This past weekend was the 2008 Calhoun’s 10 miler, the first in the Long Distance Series with the Knoxville Track Club. This was the 16th Running (I think) of the race and the 5th time that I had run it. It coincides nicely with a Spring Marathon since in a couple of weeks, there is the Strawplains Half Marathon.

Since this is a race that I know I am going to do in advance, I do two things. Pre-Register my entry form and sign up to volunteer for pre-race activities. The race is normally $15, but if I pre-register as a Knoxville Track Club member, I can take $3 off and if I go with a “no shirt” option, I can take $5 more off, making this race only $7. A real bargain.

My volunteer duties was with Registration. I would either help with Day of Race or Pre-Registered entries. I actually was a gopher for a while. There was a problem with the numbering. The person who does the preregistration showed up a little late and so the numbers were being issued for the day of race registration. This cause about 15 or so people to have the wrong bib and that had to be adjusted. I was able to help out with resolving this problem. I didn’t do anything fancy but it was nice to help.

Since I wasn’t running this race competitively (against the clock), I opted to stay at the Table until the very last moment. I had even decided that I would just stop off by my car in the first 1/4 mile to get the rest of my racing attire (hat & gloves) then to run out to the car and run back before the gun went off.

We had the national Anthem and the gun went off. I started towards the back knowing that I would be going to my car just moseying along. It was kind of nice. I wandered over to my car, not rushing, I got my hat and gloves and power gels and Clif Bloks. When I made my way back onto the course, I realized that I was the very LAST person. There was no one behind me and only a very slow jogger ahead of me. It was kind of a surreal experience knowing that I was the very last person. I knew that this was going to be short lived, but I kind of took it all in to try to gain perspective.

Once, I got situated I sped up some and started to easily pass the back of the packers. The Calhoun’s course is known for a leg buster of a hill going in the first (and again at the ninth) mile. It’s funny that a mausoleum and a grave yard is at the crest of the hill (I guess so the zombies have a good view).  But it’s not that it’s up and then evens out or a slight down hill. It’s UP and the DOWN! So on the way back, it’s UP and DOWN again. And the hill is steep, both ways (up hill without shoes… in the snow… and we liked it!).

Mile 1: 10:40 with the trip to the car and  big uphill

Mile 2: 8:52 with the big downhill and starting to find my comfortable pace

Mile 3: 9:17 thats more like it

Mile 4: 9:25

At this point, the non-competitive stance on the race that I had is beginning to wear off. I am starting to think that perhaps, I could speed things up. Of course, I hadn’t run this distance in a while and wasn’t really conditioned for this speed.

Mile 5: 9:06

Mile 6: 9:18

Mile 7: 9:16

I’m hitting a nice groove here. Coinicidentally, it’s the same pace that I was training at for my marathon last fall, so I think my body was recognizing this as “comfortable”

Mile 8: 9:18

Mile 9: 10:05 This has most of the big hill on the return trip

The last 3/4 mile is very flat by East Tennessee standards. Although around mile 6, I was beginning to be plagued with some gastro-intestinal problems (details I’ll omit)  and I had my chance to visit a porta-potty at the 1/2 mile mark. I decided to hold it and just make do (and not doo-doo… HAHAHA!). I’ve run this course 4 other times, so I knew how to handle the finish line. Once I was near the 1/3 mile to go mark, I started to pick up speed and then at the end just let everything go Full Throttle.

Mile 10: 8:21

I finished in 1:33:50 which was less than the 1:35:00 time I told My Lovely and Talented Wife was the time I was shooting for.

Funny thing was about this race is that I was fine on Saturday, a little sore on Sunday and Monday before the whole stomach virus thing, I was REALLY sore. When I ran the Chickamauga Marathon last November, I was a little stiff but never sore at all. I took no pain medication after the marathon. Very strange, but a good example on how conditioning can really make a difference both in performance AND recovery.

VOTE NOW! Voting Open until Feb 3rd 11:59pm

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There’s some great submissions for the CAPTION THIS contest. It’s not too late.  I’ll close the captions in a couple of hours, so play now for your chance to win… something.

Some of you may be wondering “where is the great content that Terry puts out” or “Didn’t he run a race this weekend, that slack ass hasn’t posted his race report”. Others of you may be saying “thank goodness”.

The reason for my absence from the great Blogosphere on the Intertube has been a viral one of sorts. It’s all started back on Sunday.

I was putting the kids down to bed, when The Younger, who had been just as peachy as all get out for the day, stops and gets this glazed look over his eyes. My spidey senses began to tingle and before I could do anything (I was already sitting down in Book Reading Mode), The Younger begins to expel every drop of liquid from his body. Thankfully he wasn’t aimed at me, or it would have been a scene from The Exorcist (except without all the head spinning).

So, a stomach virus had arrived. We quickly did the 48hr incubation math and determined that he may have picked something up from The Mall… how lovely. Thankfully he didn’t share his gift with those at Church since he hung out with us and listened to the Contemporary Music.

So Monday morning I needed to take My Lovely and Talented Wife to the airport for her trip. Since her flight was at Too Freakin’ Early, we set the alarm at 3:45am to give us 1, maybe 2 snoozes before we had to get up. My Lovely and Talented Wife was super smart and had 98% of her bags packed early on Sunday, thus we could get the bags and go.

It’s common for the kids to come into our room when they wake up at 5:30 or 6. They are pretty considerate to leave us alone, except for the times when The Younger decides to play Steamroller on us but we don’t play his game and try to ignore him for an hour or so. So, the alarm goes off at 3:45am and The Younger is in our bed. I hit snooze, thinking that I would get at least 9 more minutes of sleep. And I did sort of because at 3:53am, we are instantly awakened (as if we had 3 espressos) when we here The Younger start to heave. WE ARE AWAKE.

He ends up getting sick and so we decide to toss him in the car and take him to the airport. This way our Au Pair doesn’t have to get up way early since The Elder was still asleep. During the trip, The Younger got sick again. Another reason why My Lovely and Talented Wife is SO SMART, is that she suggested to put a towel near him during the trip. And it worked!

So when we get home, The Younger and I watch The Little Einsteins movie. Actually, HE watched it, I tried to sleep more. The morning proceeded normally. I come home from work to get the status report on The Younger… he had thrown up once more but was feeling fine. I on the other hand felt the urge to sleep, so I took advantage of the 1/2 hour that I had to sleep. I put the kids to bed, fell asleep with them and the next thing I knew it was 10pm.

I felt bad but not super yucky. I did have this great urge to sleep more, so I went straight to bed. I was awoken sometime in the early morning from The Younger finding a pack of gum and chewing (and probably swallowing) it all. I listened for any type of choking, but the kid chews it like a cow, it was easy to monitor.

I woke up and felt like a train had hit me. I wasn’t sick (yet) but I felt sloooow. I realized that I probably had a touch of what The Younger had, but for some reason, all the action seemed to be heading South. I had a couple of sitting spells before I took The Elder to school. I felt okay, but knew that I would be dehydrated from the poopiness. I stopped for a Powerade and diet Coke and went off to work.

By 9am, I was starting to decline. I only took very small sips from drinks and didn’t say much. I then started to feel very hot and sweaty. I was going to go sit on the toilet (the boys bathroom is in the other house) but as I opened the door, I felt a rush of liquid and made a dash for the edge of the porch. Although I was heaving out what was in my stomach, I observed that a combination of Green Squall Powerade and Diet Coke didn’t make the vomit taste all that bad coming back up.

So, I promptly left work, went home and slept from 10am to 5pm when it was my duty to take care of the kids. I felt like Hell, but the Au Pair needs her time off. So, I go out to the kitchen and I learn that once The Elder came home, his turn with the stomach virus has started. So, I went to go take care of him while the Au Pair entertained The Younger for an hour.

The Elder and I watched School House Rocks! DVD in its entirety. The Younger joined in after Tub Time. I then put the kids down to bed, but The Elder got sick twice (nothing much… wasn’t anything in his stomach). The Younger finally went to sleep, but I still felt like crap. I managed to get some liquids in me as well as some solid food. Based on what I can tell this bug is a 12hr or so variety…

Well, I’ll go back to work tomorrow, but now that my sleep schedule is a mess, I’m sure it’ll be interesting. Since I haven’t felt like doing anything, NOTHING has gotten done. Which is a shame because times like these are when I get a lot of stuff done. So, I do have a race report partially written, that is forthcoming, but for now it’s time to get some sleep.

I was looking at my neighborhood pharmacy, Walgreens (one on every corner), for a decongestant for The Younger. I’m usually fine with buying generic medicines since they are all just placebos anyway, why not get the cheapest you can. So, I am looking for the Children’s Sudafed in the sea of choice. There’s a decongestant - expectorant, expectorant - cough suppressant, daytime, nighttime, liquid, capsule, liqicap, etc and all the boxes look very similar.

So, I find the Children’s Sudafed and look for the Generic Counterpart, but it’s no where to be seen. I look at my choices: There is Children’s Sudafed Raspberry and Children’s Sudafed Grape. Except that with the Grape Flavor, there is just a card that you take to the pharmist. The pharmisist enters in your driver’s license information (yes, you have to show ID as long as you have a pulse) and see’s if you are on “The List”.

Sudafed, or specifically pseudoephedrine , is one of the key ingredients for methamphetamine (Crystal Meth). Since in East Tennesseee, the greatest amount of fun comes from talking about University of Volunteers, cow tipping and making crystal meth, our section of the planet is a hotspot for unlicense pharmaceutical companies. So much in fact our Govenor has created a Task Force to combat these unregulated processing facilities. As part of the fight against Crystal Meth, Sudafed (and it’s generic counterpart) is regulated to an extent that you can’t go from store to store buying multi-packs of Sudafed.

“10 packs of 96 count Sudafed? That’s quite a bit.”

“Yeah, I’m really sick. Do you have acetone here?”

So even the liquid version of Sudafed is regulated. Well, the grape flavor at any rate since that version contains the pseudoephedrine. The Raspberry flavor you could leave the store without ID at $6.99. Sitting right next to the unregulated Raspeberry Children’s Sudafed were the cards for the Grape Children’s Sudafed. You can, as a parent, decide to give your kid the pseudoephedrine-version, for “medicinal purposes” which is cheaper… don’t get that one. Maybe it’s a refund for having to go through all the work of taking the card to the pharmacist, I dunno. Perhaps the Task Force is betting that Meth Heads tripped out of their minds will pick up the unregulated version to make their Meth. Of course, this would be the same crew that would go to and get a Keg of O’Douls so they could get drunk.

So, if you are ever offered some Raspberry Meth, don’t believe them, Meth Heads prefer Grape.

DON’T FORGET TO PLAY THE CURRENT CAPTION THIS CONTEST NOW THROUGH JAN 30 2008 

This Week’s Theme: Old Fashioned

This is a vintage John Deere Tractor that you can see at the John Deere Museum in Moline, IL

Visit my Photo Hunt Archives

Here is my first attempt at a Caption THIS contest, hopefully it won’t end up as a trainwreck. But there is a prize at stake, so you got to bring your game. This is how it’s going to work:

• Submissions for the contest will be accepted via the Comment Section at the bottom of this post (you can’t miss it).
• I will keep comments open until Wednesday January 30th 2008 1pm Eastern, at which point I will close comments
• A poll will be created for YOU the reader to vote on which caption is the best. I’ll let you know how long voting will be up when the time comes.
• At the end of the voting period, the votes will be tabulated and the winner announced.

I have in my mind that the winner will be announce Monday Feb 4th, since that will be after the Supertastic Bowlerific game is played.

Your captions should either be what the subject is thinking/saying OR you can the picture as an advertisement and use a witty tagline.

You can submit comments as long as they are open. If you’ve never submitted a comment before (shame on you) and be aware that I moderate your very first comment. Once I approve your comment (really the email address) your comments will show up automatically. But before I approve your comment, it’s held in my virtual Comment Death Row until I provide the Stay of Execution.

I have the right to delete any submission that is in bad taste - but most things will be okay.

Caption THIS

Shamelessly stolen from DaniGirl over at Postcards From The Mothership (and if you go visit her send her some positive labour vibes, she can’t wait to evict that baby) Janice over at Mom on the Run!Directions:

1. Click on this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random

The first article title on the page is the name of your band.

2. Click on this link: http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3

The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.

3. Finally, click on this link: http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/

The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

You then take the pic and add your band name and the album title to it, then post your pic:

What I really want to do is honor those of you who are really good at some crazy things with a little award I’m calling ‘Madz Skills Award.’

I am very honored to receive this award, but was totally unprepared so I don’t have an acceptance speech. My “crazy” thing that won the award was my running, which has been very lean the early part of January, but that’s going to change. Thanks Maddy for bestowing this award on something that I love to do!

You can look back at THIS POST to see what actually got done… I realize that the pictures added a bunch of space and you may have missed my updated list.

But Monday was the final day. There were some projects that never got done and I would need another couple days to get them done, but the projects where I was destroying the house, seemed to have some end in sight.

But Wait… Let’s Destroy the Laundry Room mere hours before My Lovely and Talented Wife come home:

Here’s the caulking for the kitchen sink… at least the part that passed my test. I need to redo a section of caulking elsewhere.

Well, he might be a little rough on the edges and his hair a little shaggy, but he cleans up well: