Gordo Running

 It was apropos that, while sitting on my grandma's decades-old couch, I read Stephen King's intro to the Dark Tower.  In it, he talks about how he started writing the series at 19 years old and how that age shaped the outlook of the series.  King continues with how many of us get stuck at that age mentally.  Before you argue too much about that, think of your go-to music and movies.  Who are your favorite athletes?  Chances are they all come from around that age.  I know I still blast Flogging Molly and AFI.  I think I'll circle back to this in a bit. Due to COVID and moving, I was not able to meet my brothers' kids (and I still haven't met Thea).  Since I had a hole in my training schedule, we decided to drive up north and do a tour, spending 2-3 nights in various locations.    The whole point of the trip was to see family.  Different from prior trips, we weren't going to be doing much site-seeing or exploring.  Unf...

I wrote the bulk of this post the weekend after the run.  I wanted to edit it with new eyes and... it's taken almost a month to get back to it.   Sometimes the post-run shower hurts more than the actual run.  When you're out of practice, that shower lets you know just where you forgot to protect yourself.  I actually had a female friend suggest a sports bra a few years back.  I'll chance physical pain due to not putting on enough Vaseline, thank you very much.   It's all worth it to run my first in-person race in 11 months.  I ran a few virtual races last year, detailing the one we put on for the family here , and I'm sure I'll get to writing up the rest of my 2020 virtual races later.  The last actual race I ran was the 2020 Crazy Desert "Half Marathon" in San Angelo.  I shared in the  My First DNF  post that I'd planned on trying the 100k at Crazy Desert.  I DNFed a marathon so I decided to pull back to a 14 mile 1/2 mar...