Yes, the World has Ended

I just drank a wine that came from a screw top bottle.  No big deal.  The same wine came in a plastic bottle.  Yes, the World has officially ended.  To be fair, it was a Beaujolais Nouveau--which I'm sure that all of you know is a "fresh" wine, meant to be drunk between the 3rd Thursday of Nov and the New Year.  Nonetheless.... 

 I'm snooty. (or fancy in TX speak).  Plastic bottles of wine are just plain wrong--unless of course you sell it as a "green" thing.  Shipping less weight saves jet fuel (it does).  However, it also saves shipping costs and puts money back into the pockets of the winemaker.  I guess it is a win-win situation...

So, the wine tasted okay--buy it for the novelty.  Don't buy it for the taste.

Feeling Wimpy.

I went to the gym for the first time in a long time and lifted some weights. I'm shocked at how weak I am, particularly my right arm, which is the one I broke earlier this year. I think I need to eat my spinach.

Speaking of spinach, a new grocery store (Cub) opened right by our house. It is so convenient I don't know what to do. Being able to buy bread an deli meat mid-week is going to make lunch that much better. That, and the store is much, much nicer than most Cubs. They even have a sushi bar. Yum. Maybe.

A Little Motivation

This morning's run was awesome. The weather was great, there were little fluffy flakes of snow in the air and the sun came out for the first time in days. Add to that a great group of guys to run with and a great group of people to drink coffee with after and you can color me happy.

I've Forgotten

I've forgotten how to run. Well, at least it feels like it. A 6 mile run tonight felt like 20. It must be all the beer and hamburger I've had since Chicago. Ugh.

Armistice Day

Kurt Vonnegut was born on Armistice Day, which is today.  In one of my favorite books of all time (and one of my least favorite movies of all time), he wrote the following...

“I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

“It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one and another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.

“Armistice Day has become Veterans’ Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans’ day is not.

“So I will throw Veterans’ Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don’t want to throw away any sacred things.

“What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance.

“And all music is.”

- Breakfast of Champions , Kurt Vonnegut

Shoe Recycling

I don't know about you, but I have a bag full of old shoes that I've been waiting to recycle in some way or other.  Lucky me--the South of the River 'burbs are having a shoe recycling drive starting next week.  The details are;

Recycle Your Soles

Recycle your Shoes in Eagan, Apple Valley & Burnsville Instead of throwing shoes away, residents in Apple Valley, Burnsville and Eagan are now able to recycle their shoes during a free one-week collection coordinated by Dakota Valley Recycling. Residents will be able to drop off shoes from Monday, November 10 to Sunday, November 16 at locations in each community.  Shoes of all types, sizes and styles will be accepted. Shoes donated as part of the program are shredded by a local company, Wipers Recycling LLC, and turned into new products. Eagan  Eagan Civic Arena, 3870 Pilot Knob Road.  Daily 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.  Apple Valley  Apple Valley Community Center, 14603 Hayes Drive  Monday – Friday 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m.  Saturday/Sunday 12:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Burnsville  Burnsville City Hall, 100 Civic Center Parkway * Monday-Thursday 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.  Friday-Saturday 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.  Sunday 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.  *Closed Tuesday, November 11 for Veterans Day For more information please contact Dakota Valley Recycling at (651) 675-5011 or visit www.DakotaValleyRecycling.org on the internet.

Stealthy Guest Post

First, I have to come clean, this is Anne. I'm trying to clean things up around the house and one of the things that has needed some attention is the backlog of wine varieties that should be added to our century club checklist.

These bottles have been sitting around for a while...
(for some reason I can't get the photo to post right now...I'll be back to add it later)

The only information I have on these wines is what is on the label, what I can learn from the internets and the knowledge that as soon as I publish this blog they'll all be moving to the recycling bin. I wish I could tell you that they were grassy or leggy or unctuous, but frankly, I can't remember any details about the wines themselves. I do know, however, that they are now officially checked off on our Century Club checklist.

Deer Flies

First, I finally took the time to figure out how to add a title to my blog, which is nice. Second, I had a horrible, scary run at Lebanon Hills tonight. Swarms and swarms of deer flies chased me down for a good hour while I ran scared. The uphills were the worst, as my legs were tired and I had to slow down--meaning the evil flies had time to land. Ugh. I wore a white hat and white shirt and sprayed myself with bugspray but they still were horrible. I made it roughly 9 miles tonight, but I hardly enjoyed any of it...

Here is to hoping that the deer fly season doesn't last long.

Alright already Chad…

I ran a 5 Mile race in Apple Valley on Friday and ran it pretty well—nearly 2 minutes faster than last year. The start of the race was total mayhem, with a cross country style start that combined the fields of both the 2 mile and the 5 mile race. The result is that you have no idea as to where you are in the race until the race breaks up at the 1 mile mark, where the 2 milers hang a U-turn. I went out in a somewhat conservative pace and found myself way back in the field with about 8 guys in front of me (and none were that close). I had my work cut out for me. Luckily, I've run enough races to know that patience can be a virtue. After climbing the ridiculous hill that is cruelly scheduled in the race after the first mile, I began to pick runners off, one by one. I had all but the top two pulled in by the time I hit mile 4 with only one runner hanging on to me. Somehow, I held off the 16 year old kid (that’s 20 years my junior-dang I’m getting old) and crossed the line in 28:26. Not a great time for a flat course, but this isn’t a flat course.

My secret? I pre-planned and built in a great alibi the night before. Nathan and I did a 90 minute progression run (30 easy, 30 medium, 30 hard) and ran the last few miles in sub 6. That took off all the pressure of running fast! Could I have run faster had I not done this workout? Sure. Did I have a great Alibi? You bet! And nothing beats a great alibi heading into a race.

Truthfully, I believe I’m having a great early season because of the consistency of training over the winter that I had. Training for the Boston Marathon by only running base mileage built my strength up and made sure that I didn’t burn out after running a marathon like I normally do. I didn’t start doing any real speedwork until a few weeks ago and most of that has been oriented around sprint leg turnover (strides) and speed (short fartleks). I still haven’t run a track workout and I have no idea how fast I’m running during my workouts—I’ll take care of that later in the year when it is time to sharpen. Nor do I know what % of my HR I’m running. I know I’m breathing hard and that is good enough for me. Sure my Boston time suffered, but that wasn’t the goal. Running fast at Chicago was. And I believe I’m on my way. I’m looking forward to it already.

TWIKR Notes

My favorite show when I was a kid was This Week in Baseball and one of my favorite segments of the show was TWIB Notes, when you got to learn about what was really happening in the league. In honor of the show, here are my TWIKR notes (This week in Kirk's Running)..

I hit 80 miles this week, with all but 6 of them on trails. The week started with the Brian Kraft 5K, which went pretty well for me--I ran a 16:55 and placed 51st among males at the race. Yes, the field was that good. While it is a ways off from my PR, it is early in the season and I've only done a few workouts that even resemble 5K speed workouts (If you can call strides a workout...) The rest of the week's runs were amazing runs through Lebanon Hills (my favorite place to run in the Cities, and the Sibley House (Minnesota Valley trails).

The only run of note was a 35 minute Steady State that Mike and I ran on Thursday night. Very good workout in that I was only ready to be done with it once we hit 30 minutes--so only 5 minutes of not enjoying a workout. We then proceeded to destroy any benefit from the run by drinking lots of beer, eating lots of peanuts and popcorn and eating an unhealthy meal at Lucky's in Mendota. Some people eat to run and some people run to eat. I'm Schizo on that one.

Building a Wine Cellar...

Anne and I have been talking about building a wine cellar for a very long time. This weekend, we finally got on it. I bought a book--How and Why to Build a Wine Cellar, by Richard Gold--an Engineer's Engineer. It is a great read, and very instructive on how to build a wine cellar. Sooooo----We decided on a rough dimension for the wine cellar, borrowed a truck, and bought some lumber.

The first thing to do was to rip out the old insulation and vapor barrier. After this, I added electrical wire for future purposes. We don't need electricity inside the wine cellar (now), but we will (likely) need electricity in the rest of the basement at sometime in the future. The insulation was in bad shape after having too many winters with moisture (note the black color in the picture on the left). The problem was that the vapor barrier and insulation was stopped below the bottom of the wall, allowing for moist air to run up the wall and sit there. So, after the rough electrical was run (12/2 Romex, for those who care about that kind of thing), I reinstalled insulation (R-13 Fiberglass) and added a new coat of 6mm Poly Vapor Barrier. The look and insulation is much cleaner and much better than the previous installation. So, call the exterior walls semi-done.

I then had to build and install the interior walls (those that face the interior of the room. The picture below is me starting to build frame that became the wall. I used 2x6 construction and added 2x4 for the stud wall to allow for 2 layers of R-13 insulation (yes, it will be slightly compressed and if I had to do it again, I would have used 2x8 construction). The finished product looked like the picture on the right.

Now that the stud-walls were up, I had to put vapor barrier (6mm Poly) on the ceiling, but not the joices, per the book (too much vapor barrier can cause too much humidity). After this R-30 unfaced fiberglass insulation went up on the ceiling, protecting the wine cellar from the heat in the living room directly above the wine cellar.

After finish the celings, it was time to insulate (R-13 again) and vapor barrier the interior walls. This seems easy, but it was time consuming. and I was happy to be done with handling fiberglass iinsulation for the time being. There is quite a bit more work to do, but the tough stuff (like handling huge amounts of fiberglass insulation) is largely done.

There is quite a bit more to do, but the least glamorous parts of the project are done and things are looking up. I'm looking forward to next weekend so I can entirely seal up the room and see if how well it holds temperature and humidity.

One of the things we really noticed was how much heat an incandescent light put off--and so we replaced it with a flourescent light bulb. The room stayed much cooler and will definitely be the normal light in the cellar from now on...

To be continued...

Overdue

I can't believe how overdue on wine updates I've become. I'm adding 6 grapes to the list as of this moment--Riesling (I can't believe it wasn't on the list already, considering my love of the grape), Marsanne (a normal blending grape that should remain a blending grape), a Touriga (Portugal's National Grape), Muller Thurgau grape from Deutschland, and a Columbard/Ugni Blanc Mix that I'm drinking as I'm writing this.

I don't have alot to say about the grapes as none of them knocked my socks off. However, the Touriga is a Rose Wine that I picked up for under $8/bottle and was pretty pleasant. The winemaker is Quinta Da Alorna and was purchased at Byerly's.

The Muller Thurgau was a gift, so was the best kind of wine in the world. Free. That and it tasted pretty good. I don't know how much it cost, so I'll leave it at that.

24 weeks ‘til Chicago

I’ve been thinking of adding a running angle to my blog for a while, but I’ve been afraid that I’d bore the tears off of my friends and family if I did. I’ve finally realized that no matter what I write, I’m boring them, so why not add some running stuff to the blog?

So, my blog is down to running and wine. I guess that they are two of my major passions in life, if not the major passions. Maybe I should rename my blog to “Running over Grapes” or something similar…

Why did I decide to do Chicago? The (Medtronic) Twin Cities Marathon is one week before Chicago and is my favorite marathon ever. I placed 3rd in my age group last year. I know how to run a great race on the TCM course and I love the local support. So why not run it? Why choose Chicago? I’m not sure. It might be that I’m starting to get up there in my running years and I wanted one last shot on a flat course and a significant PR. It might be that I was impulsive and when Marty and Deb decided to do Chicago, it sounded like a great idea and so I went and signed up. It could also be that I simply needed a change. (and CHANGE seems like the them for the year, doesn’t it???)

I’m already looking forward to the training cycle; hard runs, easy runs, and long runs. Cold runs, yielding to incredibly hot runs, yielding to cool fall runs. To strides, to fartleks, to tempos, to hill runs, to long runs, to easy runs. I’m looking forward to it all. Chicago can’t come fast enough….

I Heart the Marathon (Part 3)


Anne's Freevo picked up the Paris Marathon, which I watched tonight. Two things stuck out. First, the Men's race was tight at the 40K marathon. Very tight. Two guys, mano-a-mano, trying to run the other into the ground. Kenya vs. Ethiopia. Man vs. Man. So, they pull up to a water stop, one guy grabs a water bottle, the other slows for him and they go on and share the water. Seriously? Share water? Slow down for the other competitor? Yep. That is marathoning. And that is why I love it. Ethiopia's 20 year old wonder one, but it didn't matter to me. 40Km showed everything I needed.

Second, the women's race. Amazing. Kenya vs. Ethiopia again. Kenyan woman running with horrible form, obviously beat. Ethiopian lady, drafting off of her, biding her time and finally grabbing a commanding lead. Or did she? Kenyan lady, basically running like the Humpback of Notre Dame, passes her back. And breaks Ethiopian lady. Kenyan lady, runs across the finish line with her head bobbing like she was listening to Def Leppard or Poison in the late 90's. With a strain on her face that makes waterboarding look like pleasure (okay, maybe not). I clapped at a recording of a recording. It was awesome.

I Heart Boston (and the Boston) Marathon

This (past) weekend was incredible. Anne and I flew into Boston on Friday and checked into the most kick ass hotel I've stayed at in a long time, the Marriott Custom House. The building was built in the 1860's as a Custom's Building for Boston Harbor. In the 19-teens, the feds built a 26 story building on top of the building. So, imagine the Jefferson Memorial with a a 26 story building (similar in style to the Foshay tower in Mpls.) The Feds moved out in the 70's into the awful Pei designed Boston Federal Government Building. Yes, this is the same Pei who designed the Pyramid at the Louvre and JFK Library. I can't speak for the new digs, but the old digs rock. Marriott gutted the tower in 1910 and renovated the Custom House in the late 90's. This hotel was amazing.

Anne and I went out to eat at Sel de la Terre, about a 3 minute walk from our hotel. Amazingly good. So much so, we went back later in the trip.

Saturday, we went to the Expo, and because it was so incredibly beautiful out, walked around alot. We went to lunch at a restaurant on Tremont Street called cafeTeria, in which we had a pretty good Kobe Hamburger. Hmmm--Hamburgers and fries two days before a marathon. That evening we (Mike, Nathan, Emily and some of her friends) drank some beer at the Black Rose (awesome) and then went to Todd English's Kingfish Hall, which was mediocre. (Sel de la Terre was cheaper and 5x as good). So, we walked alot, but enjoyed the day.

Sunday rolled around and we watched the Women's Olympic Trials. Simply amazing, except that we walked around for 5 or 6 hours 1 day before the marathon. No problem, right? That night we went to Trattoria di Monica, an awesome but very small restaurant in the North End of Boston. Off the main drag, but packed due to it's 6 table space, it was great and an opportunity for us to meet a couple we met on diving on Dominica who live in the Boston Greater Area. Great Fun.

Monday came early. Breakfast at the hotel at 5:30, buses to the start at 6:15, and the start at 10 am. It was cool before the start, with temps in the 40's and very damp. Unluckily, the clouds broke at 9:59 and shone on us throughout the marathon. I started in corral 1, and started conservatively. I don't have my splits, but tons of people passed me throughout the first 10 miles. The problem was is that I didn't feel comfortable. I realized that I hadn't run at marathon pace (or faster) for more than 6 miles all spring--and both of those were in very short races. My legs also hurt from walking around the 2 days prior to the marathon. I hit the half in 1:25 and change, exactly what I'd hoped.

By 16, I knew I was toast. My legs were mush, especially the inner quad muscles. I was in trouble. I pushed through the Newton Hills and held myself together with very few people passing me. However, once we hit the downhills after Heartbreak Hill, my quads were on fire. I tried to stay composed, but I was sure that I was going to cramp up for the remainder of the race. Luckily, they didn't and I only slowed a little, finishing in 2:55:08. Losing just under 5 minutes in the second half. Much better than the first time I ran the race when I lost 15 minutes, but still slightly disappointing. But only slightly...

Looking back, I'm very happy with my time. Very. I did no marathon specific training and ran this entirely on base mileage. I walked around a lot the days before and had some great meals and some great times at the Black Rose. I got severly dehydrated (my bad, yeah, but hey--it was the warmest day of the year so far!).

So, in summation, great race, great time and an amazing city.

I Heart the Marathon

I work up 3x this morning before 4 am and finally got up at 4:15. Why? The freakin' London Marathon was on WCSN.COM for free. I dragged my butt out of bed, threw my body on the couch and watched the marathon. What a show! I can't believe the I can hang out and watch 2:05 (2:25 FOR the women) worth of running. But I can. And there is no better show on the airwaves. The tactics and the physicality of this are second to none. Imagine running 1:11 400's for 105 laps. And then having 2 other guys hang on to you. And then sprinting away from them. WOW.

I can't wait until Boston next week.

Spring has finally Sprung (2008)!

I made it over to Lebanon Hills today and was astounded by the sounds of spring. Warblers, chickadees, cardinals, and yes, frogs... I can't wait for the trails to be clear--they look like mashed potatoes and gravy right now-- snow, and mud mixed together to make a mess. In two weeks we'll be running in the parks and enjoying the solitude (funny that I used we, eh?) of the woods once again.

Lucy caught a whaaaaat?

Yes, Lucy (notice here cool-ass runing in really cold weather beard in the Picture to the left) had this Possum in her mouth not too long ago. BTW--this possum wasn't dead. It was playing possum. As in not really dead, but playing like it was. I could see it breathing. I'm not sure how good of defense mechanism it is when you are in the grips of a predator (Lucy???)... but it worked with me. It was gone the next day.

Minnesota, Ain't She Grand?
Contrast this picture, taken today---

With this picture, taken March 25, 2007 from Anne's Blog

Ain't Minnesota Grand? At least it keeps most of the Texans out of here...

Struggling to keep up with his wine varietal postings, Kirk asked me to guest blog tonight.

Speaking of struggling to keep up, I'm feeling behind...my big bro (who Kirk refers to as the Wine Monkey) is way ahead of us on his wine quest. He's up to variety #89 as of 6 PM tonight...we're currently up to 39, but with this blog I officially bring the total to 41.

#40 - Mandolina Classico Toccata, 2003
This was one of Kirk's Wine.Woot.com bottles. A nice wine to have as a standby around the house. The wine is a blend of 5 varieties and only one of them, freisa, is new to our list. At only 15% it feels like a bit of a cheat to add it to the list, but I'm feeling desperate.





#41 - Chateau St. Jean Gewürztraminer, 2006
The decision to drink this wine was purely based on the fact that we haven't checked it off the list yet, but it was was a well made decision. This wine has a nose of vanilla, slightly sweet (but not to a fault) this wine is really drinkable. Just don't pair it with pistachios...

Cheers!
Anne