill day.

In other news, I doubt my blogging this week will be very exciting, since it's hard for me to think about anything beyond our impending trip to ALASKA. We made the final bit of reservations today (nothing like waiting until the last minute). Over our nine days there, here are some of the things we'll be doing:

• Attending the wedding for one of Jose's best college friends
• Sea kayaking in Seward
• Evening cruise around Resurrection Bay
• Riding bikes along the coastal trail in Anchorage
• Going flightseeing over a glacier in a float plane
• Taking the day-long bus tour all the way down the 90-mile park road in Denali National Park
• Whitewater rafting on the Nenana River at Denali
• Hiking to the top of Flattop Mountain, Alaska's most-climbed peak, outside Anchorage

I am spending a small fortune on this trip, but I don't even care because I think everything is going to be so awesome. I'm crossing my fingers something fierce for a few days of good weather. Alaska is notorious for gray, overcast days, and a check of one of the Denali National Park webcams showed that the mountain was visible on 4 of the past 13 days. (Or at least it was at 9:00 a.m. when the archived image was captured. It is probably a sign of...something...that most of the webcam sites include a view "on a clear day" for comparison to what you normally see on the webcam!) That seems to fit with the conventional wisdom I've read that it's visible about 1/3 of the time. So if I get to see Mt. McKinley at least once, I'll be a happy girl. Alaska! Yay!

I forgot to mention the funny part of the Lunar Rendezvous Run -- packet pickup. I waltzed into On The Run on Friday afternoon after work to pick up my packet and my name was nowhere to be found. Apparently I didn't register! Silly me. Good thing I discovered this on Friday, as I would not have had any money with me on Saturday. I paid my $20 and off I went. I know I'm doing too many events when I can't even remember what I've paid for and what I haven't. Sheesh.

With that in mind, I registered for the Clear Lake International Tri today. It's a week after Ironbabe, and it's closer to a middle distance tri. The swim and bike are both shorter than true Olympic distance (1000m instead of 1500m for the swim, and 30k instead of 40k for the bike) but the run is a full 10k. The run will be a challenge, and may very well spell doom for any chances of winning an Athena award, but I just can't turn down a new triathlon, run by people I trust, that's in my own part of town! Even if it does mean swimming in nasty ol' Clear Lake...

I had a very relaxing weekend after the race on Saturday. Jose and I braved the movie theater crowds that afternoon to see The Dark Knight. I'd heard so much hype about this movie that I was prepared to be disappointed, but I wasn't. It was exactly as dark, creepy and sinister as I'd heard. And very entertaining. I won't bother recommending it, since I'm sure you're all going to see it anyway. It felt like half of Houston was inside the Cinemark.

I ended up skipping the Webster Du entirely -- didn't register in time, then didn't even go out to volunteer. Instead, I slept until 9:00. That made 10 hours of sleep which was just awesome. I spent the rest of the day lounging, watching TV, and working on some web stuff. The only bad thing is that I completely forgot about the BAM pool party last night! I remembered around 9:00 last night and smacked myself on the head. I must have had Alaska on the brain...

I was shocked when I realized that I haven't run this 5K -- the one that's literally in my backyard -- since 2004! There was the year I overslept (2005), the year I woke up with a pounding headache (2006), and the year I was hanging out with my boy in Boston (2007). It felt good to get back to this race. The course has changed since the last time I ran it, and it now goes entirely through the JSC campus, so that was pretty neat. (Though I joked that it meant I had to be at work on the weekend.)

As we ran in the first mile, I overhead a conversation next to me. One runner remarked that "you'd think NASA was be more impressive. All these buildings are so plain!" Her companion responded "yeah, but it's NASA. NASA's so cool that if their buildings were cool too, it would just be too much coolness." If only that were true... ;-)

I arrived at the race with plenty of time to pick up my chip and say hi to people. Debbie and I headed over to the start line, where Jon turned up. As the race started, Debbie took off ahead of me, but Jon decided to run with me -- or rather, he ran about 5 feet in front of me the whole way. I told him to go ahead, but he didn't, and he was great motivation for me to keep pushing. I only walked for about a minute total, just the two times I stopped to get a drink of water.

Joe was calling times at the mile 2 marker, and I greeted him with a "hey Mr. Triple Bypass!" It was only after I called to him that I realized everyone around me now thought Joe was likely recovering from major heart surgery. Nay, I say -- instead, the term refers to the monster bike ride he did last weekend that took him over three major mountain passes, with a total elevation gain of more than 10,000 feet, in the heart of the Colorado Rockies.

But I digress. Here's the damage from this morning's race:

Mile 1 - 10:17
Mile 2 - 10:44
Mile 3 - 10:46
Last 0.1 - 0:50

Total - 32:37 - 10:30 pace

Overall, I gotta say I'm quite pleased. It was hot, it was HUMID, and I ran a strong race. Going in, I felt like a optimistic-but-not-impossible goal for me was 33:00, so I'm happy to have beaten that. It helped a lot to have Jon in front of me, especially at the end, when he kept up a litany of "come on Sarah," "let's go Sarah," and "push it in Sarah." I was gasping for breath and the tired part of my brain was thinking "why doesn't he just shut up?!?" Ha! But it was actually ok, and it helped me push hard through the last couple tenths of the race.

I had planned to go over to Webster Bike this afternoon and sign up for the duathlon tomorrow, but apparently it sold out yesterday! That's the first time the du has ever sold out, in my knowledge. The organizers say it's going to be the biggest one ever with more than 200 racers. (I believe they are limited by their transition area, not by the course.) While the organizers were nice enough to let those of us in BAM who missed out that they might still be able to let us in if we went over today, I decided to just sit this one out. If I had really wanted to do it, I would have signed up well in advance like I do for every other race. I may go volunteer. Or I may just sleep in!!

I am tired. Just plain tired. I did go to the brick last night, and even muscled through a pretty solid workout. I did 5 Middlebrook laps (or 15 miles) on the bike. For the middle 3 laps, I rode hard, maintaining 19-20 mph despite going into the wind, on the "out" leg and recovered on the "in" leg. In the end, my average was 18.6 mph, which is faster than I usually average during the bricks. The pickups were good, and I feel like they will help me improve my speed. After a couple minutes to gulp more water and change shoes, I headed out for a 2 mile run. I felt very tired, but I ran reasonably well. I walked for a minute at each half-mile mark. I did the mile out in 11:31 and the mile back in 11:32, so I was consistent. And while the pace is slow, it's typical for me for the early evening, hot-as-hell run off the bike.

The workout itself went ok, but afterwards I was utterly spent. I drank some water, Gatorade, and even chocolate milk (my favorite recovery drink), but for the rest of the evening, I was exhausted. I felt like couldn't fully catch my breath. Actually, that's not quite the way to describe it, but it's the closest I can come. I just felt extremely fatigued. I fixed dinner, but then plopped myself on the couch for the rest of the evening.

I haven't been working out more than usual, however, a lot of my workouts have been of pretty high intensity. Two duathlon "race sims," my first longer-than-4-miles run in months, a couple run/walk workouts where the run is done at fast pace, a couple interval bike workouts. Who knows. Anyway, I've decided I'm taking today and tomorrow off, and we'll see how I feel on Saturday at the Lunar Rendezvous 5K. I am still undecided (aka have not signed up for) the Webster Duathlon on Sunday, but I'm sure I'll end up doing it. I can't resist. And all the BAMmers will be there.

The elevator was packed with furniture this morning, so I took the stairs. I work on the top floor of my building, but my building is only three stories tall, so it's not really much of a climb. I should just take the stairs every day, but I'm lazy like that. Anyway, this morning my legs were burning by the time I reached the second floor and I was out of breath! Not sure what's going on there. I have been really tired all week, despite getting 7-8 hours of sleep per night. I ran yesterday, but only for half an hour because that's all the time I had -- and on the treadmill at that. We'll see how I do at the brick tonight.

Yesterday Becca invited us all over for Fish Night, which hasn't happened in a while and was obviously missed. It was perhaps the biggest Fish Night crowd ever, and the food was delicious. My contribution to the evening was bringing Rock Band. And if you didn't know already, it's now official: though I love Guitar Hero, Rock Band is far superior as a group game. Everyone loved switching between singing, drumming, and strumming -- they must have, because we played for 3 hours. Fun times. I totally got 100% on the drums playing Garbage's I Think I'm Paranoid. Aw yeah.

So NASA has done a great thing by having a small group of managers start blogs that are available to the general public. But they appear to be having issues with their RSS feeds. Today 50 "unread" blog posts showed up in my feed reader, all under the title of one particular person's blog. However, the posts are actually from all blogs on the website. This is not the first time this has happened. One step forward, one step back...

There is a large closet located just inside the entrance to my apartment that was pretty well-organized when I first moved in. Five years later, it has turned into a danger zone. I can open the door, but in order to reach anything, you have to lean precariously in and utilize every ounce of balance and care to not fall into the giant mess of boxes, coats, bags, and endless other junk accumulated over the course of my life.

I say "course of my life" because there is seriously stuff in that closet that I did when I was as young as 8 years old (a folder of work from all the art classes I took as a kid and teenager in particular). But there is also the roll of posters that adorned my various dorm rooms in college, now yellow from age and sticky on the corners from multiple layers of tape. One of those is a keeper. One is not. So after another practice run-bike-run yesterday, I figured there's no time like the present and finally decided to tackle the closet of doom. I'm a little late on the "spring" part of spring cleaning, but oh well.

Here's what it looked like after I pulled a bunch of stuff out. Keep in mind that this is only the stuff that was preventing me from actually walking into the closet. Which means there's still plenty of other stuff in there too.

Doing a major bout of cleaning like this is always both fun and difficult for me. It's fun to discover all the things I forgot about, and yet if I forgot about them, I probably don't really need them. I want so badly to be a minimalist, but at age 30 I'm forced to admit that it's not a natural part of my personality. Here are some things I rediscovered, and what I did with them:

• The x-ray and MRI films from when I dislocated my knee in June 2000. (Trash.)
• A laminated poster of the Braves World Series-winning 2005 team. (Considering mailing this to Carter, but he says he already has a couple of them in a box somewhere.)
• Way too many of those cheapo bag "backpacks" with the strings for straps, most of them received from various races. (Goodwill.)
• Five empty shoeboxes. I am really bad about keeping empty shoeboxes, because they always seem like such a good size for storing small stuff. I assumed something was in there. Wrong. (Trash.)
• Huge negatives from my section for an issue of The Technique. (Trash. I've got a book of all the issues I did already.)
• Six pairs of shoes in good condition that I don't wear. No, they were not in the shoeboxes. Funny. (Goodwill.)
• Original box and packaging for my first iPod, a 10 GB model that I traded in to Apple 2.5 years ago for a discount on a video iPod. (Trash.)
• Ancient camera tripod that belonged to my parents. I bought a newer, nicer one a few years ago. (Swap shop.)

Here is my biggest isse though: I know I don't need most of this stuff, and yet I don't want to just toss everything in the trash can. There are plenty of things in that closet and in other places in my apartment that I don't use or no longer want, but are in good condition and I think someone else could use. So how do I get rid of stuff without throwing it all in the trash? I'm not talking about the obvious stuff. Clothes and shoes in good condition will go to Goodwill. Books (as well as CDs and DVDs) will go to Half Price Books.

But where does the other stuff go? I'm talking about picture frames that I've never used, and home accessories that I don't want anymore (like candle sconces and storage baskets). What about a couple extra lamps, and my old college TV that I never use? Where do I take this stuff so that I don't have to just throw it away?

I don't want to deal with Craigslist or Ebay, because most of this stuff is not worth enough money to make that worthwhile. It's just garage sale stuff that I'd sell for pennies, or even give away for free. But how do I get someone to take it? I just want it to magically disappear...

Jose and I were walking past the pool in his apartment complex last night and noticed that it was closed for unspecified reasons. Then we noticed it was filled with ducks! We're not sure which came first, but obviously the ducks were enjoying the clean, clear water of the swimming pool a lot more than the waters of Clear Lake located a mere hundred feet away.

Jose is headed out of town again this weekend, so I expect that I'll compensate by working out like there's no tomorrow. Run tonight or tomorrow, or maybe both. Another race sim on Sunday, and possibly a trip to Twin Lakes as well.

My 4th of July holiday was actually pretty quiet. I ran in the morning, went back to bed at 10 and slept until noon, and then it rained all afternoon. Thankfully it did clear up around 5:00, when I headed over to Becca's for burgers and a million dips. I love dips. From there, we motored Byron's boat out to the bay where we watched the Kemah firework (launched from a barge in the bay) with a least a couple hundred other boats. I've never seen so many boats on the water in one place!

Enjoy the photos:

I've heard a lot of criticism of the Houston Marathon & Half Marathon over the years, but I've never bought into it because I've always had such a good experience with the race. But this year, they've done something pretty sketchy.

Last year the race sold out in September and a lot of people got shut out. They race did allow bib transfers, which was done by you selling your bib to someone else. That person then paid a transfer fee and the marathon took care of updating their records. Much of the process was done outside of the marathon's control, and there were plenty of people who were actually making a profit by selling their race bib.

This year, the race sold out -- all 18,000 spots taken -- two days ago. I bought my bib in January, mere days after the 2008 race because 1) it was only going to get more expensive and 2) I figured that if I was traveling or injured for the 2009 race -- an entire year in the future from when I registered -- I could sell the bib. I would sell it at cost, just to recoup my registration fees, but that's beside the point. Of course I plan to run the race, and at the moment with six months still to go, I don't anticipate being out of town or injured. I certainly intend to run 13.1 miles through Houston on January 18, 2009.

But if I can't run, I no longer have the option of selling my bib -- even at cost. This year's transfer policy involves going through the race organization itself and basically returning the bib to them. They then send you a partial refund. Even if you registered at the cheapest price, like I did, you get back $25 less than you paid.

Now, I don't want to sound too whiny. After all, two years ago, there was no transfer option. Two years ago if you got injured and couldn't run the race, you were simply out the $60, $70, $80, etc that you paid. No transfer, no refunds. I've had to eat plenty of race registration fees over the years when something has come up and I've had to skip the race, so I am grateful that a transfer policy exists. Having a transfer option at all, even if you don't get a full refund, is far better than nothing.

But the thing is, they do have a transfer policy now, but a different policy than last year. And they didn't announce it until after the race sold out. Which means 18,000 people registered for this race assuming that the transfer policy would be last year's policy. Lots of people got shut out last year, which means lots of people registered early to avoid just that.

I'm sure that there are some people out there who registered for the race without any intention to run, and planned from the get-go to turn around and sell the bib. I don't really have any sympathy for those people. But I am annoyed on behalf of the thousands of runners, myself included, who registered very early despite the risks associated with that. The earlier you register for a big race like a half or full marathon, the bigger the risk is that something will happen that prevents you from running. Encouraging people to register early -- 6-12 months ahead of the event -- and then changing the transfer policy on them after the last bib is sold is totally sketchy in my book. I highly doubt anyone from the marathon reads my blog, but if they do, I just wanted them to know.

I'll still be out there running the course in January, just as I've been there for the past five years.

• Articles like this about how a sizeable percentage of Americans stay in contact with their office while on vacation always stun me. I'm going to Alaska in less than three weeks and you can bet I will not be thinking about work at all, much less trying to read my work email or check in with the office.

• I was going to post that if you want to run the Houston Marathon or Half Marathon in January, you need to sign up today. But it's already too late. This morning the website said they were 99% full and sure enough -- they are now sold out. And the event is still more than 6 months away! Unbelievable.

• The Houston Museum of Natural Science is having a Guitar Hero II contest in a couple of weeks as part of their RockFest, which is tied in to their cool gems and minerals exhibit. I'm seriously considering entering. I don't know if I could win, but I could probably hold my own.

• I found this Salon article very interesting. The author talks about public perception of airline pilots as making $150,000 a year for 20 hours per week or work (neither of which is anywhere close to the truth), and about what airlines can do to improve the industry. Airline customer service is awful and should be improved, yet passengers take flying for granted. "If you think there is some terrible injustice in being asked to pay, say, $1,000 to fly halfway around the world, at 600 miles per hour, in a $200 million airplane, in almost absolute safety, you're being unreasonable." I totally agree with everything he says. The author actually writes a regular column about the airline industry that is always a good read.

Whew! I really wore myself out this three-day weekend. I guess with Jose gone, I decided to distract myself with a series of tough workouts! Long run on Friday, long bike yesterday, and today I joined some BAMmers for a "race sim" ahead of the Webster Duathlon coming up in two weeks. One of the (very fast) gals on our race team invited everyone to come over and use her driveway in Seabrook as a transition area. We had about a dozen people show up for the workout, which involved doing exactly what the race will involve -- a 2-mile run, 12-mile bike, and 2-mile run.

The weather theme for the morning was similar to the past few days -- on the cooler side, around 80 degrees, but so very, very humid. We all took off down the street, which led to Meador Park and the Seabrook trails. By the time we reached Todville, we were right at a mile so it was easy to turn around and head back exactly the way we'd come. The first run went very well for me. I averaged about 10:30 pace and didn't even feel too awful doing it.

The bike was another story. I managed to average just under 18.5 mph, but I'd expected to be about a mile per hour faster than that. Then again, my legs were feeling pretty darn tired from the start! I'm already looking forward to taking the day off on Monday. As I was coming back down Todville, I got passed -- WHOOSH! -- by a huge peloton of roadies. They came out of nowhere!

The second run actually went pretty well too! My pace was still decent and I finished just under 11:00 pace, but man was I tired. That's my "hooray I'm done" wave in the photo above. :) My total time for the workout was 1:29, and the bike was a little more than a mile more than what we'll have to do at the Webster Du. Two years ago I did the Du in 1:23. This year I'm faster on the bike but slower on the run, but hopefully I can eek out an improvement of a minute or two in two weeks.

Yesterday I wore one of my running skirts for the run I did with my BAM buddies. One of the other girls asked me where I got it; she wanted one too. Then today I got my August issue of Runner's World and there's a whole article about "the rise of the skirt!" The magazine is right: I've been noticing more and more skirts on runners around town, and I must admit that I'm a total convert. Yep, I've come a long way from the day when I wussed out on wearing my pink skirt in the gym because I was too self-conscious about the cut and the color. Now, the pink one is one of my favorites -- and I own six skirts in all! They are just so comfy and fun.

There's also a very nice article about the Crews family -- Bill, Dana-Sue and their two children, all triathletes, who live here in Houston. After Bill was diagnosed with lymphoma, the family became active with Team in Training and have since compiled a very impressive list of accomplishments, both personal and charity-related. I haven't ever met any of them, but I have heard many things about the family from Jon and others, so it was cool to read about them in a national magazine! I wonder if Jon had anything to do with nominating them for the "Real Runners" section...

It's been a girly day so far, with a haircut followed immediately with a pedicure. My hair had gotten to the longest it's ever been, I was starting to get tired of the ends getting all tangled as my ponytail bounced around during workouts, and I was ready for a change, so I had the stylist chop off 6 inches of hair this afternoon. In order to properly convey what I wanted, I took her a photo of my from 2004! That's the first time I've ever taken a photo to the salon, and I thought it was kind of funny because it wasn't a photo of a model or a celebrity. Just me, in the past, with the haircut I wanted again. So here I am. (Note my awesome Life Is Good swim-bike-run shirt. It's one of my favorite tees.)

Of course the day wasn't entirely girly, since it began with a solid 26-mile bike ride around Clear Lake. The weather was overcast but it super humid, and within 5 miles I already looked like I'd jumped into a swimming pool. My phone was in my bento box, and I noticed halfway through the ride that I was dripping sweat all over it, but there was nowhere else I could put it. Thankfully it seems to have weathered the ride just fine. I'll have to figure out a way to shield it in the future, because the last thing I want is to destroy my iPhone by sweating all over it. Ew.

Anyway. The ride. I did my standard "Tour de Clear Lake" and went out Bay Area to Port Road, then cruised down Todville to the bridge. Here's a nice view of the part of Bay Area Blvd that most people miss -- past the strip malls, past Armand Bayou, and into the lovely part of town filled with chemical plants. Let me tell you how good it smells out there: NOT VERY GOOD. Oh well. I am probably giving myself cancer riding through that area, but there's hardly any traffic out there on the weekend, and that's a good thing.

This was the first time I'd tackled the Kemah bridge on my new bike, and I wasn't actually sure I'd make it -- my tri bike has fewer gears than my road bike, and since speed is the goal on the tri bike, the missing gears are mostly low hill-climbing gears! Indeed, I could not shift as low as I have in the past on the roadie, but I managed to make it to the top in one piece nonetheless. Woohoo! From there I headed back west on the nice, wide shoulder of 96 before heading home on Egret Bay.

As I was nearing the end of my ride, I arrived at a red light where two other cyclists were also waiting. We exchanged hellos and one of them looked at my bike. "Time trial bike?" he said. "Tri bike," I responded, "though I guess it is a kind of TT bike." He asked how much farther I had to go, and since I was within a half mile of being home, I pointed and said "oh I just live over there, I'm almost done. I rode...(looking down at my Garmin)...26 miles." Then he informed me that he and his partner were almost done as well...with their century ride. Whoa. Here I was patting myself on the back for a good hour and a half of riding when they were finishing up 100 miles for the day! Crazy guys. I was suitably impressed and said "I've never ridden that far in one day!" The other guy just pointed at his butt, and said "this is the worst part." That made me laugh.

I can't remember if I ever posted this in the past, but there's a new video out that's making the Internet rounds. So there's this guy, Matt. And he started a website, Where the Hell Is Matt? And he posts videos of himself dancing in various places around the globe. And a company actually sponsored him, so he gets to keep doing it. And now, other people join in too!

I dare you not to smile.

Washington, DC, October 2005

I was up early and over at the Seabrook trails for a nice 6-mile run, the farthest I've gone in many months. We ran/walked and it felt good. Very humid, but not too hot, and the sunrise over Galveston Bay was so pretty that I wish I'd had a camera on me. It's now only 9:00 and I'm already home, showered, fed, and ready for a nap!

What else are holidays for? :)

Last night at the brick, conversation revolved around half ironman races. By the end of our 5 Middlebrook laps, I was ready to come home and sign up for Ironstar in November...until I realized that I'll be in Japan on the day of the race! Looks like my next half ironman will be either Longhorn in October in Austin or Lonestar next March in Galveston. Lonestar is certainly easier since it doesn't involve any travel, but it's tempting to go for Longhorn, do an Ironman-branded race, and get some serious challenges on the hills. I had a couple friends who did it last year and went so far as to call it a "death march" due to the hills and heat, but somehow that hasn't fully deterred me from considering it. I wonder if Leila could be talked into a half iron...

I changed my mind about running one of the holiday 5Ks tomorrow (didn't want to drive downtown, didn't want to pay $25, and didn't want to run another 34:00 5K) and will be running long with some of my BAM buddies instead. Of course, "long" is a relative term that in my current case means 5-6 miles, since I haven't run more than 4 miles in months. But I need to start building my mileage anyway for multiple reasons. First, I want to do the inaugural Clear Lake International Triathlon at the end of August, and it's an Olympic, which means a 10K run. (The run even goes through Nassau Bay, the neighborhood I professed my love for yesterday!) Second, the Houston Half Marathon in January is always on the horizon. And finally, upping my long run distance might help me get a little faster over the sprint tri distance!

There is a constant internal struggle going on in my head about whether I should really dedicate myself to training harder and getting faster...or whether I should just take it easy and enjoy myself. I want to do both, but those two goals don't really play well together for me. After doing a dozen half marathons, my PR is still the 2:15 I ran in my very first half marathon. I ran the best in 2004 because I trained the hardest. And I trained the hardest because I was scared that I couldn't do it! I burn out easily when I'm training hard. It's just the way I am, and I'm ok with that.

This morning I got on the scale and was happy to see that I've dropped another couple pounds over the last two weeks. Losing weight will make me faster too.

In other news, I have a new "toy" to play with. After months of watching ebay and learning more about the system, I bought a Gocco printer. It's a Japanese-designed system that allows quick and easy at-home screen printing. I've started to read more and more craft/design blogs lately, and I've seen more and more examples of the cool things you can do with it, from printing cards to making prints for a wall to printing on cloth. For examples, check out the Gocco group on Flickr. My Gocco came yesterday and this weekend I plan to test it out! What should I print? I have a few ideas...

Maybe I'm adjusting to the summer heat more than I thought. Some days I feel like I'm going to melt, and yet when I walked out of work yesterday to a temperature of "only" 85 degrees, I knew it was going to be a good evening for a run. I was feeling a little out of sorts (due to a lot of stuff that I'm not going to go into here) so I decided to ditch the Gilruth trail and head to Nassau Bay. It's my favorite neighborhood, by far, in Clear Lake and if I ever do buy a house in this area, I'd like to buy one there. The homes are older, and the look of many of them is very dated, but they have character. The tall trees and the quiet streets and the park at the back of the neighborhood remind me of the house I grew up in and the street I grew up on. As I ran last night, I passed people out walking their dogs. I passed at least a dozen kids on bikes. I passed people watering their flowers and sitting on their porches. And almost every single one of them game me a wave or a smile as I ran. It was just what I needed to coax me into a better mood.

There are a lot of things in my life that feel up in the air right now. I have the overwhelming sense that it is time to begin making some decisions.

I dropped my mom off at the airport a couple hours ago and her plane is currently winging its way back to Charlotte (via Atlanta). With her now gone, and Jose at home in Corpus Christi all week, I suddenly feel quite lonely, especially with a three-day weekend on the horizon! I have plenty of things to do around the house (er, apartment) so I guess I'll take advantage of the downtime to knock some of those off my list.

Earlier today, I was cleaning some old files off my computer here at work and came across the Patagonia slideshow that we made to show to the coworkers who were interested in hearing about our trip. It made me want to leave the country in a very bad way.

Oh man, I had forgotten how many fabulous photos I got of Patagonia. It was so beautiful that it would have been difficult to not take a great picture, and yet the number of photos I took that I want to print out and hang on my wall, even two and a half years later, is stunning. (In fact, I did print the one above and it currently hangs prominently above my couch.) I can only hope that I get half as many great photos in Alaska next month, and that the weather in the great white north treats us as well as it did in the great white south.