Running in the STL, and a Big Win for a Running Buddy

I spent Thursday through Sunday in St. Louis visiting a friend, David, who is rehabbing a really neat 1 up 1 down duplex. The place isn't in too bad a shape, and the neighborhood is pretty nice. He picked up the place for a song. But that's the way St. Louis is. You can buy great inner city properties in decent neighborhoods for not much scratch (as they say). The place is 2-3 br on each floor. The ceilings looked to be between 10 and 12 feet (they were really high). Closets and transoms could be found in most rooms. There was also off-street parking and a back pseudo butler staircase (something I love in old houses).

While he's putting lipstick and real tlc into the property, David's staying at another friend's house. His friend, Amanda, also has a cool old house with a butler staircase and high ceilings. It is in the Shaw neighborhood near Water Tower and Tower Grove parks. While Amanda will shortly be running the Chicago Marathon, she and I never had a chance to nail on the horseshoes for a run. She headed out for a weekend at Innsbruck (that's Innsbruck, MO., not Austria - and I may have misspelled that, but who really cares). Her friend, Meg was in town from Louisiana, and it seemed like a good weekend to get away.

Anyway, I had some great runs - mainly in the rain - through the parks and the Shaw and Compton neighborhoods. St. Louis isn't Indianapolis flat, but it is pretty stinking flat. So the runs were very fast. I was able to run between 7 and 8 minute miles for most of the workouts. That led to me going a bit longer in distance than I had planned, because I was trying to run based on time not distance. The parks and houses along the fabulous tree-lined streets made for really pleasant running. There were very few other runners out, so the workouts became pretty internal and zen-like. I'd hit the zone about 2-3 miles in, and then just cruise.

Speaking of cruising... My friend, Chris ran a race this weekend. It was a 5k in KC or Leawood or some such place. The race was put on by the heart, lung, cancer (I'm really not sure which) association. He popped out of the gate quickly and finished in 4th place - 1st in his age (30-35) division. Congrats to Chris for being a running stud. I'm thankful he lets me run in his wake every now and then.

Chris with his HUGE medal and his brother

My next race is this weekend's 9.5 mi. Sand Rat Race. Then, the following weekend, Chris, Eric, and I are running the Bert Nash 10k (after Chris' performance, it is safe to say that we won't be running that race together).

Anyway, until next week... too dah loo.