Heat Wave in Seattle!
The past few days in the Puget Sound region have been unseasonably warm but given that we haven't had much of a spring yet, not many people are complaining. The other reason that most people are not complaining is because the nice weather also happened to fall on a weekend, which made folks very happy. Lots of people in t-shirts, shorts, sandals, etc. Tons of people in the parks. All good.
We ended up having a pretty busy weekend in that on Friday evening, we caught up with Jill, Dave and Xavier, which was a fun time per usual. On Saturday, I had a running workshop that was related to the book that taught me that shin splints were evil – ChiRunning. It was a long day just because it was in the 90s, but it was pretty informative. They did a video analysis of each person so we could see our major areas to improve on in terms of our form. But there is so much information that it is hard to remember everything, so I just took away a couple of things that hopefully will help me to continue prevent injuries. I have a heel-toe strike, which is also another common cause of shin splints, so we worked on some drills that will hopefully help me get out of that habit.
Marc was a trooper again, in that he had the pleasure of doing housework while I was working on my leg kick. That could not have been fun given how warm it was. Ugh. What a guy. On the plus side, we then caught a Mariners game and it was a treat. The weather was nice, there was a big crowd and to top it off, the Mariners won.
Sunday turned out being another sunny and warm day, although not as warm as Saturday. That was good since I was running in a road race known as 'Beat The Bridge', which benefits JDRF. The race was a 5 mile/8 kilometer run around the University District in Seattle, and it was a relatively flat run. Running the race was a no-brainer given my passion for raising funds for JDRF and the fact that I have been training a lot. I ran with the family of a colleague of mine. His daughter has Type 1 diabetes, just like my cousins do, and they are targeting to reach $15,000 in their 2008 fundraising efforts. Richard, my colleague, seemed pretty confident that the 'Team Emma' was going to get there, which is awesome news. Congrats to 'Team Emma'!
The event has a bunch of different races to cater to all kinds of athletes and ages. Six of us on the team were running the 5 mile/8 kilometer race, so we had a good group. Now the whole point of the 'Beat the Bridge' concept is that you need to get over one of the local bridges within 20 minutes of the gun going off, which is about 2 miles into the race. I didn't think that would be a problem for me, but all of our team did so I used my trusty Garmin to pace us all. Well it turned out that I didn't need to use it because we had Emma's brother, Luke, running at a pretty quick clip. Luke is 12 years old and with about a ½ mile left to the 2-mile mark, he asks me how long we have until the bridge and how long it will take us to run it. He then tells me he wants to sprint it! Hello! I'm old here….
So we are the first of our group to get over and we wait about a minute for everyone else. Little did I know that I was kind of like a race baton and another person on the team wanted to put the pedal to the metal. This time, it was a teenager named Margo. She had her mix (apparently she didn't know what she wanted to listen to, so she downloaded something like 90+ songs to her iPod) and was cruising. The last 3 miles were spent with me trying to keep pace with her. Margo was also pretty fast and ran a great race. She finished about 10-15 seconds before me, but I didn't care. I finished in 44 minutes and 45 seconds, which I was really excited about. And that includes the minute that we waited at the bridge for the rest of the team!
I did tell Marc before the race that I wanted to target a 9-minute mile since this is a much shorter race, and I did it thanks to the kids! Maybe I should hire them for races and they can work in shifts. Hopefully that won't violate any child labor laws. The rest of the day was spent attending a post-race breakfast for Team Emma, doing some reading and then attending an impromptu party next door. It ended up being a great weekend.
Just finished a great book on entrepreneurship that I would highly recommend to anyone who is thinking about a starting a new business venture. No, it is not a business textbook. It's more of a memoir of what this person went through and the lessons he learned along the way. It's called Brewing Up a Business: Adventures in Entrepreneurship from the Founder of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery. The book is a pretty easy read and while some of it may appear to be common sense, it is amazing how many people throw that same common sense out the window when it is their own business venture.
Cousin Claire also sent a good article about how another prominent athlete, Jay Cutler, is adjusting to recently being diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. It's worth a read and it is awesome how he wants to get involved and help kids once he gets things under control.