A brief race report.

The short answer: No, the training didn't really pay off. :)

I did finish the race, and in the top half of my age group and of men/women overall. However, I got muscle cramps about 10 miles in, and ended up walking about two miles I didn't plan to and finishing a good twenty minutes behind my goal time. Which was somewhat sad.

However, in the last mile I met three very nice people who were also just trying to get across the finish line, and we all motivated each other and cheered each other up the last big hill and through the finish chute. One of them was a mother of three who turns forty in six months, and she was running her first half. The second guy, Kevin, was also running his first and had a baby and wife yelling encouragement and promising hugs at the finish.

The third man was my running partner for most of the last mile; he and I had been playing walk/run tag since about mile 10, and finally struck up a conversation to compare cramps and try to judge the remaining distance while jogging through the last mile. He had a fabulous attitude and completely cracked up the "runners" around us several times, especially when we jogged through a bunch of walkers and he said, as we barely outpaced them, "Thanks for making way for us--you can't stop this freight train a'runnin!"

Really, it was hard to complain too much when Matt and the kids were waiting for me at the finish line to cheer me on! It was really sweet to see the bug in particular jumping up and down and yelling, "There's mommy! Run faster!" After the finish I was reasonably useless for a few hours, but oddly the long walking/jogging cooldown ensured that I had very little muscle soreness the next day which was a great discovery.

Next year I am going to do 10K's instead and try to get faster before going long again. I stop having fun around 90 minutes into a run at this point, so maybe if I spend a year getting faster I can get further in 90 minutes. :)

An unusual media analysis.

I've made the connection between conservative talk radio and performance art before, very briefly in terms of their shared desire to shock/ inflame an audience and their tendency to preach to the converted.

That said, this is brilliant. And funny.

Call it Ludacris: The Kinship Between Talk Radio and Rap

I'm about to go run my last race of the season, the Boulder Marathon (before you ask I'm only doing the half!) and find out if all the training has paid off. The weather is beautiful and the course is just a few miles from my house, so if I can stay awake afterwards I may yet post a race report, especially if my faithful fans come to support me at the finish. :)

So, go and be nice to someone already.

Call that friend up from high school you haven't seen in fifteen years. Get in touch with your college roommate.

Am I being nutty? Nope, I've got the power of social science to back me up!

Is Happiness Catching?

And special thanks to my happy friends who are supposedly each increasing my happiness by 9%. You can theoretically spread joy throughout your spouse's office just by making sure you both leave for work happy. This stuff is great.

By the way, it also appears to influence your weight, but I have different opinions on why that might be true than the researchers in this article put forth. Most simply, if you have active friends, you're more likely to spend time with them doing active stuff like walking, hiking, biking, or even doing triathlons (that's how I got started!). If you have sedentary friends, you'll probably tend to sit around and visit. Also, adults tend to congregate over food so there's a big difference between going out for sushi and going out to the all-you-can-eat chophouse which is probably strongly influenced by your companions' dining preferences. And spouses don't have the same influences that friends do, apparently. Can't wait for further research into these ideas to separate out the correlation from causation (if that's possible).

And a delayed birthday post!

Now that, several weeks later, I've gotten all the film off the camera and through iPhoto, you too can witness the moment where at least one of my children likes my baking. :) Those of you present at the bug's first birthday party will remember that she HATED the cupcake and HOWLED when presented with her birthday dessert. Here, a far more satisfying outcome from the polliwog:

After this he devoured it completely, but at least you can see in this piece that he is at one with the possibility of more frosting.

Whomped upside the head.

That pretty much sums up the first two weeks of the school year. My three jobs are slowly cycling back into some sort of whack, now, so perhaps I'll get some posting and updating to the blog done over the holiday weekend. Quick update: we are all still breathing and aging normally, and have not been attacked by vampires, werewolves, or zombies in spite of their current media domination.

That said, a few amusing links now that I have a few moments to be amused:

For those of you with GPS systems in your vehicles (we don't have one but we know some of you do), check out this sample conversation from The Bloggess. The language is a bit salty for work, perhaps.

On the concept of being psychic, this comic has a few choice words.

And for a much more family-safe link, check out these top ten performances from Sesame Street.