Saturday morning, CC, TD and I set out to complete the Leadville Heavy Half Marathon in Leadville, CO, with spectator assistance from AH (who also offered us puffs from her inhaler before we headed up the mountain, which may have been key to the success of the whole operation!).

This sucker was hard. My legs felt like bricks from the start. ( Read more... )

Dates have been set. The plane tickets have been purchased. The apartment has been booked. A fellow traveler friend has signed on to the vacation ticket. All that remains is arranging for the rental car, prioritizing the day trips, and easing into the beans and rice diet in order to pay for it all ( Read more... )

Let's just start out with the good news - today, I ran a GREAT race, the race I knew I had somewhere inside of me. I ran the Albany Marathon in Albany, GA in 3:39.40 - which is a 16 minute PR, with my previous best coming in the 2009 Mayors Marathon in Anchorage ( Read more... )

Today, I celebrated the "8th" birthday of dear friend/former roomie KF and learned that at least two others in my circle have their wedding anniversaries today - Leap Year, February 29. Pretty cool stuff ( Read more... )

We've officially reached the "hating life" point of marathon training ( Read more... )

Me: So, it only took five weeks but my big black toe nail from the Chicago Marathon? It's finally gone. I may have screamed when it peeled off. It's kinda gross.

AF: Huh.

CH: Interesting.

Long Pause.

Me: You guys want to see it, don't you.

AF/CH: Yes!

I love my friends :-)

Runners have really sexy feet. REALLY sexy. It's true! How could anyone not fantasize over feet covered in calluses, blisters and possible missing toenails? These things occur for a variety of reasons, including hot weather - which I suspect was the culprit behind my furiously painful right toenail that appeared post-Chicago Marathon. I ( Read more... )

Sitting on the couch at W&JM's place post-marathon. cynic51 is on his way back to Cleveland. I'll give a full race update later on after I've had time to sit and think about the day. Short version: hotter than expected, finished. Have had otherwise great time in Chicago.

More later. Sleep beckons.

It's 3 weeks until the Chicago Marathon, and I celebrated by wrapping up my last long run of the training cycle - a 22-mile effort on the Silver Comet Trail (i.e. FLAT) with the last 6 miles at my desired marathon pace of 8:30 per mile. I started out the run a bit faster than I usually do, as I was running with MJ and she wanted to run 18 miles in ( Read more... )

So, it's been a bit since I've seen AF/CH and the bean - mainly due to taking a hiatus from the vegetable box and a clash of schedules. In trying to set something up for the long weekend, I typed this exact sentence in an email ( Read more... )