So, I had a lot of catching up to do, which explains the four new posts:

• A review of my volunteer experience with the Striders’ Longest Long Run
• Two running logs
• A deep, deep review of the crucial plot themes of Narnia.

Also, thanks for the Marathon tips! I’ve added the new ones…..please keep them coming!!!

On December 24th, I volunteered at the Houston Striders‘ annual Longest Long Run. The LLR is 21 miles of the actual Houston Marathon course, starting from the George R. Brown Convention Center and ending at the Picnic Loop at Memorial Park. It’s a great training run for the Marathon.

As a member of both HoustonFit and the Striders, I was fortunate to have a choice between two 21-mile runs. Although I knew the Striders run would be more fun, I opted for HoustonFit run the previous week because I wanted to get it out of the way, and it was also a good opportunity to recover from my disastrous 30K race. So, with the 21 miles under my belt, I was looking forward to helping at the Striders run.

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Date: Tuesday, Dec 27
Location: Memorial Park
Distance: 3.0
Time: $&@!

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Date: Friday, Dec 23rd
Location: Med Center, yo
Distance: 5.089 (check out the nifty running route map I made, courtesy of Harra)
Time: 57.34
Pace: 11:18
Avg/Max HR: 188/196

• I wanted to get a run in before meeting some friends for tacos and a movie. My original plan was to run 10 miles - I was helping out with the Houston Striders’ Longest Long Run on Saturday morning, so I was going to miss the HoustonFit scheduled 10 miler. Unfortunately, everything on Friday took longer than expected (holiday traffic was insane), so I only had time to get 5 miles in.
• The run was good. It was my first time running in my own neighborhood, actually. There were sidewalks along the whole run, except on Holly Hall where the sidewalks were being repaved.

Saw Narnia tonight, even though it ranked very low on my “Movies to See” list. Before Syriana, the theater played one of those video commercial/ads with the minister of a local megamall church pushing the movie. That turned me off.

So, when the idea of seeing Narnia came up, I was less than enthusiastic….but I was outvoted and one of the goals of the evening was checking out a new movie theater.

The movie was better than I expected. Yeah, there were some jesus themes, but I didn’t notice too much thanks to two recurring themes: Tilda Swinton’s fabulous costumes and the division of good/evil forest creatures.

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I think I’m getting sick.

I’ve been waking up with a sore throat this week, but it’s usually gone by the afternoon with cough drops and lots of tea. I get a bit feverish in the evenings, so I bought two cartons of Tropicana orange juice with Immunity Defense, and have been taking zinc and selenium supplements. The symptoms have been relatively mild so far, but I’m starting to feel that overall achy feeling you get when a cold is coming on. Great.