Good morning Mariposai and those yet to post. Great picture of the ladies preparing dinner! I'm sure Twocat was giving exact directions on how to prepare everything. And nice of you to take Twocat to his PT appointment.

5.62 miles this morning, and probably ran close to 4 of it. I feel like I'm making progress, but it's been a slow, painful process. Finished up with 20 minutes of weights and core stuff, and plan on walking 18 holes of golf this afternoon if the mosquitoes have eased up.

Hope everyone's week is off to a good start.

Morning all...looks a good cookfest there!!   Super busy weekend for me, besides running a marathon on Sunday.

I finished the Back on my Feet Marathon in downtown Indy yesterday in 4:48:14.   I was kind of "meh" about the time yet the old saying that "every marathon has a lesson" is, once again, quite accurate.   I was "meh" because I set out to run 4:15 and was on track for that through the halfway point, doing just under 2:07 at the half.   But my glues and quads got really tight and it was clear I wasn't going to get the turnover for the second half, so I idled back, shifted to a 3/1 run/walk and just enjoyed the second half, which took 2:41.   It was a beautiful morning, the vibe was nice, the cause of the race was a good one (helping homeless find jobs and stability), so it was all fine.

One fun thing from the race..the vast majority of the participants were on relay teams...it was a 12 lap marathon course, about 2.2 miles/lap.   Lots of four person teams.   Only 14 solo marathoners signed up and we had the lowest digit bibs.   And the RD knows me, she won the women's division of the marathon I was the RD for last April, so, out of kindness, she assigned me bib #1 !   Ha!  That's the closest I'll ever be to being Kenyan.  And, since I was so slow and most were done by the time I was finished, it also illustrated the ancient Biblical text that "The first shall be last".

The fifth time I've run this race and it's a good one.

Rock the week, folks,

Joe

Nice marathon, Joe, despite the 12 lap format!  Lucky to get the #1 bib!

PBJ, nice to see you posting!  Good luck at Hartford.

Looks like Mariposai is having fun visiting the Twocats, and cooking up a storm!

Jeanne, nice to see you running again!

Holly, that stranger walking into your house sounds scary! Glad he was just drunk and not dangerous. I saw a post on FB that a mountain lion walked into a motel in the foothills near Boulder, because they had left the door wide open… I’ve been in the habit of leaving my back door open on nice days, but now I’m rethinking the wisdom of that!

I am so thankful that I have a wonderful bunch of running friends!  It took a while to find them, because some of the other groups I tried were all younger and faster and left me in the dust.  The trick is to find an ultrarunning group - even if you don't run ultras.  Ultra runners are happy going at whatever pace for however long anyone wants.

Yesterday I did an excellent runventure with 6 ultrarunner friends.  We did the second half of the Devil on the Divide race course (I ran the first half of the race two weeks ago, but had to forgo the 2nd half because of  my recent knee surgery).  The second half is on some trails that are not clear or marked, but we ran with two guys who mark the course for the race and run a remote aid station, so they showed us the way.  We also picked up some stray race flagging that the sweeps missed.  It was hard and beautiful, and I'm definitely signing up for the 50k race option next year!  We did 15 miles, with 3400 ft elevation gain and 5400 ft elevation loss.  (point to point run, which involved shuttling cars).  Here are a few pictures.  Sorry, Twocat, no underpasses or overpasses...

No run today. I'm physically exhausted.

I ran 6 miles Saturday morning around Niagara Falls. Then off to the family reunion which was excellent. A cousin that I spent a lot of time with growing up was there. He now lives in Phoenix and we've never attended on the same year. It's probably been 30 years since I've seen him.  I told him that seeing him in person again was on my bucket list so now I can cross that off.

Of the 32 (or is it 34?) cousins almost all that are alive now were there this year.  (5 have died.)  Many have kids and grandkids. One of my cousins hosts the event every year around the time of his wedding anniversary so he has friends that show up too.  Over 2 days, 300 people are there, but fortunately, not at the same time.  He puts up a big tent and bands play in there in the evening.  There is a pig roast - one pig in a smoker and one buried under ground. A huge bonfire, fireworks, and the annual hula hoop competition (complete with age group awards.)  People camp out on his property.  It is called Pigstock and this year was the 17th year for the event.

I have 1 uncle still living and on Sunday morning we sat around to hear his stories and ask questions. He did the same thing last year too. They grew up very poor and many of his brothers and sisters did not finish high school.  He was the only one that went to college.

3 of his brothers (my uncles) fought in WWII (army, marines, air force).  One fought at Iwo Jima. He died a couple years ago and would never talk about it his time in the war, but someone asked him about the book & movie "Flags of Our Fathers" and he said it was very accurate to his experience, so I have ordered the book to read.

And, we may be getting close to a mystery about my grandfather, Sherwood Earl Whitehead.  (Sometimes he went by Sherwood and sometimes by Earl.)  For years, there was a rumor that he was part of the 2012 Olympic team as a race walker. No one can confirm it.  My uncle researched the Buffalo newspapers from the early 1900's and found articles about Earl Whitehead in various walking events, and one article (in 1911) listed him and one other person as "Olympic material."  Perhaps that is how the rumor started. He also found an article where he complained about the officiating and sounded like he was being a bad sport.  Our uncle is going to get us copies of what he found.

Nice race, Joe.  Lots of loops!  I know some folks that did that as a relay.    Love the pictures, posie and Wildchild.

3.1 treadmill miles this morning because it was either raining or about to rain outside and I didn't want to deal with it.   Not fun on the treadmill and it was hard to keep heart rate down with the warm basement and boring TV news, but it's done.   I had a 3 hour training class this morning on Emotional Intelligence.  We tried to have a good attitude about it, but, frankly, at my age that ship has sailed.  It was a little bit fun in parts- and it's over!

2 treadmill miles after work-  heavy rain today and some flooding around and it feels like a swamp.

Hey Masters!!

Posai - loooks like you are having a great time in CT!! Any chance you are making it up to Boston?

PBJ - I just can't get past "hold back" and 8:30 pace in the same sentence 

Joe - cool having #1 bib, sounds like a fun race!!

I'm slowly working in a little more running but taking it very easy. Today was the third week of mixing in some running with walking and today did 3.5 miles alternating 3 min running/2 min walking. I am aware of that area where the bone contusion was, but no pain. I am promising myself to make this a very slow, recovery plan and really add on the mileage very gradually (frustrating but necessary)

Saturday I enjoyed my last bike ride in Maine - did 18.5 miles then a short run. Took my bike home today as we are closing up Columbus Day weekend and next weekend I'll be working.

DH started on the Columbia Gas job today - interested to see how his day goes. They have electricians coming in from all over MA and out of state to help with evaluating existing electrical systems in the 8,000 homes affected by the explosions. They are planning on setting people up with electric heaters and other things until the gas lines can all be fixed. My son was very fortunate and is in an area allowed back in with full power the day after the explosions. So many friends are displaced and/or juggling right now - crazy!!

 

I assume you mean the 1912 Olympic Team.

 

A quick search on Wikipedia gave me

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athletics_at_the_1912_Summer_Olympics_%E2%80%93_Men%27s_10_kilometres_walk

 

It appears the 10K was the only race walking distance that Olympics, with 23 competitors of which 4 represented the US. Samuel Schwartz, Edward Renz, Frederick Kaiser and Alfred Voellmeke.

I believe that it's correct but you might be surprised to know that everything in the internet is not complete and sometimes not totally accurate, even in Wikipedia.    We've been trying too figure out how the rumor got traction. My uncle had to actually physically go some place to be able to search Buffalo news from 1900-1915 in detail.

It is a well known fact that the Whiteheads (my mother's side of the family) like to embellish stories.   So maybe one of them just made it up out of thin air.