Whew! What a busy weekend!

In what began as an attempt to have a very lax and regenerating weekend turned into almost exactly the opposite.

Friday night was the beginning. After work I headed out for N-TripleH (Nerd Herd Happy Hour, Nerd Herd being a bunch of us from work.) This tends to get me in trouble because I go out with them until around 8 then I meet up with my non-work friends and continue to go out! This results in me being fairly intoxicated and bad decisions get made in that state. I decided that I was not going to let that happen. After a few beverages I met up with Mark and Sarah, we ate some dinner and I managed to avoid committing to any other plans for the evening. 9:00 PM I arrive at home, shut off my cell (something that has never really been done since I purchased it over a year ago,) and promptly passed out to a few episodes of friends.

Things were off to a good start.

Saturday morning I woke up refreshed and motivated. Motivated being the key word, so I decided to change the oil in my truck. During the mission to AutoZone, I also decided I would rotate my tires. This brought up the fact that I needed (read: Really wanted) a nice floor jack to make the task much easier. That decision had the effect of turning $40 oil change into a $160 adventure. I ended up having to go back to the store a second time because the nice cheap jack that was on sale didn’t work, of course.

While in process of getting that done I receive a call from Mark, reminding me that I was supposed to run the Durango Half Marathon with them tomorrow and I had to sign up today. Now I have been saying that I would do this, but I have run 2 times for a total of about 11 miles since finishing SAM, so I was not super psyched on the idea of running a 13.1 Mile road race. As soon as I finished work on the truck I ran out and signed up. At that point the weather promptly deteriorated, and began raining.

Later that afternoon, I get a phone call. It was my friend Cody that I have know since... well.. forever. "What are you doing tonight and tomorrow?" He was apparently in Santa Fe on his way back to Vail and decided that a detour to Durango was in order. I told him that I was running tomorrow and that we would get a whole lot of time to hang out, but it would be fun. Later that night he shows up, but I had to be in town then next morning @ 6:30 for the race so we didn’t hang out much.

Sunday:

Its 5:45AM and it is cold and pouring rain outside. Looks like this will be a SUPER fun race in the freezing rain! I decided that I could not waste my $65 entry fee so I rolled out of bed, put on my cold weather running gear, and headed to the start line.

7:30AM the rain stops but it is still very cold, Mark, Sarah and I are warming up for the 8:00 start. Starting to look like it might be OK. I decide to take a risk and shed a few layers before the run. Turned out that was a good decision, the rain stopped and it was a nice cool overcast for the run. I ran with Mark and Sarah because I didn’t really care about time and I knew I was in no shape to be pushing myself. That turned out to be another good decision because at around mile 10 my legs just fell apart. Every step hurt, it didn’t help that ALL of my training was done on trials and I was now running on pavement, but also my shoes were WELL past their useful prime (they had at least 700 Miles on them. All of the Marathon training and the marathon itself.) I finished in a respectable time of 1:57:36, wish was faster than my goal of 2 hours but I was really hoping for the 1:40's. Cody was at the finish line when we finished so we sat and ate our free meal and drank our free beer(s) (wait?! Isn’t it 10:00AM, oh well don’t tell anyone.)

After the meal, Cody and I went and saw Serenity. I didn’t really know what to expect, except that all the geeks on the net are touting it as the best sci-fi movie ever. Well, It was sci-fi that’s for sure. Probably a bit more so than I was expecting. Don’t get me wrong, I love the genre, but I like my sci-fi to be a a bit less fi. I did enjoy the movie though and all in all it turned out very entertaining. (there were a few scenes that I though were very dumb, bet there were some great scenes that more than made up for them.)

I got home around 3:30, Cody was going to head home around 4 and I was looking forward to relaxing and doing all the minor chores I had planned to do but got put aside. Then the phone rings, its Mr. Mike Sarti - "Were coming over, I was just calling to let you know..." Well, So much for doing my laundry. For some reason we decided that now, right after the rain cleared, and hours after 3 of the 4 of us had just run half a marathon, was the best time to go explore the mountain behind my house. So that’s what we did, in the mud, every muscle and joint in my legs were stiff and sore. It was a great little hike and I love the fact that that whole area is my back yard.

That was it, I didn’t have the energy for anything else, so I went to bed at who knows what time, but it was all good.

Truck Maintenance - Check!
See a lifelong friend that I haven’t seen in months - Check!
Run Half a Marathon - Check!
Drink Beer @ 10AM and not feel guilty - Check!
See Serenity - Check!
Explore my back yard - Check!
Do my laundry - Che... oh wait, nope not done yet.

Just a little different than my original plan of a nice relaxing weekend.