Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, everyone. I wish the best for you and your families.

200

This is my 200th post two days after my 37th birthday. One of the best birthdays in a long while. My good friends and family came through with many things that I love. Jamie got me a sweet new dress watch to wear when i'm Suit Guy and planned a surprise dinner with a bunch of our friends. I had super tasty ale braised short ribs. Runninggunner was supposed to be there but he doesn't like me was sick. My homie Ryan hooked me up with a pound of red licorice, I scored a Value Village gift certificate for more thrifting treasures and Andrew scored me the hunter green Snuggie I have wanted for ages. An All-Snuggie photo post coming soon.
Spent the afternoon with Violet and hit up the new Muppet movie. It was her first time to the theater and the show was excellent. Very wholesome, very earnest, very Muppet-y. A great experience, aside from the fact that they initially loaded the wrong film into the projector. The previews seemed a little intense for a kids movie and when the 'Feature' started it was Twilight-Breaking Dawn. Needless to say, my 4 year old daughter was not a fan of the werewolves. Crisis averted with a minute or two outside the theater while they shut down the wrong film and got it sorted.
Great run on the back 9 of the canal course of Northview Golf and Country Club. Great run, scenic, quiet, rolling. Would be a great spot for a little race. Maybe next year in support of Mo-vember. Felt fast-ish. Soundtrack was the Fanfarlo album from a few years back.

40 less 2

last day of my forty day stretch. great run tonight, clear skies and a nearly full moon. Christmas lights up everywhere. beautiful. ipod on shuffle: plants and animals, the pains of being pure at heart, wilco, yeasayer, bon iver, real estate, lady gaga, fleet foxes.
since i posted two zeros during my 40 day stretch I'm going to extend the streak two more days to 'make up' for the missed days. cause i'm obsessive like that.

39

good run this AM. legs felt good, head felt good. cold and dry. saw some blue in the sky in the afternoon, a rare treat in Vancouver this time of year. great day in the city.
decided to take a stab at learning a new language. wanted to try Punjabi but could only find Hindi language podcast for free. learned all the consonant sounds and vowel sounds today. thinking about my little girls and how they managed to learn to speak without formal instruction. mind boggling that any of us learn at all. a fun challenge, so far the 30 min i spent listening to podcasts is 29 minutes longer than my attempt to learn mandarin.

testing testing

exam coming up on friday. that has stolen my focus and is dictating my schedule. still managing to get some miles in before work but short and easy has been the theme. body feels good, a little tired I think, but hard to discern the source. likely a cumulative effect. was very tempted to skip the run this am. was trying to convince myself that 36 days was was plenty and that really, a zero or two in the last week wouldn't diminsh what i had done up till then. kind of like packing it in during the last 6 miles of a marathon and then making sure to tell everyone your half split so they can still be suitably impressed at how well it had gone to that point.
telling, a good insight into where my head is at and has been.
starting to look back on my little experiment and evaluate how it went. more to come.

last 5

last 5 days of my 40 day challenge started with some sprints at the local all weather field. feeling good. the momentum has definitely swung back towards training as the default and not the exception. Some of the other areas of focus still need a little more attention: the strength training, the no candy rule. but, the heavy lifting of getting a running routine reestablished is done. now, maintenance.

confused

having a hard time keeping up. thought for sure i had posted here today then realized i was remembering a tweet...dur...
good npr podcast this AM about the music scene in NY in the mid seventies. Amazing the things that came out of that era, the live music club being the one that blew me away the most. hard to believe that prior to CBGB's in the mid 70's there weren't public places an up and coming band could play original music.
looking forward to tomorrow. got a new backpack with bottle holders and all sorts of cool features and tomorrow on my long run im going to try it out for the first time.
Also, i may start learning a second language by way of podcast with some of the time i'm out jogging about.

wup

missed a day posting again. glad it was just a missed post. Thursday Friday got out both days. Stopped by a local 'nutrition' store on my way home to see if they had any maltodextrin. nutrition has been a issue in the past and I'd like to get it ironed out. The girl there was quite striking: 6 feet tall, blonde and buff. Nordic warrior, like she should have been wearing fur boots made from wolves instead of lulu pants. sadly, she was only somewhat helpful. found hammer nutrition, which was the only product there which had a first ingredient of malto. at $55 for about 100 servings, it was still cheaper than gels but i balked.