Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Back in the game: Work and Northwoods Snowshoe Championships

I started work today after being off since the middle of Oct. Let's just say I'm glad to be back in the game. My new job is with the MN Dept of Agriculture, Information Technology Division in St Paul. I interviewed for the job and they decided I was qualified. It'd be a good ego-boost to think I totally smoked the field of other top-notch applicants... and there really was no competition. As in, I was the only person that interviewed for the job! Can you believe that? I can't imagine that happens very often these days.


The Northwoods Snowshoe Championships were held this past weekend in Duluth. After a bitterly cold week, Sat turned out to be a pretty nice day. I ran the half marathon, and ended up running the whole way with Karen who was doing the full marathon. That's Karen leading the charge in the picture, with me trying to hang on in the middle, followed by another guy we'd just passed after chasing him for miles.


With my Garmin I was able to "run against myself" using the course data from last year. For most of the time we were behind. But we definitely finished the half marathon stronger than I did last year - in the last few miles I could see us slowing but surely catching up. As I came around the last corner and saw the clock, I "sprinted" in and PRed by a whopping 9 or 10 seconds!! :)


So I basically did the same as last year, and I'm happy with how it went. It was good to get back in the race game, too (Surph the Murph was Nov 1st). Next up is Psycho Wyco in Kansas City.