Miscellaneous

In a moment of madness I decided that as I was going to be in England on business, I would take the steam train up north to Lancashire and compete in the British Masters 5k championship road race. Everything went fine until I sent off my entry form; then it all unravelled.

The husband of a good friend of mine died a couple of weeks ago. He was a fellow athlete although we trained separately. He died doing what he loved best…running. He had a massive heart attack while finishing an 8 mile run, and he was only 50 years old with no previous warning. He didn’t make the news like Jim Fixx or Ryan Schay, but he touched a lot of us. Our kids grew up together (known the family for over 15 years).

Lately I've had several people ask me how many marathons I've run. I'm always a little unsure of my answer. I can quickly say that I've run 42 marathons. However, if you count ultra-marathons as a kiind of marathon, then I have actually run 44. If you count a 50K fun run as a marathon, the number is 45.

Any members of NYC Road Runners?  I'm considering joining the group, and curious if anybody has had any good/bad experiences.

Hmm...everyone must be feeling the cold since no one seems to be blogging lately. Right now in Los Angeles it's 55. I myself have been out of the running scene since my PR at the City of Angels Half. Chest congestion, sinuses...blah. So this week when I wanted to get back into my routine of 5:30am runs, it has been a little nippy. This morning was 38 Brrrrrrr.

I know that I haven't been on in a while.  Sorry for that.  Been busy with new career and my running has halted for now.  But, I paln on soon getting the feet movning again.  Hope all are having great holidays!

Trunner

Well that was something! The second half of "Again to Carthage" was back on topic -- and how.

I still can't figure out why John L.Parker chose to torture his "Once a Runner" readers by having he first half of the book be so, well, ordinary novel-ish. Yes, you can tell I share his gift for words, can't you? Heh heh.

The second half makes up for it. Here's Cassidy back doing what we want to read about - training and racing. One of Boulder's local heroes, Olympic marathoner Benji Durden, has a big role in the final denouement.

As I run quietly in the morning I'm always alert for homes for sale, thinking of the day when homes become a little more affordable. But this morning I had to stop my self because I may not be here in beautiful Southern California a year. My husband got the "hypothetical talk" of "would you consider NYC if the territory opened up?" Sigh. That was the same talk that brought us out here from Miami 2 1/2 years ago. I'm sure I would love NYC, as I'm sure I would love running in NYC. But I really like Los Angeles.

It may be the heat,  but I'm feeling tired a lot of the time. It's not the old serum ferritin issue, because the energy is there, it's just hiding.

This morning, I decided to do a 3 mile run. The run consisted of 3 parts. These parts are hills, tempo runs, and medium to high cruising runs. I started out by running down the hill from our driveway, right into a medium cruising run. Then on the next street, I did a short tempo run. After crossing the next street after that I did another tempo run but at full power followed by a short walk and then another tempo up a hill but not at full power. Then I crossed the bridge and ran down and did some cruising.