I run so fast, I got a speeding ticket

  As we neared the last leg of our journey, sweat dripping down our faces, the heat of the sun and weariness of our legs threatened to slow our pace.  "I can't..." he said, wearily.  "I can't go on any more.  Leave me, go on without me..."  His voice trailed off, too weak to speak.  "No way," I said, renewed with determination.  "We're doing this... together."  The end was in sight.  A crowd had gathered, we could see worried faces in the distance.  As our legs somehow kept our feet slapping rhythmically against the hard concrete, we hear the crowd cheering.   We cross the finish, the wave of accomplishment overcoming us.  "We did it..." he panted, his voice barely above a whisper.  Older women are weeping, younger women are throwing phone numbers written on underwear at us....

... ok, so this may be the highly dramatized version of my friend Jamie and my run last Saturday.  I'm sure a movie will be made on our run based on this excerpt I wrote.  I'm looking at you Hollywood.  You can mail me the academy award.  Our actual run was rather unexciting.  Though, I did run so fast a cop gave me a speeding ticket.  Well, he says it was for driving 15 mph over the speed limit (on the way to the park to run), but I think what he really meant was he was giving me the ticket because he knew how fast I was going to be running.

    Overall, it was a very good run with Jamie.  My concerns that I had brought up in my last post were nonexistent.  We completed 6 miles at a pace of 9:50 per mile.  Both of us felt pretty good about that pace.  I really started feeling it about the 5 mile mark, but was able to finish with only minor difficulty.

   Yesterday I got a new toy!  My wife and daughter got me a Garmin Forerunner 405 for a combined Father's day/birthday present, and decided to give it to me yesterday rather than tomorrow (I'll let Susan tell the story).  When it comes to Father's day, everyone knows that the rule is, the more expensive the gift is, the better the father you are.  Period.  End of story.  Pretty obvious that expensive gift = love.  In my mind, the decision to buy happened via a conversation between my wife and daughter that went something like this:

Hailey:  You know Mom, Father's Day is coming up.  We need to get Dad a present.
Susan:  You're right, what should we get him?
Hailey:  Well, he is the best Dad there is, providing so much for his family and incredibly loving and caring.
Susan:  You're right, and he is also incredibly good looking and great in... um, never mind Hailey... So, what should we get him, a new laptop?
Hailey:  Wait, wait, wait... lets not get carried away here mom...  He isn't THAT awesome.
Susan:  How about that GPS watch he wants?
Hailey:  Bingo.

   Yes, my daughter is only 17 months-old, but I'm still pretty sure this is how the conversation went.  So, I went for my first run with it today and it is frickin' AWESOME!  Garmin has its own run tracking software, so now I have a few decisions to make.  1 - do I continue to post runs to facebook and annoy my friends?  This used to automatically happen via runkeeper, but now I will have to actively "share" my runs via the Garmin software.  2 - do I continue to track my runs in runkeeper?  I can export the data and then import it into runkeeper... but I'm not sure why I would do this... so probably not.

    So... running is going well, Cardinals are sucking bad, football is still on strike (or locked out, or whatever), and work is good.  That about sums up my life right now!

-Doc