For the next 60 seconds

This is a test to see if i am geeky enough to blog from my phone.

Track meets and concerts and ice cream, oh my!

little boy had a track meet AND a concert last night.
1 mile time->5:27.
2 mile time->11:38 (5 seconds faster than last week and after having run the mile and the 4x800 relay).

We'd both forgotten about the community concert, but it was on our side of town so it minimized the driving. The orchestra had a good night; their performance was much, much better than the last community concert when they just didn't quite have it together.

little boy also got the job at the bike shop! He is pretty psyched.

Big Boy rode his bike to school and had his AP Russian oral test and some ultimate frisbee to play afterwards. I'd forgotten to tell him that I wasn't playing softball because SO had a meeting and little boy had orchestra, so there were just a few too many things on the schedule to make it over to Minneapolis to play ball at 7:00. Big Boy rode his bike to the park, found some guys playing soccer, and played soccer for an hour. One of my softball buddies saw him and told him that SO & I were not going to play tonight. So, Big Boy got on his bike and rode home. This is a more pathetic story when you realize that the park is 7.5 miles from school and maybe 13 miles from home. The poor kid played frisbee, soccer, rode six miles to school in the morning and had a 20 mile ride after school. Maybe it's time for a third cell phone.

But, a girl asked him to the prom. And I brought him a quart of ice cream. Somehow, I don't think that measured up, but I tried.

Quite boring

I just realized that I'll probably be posting to this blog while we're in Russia, thus alleviating the need to both email people with updates and write a travelogue about the trip. In light of that, I reviewed the meager posts to make sure that they're family-safe and work-safe. Somewhat surprisingly, they all are. Somewhat sadly, I'm really quite boring.

This is a cutback week, so only 30 miles, 5 this morning. If the nice weather holds up, I'll think I'll give biking to work a shot on Friday.

Russia planning is in full swing. We got our visas on the 19th. We're going to reverse our route, sort of, and take the train to St. Petersburg when we arrive and spend the first part of the trip up north. That way, we have the opportunity to stay with Tatiana and she's offered to help us plan some of the things we want to do.

My latest obsessive worry is NWA. They're not exactly an on time airline. And we have to get to Chicago the morning of the 7th to catch the first leg of our Delta flight to Dublin. A one hour delay will make us miss boarding for that flight. That's the only really worrisome connection; every other connection has so much time that I'm not worried about anything but sleeping in airports.

Trail Mix 25K

The Trail Mix 25K was the most fun I've had at a race ever. Not that it wasn't hard, but there was just something fun about the whole darn thing. It was my longest race to date, and I'm usually leery of trail races, but I kept an open mind and allowed myself to walk up the hills. HA! "Allowed" myself. Like I had a choice in the matter. But I do love to run downhill.

I had two goals: (1) finish without hurting myself and (2) come in around 2 1/2 hours.

The weather was warmer than it's been, 50s at the start and overcast throughout, but nearly 70 by the time I finished. I was worried about rain and had a wardrobe crisis. I finally settled on shorts, long sleeve tech shirt, nylon vest, smartwool socks and trail shoes. I could have ditched the vest, but then I'd have had no place for my keys, my watch and my snacks.

Race started at 7:30. I thought I'd been to this place before, and indeed, I had. Big Boy and little boy downhill skied there a couple winters ago. I recognized the hill and thought I hope I don't have to run up that thing! The race consisted of two loops of 12.5K (or 4 loops if one was running the 50K, but I'm not that crazy yet).

We started off with some nice rolling hills and I overheard someone saying, "Don't go out crazy fast, because there's that hill and you have to do it twice. So, I, in my abject fear of running up hill, am looking out for some monster leading me up into the sky.

After a few more ups & downs, I get to the top of this hill and see a ski lift. Uh oh. But it's the top of the ski lift. Sure enough, we're running that monster hill, but DOWN it! And I like running down hills. I passed almost everyone on my way down, joking to a guy I passed that we'd have better luck sliding down with a sheet of cardboard. Passing everyone down the hills happened most of the time, actually. I felt like I was flying down the hills. The flats were just my regular running, and I walked up most of the hills. On the second loop, I walked up all the hills, but I still flew down them.

There was only one spot where the trail could be considered technical (and it was technical for dummies, luckily for me), a nasty, narrow, rocky up hill that nearly everyone walked (I don't know about those in the front of the pack, I wasn't there!) and a corresponding narrow, rocky down hill that was sort of fun. The rest of the trail was wide mowed path or wood chips with a couple of forays onto blacktop. Some of the wood chip section was quite soft and I didn't like that so much. I was afraid I'd roll an ankle, but no.

The clock said 1:18 after the first loop, and as I was just heading down the home stretch, I saw a group of guys standing in the lake. Good idea! I finished in 2:39, collected my bag of goodies, and walked over to the lake where I stood around in cold water for awhile. Changed into my new shirt, some clean shorts & sandals and took myself out for blueberry pancakes.

It was my longest run ever, and the most fun, but not the fastest. And that didn't matter one bit.

Russia here we come

OK, so I promised Big Boy that if he did all 4 years of Russian and didn't commit any felonies and generally managed to fulfill all the graduation requirements, I'd take him to Russia. Four years isn't a very long time, I've come to find out. So, we're going. June 7 through June 27.

Now, this is a big deal. I haven't been out of the country this long since 1974. And I was a kid then and didn't have to plan or pack (or pay!). After comparing flight prices for two months, I just today spent a little over $2,000.00 buying tickets. This sounds hideous, until you consider that the alternative would have been something on the order of $2,980.00. That "extra" almost grand will go far. At least, it should.

Hotels in Moscow are very, very amusing. They're huge. Some are Soviet-era. None of them are Comfort Inn or Holiday Inn (which is fine, cuz we're not looking for that) or even less than $150 a night. For a single. So, in light of the fact that neither Big Boy nor I are trust-fund babies, we're going the hostel route. They're more like $50 a night, which is reasonable, but we're going to be paying for lodging for TWENTY nights. I'll let you do some multiplication and you'll see why my hair just got greyer. I guess that's where that "extra" thousand dollars is going. Sheesh, that's more than the morgage payment.

Plus, we still have to do things like, oh eat. And pay entrance fees to museums, etc. And bring back trinkets for the loved ones we're leaving behind. And I still don't have my running routes planned real well yet.

I'm really excited. I have Big Boy on assignment figuring out what sort of day-trip like things we can do for our stop overs in Zurich and Dublin. We have a longish layover in Atlanta, too. What's in Atlanta?