Post Race Feelings
Everything below the hips hurts. Some of my toes feel worn out today. Despite the post-run massage/baths, these muscles sure are aching today.












Results are now online. Some stats - I finished:

• at 1:53:28 overall, with a pace of 5:23/km. Compare this to Wednesday's pace of 6:33/km for a 15km run (with two killer hills), or to the 5:21/km pace I set for last year's Winterstart (8km, 2 km of which is uphill)
  
• 313th out of 1105 participants, or in the 72nd percentile of runners
• 213th out of 484 men, in the 46th percentile
• 101st out of 341 men aged 20-29, in the 70th percentile. That surprises me, I thought that number would be much closer (if not lower) than the total for all men.

My nipples! The Body Glide does nothing!
Today I ran my first half-marathon, 21.1km during the ING Marathon weekend here in Edmonton. I've planned to run this since February, at which point the most I had ever run was 13km.

Random Thoughts:
- I must say, the whole thing was a very, very well organized event. I can't really think of single thing that they did wrong, or even could have done better. Kudos to the organizers.
- I'm not a hot-weather runner. In the last few years, the only training I've done usually started in early to late October, so it was a real shock having to try to run in 20+ degree heat. Today's forecast was for 30 degrees.
- The course itself was gorgeous, a path giving one of best views of the River Valley I've ever seen. Once out of downtown, I got lost as to where I actually was in the course, which doesn't usually happen.
- One nice thing about the course was the amount of shade it presented. That, combined with water/Gatorade stations spread roughly every 3km helped keep the impact from the heat to a minimum.
- I heart people with supersoakers. Next running event on a hot day, I'm gonna go down there and do my part.
- I rececived my first ever post-event massage, thanks to some sort of error in my mom's favour (she did the 21.1km walk, and didn't want the massage). Apparently I really should see a chiropractor about my hip and IT band. Huh.

Lessons learned:
- Note for future training - learn how to drink & run.
- Vaseline on a stick is meant for applying to a chafed area, power gels are meant to be eaten. Got it.
- Power gels, when eaten, are actually quite terrible tasting. At leas the strawberry banana flavour I had. It was like eating flavoured pure corn syrup. I'm just glad I didn't get chocolate. But I did spend a good 1/2km thinking of flavours that would work. Maybe something citrusy. And mint wouldn't work, because I'd probably end up using it for toothpaste and find myself sleep-sprinting.
- Another note for future training - don't spend the first 5 months training hard, and then take the 2 month leading up to the race 'easy'.

So all in all, it was a good event. On Wednesday, I ran a 14km loop with Justin in about 1:35. Based on that, I was aiming to run the race in under 2:10. Well, I'm happy to say that I did make my goal - I ran the damned thing in 1:54:18! Over 15 minutes better than what I expected! So either I had a good day, or I'm just shit at guessing my time. I guess there's something to say about HGH.

I'm pretty sore, but I stretched really good afterwards, and that combined with the massage, the soak in the City Hall fountain, and the coldest bath I've ever taken, should hopefully keep the pain to a minimum.

Pickings
Esks over the Argos
Alouettes over the lowly Stamps
BC wipes the floor with Winnipeg
Riders rough up the Cats

Programs Finale
A few weeks ago, I found a program to do what I've always wanted my computer to do - rotate desktops. You always see these great desktops that people will send you, or you have tons of photos that you like to display, but I hated that I was always stuck with one at a time. After some searching, I stumbled onto John's Background Switcher. It's exactly what I wanted. You have have it set any way you want. Currently I switch to a new background every 3 minutes, so every time I go to the desktop it's a nice surprise!

Good wallpaper resources:
- Desktoptopia - another desktop switching program that supplies it's own collection of wallpapers. Not nearly as good as JBS, but it has some nice backgrounds
- InterfaceLIFT - An amazing assortment of backgrounds, in a variety of sizes. Highly recommended, a lot of great nature photos
- Pixelgirl Presents - A number of nice backgrounds, though lacking in good sizes, especially for widescreen monitors

How about them Penguins, huh?
I'm finding that keeping up a good signal-to-noise ratio on a personal blog can be a challenge. While it's nice to keep people in the loop of what's going on in my life, I'm finding it a lot harder to keep up the effort. And it's not like I'm out of ideas for stuff to write about (off of the top of my head, I could easily pump out 5 or 6 unique posts), but maybe the passion isn't quite there. Which isn't unusual, as anyone who's followed this blog (hi Mom!) knows that these things are cyclical, and I feel like I'm coming out of a downturn on stuff to discuss, which is nice.

Heard of Twitter? It's a pretty irritating idea, this microblogging, and I'd really hate to use it instead of my blog to let people know about the menial details about my life. I am however, looking for a good way to continue to contribute to this blog, without feeling the need to elaborate on my experiences. Keeping that in mind, I'll be experimenting with a Twitter feed to the sidebar so that I can pare down stories to their interesting basics without all the filler.

I'm not sure whether RSS feeds will work with it, but ideally I'll get it going so that it'll RSS-dump 10 at a time or whatever. Who knows.

Jott
How about that weather, eh? We drove back from Calgary yesterday, and the entirety from Leduc to Edmonton was covered in black ice. We ended up driving at 30km/h on the shoulder, which was surprisingly ice-free, just to make it home safely. I stopped counting the number of cars in the ditch after 30.

I've talked about Google Calendar before, and waxed poetic about the benefits to my productivity. I've recently discovered another tool to help with my life. It's called Jott.

Jott is a free service that transcribes your short messages into text and emails it to you, or in my case adds whatever you say as a Google Calendar event. So say I'm walking down the street, and I think, 'I really want to punch Louis in the face on Friday'. But knowing me, by Friday I'll definitely forget. So I whip out my cell, hit speed dial, give my message, and within minutes an event is created.

Head Shave Update
We've just received word that the 4th Annual Engineering Head Shave has $51,627.14 for the Alberta Cancer Foundation. Including Razored for Ron, here's an estimate of where we stand in 5 years (there's some talk that the 3rd Annual may be higher, which I think is being looked into)

4th Annual EHS: $51,627.14
3rd Annual EHS: ~$32,000
2nd Annual EHS: $26,338.00
1st Annual EHS: $13,064.00
Razored for Ron: ~$12,500
----------------------------------
Approximate Total: $135,500

Which works out to about $27,100/year. Also, if you squint, it roughly looks like a Fibonacci Sequence. So next year, they'll have to raise $80,000 to keep a good thing going.