Just Hanging Out Friday and Saturday

Friday afternoon, February 3rd

I got home from Vancouver, British Columbia at about 2:45 p.m. and had been jokingly entertaining the thought of doing a race Saturday morning; however, I decided to run the 4.1-mile loop in my subdivision at about 5 p.m. Friday afternoon.

I really wasn't intending it to be too hard and even if I did, there were strong winds through about half of the run that made it interesting. I pushed it a little bit so that I'd have no desire to go out and do something stupid before going to New Orleans tonight and running the Mardi Gras Marathon in the morning.

The run (all concrete unfortunately) covered 4.1 miles in 42:40.37 for a pace of 10:24 per mile. Not something that I'm terribly happy about, but I got some miles in since I didn't late Thursday evening before we had to leave the hotel at 3 a.m. Pacific time to catch a 6 a.m. flight and go through customs. The stretch from my house back to Spring Stuebner is approximately 1.75 miles (measured by Ford this morning) and I covered that in 17:43.40 - a 10:08 pace while I covered the remaining 2.35 miles coming back (plus a jaunt into a subdivision yet to be finish to the East) in 24:56.97 in 10:37.

Saturday morning, February 4th

I was out the door at 4:30 a.m. to fill up my truck with gas and head north to Huntsville State Park to see Houston Running Bloggers RC members Rick Cook and Dalton Pulsipher start the Rocky Raccoon 100 Miler.

While I was waiting to see Rick and Dalton, I had a chance to visit a little bit with veteran trail and ultrarunner Paul Stone of Bullard. Paul's an excellent race director for a number of trail events including the Rocky Raccoon 50K and 25K in October.

I ended up seeing Rick and Dalton about 10 minutes before the start and I had the chance to meet Dalton's mother and see his fiancee, Hahn Nguyen. (Hahn will upload pictures on Monday!) Dalton was cool as a cucumber while Rick was excited. He remarked that his heart rate from the excitement was up around 190! For those interested, Rick is audio blogging on his blog, http://geauxrunning.blogspot.com/.

I stopped back by the house to try and upload a picture or two from Huntsville but it was taking too long to get the blog entry right. Shortly after 7 a.m., I headed towards downtown Houston to see the Buffalo Wallow 6K cross country race -- the first race of the HARRA Spring Series.

Three of our bloggers, Sam Rodriguez, Sarah Graybeal and Joe Carey, were running as well as a host of Houston Striders, readers of this blog and friends from clubs around the city.

Last year when this race was announced, I had already committed to do the Bridgefest 5K out in Kingwood -- a race with a straight out-and-back PR course! Even though I've taken on all kinds of courses in the 149 events I've done to date, this is one that I really preferred not to do - even if I wasn't doing Mardi Gras tomorrow - because of the potential of being lapped by the elite male runners.

The Buffalo Wallow 6K was broke into three separate races -- Master and Veteran Men, All Women and Open Men. Each race's start was spaced 45 minutes apart as the Master and Veteran Men got underway at 8:00 a.m. The weather was absolutely spectacular!

While official results will be online later, Al Lawrence Running Club's Terry Garrett and Terlingua Track Club's David Washburn went 1-2 in the Masters Men race. Houston Strider Helen Grant held off a last loop charge from Terlingua's Christie Lammers to take the Women's race in first and second while John and Alan Hedengren of Clear Lake's On The Run Racing Team went 1-2. (As of the latest update on the HARRA web site, neither Hedengren were listed as HARRA members.)

It was good to see Megan Clark-Dillingham with her new, near 2-month-old Molly. In one of the funnier moments of the morning, Megan's husband, Gavin Dillingham, and Sarah's good friend and co-worker Gavin Mendeck, were running one behind the other coming through the first downhill on the first loop. As Steve Shepard and others cheered loudly for fellow Strider, Gavin Dillingham, Gavin Mendeck looked a little surprise! Sarah and I pointed out to Steve that there were two Gavin's and before they crossed under the Studemont bridge, they had formally introduced themselves to one another! (If you can't go to a race, laugh and have a great time, it isn't worth going!)

As always, I had a great time visiting with Striders' Tim and Karen Bowler, Lee Baughman, Andrea Chan, Barry Chambers, Steve and Barb Shepard, Santos Hernandez, Rachel Guenther (she said Geoff was sleeping in!), Brett Riley (who didn't race and joked that he had retired ... then he realized I was standing there ... and he isn't!), president Sandy Wollangk, HARRA president Tom Stilwell, Chris Bittinger (new store manager at On The Run in Clear Lake) and Jay Lee (co-owner of the said store who said that their new Tri store was about to open on Memorial Drive). I'm sure I missed somebody.

The one thing that is really great about the Buffalo Wallow 6K is the opportunity to cheer on your favorite runners multiple times in the triple loop course!

Next Saturday, February 11th, is the 2nd race of the HARRA Spring Series, the Park to Park Run (5 Miler) in downtown Houston which takes participants from Minute Maid Park to Hermann Park. (Part of the entry fee is a token for a free ride back on the Metrorail to where you parked your car at Minute Maid!)

Looking at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, the forecast for the Mardi Gras Marathon is as follows, according to weather.com: "Mainly sunny. High 64F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph." Almost a perfect day for marathoning!