Happy St. Patrick's Day!

What was the best part of running the St. Pat's Dash? The delicious, delicious beer that I drank afterwards at Elysian Fields. What was the worst part? Standing in line for the bus for pretty much as long as it took to finish the course. It's too early to get my official time, but the clock was at about 44:45 when I crossed the finish line, and I crossed the start line about two minutes after the official start. I wasn't expecting to run the whole thing (and I didn't), but I'm pretty happy with how I did and that halfway through March I'm still sticking to one of my TCB resolutions. And my Dash Hat held up very well--I was really glad to have it, especially while standing in line for the bus.

The route is about 3.5 miles, and according to my iPod & Nike + I went 3.89 miles. I'm not sure how much of this is a calibration error, but I didn't start and end the workout at the start and end lines. At the beginning, it was too early to think about, and at the end I wandered around for a couple of minutes before thinking about it. The most interesting thing to me about looking at the Nike+ graph is that there isn't a huge speed difference between my walking and running, but it sure feels different!

Frieda and Gretel have no respect for my photographs, by the way:

Moments after I took that photo, Gretel peed within INCHES of my shirt. Yes, it's perfectly normal for her to pee in the backyard, and she didn't pee on the shirt, but it was still a little close for comfort.

Stones That Throw and Feet That Run

In May, I'm going to be travelling with my friend S___ to Vienna for a wedding, and there are a couple of side trips planned. S__ will be running the Prague Marathon, so I thought that I should strap on some shoes and run, too. Not the full marathon, of course--that would be stupid. Not only have I never run more than a couple of miles at once, but I can't think of anything I'd rather do less than run for five hours. Instead, I'm training for the 4.2K family mini-marathon. It's a lot less running, with the same guarantee of unlimited free Czech beer at the after-party. Anyway, I've been running regularly for two months now, and I'm in week 6 of the Couch to 5K program. It's going pretty well (not counting the soreness), so I've decided to try the St. Pat's Dash.

Part of any good training program involves preparatory knitting, and this is no exception. It could be a little warm for a hat, but I knit one anyway:

The St. Pat's dash has a costume contest, and this is pretty much as far as I'm willing to go. This is the Jacques Cousteau Hat, knit in the Duet Sock Yarn (colorway: Leprechaun) that I failed to knit into Jaywalkers last year. I love the decreases on this hat, and I love the colors in the yarn. I started this on Feb. 22, and finished it over the weekend--it went very quickly.

I had a request for a photo of the Octopus with a household object, so that the size is easier to gauge. The Octopus isn't very big . . .

. . . but he sure is thirsty!