Saturday morning confession time

Saturday morning, I overslept and missed the start of my group run. Seems that I need to whack the alarm clock silly a few times for it to reset itself. I set it for 5:00, but it did not go off, or maybe I slept soundly with the darn thing blaring in my ear for an hour. It could happen, and has before. So, I got up, decided I probably needed the extra beauty sleep anyway, and decided to ride my bike on the route my friends were running. Lotsa time to take pics, and get a few miles in the saddle in the books. Click here for a report on the RW blog.

Next on tap was a 5K trail race over at Keystone. Actually, this was a duathalon, with a 15K bike ride sandwiched between 2 5K trail runs. I would love to get into some serious mountain biking someday, but I have a hybrid which tough trails would eat up. And, I admit I am a little more serious about getting a good road bike before getting an off-road toy. So, a short 5K was on tap for me.





Brian Franklin, the race director did a superb job putting this together. Brian is the owner of Double Shot coffee, by far the best espresso obtainable in the city of Tulsa.
Local beer and hotdogs awaited the finishers, and since I was doing the bunny race, that meant I had gratification much sooner that the hardcore participants!

My buddy Wade ran the same race, and PR'd in a major way. He ran 23:23 on a hilly technical course, finishing 13 minutes ahead of me. I would blame the time difference on youth, but he is not all that much younger than me.

The start. There were far more people in the full Du, than in the 5K. I started near the back....OK, I started dead last. Nowhere to go but up. See the little dude in the colorful jersey? I put a big bulls eye on his back, and intended to blow his doors off.

There were lots of switchbacks early in the race. Make no mistake, these guys were a good 1/4 mile ahead of me.

A mile into the race, I ran into Robin who was acting as course marshal, making sure no one missed this turn.Robin ran with me for 16 miles at the Arkansas Traveller last October. She is getting quite good at knocking these 100 milers out.

I would have for sure blown through this turn without these guys helping out.Tried to talk this guy out of his shirt, but to no avail. Our race shirts were white, and the red would not have shown blood as bad.

It was work, but I finally caught this guy. A tactical move on my part....get them to pose for a picture....let me catch my breath as I was wasted from running him down.

A brief moment of indecision. When in doubt, trust the arrow.

Actually, the course was very well marked.

I finished 6th place overall, and 1st in my age group!! Not my best time by any means, but considering I just treated it as an easy run, I was happy with it.

Hot dogs at the finish line.Hot babes at the finish line too!And MMMMMMM Coffee!

Ok, I guess I need to come clean. yes, I was 6th male overall, but there were only 7 males in the 5K. I'm ok with that.And if this guy hadda ran, maybe I could have beat him too.

Nothing about running

I had a sales call in Bartlesville today, and either I was earlier than I was supposed to be, or my peeps were late. I called as I entered town, and although I was only a little late by my watch, I was 45 minutes early by theirs. I had my camera, and ventured downtown hoping to find a quaint coffee shop for yet another dose on caffeine.But, it seems Bartlesville shuts the town down and rolls up the sidewalks at 5:00. So, I grabbed my camera and walked about snapping a few pics. The above is a new building that was made to resemble some of the older architecture in the area. Being in the business of selling windows, I would have liked to have had a piece of that action.I hope to come back to eat here. I am guessing it is a hot ticket and difficult to get in at lunch time as there are only about 8 seats inside. I have a spare closet in my house, and I wonder if I could open a restaurant in it?

There's a lot to like in this picture. First off....good cigars for 10 cents? Those were the days! I love the fire escape bolted to the wall over the sign. While I like the message of the newer billboard, I hate the placement of it. Put the dang sign elsewhere! Covering up a classic ad from the past is a sin!

New construction that compliments the old.

Did I mention I was hungry? Must be a good place for lunch, cuz it was closed for dinner.

Bricks and blue sky.

TZ does not follow directions.

Copper and glass.

Amazing how the copper just gets better as it tarnishes.

I'm not washing those!

A Frank Lloyd Wright creation.Another Frank Lloyd Wright classic.

No problem staying on my diet in this town!!

Ok....sure thing. I'll come right in and read. Looks more like "lock-up" to me.

Care for a little stair workout?

Now that doesn't sound real Christian-like.

Sounds like a good joke....three lawyers named Kane walked into a bar....

A cool old general store. Click on the pic to enlarge to see what all this business did back in the day.

Of course I had to open the lid, and was gonna take a pic, but the smell was so bad, I gagged. Nothing too pic-worthy in there. Would love to say this was behind the local McDonalds, but it was not.

Lisa, this is for you!

Burned an hour downtown, never found a coffee shop, made my appointment, and headed home. Bartlesville, you are welcome.

A tale of three runs

Saturday morning came early. 5:45, which means waking up at 5:00...sounds insane. The guarantee of rain made snuggling back down under the covers seem so appealing, but I still rolled out and met my group to run. 8 miles, and then we could go eat!It was a light rain, and since I am a big time sweater, discerning what was sweat and what was rain was a difficult task.Always good to see friendly faces on a run, even if one is Mike's. Mike is my best leftfield friend. We just agree to disagree. (I heard he voted for Reagan!)

After the run, after some bagel consumption, Dana and I went to Turkey Mountain for a little running, hiking, and climbing. Turkey is not the best place for climbing, but there are a couple of faces that you can scale up. A missed notch or slipped grip could have plunged me a good 15-16 inches to the ground below!

Taking the road less traveled, we venture through a crevice for a change of pace. Ya never know when you might find a mystery cave or a porthole to the other side. Ever since meeting Eldridge a few months ago, I have been on the lookout for stuff like that.

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Most people know I'll take a picture of anything. Call me an attention hound, a story-teller, a bull sh%#ter, or whatever. So, don't gag on your Post Toasties over this....Why would I post a pic of trail muffins?? Well, there is a story here. A quarter mile after seeing this pile of horse tootsies, I saw a lone dung beetle who looked like he was on his last legs.It was not too far back to an endless smorgasbord for this poor hungry creature, so I scooped it up and proceeded to take him/her to it's food nirvana. Problem is, it was not as appreciative of my kindness as it should have been, and it bit the hand that was gonna feed him!Nothing serious, but hurt like hell!

So, my act of kindness was simply directed another way. One of God's hungry creatures got his meal.Not sure if I get any "karma" points for this??

Run #3 of the day started at 8:00 pm. An impromptu night run was thrown together, with a sidelined Coach Kathy running sag for our group. Kathy had Susan and Sandra as assistants along the way. Roman was well rested having rested well for the past 2 weeks since the Midnight 50K. Most of the rest of the group had ran 8+ miles with the Saturday group.We met at Wendy's near the Hard Rock casino, headed north 2 miles, before getting onto Redbud Valley Road, a paved country road that winds around up and over rolling hills and ends up in northeast Tulsa in the middle of nowhere. I knew where we were at all times, since I lived in Catoosa a few years ago.

Lisa and Sandra go on a snake hunt.

The last of daylight slips away, and the night-fun begins!

Kathy and Company were waiting for us about every 1.5 miles.

We did see one live snake on the run.This garter snake was scriggling around like a feisty earthworm, and I thought about putting it in my pocket and making a pet out of it, but after my incident with the dung beetle earlier, and the fact that Lisa would probably have had a seizure, I let it be.

A little later, after an aid stop, I received a phone call from Sandra who offered only a short apology....nothing more. What could this be about? Hmmm....we all talked it over, and just about had decided that there was gonna be some road kill ahead. And sure enough, there was a prize that many a redneck would have made a hat and shishkabob out of!Ok, not the best picture, and not really what you want to see while having french toast and orange juice. Sorry you had to see this over breakfast. One shot was all I cared to shoot since the odor was quite the deterrent.

Another commmon sight on a lot of our night runs....Two speeding trains past us on our return trip.

Kindred spirits in the night.

Our journey was nearing it's end.

27 miles total for the day, a dead bobcat, dead skunk, one live snake, one dead snake, two trains. You might think we'd head home since it was after midnight, but not before tearing up a nice stack of pancakes! A runner's gotta eat, ya know.