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Showing posts from July, 2009

Busy night at Court Square Tavern

Court Square Tavern was packed last night for a Friday in July. This comes in part because a group of us have decided to reclaim it, to make it into what it needs to be - Charlottesville's most awesome bar. Or at least, an antidote to every other place in town. For the record, I don't know what every other place in town is like. I only know that the Tavern is a place where I feel at home. Last night, the woman who first introduced me to the place was in there, which felt like serendipity because that means the service might be back up to their standard. Why do I love the place so much? Maybe because it's always there for me. It's a place I can go and feel at home pretty much no matter what. Sometimes I feel like this existence is nothing more than a series of stages on which we play our lives. If we're not on those stages, we don't quite feel alive. The point of life is to make sure that we're playing an interesting part, on whatever stage we end upon. I don

Lunch run report

My bus will be here in 10 minutes to take me back to work. I left my office in Court Square at 1:00 PM for a quick run. It was nice to go to work in my running clothes. Now I'm showered and waiting for the bus, eating a black bean burger with two slices of cheese. I sort of mistimed my run. I had hoped to run for about an hour and ten minutes, but I left the house without my watch today. Instead, I ran for about 55 minutes through the neighborhoods north of the Downtown Mall. Turns out, I don't like to run without the watch. It's an incredibly useful device. I've never really worn a watch as an adult. My parents gave me a Mickey Mouse watch when I was a teenager, but I stopped wearing it because I was allergic to something on it. Now, I'm allergic to not knowing what time it is when I'm running. I've more or less ditched the iPod, though. It's too much hassle to run with it, and I like to be able to take in what I'm listening to. I enjoy hearing bird

Seeking a balance in training

I'm sort of at a crossroads with the training, in that I am not entirely committed to going to bed every Friday by 10:00 AM so I can run my long run. Don't get me wrong. I would love more than anything to run several miles every Saturday morning, but Friday is the only night I get to go out. And, going out is a vital ingredient in my quest to build a social life. Yet, so is running. I have enjoyed meeting people so far in the marathon training program, and I am definitely not going to drop out of it. I still plan on running in the Richmond marathon in November. I'm going to continue to boost my mileage each week, but I do have to seriously weigh what my goals are, and achieve some sort of a balance. Do I want to run as fast as I can, or do I simply want to finish? That is not a decision I have to make today! This entry is mostly a place to organize my thoughts on the subject. I also promised I'd update folks, so here we go. I do need to figure out a way to keep better r

Racing Forest Lakes, adding the miles, stopping the bleeding toe

My middle toe on my right foot is bleeding. I have no idea why, exactly. It must have chafed against my sock while I was on my run tonight. Two friends of mine who are expecting their first child have been looking after the kids an hour at a time so I can get another hour of running in. This week I've got my miles up to about 27, which is right about where I wanted to be. I skipped a long run on Saturday in favor of running a 5K for the Kiwanis Club. Someone had asked me if I was planning on running it, and I decided to put that over the long run. The start time was later, and I wanted to try my feet at another run. I got there at 7:00 AM, amazed at the commitment I seem to have to running. I jogged from my car to the registration table, filled out my card, and then ran the first part of the course and back to warm-up. For the first time, I had a watch on me so I would have some sense of how much time had passed. On my first long-run, I ran way too fast, according to running friend