ruminations

haven't run more than 5 miles in about 5 days.

this weekend i'll run 3, maybe 5 on saturday. it's our 2nd annual runner retreat to celebrate our awesome 2009 season at friend kim's cabin.

since my last post i remembered a smattering of NYC details to share:
Favorite tidbits I failed to mention in the last post, random order.

1) african man holding a sign with "Twizzlers' on it and the african translation handing out candy. just by himself on a corner. then an older (more than 70 i'd say) european man running next to me with his individually wrapped twizzler was not able to open it. Man nudges me, worried or questioning look like 'can you please tear this baby open for me?' i did. he smiled and kept on truckin'. awesome.

2) similar story to above but without the elderly man. an asian woman holding 'Swedish Fish Here' hand made sign in english and kanji or some asian translation and a little gladware full of red swedish fish. again. awesome.

3) a man. with 2 prosthetic legs. changing them out. Mile 10 or so. In the middle of the route/road. With his pit crew of friends helping. WOW.

4) the sound of thousands of runners and sticky shoes. Gatorade Endurance formula was on the course...it's full of more sodium and other 'goodies' to keep us hydrated. it also has to have more sugar in it. because SO MUCH was on the roads, esp the later we got into the race that when we throw our cups to the side, there's always splash out of what you didn't drink (non runners? we usually don't ever down the whole cup...) so with all that gatorade on the road, our shoes literally stuck to the road for a good 1/4 mile past each water stop. very very weird. shluck shluck shluck shluck....as we all kept on pace..

5) related to above? so much water and gatorade on the road led to the cups themselves literally composting down as we ran over them...most races have people with brooms or rakes get the cups over to the side to prevent runners from slipping/tripping on them. but with so many people on the course it was nearly impossible for them to do that at certain points without becoming hazards with rakes. so composted trampled wet clumpy bits of gatorade cups were all over the road. again, just not the norm...and kinda interesting.

it was an amazing event. it took about a full week for the whole experience to really settle in. yes. i WOULD run it again. it was amazingly cool, even if i still can't believe they let me in...

my next event is not until January, unless I become one of the millions (yes that many) on Turkey Day to run a 5K. which I just might. where's one right by my house. can't really pass that up...and i have the whole day off before turkey day to clean house for our house full of friends to attend thanksgiving dinner. no family near here so it's just us and the friends hanging out. much wine, much delicious food, a variety of topics to laugh about and no dysfunction :) amen!

January is when i hope to travel to phoenix to see baby Julia, mom Karen and dad Jerry...it also happens to be when the Rock N Roll Phoenix marathon and half is. Let's not think crazy. I'd be doing the 13.1. this girl is taking retirement seriously. IF i run a marathon at all next year it'll be Chicago. It's on Oct 10th. That would be 10.10.10. Which I think would be awesome karma and a stellar way to remember when I ran it ;) I still remember 8.8.88. The lights went on at Wrigley Field for the first time. I remember such useless things sometimes...but there you have it.

on the homefront, we got back from Winnipeg, Manitoba on Monday. Mark had a big basso profundo solo to sing in a Rautavaara piece last weekend. The choir director flew us both out, put us up in a beautiful hotel and paid Mark on top of that to take part in this. Very cool! Mark is now wishing he could sing full time and ditch retail land. But reality is that singers just don't make the millions...esp basso profundo singers. yet?

Cora is hanging in there but the limping is getting much worse as time goes on. She was great until about 2 weeks ago. I have a sinking feeling we are in a much diff position now than we were all summer. I hope she sticks around for another couple of months but I know reality may not play out that way. We really don't know. The vet is astounded how well she's done til now. But he has told us many times we're really lucky it's gone this way. And that we just have to see how this continues in the coming weeks. Her spirit is still awesome! Her shoulder sadly is not. We'll keep you posted...

On that note, it's time to get some chores done. Peace & love, ~jd