Rock'n'Roll Half Marathon

I ran the Rock'n'Roll Half Marathon in Nashville today! Finally, after what seems like a million miles of training. 

It poured in Nashville before the race. Like, we had to hide in a car wash to get out of the rain (we were not the only people in there). The race was postponed almost a half an hour to try to avoid having runners on the course during a storm. When it came time to actually run, it wasn't raining anymore, but I was already soaked. My poor shoes and socks were soaked. My worst fear was that the weather was going to do a typical Tennessee thing and rain really hard, then the sun would come out and immediately there would be oppressive humidity. But the sun never really came out. 

Thanks for doing me a solid, Sun. I appreciate it.

I'd say the first 7 miles were pretty easy. I kept a good 9-10 minute pace. Then I decided to grab a little cup of Gatorade and eat a Poweraid energy gel packet. That was probably my worst mistake. I got a horrible cramp in my left side that I couldn't shake the entire rest of the race. It slowed me down considerably. 

But I finished the race. I finished it slower than I had wanted to, but there were more hills in Nashville than I anticipated running up. I'm a slow poke up hills. 

I can't wait to do another one! But first up, I'm going to house this Burger King and take a loooong nap on the couch with some french bulldogs. 

Spring PT Test

I took my Spring physical fitness test yesterday. 

I have always been a bit worried about my push up score. Actually, I've ALWAYS been worried about my run score, but lately its been more about the push up score. 

Let me clarify, I am NEVER worried about passing. I could pass any day of the year someone asked me to take a PT test. However, I prefer to study for any test I take. And a few weeks before the scheduled bi-annual PT test, I amp up my push up and sit up performance to make sure I am ready. I work on the run at all times. 

Even though I truly enjoy running... apparently I enjoy running slow!

So my Spring scores are as follows:

What did I just see? Was that at least a 90% in all 3 events? Are you freaking kidding me!?!? That is the first time in my entire career I've done that! 90-90-90 qualifies you for the Physical Fitness Badge. You sew it on you PT uniform. 

I was hoping for a better run time, but I burned myself out doing sit ups (and it was raining, so I love to blame the weather). My push ups were more than I expected so I was really happy with that count. 

One of my Soldiers earned his PT Badge yesterday too. We joked that we are PT Patch Buddies now. The real joke is that only douchebags wear the patch on their uniform. Sorry if I offend anyone, but seriously, you know its stupid. This patch is like a giant neon sign that screams, "EXPECT TOO MUCH FROM ME!" No thanks, I'll pass on that. 

But earning it for the first time after 10 years of service was still a nice milestone to meet. 

Ditch

I undertook a huge landscaping job in September. It took me the whole month to do it. I'm actually still not 100% done with it. 

We have a ditch that runs between my backyard and the neighbor's. It's the neighborhood water run off. The unfortunate part about it is that the actual drain for all the water to flow into is in my other neighbor's yard. So whenever it rains, all the water sits on top of our grass and eventually crosses our entire back yard to empty into the neighbor's drain. The ground is mostly clay so the water doesn't soak into the ground. Basically, when it rains I have lake front property. 

So my yard doesn't erode away around the ditch, I let all kinds of weeds and crap grow in the ditch. Tall, controlled weeds with deep roots to keep all the land together. It didn't look bad. At least, I didn't think so. But my neighbors whom I share the ditch with apparently thought it was an eyesore through their privacy fence that they can't see the ditch through. So they went out there and hacked it all down and killed everything. 

Now its an eyesore. So I undertook the job of ripping out all the weeds, vines, tree stumps and bullshit from the root to clear the entire ditch. Just pulling the weeds took me three weeks. The rest of the time I've spent rearranging the rocks in the ditch so they do their job. They were strewn around all willy-nilly in the ditch before and were not doing anything at all. Now they help filter the water coming off the street. 

I basically reinvented the functionality of the ditch. I made it a lot smaller by consolidating the rocks. I laid grass seed. I still have a lot of work to do-- more rocks need to be moved and I need to acquire some rocks as well. Next spring I will need to saturate the rocks and nearby land with Round Up 365 to keep it from growing weeds again. The rest of it should become grass and we will be able to mow it like the rest of the yard.

And when the frenchie keeping in fence goes up, my backyard will look like it should have the whole time we lived here but were too broke or lazy to do it.