Mornin' everyone.

Twocat, I don't think you are checking the weather often enough for your race day...

Nice 10.1 miler while catching up with a friend, Deeze. I'm disappointed that I won't see you at the Seacoast Half this year, but I hope you do well at the other race. Have a great trip to VT with your Mom, and Happy Birthday to her!

Nice 11 miler for Holly, who is coming along nicely. The sproink will return.

Mike, good luck to the boy's and girl's CC teams in the Sections and States. Great comeback win by the girls soccer team in their championship game!

Good 15-miler, Lori. I wonder if Gu is less expensive if you get it by the box instead of individual pkgs?

Enke, it sounds like your son's crew had fun at the marching band competition, even if they didn't place as well as they wanted. Nice 5-miler in sun and humidity.

Nice job in the 5K, Tet. And a good perspective on having 2 more minutes of running!

Wow, Steve - a very tough situation with your FIL that you and your DW seems to have managed quite well. It must be so difficult for your MIL to not know what each day will bring. Thanks also for the amazing story of the tree people.

I got all my chores done yesterday, and even managed to clear (temporarily) the leaves from our long driveway and parts of the front and back yard. I baked another chocolate whiskey cake, but used Cointreau instead of whiskey this time. I wonder how it will taste? One of DW's aunts passed away on Friday (she was 87 and not doing well at all, and she had said that it was time to go, so we miss her, but are glad that she is no longer miserable and suffering). We're taking the cake and some other food to the wake, which is in Brooklyn, NY. We're leaving tomorrow morning, and should be back by Wednesday night. We'd like to stay longer, but we both have way to much going on this week to be able to afford any more time away.

5.7 RW miles this morning in 43F temps. I'm still feeling too much tightness, so I'm spending as much time stretching as I can each morning and evening. I'm not trying for speed, but just to get in a modicum of condition for the weekend's races.

Have a greta Monday!

Jay

I am sorry to hear about your aunt, Jay.

I am sure the orange flavor will be lovely with the chocolate cake.

Rest day for me too, although it's probably the nicer of the next few days.

Just a quick pop-in to say hello to everyone! Today is the only day I'm working this week, so lots to do. I had 7 remaining vacation days I had to use in October, or I would lose them, so I'm down to my final 4 in this last week of October, so despite having quite a bit of work going on, I needed to take the time off.

Tomorrow is the final conference XC meet and then the season is over already. Hard to believe it goes that quickly!  Then I guess it's time to start focusing more on my training and getting ready for what i hope is going to be a better running year in 2017. I even already ordered my 2017 running calendar, so I hope writing things down and getting a minimum of one race on the calendar per month, will help me stay more focused. I've had a couple of very lazy running years now. 

okay, gots to work  cya!

Leslie - glad you survived Glacier National Park with-or-without bear spray.  You and Shorty detouring out of your way to support us on that rainy day in Portland helped make it one of my best and most fun PM’s ever.  Please thank him too.
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What a difference amongst the elderlies in our lives reported herein yesterday and today, and over the years.  I hope when our times come, we will all have someone special like us around us too.
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Five morning miles
high clouds / no wind / 47^o
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Twocat - I don’t like to run in the rain either and usually won’t if I have any choice but, since I don’t have any choice in races I pay for and, since I’ve never really minded rainy days that much anyway, please send me any rain or chance thereof that might be threatening your upcoming marathon so I can do all the running in the rain in your stead at this weekend’s Carkeek 12-hour Fun Run. .  However, for full disclosure, just so you’ll know, I’ll have plenty of excuses for a subpar performance and you won’t.   good luck.
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ps amy - thanks for the baseball updates.
On Saturday, we had four radio stations
broadcasting football (3) and soccer (1)
but no baseball

Leslie - looking at your projected 2017 schedule - I'll probably be seeing you at 3 races! I'm so excited!

Hello everybody!

Well--I thought I was going to get fired from my coaching job, today.  I was already to head out with the varsity girls on their run, when the head coach told me to run with some of the boys.  All the,kids are assigned certain courses to run, but I never pay any attention to them because, I just follow the group I'm running with.  I thought it was odd that such a large group was going together and then it was really strange when two groups merged together and they were running a whole lot faster than I was expecting them to run....and I started noticing that some of the guys were looking at me a little weird.  And then we came to a creek.  Ahhh..."the double creek run".  I had heard of this course from back when my older kids were in school.  Some the kids had already started across by the time I got there and the rest looked at me and wondered what I was going say.  I said, "I've been hearing about this course for years--I'm going!"  With that-everybody jumped on in.  The water was freezing!  And it was a whole lot deeper than I anticipated and, at one point, I was pretty worried about myself.  But we all made it safely across and away we went...through swampy, tall grassy, muddy, stinking, stuff--and then crossed the creek again a little further down. Well, we were gone a whole lot longer than the runs we were all assigned should have taken.  When we finally got back, we found that the coach had locked us out of the cross country room and he told us all that we weren't welcome back there today.  Well, we did our ab work and stretches out in the hallway and, then I finally got somebody to open the door for me.  I apologized and told the coach that I never realized that he would be so mad about this.  I told him that the kids needed to get in and pick up their stuff and he said they could come in to get their stuff, but he didn't want to talk to anybody!  I  told the guys to just go in and not say a word...which is what they did.  Of course, I had to stay and face the music....and, really, he took it easy on me because he knew I had not planned to do it and he realized that I was kind of in a tough spot.  And, to be honest--I really felt that I needed to make sure everybody made it across okay.  In hindsight, I should have insisted that everybody turn around and get back to the school...but, it sure was fun!

Okay--gotta go!  See ya!

Tet, snork!! I don't care for starting in the rain. I seldom complain about being caught in a down pour though.

MikeE. That sounds like a perfect run.

 

 

I bit the bullet and ordered my first pair of trekking poles to use in races with lots of climbing.  They weren't cheap (gulp!), so hopefully it all works out.

 

 

It will all work out.