Three Good Things about The Blackout...

Perhaps you heard...Southern California experienced a pretty massive power outage yesterday afternoon and evening. It lasted (for us) about 8 hours, although I think there may still be peeps without power. Even still, I know some of you on the east coast who were without power for days are thinking "SoCal wussies...we didn't have power for three DAYS after Irene!" and to be honest, I'd be the first to concede the point.

In any event, I had planned on running after work yesterday, once it cooled off, but since there was no power, I ended up attending to other things... 

No matter, there were three VERY GOOD THINGS that did occur as a result of the outage.

• I didn't have to work today. Was supposed to do a full day workshop at Cal State San Marcos, but it is closed for the day, so I have the day off!
• Betty came over as we were activating our "Family Emergency Plan"* which meant opening a bottle of wine and sitting by the pool and then sitting in the pool because it was so dang hot.



We have a really well developed emergency plan.

• While I was looking for a cable to charge DramaGirls phone with my battery charger, I found the nose piece to my Nike Vomero Sunglasses. I LOVE these sunglasses, but losing the nosepiece has been an ongoing issue for me. I thought I'd lost it AGAIN somewhere in Kansas City, but when I opened a case that I keep the battery charger supplies in, I found it. Apparently, I had cleverly put it there in KC, so that I WOULDN'T lose it. I'm such a genius!

So that you know, you were saved from reading a really boring post about the saga of the Nike Sunglasses and the Lost Nosepiece, part 5. Instead, if you want to know, you can go here, and here, and here.

So, the power is back on, I have the day off,  I have my favorite running sunglasses EVAH, and all is well with the world!

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* I saw a tweet that SDG&E (the power company) was advising people to "Activate their personal family emergency plan." Walter and I figured we'd already done that.

Hill Focused

In less than eight weeks, I'll be doing this... Well...I'll be doing half of it anyway...

Which includes some of this ....

Borrowed from this site, which I located via Google Images. I do not claim that the woman in the photo in any way represents me as I am neither young, blond, or have THOSE legs. Nor do I claim that the hills in San Fran in any way the one she is running up.

In fact, I think the hills will look more like this...

Also...not an actual hill that we will be running up, but it will probably look like this... Also, I did not take this photo. It has been borrowed from this site.* 

Therefore, it's really time to get the hill training on, so I convinced Betty to come run with me last night in my 'hood...3.5 lovely miles of rolling SoCal hilly-ness.

It was 5:30. It was HOT. It pretty much sucked. But we did it.

Can I offer some stats about the ugliness of the run? How about this?

Uh...yeah...you could say I walked a bit. The elevations may not look like much...but somehow they FELT LIKE BIG-ASS HILLS...Just ask Betty...

Overall suck-fest numbers?

LORDY...I haven't wogged like that in quite awhile!

I'm ready to blame it on the heat. GAH!

In other running news that is almost completely unrelated to hills and/or hill training, Elsie, Betty and I will be running at The End of Summer Fire Run, which looks like it's now called The Fire Run this Sunday at 8am. The race starts in La Jolla and ends in Pacific Beach...four miles of flat downhillishness.

Whatever they call it, it's been an end of summer tradition for us for the last three years (2007 (no blog then) 2008, 2009, and 2010).
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* Not an endorsement of the podiatrist's website where I found this foto, but if you are in the Bay Area and need foot doc, at least here is one who runs....so that's something I guess.


** Also...BIG HUGS, HIGH FIVES, AND CONGRATS to all my friends who ran AFC this past weekend. Irene, Rich...you rocked 6th Avenue!


***Also MEGA SHOUT OUTS to the Nuun Hood to Coast team (who includes my friend Lisa, who I guess will be TOO BUSY to run the Fire Run with us this weekend. I'll be following you anyway. Have fun!