Hope

I know that all the peeps in Cleveland, Minneapolis, and the "Through Th3 Wall World Headquarters" probably don't want to hear this, but it has to be said. This is the best time of the year in Houston. We suffer, swelter and melt while you have temperate summer breezes, so in return, we get moderate temps while you sit in the slush.

It's a bit like living in the Southern Hemisphere, say New Zealand, where summer is on the way. Just when Triathlete Magazine and Runner's World start talking about off-seasons and winter training, we are having weatherly bliss. Rather than this serene picture of morning light in the Huntsville State Park, I could have rubbed your faces in it with pictures of Memorial Park yesterday. It was dry and 65 degrees. The park was full of people playing volleyball, eating on blankets, lying on the ground, riding bicycles, and (like me) running.

I was only in the park for a bit, but not because I was running junk miles. The park represented about 1.5 miles in the last hour of an 18 mile long run.

*blink* *blink*

Yes, that's right, sports fans. Eighteen Miles.

It has been a year since I ran that far, and the furthest I ran before the aborted "Battle of the Sexes" was 15 miles--nearly a month ago. I had split a 17 mile run morning and evening last week, but with the Disney Marathon coming up, it was now or never. Either I have progressed to the point that I can run with decent posture and my neck will take a marathon long run or I have not.

So, on the top 5 weather day of the year, I took off on an 18 mile route that approximates part of the Houston Marathon course. The route leaves downtown on the bayou trail, turns south through Montrose and the Museum District, turns west at the Medical Center past Rice University in to West U, turns north then west into the Galleria, turns back East through Memorial Park, and thence along the Bayou back into downtown. If you get out to the Galleria or "the Loop" and give out, there is nothing to be done but walk it in 6 or 8 miles. Absent that, there is the ignominy of calling for rescue, because the family is too far away to pick me up and take me to my car..

Parts were tough, and today I am a little creaky in the legs, but with a little help from my friends Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana, Mahler and Metallica, we got 'er done.

Tuesday is 7x800 fast. There. Is. Hope.