Last weekend’s time change made it a little easier to get up in the morning for a run. But by the time I get home from work… its pitch black. That’s no fun either. Even with the earlier sunrise I still found a lot of excuses not to run. Talk about temperature contrasts though… geesh. After last week’s race I walked around in a sleeveless shirt but after this week’s race I was looking for more dry layers to put on.
I ran Monday 3.25 miles on my Metrodome loop. It took me a meandering 24:35 to do it, but it was warm and sunny. The temperature was around 50 and it felt pretty good.
I stayed up pretty late Monday night writing a blog post - not a smart idea because I was really tired and slept in Tuesday morning. Plus I had to be at work extra early to make sure our students handled the election without any problems. Everything went smoothly and at 4:30pm when I left they were at 76% voter turnout without counting the absentee ballots.
We stayed out late on Tuesday watching the election returns with friends. And I had another early morning with a meeting on Wednesday. Pretty much everyone there was exhausted - it was a school related meeting and our referendum passed!
Luckily the weather held out for one more day. Thursday I got a nice 4 mile run in on my Park-Downtown loop. It was raining but in the 50’s so it felt really good actually. I ran it in 30:07. I’m glad I got one last run in with pretty nice weather.
I skipped Friday so I would be well rested for Saturday’s race. It snowed though.
Saturday morning was the USATF-MN XC Championships. It was a 10k on a cold (32f) morning. It was snowing when I woke up but the ground was just really soggy. I ran the 10k in 43:09 on a pretty hilly golf course. More on that later though!
Sunday was a nice cold 8 mile run. The temp was around 27 when I left and it was snowing off and on throughout the morning. We met at the Sibley House and ran south along the Minnesota River for a nice, fairly easy hour. The final time was 64 minutes. This was my first time on that trail and it was fairly scenic. I was surprised at how good I felt after the 10k. My toe still hurt a little bit but nothing major.
A St. Paul marathoner and medical researcher - Mark Laliberte - saw a robbery and took action. The thief took about $350 from the coffee shop inside St Joseph’s hospital. Laliberte happened to see it and decided to take action. Initially confronting the thief and tackling him inside the hospital, Laliberte got caught up in the suit coat he was wearing which allowed the suspect get free. After removing the sports coat Laliberte proceeded to run the thief down.
Used to running 6:30 pace Laliberte a marathon and triathlon veteran mustered up some sprinting speed and chased the thief for several blocks in downtown St. Paul. Eventually Laliberte caught and wrestled the thief to the ground before horse collaring him and dragging him back to the hospital. Eventually the hospital security and St. Paul Police arrived to help!
Once they were back in the hospital, Laliberte gave the suspect a quick leg sweep that he remembered from his college kickboxing days and brought the man to the ground. With his knee on his back, Laliberte waited to for hospital security and the St. Paul cops, who placed the man under arrest.
“We don’t usually suggest that people chase down suspects,” said St. Paul Police spokesman Peter Panos. “We usually suggest that people be good witnesses.”
This marathon-hero story brought to you by the Star-Tribune. A quick search of MarathonGuide.com showed a Mark Laliberte, but the ages didn’t match up.
Be sure to check out the full list for more enemies and his full description.
The other is a list from the Telegraph paper in London with a catchy title: Everything you Wanted to Know about Marathons but were Too Exhausted to Ask. Author Ben Fenton points out 100 random facts about the marathon (some specific to London and others to the distance in general). The article was actually written in 2004, so I’m not sure if all the facts therein still hold up, but its pretty interesting stuff. Here are ten of my favorites:
Organisers provided 88lb of petroleum jelly for medical use including avoidance of “runners’ nipple”.
The London Marathon is the only one requiring athletes to run in two different hemispheres.
There are 29 people who have run in all 24 London marathons. One of them has flipped pancakes around the course for the last 10 years.
First holder of the 1908 world record, Johnny Hayes, would have been 662nd yesterday.
Thousands of runners sent texts updating their time and position thanks to a special microchip supplied by a mobile phone company.
Fastest marathon time for a person blowing a trumpet is 3:06, which would have beaten all the celebrities.
710,000 bottles of water and 40,000 litres of sports drinks were available.
Last year, Lloyd Scott finished in five days, eight hours, 29 mins and 46 secs - in a 120lb diving suit.
The London record for a conga line to complete the course is 25 hrs and 13 mins.
Greatest victory margin in the men’s race was the 2:57 that separated Hugh Jones from Oyvind Dahl in 1982.
Sorry for the problems today… I tried to upgrade to the new Wordpress 2.5. It has created some issues. Hopefully I will be able to get them all fixed at the beginning of the week. I am going to be out of town for the weekend and just got the site back up right before its time to leave. And I only lost 1 or 2 posts!!!
Did you know about the Lunar Eclipse tonight? We are expecting a full Lunar Eclipse to occur tonight (Weds) starting at 7:53pm Eastern the entire event will be over at 12:09am Eastern. The full eclipse will occur around 9pm Eastern and last for almost an hour. This is all from USA Today. They have a lot more technical details for you too! This eclipse should be viewable to almost everyone in the Northern Hemisphere, so if it is clear outside you should take a peak!
I know of several events here in Minneapolis alone, so I’m sure there are plenty of events in your neck of the woods too! Just stay warm out there!
Last weekend’s time change made it a little easier to get up in the morning for a run. But by the time I get home from work… its pitch black. That’s no fun either. Even with the earlier sunrise I still found a lot of excuses not to run. Talk about temperature contrasts though… geesh. After last week’s race I walked around in a sleeveless shirt but after this week’s race I was looking for more dry layers to put on.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=b1ae00c5-100e-45ac-8679-f7b9d70f8c59)
