Re-united....

The coolest thing about my renewed desire to run competitively is how I have been able to reconnect with old friends - such as Eggers and Oelz - and meet new ones, like David Brinkley.  This past Saturday, I met up with Brandon Hillis, an old friend from UNCW, for a long run all over Dilworth and Charlotte.

I followed Brandon from the Charlotte Running Company parking lot on East Boulevard through the Queens Road neighborhoods, then back through the center of uptown (Did we ever really decide what to call Charlotte's center city?  Uptown?  Downtown?  Funkytown?  I'll never get it.) on Providence Road.  This was pretty neat because we saw a lot of the competitors from the "Hit the Brixx" 5K/10K cooling down, hanging out, and milling about.  (This is where I would post a link to that race's website, because it's one of the better ones in the area, but the meet organizers still haven't posted results.  It's only been 4 days.  Geez.)

Brandon and I exchanged workout and training plans and talked about what some of our old friends were now doing.  He was no doubt a bigger help to me than I could be to him, seeing as how he has already done a marathon before and I'm about to attempt my first one (yeah that's right...details forthcoming).  He encouraged me to lower my goals for the race, which is probably a good idea, on the grounds that the marathon "is just a whole new world."  Alrighty, then.  Sounds like good advice; I haven't figured out what my goals really are but I guess I'll just focus on getting faster and preventing injuries for now.  We wrapped up a 14-miler by looping through Freedom Park and checking out the scenes from the Festival in the Park.  Brandon did 6 before I met him, so it was actually a 20-miler for him.  I suppose I'll get there soon.  That distance still seems awfully tough but it seems alot more doable now than I would have thought a month or so ago.  I ran my 14 at just under 8-minute pace.