Birthdays

There have been two birthdays lately. The first was my mother's 70th birthday. There was a huge party thrown on her behalf with lots of friends and all pseudo-east coast family present. Four of her five children and all of their children were present. God knows my mother deserved it. She put up with more crap from my father than we will ever know, including practically raising five kids by herself. After 29 years of marriage, they split. It had something to do with the fact that they argued all of the time and that he was genuinely unhappy so went and found himself an unattached woman with little besides herself to take care of (a few cats but they can go days at a time without being seen by any human). He probably should have waited until they were divorced before starting to see her, but like most males was thinking with a part of himself somewhat south of his brain, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, I was not ever unhappy about their divorce since it was the best thing for both of them. 29 years is a long time to put up with a mostly unhappy situation. Since I was already out of the house by then (in an off-campus apartment at college), the only thing that affected me was that I have very few momentos from my childhood (where can you store stuff in a tiny college apartment that you share with 3 other guys?). So, my memories of my childhood are only in my brain. Over time, those memories have faded. Lately, I seem to remember less and less about the details of my childhood, just a high level summary of the events. I'm hoping that it is not due to the fact that there are not too many bad details. Of course, I'll never know.

In the first sentence of this post I mentioned two birthdays. The other one is mine, which is today. I hate the fact that I am sitting in a hotel room in Hotlanta and not with my family, but I'll be home late tonight. Later today, after sitting through an all-day meeting then partaking in the highly congested traffic of Atlanta (as I attempt to not make wrong turns on the way to the airport), I will meet my mother-in-law at the gate for the return trip. She happens to be heading to our house today, so I got her on the same flight back north. She is a really wonderful lady and quite active for being almost 84. I think we both get on each other's nerves after a few days (we're both set in our ways, I suppose), but I'll be working so it won't be bad at all. We actually got along really well on our trip to Jackson Hole, Wyoming this summer. She paid for the entire trip for all of us, which was unbelievably generous of her. I know she enjoyed herself immensely, but so did Sue and I. It was the first time I really forgot about work in many years.

Self-inflicted pain

On Saturday, I ran another 10K. I put this specific 10K out there as a goal for myself to push myself on the treadmill daily at the gym. It has been more difficult lately to keep myself running so I find myself walking seemingly more each day and running less. However, in January of last year I came to the conclusion that I was getting old and fat. Only one of them is in my control while still alive. So, Sue and I joined the gym and I started on the quest of bettering my 10K times with each entry.

Two years ago, my Monument Avenue 10K time was about 1:21. This April, I was down to 1:14 with a seven minute improvement. If you are a runner, please don't laugh at these times.

The race on Saturday was very different. It was not the Monument Ave. 10K, lined with people along the entire route. It was not the Monument Ave. 10K where there were timers set up every mile so you could determine how fast you were going (or how slow). This was not the Monument Avenue 10K where you saw people you knew every few yards since there were almost 25,000 people participating (that's 2.5 people per meter). This was a very different race.

In April, the 10K was run at 80+ degrees (it hit 90 by the end). Saturday, the temperature started in the upper 30s, and was in the lower 50s by race end. I was there by myself, having driven myself there and with no expectations of seeing anyone I knew. There were less than 500 registered runners, and a handful of walkers. There was no crowd lining every inch of the course. There were no clocks showing your time every mile. It was very different.

So, while I did see a handful of people I knew (Richmond is a very small city), this was a race for me. Could I do better than I did in April? How much would I need to walk? Until the end, I had absolutely no idea how I did, since the only clock was at the end. As with most races, I also had a timer chip on my shoe so could get an official time from start to finish. As I made the final turn (mostly walking by then), I was very surprised to find that I was indeed doing better than I did in April. I bettered by time by over six full minutes, taking a new personal best of just under 1:08. While this is ridiculously slow for a runner, it's not bad for a 45-year old who did nothing athletic for about 20 years. The work at the gym is worth it and I'm looking forward to hitting a new personal best time in the next Monument Ave. 10K.