Argh… I must of hit “save” on my last post instead of “publish” because it was still here when I checked this afternoon. I must be getting old.

I had a great run today at lunch. I knew that I was going to run on my VolunteerLanding/James White Greenway 4 mile course because I needed to record some audio for the Phedippidations podcast. The 2 mile turnaround is fairly secluded from vehicular traffic, although if you listen to the my part of the race start podcast, you can hear some avian traffic.

I was playing a little game when I took off. First it was “Guess the Temperature”. It was rather brisk with a coldness (but not bad) in the air. It didn’t have that cold air burn, but it was definitely on the edge of needing bandages or gaurds for the nipple area. Yes, think of them as runner’s pasties. Wet conditions, plus up and down of running and cool conditions can lead to — Well, I was going to put up a picture, but then my google image search for “Running Blood Nipples” or “Running Nipples” didn’t really get me what I wanted, eh-umm –

So back to the story. My original guess was around 67 degrees. Nope, Thompson-Boling had 62 degrees up on the big board. 0-1. So, as I was making my way to mile 1 I guess that my pace was 7:50, and at the first mile marker 7:51. BAMMM! You hear that? That’s me with a direct HIT! Boo-YAH!

My 4 mile run, ended up turning into a Tempo run… I ran the first 2 miles at a slower Tempo run, fast enough that you can feel it, but you can still talk. Then on the way back it was a true tempo as my 3rd mile was a 7:25 and I had no desire to run and talk.

Even with the Lake Loudon hill, I still cranked out a 8:00ish pace for the run and was very pleased. Of course, I am going to pay for this tomorrow as my body will kick into eating mode and I have no more birthday cake! Darn it.

Saturday, I will have the kids all morning and am still trying to figure what I am going to do with them. I am thinking park somewhere, but not sure where. Sunday, I get the day to do what I want and am not sure what I want to do. I’d love to find a place within a 2 hour drive to go trail run and then take pictures. That would be great, but my lack of planning has me doing nothing exciting at this point.

Thank you for everyone who wished me a happy birthday. Although I didn’t do anything wild or crazy, it was a great day. My mom came over and we ate a bunch of Sushi and had some Grolsch (but not at the same time). I also had a conference call for the Phedippidations WorldWideHalf Marathon which is coming to fruition and will be happening on Oct 7th & 8th.

I have a few things that I have been meaning to blog about and wanted to “get them off my chest” sooner, rather than later. So, if you are scaredy-cat when it comes to spiders, you’ll not want to do much further. I think Stacie might scream like she’s being attacked by kamakazi ducks, but my cute litle spider friend has become a neat “addition” to the house. But first, let me start off with some shameless self promotion and present to you the hardware that I received at the Farragut Fall 5k last week for being a fast mofo in my age group.

and on the back it has the 3rd place stuff etched into it.

“Spider, I promise not to kill you”

okay, here is my 8 legged little friend who keeps my front porch clear of some insects. Actually, he gives, me some insane photography shoot material and I wanted to make a video for YouTubesday of him stringing his web. It is amazing. Oh, and I didn’t check under the spider’s legs, so it might be a girl, I don’t know. I don’t have the fancy scientific name, so let’s go with (creepious crawlous biggeous) He’s been around for a while, but we’ll see how long he stays while as the weather gets colder.

This picture was taken last weekend when we got a bunch of rain, the web hung around for some of the time before the wind just took it out. So, if you get the Heebee JeeBees… avert your eyes.

Today I am officially part of the 35-39 age group for running events. Some even think that this is the toughest age group (all 30s are tough) because with the combination of maturity along with still the ability to not have any loss of physical assertion, it can overcome youthfulness speed.

Some might think that youth (18-22) would be dominant, and for a short race, that might be true. But the young buck tends to not be “Street Smart” and takes off too fast and burns out. The older runner has not been staying up late eating burritos and playing video games all night. He has a training regiment and what he lacks in speed he makes up in endurance.

Also, now I only need a 3:15:59 to qualify for the Boston Marathon… currently I am at 4:09…

I appreciate the Birthday wishes so far today. It’s been a good day although my run wasn’t all that great, at least I am alive and healthy enough to run, right? It was supposed to be a Tempo run, but it just wasn’t all that Tempoish.

Sometime ago I had blogged (I think on LiveJournal, but didn’t tag it well) that my fellow birthday mate, Hilary Duff should be sharing some birthday love with me. So far, her peoples have not contacted me yet for any formal arrangements.

[names have been with held to protect the innocent, eerrrrrr guilty]

Do you have that special someone out there who needs a nice sentiment?
Maybe that couch isn’t as comfortable anymore? Perhaps it was to celebrate an absolutely brilliant 18 mile run? Maybe your new work gear came in and you feel damn sexy… Perhaps it’s that coworker who has just about decided to become single again… Maybe a vicious attack bear needs a break… *erh*ps the co*pany you work for sucks… nice treat after a nice ride? Maybe it’s your big brother is soooo *uckin’ cool that are in awe… It could be that you celebrated a 5k actually being equal to (or greater) than 5000 meters. Marathon Taper: Carbo LOAD! Maybe you need extra supplies for the kamakazi fowl in your area… Maybe those grandchildren needs an extra sugar rush at 8pm… Silently you want it for yourself… The beta version of your Tigger cake bounced on the floor (it’s what they do best)… Your podcast has “The 12th listener” now… You need something to keep that yappy in-law quiet for 2 seconds…

You were excited that it made the “O list” but then disappointed that O was for Oprah…

Well, fret no more. I bring you something that (I think) may just do the job. If it doesn’t I never of had this stuff, but it looks and sounds pretty damn yummy.

During the month of October, Dale & Thomas is offering 4-cup bags of their gourmet popcorn for free. Pay only $2.95 shipping per bag. It looks like you can order now and they will ship them out starting 10/2.
Expires: 10/31/2006

“every breath you take, every cake you bake
I’ll be watching you…” - Police

Don’t you hate it when you are 1c short of All-Purpose flour (pronounced FL-err here in East Tenn) and can’t bake that second cake? Me Neither.

It’s a hard rule at my office that when it’s your birthday, you supply the eatins that day (staple items are cake and ice cream) and you receive a Mystery Surprise Birthday Card. Everyone sings horribly out of tune the copyrighted version of happy birthday, unless you don’t like the Tennessee Volunteers (as one guy does), then you get a loud and vibrant rendition of Rocky Top (…you’ll always be home sweet home to me… good ole Rocky Top -WOOOOOOO Rocky Top Tennessee)

So to follow the office political protocol, I bake 2 cakes. Sure as hell that I get a whole cake to myself to share with family & friends and not moochers. Of course, I mooch like crazy on other people’s birthday… heehee. So above is Cake #1 which will be the cake that I bring to work. It’ll be covered in a Chocolate butter icing that only has 1.2 million calories per ounce, but it’s like Crack. I guess that I will have to purchase the $5 bag of flour at the convenience store (convienent for you, not your wallet) so that I cake be one of the Knaves of Three.

It is my personal tradition to purchase something for myself for my birthday. Typically it is something that I have been wanting that I don’t feel like I deserve (like about everything). I’m not sure what it is going to be this year, strange. Perhaps I will get something running related, ugh, how unoriginal.

I received a special item in my mailbox the other day… Mail ART! Marianna (rhymes with Banana - ’cause she’s fruity tooty) aka Greek Chickie, sent me a way cool mail art and I owe her an semi-apology for not getting it up sooner. I am trying to play reanimator with my Printer/Scanner/Copier thing and I did not scan it, but she emailed it to me regardless. YAY!

This race is the road race that is closest to my house, so it’s almost a no-brainer to do it. Plus, the sponsorship is good which means great swag in the race bag. For example, this year a chiropractor gave hot/cold packs in the race bags, there were pens and pencils and some sticky pads. It was good stuff.

I was going to volunteer for this race, but they didn’t actually need me… more on that later. Last Year, I didn’t run the race, but volunteered but this year, I wanted to get another 5k under my belt, so I opted to run and do a volunteer stint pre-race.

Due to unforeseen kid problems, I did not leave when I wanted to, which meant that I did not warm-up like I wanted to because I had to be there to set up early. So, I spent the first little while trying to get my race number and stuff and then find the race coordinator. When I finally found Ed, he told me that he had plenty of people and that he’d email me another time when he needed some help… good enough for me.

There was a forecast for some wet weather in the area. We had gotten a few spotty showers here and there, but I was debating on whether to bring my iRiver to record material for Phedippidations and for my own podcast. I knew that I could record the stuff for Phedippidations (higher priority, time sensitive) in the car or back home… I had a plan for that recording. The material from my own podcast would be of the race itself… like I did for the Scholar’s Run.

I ended up opting to wear the MP3 player. So mic’ed up, I started walking to the start line while recording the my submission. Due to road noise, I have a ton of stuff to edit, so hopefully it won’t take me too long.

At the start line, we had a 15 second downpout before it let up. Not sure if the wet weather really was going to help but it was nice to not have any heat. My goal for this race was to break my personal course record of 25:38, something that should be pretty easy for me to do with my current training.

So the mayor, Eddy Ford, sounded the gun and we were off. Most of this race is covered in hills, perhaps, the last 3/4 mile or so is as about as flat as you can get around here. So for the first 1/4 mile, it was a nice steady uphill. I found a pace that worked, and fellow runner Darrell can appreciate this as the person I was pacing behind, was indeed a woman. (I found out that she won an award for fastest Womens Master runner -over 40- I think).

“6:59″ is what the split timer said as I passed and I could not believe it. I was running on a 5k PR pace and it didn’t feel like it. Sure I was pushing it, but I didn’t feel in pain, so I wondered how many more hills there would be and would I have enough to capture that elusive 5k PR…

I can’t remember thinking anything specific while I was running. Sometimes the mind wanders and gets distracted. Typically, I think of a song and that helps me get through the miles. I lost my pacer at the water stop, but knew that if I could keep this pace, even I hit the wall at the end I would probably be sub 23-23:15 and that would be a good day.

I think that the 2 mile split was off as my second mile was a 7:50 and I knew that I hadn’t slowed down all that much. For some reason, I didn’t care. I just kept running. At one point, as we were running through a residential neighborhood, this kid hits the curb and almost does a face plant. Thank goodness for youthfulness and agility as he was able to regain his balance in one quasi-ballet move and didn’t break pace.

Had that kid fallen, I would of had to hurdle him or else mow him over. In the last 0.75 mile I paced behind this guy and his son, who was having a hard time keeping up. They were traveling at my pace and it was nice to have them there in front of me.

The last part of the race is on a greenway section within the park and so there is quite a number of turns. Because of the rain and mud, I was not taking the turns as sharp and as fast as I wanted so it was slowing me down a little. It was also slowing that kid down too, but not his dad, who was as I was thinking in my age group because it was a 30-39 breakdown.

With 1/2 mile to go, I pass the kid with the dad just 10-15 strides ahead of me and I didn’t think that I would have any juice at the end for a sprint finish. The dad started to pull away from me in the last 0.1 of a mile and I just concentrated on the finish line. As I rounded the corner, about ready to collapse, I looked at the finish clock, it was reading 21:59, 22:00, 22:01 - WTF! No Way… so I gunned it with everything I had… I stopped my watch looking at the time and thinking… I need to stay for the awards, I have a shot at an age award!

It took me a while before I was able to catch my breath… I was very thankful for the guy who handed me the water. I needed air and water!

When I calmed down, I went over to the last turn of the course (maybe last 10-20 meters) to cheer the runners. After a while, I was starting to get pretty hungry and there was good stuff in the race tent. As we were waiting for the awards, there were a couple of spotty downpours. Little did we’d know that all-day Saturday it would rain and that this was the first of 6″ in the Farragut area.

I didn’t win squat in the doorprizes… the only thing that would have been worthwhile was a free session with the professional organizer. That’d be useful. So, onto the awards.

“In the 30-39 Male Category,” the annoucer began.

“Oh, that’s me,” I thought nervously. Relatively, I don’t run fast enough to consistently win age group awards. Typically, my very best and fastest time is enough for 4th and 5th, especially at the larger more popular events that attract athletes with more natural ability than myself. However, at smaller races, my very best races at these venues can win me age group awards (Run for the Deaf 2005) or not (most other races). But the odds were better at smaller races.

“In a time of,” the announce spewed out rapidly to get through these scores and get to drier areas, “22:08, Terry Higgins”

“SAH-WEET-TAH” I thought, as I walked up to ceremoniously get the medal put around my neck. I didn’t get have any hot half-naked chicks give me kisses for my meager 3rd place finish, but I didn’t care. I had hardware and officially my 3rd fast PR time (of all time).

My official time was the 22:08, the fastest 5k time I have run since I tied my current 5k PR time of 21:56 in November of 2002. Yes, almost 4 years since I ran at that speed! I finished 24th out of 160 finishers, which is my first time that I finished in the top 25 of a race with more than 100 runners. I was 3rd out of 16 in the 30-39 age group.

It was a successfull morning but not without its price. I managed to get a blister on the side heel of my right foot. Oh well… the price you pay for a passion.

I never got a chance to say anything about Friday at all and seeing that I was not really near a computer all weekend… I couldn’t do a thing about updating. Also, one of our small computers (a older refurb model) seems to have bitten the bullet. It’s in a loop error that I am not sure if I can fix.

Friday was a crazy day of sorts. I ended up leaving work early because Jen was in a disarray with the kids and her sickness and just a bunch of other stuff. I came home and let her sleep until the evening when she had to go her nails done. I mean, what better than that to cheer up a gal? When she got home we watched the movie Sideways as part of our informal “date night”.

Saturday could have been called “The Flood”… locally we got around 6 inches of rain. some places and businesses were even flooded as it rained ALL DAY LONG. Even the UT vs. Marshall game was put on hold because of severe weather. In the morning, I had the Farragut Fall 5k, which will get its own race report. we had a babysitter because I had the race in the morning and Jen had an event that morning/afternoon. So, I had the kids Saturday Afternoon and we didn’t do a whole lot because of the rain. I took the kids out on the porch, but mainly we watched college football… “wanna watch football with daddy?” I was biting at the bit to go out and take pictures, I knew by the amount of rain that we’d be having some flooding, but by the time that Jen got home it was too late and even some of the roads were washed out as well. I guess I could have biked, but that would have been, like… work.

Sunday we had a fairly quiet one. It was cloudy and semi-rainy as well. So there was not much outside stuff going on. In the afternoon, I took Eric out with me to take some pictures that I wanted to do the day before. Although some places weren’t as flooded as I would have liked or anticipated, it was still pretty neat. I had my Canon AV-1 (SLR) and a digital Canon Elph. I will download the Elph pictures, but the AV-1 pictures, you’ll be able to (eventually) see the good ones on my photoblog.

I have a busy week this week… I have cakes to bake!

I had promised them that this would be up on Monday of this week… but given my ultimate slackness and the bubonic plague that came over the household, I had to defer this post until today…

John & Kat are great friends. John and I went to college and his twin brother, Jim, is my little brother in the fraternity. John is the little brother of my friend Gray who, if you are a regular reader, is the same guy that I was in his wedding June and he and I did the Tellico Sprint Triathlon in July.

John spent a number of moons over in Iraq doing soldier stuff and while he was over there I blogged about him from time to time. When my archives are back, I’ll try to tag his posts.

I absolutely love the name Lauren. In fact, I wanted my daughter, if I had one… to be named Lauren Dawn, but that won’t happen. I will have cede that name for someone else. But as MUCH as I love Lauren, I will FOREVER call this girl Scott or probably Scottie… because that’s the way I roll. I can only imagine that there is some teary story on how this is a family name and means so much. When I get reamed for this post, I will pass on the story! But you know what, this is coming from a Terry… a Freakin TERRY, TERRI, TERRIE, TERRYE, TERE… I’m pulling the transgender name card and if that’s not enough, I will call you!

Kat is a wonderful gal and she actually started to get Masters in Statistics before I went for mine, but given that I had the luxury of quitting my job and going to school full time, I finished first. But we got to talk shop very briefly.

I know, I know enough crap about the parents, it’s all about the kid right! I know, I have 2… I know how this works! So, without further ado, I am pleased to present to you the incredibly beautiful (lauren) Scott Monihan:

Kathy and John Monihan are elated to announce the birth of their daughter, Lauren Scott Monihan. Born at 7:14 PM, Thursday, September 14, 2006 at Reston Hospital in Reston, VA. Lauren weighed in at a slim 6lbs, 7oz and 19 inches long. After a 10 hour 7 minute labor and 14 minutes of pushing, baby and mother are doing great, and are now resting at home.

I am just about caught up with everything and just about everyone. Wow, I sure hope that I will have a computer when I am in American Samoa… a weekend is bad enough but 2.5 weeks of catch-up. YIKES!

I did not run yesterday. I actually only worked half a day. Wednesday is Jen’s day for home scholling Eric and young boy named Joshua. On Tuesday and Thursday, he is a Joshua’s house for school. So, with Jen being busy with the 3yos, I had to take Ryan to get his 15 month well check.

Ryan did fine with at the pediatrician. He ranks in the 5-10% percentile of weight and 10% of Height, which means that he is a small squirt. With an average male and a Filipina mother, these kids are not going to be giant by any stretch of the imagination. Okay, I can imagine them as big as Godzilla terrorizing downtown Knoxville, but I do have an active imagination.

It was also time for some vaccinations. Some people are super anti-vaccinations, but we’ll go for the risk as small as it might be. Ryan had to get one in his leg and the other in his arm, and he only cried a little bit. He quieted down and after the 10 minute wait in the office, we headed to Chik-Fil-A for some lunch.

By the time i dropped Ryan off and got to work it was past Noon and it was just easier to skip the workout. It’s probably a good thing since I had such a speed workout on Tuesday. Today (Thursday) I brought my Heart Rate Monitor which I will run a control easy run. Typically, I do a two day taper before races but if I force myself to do an easy run, I should be okay.

The Powerball Lottery is 203 million… I think I may play, if I win I will have to do a special contest for you all out there.

website news: I have exported all my LiveJournal entries and will be adding them shortly. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to add your comments as there is no way to extract the data with any ease. Voiceposts will also have to be manually uploaded and that will take a few days.