Only 52 days to go

Good morning or evening (depends on when you read this). Bottom line is . . . how ya doin? Howdy! Hey! Choose your colloquialism (Hmmmm, did I spell that correctly?). Got up this morning after a nice run last night and I've discovered that the world has gone one more step closer to crazy. I must preface what I am about to say . . . I am a southern boy. Some might say redneck, but technically that is not true. A redneck works outdoors. I believe in God, country, mother, love, puppies (kittens sometimes). WHAT IS THE DEAL WITH THESE WHACKJOB MUSLIMS? Don't misunderstand me. I am not using a broad paintbrush. I understand not all muslims are whackjobs. But these radicals that want to destroy, kill, maim. SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN! I am sorry if I am stepping on toes. I have muslim friends here at my office. They desire the same things in life I want. But these others . . . . geez. I think that if you're involved with terrorist activity (or any other criminal activity) you should be summarilly executed. We have to get away from this mamby-pamby, limp wristed approach to handle criminals. It is like watching a parent in Wal-Mart trying to reason and beg with a brat child. SMACK 'em one . . . that's what is needed! Okay, I've vented about this morning's events in the UK. Afterall, this is a blog about running, not politics. Sorry.

I had a really good run last night. We had some thunderstorms roll through so that helpd to cool things off. I called Susan to see if she wanted to run and she was up for it. She needs it since she is training for the Mercedes half-marathon here in Birmingham. We went to the Lakeshore trail and started around 6:45. No, we don't have a nice big lake here in B'ham. To be honest, I am not exactly sure why the road or area is called Lakeshore. I think that there was a swamp there once, a hundred years ago. Anyway . . . the trail is a nice long, flat run with different parking areas which allows you pick and choose distances. I wanted to get in a hard run and I knew that Susan couldn't run my pace so I introduced her to a little game that me and my running buddies do sometime. We start at the same spot, run out a fixed amount of time, turn around and come back to the start point. This works out well when you have people of different speeds and abilities and it will definitely make you run a negative split since you are either chasing or being chased. We ran out 25 minutes and then turned around and came back to the car. This meant that Susan ran about 4 1/2 miles and best I could tell, I got in close to 6 miles. We never really did run "together" except for when I caught her about 100 yards from the car. Good for her that she really did run the second leg really hard. When I turned around, I kicked it up a notch, planning on catching her a lot sooner. However, the fear of being chased down made her run harder. A good workout for both of us.

Oh yeah . . . 52 days until Portland Marathon. I spoke to my BIL, Cary. He had had a bad sinus infection in June/July and has subsequently bailed on running the marathon with me. It's okay because I know that he is a good host and I will have a good time in Portland with his help.