Half-Marathon

The half-marathon was last weekend. It was a distance I once dreaded, but I have taken to running over the last 12 weeks in a surprising fashion. Given everything happening in my life it offers a respite from the mental chatter and somewhere around mile 9 of all the training runs I re-realize that resiliency will see me through.

With that dramatic opening paragraph done, on to the race report. It started with a light rail ride to the start. It is funny to get onto a train packed with runners and I imagine any ‘civilian’ commuters were surprised.

The start line was packed and pace initially slow as the crowd slowly thinned. Below is the race early on and Alan and I mugging for the camera.

 

Alan, I and another friend ran most of the race together. Everyone told me to expect the excitement of the race to sweep me along, and they were right. We needed to maintain a 9 min/mile pace to finish  in under two hours, which was the goal. Coming out in a crowd we ran 9:45, 9:30 and 9:15, which made me nervous, but then the excitement kicked in and we ran several 8:30 miles and got back on target.

With three miles left I got to thinking about the direction of my life as of late and how much I wish Dave was around to talk through it. This put me in an odd place mentally, but also upped my energy level. With 2.5 miles left a song that Dave and I liked came on and it was off to the races. I ran the last  2.5 at a sub 8:00 pace, faster than I have ever run since high school. There was an uphill finish that had a lot of people walking, I blazed up it with all sorts of people shouting “go”, “you can do it”, “yeah”, I then took a hard left and ran the remaining blocks at a near sprint. I knew I could finish, but never expected to finish so strong and be covered in goosebumps while doing so. It was far more emotional than I anticipated.

With that said, will I run another one? That remains to be seen.

Texas

One of the Texans, David, offered me a weekend in Fort Worth, promising me a tour of his favorite restaurants and bars, as well some biking and trail running. When it comes to friends, food, and exercise I am like a moth to the light, so off I flew to Texas.

Stop one: Justin, TX, home of Justin Roper boots. David was convinced that as a man in TX I needed a pair of boots. I was convinced otherwise and immediately clocked a city slicker due to my sandals, t-shirts and inane questions for the staff.

Me - “Why the leather bottom?”

Staff – lengthy exhale, look at other staff member “That is for dancing.”

Not being a line dancer and riding a bike versus a horse, I passed, but David walked out with some great ostrich boots.

I did answer the question as to why Texans hike and ski in jeans. It is the marketing of denim as the prime choice for all outdoor adventure.

From this point forward it was food tour of a ridiculous nature.

Below is a burger from the Love Shack, owned by Tim Love. It is made whole by the addition of quail egg and cheese, oh, and some bacon.

Dinner that evening included Magnolia fries and a custom kitchen sink burger with cheese, cheese sauce,ham, chicken friend bacon(!), onions, mushrooms, a fried egg and chili.

Below is a fish bowl sized margarita spiced with serrano peppers. The touch of heat brightens the drinks, but also makes it disappear with alarming speed.

Other meals featured tenderloin for breakfast, samples at Central Market, esoteric beers at the Ginger Man and ribs that fell of the bone at Angelos. I would wilt in the heat and humidity of Fort Worth were I to live there, which is only made more true by the fact that I would be Clydesdale due to the food I would consume.

Network Awesome

There are those moments when you are not sure the internet has anything left to offer. Like a restaurant with a menu that never changes you view the same cute cat videos and news sites with ennui replacing former zeal. And then your prayers for mindless escapism are answered…

It started with BoingBoing, which is an excellent time waster in and of itself, and then leapt to Network Awesome. As noted on the website, “Network Awesome is a platform for entertaining and interesting TV. We spotlight the best from the past to create something new for the future. In a sense it’s TV about TV but our wider intent is to show something about culture as a whole.”

To summarize above, it shows some fairly amusing old school TV footage. It is a retro junk food for the mind. While much of it is amusing, at least to me, the most shocking so far are the commercials by Jim Henson. Who knew that early muppets character would willingly act out violence upon one another?

Coyote

Yesterday (Monday) I knocked out a dozen miles as my last long run prior to this weekend’s half-marathon. While running along the South Platte River I had the brief companionship of a sole coyote.

Constantly vilified as a pest as Denver suburbs continually chew into their habitat with locust like ferocity, I appreciate their resourcefulness and scrappy nature in living and breeding in the urbanized environment.