The Random Thoughts Review

Bayshore has now decided that I’m registered for the marathon, too. They are fast. I’ll give them that much. I sent the envelope off on Wednesday or Thursday of last week, and I’ve already got email confirmation that I’m registered.

This past week of running went pretty well. Yesterday was a new record for me of 12 miles, and I felt really good during the run. For the last mile or so I even increased my speed by a little bit. The remainder of the day wasn’t as bad as last week, either. Neither day was particularly difficult, but I felt my legs more last week than this. All things considered, a good week! This week is a step-back week. My long run will only be 9 miles on Sunday, but next week I jump back up to 14. Gotta love it!

I just wrote a $55 check for entry into the Bayshore Marathon and put it in the envelope. I could have registered online, but I discovered that they had a $4 service charge for online entry, so I decided to just go old fashioned. I printed out the entry form, filled it out, wrote the check, and dropped it into an envelope.

Bayshore is cheaper than most of the marathons. They seem to commonly cost somewhere around $80. So, I’m hopefully getting a good deal. This particular marathon includes a synthetic t-shirt (not cheap cotton) that should be nice to have. But, I’m now committed, since I’ve put money on the line. No turning back.

This week has been interesting. My legs have been a little bit tired all week long. After Sunday’s 11 mile run I did a little bit of biking on Monday and some volleyball. Tuesday was 3 miles; Wednesday 6; and 3 today. Tomorrow is supposed to be a day off. I’m not planning to do much (leg exercise-wise) before playing some volleyball tomorrow night. Hopefully my legs will recover tomorrow. I have 6 miles to do on Saturday and 12 on Sunday.

Today I hit something of a milestone in my training for the marathon, and I thought I would update the blogging community on how things have been going. It’s hard to believe, but according to the calendar, I just finished my 4th week of official training (it’s an 18 week training program).

Having said that, I haven’t done as much running during the first four weeks as I should have. From my first post about the marathon, you can follow a link that will describe the marathon training days in more detail with the number of miles that I should be running each day. But, to summarize, each week follows a pattern: Monday, crosstrain; Tuesday, low miles; Wednesday, medium miles; Thursday, low miles; Friday, off, Saturday, medium-ish miles; Sunday, long miles. My problem, however, is that I took off a week (the second week) and went to Breckenridge and skied. While some might think that skiing is good exercise, it apparently can’t compete with running, as far as keeping those muscles in good shape. When I got back from Breckenridge, it took me a few days to get back into the swing of things. I didn’t get in the long run that I had planned to do on the day I got back, and it took me a few more days to actually get back on track with the number of miles that I’m supposed to be doing.

Luckily, I think that I had enough of a running mindset before starting the official training that I’ll be ok. Anyway, fast forward to the present (or closer to it). Last weekend I ran 5 miles on Saturday at Marathon race pace, and 6 miles on sunday (at a slower pace, as is normal for the long run. Every 3 weeks during training you have a light long run. As we go through the weeks, the Sunday runs are (in miles): 8, 9, 6, 11, 12, 9, 14, 15, 11, 17, 18, 13…. You get the idea. So, last weekend was the 6. Today, though, I broke 10 miles. I went eleven, in fact. I didn’t run 11 miles straight. I took about 3 breaks, each 30 seconds long. The rest of the time I was running at 7 miles per hour. So, it took me a little over an hour and a half. Next week I do 12.

The run really wasn’t bad. I think I’ve definitely reached a point where my heart isn’t going to be much of an issue on the long runs. I feel like, heart-wise, I can run all day long at 7mph or so and not get winded. I could pretty easily hold a conversation at that speed. (the problem being, of course, that I’m hoping to run the marathon at 8mph, so we’ll see how that goes).

At about mile 10.1, I think I was starting to notice the lactic acid building up in my legs. This is the beauty of training. I’m assuming that, as I do more miles, that buildup will start showing up later and later. If it continues to start around 10 miles, I think I’ll be in trouble. But, I’m sure that the longer runs will take care of that for me. I finished running this morning about 8:20, and since then, my legs have felt kinda strange. I can tell that I’ve done some running on them. After eating lunch today I went to the department store and did some shopping, and I could feel my legs. They aren’t hurting.. they are just definitely there.

Anyway, that’s how the training is going. Fun times. I calculated that I burned about 1,300 calories this morning as I was plodding along. Kinda freaky. Last night I ate a big plate of spaghetti. I made a lot more than a single plate, though. I froze a reasonable sized portion that I might eat next saturday night or something. We’ll see how it goes.

Another Valentine’s Day has come and gone, and hopefully everyone has lived to tell their tales and think about exactly what has transpired.

I’m sure that there were a lot of people that went on public dates, more than a few people that honestly just hate the whole day and everything surrounding it, some people that didn’t go on dates that should have, some people that would have went on a date if they could have, and some people that went on secret dates.

Cynicism abounds on Valentine’s Day. Some prefer to refer to the day as Single’s Awareness Day (with, some point out, the appropriate acronym). I’ve heard that the time around February 14 is one of the most common times to commit suicide. Some say that V-Day shouldn’t mean anything, and it would be much better to do the Valentine activities throughout the entire year and not just on one day. Touche. But, as with baptism, which is a public declaration of faith, there’s something romantic to be said for playing the traditional games and publicly participating in a day devoted to relationships with one another.

As for myself, I really don’t mind the day. I suppose that hope springs eternal, and I’ve always enjoyed the thoughts surrounding the day. I’ve had good Valentine’s Days, and less than good Valentine’s Days (not meaning bad.. Or maybe I’ve just selectively forgotten the bad ones *shrug*) I enjoyed yesterday. Among other things, I’m optimistic about life and my place in it and I had beautiful snow upon which to gaze. What more could a guy ask for? ahem…

Anyway, hopefully you, kind reader, had a good day as well. Do anything super special? Get proposed to? Propose to someone? Reach any other interesting milestones in your relationship with the apple of your eye? Think about taking a relationship to the next level? Stay inside all day to avoid having to see anyone looking happy?

Regardless of what you did, remember that there’s always tomorrow, and you can make it better than today (or yesterday). (choose your own definition of “better”. It doesn’t matter how you define it)

I’m now back in Champaign. Safe and secure.

I woke up on Saturday at 4am in Breckenridge. Ate, showered, carried stuff to the car, and we were on the road at 5:03am. I had the pleasure of driving (it was a conspiracy, I think. The others seem to enjoy having me drive during the bad stuff). Highway 9 from Breck to the Interstate (about 9 miles) was about half snow covered and the wind was blowing snow across the road… quite bad at times. A few times I could only see about 5 feet in front of the car. But, I didn’t get in a hurry, and it went well.

Once on the interstate at Frisco ( about 9,600 foot elevation) you drive up and down a couple of hills and then you start the climb to the Eisenhower tunnel, which is at 11,000 feet. The weather generally gets progressively worse as you get near the tunnel. The chain law was in effect for commercial vehicles, and no one was getting in a real hurry. Luckily, the road on the west side of the mountain is relatively well shielded from wind effects, so I didn’t have to deal with that very much. We made it to the tunnel and through it. The wind and blowing snow was a lot worse on the east side. My guess is that the mountain was shielding the wind from the Breckenridge side.

Anyway, once through the tunnel things got a lot better. We made it to Denver and the sun rose just as we were on the east side of town. It would have been great to have been about half an hour later. When you come down out of the mountains there is a great view of the entire city down below you, and the view of the city lights in the foreground with the rising sun in the background would have been wonderful. Oh well. We weren’t going to wait. We were on a mission.

I had calculated that, if we left Breck at 5am, we should be at Cinzetti’s in Kansas City at 5pm. Last year, we had met up with John and Natty at Cinzetti’s in Denver. I had never heard of the place until then. It’s an all-you-can-eat Italian restaurant, and we absolutely loved it last year. We looked them up on the web and discovered that they had a Kansas City location. So, we had plans to stop there on the way back.

We made our way across eastern Colorado (boring) and Kansas (very boring) and rolled into Cinzetti’s about 5:05pm. We immediately got a table. Lucky that we got there when we did. When we left an hour later the entrance area was a madhouse. Cinzetti’s is awesome. By far the best meal of the week. They have a number of tasty Italian dishes, pizzas, and a bunch of nice dessert. It’s a dandy place to visit. I think that once a year is about right, though. Sadly, I didn’t take any pictures, though. I completely forgot. *slap*

We left Cinzetti’s between 6 and 6:30. Made our way east from KC and then south to Bill’s place in Rolla. Got there about 10:15, crashed on the couch and got up at 6:30am for a 7am departure. Dropped Brian off in St Louis about 8:30-8:45 and then headed on to Illinois. Made it back to the house about 12:15pm or so. All in all, a good trip.

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Friday in Breck wasn’t a lot of fun. We knew it was going to be cold. Highs of around zero.. (it was about 3 below at 9am). Wind chills in the -20s. Cold stuff. I got up about 5:30 this morning and watched the wind whip around the snow behind the condo. The top of Peak 8 has not been visible at any point (due to the blowing snow). I had planned to be in the lift line at 8:30 so that I could make my way over to Peak 10, but seeing the temps and the wind chills convinced me to delay. The weather forecasts were showing that the wind was going to pick up after noon, so I decided to go skiing. I got ready and left the condo a little before 9am. Brian and Bill were planning to go out around 10 and ski until 2. I wanted to go do Peak 10, and I figured I’d go from there. I got to the bottom of Peak 9 and learned that the lift for Peak 10 was closed due to extreme wind. So, that wasn’t going to happen. Since it was unlikely that the wind would just completely die all of the sudden, even if they opened the lift, the wind was still going to be pretty bad.

I got on the Beaver Run chair with a couple of ski instructors and we headed up the hill. The wind was whipping the snow all over the place, and there were very, very few skiers on the slopes. My fingers quickly got cold, even though I had started some hand warmers (for the first time this week). I asked the ski instructors about their gloves. One of them had a pair of Rome gloves, and the other had Gordini Outlast gloves. Both seemed to like their gloves. As we went higher on the mountain the wind got worse. I got off the lift and started down the hill. The wind was whipping, my goggles had ice freezing on the outside of them. There was absolutely no contrast to the snow. I wasn’t having fun, I was doing runs that I had done before, and it was cold. I decided that I wouldn’t get a wole lot out of being there.

So, I made my way over to the Peak 8 Superconnect. I figured I could take that to Peak 8, which would let me take the 4 o’clock run back to the condo. The top of Peak 8 wasn’t any better than Peak 9. You couldn’t tell that any of the runs had been groomed at all. The wind was blowing snow across them and had completely hidden all of the corduroy. In fact, as I was skiing down, the wind was blowing the snow across about six inches above the surface and it just looked like dry ice on a dance floor. I couldn’t see the surface, and I just counted on the fact that I had done that run multiple times and knew that I was unlikely to see any rocks, etc.

Groomers were out all over the place. I can only guess that they were regrooming the runs, since all previous indications of grooming had been blown away.

I got to the end of the ski run back at the condo around 9:50. When I got here, Brian and Bill hadn’t left yet, and I had to recommend to them that they not go out. There just isn’t much point. It just isn’t fun out there right now. If the skiing conditions were great, the temps could be handled, or if the temps were good….. But with the combination of everything, and knowing that I wouldn’t be doing any new runs any time soon….

So, we’ve just watched some TV since then. Boring times in Breck. A family showed up at our door this afternoon. Their rental company (not the same one we use) had told them that Sawmill 115 was their condo. It wasn’t. They left sad, but wiser.

For supper we went to Tokyo Taipei. They bring out this pre-meal thing (kinda like mexican restaurants will give you chips and salsa). It’s soybeans that have been steamed or something. They are still in their soybean shell, so you bite on the shell with your teeth and the soy beans pop out. Quite tasty.

For the main course, I had chicken Teriyaki. It’s the same thing that I had last year when we went there. For food presentation, I think that this place is about the best that I’ve ever seen. The chicken comes out on a pan that is still sizzling. The quantities are very good, and the taste is excellent. Bill had the Vegetable Tempura, and it comes on a big square plate with breaded veggies arranged in all kinds of neat ways. Another table had bought a bunch of sushi, and they brought it out in a miniature ship. Another table had something delivered that was in a little flower-type basket. All things considered, a very tasty meal. It might just be the best of the week so far.

Planning to leave the condo at 5am tomorrow. Going to be getting up really early. Cinzetti’s for dinner tomorrow night. I can’t wait!

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Good day on the slopes! Read on for details.

Last night, some new people moved into the condo above us, and they apparently stayed up all night long walking around. And, I think they might have been doing some sort of construction in the room above my bedroom.

For some reason, it took me forever to fall asleep last night. I read for a little while first, but then tried to fall asleep, and it just wasn’t working for me. I’ve had pretty good luck for the rest of the trip, but not last night. I’ve generally been waking up a few times during the night, but I’ve been able to fall asleep pretty quickly, until last night. Anyway, I got up around 6:15 this morning. I’m trying to push myself earlier and earlier in preparation for Saturday. We want to leave here by 5am. So, I’m going to try and get up around 5:15 in the morning, and that should put me in reasonable shape for the next day.

I could see the mountain peaks when I got up, and that was a great sign. It wasn’t snowing! From the weather report it looked like the snow was supposed to start around 11am. The ski instructor we had talked to last night had emphasized getting on the slopes early to avoid the crowds and get the good snow, so I ate my typical breakfast of oatmeal, got ready and caught a bus around 8:15 (the lifts open at 8:30). We made it to the base of Peak 9 and took the Beaver Run lift. Our plan was to do Volunteer (a blue) and then Gold King (another blue) which had given us a lot of trouble last year. Depending on how we felt after that, we’d decide if we wanted to go more difficult.

We went down Volunteer and got to where Shock (a black) led off to the side. Brian said that if he was going to do a black, now was the time. He felt better than he ever had. So, we slowly slid over to the edge and looked down. I suspect it is named Shock because that’s the state that it puts people in who aren’t expecting the steepness. We talked about it for a while and decided to wait. So, we edged our way back up to Volunteer and I told them that we could try a blue-black instead. So, we slid to the bottom of the hill, took the same lift back up, and decided to try American, which is a blue-black.

One of these times on the way up we went up with a girl who was helping out with the Honda Ski Tour ski-cross race that was going on today (time trials). She had just finished her degree (elementary ed) and had moved to Breckenridge about 6 weeks ago. She had been ski racing since she was 4 years old, and was excited because Darren Rawles (US Ski Team member) was going to in the ski-cross. As we passed the ski-cross track, she pointed out Darren to us. Pretty cool.

We sailed down that run as though were a greenish shade of blue. There were moguls on the side of the run, and Bill said that he didn’t consider it a blue-black since it was so easy. Fooey on that. We did a blue-black, and that’s that!

Next, we decided to do Gold King. Gold King was Brian’s nemesis. We sailed down it and Brian decided that they must have recut the hill, because it was a lot easier than he remembered it being.

Next, we wandered over to Peak 8 via the Superconnect. We took Crescendo (a blue) down to the bottom of the Peak and rode the Rocky Mountain chair back up. Next, we took Northstar (a blue) down. Northstar is steaper than any of the other runs that we had done. It was tougher than Gold King by a fair margin, in my opinion. Brian and Bill decided to stay at the bottom of Peak 9, and I decided to do Duke’s Run (a blue-black). I took the Rocky Mountain back to the top and headed down Duke’s Run. Duke’s Run (unlike American) would probably be truly called a blue-black. It was steaper than the other runs that I had done, but I made it down without any trouble. I caught up with Bill and Brian and we headed back to the top of the Peak 8 on the Colorado lift. I decided to do Spruce, the blue-black right next to lift.

Bill took another run down, and Brian decided to do Spruce as well. (He later said that he hadn’t realized that American was a blue-black, and that the only reason he took Spruce was so that he could say he had done a blue-black) Spruce was a set of three or four steep sections followed by a much more level area. It was a blue-black. The final steep area was steeper than anything I’d done up to that point.

At that point, I decided I was going to do Rounders, which is a BLACK. An expert-rated run. Bill and Brian took another path down, and I headed down toward Rounders. Rounders was interesting. It had some relatively steep sections, but the final steep was longer and steeper than the last part of Spruce. But, I made it down it in pretty good time. I made it about halfway down, where a bunch of the trails meet up (and the difficult part ends), around the same time that Brian and Bill got there. I had conquered a black! The rest of the day was downhill from there. (ha ha)

I had done my black. I had done an expert run. In and of itself, this isn’t a big deal. The nice thing about it, though, is that it shows me that I can handle at least some of the blacks at Breck. This opens up a lot of possibilities for me. I’m sure that there are several blacks that will make me freak out, but I can handle SOME of them.

Breckenridge is made up of 4 peaks (7 through 10). I’ve been on every peak except for 10. Peak 10 only has blue-blacks, blacks, and double blacks. It’s always scared us to death. Tomorrow I plan to be on Peak 10. For a couple of reasons… One, I’ve shown that I can handle the blue-blacks and the easier blacks, and two, we rode up one of the lifts today with a ski patrol dude. He told us about a run on Peak 10 that isn’t on the maps. It’s the “peak road” and is rated a blue. Breck decided to open it this year after they had printed the maps. SO, I can go to the top of Peak 10 and see the scenery and get down alive!

After the black, we poked around on a few more runs and headed back to the condo for lunch. I had another excellent lunch and we headed back out. The afternoon was a pretty low-key affair. It had started snowing about 11am (as predicted) and it was getting colder. I went down Spruce one more time in the afternoon, but we mostly played around on Peaks 8 and 9. We didn’t even stay out until 4pm. We actually came in around 3:30 because we were really getting cold.

We went to the Horseshoe restaurant for supper (actually the Horseshoe 2, to be technical). I had the Country Fried Steak with chili cheese whipped potatoes as a side. The potatoes were interesting. It was a dollop of mashed potatoes with a layer of cheddar cheese melted in and a hot chili type sauce. I was expecting texas-style chili, but that wasn’t at all what it was. The Country Fried steak was really good, and it came with a slice of Texas Toast and a couple of orange slices. The meal was really quite good. I should have gone with regular mashed potatoes, but it was still interesting.

After that, we walked up and down the street for a while and looked in a few stores. I had been thinking about getting a pair of “over mitts”. It’s a large mitten that’s designed to fit over a regular pair of gloves. But, I decided to save the money and just use hand warmers tomorrow instead.

Why is this important? Well, it’s going to be insanely cold tomorrow. The high is supposed to be between -5 and zero F, and a fair amount of wind. Wind chills will be in the -20s (or colder). We aren’t really planning to spend the majority of the day on the slopes. I think that Brian and Bill are going to wait to go out, but I think I’m going to go out at 8:30 like normal hit Peak 10. I want to hit the runs freshly groomed, and then I will either come back in or do some of the runs on the other peaks.

All in all, a great day at Breck!

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Today has been boring.

We have always planned our week-long ski trips so that we ski on Monday/Tuesday,Thursday/Friday and do something else on Wednesday. This gives us a chance to recharge our batteries, nurse our battle wounds, and get ready for the final push. One year we went snow mobiling on Wednesday. Another time we went snow tubing over at Keystone resort. This year, though, we haven’t really done anything.

I had planned to go out and do a bunch of photography on my day off, but it has been snowing all day today, which really destroys the nice photographic opportunities. So, we’ve sat around the condo and watched it snow.

We had thought about skiing today and taking Friday off. It’s going to be insanely cold on Friday. But, we ended up going with the normal plan. We’ll see how Friday goes. Frost bite will be a possibility, but I plan to be as wise as I need to be to prevent that from happening.

Last night’s visit to Bubba Gump was really good. I went simple with the Fish & Chips. It was really quite good, though. The fries were just standard seasoned fries, but the fish was quite good. After Bubba’s we thought briefly about having a crepe dessert, but ended up walking in the opposite direction.

On the way back to the condo we stopped into the Breckenridge Information Center. They have standard brochures about stuff around town there, and they also have a museum detailing Breckenridge’s past. The museum is really nice. It has a lot of information in it, and is well worth a visit. But, the real coup of the evening was chatting with the administrators of the musuem. We ended up talking to them for probably over an hour and the discussion ranged far and wide. The admin and his wife (both there) live about 30 minutes south of Breckenridge on Highway 9. They can’t afford to live in Breck. The overwhelming majority of people who work around here can’t afford to live here. This is one of the things that makes Breck such a unique environment compared to everywhere else I’ve ever spent any time. Anyway, the guy is a certified ski instructor and we had a really good chat about the ski runs. He actually recommended a black (Cimarron) over some of the blue-blacks that we had been investigating. So, I might just get brave and try one tomorrow or the next day. Doing the runs early in the day was definitely recommended (fresher snow that hasn’t been scraped off by a bunch of people).

This couple has lived in Colorado for about 11 years. They moved from Ohio and don’t make near as much money now as they used to, but they enjoy their life a lot more. They said that Highway 9 is usually kept in better shape during the winter than the Interstate itself. They said that the road can get kinda busy when the shift changes occur at Breck. So many people that work here live in that direction that it can cause traffic.

The town of Breckenridge is planning to take over control of the various museums in town. Apparently there are a bunch of them. Something like 15 or so. Who knew? Anyway, they are going to hire a manager to be over the administration of all of these museums, and the pay for the job is going to be 70k. So, a high level town administration position salary is 70k. In a town where a 2 bedroom condo goes for 4-500k.

Supper, which is a major event around the condo, took a while to decide upon tonight. We had a few more restaurants on tap that we wanted to try out. We wanted to do the crepe place for a dinner crepe (followed by a dessert crepe, of course). Brian was saying last night that last year we went to the crepe place 3 nights. Before tonight we had only been there once this year. Here’s a pic of the crepe place, btw, that Brian took last year. We also wanted to visit Tokyo Taipei, which is a nice oriental place that we went to last year. And, there is a pizza place in town that has wheat crust pizza. We went there last year, but they didn’t give us a whole wheat pizza like we asked for. But, since I had pizza a couple of nights ago, we decided that the pizza was optional this year. So, we changed things around a little bit. We decided that we could pass on having the crepe-only night. We decided to go to an Irish pub tonight. They have a shephard’s pie that sounded good. We got there and they were full. We could have waited around, but we decided to go to another place instead. There was a steak place that had a sirloin for a reasonable price, so we went there. Kenosha Steakhouse was the name of the place. I got the Kenosha special sirloin, and it was merely OK. I’ve had much better steak. It came with mashed potatoes and broccoli. No bread or salad. Salad was an option for a price.

After the steak house we went by a couple of outdoor stores. We were looking for good gloves. We found some that would probably have been good, but they were very expensive. I ended up buying a new pair of glove liners. They are a freaky gold color that would look right at home on a 12 year old girl playing dressup in the 1980s. But, since they are a liner, they won’t be visible most of the time. And, I got a couple of pairs of hand warmers. I think it is going to be really cold the next couple of days, so they might come in handy.

After that we went to the crepe place. I got a raspberry chocolate cream crepe. It was good. Bill got a pumpkin pie crepe, and Brian went with a S’Mores crepe. Right after us a girl ordered a crepe and was commenting that she was living in town, but hadn’t been to the crepe place. So, I struck up a conversation with her afterwards. She said that she had lived in Paris for a while and had gotten burned out on crepes. She was studying for her EMT license, was going to live in Breck until May or so, was a 6-months at a time type of person. She grew up in Georgia, had lived in Switzerland, and she worked at the Mother Loader tavern. And, she wasn’t bad looking, not that it really mattered.

After that… back to the condo and preparation for tomorrow.

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