My, What Big Wind You Have

I am back in Nebraska for yet another annual pilgrimmage to my husband's small home town of Columbus for the rockin alumni basketball tourney. (Let me say, yes, this basketball thing was hot when all the boys were in their 20's and could cruise up and down the court like shirtless, be-abbed, sweaty-but-tough ninja-gazelles, quite possible still drunk from the previous night's beerfest at Glur's...now that they are in their 30's with desk-job-abs, hairy chests--where does the hair come from all of a sudden???--and kids? A little like Eastbound & Down, only with self-glorified high school basketball players. But they love it and it's an immutable annual tradition....one I now find myself taking PTO days from work to participate in. Who knew Nebraska could be considered vacation? Well, I mean besides folks from South Dakota?)

And on the schedule for this weekend's long run: 20-miler. Now, this is a small town and one that I strugled to find 10 miles to run in last year. How the heck was I going to make 20 miles?! Answer: laps. Yes, 3 miles over to the other side of town...3 laps around the 2.5-mile Wagner's Lake loop, a couple out-and-back laps on that rails-to-trails thing on the Platte River levee that I think I am not supposed to be on but that I didn't notice the sign for until I was coming off of it, 3 miles back to the inlaws' donut-shaped lake, and 2 laps around the 1.5-mile loop there. Whew! I did it! And it was the most completely, gloriously, hideously FLAT 20 miles I have ever seen. Who knew flat could get old?! I was actually longing for my Colorado hills at a couple point, just do I could shake up my legs (and get a little downhill action). Luckily, the wind provided all the exciting challenge that I normally get from hills. What, 40-mile per hour winds don't excite you? Yeah, me neither; welcome back to Nebraska.

And in an unrelated-yet-related note, they finally posted the race results from the Downtown Runaround 5 mile race I did here back in July. I pretty much knew my time, but had no idea how I did overall, as they didn't use timing chips and weren't quite as hi-tech as I am used to with the CO races. Well, turns out I finished 8 in my age group, which I think is my best finish to-date (hubs also finished 8 in his AG; we're Identical Age Group Twins, yay!). It wasn't a very big race, but was definitely skewed to younger, speedier runners, so I am happy with that finish (the top 100 finishers out of only 254 runners were all under 8:00 pace). One of these days I'll get an AG award...though I may have to stage my own race to get it.