Long weekend!

Well, I did make it back from my trip. Thoughts from the road are as follows:

I got an EZ pass for the trip. Not that I really needed it, but I thought it would be fun and cool. It was.

I know my wife doesn't want to hear this, but I really had a blast. I fought the trip tooth and nail before I went. Once I got there, I really didn't want to leave. I could go out and do my own thing at night, and that was that. No real schedule after work, so I could just go work out at the hotel, and then go out and about.

Plus, I wound up sleeping diagonally in the bed, so that was pretty cool too. And no one stole the sheets. :)

And that's the end of my trip report..


So, Saturday was a 4 miler in absolutely beautiful weather. Sunday was a 3.5 hill run, with weather that was slightly not as good, but it was still pretty awesome. My ITB felt pretty good, which is really nice. I'm going to try to keep upping the quantity of runs I do for a while, and then work on lengthening one of them.

I've got to say, having nicer weather to run in is just so awesome. I love it.


Monday was a self-prescribed day off. A couple of us from work went up to Cooperstown for the day. Here's a photo montage..

This is outside of the baseball hall of fame, our main destination for the day:


This is a shot of some of the plaques in the hall of fame:


My wife views this room with the plaques (the actual hall) as her own personal hell. It is analogous to me being confined in 'Jo-Ann Fabrics'. She was absolutely thrilled that I found people to go with, so she never has to step foot in here again. (Now, I think that's a bit extreme, but what can you do?)

This is where we went for lunch, a place called 'The Pit':



After the hall of fame, we went to Brewery Ommegang. This is their building:


After an informative tour, we sampled all of their beers, plus a couple of special ones. The 'Hennepin' was my favorite, until they got to this 'cave-aged Abbey Ale', which is a bottle of their 'Abbey Ale', which had been stuck in a cave for 11 months. I'm thinking of telling my wife I need to dig a cave. That beer was phenomenal.

The ending note of the beer sampling was this:



It was a special beer, not ever bottled, made for the inauguration. They dubbed it 'Obamagang'. I thought that was pretty funny.


Today, I'm back to the grind. Keep on rockin', everyone!

Six Twenty One

Well, last night I went out for a run. I really couldn't decide what to do. I didn't want to do hill work, none of my normal routes appealed.. I figured I would just get out the door and see what happens.

Started at a fairly normal pace, waited for a car in the intersection, the usual. After a brief uphill and a brief downhill, I said to myself, "You're moving pretty good. Why not? Go for it."

I decided to go all out and see how fast I could bang out a mile. The last time I did this, I wound up at 6:50. This route was similar, but it had the little uphill and a little downhill.

I tried to work on pacing, on not going out too fast, leaving some for the end.. Not sure how well that worked, but......

6:21, baby! Woot! Fastest mile for me ev-ah!

I'm going to have to drag my ass to the track one day and try it there, to get a real feel for it.


So ya, after that, my lungs were not feeling too good. I was coughing up all sorts of crap the rest of the night.. Oh well.

I did a "recovery" run of .8 after I walked it off a bit, and called it a night, running-wise.


I got home, cleaned myself up, and then did the dishes, cleaned the toilets, cleaned the sinks, did a few loads of laundry. All that good stuff. (Yes, I make a good little beeotch)

Maybe I should put an ad out? "Dude with mad skillzz, energy, and endurance. Available to do whatever is needed around the house"

I'm sure that would get some responses..


Lesse, what else? Oh yeah, I scored this little bike repair kit as a free gift:



It even came with a little knock-off CamelBak. It's tiny though. Not for any serious exercise hydration. It might handle a bottle of wine, OK, though... hrms..

Alright everyone.. keep on rockin'!

A run, a walk

Saturday, I busted out of Funky Town, and went for a run. It was not stellar, by any means. I didn't even make 3.5 miles before pulling up lame. But, I went out, at least.

The dishes in the sink were emptied (but the thing filled up again by this morning.. what's up with that?). Some of the Christmas decor was taken down (rest assured, the tree is still up..)

Let's see.. what else? Oh yes, I watched some basketball. The local college made it to the big dance. I'm a total bandwagon fan with them. I admit it.

Sunday.. I did some painting. Yours truly didn't buy enough paint, so I get to do it again in the near future. Whee

Also, since my ITB/knee was acting wonky, I didn't run on Sunday. I did go for a walk/hike, though. No idea how long of a walk it was, but it was nice. For visual blog interest, here's some pics:




There's some nice paths to walk nearby. Before the local area went in the toilet years ago, a golf course had some paved paths for golf carts to drive through the woods and the like. The golf course was sold off, went out of business, etc. Now, a nature group owns at least part of the preserve. Either way, it's still nice to walk through it. This is some of what it looks like.



A good 15 minutes into the walk, you can come across this bench. I do like sitting down here. It's very peaceful. There's a small stream that you can watch and listen to. These woods generally have very few people visiting them, as well. On Sunday I parked my can here for quite a while just to reflect and such. Since I can't run long right now, this has to serve as a substitute. :)

Looking around, I saw this "sign":



It basically says.. "The vine growing around this tree is poison ivy." (along with a description of what poison ivy looks like). Cracked me up, for some reason. Interesting tidbit.. when I was younger, I was immune to poison ivy. I always tried to be careful, but that fact got me out of a few scrapes. :) I don't know if I still have that, but I'm not about to go find out.

That's about all I've got for the weekend.. It's supposed to be around 60 today, so I'm going to try to get out and do a couple of miles.

Keep on rockin'...