Catching Up

It's been a while since I've posted and a lot has happened! The biggest thing is that I got married! It was the greatest day ever. The wedding was in Sandwich, NH on March 15. Thanks so much to everyone who came! Tora and I were so happy with how it went and that we could share it with so many great people.

For those people who have been paying attention to my running, I'm still on track to run 365 days this year. Running during the wedding and honeymoon was actually really easy! Today I ran a 5k race and finished in 21:40. Don't worry, I warmed up right into the start of the race so my total time was over 23 minutes. I'm actually pretty happy with the time because the course had a huge snowy hill in it.

As always I probably won't blog as much as I'd like, but I'm trying to get back into it. Right now I'm doing this post from the Olafsen's kitchen in NH. I'll have to try to grab these odd moments to put something quick up.

Resolution Update

I had a sad milestone in my attempt to run 365 days this year. On Friday I didn't get my run in. That broke a 52 day streak of running every day. I came down with the flu and had a temperature of 101.8 on the same day as a big snowstorm hit Boston. The combo put me out of commission for running.

Fortunately I rebounded from my low on Friday and was able to make it out running on Saturday and Sunday. According to the rules of the bet I am still ok, though now I have lost my wildcard day. The "contract" is tor run 365 days this year, and because this is a leap year there are 366 days in the year.

If I look at it statistically, using up my free day in only 52 days into the year is pretty poor. Ideally i wouldn't use it until after the halfway point, showing that I can go for 180+ days in a row without a break. On the other hand I knew that this winter was going to be the hardest part of it for me. I'm not in great shape yet, I've been planning the wedding, and its cold outside. I'm still optimistic about winning this bet!

Things that I'm wearing at work.

I'm sitting here freezing in my office and thinking about how much I'm wearing and how I'm still cold. Here is what I have on:

• Winter hat
• Softshell jacket
• Sweater
• Dress shirt
• T-shirt
• Pants
• Boxers
• Wool socks
• Shoes

Even with all that on I'm still cold. I have to rub my hands together or stick them in my pockets every couple of minutes to keep them warm. I would wear my gloves but I can't type in them. I think that I still haven't warmed up from the run this morning.

Still in it!

Just a post to say that I'm 16/16 days so far this year. Ran my first workout yesterday. It was 4x moderate-hard up a hill and 4x moderate down. All in all it felt pretty good. Certainly not a hard workout but I want to ease into it because I can't take any rest days.

Absolutely crazy busy this whole month. I'm on a project at work that needs to be done by Feb 1 and Tora and I are also trying to do a ton of wedding things. Should be sending invites out tomorrow.

Run #2

I lasted another day with the bet. I just finished a pretty hard 23 minute and 30 second run here in Waltham with Tora. I was really glad that Tora volunteered to come with me because today is mad cold. We ran around in our neighborhood and down into West Newton where we made a quick stop to see if the local outdoor store had any reflective vests. Before you claim that it is cheating to stop, we were only in there for 30 seconds and I stopped the clock. They were all sold out so we bounced and kept running.

We both had a hard time coming up with the appropriate gear to run in the cold and at night. We were short one lobster mit, my nice pair of tights, her headlamp, and both of our reflective vests. I guess I need to start digging around for lost stuff, or make up a list for my birthday.

I'm a little worried about tomorrow morning. The plan is to get up and run before work but its going to be freakin freezing. I heard its supposed to be like 7 degrees out! We'll just have to see how it goes!

Day #1 is down

I got up New Year's morning and laced up my shoes for my daily run #1 out of 365. Fighting a hangover, snow, and the hills of New Hampshire I struggled through a good 27 minutes.

It was good that I got out early because soon after I finished a crazy snowstorm started that dumped 14-18 inches in NH. Tora and I ended up retreating away from the crazy traffic on I-93 to stay at her parent's house. Because of that we had to get up at 5:30 to drive back down to Boston and I haven't gotten run #2 in yet. I'm hoping to do it right after work, I'm not about to give up on the second day!

The Resolution

Today I went to lunch with some co-workers and to start a casual conversation I asked if anyone had a New Year's resolution. Since no one seemed to have any I volunteered mine, to run every day this year. This got a good laugh out of everyone as they looked at me in disbelief. Scott claims that even if I *could* run every day of the year it would be "incredibly idiotic". Well, I got all fired up about this and started talking trash that I probably cannot back up.

I am now engaged in 2 bets on whether I will actually finish this resolution. One is for $20 just until the end of January and the other is $20 for the whole year. I think that even the end of January one will be pretty hard because I am totally out of the routine of doing it and January weather sucks. I'm kind of hoping to get the pot up to $100 or more because I think that it will take that much motivation to actually get me out of bed.

This is definitely a bit of a crazy idea but I think that my odds are pretty high. I'll have to find some way of tracking this bet and link it from here. I think Tora is going to get pulled in as the official judge. She'll be pretty impartial because she's been trying to get me to run more all year. Next year today I'll post and let everyone know how much money I rake in from this thing

How to Fix a Website

I've solved the mystery of fixing outdated websites. This technique will work on anything from that homepage with the neon rotating banner that you made in '97 to the ecommerce site you made last year. Just follow these three easy steps:

• Step One: Cut a hole in the site.

• Step Two: Put your junk in that site!

• Step Three: Have someone open your site

and that's the way you do it!