Marathon

I've had it in the back of my head that I want to run a marathon for more than 10 years and this winter, spring and summer I've decided to give it another try. The tentative race is the Cordova marathon on July 11, which will give Beth and I an excuse to take the ferry over to Cordova and check the place out for a day or two.

Since I got to Alaska almost 2 months ago I've been running or XC skiing probably 3 times a week, and the funny thing about it is that I'm already getting into better shape. I'm pretty lucky that I have a body thats pretty willing to take the abuse, and that whips itself into shape pretty quickly. So far I've run up to 7.5 miles, with relative ease during the run but considerable soreness afterwards (i.e.: today). I'm thinking that I need to make that a typical distance in about the next month or so, so that from April on I can go for a couple runs of about that length a week, with longer runs mixed in occasionally.

Beth is also in training for the Mayor's Midnight Sun half-marathon in Anchorage in mid-June. So we'll be a couple of running fools until mid-summer.

Alyeska Weekend

Beth and I went down to Girdwood on Friday afternoon, where we met up with about 10 of her friends from work to stuff ourselves silly and drink too much. Almost incidentally, we also went snowboarding and cross-skiing. If one measures the success of a ski weekend by the heftiness of ones breakfast burrito, as I do (and God help you if you don't even eat a breakfast burrito on a ski weekend), then this one must have come in at about 23 ounces. Big success!

The mountain was in good condition, with the kind of weather that I have sorely missed for the past couple of months, and the scenery was beautiful. Don't believe me? Well here are some pictures to prove it:

first a couple of panoramics from Saturday

and then a couple from XC skiing on Sunday

Let there be Light

In all honesty, Beth and I were a little slow to get out of bed this morning, but we were maybe only 15 minutes later than usual heading out the door towards her office. Still, when we got outside at 7:30 it was getting light!!!!

Snowboarding in Alaska

Given the combination of mountains and snow, snowboarding up here in AK has promised to be pretty good, but I didn't actually make it out onto the hill until 2 Saturdays ago. As expected, it was a very fun day, with good conditions and virtually no crowds. Here's a picture I took from the top of the mountain:

Bush's letter to Obama

Following presidential tradition, George Bush left a letter for Barack Obama in the oval office, which our new president was good enough to share with the American people...

Obama Reads Bush's Letter - watch more funny videos

Reluctant Geochemist on Facebook

I just started importing this blog onto Facebook. If you're viewing it there you should know that embedded videos don't show up on Facebook, but you can see them on my blog by clicking on "View Original Post." I guess I'll have to start marking posts with videos, too.