My Old Home

So it again has been too long since I last blogged. Life has kept me pretty busy so it causes my blogging to be lax. I should start blogging during lunch or something, perhaps that would cause me to be a little more consistent... but I don't seem to get much inspiration when I am at work. ohh well...

last weekend Kristin and I went back to minnesota to visit some family, friends, and show her the place where i grew up. the trip was a lot of fun cuz I got to spend a lot of time with my brother and sister, friends from college, and with Kristin. A rare trifecta that has never been realized in the past. Thanks to murph and courtney for letting us crash there, thanks to petie, struck, raver, ben, herrema, and tim for taking the time to hang out with us. EP looked less different than I expected after 3 years, but I guess it takes a little longer to change a city. I did take a look at the high school though and it is simply ridiculous. They must have added like 3 new wings to the building since I last saw. It is simply huge!!

Running over the last 3 weeks has been pretty consistent. I forget when I last blogged, but 2 weeks ago I think I was in the mid 20's, this past week I think I only got 15 (due to vacation), and this week I will again be around 25. I am not going to set any records at that mileage, but i am pretty happy that I have been fairly consistent and I seem to be injury free. Even my ankle has been feeling better than last year. My pace still seems pretty slow compared to my effort, but maybe that will come with more time.

an interesting note... for those of you running folks out there who use the sue and pauls gmap pedometer, http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/, I poked around a little bit about the whole elevation thing. apparently when calculating distances it doesn't take into account the increase in distance due to a an elevation change. so the hillier the course you pick, the last accurate gmap will be (the number estimated by Gmap will be low). Not that I am dissing the tool, because it is great and I use it all the time, just something to keep in mind if your courses generally involve ladders because they will not be counted.

My OC

Bad vacation karma has been following kristin and I this summer, but I was hoping that our 4 day vacation in ocean city, maryland would break our streak of bad luck. We drove down wednesday after a half day of work, checked into our hotel, and decided 20 blocks wasn't too far to walk to the boardwalk. so we hit the boardwalk to find a meal and within 5 minutes of walking on the boardwalk, kristin gets crapped on by a seagull. my next thought was fear of what might happen for the rest of the trip if it is already starting out unlucky...

the trip ended up being great. Relaxing, reading, and running on the beach, ate some good food, I think I only drove once during the 4 days, which was sweet. on the board walk we noticed a place called marble slab creamery. this sounded eerily familiar to the chain ice cream store where I occasionally binge on the apple pie a la cold stone. quite good. I decided to do a little research into which came first... here is what I found. I had never run into another marble slab creamery but apparently it is also a big chain with 350 stores (compared to cold stone's 1314) and they basically do the same thing... but which came first? It turns out cold stone opened its first store in 1988 in Tempe and Marble Slab opened there first store in 1983 in Houston. huh... who would have thunk it. apparently the franchise fees for marble slab are higher (8% for marble slab and 6% for cold stone) so maybe that has stifled their growth. who knows...

the week of the OC trip I run just under 20 which isn't bad because of the vacation factor and this week I should finish up over 20. My inconsistent training has certainly been apparent in my performance on the runs, but at least I am still running and no injuries to report! yay!