Most of the reading I do tends to be exclusivley fiction, technical and outdoors related. This past Christmas my mother gave me a book titled Joseph Bennet and the Growing of New York’s Niagara Frontier. It was written by Kevin Siepel, whose family my family has known since we were children. The first page of the book is even signed with best wishes to me!
Today was a hot one. It hit 91 this afternoon, two degrees shy of the record set in 2005. When I left the office in Amherst just after 5, the truck thermometer read 92. A couple miles away along the Niagara River, it dropped to (a mere) 84. Back at my apartment a mile or so off the river, it climbed back up to 88. I find it amazing how much of affect the river can have. I waited until 8:30 to head out for a run, but it was still around 82 at that time. It didn’t drop any by the time I got back just shy of 9:30.
I did one of my tougher runs today - down Delaware Ave past Chippewa Street to Niagara Square, back & some zig zagging around the apartment for a total of 6.5 miles. It’s full of hills the entire way, something which I had shied away from when I was training for the 2005 Rochester Half Marathon, but now conscientiously seek. My watch indicated I averaged 8:14 minute miles across the run (53:33). I was plenty happy with that pace in this weather and had nothing more left in me at the end.
As it was hot out, I made sure to weigh myself before and after I left. The scale said I’d lost a pound from the run. I was a little puzzled at first - believe it or not, that actually felt like it was a little too little. A while later I realized I’d drank two 20 ounce bottles of Gatorade after I got back - I’d really lost 2.5 pounds!
I just finished up Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk. He’s best known for authoring Fight Club, but I’ve also read Choke and Lullaby. His Invisible Monsters is next on the list after I finish the book I’m currently on.
If you haven’t read Palahniuk before, be warned - he’s different. His characters and style remind me of what I saw in Naked Lunch by William Burroughs, with the minor exception that I don’t put down a Palahniuk book after a couple dozen pages…
I headed out this past Monday to get a run in. I had a lot of things going against me - it was 85 degrees out (at 8:30!), I hadn’t done a run since the past Saturday and I’d just returned the day before from a 4 day long bachelor party. I ended up only doing 4 miles in 33 minutes - a rather short distance, but still at an average of ~8:15/mile. I was not happy and realized I need to dedicate more time to training.
I typically run between the back side of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and Hoyt Lake. It’s a beautiful area with lots of trees leading to it from Lincoln Parkway and lots of people gathered there. I’d seen a juggling group that gathers outside the Rose Garden many times, but never knew who they were. This week, one of them was on stilts and was juggling on stilts with flames! Turns out this group is the Buffalo Jugglers.
Normally I’d figure that one turkey running in front of me would fill my quota for close encounters with birds. But no, yesterday an injured seagull decided to drop in the middle of the field during my BSC International soccer game. It landed in the middle of the action and was almost immeadiately squashed by one of my players. The official stopped the game, one of my guys grabbed a towel to move it & we went on to a 1-0 victory. I can only wonder what I will see next…
As I was out at my mother’s place last night, I decided to check out MapMyRun.com to choose a local route to run. I’d traditionally used Gmaps Pedometer for such tasks, but it hadn’t been cooperating with my browser lately & I’d heard several folks mention MapMyRun.com. I planned for what I thought was about 8 miles, but ended up doing 9 miles in 72 minutes. (more…)
Last night I ran the 2007 Buffalo Coporate Challenge. I participated as a member of the University of Buffalo team and was accompanied by three co-workers from my department - nice job Jim, Stew & Andy! I finished with a time of 27:07 (for 3.5 miles). I’ve created maps of both the pace and elevation from my Forerunner 201.
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