Catching up, MC200, and more

Wow. So much has happened since my last post. As you can see, I had a few opportunities to put up a few posts during MC200 last month. Needless to say, it's the most fun I've had running. Ever.

I met eleven of the nicest people you will ever meet- and they were runners to boot. Van one consisted of Dave, Amy, Tonya, Becca, Nicole, and Catheryn. My team included Matt, Jordan, Jeremy, Dalby, and our only girl- Jamie. Two vans, twelve people, lots of bags, and very smelly clothes. We had a mix of triathletes, track stars, runners who hadn't run in over a year, moms, dads, non-competitive runners, competitive runners, and even a few who are training to run the 2010 Chicago Marathon.

There are so many memories floating around in my head about that particular trip I could probably write a book about it. I was going to write a full race report, but I'll let some of my pictures and posts tell the story. The decision to run a race that covered 200 miles between Madison, Wi. and Chicago was made on a cold winter day and cheered on by a couple of my runner friends on Twitter. My friend Lindsay introduced us to the captain of the team I eventually joined and the rest was history.

It was a scary thought. All twelve of us had three legs to run, scattered through various parts of the course ranging from 3 to 9 miles each. We would run all day Friday, through the night, and most of the day Saturday to end up at Montrose Harbor for the finish. Everything eventually fell into place and we ended up surprising ourselves with finish times and paces below what we had figured at the start:

Overall Place: 69 out of 203
Mixed Open Place: 40 out of 99
Run time: 29:57:12
Pace: 8:51

It was just an amazing time. If you're an avid runner and have the opportunity to do something like this- do it. Do not hesitate. There were many a "let's do this again next year" in our group and I'm sure none of us will hesitate to do so. I wish you could see many of the Facebook photos that were posted, but hopefully you'll enjoy a few of my own.

In other news:

I've been brought on as a paid contributor for a mobile technology website that focuses on Palm and webOS devices named webOSroundup.com. My focus is primarily reviews of various applications (productivity, games, etc) that can be downloaded to the Palm Pre, Palm Pre Plus, and Pixi smartphones currently available on major carriers such as AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint. Writing about mobile technology has been a hobby of mine for a long time now, and its nice to show it off on what's quickly becoming a popular destination for users of Palm devices. This has been made even more exciting with the purchase of Palm by Hewlett Packard. It's not anything I can live on, but it helps to feed my geeky obsession with tech :)

Don't worry, my friends, I'll keep posting here, and as guest blogger for the Lake County Convention & Visitors Bureau website.

Coming soon? An update on my Chicago Marathon training. Stay tuned!