Prelude

I made it to D.C. A little late, a missed flight, D.C. traffic, rain, but I made it. With 3 minutes to go before our dinner reservation, I was still sitting in traffic on the way to my hotel, with Bex's phone number in the trunk. I called her later to tell her I'd be late, and eventually caught up with them just as everyone was finishing up their appetizer.

It was absolutely incredibly gastronomicaly fun to get together with all the other runners :) I got to meet Susie and her David, the other David from Florida, Jeanne who's going to PR tomorrow for sure, Peter who will be running NYC next weekend, Hallie who ran the Army 10-miler recently, and of course the gracious host Bex! I left my camera cable at home, so I'll have to post them later.

I went for my last training "run" this morning, leaving the Hilton Embassy Row off Dupont Circle. I ran south a mile which took me to the White House, which had a few tourists mingling about. Turned around and ran back. 2 miles even. That's my kinda run! Yeah!

Back at my hotel, I headed up to the lounge they have for frequent guests, hoping to get maybe some water and a banana. Surprise! Scrambled eggs, potatoes, croissants. Just give me some protein and carbs! I loaded up, I'm stuffed, and I'm headed to the Expo to meet up with David. Just got a call from Bex and we'll join her for lunch later. The sun's out. I'm so ready for tomorrow!

Getting Closer

It finally arrived. My last long run, of only 8 miles, was completed today. I started late, at 4:45 pm, but it was a rare perfect fall afternoon for Dallas. You've all probably had these days, the sky couldn't be blue-er, the sun couldn't be shinier, the air couldn't be crisper, and the wind couldn't be cooler and more refreshing. We just don't get that many of them here.

Now if I can only hang on until next Sunday, I'll be at the starting line for MCM. By then, I'd have logged 524 miles of training over the past 18 weeks, easily a few hundred miles than I would've, had I not signed up for a marathon.

In the meantime, our baby turns 5 tomorrow (sob sob!). We took her and a few of her fellow princesses to Libby Lu's at Stonebriar Mall yesterday. If you have a little princess, this is apparently the place to be. Their birthday "makeover" party came with princess gowns for everyone, hair styling, make-up and nail polish (not quite a full manicure!). This is the girl who scored a hat-trick two weekends ago and put in two more goals earlier in the day against a boys team!

My baby's growing up, I ate too much cake, but otherwise everything's good.

Happy Birthday Sydney :)

Hello Old Friend

I flew into NYC tonight. It's been almost 4 months since I've been here, and I've missed the city. I got to my hotel room at 10:00 pm, and by 10:05 pm I was changed and out the door. A quick warm up in the lobby, and I was off.

From Lex and 51st, I just ran. The air had a bit of a chill in it. The streets were packed with traffic. NYPD had blocked off a section of Lex from the Doubletree to the W, and cars were backed up and honking like no tomorrow. Only in NYC. The sidewalks were full or people, but not crowded. I easily weaved in and out, and ran wherever the streets would take me, crossing whichever intersection gave me a green light.

I ran in the general direction of Central Park, but I had no plans to go in. I wasn't sure if it was still dangerous to run there at night, but when I got there, I noticed the park inside was deserted. I ran west along the perimeter of the park on 59th, passing upscale hotels with their beautiful people milling around outside. I caught the familiar but not-so-welcome whiff of the horse carriages lined up waiting for tourists. Even at night, in the midst of NYC hustle and bustle, I felt relaxed.

I made a long, slow loop from Columbus Circle to Hell's Kitchen to Times Square to Grand Central Station and back to Lexington, about 6 miles total. I've got a meeting downtown tomorrow, then a flight back to Dallas in the afternoon. I just had to see the city my way tonight while I could, and I'm glad I did.

It's Getting Real

For only the 3rd time in my life, I ran 20 or more miles. The first was a training run last year, then the San Diego RNR last year, then my 20 miler yesterday. Without MCM around the corner, 20 miles is just a bit too much for me to go and knock out for no reason.

I ran solo, starting in the dark at 6:30am, and finishing in 3:35. Nice easy even pace throughout, 2 GUs, 1 self-supplied water bottle unlike others fortunate enough to have a support team, or at least some company!

I felt surprisingly fine all day yesterday after the run. I hope that's a good sign. When I did an 18-miler a few weeks back, I felt like %!@&# all day long, took a long afternoon nap, and still got up feeling tired!

This week is a step down week, followed by one more 20 miler the next week before tapering into the home stretch. I can almost smell the starting line ...

Zzzzzz

I'd blog some more, but I'm sleepy, and it's only 10:40pm. Waking up early to run is ruining my "night person" persona. I've never gotten up so many times between 5:00 and 5:30 am as I have in the past couple of months.

Last Monday, I was thinking about this, close to the end of my 13 mile long run, shifted from the previous Sunday due to rain:

Ran a half mary
Before work
Before breakfast
Before sunrise
What the hell am I doing?

So it's not my best work, but it's all I had. I don't dislike running, I think, but I really can't wait to get MCM over with. I'm impatient while running, wanting to finish up, but also needing to stay on pace. I can't run too much faster, for fear of messing up my next run, and of course it hurts to run faster too. On my EZ runs and LSD runs, I generally take my time until the last couple of miles, and then I step on the gas because I desperately want to avoid missing my target time.

Despite all this, I enjoy the morning time. It's dark. It's cool. It's quiet. And I get to run down the middle of the street, all to myself. In the dark, you have to adjust your running. In the dark, you stay off the sidewalk, unless you want to step into hidden souvenirs left by dogs the night before. In the dark, you get prepared to run into a lot of cobwebs, at all the same places, like the spiders never learn. In the dark, I look up and see Orion in the sky, and I remember my dad teaching me to spot it when I was probably about 1st grade or so, and it's still there, and so is he. In the dark, when I'm running, I don't feel sleepy anymore. I feel good. Even if I don't know what the hell I'm doing out here.

It's Been A While

My reading and commenting time took a big drop off. I started a new job back on 8/14, and it's been pretty hectic. At least it challenging and stimulating, but like any company, it has its Dilbert moments, and clients will always be clients, and there's never enough resources, and ... oh, never mind.

So let's see, what else is up? Well, I'm still running. My EZ runs are fine, my long runs are fine (18 miles last Sunday), but my last 2 pace runs really sucked. I was starting to get really worried, but I think I have it figured out. The past two weeks have been bad for allergies here, and I think that's it. I'm able to do my slower runs without any problems, but I run out of gas on the faster ones after about 3 miles. I have another 8 mile pace run on Sat, and my allergies have cleared up enough that I should be able to do it.

What else. I went to DC a couple of weeks ago, and didn't get to run. That stunk. I took a car service from BWI to Tysons Corner, and it cost a whopping $110! That's nuts. Even though that's not out of my pocket, that's too much. The next day I took the Metro into town ($2.94), met friend for breakfast at Union Station, took some calls, then took the Amtrak to BWI ($33). That felt a lot better. Plus, I really wanted to get around on the Metro and Amtrak because that's what I plan to use when I come back for MCM.

Nothing to report on the racing front. I'm missing all my favorite races, because they'll really mess up my Sat morning pace runs, and I don't need any more obstacles! The Half is the weekend after MCM. Early registration ends tomorrow. I'm wondering if I should chance running it, or if I'll be too spent after MCM. Maybe I'll try volunteering for a change. I'll miss out on the cool long sleeved tech shirt though.

Jumping around to another topic, I got a great deal on shoes I want to pass on. Check out Running Warehouse. It may have just been luck, but I found my Brooks Beast there for only $92! No tax, and free 2 day shipping. It's $120 retail! If they had more, I would've stocked up, but they only had one pair.

2 more things before I sign off. One - do you think I have the most boring header around? Well, say no more, I stumbled upon Susan's new gig, and viola! a new header will be arriving soon at this site ...

Two - Happy #0th Birthday to my other Susan, big sis Sue! I'm guessing there might be a drop or two of wine spilt today! Cheers!

Passing Dean The Invincible?

If you've been reading your Runner's World, you may have seen the ad for Dean Karnazes' upcoming 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 days run. It starts 9/17/06 and ends 11/5/06 in NYC.

I thought this was a pretty creative, if gimmicky plan, for Dean to come up with. But hey, I'm still looking foward to seeing him at MCM, where he'll be running the actual race that Sunday.

So did anyone else hear about this other guy who seems to have quietly done the same thing? He's doing it for charity and he's almost done already, having finished 48 marathons in 47 days!

And how would you feel about this right now if you were Dean?

Property Irregularities May Affect Your Training Runs

At 7:07 am this morning, I left Dallas for Greensboro, North Carolina. My single checked-in bag did not.

Since TSA's new rules went into effect, I've flown twice, "won" one and lost one.

At 6:30 pm, my bag had not yet been delivered to my hotel. AA's baggage tracking system had no idea where the bag was, the local office was not answering calls, and the next and last flight in wouldn't arrive until 10:50 pm. It wasn't looking good for my training run tomorrow morning, unless I was going to run in rolled-up kakhis and dress shoes (+ black socks for that extra visual impact).

At 7:30 pm, on my way to the mall to buy a set of clothes for tomorrow, I decided to check in to the hotel first. Lo and behold, behind the registration desk was my bag. Incredible.

So, my training will continue uninterrupted for the moment. I'm beginning to really enjoy my Saturday pace runs, especially since I've started finishing them ahead of my target 9:09 pace. Nevertheless, while huffing and puffing through a 7 mile pace run, I keep wishing I was doing a slow relaxed LSD run instead. Then Sunday happens, and while plodding along in my 15 mile LSD run, I keep wishing I could just speed up and get this thing over with! Dream on.

200M in 27:15

No, that's not a PR. It's how long it took American Airlines to move my bag from the gate to baggage claim last night. It was literally only 3 gates away, or 200M long given the way DFW is configured, and it took them 27 minutes! That's why I usually never check any bags, but ... c'est la vie.

At least I got in my EZ runs this week. Plus, it was a surprising and welcome 57F (gasp!) on Tuesday morning when I stepped out in Grand Rapids, Michigan for my run. Ran 4, 7, and 4 EZ on Tue, Wed, and Thu.

This morning it was back in Dallas for a 7 mile pace run. I managed to finish it right on pace, but I have no idea how I'm supposed to keep this pace for the entire 26.2!? I guess I'll have to trust Hal's plan and see how it goes.

Back In The Frying Pan

Texas that is. We're back from Singapore. Holy smokes, I read that there was a heat wave here, but this is unbelievable! There's no end to 100+F days in sight. We're pretty much camping indoors all day to escape the heat, which is fine since we're asleep most of the day with our jet lag anyway.

In the end, I was able to do most of my training runs up until we left last Thursday. My Sunday long run was pushed to Monday, which got rained out, so I did it on Tuesday. I ran 6+ miles to my sister's "flat", and surprised them with an early morning doorbell ring. After taking a GU, getting a bottle of water, and receiving no less than 3 pronouncements from sis that I was "bloody mad", I was off for the second half of the run. 12+ miles, 2:04:58.

I was off on Wed, we left on Thu, arrived on Thu also after 19 hours in flight and 3 hours in transit, and I was asleep all morning on Fri. Today, Sat, I was up since 2:30 am, so by 6:00 am I was ready for my run! I wasn't altogether as with it as I thought, and it was ugly but I finished my 6 mile pace run. Tomorrow is a 9 mile "short" long run.

We had a great vacation. I'll leave with a few favorite pics ...

We took a short road trip up to Malaysia. Outside of the cities, much of the country is still a trip back in time. Here's a makeshift roadside fruit-stand. Amazing that stuff like this still exists, but don't tell the Health Department.

Cappuccino? Oh yeah. Should've bought more. I passed on the limited edition Lemon Cheesecake flavor. I'm not kidding.

Some pics from our trip to the Singapore Zoo. I'm not a zoo person, but this is the best zoo I've ever been to by a long shot.

OK, one last food item. After countless samplings of local fare, this is what I eventually settled on as my default meal. In the first pic, the bowl in front is mine, a dish called "laksa" which is a noodle dish in a fiery hot coconut based curry broth. Just smelling it will start you sweating! After I survive that, for dessert I'll have what's in the second pic, which is called "ice kachang". It's shaved ice dripped in syrup and sweet milk with red beans, sweet corn, and jelly inside. Sounds bad, I know, but it tastes good! Fire and ice, both for about US$3.