OMG ... it's Quadzilla!

Oh. My. Gosh. My new name should be Quadzilla. The photo in the paper Friday does NOT show my legs to their best advantage. Thank you, Paul, for the exposure for our merry band of runners and revelers. ;-) Lionel Cheng took my photo, I tool Lionel's photo and I believe it was Lori Torgerson that took the group photo on my camera. It really was great fun.

Here's Mike Schmitt's video of us running across the finish line.

Thank you, Justin Murray, for clearing up the mystery of the Soldier's Field trash-picker-uppers spotted last week. That was Justin's daughter and grandson, Joni Murray Petersen and Justin Petersen. Thank you for doing that for us, and for the community! It's a highly visible location.

I think I posted this link several months ago, but I think it's worth posting again. It's a new marathon/half marathon/5K on the Sparta/Elroy (WI) bike trail on November 2. I think it sounds like a fun little road trip. Half marathon if the weather for TCM is decent. Full marathon if TCM is anything like last year and I bail (or don't even start, which would have been a more prudent choice last year.) You run through a 3/4 mile tunnel, so bring a headlamp or flashlight. If you're possibly interested in running one of the events, contact me!

Note on my new cookie recipe: When cooling the butter, if you use it when it's still in the liquid state, the cookies spread quite a bit more than if you let it solidify again. Both versions are good.

This morning was a 20-miler. It started out fine. No problem. South on 22, east on 2nd St SW, stop at Mayo C.U. South on 14th Ave (St. Mary's), path to 16th St SW. On this route we normally have a stop at Stone Barn but today we went another 2 miles to Jean Murray's house.

I should have brought a bottle as it was 6 miles between those stops and I was pretty thirsty. But all was still well. Up to Soldier's Field. Took a GU. Bathroom break. Back to water stop for Powerade and a chat with Pete Martin. He's injured. ;-( Pete NEVER gets injuired. He's got planatar fasciitis. ;-( Then it was west on 9th St to Slatterly, east to RCTC traffic circle, north to Quarry Hill for another water stop. I was getting pretty warm but all was still relatively well (getting tired, of course, though starting to cramp). West to Silver Lake, across Broadway to river path, north to Rec Center where there was to have been water. Unfortunately Pete was handling a lost and or slow runner so didn't make it there by the time we ran by. We were starting to wilt, take walking breaks, etc. I knew I needed water pretty bad so I headed up to HyVee north for fluid and another bathroom break. Right at the door I started consuming my second GU and guess what? They uninstalled their water fountain. So I asked the pharmacist, "Ib dere a waber fouban abywhewe?" (My mouth was full of Tri Berry GU.) Nope. But she gave me a little pill glass with about 1" of water in it (enough to get the GU down anyway) and told me I could go over to the Kitchen area and ask for an empty glass then come back to the rest room and fill it up. I probably should have done that, but I didn't want to. I just wanted to be done. I did fill the little cup a couple of times in the bathroom. Then I headed back to West River to the Cascade trail. I ran into Becky Tri (8.5 months pregnant) walking her dog and asked if she lived close and told her I needed water. She gave me directions and told me the side door was open. Then I ran into Sandra Dalquist (out for a short run before going up to the Gopher's game--she said she's doing more biking, traing for TreadMan) ...

and asked where she lived in case it was closer. She lived off 17th Ave, so I headed to Becky's house for a couple glasses of water. Finally headed back to the RAC to share my cookies. There actually were people waiting. I thought everyone might have gone home by then. This wasn't a pretty run, taking 3:11, but I got almost 21 miles in. "All's well that ends well"or "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" as they say. I came home and plunked down on the couch for a couple hours. Haven't been this spent after a run in a long time. Then decided to clear some lactate and mow the lawn and now ... here I sit, blogging!



Tom Woo was planning to run 26 miles. I told him he should just do another .2 so he could say he ran a marathon this morning. And I told him I'm sure I had some T-shirt I could give him. He said he didn't need another T-shirt. ;-)

Good luck to Dan Strain, Trevor Distad and Mike (new to Rochester) doing the Square Lake Tri (half Ironman) next weekend.

Guess that's it.

Thought for the day: "It's nice to be great, but it's greater to be nice."

Happy Labor Day weekend!