I bet you thought I was....

I bet you though I died during my last Marathon and that's why I haven't been blogging?

That's about the last time I blogged, just before that race of 26.2 miles happened. Well I've got good news. I did not die. I'm still around, and I'm still running. I just am not blogging (we will refrain from excuses and pretend 2 months have not passed). The Virginia Beach "Shamrock" Marathon was awesome. In fact, it Sham-rocked. I had a PR at 3:55. Only a minute faster than my last PR but I felt infinitely better throughout the race, and despite my calves cramping in the last 2 miles, I may have finished at 3:50. So, Ill consider it a success and get another PR next time. Whether the PR was due to the fact I had a "good day", I trained better this time, the weather was great, or I was just running faster to get to the free Yuengling at the end of the race...I'm not really sure, but the beer sure did taste just as good as I thought it would. Jerry was nice enough to come with me and watch me run 26 miles which I am sure was sooo exciting for him. I actually give him props on his first "almost-half-marathon" since he reports that he walked 12 miles in order to see me as many times as he could along the course. I have a great catch here. However, I was not sympathetic of complaints of sore feet or chafing on the ride home. I had enough complaints of my own that needed sympathizing.

The champion and the chafer

Now that I have recovered fully, the running continues. The Detroit Free Press Marathon is in my future. I have high hopes to get my mother to run it as well...that may be a long distant hope, but we can see how much persuading I can do. The weather in Winston keeps getting hotter (while the nightlife remains cold and unlively), and the humidity is slowly melting me like the Wicked Witch of the West. The Wicked Witch of Wake Forest. That's me. Oh what a world, what a world.

Fortunately, not too much has happened to me in the last 2 months. I have successfully just completed my first year of Graduate school here at Wake. I still work crazy hours for my advisor, Dr. Messier, and I still work at HELPS. In fact, the most recent job at HELPS has been to retrieve UFO's (Unidentified Fallen Objects) from a mystery (or not so mystery) patient....however I personally think we should replace Unidentified with Identified...because there is no doubt to any of us what those fecal, I mean fallen objects are. Oh HELPS, new adventures daily. I know, you all want my job.

This marks the return of my blogging; while this is not one of my best or most entertaining posts, it will serve as a "coming back". And now that I am officially done with all my grad school classes EVER, I can no longer use that as an excuse. More to come...stay tuned.