Tuesday, May 31, 2011

The ground beef relay and other shenanigans

Saturday I went running. Twice. That shouldn't suprise you though, its summer, thats just what you do. I went for a regular 17 miler in the morning, took a shower, went to bed again, and woke up around lunchtime. My roomate was grilling, and my other roommate- the one who freeloads all the time for food- says to me "oh, hey, want to run to Cub and get some ground beef?" So I oblige and tuck $5 in my shoe and we're off. I had a tough time getting going, and almost threw a temper tantrum because I had to wear a shirt (the whole no shirt, no shoes, no service thing), but before you know it we were going at a good clip and halfway there. The store is only 2 and a half miles away, but we were both pretty sweaty when we got there on account of the fact that it was like 90 degrees, so we walked in and got some serious stank- eye dropped on us by everyone in the store but its all good. We wondered around for a good 15 minutes before we found the meat aisle (clearly labeled MEAT AISLE) and got some ground beef and left. The freeloading roomate got 2 lbs and I got 1. Freeloader rooomate thought it would be a good idea to put them in a bag, not carry them. I won $2 off a $1 lottery ticket and bought a soda, so this bag was already getting heavy.

With that, we took off. We were going pretty quick, hit the 1 mile mark in 7:12, and I was dying. I was carrying this bag with me the whole way and it just wasn't happening. I downed the soda I had bought like nobody's buisness, and it started to rain. We had to get home quick too since we needed to get the ground beef into the fridge before it did whatever ground beef does when it gets too hot. So, we devised a plan: each of us would run 2 blocks with the bag of beef and toss it back to the other guy. So thats what we did. We almost dropped the bag a few times throwing it around, but we got home real quick. It was a good time. We were singing and making jokes about our huge meat and immature stuff like that. And then we cooked it and then we ate it. The end.

I also ran yesterday. Holy cow was that hot. I went 2 hours just because and got sunburned for the first time this year. I was also white from salt. When I came home I literally passed out in my bed. Today I'm going to go later, like 9 or 10.

Related: I ordered a pair of cascadia 6's today

Monday, May 23, 2011

Whats once was lost now is found

Hello interwebs, glad to be back. Want to hear something crazy? 4 weeks until Grandmas. And 4 months until Twin Cities. Crazyness, man. I better start like, actually training. I have been training, just not as intense as I would like. I've done next to zero speedwork, and my milage has consistently been in the 50-65 range, but I feel like I haven't peaked yet. I've taken weeks at a time totally off, which shows. I went into this training cycle hoping to qualify for Boston at Grandma's. Maybe not. Oh well, shit happens. I'm not happy with my training, and it looks like I'm headed toward another mediocre marathon. I found a new trail to run though, which is kind of exciting. It is paved, which is a bummer, but it is pretty secluded, which is pretty awesome, especially in the middle of a metro area. The trail is a good 2 miles from my house, so usually I can't go that far down it, although maybe this weekend I'll go all the way down and see where it goes.

I'd also like to do a 50 miler this summer. My friend called me last night (drunk of course) and asked me to run to Monticello. Now, I'm not going to do that on a smile and a wink, but hey, why not, I've got all summer. I think that would be pretty cool if I could get off work for a couple days.

Third, I got a PS3 and a TV for cheap and now my productivity has dropped to zero. All I want to do now is play NHL 11 and sleep. And maybe run a little too, but mostly play NHL. I'm pretty bad at it too.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Osama Bin Laden Hide and Seek Champion 1998-2011

I'm alive! I'm sure you were all deathly worried about me, right? Well, I've been busy- er than usual. Its been a really horrible couple of weeks. Like last week, I pulled three all nighters and am still behind on homework. Its because last weekend was both Sigma Chi initiation and Relay For Life. Initiation was awesome as always, we initiated 9 guys, which is actually a bigger class than the University of Minnesota. Initiation was Friday night into Saturday morning and I stayed up all night for that, even though I didn't have to. All the initiations I've been at, save my own, I've missed something. So, I stayed up all night so I made sure I wouldn't miss anything. That ended at like 11:30 when we stopped cleaning up, so that was all nighter number 2. I got home, at lunch, and tried to convince myself not to take a two hour nap because I knew I wouldn't wake up. At 3 I went over to the Anderson Athletic & Recreation Complex Fieldhouse to start setting up for Relay For Life. We actually got done a little before 6, when teams were slated to set up, so I was able to grab my team's stuff and stake out a decent campsite.

Relay itself went really well, and I had a bunch of fun- after midnight. Before midnight was an absolute ****show. No one really had any idea what they were doing when, stuff didnt get printed out, and everyone had their own idea of how they wanted things ran. Somehow I got everyone on the same page and we were good. The one thing I was really worried about was the Luminaria ceremony. The glow sticks we were using to light the Luminaria bags looked to be going out every five minutes or so. We decided to pass out glow sticks before the ceremony, and have people crack them as they walked around the track. It looked really cool and it worked well. We had an acoustic performance during the luminaria ceremony (and after as well) by Matt Griswold and it was really touching. The ceremony, the speakers, all of that was really well done if I do say so myself.

I ended up losing the concessions stand key for a while, which was really stressful for a while. I figured out that I had locked it in the concessions stand itself, so all I had to do was open the door and get the key. The problem was, there are only two keys to that door- I had one and the Athletic Director had the other, and it was 1:00 in the morning. I called our public safety and they called Saint Paul police to try and get the door open, but nothing worked; they didn't have a key and couldn't pick it. I had left some ice cream out on the counter to thaw and I was cooking pizza rolls on the hot dog rollers (because there was no oven), so after I was resigned to the fact that I wasnt getting the door open until the AD answered his phone, I got pissed that I would have to clean all that ice cream up off the floor.

It was all good though, we just got breakfast to the relayers on time and we had enough food! Some highlights were watching TC and the Wild mascot play beer pong against eachother, watching the chair of the Political Science department do the velcro wall, a 6 hour long volleyball tournament, and running a 4:52 midnight mile in my boxers. Good stuff, and I can't wait until next year.

Also, a quick shout out to Dougie Fresh, emperor of the Brooks Fanatics program, who donated two free shoe certificates toward the event. You're the man!

We ended up raising $29,082 toward the American Cancer Society