Happy Tuesday

It's decidely so

Funny when you just know. That moment comes often without any warning and in my case usually way ahead of plan or way behind it. Stupid plan. There is a strange comfort when you just know. The struggle comes for me when the mind has other plans. As elementary as this may sound, while it's happening, it's impercetible. It always feels good though when the mind gives way and the gut is clear. Here's to just knowing tonight.

Little Boxes...

Striking while the writing iron is hot, here is another conundrum Tiff and I are looking at. As has been mentioned, we are house hunting right now. I am finding many of my preconceived notions about the place I want to buy are dated and not fitting where my life is now. Tiff has her own bag of ideas she is sifting through, but together we are on the same page mostly. The big dilemma for us is location. There are places in Denver we love and would love to live, buy our budget would necessitate a pretty small place. on the other hand, we have a couple friends that just bought a place in a development a bit outside of town with much potential for growth. Both sides have appeal and I am surprised how much the place in the burbs meets a lot of the ideas we both want. We will have more information to decide soon, but either way it will be wonderful to not have a unit number after our street address if all goes well.

What's It Take?

Once again, sitting here on break at work. The line of thought today is on attitude. Today it feels like there is a heavy, frustrated attitude in the air. I've often subscribed to the belief that if I encounter more than 3 assholes in a day, I am probably one of them. That being said, I'm trying to stay positive, realitively. It's tough though. It feels like wave after wave of irritation and after a while it just seems easier to be irritated. That's less fun. So, what does it take to remain ok when everyone else seems more focused on bitching? I'm not sure, but I will be humming Wave of Mutination and thinking of rainy day in the city to stay where I feel better. We'll see if it helps.

Black Friday from the other side

I'm sitting here at the mall on Black Friday. The only reason I'm here is because I have to work. Oddly, today is not nor ever has been a holiday as far as pay goes in the retail world. For those on the other side of the counter, there are fewer days as tough to work. It's not that it's unreasonably busy (which it is), but that most people seem to forget they are in public and dealing with people at these stores. They get ugly and tale it out on the folks just trying to do their job. While I know there are other lines of work, it's hard to see so many hard working people being so poorly rewarded. I say Black Friday should be deemed a mandotory holiday pay. Hell, most places can afford it today. Me, I'm observing Buy Nothing Day.n

Mayhem

So Tiff and I set out to look at some houses on Halloween and stopped by our little, local pet shop for some food for Estes.

As the picture will show, we ended up with a little more than we intended. Since Estes was pretty young, we knew we wanted to get a second dog for companionship. as it turns out the opportunity finally arose. I present to you, our new Westie puppy, Maggie Mayhem. She's 12 weeks old and definitely living up to her name. Yet another memorable moment for an incredibly eventful year thus far. And yes, I did memntion we were out looking at houses... more on that to come.

New York by the Mile

New York was such a great run! I am very grateful to all that offered their encouragement and support. A special thanks to Tiff for all the moments of support on all those many days I had "a quick training run" to go do. I also wanted to thank the tremendous Jack Finnegan for putting me up in his Brooklyn pad. He's in the midst of an ambitious project with City Love song (his show) and if you can, give him a little help.

Here's how the marathon weekend and run went.

Friday:
Arrived in New York and Jack treated me to the "best jerk chicken" in New York. Well fed, we hit the town and actually walked most of the island of Manhattan that night. awesome conversation and great company.

Saturday:
The adventure to get to the Expo. Pretty smooth, but again a ton of walking. I secured my bib, my bag, and my ride to the start. They set me up on the 6am Staten Island Ferry. I was just glad to get the start transpo taken care of. Jack took me to an fantastic local Italian restaurant in Brooklyn. In true marathoner spirit, I ordered 2 dinners and was able to crash by 9pm.

Sunday:
In order to get from Brooklyn to the SIF by 6am, I had to get up at 4am. that in and of itself, wasn't bad until you later see what time I started actually running. I was out the door by 4:45am and at the Ferry by 5:40am. The Ferry and bus to the Start was pretty cool, it helped that the sky started getting light while on the boat. I arrived at my particular starting village at 6:50am. I had nothing to do but check my bag, eat a couple bagels, a Powerbar, and drink a large amount of complimentary Dunkin Donuts coffee. Having unlimited DD coffee was a fantastic perk on an otherwise very chilly morning in the shadows of an intimidating bridge, The Verrazano. I was called to my starting corral at 9:40am and had to shuffle around a bit to make sure I got into that start.

Miles 1-2:
All bridge. I was on the lower level so had no idea when we got to the top, but the views were fantastic. Very crowded and I was bent on not going out too fast so I got passed, A LOT on the bridge.

Miles 3-9:
Seriously, these were so much damn fun. the people in Brooklyn were the best! They were rowdy and very supportive. It was a surprise each time the mile markers came up. The pack was moving comfortably and not real troubles on the course.

Miles 10-15:
It was starting to feel a little surreal that we were still in Brooklyn. The people were great still, but you knew you had 3 more boroughs to get to. When crossing into Queens it felt good. The people in Queens were also fantastic. The legs felt strong and the conservation seemed to be paying off. To avoid the wall, I was very determined to refuel and do everything I could. This included a salt packet and baby aspirin at the start and another salt packet at the halfway point. The salt packet (from In n Out by the way) @ 13.1 was sadly a little empty. Rounding the corner before mile 15 and seeing the buildings of Manhattan coming up was encouraging. It was also exciting to see what one of the big bads of the marathon was going to be like.

Miles 15-19:
The Queensboro Bridge was unanimously touted as the hardest part. It was a good, long incline but not so tough. I know I trained in Colorado, but it wasn't so bad. Actually, the steady up through Manhattan began to wear me down. The people were great too. The route was very wide though and while I was in a pretty decent groove, the crowd support was vital by this point. I had to run towards the fringe and enjoyed it. I started to feel the miles but not too bad.

Miles 20-22:
The Bronx were fun. It felt good knowing I was on the next to last borough. The few and proud out to support were great. My legs were feeling good and I was starting to feel like the wall may not be as bad. I popped a Jolly Rancher I brought from work and quickly found out where the rest of the salt had gone. At that point, a salty, blue raspberry hard candy was actually friggin fantastic!

Miles 23-24:
Great reserves in the legs, but weary of burning out in the infamous final 6.2miles I wanted to hold back still. Loved the crowds. I began pushing faster limits when I was open.

Mile 25:
One mile to go and deep in Central Park, it was time to let loose everything I had left. I actually had a lot of leg left. With runners at a slower pace I gunned it on the outside. Now I know in Minneapolis, I thought I was flying and actually was running normal. When I had a chance to finally check, I was on a 6:45/mi pace. It felt so good to cross the line so strong.

Again, thank you! I finished at 4:15:37. Damn proud of that!

A Nice Message

Friggin Great Project to Know About

More on my New York Adventure very soon, but wanted to share this in hopes you can help or spread the word (which is helping too)!

In Brooklyn

I have arrived in New York and am all sorts of excited. It's one thing to know you are running the NYC marathon but it's another when you are actually standing in New York. I have been so well received by "Pastor" Jack in his digs here in Brooklyn and took a vigorous foot tour through much of Manhatten last night. I am excited for tomorrow's run, but am also just enjoying the hell out of being here. I'm about to head out on my own to the expo and start unwinding on a notoriously hard day to relax. This is something amazing.