Irony at "Run with the Wind 25k"

Today was a busy day. This morning I headed down to Sarcoxie for the Run with the Wind 25k. The course takes you from Sarcoxie HS to Carthage HS and this would be my very first 25k. The race started @ 9:00 am and I also had tickets to the MSU Bears game @ 12:00. So, I wanted to park my car at the finish in Carthage and get a ride back to the start in Sarcoxie so I could leave as soon as I finished the race. Found a ride no problem, only to find out that when I returned to Sarcoxie my freshly charged Ipod is mysteriously dead. Ah, "no problem" I say, there is a charger in the car....oh wait it's in Carthage! Ok, so not really a Shakespearean tragedy, but I did manage to survive. However, I really could have used some music around mile 12 when my legs decided to stop picking themselves up off the pavement and felt like I was lifting cinder blocks with my quads on each step. This is what I get for running a race at a longer distance than I need too, but I kinda had that 10 foot tall and bullet proof feeling going into the race. Thank you rolling hills and very little flat ground for bringing me back down to reality. I obvisouly managed to PR since it was my first ever 25k in 1:53:08. After finishing the race I managed to make it to the Bears game by halftime, but it was well worth it to see them win their first MVC Championship ever. Record crowd of 11,000 + and in 10 years of Bears basketball I have never seen an atmosphere like that except for when Jackie was playing. Go Bears! and Go Aimee! who will be competing in her dream Princess 1/2 Marathon tomorrow in sunny Florida. Good Luck sweetheart, I love you.

Grant's River Greenway

This morning Aimee and I went for a nice long run (12 and 13 miles respectivley) on the Grant's River Greenway in STL. We are in town for a wedding that Aimee is in and we needed somewhere to run. While driving on I-44, we saw an overpass marked with the Greenway Logo that was close to where we were staying, so we looked it up (Grant's Trail). It's always so hard to run long distance while traveling, but this made it super easy. Aimee and I both commented on how we never imagined St. Louis having something like this inside the city, but it was well maintained, very clean, had mile markers, and there were lots of people using it. We were very impressed. Probably the best part of the whole trail was actually getting to run by Grant's Farm. You can even see the world famous Budweiser Clydesdales along the way. After running, I was asked by two different groups of people about the trail who did not live here, which was kinda ironic since neither did we, but I just started rattling off info like I ran it all the time (or had just finished it for the first time). I bring this story up because soon as we get there it is 5:30 am, dark and no one else is around. Then another car pulls up and I ask the guy if the trail is marked with mile markers. He tells Aimee and I "it is, but I have never been able to figure out the system they use" and he tries to tell us approximately where we should turn around. So we take off and quickly realize that it is marked every 1/2 mile! In Aimee's words, "ya real hard system to figure out". In addition to this trail, STL has many additional Greenway trails throughout the city that will give us new places to run in the future whenever we are up here visiting and if you are ever in town and need somewhere to run, now you know where to go.

New Snow Shoes

Tired of running on the treadmill (I only ran on it once), today I decided to make myself some new snow running shoes. As you can see I basically put some screws around the outside of an old pair of running shoes. I did some research online first and all videos suggested using 1/4 inch sheet metal hex screws. Since I did not have any of those and did not want to go out and buy them, I just used some 1/2 inch deck screws. I tested them out this morning with a 5.4 mile snow packed run and they worked great. Well, at least I did not fall. I am not sure if they were any better than normal shoes without the screws but it did not hurt my feet and I felt like I was keeping decent traction. I managed to keep under a 9 min pace, and the only difficult part was in the slushy snow. So, if you have ever wanted to try it out, I can tell you it doesn't hurt and it only takes about 5 minutes to assemble.