Miscellaneous ramblings:
- It is amazing how much safety technology has advanced in cars in just the past few years. None of our 11+ year old cars even have a backup camera, but our basic economy rental car had that, blind spot monitoring, collision warning, lane drift warning, and it even yelled at me when I took my hands off the steering wheel while driving. How did it know that? The rental car company must've put someone inside the car that we didn't see.
- I had the honor of being in the same room this week as General, Secretary of State, and Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell, as he gave a powerful keynote speech in Texas. He spoke of his humble beginnings as a poor black child of immigrant parents, growing up in Harlem. Back when he was growing up in the '30s and '40s, not many blacks rose to notable positions. One of his funniest lines was when he and his friends learned that the nation had its first ever black bus driver, and their reaction to the driver was "Whatever you do, don't crash that thing or they'll be saying, 'See, they can't even drive a bus'!"
- At Mark's University of South Florida commencement, the last one for the current USF president after a 19-year tenure, she remarked that she had the distinct privilege of granting degrees to 210,000 very disturbing individuals. She seemed oblivious to this until the audience laughed loudly, and she corrected disturbing to deserving.
Monday: 0
Full stretching and workout, using my PT-supplied exercises.
Day off from running.
Tuesday: 13
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| Yes, I'm in the Lone Star Republic. |
Lady Bird Lake. First ever
visit to Austin, TX. Here for a business
conference for a couple of days. Arrived
early afternoon to 82 degree weather.
Despite the heat, decided to go for a run as this would be my largest
block of free time here.
Mapped out a run on the 10-mile dirt trail loop around the “lake”
as it is called, although it’s really a section of the Colorado River that was
dammed. Between the short trip from my
hotel to the “lake” and back, and a couple of missed turns, 10 miles became
13. I took it easy in the heat, and made
copious amounts of stops at water fountains, or as we say in RI,
“bubblers”. Despite being a weekday afternoon,
there were lots of walkers, runners, and dogs on the trail. No mean dogs at all today; they must’ve all
stayed home.
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| Much of the trail loop looked this. |
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| Each time I found dirt single-track spurs, they went nowhere. |
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Lots of bridges and boardwalks built into the trail.
(There was no haze at all; the gray cloudiness on the left of many of my
pics now are after I cracked the phone camera lens falling hard on roots in MA
a few weeks back. Yes, I have a case on it. I'm pretty hard
on my phones, so I'll likely never buy an expensive one.) |
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| Interesting fowl along the trail. |
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| Loved the wildflower section of the trail. |
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So you already know I'm in Texas.
But honestly, if you didn't know where I was,
and I asked you where you thought I took this picture,
would you guess Texas? I certainly wouldn't have. |
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I really wanted to join this guy in the river to cool off, but I was still a good
5-6 miles away from my hotel here. |
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Thank God (or if he didn't put these out here, thank whoever did)
for these water fountains along the trail. |
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Reminded me so much of my son Mark's dog Brady. He's returning
to shore after fetching his tennis ball. |
As I arrived back at the hotel dehydrated, an angel appeared in
the form of a hotel employee and came right up to me with an iced cold bottle
of water. That was drained before I
reached my hotel room.
Wednesday: 10
I had set my alarm to 6am to give plenty of time for a run,
shower, and breakfast before 8am conference start. I had my route planned out, and my running
gear laid out next to the bed and ready to go.
What I had NOT planned on was waking up at 6am and finding it pitch
black! Found sunrise isn’t until 6:48am,
so slept a little more and left in the pre-dawn at 6:30am.
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6am from my hotel room (hotel pool at 4 o'clock in pic).
This isn't a place I'm familiar with, and I didn't bring my headlamp,
so I'll stay put a little bit longer. |
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Start of the Shoal Creek Trail,
about a mile from the hotel. |
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Quite urban here, and concrete, but at least you don't have
to cross any roads |
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They really did a great job going around buildings,
under roads, etc. |
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| After a few miles, you finally get away from concrete and asphalt. |
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What this?
The sign explains some type of artwork made of sticks.
Cool. I'm not an artsy kind of person at all, but if you can make
something with sticks or Lincoln Logs, I'm in. |
There was enough light for the portions above ground (99.9+
percent of the run), but for the short subterranean sections in tunnels, it was
rather dark. So much so, that in one of
the tunnels, I nearly tripped over the body of a homeless person sleeping.
eat at a hole-in-the-wall barbeque place, I relaxed on my own.
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Swam about 1/2 mile here after dinner, and before retiring for the evening.
Plenty of packed bars with conference goers, but I opted to be anti-social
and just have some down time. |
Thursday: 5
I was really looking forward to the conference Fun Run. In
past years when the conference was held in Chicago, I always got to meet and run with some faster runners
from around the country and talk about all things running, big races or
marathons we've collectively recently run, injuries, pacing, whatever.
All good stuff.
Got to the Fun Run check-in about 15 minutes before scheduled
start of Wave 1, only to be informed they had just started. But isn't the
start at 7am, and it's 6:45 now? Ugh. So disappointed. Did I
get it wrong? They said if I hurried, I'd catch the runners as they just
started. Off I go.
About a mile in, I did catch the back-packers, but these guys (and
gals) are actually talking about the conference! Double ugh. You
have the rest of the conference to talk about the conference details; this
event is to talk about running. To each his own. I
continued past the chatty runners and completely missed the turn to go across the river and
come back. When I arrived at the finish and explained that I missed the
turn and ran nearly 5 miles instead of 5K, I was told,
"Congratulations! And we have a nice water bottle for your
accomplishment!". Triple Ugh. Another faster-looking runner
finished up (the right way) about the same time as he also missed the start,
but he took it in much better stride, so I guess I need to calm down.
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| If you publish that the start time is 7am, don't start at 6:45am!!! Argh. |
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Was handed a decent water bottle and cold water at the
finish line. Drank the water; inconspicuously left the water bottle behind at the
conference, rather than add to my overstuffed luggage
and restart another inane water bottle collection hobby. |
Friday: 0 run, 2 hike
With flight delays out Austin and then Dallas due to thunderstorms, I didn’t arrive into Tampa airport until about 1am (where Jana had arrived from RI a few hours earlier), and then by the time getting luggage and rental car, it was close to 2:30am before getting to the hotel. We had about 4.5 hours of sleep to ensure enough time to have breakfast and make Mark’s college graduation, so unfortunately running in the morning wasn’t a viable option for me.
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USF graduate Mark with his mother and his fat father.
Somebody tell that old guy to smile. |
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Seems like just yesterday (in fact three years ago) that he graduated
Westerly High School. (With my Mom, and Matthew to far right) |
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| Middle school graduation. |
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| Elementary school graduation |
Post-graduation
the temperature was 86 degrees and very humid, so running was
out today. Instead, Mark dropped Brady
with us for the afternoon, and we went to two different parks, where we walked,
not ran. We had plenty of downtime with
water breaks and an ice cream stop.
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Reunion with Brady!
Do you think Mark would notice if we didn't return him? |
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| It was hard to get him to come up on this tree. |
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Lettuce Lake Park.
Fun with Brady! |
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Everybody is hot now. Jana (left) bought a collapsible dog water
bowl similar to what Tommy 5K uses.
(I mean for his dogs; I don't think Tommy 5K drinks out of it personally,
but who knows.) |
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After rejuvenating with ice cream and iced coffee,
we were onto the next park: Trout Creek Park.
Mark did leave Brady's tennis balls with us, but he was just as happy to play
fetching a stick. |
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Terra Gaucha Brazilian Steakhouse,
Mark's choice for a post-graduation celebratory dinner. |
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A very happy Mark, with lots of carved meat on his own
plate. Mark once prepared a note to whatever childhood social group
was preparing a dinner, advising that he was allergic to all vegetables.
His eating habits have not changed. |
Saturday: 7
Trout
Creek Park, Thonotosassa, FL. It looked pretty interesting here yesterday during the very short hike, and I knew we had barely scratched the surface of trails here, so I came back solo, unfortunately sans Brady for a run. I could've run longer, but I was a hot sweaty mess and was getting lost.
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| Cool flora to run through |
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| OK, but which way if you're running? |
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| Fun, non-technical single-track. |
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| Neat mountain-bike signs and trail names. |
Sunday: 5
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Originally our connecting flight was supposed to depart Charlotte at 10:xx pm, but
it got repeatedly delayed 5 times due to weather. We eventually landed at TF Green
at 3:20am, pretty sure the latest I've ever landed. Got home and to bed at 4:30am,
and slept until 11am Sunday! (Felt like my son Mark's waking and sleeping hours) |
After wasting half the day, finally got out there late afternoon. Went for a solo run in Grills Westerly, and despite the steady rain and 51 degrees, was surprised to see a couple out there hiking, albeit with umbrellas. There must've been a lot of rain that fell in RI while I was gone, as water on the trails at places was probably the deepest I've ever seen it. One section on the yellow trail was knee deep.
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Wrapping up the night and weekend at Margaritas,
with their special event for Cinco de Mayo.
At one point a waitress came around and asked if
we wanted shots. Shots?! On the eve of a work day? I don't think I've
had a shot of anything in decades. The last time with tequila shots didn't
end well.
-------------------
I looked around and saw that I was bringing the average age
of patrons WAY UP. Oh, now I get it. Um, no thanks to the
shots, I'll just have a warm milk. And maybe a side of Metamucil.
Or prune juice. On most nights, Margaritas has a wide swath of ages in their patrons.
Not tonight. I felt like my grandparents at that moment. |
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| Happy Cinco de Mayo! |
Weekly mileage: 41
Weekly synopsis: Better than the last two weeks, but still not the mileage I was looking for. 50 is where I want to be. Overall, a fun week with lots of runs in new places.
Weekly highlight: For running, the 13-mile gravel trail loop in Austin, TX. Yes, it was hot, but I took it easy and was under no time constraints. For walking, Lettuce Lake Park in Tampa; it's always fun to spend time with Brady.
Weekly lowlight: The conference fun run. I know, get over it, and I am, but was looking forward to catching up with other runners, and it was just disappointing.
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