Charity Chase

Now that a friend of mine has linked to this on her facebook page, maybe I should update more.

On Saturday I ran the Charity Chase half marathon in Hickory, NC. Before I start, one thing you should know about me. I don't run well in the heat. I can train in the heat slowly (9:30-10 minute/mile pace), but I can't race. Heat for me is anything over 65 for running. Well, midday that's great but in the morning 60-65 means it's going to be 80-90 later, and that's hot. In the summer I have a 10AM rule - be done with my run for the day by 10AM. After that it's too hot for me. I am a heavy sweater, and I tend to push my body temperature up a bit. I wonder if I get close to overheating (although I always know when to slow down).

Anyway, Saturday was pretty humid. It was about 66 or so at the start of the race at least.

But the race course was sadistic with hills. Holy cow. For those of you that have run with me, Coach Bubba and Umstead are probably the toughest courses around. This was way worse. At mile marker 11, there is what had to be a 100 foot incline over 200-300 yards. That was the worst obviously, but the hills were constant.

Let me put it this way. This was my 4th half marathon, not counting 2 20km races (Coach Bubba in Durham is 20km, which is 12.4 miles). For the 2 20km, I finished about 1:54. Could I have finished 0.7 miles in 6 minutes? Maybe. For the 3 half marathons, my times were between 1:53 and 1:58.

At the Charity Chase I registered a 2:09 something. Could I have run faster? Maybe. More hill training? Maybe. I burnt out pretty quickly. I want to run a half under 1:51 to qualify for a corral for the Chicago marathon, and maybe I started too quickly. But I don't think I could have made enough improvements to break 2 hours given the circumstances.

Radiohead tomorrow

Going to Charlotte to see Radiohead tomorrow. Can't wait.

Is the primary over yet?

Why does North Carolina have to matter? Really. Hillary is only in it because she thinks she can strongarm the superdelegates into voting for the person with less regular delegates. And Obama is going to get the majority of the Democratic vote.

Nevertheless, I have gotten 2 calls from Barack Obama, one from Hillary, 2 from an Obama office campaign volunteer person, one from a Hillary person. And now an Obama volunteer rang my doorbell to confirm who I was going to vote for.

Stop the madness!

hide your gps. and the suction cup mount

Smash and grab monday night/tuesday morning. Remove the suction cup that is on the windshield too as that's a sign you have a GPS.

this weekend, random thoughts about old friends

I'll be at my sister's running the Country Music Half Marathon this weekend. Should be fun.

I've been spending some time getting more connections on facebook.com with old friends. I've spent a lot of time and energy running from my past.

For those that have only known me for a while, I'm definitely a candidate for most changed from high school. I've lost weight, shaved my hair off, started running and doing athletic/outdoors stuff, developed social skills, became very progressive politically. I didn't like who I was back then. I'm slowly realizing that I can't deny who I was or what I did in high school or college or whatever. I'm trying to embrace it for a little while so I don't feel like I've totally denied who I was then.

I must blog more

I've been taking some time lately to get back in touch with old friends and to keep more in touch with current ones. I must blog more to keep up with what's up in my life.

One reason I quit for so long was that I soured on Team in Training for a bit. The fund raising became arduous. I highly recommend TNT for participants - don't misunderstand. I was a little jaded by what happens behind the scenes, interacting with what I thought was an unprofessional coordinator, and the overall feel that we were fundraisers first and volunteers second. Running was somewhere down the list.

So, more posts with more updates. I promise.

This past week in running

Man I was sore after the half marathon. My legs were pretty stiff for a day or two. Nevertheless, the goal is the marathon in December. They loosened up as the week went on.

And thankfully the mornings are cooler. Running is much nicer with the cooler weather. High of 85 tomorrow. That's awesome.

Anyway this past Saturday was the 4th Saturday training for TNT, and we're already up to 6 miles. I'm on my own schedule and did 17.5 on Sunday. Yes I'm nuts.

Tonight is the mid-week training I've organized for my group of people. I hope it cools off a bit. The start is about 3 miles from my house and I'd rather run there than have yet another medium-length run on a different day. But we'll see how hot it is. Actually, what do I care? It's not like it hasn't been hot the rest of the summer.