I did my Twenty!

September 19, 2009: I turned 40 and I ran my 20.

Top four moments from the run:

#1: Meeting Cathy and the Kids

I find Simon, Laura, Maddie and Cathy all with pom-poms cheering me on. It was great.

#2: Running up Cranbrook Hill

Cranbrook Road, just before it runs into Woodward, has the steepest hill I know of. (Though the parking structures at Beaumount are pretty bad.) Here is the profile of that hill as seen by RunKeeper Pro:
Mike Sklar and I used to ride a twenty mile circuit and the half way point was that hill and it always took my breath away. Jeff Stefeil used to tell me about climbing Cranbrook Hill on his long training runs. Everybody has been telling me that I need to be ready for the hills of the New York Marathon. So I knew I had to climb that hill. On the profile it looks straight up. The significantly higher hill just after Cranbrook Hill is the long climb up from the lake to the corner by the Art Institute and Lone Pine.


#3: The most Tweetable moment.

At mile 8 Nike+ crashed for the second time in the 3 years I have been using it. The first time was before I started to run. This one occured 8 miles into the longest run of my life. I had been listening to some tunes and decided to switch to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. When I went to turn off the music down went the Nike+ App. I couldn't revive the Nano. Luckily RunKeeper never missed a beat and captured the whole run.




Here's the tweet:

#4 and Cathy's top moment: Running with the family

I start my runs with an almost two mile loop around the southwest corner of the Woods. Cathy, Simon and Bo all sent me off in grand style by joining me for this warm-up loop. As we came around the loop and approached home, Simon said, "I'm glad we are close to home because I'm getting tired." I had almost 3 and a half more hours of running at that point.

One last pic...

from where my legs were dying. 20 miles is really hard and yesterday I couldn't have run 20.5 miles. Can't believe I will have another hour on November 1. Ughhh.

The post script

The punch line is that my wife had planned a surprise party for me. She took me to LaserQuest and I walked in to see Lyle, Steve Williams, Dave and Jill Hart, Susan and Trey, Amy (Matt had to deal with the babysitter), Jeff and Rachel. What a blast. I was destroyed tired but the entertainment was so high charged it was awesome. Great fortieth.

Thanks Cathy.