I’m going to San Francisco this weekend to run the Bay to Breakers 12K with Luna. This is the infamous race where some runners wear costumes, some runners wear normal clothes…..and some runners wear nothing at all. Yes, I’m in the ‘normal clothes’ category.

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Location: UT Med Center Gym
Activities: 30 min elliptical, 30 min strength training.

woohoo

[photopress:orangebrooks.jpg,thumb,alignleft]…of running shoes will be these snazzy orange Brooks Adrenaline GT6s.  Jessica, who wears the same Brooks model as I do, pointed them out at the Bellaire Trolley Run.  A Brooks rep was at the post-race party with a collection of next-model Brooks, and I was really excited to see a pair of the GT6 in a color other than navy blue.  My last four pairs have been the exact same color…..it’ll be nice for a change. 

Maybe orange will make me faster, too. (I wish)

[photopress:riocali.jpg,full,alignleft] The only regret I have from the Marathon is losing my Rio Cali MP3 player.  I have no idea what happened to it.  I vaguely remember tossing it at my sister around mile 22, then someone handing it back to me inside George R. Brown afterwards. Unfortunately, I was pretty loopy at those key moments so at some point, my poor Rio Cali and I parted ways.

I loved that Rio.  It came with 256MB flash memory and an SD card slot for up to 512MB additional memory.  It was lightweight, came with a nice armband and most importantly, it had been my companion through months of training and difficult long runs.  Plus, it had been a pretty cheap deal on Overstock.com. 

So, after a few weeks of denial (”It has to be around here SOMEWHERE.  I’ll go look in the car for the 138,092th time”), I conceded that I’d never see my poor little Cali again…..and went on the hunt for a new MP3 player.  After several more weeks of procrastination and indecisiveness, I settled on the iRiver IFP-799.  One word: awesome.

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[photopress:stevecake.jpg,thumb,alignleft] May this year be fast and injury-free.

[photopress:bayoucityjenandjohn.jpg,thumb,alignleft] Ran the Bayou City Classic 10K this morning with my race buddy and author-of-the-best-book-ever-written-about-the-Houston-Oilers, John P. I was a running nose (get it? yuk yuk), and he was a box o’ tissues. We rocked, if I say so myself. And we won an award for our costume!! Ok, every costume team won an award, but hey.

I didn’t wear a chip (well, I just stuffed the envelope in my pocket) or a watch, so I don’t know my time (gasp!! the blasphemy!!) But who cares? It was fun.

More detailed race report to come, including more photos. For now, I’m heading over to Spanish Flowers for some post-race texmex. mmmmm….greasy tacos.

Tonight was the first night of the Houston Strider’s SMART program, formerly known as PIM.  Well, PIM’s still PIM, but it’s not the Striders’ PIM anymore, it’s HARRA’s PIM now.  And instead of Wednesday nights at Memorial Park, HARRA’s PIM is Thursday nights at Rice University.  So even though Rice is just minutes from my house, I decided to go with the Strider’s SMART program since it’s smaller, I’ll know more people and it’s a 5 minute drive from my office. Getting to West University from the Galleria area is insane on any weekday. Plus, I’m a Houston Strider, yo.

Anyways.

So, speaking of being close to my office, I got to the Aquatic Center in Memorial Park at 6:30 - half an hour before the 7pm start time.  It was one of those rare moments where I was actually early for something.  I headed over to the meeting place, chatted a bit with Judith and then said Hi to Steeeve Shepard, who handed me a nifty pedometer with the little Houston Striders logo on it.  Yay for gadgets!  Cassie (aka, Clarice Starling) arrived, Steve gave his welcome message and then we split into groups - beginners, intermediate, and performance.  The beginners group was for people new to running (”not confident about running a mile”), the intermediate group was for people who could run a mile but not sure they could run a 5K, and the performance group was for anyone who could run more than a 5K and wanted to improve their speed.  Most people joined the performance group, maybe 8 people joined the intermediate group, and no one was in the beginners group.

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