I am helping out at the Stratton junior camp for the week. Day 1 was a little disheartening; we did their uphill skate time trial, which is a sprinter’s course. It was also my first time on rollerskis since last November. I joined in anyway, and I did manage to beat all of the J2 boys and all of the girls as well. Almost all of the older boys were well ahead of me. We then raced in four person heats; I ended up racing against two girls, who I beat by a “comfortable” two second margin.

Today, though, was my day. Uphill running day. I felt good, attacked the hill when I needed to, saved my strength at other times, and set a big course record, running 20:43, almost a minute ahead of last year. And while last year wasn’t an effort I was proud of, I was coming off some better summer running results.

So I think this bodes well for my last two races of the season coming up in September.

Oh – I should mention that a J2 by the name of Adam was the top camper in the race, finishing in 24:40. I don’t know his last name, but I know he is a skier to watch!

Also, we had a nutrition talk here the other night, and I heard something new and helpful: the whole (and good for you) foods in the grocery store are all around the outside edge. The more time you spend there (and out of the aisles) the better! The general though wasn’t new to me but the geographic framing is the best new advice I can remember.

So, while I couldn’t find any coverage of myself on the web, it turns out I did make the 11 PM news broadcast. And the 10 seconds of me talking does not include any mention of Kris–so he is the one on the cutting room floor. They even showed me crossing the line, and–embarrassingly–I appear to have eased up in the final meters of the race. So I can’t claim to have been disrespected, and I can’t claim that the loss of my time bonus is anyone’s fault but my own.

I was top NH finisher at the Cigna 5 km race tonight, running 14:50.7, within a second of last year’s time (14:49.8). That 0.7 seconds means I won’t take home a $250 bonus, but top NH finisher means I won a hundred buck, plus got interviewed and should be on television.
And what do you think they asked me? About how it feels to win New Hampshire’s two biggest summer road races two years in a row? No. They wanted my thoughts on Kris’s prospects in Vancouver next February.
I said something very nice about my brother, then called him on the phone and ranted at him; none of the language I used would be appropriate for this blog…

Last Saturday, just before I turned off of Tripoli Road and onto the road to Russell Pond Campground, I finished by 30,000th mile of logged running. Yes–I know that since I estimate the distances of most of my runs, since in college I accepted the canonical distances for most of our runs even though they were all overestimates, since I have been known to fill in the blanks in my log with “reasonable guesses” not just of how far a run was but of where I went, that to pin it down so accurately is a bit absurd. But there is something powerful about keeping long-term records, and I feel special being almost a third of the way to 100,000. At 2,000 miles a year (last year I ran 2,016) I will hit that milestone by age 68!