Four Things Thursday

1. You have to be able to laugh at everything.  The funniest thing that happened at Aunt Johnnie's funeral last week?  Kelley's cousin Margot.  I love Margot, always have.  They've got 4 kids, the youngest a set of twins.  She came up to me at the gravesite and said "I have to ask this, when I was pregnant with the twins people used to just walk up to me and start rubbing my belly the whole time they were talking to me.  Now that you've done an Ironman, do people just walk up to you and start rubbing your belly?"  And of course she was rubbing my belly the whole time we were talking.  No Margot, that doesn't happen very often.  But I'm ok if people do randomly start rubbing my belly.

2. Sunday night after running the fastest half marathon of the year and finishing the "run a half every month" challenge we got a "free" dinner at my favorite bar, the Flying Saucer.  We were out there drinking one night with friends over thanksgiving weekend when they lost my credit card after charging my tab.  Very strange.  I called the bank, ordered a new card, not a huge deal.  They offered the meal to keep customer loyalty, since they are an awesome bar.  I love the food there and they've got something like 93 beers on tap.  Hell it's a 4 page beer menu and a 1 page food menu.  My kind of place.  Kelley got dressed up, she was amazing.  I had 3 pints, a double bratwurst sandwich, and we split a dessert.  Incredible.  So glad they offered that.  They picked up the tab, but we still had to drop off the kids at Kelley's dad's house with zaxby's for their dinner ($10) and we left a tip with the only cash we had on hand, a $10 bill. So our free dinner still cost us $20.  But can you think of a better way to recover from a fast half?

3.  I'm getting really tired of losing people.  Monday was the funeral for Raymond Brown, and my mother went.  Raymond was my grandfather's best friend and golfing buddy.  I got to play golf with them a few times in high school, and that's some of the best time I ever got to spend with my grandfather.  After my grandfather died (13 years ago now, lung cancer) Raymond couldn't play a decent round of golf for two years while he was grieving.  I don't think I've seen Raymond since my grandfathers funeral, but I know he is going to be greatly missed.  It's still very sad.

Another loss hit yesterday.  When I first moved to Raleigh I lived with Kelley's dad and his wife Eleanor for the first 8 months or so, and of course I became much closer with them. During that time, Eleanor's dad was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gherig's Disease), and was moved to a special home in Raleigh from the family home a few hours west of here.  Yesterday he lost the fight and died in his sleep overnight.  My heart totally breaks for Eleanor, they were very close, even more so after he moved to Raleigh. This is not cool.

4. This upcoming Saturday is the first race of my 2012 season - the Jolly Elf trail run is a 5k mixed between paved and hard packed dirt trails at Bond Park in Cary, just a few miles from our house.  It will be my first attempt at going sub-20 minutes, but I have kind of low expectations for this one.  I'll try to keep them all under sub-7 minute miles, but breaking 20 takes a 6:25 average pace.  Don't know that I'm quite there yet.  And some parts of the trail in Bond Park can get narrow making it hard to pass people, so I could get caught in traffic.

Sunday is the first 20 mile run in training for the Charleston Marathon.  Should be fun, it will be the first time since Ironman that I've gone longer than the 13.1.  Hope I'm recovered enough.