Great runs with great friends

Last Monday, I took an impressive spill on my bike – and after the comedy subsided, my riding buddy asked why I never blog about “moments like this”?  Ok, so I guess making a right turn straight into the curb, traveling at ½ a mph, less than a block into our morning ride was funny.  It only tore up the surface of my right knee and traumatized the entire right side of my upper body for a good three days.  (wink)  In all seriousness, it was only the 2nd time I’d gone down on my bike – so I was embarrassed more than anything.  Matt was a good sport, telling me stories of his falls (which were all at some ridiculously slow speed attempting to stop) – it did make me feel better; I’ll admit.

The reason I mention this now is because I told him the reason I never blog about my klutziness is because I only blog once a week and, if those moments don’t occur close enough to blog-day, I either eliminate them or just forget about them.  Both Matt and Ron said that the solution for this problem is to simply blog more often.  Naturally, I thought, “who the hell would want me to do that?  I only have a handful of readers, anyway.”  So…how many of you regular readers realized I blogged 2 days ago?  We’ll see if I can keep it up.

This is now week two of Philly-Marathon-Training and Brent was interested in coming out to my neighborhood to hit the hills for a 7.5 mile run with me.  I’d suggested going farther if he needed it (since his marathon is 5 weeks before mine), but he was happy with 7.5.

Much like me, Brent is a runner turned triathlete.  Our training schedules are somewhat similar and we talk biking, running and swimming a lot.  However, not this morning.  This morning we talked about life and work and friendships.  It was a morning filled with personal advice and professional wisdom.  We know that we share a lot of things in common – but the most profound is our love for our work, our professional work.  We’re not dissimilar in our work either – we both work for colleges and have many of the same issues with our colleagues and friends.  Its really refreshing to chat about similar issues but not have a clue who the other one is referring to.

Soaked!

The morning was 80-something degrees with what felt like 100% humidity – really unusual for Phoenix.  So, Brent and I laughed as we came around to my driveway at the end – ringing out our clothes all over the sidewalk and pavement.  Since we’re both from the mid-west (Brent from KC, and I from STL) we knew this kind of humidity well.  It’s unfortunate that we both sweat out our body weight, this morning – because Brent then had to get into his car and drive 20 minutes home.  I cannot imagine that it was going to be a comfortable ride at all.  In fact, we could hear our feet sloshing in our shoes for the last mile of the run.  However – we kept a decent pace; even with stoplights and a water stop, we still managed to pull the 7.5 miles in 1:13.

Thanks Brent – sending you big hugs!