Every Race is an Adventure!

Well, I've got people wishing me a happy birthday on my March 22 entry, so I guess I'd better get my official March 24 birthday entry done. Kim suggested maybe I was sleeping in and being pampered. Are you kidding? My birthday wish would never be to not have to run, quite the opposite.

I got up this morning and did a 6 mile solo run at a very easy pace (avg 9:52/mi). The main purpose of this run was to stretch out my legs. Actually, I feel much better than I expected to after Saturday's 20 miler, but I do still have a little stiffness/soreness in the tops of both calves, just below the knee. Fortunately, this is the "muscles are getting stronger" kind of pain as in "no pain, no gain", not the "dang! I over did it" injury kind of pain.

That 20 mile run was the beginning of a great weekend. We went to the Easter Event at Lavendar Farms in Mona later in the morning. My daughter Tiffany helped plan it as part of one of her classes at BYU and was the handler for Easter Bunny. My favorite part was the baby animals at the petting zoo. I got to hold a cute little baby goat that looked right up at me and said, "I think I've had enough of this now. I know you are much bigger than me, but may I please return to mother now? I'm a little overwhelmed by all of this, and a little bit hungry."

We then went on to a Thomas family gathering at my parents' home in Nephi. We had a great meal, played some games, and had a good time hanging out together. All of my siblings were there (1 brother, 3 sisters) and many of the grandchildren. Playing Easter Bingo for candy bars was fun, and racing boiled eggs down the driveway, but playing The Great Dalmuti (two tables of 7 each) was probably the most fun. I've sure been blessed to have good people in my life.

That was followed by finished up Easter dress shopping at the mall on the way home. Even that wasn't so bad. It's much less frustrating now that I've learned that my role is to "pack and pay", and that trying to hurry things up is not usually helpful. It's a great opportunity to practice the virtue of patience.

Sunday my two young single adult children who are not living at home came by and we had a great Sunday together with Easter candy, a great Easter meal, watching some old family videos, and playing a few games together (Such & Such, Curses, and Bang! with the Dodge City expansion deck). We had a great time!

I'm hoping to run again at noon today if any of the guys are going out, but I'll have to see how work is going. I normally take my birthday off, but I've got a lot of work to get done so I thought I'd better come in. I'll take a day some other time when I can enjoy it more.

I did make it out at noon and enjoyed a nice run with Tom and Bill in near perfect weather on the Lake View route. We averaged 8:19/mi for the 5.2 miles. I wish Bill could make it out with us more often, but he's normally doing a fitness class at that time. I don't know where Nathan and Will were today. Maybe Wednesday.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I rode my motorcycle to work today for the first time this year. I really quite enjoyed it. I certainly prefer the 70-75 mpg the motorcycle gets to the 10-12 mpg my Suburban gets. I'm not really a "biker dude". It's not a Harley or a bullet bike, it's just a little Yamaha XT 225 dual purpose (dirt/road) bike that's seen far more asphalt than dirt, mostly commuting the 10 miles to work and back.

I remembered I was supposed to run with Larry and Wayne this morning, but I guess I missed them again. I went out early to get in a couple of miles before meeting them. I just ran 1/2 mile loops around the block, one corner of which is where we meet. I wasn't sure if I had time to get in the 4th half mile loop, but I looked towards Larry's cul-de-sac and didn't see them coming so I went for it. There's only a 1/4 mile where I couldn't see the meeting corner, but I guess they must have met and left during those couple of minutes because I never saw them.

I ran up to 1600 North to see if I could see them, but no luck. As I looped past the elementary school I ran into Tim Hakala who was just starting a run. He's a beginner runner who used to live in our neighborhood, moved away for a while, then moved back but a couple of streets over in a different neighborhood. We've talked a couple of times recently about him joining us for runs. He only wanted to go a couple of miles so I backed off a little and ran a couple of miles with him. It was good catching up on what he's been up to.

After I left him I was going to get another couple of miles in, but for some reason I was feeling some chafing this morning so I decided to just head for home. It's supposed to be another nice day. Maybe I'll get in a few miles at noon if work permits.

I averaged 9:42/mi for 4.5 miles. I wore my new Garmin 205 for the first time this morning. I know there's a 305, and the 405 is coming out soon, but the 205 meets my needs just fine, and is a step up from my old trusty 201, which is so trusty anymore.

At noon, I got another 6.5 miles in (avg. 8:52/mi). My hip was hurting a little this morning so I wasn't sure how far I wanted to go. When I saw Darin and Will on the treadmills in the fitness center, I decided that if I ran on the treadmill I could stop immediately if anything didn't feel right. I was only thinking of going 3 or 4 miles anyway. Will was a little disappointed. He was going to go outside with me if I went. I knew I didn't want to run sub-8:00 today, so I stuck to the treadmill decision.

I talked to Will a bit until he finished. I also got to talk to Nathan and Tom for a bit as each of them came in from their runs at different times. The rest of the time was filled with watching "Flightplan", which I'd already seen. Still, I ended up running until it was over and went 6.5 miles instead of the planned 3 or 4. Of course, thankfully, my hip didn't bother me at all and I would have enjoyed running outside in the mild weather. Ah well.

I ran Lake View with Tom and Will at noon. We actually managed to keep the pace from getting too fast. I think we averaged around 8:18/mi.

I was trying to save some energy for the annual men vs. young men basketball game. A lot of good that did. They toasted us. We played them close the second half, but the damage was already done. Speaking of damage, I've decided to turn an ankle at least once a week. I took care of this week's ankle roll during the game. I think that's three weeks in a row now, once on a rock, once on the edge of some bad asphalt, and once getting bumped around playing basketball. I was wearing high tops and an ankle support so it wasn't too serious. I sat out the rest of the game, but I think I'll be able to run on it okay.

At first I questioned whether I should have played, but then a quote from the movie "Strictly Ballroom" came to my mind: "Vivir con miedo es como vivir a medias" or "To live with fear is to live a life half-lived". (If you haven't seen the move, I recommend you see it.)

I ran a half mile to test out my ankle then joined Larry and Wayne for a run around the Lindon Loop. The ankle held up fine, but I think I'll talk it easy tomorrow and then only run 10 or 12 on Saturday instead of the longer run I originally had planned.

I ran the 10K Lake View route with Darin today. We ran about as fast as I can and still stay conversational. We averaged 7:47/mi for the 6.2 miles. We ran into Tom in the fitness center afterwards. He had averaged about a minute per mile faster than that for his 8 mile tempo run, but I bet our conversation was better. Actually, it might be interesting to hear the conversations Tom has with himself during his long tempo runs.

Wow! My tag line is "Every race is an adventure!" I truly believe that. I thought about "Every RUN is an adventure!"...but if I'm honest, many runs are not all that adventurous. Today, however, was an exception.

Larry, Wayne, and I met at 8:00 for leisurely 12 mile run. I put in a warm up mile before that. They suggested the canal road towards Pleasant Grove and that sounded good to me. As we approached Pleasant Grove, Wayne suggested we head up Battle Creek canyon and take the Bonneville Shoreline Trail back. I had never run that way before, but they had and I trusted them, so I agreed.

I soon began to wonder what I'd gotten myself into. We proceeded to run up and up and up for the next 2.5 miles, from about 4900 feet to 5700 feet. The splits for two of those miles were 13:08 and 14:37. There was a lot of downhill after that, but with enough uphill mixed in to keep my legs pretty tired.

Despite the hard work, it was worth it. The views of the valley were beautiful. I told Karen afterwards that I wish there was some way I could share those experiences with her and the children. The combination of a beautiful morning, good people, exercise, the wonders of nature...well most of you reading this will know what I'm talking about. I feel so blessed. I wish everyone could experience it.

We were all pretty much beat when we came out of the foothills, but we were only at about 10 miles and had planned on 12. Larry took a more direct route home and Wayne and I decided to loop down 2000 N to 400 W and back home. Larry actually ended up doing an extra half mile loop around the block and probably ran farther than we did. Wayne and I pushed pretty hard the last 1.5 miles and averaged 7:47/mi. Wayne's running pretty well after his battle with pneumonia over the winter.

Today's run felt more like an 18 mile run than 12.5, but I'll only count the 12.5.