Holiday Celebration

Friday of last week was my favorite holiday of the year. Considering it was 80 degrees and sunny that could only mean it was national "Take Your Ice Scraper Out of Your Car Day". This is the day when you have faith that it is FINALLY safe to put your ice scraper in the closet and maybe even put the windshield sun cover in. Oddly enough this happened to coincide with the Christian Holiday known as "Good Friday" which has a great deal of faith as well. Coincidence? Good Friday was a double bonus since it is also one of our non-working Holidays at my beloved consulting company. I decided to head out for the "Top of Ohio" course. If you don't know that route, you obviously have stumbled on this blog by accident. Either you can search the archive or just trust that this is a known training route. Because it it still a little chilly in the morning here in C-Bus, I decided to have a leisurely start to my Good Friday.

What do I mean by leisurely start? Most morning for me are black coffee, in great quantities, and out the door by either 5:00 or 7:00. A leisurely morning is much different...massive amounts of black coffee, surf the web, watch Sports Center, empty the dishwasher, walk to the basement and forget why I went down there, surf the web, grab the mail, and out the door.

Anyway, great ride for the holiday. 77 miles in 5:30 or so. A person has a lot of time to think when they ride alone for five and a half hours. Fortunately, when I get tired of me, I just put on some good podcasts.

Sunday was awesomeasw well. GS and I had 22 miles on the plan, and we were picking up Nemo at the 1 mile mark, so he was going 20. "Long Run Saturday" was a typical out-and-back routine from Hills Market to OSU Stadium. I'd been a little nervous about this since GS was planning on going hard to gauge what he thought he could run in Boston and Nemo is in good enough shape to run with him. I like to give this analogy...you know how sometimes you see a group of pretty girls hanging out and they always have this "lesser pretty" friend. I was the "lesser pretty" friend Saturday. The pace south was quick but I was feeling OK. We were working in the 7:30 to 8:00 min/mile range going out which is a little faster than usual. After the turnaround, the pace picked up and the only thing I could do was shout, "Hey, have a good Easter, and safe travels..." and they were gone. Rumor has it...yes there are rumors in MRC(am)...that there were a quite a few sub 6:00s on the return. I fear that Nemo is going to make me the slowest marathon guy in MRC(am) after next weekend. FYI...MD is out on Spring Break with his family so we are only getting twitter updates from him. He will still bring a mean run to Boston. His fast is faster than my fast...

As always, it was good to see the MIT Army on Saturday. Having been around Antrim and MIT for a while, it is kind of nice to see the commitment and growth they have experienced. For anyone that wonders if Columbus is a good Running City...come by Antrim on a Saturday morning and run with hundreds of other people. I am more surprised every year when "Runner's World" doesn't name Columbus in the top 10. Bastards!

OK, weather is turning and I'm getting back into the swing of things. Lots more to write about like finally riding Canal with Daredevil (slow), getting back to masters swimming (slow), preparing for the Boston trip (slow), J-Fo's awesome biceps (huge) and much more but that is enough for tonight. Right now, spring is in the air. My west coast fans will never really apprciate this but this is my view this afternoon. See the green, see the hope, see the shine...we call that spring.

Sure to come this weekend: What Foods I Think About While Running!

Stats:
4/3/2010 Saturday 20 mile run (2:41)
4/4/2010 Sunday 33 mile ride (no timing)
4/5/2010 Monday 2100 swim (water was THICK)
4/6/2010 Tuesday 5 mile run (43:00
4/7/2010 Wednesday 10 mile run (1:23)
4/8/2010 Thursday 1 hour spinning and lifting
4/9/2010 Friday 2400 swim & 5 mile run (40:00)
153 - 157 lbs