Race for the Roses

Did "Race for the Roses" a half marthon here in Portland, Oregon yesterday with a buddy of mine from work. Went out with the 7 minute pace group and felt pretty good so kicked it up a little about half way through only to max out during mile 12 and slide back a little. Should have waited to mile 10 before hitting high gear! Ended up finishing in 1:31 with an average pace of 6:58. That put me in 79th out of almost 2200 runners and less than 5 minutes from top 10. Considering I'm not training for a running event I felt pretty good about the results and it was a new PR for me.

Some Cats do have 9 lives!

Was a busy day at the station today. Spent the morning pressure washing the fire engine. And then caught a run on the way back to the station. Ended up eating lunch at 2ish. At about 4 I went down to the basement, where we have our gym, and was planning on doing an interval session. 7 minutes into the run, we were tapped out for a house fire. When we got there the whole back of the fire was on fire. We pulled some hose and went to work. When we got inside the house, I heard some crying. Initially, I thought the home owner had shown up and was outside crying or screaming about the house. But as the sound continued I searched through the rubble and smoke (it was bad - when we first went in we couldn't see anything and the smoke was banked down to the floor). Anyways, I found a cat hidden in some debris. The poor thing had one of those loud cries that sounded like a person crying. I took it outside and give it O2 - we have special oxygen mask for animals. How the heck that cat lived through the smoke is beyond me. But so far it looks okay.

Unfortunately, my workout didn't happen as planned but I still logged it as 2:30 hours of exercise since it was a lot of work!