Weekend in St. Pete

Well, what would YOU do? Here were my choices. Stay at home, alone, in Chicago, in November, or go with Jenny to St. Petersburg, Florida where she was working at the Women's Half Marathon.

I chose to take a busman's holiday. For those of you who DON'T know what that means,  a busman's holiday is a holiday or vacation in which one does as recreation what one usually does as one's work. So, for me, going to a race on my HOLIDAY is an awful lot like what I do for a living.

And am I glad I did. First off, not having any real responsibilities meant that I could run when I wanted, and how far I wanted. The result was that I got in a 3 mile walk on Thursday, a 7 mile run on Friday, a 3 mile run on Saturday, and a 4 mile run on Monday. Every run was along the Tampa Bay filled with pelicans and cranes and boats and blue sky and ocean breezes. It was FANTASTIC.

The plan was to do the long run on Friday and back that up with a "tempo" run on Saturday. I just got one of the new Garmin 310XT GPS units and was eager to play - err - use it. It was perfect. I was able to see the pace so I could run slow enough on Friday and FAST enough on Saturday. I really don't know how I managed to run without the 310XT. It does EVERYTHING I need a wrist unit to do; mileage, time, distance, pace, average pace, intervals. It's perfect.

Because the race benefited the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, I stopped by the inspiration dinner for a bit to give folks a few "penguin" tips. At least they got a good laugh out of it.

I did hang around the start/finish line on Sunday. Jenny was running the race so it made sense to head on down and see how things were going. A quick congratulations to Dawna Stone and her crew for putting on a very nice event.

So it ended up being a great holiday weekend.

Piaggio MP3 update: It's all set and ready to go. I am waiting for the first snowflake to fall so that I can get out and ride in real winter conditions for the first time EVER.