busy day

funny how i seem to have so much more time in the UK than i do here with so much to do. couldn't seem to sleep last night despite being very tired and watched the charlie rose interview of steven hawkings from cambridge. really fascinating and i thought rose did a great job with some really insightful questions and a nice personal touch. glad it wasn't tim russert doing it. here's what tim's first question could have been- so do you think it was your fault for some previously committed sin that you have ALS?

anyway- that ended at 1:30 or so and i read until 2:30 and got up at 6 and talked to gail for a bit and headed out to run in the pouring rain. AM heart rate was 56- shows how tired some part of me was and i almost skipped, but figured it would be ok to be out even if i only walked.

did my usual start up strategy of just moving slowly until the body either warmed up or gave up. ran down the parkway trail to the 7 mile mark and met andy , a guy i had run with before who is a tri-athlete and is training for the florida ironman. he was trying to watch his heart rate also and made for a good partner. he is faster than me and 25 years younger so i just held on and we kept going, slowing occasionally to get our heart rates back down as we climbed the hills on the way back to the 3 mile mark. turned into a very good paced run for me as i ran the second 4 miles 6 minutes and 15 seconds faster than the first 4. shows how pathetic the first 4 were, but i ran the entire 8 miles with no walking and it was hilly and rainy and i had run a pretty hard 9 miles yesterday. over 84 minutes in or above the 70% zone and hit a high of 153 heart rate- probably a little over 80%. shows the miles in the uk made me stronger, now to get some speed and to get this right hamstring stretched out. hope to get on the track this week. but watch the hamstring.

then spent some time running errands, bank, post ofc, running store, lowe's, rite aid and the hardware store. then did some laundry and spent some time working on the house and mail, while waiting for beth.

had a nice visit with her and shawn and caught up some with them. all good. then hurried over to meet some friends at the driving range, but they were done when i got there. hit 210 balls trying to find my swing and saw some improvement while working on drills. still, i hit 18 shanks. hard to get confident that way, but i think i figured out why. was really cold and windy and that wasn't too pleasant, but stayed with it.

back home to some dinner and paperwork and now to get ready to go to philly in the morning. everything else will wait. have to turn the clocks ahead and lose another hour of sleep.

143 and a wakeup. gail says no news on the cat yet. forgot to ask about the plumber. there is no good way out with the cat and any decision will not be a good one for us. still, it would be nice to somehow save the cat.