Bends Toward Justice

It was a great trip! Great to see Tommy and Dorothee, Chris and Lorene, Bob and Betsy, Donna and Bogey, Dr. Evil and Magma, Mary Beth and Jonathan, and all the kids. I was a slug and never even made it down to the point or the dock past the Harb cottage. Meg did drag me around on one short run. Mainly I abused my body with unhealthful food and too much alcoholic beverage -- got me thinking about Baxter next fall! I think we have a hike planned for over in NH in about three weeks.

A sad, sad day for Celtics fans. Read Bill Simmons on ESPN.com for the high and low of it. I created this image of "Unlucky" for my Dark Trail project. It really speaks for my mental and emotional state right now (in relation to the Celtics)

Meg visited some website that uses GPS technology to give you mileage of routes you put in. Apparently the distance from here to the Boulevard is more than 3/4 of a mile, when I thought it was closer to 2/3. This morning we ran, starting from the end of Rackleff St., down and around, then back up Woodfords. I slowed to a walk, but Meg continued to run all the way to Forest Av. I figure that's @ 4 1/2 miles, well probably a little short of it. Of course, while I'm talking about that as a long run (and it is for us) Pete is out today running a 25K race, while Phil is going for 50K. I hope it went well for them, considering it was misty, cool morning. The boulevard was packed with walkers there for a heart charity fund raiser. The negative part was weaving around them. The positive part is that there was a drumming group out under a shelter for distraction and entertainment at one point, and Crackers and Salty Pete (Portland Pirates mascots) hanging out at the walk finish ...

But only a little. Meg and I pushed our standard neighborhood run by a few blocks here, a couple blocks there. I think (hope) it takes the distance up past 3.5 Mi. We ran it on Tuesday. Yesterday I did diddly. Today we ran it again. I felt real good on the run; I was in kind of a mood when I started, but physically it was fun, and I held at that pace all the way around, so it was a nice time. I've probably doubled my running miles this week (counting from last Saturday), but no basketball and no wallyball or volleyball, which probably means less abuse on my legs, especially from the knees down.

Great Day! Great Times for Meg, Pete, and me, as well as many other people I talked with. Here 's the link for the race results. I finished in 24:25, Meg in 26:53. Go to Pete's blog Transitions and Motivations to see my whining comment. Meg wants to run longer races and I agreed to do it. She's found a 10K on June 16th here .

I was talking with a fellow Celts fan last night at a party who was more optimistic about all the young players than most of the people I've talked with lately. He was really keen on Delonte West's growth, and used it to support his argument that Doc Rivers has developed the youngsters. Today, reading Steve Kerr's analysis about why the Rockets lost their series gave me more hope for the Celtics, too. Kerr wrote, as we're seeing with teams like Phoenix, Chicago and Golden State, it's critical to have multiple players who can attack defenses and score the ball. The NBA has changed quite a bit in the past five years or so, and big, stodgy teams aren't effective anymore. The Spurs have been great with Tim Duncan in the post, but only because they added Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili to the mix several years back. With today's rules – the zone defense and hand checking, in particular – it's critical to have slashing perimeter players. Zones make it easy to ...

When I go for a run I still feel like I'm struggling (part of every run), but I noticed that afterward I don't have any soreness, extra fatigue, etc. So I knew I had to step up a little more. Well, there's only three choices: run more often, run more distance, or run more intensely. I don't think I can consistently get myself past five workout days a week until I get out of work for the summer, so I decided to run more distance AND to run with more intensity. Yesterday I jogged to the Boulevard then alternated race-effort quarters with jogging quarters all the way around, then walked back. No fatigue today, so I guess I can push even harder next week. My idea is to raise my mileage on Sundays, and run some kind of pace workout on either Wednesday or Thursday. Saturday's basketball and walking, Tuesday's wallyball -- soon to be volleyball. Add something on the Wed/Thurs that's not intense, I think I'm doing OK.