Brother

This weekend is the Atlanta Marathon. My brother is going to run the 1/2 Marathon. I am proud of my brother. He is a great husband, dad, brother, son, worker and all around good guy. I am happy to say that I have influenced him as a runner. He does not ask me for advice anymore, but he does call me a "serious runner."

Fall in Spring

I fell today. It is remarkable, given all the miles I run on trails that this has not happened before. It was a loud fall. When I fall in the woods, you will hear it.

Damage report. Pretty minimal; knees, elbow, thumb. Biggest issue is that I slammed my camera on the way down. It still takes pictures, but the display screen is shattered.

Hope you never take a fall and I hope this never happens to me again. Except for my camera, and hours later, I am happy it happened today. Sorry, but I cannot explain this, except to say that I am alive.

A certain age

On your birthday cake there are candles and each of those candles represents a year to the day since the day you were born. Check. Yesterday I set out to run a number of minutes equivalent to the number of candles that would have been on my birthday cake, if we were going to observe this tradition of candles on cake. I ran for 48 minutes and thought, excellent - mission accomplished. Problem is that I am now inclined to forget how old I am. Yesterday was my 49th birthday, as I realized later in the day when I was showing off my running creativity to loved ones. I owe a minute of running, which I now refer to as my "senior minute."

Weird runner thought patterns

I get all kinds of ideas when I am out for my daily run. Today I worked on comparing running to shaving. This is just plain weird, I realize, but I am going to give you the highlights anyway.

I like shaving and running and do both almost every day.
I do not over think my shaving or my running. I simply put on lather or shoes and do it.
I look good (relatively) when I am done shaving and I feel good when I am done running.
I will shave and run for the rest of my life.
Shave shower. Same order, run then shower. Never shower shave or shower run.
I'm done.

What about the razor?

Clean Running, Part 2

http://epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/ind_calculator2.html

This is a link to a carbon footprint calculator. I checked it out and the next best thing for us would be to replace our furnace. Kind of a big expense item, but would measurably reduce our carbon footprint. For my family of three we came in around 57,000 pounds of CO2 which is only slightly less than the US average. The EPA calculator does not include questions on the amount and type of meat we eat, which apparently is a consideration.

Yours Truly,

Uncle Clean

AIG Logic

Have you been at your job (lucky you) and been in a conversation where everyone agrees how screwed up things are and how that leads to job security. This conversation happens almost everywhere at times. Beware of too much of that kind of logic because it will get you in trouble eventually, unless you work at AIG.

Here in Cleveland, we have so many things that are screwed up. No one needs me to point this out or make a list of proposed solutions. I like to point out the things to be appreciative of and the things that go well. I had a great time at St. Malachi this weekend. There were almost 2000 runners working those hills in the Flats. Weather was perfect, everything was well organized, and the volunteers were friendly and helpful.

Now about that stupid airport next to Great Lakes Science Center . . .