down in sandy San D

I'm not dead! I just haven't, um, kept up with this blog in months and months and months.

Yeah ... I keep a personal blog elsewhere, but this one was just going to be for workouts. I ran into a frequent problem of mine, which is not keeping up with a project for more than a couple months at a stretch. (This may explain a few of my issues with school as well.)

I'm still running a few miles a times a week, though without a timer (I haven't measured the distance at any of my usual running areas). I am not at all sure my physical fitness has significantly improved, though. It's hard for me to do a good workout alone, without even a machine to keep me honest. I really need a team or a running partner to drill with -- it's finding one that is proving tough.

The family I now live with has an active young dog, but the dog likes to do 10 minutes of sprints and then go lie down in the shade and pant. Distance running is not his thing. Unfortunately, it's hard to find an excuse to not take when I go running, so he's sort of slowing me down, but maybe he'll shape up over time. Or else I'll start doing longer runs and then I really won't be able to drag him with me. The dog will happily hike until he drops, but running is a different story. Of course, at the pace I run, he might indeed be able to keep up if I went longer. I dunno.

I didn't run the San Diego Rock'n'Roll Marathon, because there was no way I was going to be ready in time for that one, but maybe a marathon this winter would not be out of reach. I did GET to the marathon, though, because I sat down and asked myself: "Hmm, what would my favorite athlete do if he couldn't run the race?" Answer: volunteer for the marathon staff. So I got an authoritative-looking t-shirt and spent about ten hours putting ice into small bags and handing it out to people. It was hot and I got soaked. The time I used to spend carrying groceries pays off: those sacks of ice weighed 20 lbs each (before the hot weather melted off some of their water, of course) and I could carry two at a time. They didn't feed us, either, so all I could do was grab snacks from the finish line (fortunately we were right there, but we were also the station where ALL the runners who managed to stagger to the finish started crashing. Oh my god, the hordes.) But at least it was a good deed, I suppose.