Last Weekend ; Things preschoolers dream of

So I previously told you that I was going to spend the majority of last weekend away at a golf tournament and running a half marathon. Well, thats exactly what I did and I had a friggin blast.

The tournament was a memorial tourney for a friend who had died unexpectedly several years ago. This was the 4th year that the tournament was held and a fun time was had by all! It was a 4-man scramble format (for you non-golfers, that means that all 4 people in your group hit a ball and you decide which one you want to play...then you all go and hit from that spot and decide which one is the best, etc).

It was fun because it was only the 3rd time this year I broke out the sticks, so there was no pressure to do well. But I did manage to kick some serious ass. Well, not really kick ass, but I had some excellent shots and it was the best I've played this year. Unfortunately I don't have any more golf outings on the books until April when we're taking a 'guy's golf weekend' down in Florida.

So it was fun to get out there and play some golf and hang out with guys I haven't seen in years.

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After golf I headed up to Kara & Tommy's to spend the night before the Boston Half Marathon. I won't go into boring details (unless you're a runner, then I'll give ya our mile splits), but the abridged version is that Kara and I had no expectations going into the race. We weren't going to 'race' it, just use it as a long-run since we're both training for marathons.

We started off nice and slow, deliberately keeping it at a slowish pace and not trying to pass people and worry about time. We got to the last few miles and decided to pick it up since we both had a good amount of energy left and finished with a good kick and a fast mile and a half. We both clocked in at 2:11 and change.

I'm super happy with the run because:

a)it was a lot of fun
b)it was good running weather (cool, breezy with some misting rain)
c)our time was pretty damn good! Although it was about 2 minutes slower than my personal best, it was a good 3 minutes faster than my first half marathon which was exactly 364 days earlier.

It was only 3 minutes faster than last year, but our (well, at least my) conditioning is so much better. I made a comment to Kara during the run that the hills didn't seem as bad as they were last year. Kara also pointed out to me that last year I told her that I wouldn't be talking on the hills and just focus on breathing and making it up them (which I vividly recall)...but this year, I was doing all the talking on the hills. Those factors, plus that it was a deliberate slow run made it a VERY successful run in my book! Thanks for the great run, Kara!

Oh yeah, one more thing. Right around mile 4 I felt that familiar warm friction feeling upon my left nipple. I did put on liquid band-aid in the morning, which I had success with on my previous 2 long runs (15 and 16 miles)...but apparently it didn't work on Sunday.

Mile 4 there was a little pink stain. Mile 6.5 found Kara laughing at the red mark and asking me if I wanted to stop at the medical bus that we were about to pass. Mile 13.1 found Tommy blurting out "Jesus Don, what happened? Did you get shot?"

Of course I took a picture of the carnage...The picture is from later that night, so the blood had settled into the shirt, so its not fresh and the deep red color that 3,500 other people saw that day...but you get the jist of it:



And yes, it did hurt like a mother. But only when I was running into the wind or taking a shower. How much did it hurt? Enough to make a grown man whimper for his mommy.

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This weekend I'm signed up to run the Hartford Half Marathon, but will be banditing the Marathon course instead. I'm scheduled to do 18 miles, and was planning on doing 5 miles before the HM started. Well, I talked to Kara last weekend and she convinced me to just run the Marathon route and stop at the 18 mile point.

It feels weird going into it KNOWING that I'm not finishing, but then again, its just a training run for me. I could barely walk after 16 miles 2 weeks ago, but didn't do any mid-week runs between and probably could have hydrated better the few days leading up to it. I'm not making that mistake this time! Wish me luck!

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Ian keeps talking about the game "Hungry, Hungry Hippo". He picked it out as a birthday gift for 2 of his friends and has been saying for weeks that he wants to ask Santa for it.

Well, he came down from his nap today and announced that it's Christmastime. I told him it wasn't and tried explaining the concept of time and winter and months and blah blah blah. No joke, he looked at me and said that Santa told him that it was christmas time. WTF?

He said that Santa rang his "grey" bell and said that it was Christmastime so Ian asked him for Hungry Hungry Hippo and Santa said yes. I asked him when this happened and he said 'just now'. So deductive reasoning tells me thats what Ian dreamed about today.

So it's official: It's Christmas time.

Well, if we're going on that kind of logic, it's also official that I defiled the Swedish Women's Olympic Volleyball Team.