Ah, Thanksgiving!!!

I just LOVE Thanksgiving weekend.  It's my favorite holiday of the year.  This year, I'm thankful for some great 2012 Thanksgiving weekend memories, including:

• Last Saturday's Cranksgiving bike ride with our gang.  Lots of fun, even though I only rode the downhill half.  What a great start to the holiday season -- I hope we make this an annual tradition.
• Dinner Tuesday evening with four of my class of 2010 Sunday School students (now Juniors in college) home for the holidays.
• A dinner and movie date with Katie McClave on Wednesday -- ARGO is just as good the second time.
• My 14th running in the 16 years I've lived in KC of Thursday's Sprint 5k.  Spotted Jason Gertzen with his 2 kids at the start.  His 6th grade son dusted us all, but I did manage to finish in front of Jason and his 9th grade daughter -- both great kids.  Ran a 10:21 first mile in heavy traffic, followed by a 10:00+ uphill (I missed the split) and a 9:35 or less finishing mile.  I'm really much better on the downhills, where I frankly have a serious weight advantage....
• The Plaza lighting ceremony with 3 families of friends and kids -- lots of fun!
• Reading Mike/Rob's blog on their Prairie Spirit trail ride and Mitchell's blog on his amazing Turkey day bike ride.
• Watching as a family Katie's Creighton beat Wisconsin in basketball last night -- great fun!
• Runnng a very successful 10 miler this morning in 25 degree and beautiful sunshine with Runner's Edge.  Averaged 10:21's for 6 of the last 8 miles (over a minute slower on the other, two uphill miles). 

Looking forward to seeing everyone on our monthly run Dec. 3rd!

Bill

Thanksgiving Ride with the Prairie Village Yacht Club

I found out about a ride on Thanksgiving with the PV Yacht club. It has nothing to do with yachts and is not even a club. It is a yahoo group.  Well today was the warmest day so that's the ride I chose.  We headed North through town to N. KC to the Dennys for breakfast.   It was a similar route Bill, Rob, Mike, and I did for Cranskgiving, same bridge.

These guys were serious. All the other bicycles were high end -- no name brands like Trek or Specialized, but custom or other small specialty bike makers.  Also check out my speed for the 1st 13 miles. I had breakfast and then we took off fast. No easy going for the 1st half hour. I struggled to keep up.  One of the riders, Doug, rode with me for a while. The group waited. But the second time they waited, I told them to point me to the start and I'll ride myself.  Right after we split, I found a wall and sat for 5 minutes to catch my breath. Also there was a northerly wind, so we were riding straight into it on the way back. I rode back on Paseo, the same way we came back on the Cranksgiving ride.

Overall average speed was 12.6 mph, But the 1st 13 ranged from 10.4 to 25.7 mph with most 1-mile splits above 15 mph.

Then I came home and helped with dinner.  We made 2 pies with a butter crust, the same recipe my son Nathan used.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/245864192

Prairie Spirit

Mike and I took advantage of a bright and mild November day and headed south with our bikes to the Prairie Spirit Trail.
We pulled into Ottawa, Ks., right about 9 a.m. and, after Mike marked his territory near the old train depot (in his defense, the place wasn't open), headed through and then out of town on a planned 30-mile ride.

Mike has ridden this trail two or three other times, but this was my first. It's amazing that the state of Kansas has constructed such a long (51 miles) and well maintained trail. The scenery is mostly vast stretches of farmland, but the trail itself is on an old wooded railroad bed. It's flat, and straight. You don't coast down any hills or pump up any, either. There were very few people out until we were on our way back, and even then the numbers were sparse.
Since neither of us has ridden much lately, we were getting a little saddle sore after about 20 miles. We were glad to dismount for good about 12:30.

The hardest part of the whole morning was finding some place to eat lunch afterward. Driving slowly through downtown Ottawa we spotted a local pizza shop and decided to go in for a sandwich. We weren't 5 feet inside the place when Mike sensed it wasn't going to work out. I talked him into staying, and we sat down in a booth.

I was going to take more pictures, but what you see in the background is pretty much all there is to see on the part of the trail we rode.

The waitress came over and announced they had a pizza and salad buffet, or we could order off the menu. Mike didn't want pizza and went for one of the four sandwich selections. "They can be on wheat or white bread," the waitress said, but when Mike wanted his on wheat, she announced they had only white on hand that day.
Scratch the sandwich. 
Still, we did not leave. Mike went with the salad bar, and I ordered the pizza and salad buffet. When we got to the salad bar, there was about a half pint of lettuce in a gigantic bowl, a few croutons, and a dozen or so small crocks of dressing. On the next table, the pizza looked like Friday's leftovers.
Scratch the pizza place. The waitress granted me a styrofoam to-go cup for my $1.95 20-oz. soda (so much for small-town prices), and just as I was about to turn and leave, and rather large gentleman in business attire approached, looked at my tights, bike shorts and bright yellow bike shirt and asked "You been ridin'?" Nice guy. And sharp, too.
Three miles and a half dozen Mexican restaurants later, we were at McDonalds on the far south side of town. Mike spent $2.82 for lunch and was happy. I had chicken fingers, I believe (doesn't everything taste the same at McDonalds?), and we were finally on our way back home.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! -- Rob

Pilgrim Pacer Half Marathon

I finished a half marathon!  My foot was still bothering me and I had almost decided to skip running any halfs this fall.  But with 60-70F weather, I decided to try it.  I felt pretty good. No real pain in my foot. I ran about  8 miles with a friend from work, Omar Olivares.  Those 8 miles went fast as we solved most of our company's problems.  I just wish I could remember the solutions we came up with.  Seriously, it was a bonus to to have a great conversation, and not only about work. At 8 miles I took a 10-12 minute restroom stop (waiting in line, etc.)  Below are my official times. If you subtract 10 min, my pace was 10:50.  Not bad for not being really trained for it, and I was just running and enjoying the day.

       overall place 273       M 55-59 age group place 8        2:32:47        11:40/M

My Garmin stopped working after 4 min.  But I have a finisher's medal to prove I did it.

A Scott Oakes Classic 7-Mie Run

I've been jumping in a Tuesday night short run (usually 3 miles) at Lifetime Fitness that Scott Oakes, a past runner from Runner's Edge, participates in.  Scott was historically a slower runner than me, but currently we're on an even level.  He invited me to join him on his favorite 7 mile hill run last night out of Shawnee Mission HS.  We had a ball in what I would describe as a "Scott Oakes Classic Run."  Specifically:  it took us about 90 minutes for our run due to (a) a stop I forced in at Walgreens to hit the restrooom, (b) a stop Scott threw in at a childhood friend's house to 'say hello and have a drink of water.'  ...it was actually a nice stop, and (c) multiple stops for short walks for no apparent reason throughout the run...which wasn't necessarily a bad thing.  We ran on very hilly side streets in Mission, KS on very narrow and irregular sidewalks that had me thinking about sudden falls, broken hips, and feeling very old already....But in the end, I was glad we did the run.  It reminded me that there is no such thing as a bad run when one runs with a friend! --Bill