Running!!
It’s about time – I’m officially a runner again. Don’t believe me – here’s a link to my runs on MotionBased.com – http://4unpaved.motionbased.com/. I’m still practicing the below 40 degrees for tights and above 40 degrees for shorts. Also linked to the four books I’m reading currently.
The Big Race
On Sunday October 1st, I suited up for the 25th annual Twin Cities Marathon. I got to run from Minneapolis to St. Paul and not as the crow flies.
Here’s me putting on my game face before the race
Kris too 
Here we are at the starting line:
Looking Forward And Looking Backward
Around mile 9 Around Mile 19
We finally finished
Getting ready for the race
We left Illinois at 6am this morning headed for the Twin Cities. Had a good time at the expo and we’re staying at our friend the James’ tonight.
Carbed up at Noodles and Company and stuck to my personal training ritual of going by the DQ for an Artic Freeze.
Last Long Run before the TCM
Today called for a 12 miler. I woke up around 6:30 and thought about what I was going to do this morning. Last night I was looking at the GeoCaches online keeping an eye out for the green Jeeps that the Jeep company has hidden in geocaches around the country. It just so happened that one turned up here only a couple of miles from the house. I decided to make a run to this lovely location
near here
I found this:
4-Unpaved – it’s a jeep thing. So anyway after all that excitement, I decided to go for my run on the I & M Canal Trail again.
I hadn’t gone very far when I saw a turtle on the side of the trail.
He’s a little larger than last weeks turtle.
So I’m running down the trail right -
Then I see this stretched across the trail
Crikey! That’ll put a spring in your step if you’re not expecting it. (Terrible to hear about the crocodile hunter wasn’t it.)
As I was getting close to the half way point, I stopped on a bridge that goes over the canal at one of the locks that still has a lock house. There are several on the I & M and they were used to enable the barges to stairstep their way up or down as the water level rose and fell with the topography. Here are pictures looking west first, then east.
Did I ever mention that the I & M runs between the canal and the Illinois River? The Illinois River is large enough to accomodate barges and also has a large population of recreational boaters.
So here’s your faithful runner around mile 11 – I could still smile…
Here’s a couple more blue herrons just for fun:
Gotta figure out a way to hold the zoom steady, but this guy was in a tree around where a geocache was rumored to be. I still haven’t found the geocache after probably 5 searches.
On my way out of McKinnley I saw this beautiful fawn – I saw the mother too, but didn’t get the camera out quickly enough. Another shaky picture.
Anyway, it was a great run. I’ll be tapering between now and October 1st. My target in St. Paul will be survival, but it should be a fun event anyway.
Running 18 Gettin’ Ready for TCM
Well today was my longest run so far. To keep myself amused, I took my camera along. There’s always something to snap running on the I & M. I started at McKinnley Woods and headed towards Morris.
One spot that was really beautiful a few weeks ago was a patch of lily pads literally covering the canal. This was taken today, and the flowers are gone, but it’s still kind of cool.
Here’s a picture of our faithful runner at around Mile 13.
There are a lot of blue herrons around.
One of the coolest things I saw today was a little turtle that look like tree bark. I’ll ask my homeschooled kids to find out what it is for me while they are one vacation this week. Here are a couple of pictures:
The cool thing is he looks just like tree bark and even has something that looks like moss (not Randy) growing on his back. He also has a long tail. I picked him up and said hello – he’s definitely a real turtle.
The first person who can tell me what this object is gets a free visit from my wife and 2 1/2 kids.
So at this point we still have 12 miles to go or so….
Here’s where they used to keep the mules that towed the barges up the canal.
As usual – here’s the google earth link to my run. Right click and download the file and open it with Google Earth.
Tried some new things today linking to Flickr for some of the photos instead of uploading them directly to the blog. We’ll see how that works.
Another interesting thing that happened today is that I ran in to one of my very good friends from church – Mike Morrisette on my run today. Mike spotted me on his bicycle all 20 miles of my 20 mile run preparing for the Chicago Lakeshore Marathon in 2002. Interesting that we ran into each other on the same run today.
Well that’s it for today. I’m going to hit the couch and what some football – Did I mention the rest of the family is vacationing in wonderful Starkville MS home of the MS State Bulldogs who didn’t do that great yesterday against a tough opponent.
