I had Colombus Day off and so spent the day sitting with my sick daughter reading up on Colombus. I was facinated. Columbus brought a lot of settlers to the many islands just south of Florida and off the coast of Venezuela, but never really made it to the mainland of Continental North or South America. He sailed into and named most of the islands like Dominican Republic, Cuba, Hati, the Virgin Islands, Antilles, Tortola, Aruba, etc., etc. It was actually a group of Norsemen (Lief Erickson) who settled in Newfoundland Canada 500 years before Columbus started sailing around looking for a faster spice trade route in 1492 by sailing West instead of East that should be credited as the first North American Settlers. Besides which, America couldn't actually be 'discovered' because there were already people native to this continant....anyway....That fact aside, the trend tying Colombus to the America's actually stemmed from a 200 year legal battle waged by his estranged sons in the 1500's to fight the Government of Spain to hold the crown to it's original contract with Columbus to give 10% of the tax revenues/riches that came from those 'discoveries' to Columbus (and by extension, his progeny). An Italian Cartographer and explorer, Amerigo Vespucci (a collegue of Columbus's) was credited a year after Colubus's death with the discovery of these continants by the Spanish-- in an effort to cut Colombus's family out of future royalites. And thus the continants were renamed after the latinized version of his name 'Americus'. But for 200 years or so, this continent was called "Colombia" (as in District of Columbia, Columbia SC, Columbus Ohio, etc) after Columbus. Pretty interesting.
As far as the running went-- it's still slow going. I don't know if running a slow 6 is too many miles? I'm taking it really easy, but I still feel tender and my muscles do not feel strong-- they're still a little fatigued I think. But I have really enjoyed the slow running--and not having to be anywhere today, heighted my enjoyment of being outside in this weather--doing my thing, at my own sweet pace. | 