tetsujin209 do not worry about what evanflein wrote. I would never say "I told you so." Even though I told you so. Since that would be just onry. On the other hand, it would also be very satisfying. I will have to rethink this. 

coastwalker "only," "2 hours" and "meeting" should never be in the same sentence. Here let me help. The meeting was an interminable 2 hours, I was ready to kill myself. See, much better.

RunnerKSA I sure hope the rain holds off for your race.

HopesMom well, shameless plugs are more than welcome! This is not FB, so we otherwise have no way of knowing. Happy birthday to the woman married to the brave, brave spider vanquisher!

Tramps best wishes to your DW for a quick recovery.

Holly S. do you all get to enjoy the Oktoberfest party at all? I hope it is not all work.

wildchild have I mentioned how much I hate your pictures!  What do I get to run in? Suburban streets! You? Stunning mountain scenery! I tell you, I think you would eat ice cream in front of a bunch of 10 year olds on their way to school! Evil, just evil you are. See spacityrunner also lacks the incredible scenery you have! See, see . . .

Speaking of a lack of scenery, here is the relive from my 6 mile run this morning.

https://www.relive.cc/view/g14536746336

There is a picture in it (note, not nearly as impressive as wildchild's ) from a little circle called Devon that I run through when I feel like adding a 1/4 mile to the end of my run. I can say with confidence that happens less often than I run 20 miles! But, today I got there and thought what the heck and ran it. My original plan was to run 16 today. But the dew point was pretty high and tomorrow it is supposed to drop into the 40's or low 50's. So I figured, why not run easy today and long tomorrow.

A couple of days ago mrrun asked what my consolation marathon would be given I had to cancel my Australia talks. My DW pointed out that we can actually go places even if someone else is not going to pay for it. True. So we booked tickets to Australia on our own dime (a lot of dimes as it turns out). Part of the motivation is that if I do not run the race this year it is not clear when I would next have a chance to do so. I am hoping to move my teaching semester from the spring to the fall starting in the 2018-2019 academic year. If that happens, I cannot travel for more than a long weekend in October and that means Australia for a marathon is out. I will say the schools have been very understanding. Most have already extended invitations to come out next year. I am not sure they understand that it may mean spring 2019. I see a series of negotiations in my future.