Hello Dolly

Today we are getting the rain from the hurricane - and I am going to start blogging about my daily ! exercise and Imogene training.

This morning I took the dogs on a 3-mile walk in the rain on the flood control dam.

This afternoon I hiked the Baylor Canyon/Pass trail. I had intended to go the entire 3.5-ish miles to the peak but turned around at just over 2 miles because part of the trail was under water and I was not willing to get my trail running shoes totally wet and muddy.

So a total of about 7 miles for me today - 3 flat - 2 up - 2 down.

Web Sites

Interesting web sites ~

The article in Outside magazine explains the guy ~
http://sifter.org/~aglisi

What is the difference between a duck?
Courtesy of some Rice students ~
http://www.betweenaduck.com/

Buy new artwork online ~
http://www.20x200.com/

Design your own energy bars ~
http://www.youbars.com/

Buy and Sell event tickets ~
http://www.stubhub.com/

Other people answer questions about your face ~
http://www.facestat.com/

Morph your face ~
http://morph.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Transformer

Scary political ideology ~
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/apr/24/usa.comment

Adventure travel for singles ~
http://www.oars.com/
http://www.theworldoutdoors.com/
http://www.backroads.com/

Dave and Imogene

Dave from St. Louis - to distinguish him from all the other boys I know named Dave - visited this past Saturday - Sunday - Monday. I had not planned for us to get together with other folks but he ended up meeting almost all the important people here. We had lunch on Saturday with Laura Keith Ian Erik - lunch on Sunday with Ed - dinner on Sunday with Marco and Kevin - and lunch on Monday with Marco and Larry and Dom. I know a lot of boys. But he would have also met Kim and Cheryl had they not been out of town.

We also took the doggies to the dog park on Sunday morning and to White Sands on Sunday afternoon and for a walk on the flood control dam on Monday morning. Maddie and Bodhi miss their Uncle Dave.

Dave left on Monday and I started training for Imogene on Tuesday. Just managed to get in a 1-mile jog on the flood control dam before darkness fell. Wednesday I started speed work with a Yasso 800 [3:40] on the flood control dam. Then off to Primetime for a 3-mile treadmill jog. Thursday/today I did two Yasso 800s [4:24 and 4:17] on the flood control dam and will later get to Primetime for a 4-mile treadmill jog. Tomorrow may be three Yasso 800s and/or a 5-mile Independence Day fun run and/or a pilates class.

I must be diligent about training over the next two months as you can see from the course profile here -

http://www.imogenerun.com/profile.htm

What is a Yasso 800 you might be asking?

It is an 800-meter (about half a mile) repeat and the goal is to work up to 10 of them with 400-meter jog recovery intervals. Your average time across the 10 repeats in minutes and seconds is supposed to be a pretty good predictor of what your marathon time would be in hours and minutes. So my goal is to get up to 10 repeats with an appropriate recovery interval - today I walked an 800-meter recovery interval - and then hopefully I will be doing them at a suitable pace. I am not training for a marathon right now but your marathon pace is supposed to be a good predictor of your Imogene pace. And the Imogene run has cutoff times - another reminder that I must be diligent about training from here on out.