Day 45: Muse Music Cafe

Date: April 28th 2011, 4:30pm
Distance: 4.5 miles
Weather: Beautiful

I was in a tight spot. I had to get from my work (at the MTC) to Muse Music Cafe quick. I had an important meeting to attend. As I was planning how I would get down there (no car, no bike, and the home teachers weren't home), I realized that I could just run down and call it my Thursday workout (it was Thursday, after all).

My route was 'sposed to be short and sweet but it was like an obstacle course dodging the ladies all over the sidewalks for Women's Conference. Throw in the fact that the South Stairs were STILL roped off and the grid system in South Provo makes it really hard to get from point A to point B in a short amount of time. Final result: arriving late, sweaty, and smelly. Not the best impression I've ever made.

At least I got to take a break, cool down for an hour, and enjoy the meeting before running home again.

Day 44: -no comment-

Date: April 26th 2011
Distance: 0 miles
Weather:

My bad.

Day 43: The Long One

Date: April 24th 2011
Distance: 20.4 miles 
Weather: Crummy

This is the longest training run I will do until the actual marathon. I wanted to see how far I could get, so I spent time mapping out my route. I determined that if Holly drove me down and dropped me off in Payson, Utah, then I'd get the full 20 miles and have a nice change of scenery. It also gives me some cool bragging rights:


"Yeah, this morning I ran from Payson, through Salem, through Spanish Fork, through Springville, and then through most of Provo until I got home."


I like the sound of that.


When I got dropped off, the weather was cool and overcast, with a drop of rain falling every once and a while. I got dumped off at the Payson Baseball complex with nothing but my I-Pod. My playlist included a couple of podcasts: "Nine Lessons Learned about Creativity at Google", "How Muppets Work", "Groundbreaking Healthcare Initiatives", and "Why is the U.S. so dependent on cars?" Pretty good stuff.


That's not to say that the scenery wasn't also entertaining. Most of the running was along these rural two-lane highways, meaning, I got to see a great assortment of roadkill. Cats, dogs, rats, birds, moles, raccoons... you name it, I saw it.

Then there were these "Jim Bridger" billboards. There were probably 4 identical billboards along my route, all talking about Jim Bridger, who "discovered the great Salt Lake" (no relation to Jim and Bridger Sorensen, although there seems to be a slight resemblence, lest my eyes deceive me). Let me see if I can find an image...


There we go. As you can see, there's just this factoid stuck on the billboard along with a funny looking URL. Every time I saw one I was thinking "What are they trying to sell here? What on earth would justify the expense of advertising this on a billboard?"


Well I actually found out the secret! I'm so relieved... it all makes perfect sense now! But if you want to know why they spent all this money putting up billboards, you will have to go to jimbridger24.com, and check it out just like I did (that's some incredible billboard advertising, by the way. I'm not sure if I have EVER gone to a web URL that I saw on a billboard before).

I was pretty content with my running all the way until I got to Springville. By that time the rain had soaked through all my clothes and I was getting cold. I was developing a massive cramp in my left calf and spirits were low overall. I wasn't thirsty, however, because on the car trip down we had made a stop just outside of Springville and left a full water bottle at the side of the road. I was pretty happy when I found it and got a little hydration. And for the record, I actually carried it into town where I deposited it into a trash can outside a Burger King. +5 environment points for me.


As for the cold, I found a electric hand dryer in the Taco Bell bathroom and spent a few minutes in there, running it over and over again to warm up my hands.


The last item of interest came as I ran into Provo. While I was stopped at a traffic light I saw a "Scooter Gang" cruise on by. Think "Motorcycle Gang" except everybody was riding those electric road scooters that got popular when gas prices got high. There were at least 7 scooters that went by, leaving me thinking that the only way it could have been more nerdy is if they were all driving Segways (I actually ran by an official Segway distributor in Spanish Fork so even that wouldn't have been too shocking).


By the time I got home I was starving. My whole run, I was getting energy from two bean burritos that I dropped down the hatch before I left. Needless to say, I went straight for the whole wheat roll and the Jolly Ranchers when I walked in the door. And a Blue Raspberry Jolly Rancher really tastes good after a 20 mile run.


PS: Did you take the bait? If you went to jimbridger24.com, then congratulations! ...you are a naturally curious person. If not, then I'm sorry... you live in a world of apathy and ignorance. There's nothing I can do for you. ;)

Day 42: Odd

Date: April 22nd 2011, 9pm
Distance: 5 miles
Weather: Mild

This run was odd for many reasons:

• I saw a dance party in the parking lot of Fat Cats. They were playing some sort of Hip-Hop Techno rave music that you could hear a couple of blocks away. I admit, I was tempted to join the party.
• A ran by a bum with a cardboard sign standing near an intersection. As I waited at the light, I saw what looked like a 3/4 full Nacho platter in one of those carry away plastic disposable containers sitting on the electric box near by the "walk" sign. There was still a lot of delicious looking mexican food that had been left there (it looked like it was from one of these high end Mexican places like Costa Vida or Cafe Rio). As I passed this spot on the run back, the bum was gone... and so was the food.
• They lit up the Y for graduation. I didn't even notice until I was on my way back and facing the mountains.

Otherwise, I'm just 5 miles closer to the big race.

Day 41: The Unlucky Bird

Date: April 20th 2011, 10am
Distance: 8.2 miles
Weather: Overcast

The weather was great so I took the opportunity to do a morning run. I ran this route counter-clockwise, taking the hill up to Orem first.

The first half was pretty chill... just cruising along listening to the I-pod. Things got interesting once I got into Orem. The problem with running on busy Orem streets is that there's always the issue with drivers wanting to turn into the parking lot as you run by. Today, I had a scare by two separate drivers who were talking on their cell phones. They usually don't see me, start to turn in, and then stop once they are at the mouth of the entrance, often just sitting in somebody else's lane. C'mon folks.

Once I got into the neigborhoods I had an funny experience. While I was running by a house, I scared a pigeon out of a bush in somebody's yard. The bird flew out into the street, where it ran into the front corner of a passing white sedan. The bird deflected off of the car, recovered in mid flight, and flew back into the yard and over the fence. I couldn't help but laugh. The funny this is, this has happened to me before. Once, Jeff and I were riding bikes to URM (that bulk foods store in Greenacres) when we scared a bird out of a bush. That time, however, the bird flew into traffic cruising at 35-40 MPH. Needless to say, it failed to recover with the same grace that my pigeon friend did today.

I finished up the run with a sprint up the final hill approaching my apartment. I guess we'll just have to see if I have that kind of energy left as I approach the finish line on race day.

Day 40: To Grandmother's House we Go

Date: April 16th 2011
Distance: 13 miles
Weather: Sunburn Weather

To prepare for the run, I loaded up a good, long, podcast (this time it was the Entrepreneurial Thought Leader Series at Stanford--high quality stuff). The plan was to run up to Holly's grandma's house in North Orem, giving me a place to stop and rest at the halfway point.

The first half of the run went quickly. I hadn't been out for more that 10 minutes before I realized that running in long sleeves was a mistake. The sun was high in the sky, and I was sweating like a nervous pig in a sauna. Holly's Grandma wasn't expecting me, so I'll bet it was quite the surprise when I showed up.

Regardless, she was very hospitable, offering me water or a variety of other beverages. I went with the Root Beer. It was delicious at the time, as we sat and chatted, but once I left and was back on the road I regretted not going for the water. I had a bad case of the "sticky mouth" that lasted the second half of the run.

Fortunately, it wasn't so bad that I couldn't laugh at the guy I saw tanning in the parking lot of Gold's Gym. Priceless.

When I got home I was so parched that my mouth felt like a desert (complete with cacti) and I made short work of the remaining Gatorade that Mom got for me. Thanks Mom!

Day 39: Goose Egg (part 2)

Date: April 14th 2011
Distance: 0 miles
Weather: Indoors




Did I mention in the last post that the muse music website obstructed two runs in a row? Yeah, well it did. I know... lame, right?

I guess the best I can do is show you the route of me walking from my computer to the fridge. I had to get up to get some late night pizza on Thursday, but that's the closest thing I did to any serious exercise. I am ashamed.

Day 38: Goose Egg (part 1)

Date: April 12th 2011
Distance: 0 miles
Weather: Indoors

The big 0 miles. Yeah, I failed to do my run. Here's the story. My buddy Justin closed the deal and bought a Muse Music Cafe, a performers venue and cafe located near downtown Provo. It's really exciting stuff. Anyways, I've been spending the whole week working my can off, designing a website for him. I was custom building a Wordpress template from scratch, so needless to say, it took longer than expected. He had an article coming out in the Thursday paper with the web URL in it, so it was a hard and fast deadline. But I'm confident in saying that the all-nighters appear to have paid off--it looks awesome. Check it out at musemusiccafe.com.

In the mean time, I'll be here, trying to get my biological clock back on schedule.

Day 37: The Church Tour

Date: April 11th 2011, 4:45 pm
Distance: 18.4 miles
Weather:

I moved this long run to Monday because I felt bad on Saturday. And it was a legitimate, foggy headed, pour-Robitusson-on-my-cereal type of bad, folks. I was out for 3 days. And even though I was back to 85% when I left for my run, it was still pretty hard to get out the door.

I've been planning this run for a while. You see, I am always surprised by how many LDS churches I pass as I go on my runs. It's almost ridiculous. So I decided that I would see how many churches I could pass in a single run. This route was calculated to pass as many churches as possible. The complicated route mandated that I bring a map along with me.

During my run, I saw:

40 LDS Chapels
4 Churches of other denominations
3 LDS Seminary and Intsitute Buildings
1 LDS Temple

That's one LDS church building every 0.46 miles. And that isn't counting the hundreds of LDS wards that meet in random buildings all over BYU and UVU campuses. In my opinion, if you live around here you should be walking to church.

I also ran with my camera and took pictures. Feast your eyes:



Running by churches took me off of the main roads and put me into the neighborhoods which was really an interesting experience. It felt like I was running through "America". Broken toys, barbecue grills, kids on skateboards and Razor scooters, Christmas lights, broken down cars, and signs declaring that the house was armed with an APX or ADT alarm system. I'm convinced you can learn a lot about a neighborhood by running through it.

Here are some more interesting things I saw along the way.

Deer

This Apartment complex filled their swimming pool with gravel and stuck a swingset on top of it.

Apple in the gutter

Funny Bumper Sticker (and yours truly)

Day 36: It Gets Ugly

Date: April 8th 2011, 4:45 pm
Distance: 6.2 miles
Weather: Falling Snow

First, the weather got ugly. It's like 33 degrees outside, with heavy snowfall that is just making everything wet. I'm cold because I went out under-dressed (my long sleeve shirt is in the laundry). I figured that this run would be short enough that all I have to do is go fast. Plus, I'm not going that far from home, right?

It wasn't 5 minutes before I started experiencing a lot of discomfort. My socks got wet and a portion of loose wet sock in the toe of my shoe got lodged between my second and third toes on my left foot. Then my bowels seized up, making it hard to run. I took a wrong turn because I ran out the door without double checking my route. This extended my run by over a mile. Add this to feeling cold and my souring attitude and you get one ugly run.

I went slow. Time dragged on. I did have one redeeming experience though. As I was nearly home and running past the MTC, three missionaries called out to me:

"Excuse me, are you a member of The Church?"

"Uh, yeah. Do you have something you wanted to share with me?" (I've been in the MTC before, so I knew the drill)

"Um... Uh, we just wanted to come and contact you. Um, so... yeah. We gotta get 20 contacts by the end of the day, and we only have 3 so far."

Another Elder spoke up.

"Oh, and we're supposed to show you this picture of Jesus and John the Baptist but we don't have it with us. Do you know what picture I'm talking about?"

"I think so."

"Yeah, that one."

Good times. I think I caught them off guard or something... plus I'll bet they were really fresh. Either way, it's better for them to have this awkward conversation with me now than with a big Swedish man in a couple of months. It made me smile.

Day 35: Call off the Dogs

Date: April 6th 2011, 6:00 pm
Distance: 6.7 miles
Weather: Excellent

With the fam in town for Spring Break, I got to go on a run with both Jeff and Steven. With 6.5 miles on the schedule, we headed north towards the Provo City Cemetery.

Everything started well. As we got on Timpview, I briefly mentioned to Steven that this was the road I was running on last time I was chased by a dog. Just a couple blocks later, another dog came out and started running behind us. It was kind of funny... except for the fact that it didn't stop. After a couple of blocks, I suggested that we split up and see who the dog chases (a nice way of determining who has the most interesting odor). We didn't do it though and the dog continued to chase us as we ran by Timpview High School.

It reminded me of that scene in "The Sandlot" where the dog was chasing Benny Rodriguez through the neighborhood, the theater, the memorial day celebration, and other places. Of, course this dog was a lot smaller than the one in the Sandlot (After some research, I discovered that "Hercules" from the Sandlot, was an English Mastiff, a breed that holds the world record weight for a dog--343 lbs).

The dog followed us for 3/4 of a mile before finally stopping to stiff something on the corner of 3950 N. We were pretty glad when that happened.

The hill up to the cemetery was pretty tough but the view from the top was good. They've got an American flag flying from a huge pole on the top of the hill and it makes a pretty good sight. We saw a dog running around up there too but this one ran away when it saw us. Thank goodness.

The whole trip back, we were hoping that we wouldn't run into that dang dog again. It seemed like there were a lot more dogs than usual out--most of them behind fences or going on walks with their owners. One poor girl was going on a run with her dog and she tripped and fell pretty good. Ouch.

Just before Timpview ends, near the end of the run, I always see this yard that looks like one of those fields of grapes from SimFarm. I know, that game was kind of a bust... but I spent some quality time playing it and learning about crop storage and the delicate balance of supply and demand. Anyways, I pulled up a google image of the grape fields for your viewing pleasure.

Ok, well It looks a little more similar from the ground.

Day 34: The Wet One: Part 2

Date: April 2nd 2011, 8:30 pm
Distance: 11.6 miles
Weather: Rain

Michael came down to see General Conference so he decided to join me on my run.  We left right after Priesthood session (instead of sprinting out the door during the closing song and fighting people for parking spots in front of Fuddruckers. I prefer to pass on that experience).

The weather was menacing and sure enough, it started raining. It was then that I noticed: every time that Michael goes running with me, it rains (as evidenced in "The Wet One: Part 1"). In fact, because of this trend, I'm predicting rain for the day of the marathon. I suppose that all this running in the rain will be good training.

We got on University Ave and just kept running South (only digressing briefly to run a lap around the South Town Mall). Michael proved, once again, that running over a bridge produces in one an undeniable desire to hawk a loogie (the spellchecker in Blogger is trying to tell me that "loogie" is not a word. I know better).

Pretty soon, we found ourselves sprinting across the freeway on-ramp because there were no crosswalks or sidewalks. I always get a special feeling when I run by a "no pedestrians" sign. Somewhere along the southern leg of our run, Michael picked up a hubcap on the side of the road. He decided to carry it along until he found a good place to deposit it. That place came up about 2/3 of a mile down the road when we crossed over some train tracks. There was a derelict train stopped on the tracks underneath us. A well aimed throw landed the hubcap in the back of a open-topped railroad car. That would have earned him like 500 points in a video game (the paperboy memories are flooding back again).

Several more miles of uphill and we were back home again. The rain had slowed quite a bit by then. Oh, and special props to Mike for buying me ice cream when his date bailed on him. It sure hit the spot.