Harry ready to wave

Harry ready to wave
Originally uploaded by vergil66.

Evan in his costume for this Halloween.

I like Columbus!

I really do. Because I couldn't run in the Lakefront this year, fate steered me toward Columbus and what a nice city that was. The race was really what I wanted and my special thanks goes to the Pace Leader for 4:00 hours.
I ran a comfortable pace up until 13 miles and then the wall began to creep in front of me. After walking through a water stop (thanks volunteers!) I found myself behind the 4:00 hour pace time group with its leader. And that was my goal: stick with the guy in the navy blue running gear and for the first time, I finished on pace without a mental/physical breakdown.

Time: 3:57:24 (in case you want to know, I finished 1475th overall (out of 3797), pace of 9:04 and a half time of 1:56:08).

What a wonderful end to an icky season! If you get the chance to run Columbus, do it. Very cool people and a nice route through neighborhoods with bands along the way (special kudos to the bagpipe player in Germanville...made my day).
Now what?
Starting to make plans for next season (Sunburst in the Spring?) and we're planning on running in the Figid 5K in Warsaw, IN (Jan 1. 2006).

"Why not to blog" and Columbus

This is the reason why I'm not a good blogger: I write for a week or two, then drop off the face of cyberspace.
So, I'm back because we were in Milwaukee this weekend and got to see some of the runners finish the race that I was training for.
Oh, yes, I was training for a fall marathon (Lakefront Marathon in Milwaukee, WI) and as I went to sign up (like I do each year) the race had reached its cap: 2300. (This happened when I originally was training for my first marathon (Chicago) and had to pick another marathon around the same time (Lakefront). So of course, I was disappointed. But since October is crazy anyway, I decided to run in the Columbus Marathon two weeks later and so I've added two weeks to my training schedule.
BTW, training has been going well. I've used the hills of Northern Indiana (the few that we have in this area) and the time off after the my spring injuries has paid off. My 20 miler and 18 miler felt good and strong and last Saturday's 12 miler was really, really cool--- a run along the shore of Lake Michigan on the Oak Leaf Trail in Milwaukee around sunrise: priceless.
Next week I'm in Canada and the following week we head to Columbus and I run with approximately 5500 other runners. New town, new race, same 26.2 miles. Shooting for 4 hours and not trying to prove anything but finishing and getting another cool t-shirt.