Another Five Thousand Meters.

I love it when a plan comes together.
- John "Hannibal" Smith, The A-Team

In this case, my hill training for the past few weeks paid off! I successfully ran the entire length of the Susan G. Komen 5K two days ago and even surprised myself by not being exhausted at the end of it. There were a couple of brief periods in the middle when I felt my lungs laboring a little bit during some inclines but they were very manageable.

My main improvement was definitely pacing. Last year, I varied my pace too much during training and subsequently gassed out on the race course, resorting to walking for a minute or two before resuming the run. Not cool. Also it didn't help that I trained on a relatively flat course -- but that had more to do with where I was living at the time. Bottom line, I wasn't fully prepared and it showed. I'd resolved to do better.

This year I don't think there was a concerted effort to organize a team from OMC so I ended up running solo, although it would have been great to participate with some friends. The weather was fantastic: even though it was already in the mid-70s at 7am, there was a nice little breeze and the skies were a brilliant blue. I parked at the National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial and walked down the gigantic lawn to Union Station, absorbing the vibrant, buzzing energy emanating from below. There were already thousands of runners and walkers getting ready for their respective races and the excitement was building to almost a palpable level.

rising with the sun

Threading through the crowd, I made a quick circuit of the grounds and dipped into Union Station itself, then paused as someone sang the National Anthem on the stage in front of the fountain. After that, the race announcements were made and I joined the people assembling on Grand Boulevard, a block away. The woman on the loudspeaker excitedly counted down the minutes and anticipation swelled. I saw smiles all around -- and then the starter pistol went off. Twenty-six thousand people slowly began surging forward.

course map

It was hard to tell, but there might have been 1000-1500 people in front of me as I began walking. Due to the sheer density of the crowd at the starting line, running was impossible at first and only after about a half-block could we begin to pick up speed. Throughout the race, it was still pretty packed but everyone gave each other enough space to run comfortably -- I didn't see any collisions :)

near the beginning

As I mentioned, I'd been working on evening out my pace for weeks and it helped me out immensely. For a minute or so at a time, I'd match speeds with one or two other people, then either fall back or pass as they changed theirs. As the course wound through downtown KC, past live bands playing upbeat music and the occasional group of cheering onlookers, I felt very consistent and happy with my form.

Since I didn't stop to walk this time around, and maybe because I ran by myself, the race seemed shorter than it did last year. After a curvy stretch on the West Pennway Bridge, we rounded the final corner and saw the twin balloon pillars that signified the finish line, only a few blocks away. Encouraged, I even picked up my speed on the last 40 meters or so (joined by a couple of other runners) and crossed the line at a fairly fast clip to the noise and cheers of the supporters gathered there. Slowing to a walk, I gratefully accepted a water bottle offered by a volunteer and stretched while thousands of other runners completed the race.

post-race rehydration

I had a great time! I stuck around for another hour or so, taking miscellaneous photos [see my Flickr set of the event]. After a quick shower, I celebrated with a French toast brunch at IHOP. I figured I deserved a few extra carbs :)

Anyway, that should do it for the running-based entries, at least for a while :) I'm glad to have achieved one of my goals for the summer. Next, I'll start working on timed runs (yikes.), and I'm definitely looking forward to running in more races in the future!

Now, about those new shoes ...

Achieving Flight Through An Iowa Cornfield.

So it's been about a week since I've returned from a really nice wedding in Wisconsin. It was the latest in a series of weekend road trips I've been taking, stemming from equal parts wanderlust and the simple desire for activity. On the journey up to the Badger State, Google Maps cleverly routed us through the smallest state highways possible in an effort to confound and confuse us. In addition, Jose and I were only armed with an outdated Magellan GPS unit that occasionally told us we were floating through nothingness as we drove through the Iowa countryside.

Even after making a couple of wrong turns and creeping through more than a handful of sleepy rural towns, we made it to La Crosse in the estimated 8 hours -- so Google Maps was right in that regard. I also had to admit that although we pretty much failed to use any major interstates on the way up, it was an interesting and -- dare I say, scenic -- drive. With only the occasional twist and turn, the state roads were straight and mostly well-maintained. We did get stuck behind a slower moving vehicle now and then, but it was easy to gun past them as visibility opened up and I jammed on the gas.

I dunno, something about being away from the interstate and flying through acres and acres of cornfields made me drive a bit faster than I probably should have. But there were long spans of time when there were no other cars on the road, either in front of me or in the rear-view mirror (and visibility stretched out into miles on some parts of the journey). It was strangely liberating, so I took every opportunity to see if we could make up time. A few hours into our trip, we crested a hill and descended into a long valley, where I could see ahead for a couple of miles, and I gunned it. The cornstalks were green blurs. I kept accelerating. My car's engine sounded ... happy.

cooooorrrrnnn

After a few seconds, Jose looked at me. "How fast are we going?"

"A hundred."

"You better watch out for cops," he replied. There was absolutely no place for a police car to hide on this stretch of road, as corn grew at the shoulders' edge. All the city cops were probably hiding out in the small towns we'd driven through earlier, hoping to catch someone running a red. But he had a point. It probably wasn't worth the ticket :) Even though I knew we were the only ones around, I eased off soon after (we were nearing the edge of the valley anyway).

It was different from flying down a major freeway, when you can usually just join a group of cars violating the speed limit. The sensation of high velocity was more pronounced, heightened by the closeness of the crops on either side and the narrower road. It was pure, simple fun, even if it was only for ten seconds.

On the trip back from La Crosse, we got out act together and found the 4-lane state highway that we were supposed to take on the trip up, and didn't manage to save any time (the drive still took 8 hours, but we were more or less obeying the speed limit). So it was definitely more boring. Maybe we should've taken the smaller roads again.

And The Living's Easy.

Well, not that easy if your livelihood depends on the ebb and flow of fair-going crowds. Nevertheless, my Filipino brethren seem to do it for the love as evidenced in this film short. It makes me want to ride Ferris Wheels and throw darts at balloons -- and leave my worries at home for a little while.



How's your summer so far? Mine's going very well.

Boom.

Although it would've made a great case study during clinicals last year, please don't do this:

yeah, no.

Blowing your freaking hand off 'cause you were trying to "disassemble fireworks and combine them into a larger device" is not the business.

Have a great and safe Independence Day weekend everyone! I'll be camping and floating down a river in Missouri for the majority of the weekend, and returning to KC in time to view the fireworks going off all over town.

Escape.

I've been feeling restless and needing to do things lately, which is somewhat foreign to me 'cause I'm usually more of a homebody. So it's weird, but over the past few weeks I've just been wanting to get away somehow.

[via]

With the advent of my three-day weekends (due to working 4 10-hour shifts at the hospital), I'm starting to actively look for things I can get into, especially in the Kansas City area. Someone dear to me once said that I'd missed out on too much of what cities had to offer, most likely because I didn't look hard enough (or just didn't want to look). It was true; I'd only really stuck to the things I knew I liked to do and unfortunately wasn't very adventurous or spontaneous. Obviously this led to plenty of missed opportunities, experiences and memories. This makes me sad, because I like to think that I would've learned from those experiences.

So I'm trying to be more proactive. I'm saying "Yes, okay, let's go!" more often. I've lined up the next couple of weekends, with an out-of-town bachelor party for a close friend and then a 2-day float trip with lots of acquaintances (I'm basically the "new guy" hanging out with a members of a close crew). I'm looking to see what else I can do here in the metro area over the next couple of months. I don't want to waste any more time, nor have any more regrets about not having done something. The experiences will definitely be worth the effort.

It's the weekend, PM readers. Time to escape.

Parkour + Robots + Insane Footspeed = Canabalt.

Hey it's the middle of the week and you could probably use a little break. I got just the thing.

In Canabalt, all you do is run and try to escape a city being overrun by giant robots. Actually, the game "runs" for you so all you need to do is push X or C to jump. But they better be carefully timed jumps, or you're meeting your maker. Okay, so it's not really "parkour" -- just a lot of jumping and some really fast running.

Very simple concept, and to my knowledge there's no ending (you just try to run as far as you can) but it's oddly addicting. The atmosphere of the game is, in a word, menacing -- tense music, angry mecha destroying the buildings on the horizon, the occasional rocket fly-by that shakes everything in sight -- and combines perfectly with the sense of urgency to GTFO!

Play it a couple of times and escape. Then it's back to work for you -- until the robots arrive for real.