Ready to race

Our next race is next Saturday, May 22nd: Going the Extra Mile 5k. Our training has been going well, but I've been itching to get out and run the course. Finally got that done this morning.

Runners will start at 8:30 and we started a little before that this morning, maybe about 8:15. It wasn't quite 75 degrees yet, but it's hard to believe it'll be that cool next week. Have to plan on it being warmer. The good news, in this regard, is that much, and maybe even most, of the course was shaded this morning. Again, we'll be just a little later and the sun will have risen a little sooner, but we can count on a good amount of shade. A lot of people were watering their lawns. I hope some of them turn their water on us ;-)

Starting last night I've been having this funky twinge in my left knee. It's not normal pain. It's almost like phantom pain. It hurts for a moment, but it doesn't. It didn't seem to affect my running. If I had to guess, I'd say it's more nerve-related than tissue or mechanical. Does that make sense at all?

I was a little worried about the elevation changes. This course is a lot more hilly than our last race (which was almost ideally flat). However, in practice, it didn't feel that much different than our normal runs in the neighborhood.

We started out walking to warm up for five minutes, so we were already behind race pace. Then I took a wrong turn and probably lost us another minute. But we still finished the course in about 31 minutes! It almost doesn't seem possible that we were running that fast. We must run faster than 10 minutes/mile (6 mph) usually. I haven't been timing it exactly. We usually just run for 30 minutes. So, we will be shooting for sub-30 minutes for the whole thing come next Saturday.

Notes to self: bring cold Gatorade for after race, hit the water table for one drink and one cup of water for my head.

Doubting Roethlisberger

Two critical articles I read recently:

The Hangover: Roethlisberger, SI

Roethlisberger: Can't Cut Him, Can't Stand Him

Plus, could Roethlisberger's boorish behavior be a result of brain damage?

Right now what we've got is one more case of a badly-behaving star who says I won't do it again. Not least of all from reading these articles, I predict that Ben will misbehave again and that Pittsburgh will have to cut him loose. What do you think?