I’m much too busy these days to put together a long and usual posting but here is a quick fun one, explanation of Skyline trail still to come.

Douglas and Ali arrived last night and we went the for obligatory walk through Times Square and then proceeded onto a much more interesting area of town, and one of my favorites - Alphabet City in the East Village.

After an awesome night out experiencing some ‘NYC Fusion’, a Reggae Bar, Shisha Pipe, and Ali’s Cosmopolitan(s) we started to head home. Before heading home back up to the Upper East Side, we wanted to get some post bar food - so we found a pizza joint and then proceeded to walk down to the edge of a park and sit on the sidewalk up against the fence to eat.

As we were eating our slices a rail thin, tattoo covered, grubby looking man walked up to us - I was sure he was hungry and going to ask for money - WRONG! He, my friends, let us know that he was filming a documentary about homeless people in NYC and wondered if we would mind if he filmed us for a bit!! We said sure no problem, but we were impostors and were not homeless. He was disappointed, but Douglas offered him some of his pizza and he accepted - but he didn’t reach out and take Douglas’ offer, he bent over at the waist and let Douglas feed him but putting the pizza in his mouth. Douglas also offered some pizza to his female partner who also bent over at the waist and let Douglas feed her. STRANGE!

After a good laugh we got up and went home.

There is a good story behind these photo’s. I have been busy getting back into productive mode after too much travel so I am not done writing the story that goes behind this it will come later this week with some descriptions of some of the photo’s that I like.

Enjoy the pictures - I’ve look at them 184 times and I still like them so if you look at them once you might also like them - maybe not.

Click here to see the slide show.

A description to come soon.

Hello Everybody;

Well I am part way through my week ‘back home’ and figured I would give a quick update while I wait for NAN! to meet me for a run.

Had a great meeting in Detroit last week, but by the time the week was over I was completely spent. I shut the world off on Friday night; turned off my cell phones, disabled the computer, and didn’t call anyone. It was nice to be on holidays and just shut off the world as I was wound up pretty tight by the end of the week, I also had some great company on my little ‘holidays’. Sunday afternoon I turned my world back on and have been hard at it since.

The Executive Offsite was really productive, and I got a really special treat yesterday because my brother just happened to be in Canmore for meetings of his own…. what are the chances that we would both be in Calgary at the same time given he lives in Lloyd; forget out in Canmore and over night at the same time. He is awesome and it was fun for me to have a chance to visit with him and have him be a part of the night. After he left I proceeded to get fairly drunk, smoke a cigar and finish the night with some scotch…. There was a bit of jealousy as Napoleon was upset that he was not mentioned in the blog but Fairytale land was. Well Napoleon was in FINE form last night, it’s not the Brian most people get to see but he’s a wild man deep inside and feisty.

Got to bed at 1 am, conference call at 6:30 am - so up to shower at 6 am; I felt green.. but not Kermit the Frog happy green, more like swamp green.

NAN! is currently coming to meet me in Canmore to get a mountain run in - that will go well with the hangover. Then I am off to jump on a plane at 12:20am to Toronto - so with my 3 hours sleep on the plane I have 6 hours of meetings and then I get to get back on a plane to sleep for another 3 hours and get back to Calgary around 8pm.

So I am tried, was relaxed, am hungover, had a great weekend, going to have a shitty night, and am looking forward to an awesome weekend in the bush away from the world with a few people I really enjoy spending time…

I ran across this photo and at first I thought it was a joke.. it doesn’t appear to be… This is amazing, I can not imagine the kind of boom this would make if a spark hit the bag click on the picture below for the story - apparently the sack is filled with natural gas!

There has to be a happy medium between the scared-y cat environment we live in where we worry about everything and riding down the street when your 10 years old with a back of explosive gas behind you… There certainly is lots of room to work with that is for sure.

Some neat things in the picture:
- the boy looks 8 - 10 years old and this is clearly a “man’s” job as there is clearly some risk in this job
- there is a tube on the bike that looks almost like a makeshift gun holder or a stick holder… wonder what it’s for
- that bike is definitely a single speed

My posting frequency is going to die down again
- I have business guest in town tonight and tomorrow
- I have some business travel coming up (Thurs, Fri)
- I travel back to Calgary and am offsite in meetings for 3 days
- I do a day trip to Toronto (midnight flight out and back that same day for dinner)
- and - I hope to go sleep in the bush for a weekend.

So until the 26th when I am back in NYC things will likely be somewhat quiet around here.

Okay so the deal was I was going to try and run about 30K this weekend, but I did not want to run around the park in circles again. Well I achieved one of the goals. The New York City Roadrunners have a marathon tune up race, and it happened to be this weekend, and it also happened to be around central park 3 times! Oh well, I figured that a fixed starting time, an organized race and a chance to force myself to run would out weight the negatives of doing laps in central park. (The run is 18 miles which is only 28.8 kilometers.. close enough!)

Having run my 20ish Km on wednesday my legs didn’t feel great and the climbing the next night did nothing for the comfort of my toes. To ensure things weren’t too comfortable, in an absent minded moment when I headed out to get the race registration package last night I threw on my flip flops on to my already tired feet…. the problem with NYC is that you walk a lot and sometimes when you don’t expect it.

Once I picked up the race package I needed to solve my chaffing problem by getting a new pair of shorts. I remembered there was a running store in the new Time Warner building by Columbus Circle on the south west corner of Central Park. I picked up a new pair of Nike running shorts that appears to be missing the characteristics of my other running shorts, which allow them to moonlight as a toture device after about 15K. By the time I started walking home my feet were really quite sore but I had been walking for over an hour by this point, my delicate feet would prefer something other than flip flops at this point.

Got home made a pasta dinner with some meat sauce, surfed around for a bit and headed to bed. The race started at 7:30 so I needed to be up somewhat early to eat, drink, and just generally get ready. The morning didn’t go so well, the milk in the fridge went bad, I slept in a bit so I was in a rush, and my diet had to consist of some peanut butter cookies, some carrots, a couple bottles of a sport drink, and big cup of black coffee. I made it to the starting line 2 minutes before the race started; perfect timing!

Now the race.. first there was lots of people - over 4,000 according to the announcer, not bad for a matathon warm up race. Here is a play by play of how I think it went.

WARNING DORK ALERT!
When running I have my heart rate monitor to ensure I have something to confirm why I feel like hell sometimes. I also during races keep track of the split times of each kilometer or mile in this case. It lets me focus on the next couple minutes instead of the hours ahead of me as well as letting me know if I am pacing okay. Part of my goal today was to try and keep a really really steady pace. Goal achieved. My legs are a bit sore so I geeked out on my computer for a bit decided to chart my pace against my heart rate and see what things looked like. Here’s what it looked like:

I was able to get stronger and faster as the race went on (part of that in the start would have been due to the possible explosion that my internals were contemplating).

Some more dorking out.

p.s. I finished in 2h 32m 38s (or so)