Welcome to Summer

Well it's been a couple of weeks since my last post. Not a whole lot has happened, at least that I can remember. Last week was Father's Day, which was nice. I got up at 3:30 in the morning to get ready for my long run. I started running at about 4:15am and it was great. The sky was full of stars and the weather was nice. I did my 9 miles in 1:38:03 which is a pace just under 11 minutes. My goal for San Francisco is about 11:25 so the fact that I did 9 miles at under 11:00 made me feel pretty good. Sunday was good as well because as always, Theresa and the kids did a great job hooking me up. I got a really cool Yoda doll that goes well with my 30+ year old Chewbacca doll. Of course Ethan also really likes my Yoda doll and already tried to steal it. I also got a book I loved as a child "Ticki Ticki Tembo" (not sure if I spelled it right). It was great to read it again.

Well we had a super fantastic fall, winter and even a nice spring, however, summer is back in Phoenix. On days like today when it is 112 degrees, I try to remember how nice the winters are here but it hard to do. That's another reason I got up at 3:30am to do my long run. The lows now are in the mid to upper 70's which is really nice running weather, but the low occurs around 4 or 5am. I did a little research and the expected temperature for the SF Half-Marathon is to be in the 50's to 60's. Today I noticed the record high for July 25th in SF was somewhere in the 80's. So I am pretty confident that my training temperature will be significantly higher than when I run. It does make me nervous because I have three more races this summer, the next being a four mile run on July 4th. The races don't start until 6:30am so it should be pretty toasty. Of course I knew all this going into it so I guess I can't complain.

Last Friday our firm had a Community Service day and as part of my work team is located in our Flagstaff office some of us went up there to work in a food bank. First we packed and stacked boxes of food for a few hours, then we went outside and stacked wood for a couple of hours. Being as I am a white person of Idaho descent, I got a little burnt. I also got a little sore but it was all for a good cause. I learned a long time ago that performing service is like wetting your pants. Everyone sees the results but only you get that warm feeling.

As some of you may know, I am somewhat lacking in top hair, and as I have learned in the past, a sunburn on the top of your head is not fun, especially when you go run 9 miles and your head is sweating the whole time. I pushed through and made it and my head now has a new layer of fresh skin just waiting to get burnt this weekend.