Day Six

Day 6 (rest day 07/03/08)
I was up by 6 am today and out on the Pre Trail by 6:30. I really prefer to jog in the evenings because the old joints in my unglorified body just don’t loosen up very quickly anymore. There are a lot of good things about morning jogs, however. The air is crisp and fresh. The birds are singing and there are a lot of worms. (you do know the story about the early bird, don’t you?) I was showered, dressed, and down to breakfast by 7:40. Yesterday evening I went out to my favorite watering hole, Prince Puckler’s Ice Cream Store. While I was nursing my dietetic, fat free, sugar free, low cal hot fudge sundae (minus the hot fudge but with the cherry) I saw a poster advertising that Ryan Hall, the winner of the Olympic Marathon trials ,would be out at the Eugene Running Company signing autographs the next day. (It’s kind of ironic that I learned about this autograph signing because earlier that day I saw Sara Hall, his wife, running by my dorm and when she stopped for a minute, I was able to her for a short time.) I thought it would be hoot to go out there and meet Hall and give him a little advice about how to win the marathon in Beijing. So, after breakfast I was on the bike, peddling like a Tour de France Champion. About a hundred people got there before I did so I had to wait in line for about 30 minutes before I was able to impart my running wisdom onto Ryan Hall and get his autograph. (now, if he wins the Olympic marathon in China, you will know why). This evening after dinner, Ed and I walked over to the Street Fair and went into the Nike Tent! Every running related item you can think of was in there and that is where I learned about Nike’s amazing chip device that fits into your shoe, syncs with your ipod nano or a wristband that you wear. This marvel of technology then records your run and calculates how far you ran, how fast you ran, and how many calories you burned up. After you run, you simply sync the wristband chip, or your ipod to you computer and it shows all the results for every run you do after that. All this information is stored on a hard drive at Nike’s computer center. There are a lot of fun things you can do with the info. You can e-mail it, compare it with how your friends are doing, set up challenge runs with anyone else that has this technology, run virtual 10 K races, and join TheHumanRace on 31.08.08 where you will be able to compare you race results with tens of thousand of people all over the world. Go to nikeplus.com to learn more about this exciting new technology that is being integrated into running. I can’t let you go without picking your brain. Tomorrow night is the highly anticipate showdown between Olympic Champion Jeremy Wariner and rising start LaShawn Merritt. Who do you think will win this 400 meter dual on the track?