Race stats explained
Yesterday many people from all over the world ran 26 miles. I am not that cool and i only ran 5. But still i feel pretty good about it. Sure, i run five miles lots of times, especailly in the morning before work, but yesterday i was racing, and that meant i needed to go, like, way faster.
Here is my score as it appears on the list on coolrunning.com:
165 165 LEAH BERNSTEIN 7/19 F2029 LEXINGTON MA 39:19 7:52
Explained:
165 = the place that i came in the race. 164 people finished before me (the fast bastards) but 286 people finished after me, which doesn't mean a lot except that i'm not the fastest, but pleanty of people are slow.
165= the number that i wore on my chest, assigned to me by the order in which i signed up for the race. Dan concluded with glee that i was the only racer who placed exactly the same as my number. I didn't think that was particularly exciting, since my number was 165, and who can get excited over placing 165th, even if it is your own number. Next year i'm going to sign up way earlier and get, like, number 10.
7/19 = i placed 7th out of 19 people in my age group: women 20 - 29years old (that's what the F2029 means.) Since there weren't that many of us running, i don't really know what to make of that score except i hope next year i will do better and be more around the top 3. (i didn't even see anyone else running of my age group while i was on the course! They must have totally wasted me!)
39:19 = this was my total finishing time, 39 minutes and 19 seconds. This was pretty good for me for a five minute mile. It means i ran a...
7:52 minute mile average. This is actually the fastest mile i've ever been timed at, for the record. In high school i ran one mile at 8:15, and i thought that was pretty good at the time (what a lame-ass i was.) For my 10K last march, i ran 8:50 average for 6.3 miles, and i was all excited for doing under 9 minutes. Now that i did under 8 minutes, i not only feel pretty cool for running faster now, but pretty lame for the times i got in my other races. i realize now that my previous goals were wicked out of wack with actual potential performance. I mean, i ran this fast and still sprinted at the end and didn't even throw up. I'm going to have to step it up in the future.
Anyway, that's these times explained. Today my calves are a little sore, but all around i'm more tired from packing up to move. Next year i'll be so well rested from living in our big new house, maybe i'll run the marathon!
Papa!
There's a new pope today, we hear: the head cardinal came out of his window and this time he didn't see his shadow. The new guy isn't anything special though, at least at first appearance. He's called Benedict the 16th, but from what I understand from the folks who know anything about all this John-Paul II.2 might have been a more accurate definition. Also, he's still European. I know there hadn't been a German pope for a thousand years, but who cares; there are Catholics on other continents too, I believe. And that's as much about the pope as you'll hear from me.
It was hot to day, terribly hot; still is, in fact. I went to the Super Stop & Shop in Bedford (a place of magical wonder, by the way, about which more later), and the dude whose job it is to round up the carts from the parking lot engaged me in conversation on the subject of the heat. I could not but agree with him that it was somewhat oppressive. I was glad I wasn't doing his job; at least with moving, which I was doing all day, you get to be inside at least half the time. The problem with this degree of heat in April is, the trees don't have any leaves yet so there's no shade. They tell us it's going to be in the 80s tomorrow.
I moved some things to the new house, and I met some of the neighbors. One of them is named Mark. They seem quite pleasant, nonetheless, and I'm sure this new neighborhood will be an improvement on the existing one. Not that I have anything against any of the neighbors here now, though: some of them were just as nice when we first moved in here, I recall. The neighbor who lived in our house, though, was enough to counterbalance all that and swing the balance firmly to the negative. Although, I must say: though we have no human neighbors living with us in the new house, there does seem to be a disturbing number of wasps about. Wasps and their nests both, actually, are much in evidence. I wonder what we're supposed to do about such things?