Easy like Sunday Morning

Does any British "child of the 70s and 80s" not remember the tv show "The Trap Door"? Good old Burke, Boney and "the thing upstairs". I loved that show, and when Gavin was born I bought a dvd of all the episodes (they were only 5 minutes each). Since this weekend was the first of Nancy's four weekends down in San Antonio, and it was just me and the boy (and the dog) left to rule the roost at home, we enjoyed a Trapdoor marathon. It was wonderful to sit and laugh together at a show I grew up with (and there's a large selection of them on Youtube). Oh globbitz!!!

Anyway, I had great plans to get up early and go run Walnut Creek yesterday, but never quite made it. Ah, the pleasure of being "off season". Instead I had a great weights session which included lots of squats, lunges and side planks (some with weights and some with Gavin on my shoulders). Dang, when you haven't done those for a while, you certainly feel them the next day. Over the next few months I will be concentrating on more weights sessions, aerobics and core workouts to supplement the running, and integrating them into my Cactus Rose training plan which tentatively starts in May.

This morning I woke up super early and got my run in at 5am before Nancy left. Clea agreed to meet me (thank you, thank you, thank you) and we had a lovely run around Mueller. I haven't been back there since it was the Austin airport in the late 90s - there were some really cool trails and funky neighborhoods to enjoy and the weather was just about perfect. It was a nice start to one of those odd Sundays where I had to go into work. Clea kindly offered to babysit Gavin for me, but he's been really good recently so I took him into the office with me. He was reasonably well behaved (though very chatty), and took a liking to a large inflatable alien I had in my office (don't ask - except to say that inflatable alien is now in our living room). I'd forgotten that the Capitol 10k was this morning. 30,000 runners crammed onto Congress - not my idea of fun - and I had to take a few detours to get into the office, but nothing major.

And finally, big congratulations to my little brother who ran his first half marathon this morning in Wilmslow, England, with a cracking time of 1:46:59. Seriously, if this boy actually did any training he would be a superb runner - much better than me.

I have one very clear memory of running with him - it was a 5k race about 6 years ago. We had been up drinking beer until late the night before and he wasn't feeling very good in the first few miles so I slowed down to stay with him. Then about half a mile from the finish he got a second wind and took off without even looking back.

That just about summarizes my brother - a hell of a runner, and a bit of a git.

Only kidding John :-)