Pets, Plants, and the Elderly

Look after your pets, plants, and the elderly people, it's going to get cold in Houston tonight! Low of about 38 from a high of around 70 today. I wanted to get a run in before the front came barrelling through, so at about 5:30PM, in noticeably colder temps than at 5:00PM, Leon and I went to Memorial for a jog.

The plan became one mile easy, two miles hard, and one mile easy. In the middle of the first mile, I noticed a squat fellow barreling my way. Just before I made out who this guy was, he pointed at me and yelled, "There goes a marathoner!" It was Felix, with a gaggle of runners in tow. I gave him a "Felix!" yell, and continued on my way, settling along side some random guy who seemed to be doing about 10 min/miles.

At the mile marker I launched into my two hard miles. About a minute in, some guy came from behind me and asked, "What was your time in the marathon?" Lest you think Nostradamus was running with me, I had on my "2008 Marathon Finisher" shirt. When I checked to see who was asking me this random question, it was Mr. Random that I had randomly ran beside in the first mile. I told him 4:52, and then, as we were clicking off a pace well under 9 min/mile, he asked, "Is this about 4:52 pace?" Not exactly. When I explained we were doing something a tad under 4 hour pace, he told me that he was running his first marathon in a month, Los Angeles, and had decided to do the run ..... about two months ago! This started about a half mile conversation as he explained how he stumbled upon such an ambitious undertaking, I gave him a pointer or two (don't go out too fast), and assured him that with his long run of 16 miles, he would surely finish his first marathon. At the 1.5 mile marker, he dropped away, I continued on (there's Felix and his gaggle again), and completed my two miles hard with a one mile cool down. The easy miles were about 10 min/miles, and the hard were about 8:30 min/mile; a decent tempo run.

Now go wrap your pipes, bring in Fido, and throw an extra blanket on grandma, it's time for that front!