A day at the races (and assorted oddities)

Last night, I went to the Meet of the Miles at the University of Minnesota. It'd been a while since I'd been in Dinkytown and it's interesting to see the changes, how student life has changed and how it's stayed the same. I plan on doing some damage at this race next year, so I wanted to get a feel for the place again; the first time I ran in the fieldhouse, there was only a dirt track and a lot of the people racing last night had not yet been born. On the other hand, there were a lot of old-timers; some of these races become a who's-who, with people decades past their glory days trying to scrape out one more age-class record; that will be me pretty soon.

It's hard not to race when the competitive juices are flowing. I did a couple of laps on the track with a few pick-ups and I was hanging with the 4:45 mile crowd. I wanted to race. I could've raced (if barely breaking 6 minutes counts as "racing" for me). My left ankle was creaking a bit and I could feel some tightness in my hips and back, but I was not struggling to breathe, which is my main worry with asthma and dry air.

My main competition was not there. One was in surgery, one was officiating at the race, one is not racing in the winter. What I noticed overall was that no one takes the race as seriously as I do. Had I raced, I would've pushed and probably got myself hurt. So, not racing was the right decision.

I'm supposed to be running right this minute. It's supposed to be 50 degrees today (in Minnesota in January!), but it was only 29 on my thermometer when I planned to start, so I'm holding off. The plan is 9 miles with 4-6 hard quarter miles thrown in. We'll see.

More changes

For those interested in my personal life, last year I went back to an old relationship ("like a dog to his vomit") and it's ended again, so it's time to make a clean break. Fresh starts in January seem to be the order of the day. The woman who made last year miserable is one of these [you can probably narrow the field easily]: