Zero miles today. Yes, a planned day off. I don't want to, but its probably "smart". We woke up at the crack of 4:30am, flew to SLC, then I went straight to work. I might go walk a lap around the track later if Andrea is doing a workout, or maybe I'll just go home and go to bed. My legs feel good, but I'm tired from traveling and not getting my normal 8-9 hours of sleep the last two nights. The city where I grew up (Amsterdam, NY) had a newspaper (The Recorder) that always did a great job covering local sports. They were very good to me during high school. I haven't been back to Amsterdam in about 6 years, but The Recorder apparently remembered me and got wind that I was in the elite field for Boston, tracked me down, and did a pre and post race interview. The ran a story on Monday, and then apparently it was the lead story on Tuesday's sports page (I've only seen a snippet of the article - below). The thing that matters in all of this is that my grandmother is probably like one of a hundred people that still get a hard copy of this newspaper on a daily basis - so for her to see my picture on the cover page (unexpectedly) ... well, it was like her grandson just won an olympic medal, and she now gets ultimate bragging rights to all of her 85 year old friends. They don't know any better :-) I think that I have good self-awareness, that is - I realize where I stack up in the grand scheme of things in the running world, and its nowhere near the top of the totem pole. But if there is one person that I don't need to qualify that to - its my grandma. She can barely even read anything other than the headline, and the Boston Marathon is the only race she's ever even heard of, so if she wants to believe I'm the 23rd best runner in the world, in this case that is fine by me. There has been an outpouring of support from people back "home" that I haven't heard from in a decade - it goes to show how Boston is viewed differently than other races. The local TV station ended up running some of the footage of me from the race as well. My grandmother called my Dad in tears because she was so happy to tell him. She was beaming when I talked to her, she sounded 20 years younger. So if nothing else, I was able to do something this weekend that injected a heck of a lot of joy into her life, and that makes me very, very happy. Little things like that make this whole thing worth it on so many levels. 
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