He's not as fit as the 1000M bunny, although that's more of a consequence than a reason for his smoking. I used to be a smoker for 15 years and I thought it'd be funny. I wonder if there really are runners who smoke. I wouldn't completely rule it out.

eat more oysters than all other boomers combined in Newport Oysterfest and Marathon.

Dear percher -

not that running a hilly marathon that has more some five miles of ascent in the last nine miles in pouring down rain and wind and on a bum knee to boot just for training doesn’t make you one already but Richmond in two weeks later will more than confirm your maniac status.

If you don’t think so just try to find any coaching program that includes a marathon distance as practice for a marathon. Divechief did it for Boston and was proven guilty shortly thereafter too.

Thanks for the sock guy site. 
There’s another one for sandals, and even some for running barefoot!
www.higuy.com  (sandals)
www.runningbarefoot.org
www.barefootrunner.org
www.barefootted.com

ps - be sure say hello to all the maniacs and ask if any’ll be in your upcoming races.

Dear dea goddessa,

thanks for the special 50th birthday RR at what turned out to be probably the most memorable ultra you could have found.  You looked so pert, pretty and refreshed at the 6pm/12hour finish, I wouldn’t even have imagined you’d done one of the 5K’s we used to do so many times over the recent years. 

In fact, I was thinking you must have had to miss it or something and had just come out to be sociable to your increasing ultra fans and friends.

Starting late around noon myself, I fully expecting to complete a marathon distance (14 laps) in around six hours but’d only made 10 laps by the 6pm cutoff.

It was a bit of shock to encounter that first long set of stairs to the first Puget Sound overlook right after the grassy football-field length meadow and then have the reality of the hilly course set in when ultra-Tracy was passing me on one of the two metal-grated footbridges about half-way around. She said that they were the only other flat places.

It's hard to imagine anyone thinking that the three little flats (meadow and the two bridges) and three major steep ascents/descents in the 1.93 mile circuit could have anything to do with running.  The only other time I thought that about a course was the 8,700' up and down two mountains in the White River 50 mile Endurance Challenge. 

However, with 430 feet up/down per lap at Carkeek, you exceeded 9,000 feet in ten less miles!

Afterwards, the RD said the circuit had been recently googled and it is still the hardest 12-hour run in the country.

Now that’s what I call a very special happy birthday! . . . . especially for someone who’d never run an ultra until a little over a year ago and only one marathon some years before that!

. .

 .nearing first overlook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2nd flat place

SATURDAY (10/24) DAILY from Tokyo - having a good time for the last time 

I had vowed that no one would come to Seattle to get last place in the RnR so, even when i couldn't be there in June, I ran a 6:38 in one of the weekly Imperial Palace Marathon to capture last place by almost two hours on the same Saturday morning as in Seattle..

Now, when I missed my friend's 26.2 mile long moving 80th birthday party at the Portland Marathon earlier this month, he sent me the birthday t-shirt I'd've been wearing with him and said to do it in Japan for him during a trip this week.

Only problem, I wasn't sure my poor excuse for a knee and I would have been able to match Bob's 6hr/10min finish. 

Fortunately, sticking with now - 680 marathoner Mr. Nakamura of the Japan 100-Marathon Joyful Running Club this summer when he fizzled to a nearly two hour PW up in the mountains around the base of Mt. Fuji at 90 degrees in one of this summer's marathons had him happy to return the favor pace me and had us both finishing in 6:06:06!!!!! 

I'm just overjoyed knowing now for sure that I could have done it with Bob too. See below photo of how happy I am wearin' Bob's birthday shirt with one of the Joyfuls. As the first photo I've ever figured out how to post, I pretty happy about that part too.