Race Report: Library Race

My university has an annual running race to raise money for the library, but this is the first year I have done it. It sponsored by the president of the university, so the university mascot was there.

My friend Rachel from California said she wanted to do a fun race, so we decided to run in costume. I'm Benjamin Franklin and she is Frida Kahlo. We thought we could talk some other history faculty members into running in costume, but the two most likely prospects were out of town.

The race started and finished in different places, and was net downhill. The two main uphills were about 1/2 mile into the race and at the end. Rachel said she wanted to run with me, though I am much slower. My costume was fairly comfortable to run it except that I got hot--the temperature must have be around 60.

I said my goal was 11 minute miles. I'm just not as fast as I was a year ago, when I almost broke 30 minutes for a 5K. I went out pretty hard, counting on the long downhill in the middle of the course, and then tried to keep up my level of effort going downhill. Looking at my heart rate monitor results--

I did a good job of keeping a steady and intense level of effort. Maybe my max heartrate is higher than what I'm using--I could talk a few words at a time--but I'm already using 205 as my max, which was measured in a stress test and is awfully high for my age. I walked some uphills on the last mile--my mile splits were 10:57, 10:34 and 11:35. Rachel went ahead then waited for me to cross the finish line together.

I'm sore afterwards--my other two running races this year were 10 miles and 10K--I forget how hard 5K can be.

Results are up. I was 147th out of 152 in 34:16. The overall female winner was 48 years old and her time was 19:51.

retreat

I did a two day silent retreat at Snail's Pace in Saluda NC, the first time I had been there. It was beautiful early spring weather.

I actually went up Thursday evening and left Sunday morning, so I had two complete days of silence. I did take my bicycle, and when I had listened to what came up alone with myself and with God I would go out on my bicycle and burn off the emotional pain. The bike routes around there all go up and down the Saluda grade. I did the southern half of the YMCA metric century and it was over 2,000 vertical feet of climbing.

one hour swim

We did a one hour swim today at masters practice, and I did 2300 yards, if I counted right, which is 2.1 kilometers. I signed up yesterday for this race, with a swim of three kilometers (just under 3300 yards). The swim cutoff is 1 hour 45 minutes after the start of the last swim wave, so I'm fast enough. I was going to do a half ironman this year, not a 3/4 ironman, but I like the approach of the Triathlon One O One series and I think it would be fun to be in on the first year. Plus I have Labor Day off this year for the first time ever--Clemson is playing a Monday night football game that day.

race results

I finally got around to looking at the race results for the 10K race last weekend. I was second out of three in my age group, and if I had been a minute faster I would have won my age group. It happened that the fast people didn't show up to this one, but it is a nice change to not be way behind. I was 82 out of 87 overall.

It's spring break here, but at the moment our lovely spring weather has gone back to cold wind. I got in a 7 mile run before church so I'm working on clutter instead of riding my bike this afternoon. I'm going to get some writing done the first part of the week (and also save some time for bicycling), but then I'm going Thursday afternoon to Snails Pace to do two days of silent retreat.

The Prayer of St. Patrick

I arise today
Through the strength of heaven;
Light of the sun,
Splendor of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of the wind,
Depth of the sea,
Stability of the earth,
Firmness of the rock.

I arise today
Through God's strength to pilot me;
God's might to uphold me,
God's wisdom to guide me,
God's eye to look before me,
God's ear to hear me,
God's word to speak for me,
God's hand to guard me,
God's way to lie before me,
God's shield to protect me,
God's hosts to save me
Afar and anear,
Alone or in a multitude.

Christ shield me today
Against wounding
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down,
Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in the eye that sees me,
Christ in the ear that hears me.

I arise today
Through the mighty strength
Of the Lord of creation.

(this version was on Beliefnet today)

Sony Reader, continued

I figured out some of the answers about making free books work on my Sony Reader (information that Sony doesn't make easy to find, as they want you to buy books from their bookstore). Fairly few ebook sites offer the Sony format (Manybooks is the most valuable exception). But more offer RichText (.rtf) format, such as the Christian Classics Ethereal Library, and that works very nicely on the Sony reader, including the ability to adjust font size. On Project Gutenberg, many books are available only in text (.txt) format. I bought a program to translate text format to RichText format, and it is easy to use and works beautifully. I don't know how it would handle footnotes, but it takes out the annoying hard line breaks. So now I have access to all 20,000 books in Project Gutenberg. Gutenberg Australia has books that are out of copyright in Australia, where standard copyright is 50 years, but not yet in the U.S., where it is 70 years.

good news

My daughter got into the boarding school of her choice. That was what we expected, but since when I was her age I didn't get in the first time, with similar test scores, and the school has an acceptance rate of 32%, I worried. It will be an interesting change in our family patterns, not just having her so far away but she will be in the same town as my mother.