Week Recap, and General Thoughts

I finished my week of running today with a long run that I thought was great. My plan called for 17 miles, but I did 20. I tried to keep the run at a fairly easy pace, and yet it still resulted in an overall 9:07 pace. I've now done five runs of 18 miles or more, and this was the first one where I didn't feel completely spent at the end. My long runs these days feel very easy for the first 13 miles or so, and then they start to get a little more difficult with each additional mile.

The mileage total for the week was just short of 53 miles. Four of my last six weeks have been over 50 miles. Six more weeks until the marathon, and just a few more until the taper starts.

Here are those thoughts I mentioned in the post title ...

• I'm a general sports fan, but the two sports I really follow closely are baseball and hockey. I think I have about the same level of interest in each sport. However, I would love to visit every major league baseball stadium, but I don't have a lot of interest in making a point to visit NHL arenas. I think the atmosphere of a ball park has a certain appeal or nostalgia not found in indoor arenas.

• Speaking of sports, I am very excited for the return of Tony Kornheiser to radio! In my case, I'll be hearing him via podcast, although his show originates out of ESPN980 in Washington, DC. I absolutely love Mr. Tony on the radio, even when he's talking about college basketball (which I have zero interest in) or Washington, DC stories. Most people outside of Washington are familiar with Tony from his TV work on PTI or as a Monday night football analyst. I started listening to his radio show a couple of years back, and I very much enjoy the mix of sports, news and pop culture that he and his co-hosts discuss.

• This link to ABC News has a story about how "running may indeed be addictive to the brain in the same way as heroin or morphine." It mentions how the researchers let one group of rats become increasingly avid runners, and forced another group of rats to stay lazy in a cage with no hamster wheel. I would like to see video of the rats doing pre and post stretching routines.
  
  
• There aren't many things I enjoy more than listening to a good, long, hearty laugh.
  

• At some point in my life, and I'm not sure when, I stopped watching movies. I think in the last few years, I couldn't have watched more than a handful of movies each year. There was a time when I watched many movies and followed many movie reviewers. I would even see artsy-fartsy (spelling?) releases, and foreign films. These days I have next to no interest in movies, and I think the main reason is that when I sit down for two hours to watch one, I'm thinking in the back of my mind that there has to be a more productive way to spend two hours of my life. Last night was an exception to all of this of course, as Faith Ann and I watched "Paul Blart: Mall Cop". Yes, I watch four movies a year, and this was one of them.

• Speaking of movies, here's a line from a movie made back when I used to watch them - "Ferris Bueller's Day Off": "Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." Check out this blog, Marathon of Hope, for a reminder of this. The blog is written by a wife from close to my old stomping grounds in Nova Scotia, about the recovery of her husband (Chris Cashen) from what would normally be a fatal episode of bleeding of the brain. Only hours before the incident occurred, Chris had finished 16th out of 113 runners in the Cobequid Trail 10k, an annual race held in Truro, Nova Scotia. Outside of a short recovery period for hernia surgery in 2003, Chris had run every day for over 4000 consecutive days. He also qualified for and ran in Boston last year. I recommend you give the blog a read - it's interesting, sad, inspiring and hopeful.

Here's hoping all are enjoying the Labour Day long weekend, as we enter the first full week of September.