I just finished up listening to an audio book on the 1930s-1950s radio show The Shadow. The first disc was a 45-minute history/overview of the show, and then the book had 8 of the original shows to listen to. They were fantastic! Radio drama is really cool – it is especially nice when I’m running on a treadmill. Yes, the plots could be contrived, the dialog was not always sparkling, the characters could be flat, but it was still great! The medium of radio allowed for plots and lines that would not make it on TV. It seemed to be part of the flavor. The sound effects were fun, and the melodramatic music on the organ was great.

For those who do know much about the Shadow, he fought crime. He “mastered the art of clouding men’s minds so they could not see him,” and he would track down evildoers and find ways to bring them to justice. He only “appeared” to the villains as a voice, the baritone voice of the Shadow, with a sufficiently creepy laugh. Only appearing as a voice works really really well on radio, by the way.

The thing that continually surprised me about the radio shows was the level of crime. In most of the shows, someone (or someones) dies. The Shadow is also no Superman – sometimes the people he is trying to protect die, and sometimes the villains die. In all of the shows that I heard, the Shadow always found out what was going on, but he did not always save the victim and he never seemed too shaken up when the malefactors died. In one show, he forced two murderers to sign a confession – if they did not, he was going to turn them over to a mob of their possible victims, who would kill the two men. Not exactly legal, and certainly not nice. I always think that the 30s and 40s had fairly innocent diversions for entertainment. The Shadow proved me wrong.

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows….

Check out some of the shows here!
You can even download 98 of the shows for your mp3 player (click on “Whole Directory”). How very very cool.

Mer and I passed a milestone a few weeks ago, and I forgot to comment on it! After SIXTEEN months of listening on and off in the car, we finished The Teaching Company’s lectures on classics of American literature, all 84 lectures (42 hours). We finished up the lectures on one of our trips to see theater in Cleveland. I give the series a thumbs up. I did like the Shakespeare lectures we have better, but the overview of American literature was still very good. A few surprises came out of the course – I really liked what I heard on Emily Dickinson. Her stuff really impressed me, and I am not much of a poetry guy. I liked that the teacher, Prof. Arnold Weinstein, was willing to talk about books that are not in vogue in universities nowadays (according to Weinstein) – Frost, Hemingway, some Twain, James, and others. He also threw in some works that he considered important that are not usually read or discussed, like Melville’s Benito Cereno, which sounds really interesting.

Meredith has started re-listening to these lectures on her morning walks, and she is already through 42 of them! At this heady pace, she will only take about three months to go through the whole course.

Not to let our brains atrophy too much, yesterday we started in on the 24-lecture (12 hours) course on the Life and Work of Mark Twain. I’m guessing that should only take 4-6 months to get through!

Last night (Saturday), Mer and I went to Actors’ Summit to see our second play of the season, Medea. I knew almost nothing about Medea, except it was an ancient Greek tragedy (about 2400 years old). The lead role of Medea was being played by an Actors’ Summit regular who is a very good actress.

The story of Medea is pretty typical. Medea falls in love with Jason of Argonauts fame. She saves his life several times, betrays her father the king, kills her brother when he comes after her, and moves to Greece with Jason to be his wife. They have two sons together. Jason then marries the daughter of the Greek king so he can be king someday. This does not go over well with Medea. She raves so much the king fears for his daughter’s life and sentences her to exile, giving Medea one day to get ready. She uses that day to plot the death of the king, the king’s daughter, plots to kill her sons to hurt Jason, and arranges her own safe haven in Athens. It happens all the time.

While a tad on the extreme, the play is still performed after 2400 years because it does raise issues of faithfulness, revenge, hatred, justice, love, family, and more. The play was compelling. The language was a bit stilted in places (those Greeks had a thing for oratory and speeches, even in plays), but the leads in the play were excellent, so they were able to act through the stuffy language and make it seem almost normal. Usually the acting at Actors’ Summit is excellent, so I was a little surprised that one or two of the minor characters were acted fairly flatly. The lines were delivered, but they had the feel of almost being read instead of acted. Still, the major roles were excellent, and they pulled the play off well. Seeing Medea makes you want to be very, very nice to your wife.

Speaking of nice, we had a gift certificate to the Old Whedon Grille in Hudson. We had never eaten there before. It is a casual dining experience with TVs in the corners showing sports. The menu is extensive, and full of food that I like. Mer had a southwestern wrap, and I had cashew-crusted chicken. They both came with really good fries (I may have to take Sonotmu there, since he is the fries connoisseur). Dessert was chocolate lava cake. MMMmmmmm. It was a nice date night – dinner and a show! Just don’t scorn your date!

Measure for Measure and Arsenic and Old Lace were playing in repertory (both plays playing at the same time with the same actors). So, last weekend, on Saturday, Mer and I headed back up to Cleveland to see Arsenic. We knew the travel time better, so we did not have the hour wait until curtain time this time.

The staging for Arsenic was impressive. The curtain rose on the exterior of the Brewster house, and the whole house rotated at the start of the play so you could see the interior of the house, which included a full staircase. The entire play then took place inside the Brewster house, and the house was rotated at the very end of the play so the older Brewster ladies could motion for the audience to come into the house.

Arsenic is a wonderfully funny play. It is a play that is humorous no matter who plays it, as long as they are even just okay actors. The actors in the Great Lakes Theater company are exceptional, so they enhanced the play with great acting, and even added many sight gags to support the play. Mortimer (the lead) was played by the same actor that had played Angelo (the bad deputy) in Measure for Measure. One of the great things about repertory theater is getting to see actors do widely different roles back-to-back. Mortimer is a very very funny role, with a ton of energy required to play him well. It is about as different from Angelo as you can get. As good as the actor’s Angelo was, his Mortimer was brilliant. He played the straight man to the entire farce perfectly. He was stunningly active, being all over the stage all the time as he tried to keep his aunts from doing anything else.

Some of the wonderful sight gags they added to the play included:
– “Teddy” was bringing a body down to the cellar to bury the body in “Panama.” He decided it was easier to let gravity do the work, so he dropped the body down the (hidden to the audience) cellar stairs. We got to see Teddy’s head bounce up and down as he watched the body bounce down the stairs.
– One of the aunts bent over to pick up a throw pillow, and had a very hard (and funny) time getting back up. This was away from the main dialog, which was across the stage. It was still funny enough to have the audience laughing, even though the attention was supposed to be many feet away.
– Mortimer staggered all over the stage in shock when he discovered that the body in the window seat was not the same body that had been there a few hours ago. The shock was way over the top, which fit the play perfectly.
– Mortimer staggered all over the stage because his limbs had fallen asleep after he had been tied to a chair for several hours.
– The mean brother, Jonathan, has had his face altered, and now it looks like the guy that played Frankenstein. At one point, his companion lights a match, and Jonathan grunts and waves his arms at the flame – that was great.

The play had me laughing from beginning to end. If you have never seen the play, you can get the excellent movie from 1944 staring Cary Grant, and you should go get it now!

Last Christmas, Mer and I got a gift card to use at Playhouse Square in Cleveland. We mused on how to use it, with no real consensus until we found out that we could use it for the Great Lakes Theater Festival, which performs at Playhouse Square. The GLTF has a special 2-for-1 subscription package, where if you are a new or lapsed subscriber, you can buy one subscription and get one for free. This season is pretty great – Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, Kesselring’s Arsenic and Old Lace, Miller’s The Crucible, and Shakespeare’s All’s Well that Ends Well. With a little bit of our anniversary funds thrown in, we found we could afford the Saturday matinee package for the four plays listed above.

So, two weeks ago (yes, I’m behind in blogging), we headed up to Cleveland to see Measure for Measure. We have not gone to the theater in Cleveland since moving to the new house, so we got there really early. We caught part of a talk about the play (a feature that happens an hour before curtain on Saturdays), where the speaker talked about how relevant Measure for Measure is today in an age where powerful men have been brought low by sexual scandals. It was not a deep talk, but it was a good overview.

Since we still had about 45 minutes until curtain, we had time to wander in the gift shop. Meredith got distracted by a book on Mamma Mia, so I wandered to the small gallery in the theater. This gallery never seems to be open on weekends, but you can look through the windows. They have a fair amount of sculpture, and my current favorite piece was back after it had been away for a few months. It is a larger-than-life sculpture of a woman playing the fiddle. I love this piece – it captures motion really well, and it just speaks the joy of music to me. It is called Melody by a sculptor named Tuan. If you are looking for a Christmas gift idea for me, consider Melody – it is only $79,000. I’d put her next to our piano.

Mer found me and we went to our seats. Briefly, Measure for Measure is the story of a city (Vienna) where the the Duke has become concerned that laws are being ignored, especially sexual laws. His solution is right out of modern boardrooms – he decides to leave and installs an upright and just man (Angelo) to start enforcing the laws. The Duke also reveals later that he is curious to see if Angelo can remain just with the temptation of power. It’s not a very charitable solution, but there it is. Angelo sentences a man (Claudio) to die for the crime of fornication (Claudio has gotten his lover pregnant). Claudio appeals to his sister (Isabella), who is entering a nunnery, to plead with Angelo for his (Claudio’s) life. Isabella does so, and in pleading for Claudio’s life, Angelo (the powerful official) falls desperately in lust with Isabella. He proposes that if she sleeps with him, he will spare Claudio’s life. She refuses. Things are moved along and patched up by the Duke, who comes back to the city disguised as a friar. It is a comedy, so all ends in marriages. However, it is considered a “problem” comedy, because it is a very dark play, and some of the things the Duke does are bordering on cruel (not telling Isabella that her brother is still alive when she thinks he is dead, having Isabella briefly arrested for “slandering” Angelo, etc.).

The director decided to set Measure for Measure in a modern police state. The set was stark, with many steel bars showing. There were surveillance cameras everywhere, and the sets were changed by police guards, who often stayed on stage without lines. Angelo was dressed well in a suit, and was often behind or near a large desk. The “walls” of rooms could quickly become the bars of a cell, or the walls of a convent. It worked really well. Having the cameras everywhere was effective – when Angelo decides to offer his deal to Isabella, he goes to great pains to turn the cameras off. When Isabella says she will expose Angelo as a fraud, he asks her who would believe her. She points to the cameras, after which Angelo smiles as he turns a camera on and off. It exposed Isabella’s powerless situation really well.

The acting was first rate. Angelo was smooth and powerful. Isabella was strong in resolve, but realized she could not save her brother. The Duke was smart and scheming. It was a well-done production. My only slight gripe was right before the intermission. The police had been hauling prisoners around strapped upright to dollies. That worked really well. But right before intermission, while the Duke was musing over justice and the lives he can save, the police wheeled four prisoners on stage. Of the four, only one was under the death sentence. I thought wheeling all four on stage was heavy handed, and I think it would have been more effective to just have Claudio on stage. Small detail in an excellent production.

That was our afternoon – we got home about 4:30. We still had more going on that Saturday! Our friends Ray and Sara had extra tickets to go see the Summit Choral Society do an a cappella concert in Akron. We were told it was at a church downtown at 7:30, so we headed out about 7:00. We parked at a parking garage about 7:20 that was next to what I thought was the church. As we approched the church, there was a wedding streaming out, so we figured it was the wrong church (it was almost 7:30 now). We walked quickly (Mer was running at points) to try to find the street the church was on. We walked four or five blocks down the street, then went to another street and walked back to the car. We jumped in the car to drive around looking for the street. We went six or seven blocks, then drove back another way. We came to the same garage, and saw that it was on the street that we were looking for – the church that had the wedding in it was the right church after all. It was now 7:45, so we were a little surprised to see Ray and Sara standing on the steps. It turns out the concert started at 8:00. Ray and Sara had seen us walk by, but had not been able to stop us (they were still in their car). So, we had good exercise before the concert.

The concert itself was much fun. The choir was about 60 people strong, and they opened with some pieces I really like (a piece by American composer William Billings, and they did a wonderful job with “Magnum Mysterium” by Lauridsen). The concert had several arrangements of gospel songs, and they even threw in a PDQ Bach piece for fun. The choir had three brothers as special guests. These three brothers could really really sing – they all could sing different parts, and they sang their own arrangements of gospel songs and originals. The high tenor was getting higher than many of the sopranos in the choir. They were amazing.

The concert was much fun, and ran for about an hour and a half. I had a mild headache for much of the concert, so I did not enjoy it as much as I should have. Ray and Sara took us out to eat at Applebee’s after the concert. We had a good time visiting and laughing with them at the restaurant, and my headache went away with the food.

So, theater, music, and food! Not a bad way to spend a Saturday!

Meredith and I got together with our friends (and soon to be married!), Zach and Londa. We met in Kent, at the (aptly named) Kent Stage to see David Wilcox in concert again. The four of us saw Dave last year together, and Mer and I have seen Dave at least 5-6 times over the last 15 years. We are both big fans of Dave – his songs tend to start out about the ordinary or the small, and then you suddenly realize he has made a large or even universal application out of the song. A good example from last night was a song inspired by his wife’s leg healing after it broke; he decided to write a song about talking to the bone cells that were growing. He tried to explain to them how they were just small and he could not explain how they were part of a bigger, more complicated system. Then you suddenly realize that Dave is not singing to or about cells anymore….

Dave did two sets, lasting about two-and-a-half hours. He did almost all new stuff; he has an album about to come out. Some of his songs were so new he was still reading them off of sheets of paper. They were good, and I’m looking forward to the album (once we sell the house).

I love getting together with Zach and Londa – they have such joy, and it is fun to be around a couple so excited about each other. It reminds me that I’m very lucky to have a good ‘un like Mer. We bought the tickets for the concert with the last of our anniversary money (from August). Happy anniversary, honey!

Baseball on TV tonight is exciting – and I’m not talking about the Indians/Red Sox game. The REAL action was in Wii baseball tonight. I was playing in my sixth pro-level game. Prior to tonight, I had never scored a run against a pro team, so I was not expecting much. When I went down 0-3 after the second inning (Wii is a three-inning game), things looked really bad.

My lead-off runner got to first. Whoo hoo! Rally time! My next batter got out. My next batter got out. Things looked grim – two outs, down by three runs, man on first. I decided I was going to swing hard and low – the pros throw a lot of splitters, which I cannot hit, so I was committing to swinging low at the pitches. I hit the ball and actually hit a home run! My first runs in the pros! Now it was two out, 2-3. My next batter hits a home run! The crowd (me) goes nuts! My next batter hits a double! 3-3, man on second! Amazing! My next batter hit out. Bummer.

I can still play for the tie, if I can find some pitching. I’ve had TWO home runs hit off me tonight off the handle of the bat (I threw way inside and they still nailed it). Somehow I managed to get all three out – two flies and a strikeout. My very first tie in the pros! Note that my score is still not pro-level (you have to get to 1000 points to be a pro yourself; my current score is 877). A good baseball night!

In other sporting news, I also made a 23-yard chip shot out of a bunker in golf for a birdie. A two-sport athlete!

The last two weekends have been perfect weather for both me and Mer. I like things cool, and Mer likes things warm, but we have a ten-degree range where we both like the weather – the 70s (although I like the low 70s best). Two weeks ago, we took advantage of the beautiful weather to go walk on the towpath near Peninsula, Ohio, and last week we walked on the towpath closer to home. Both walks were very nice.

Peninsula is a very small town in the Valley, and is the closest to a New England town that I have seen in Ohio. It has the rolling hills (because it is in a valley), it has a cute main street, it has the towpath trail, it has a scenic railway, and it has the Cuyahoga River flowing through the town. We parked in the overflow lot for the trailhead (the main lot was full). We headed south on the towpath – I wanted to show Mer a pretty spot I had seen while running. The trail is almost entirely in shade – every now and then you can get to a spot without trees near a field or next to the river. We walked for about twenty minutes south and came to a lock on the old canal. I was thinking about turning around, but there was a side-trail that went to an old quarry. Mer asked if I wanted to go see it. Duh! It was an uphill climb! It had rocks! Of course I wanted to go see the quarry.

All the old quarries I had ever seen in Maine were holes in the ground, usually filled with water. This quarry was surprising to me – it was stone cut out of the side of the hill. We did get a good scramble up the side of the hill, and found a gentler way back down (the first picture above). The current quarry path used to be the railroad bed for the trains that would haul the stone. Neat.

After the quarry, we took our time going back to Peninsula. It was late enough that most of the towpath was free from bikes and runners, so we had it largely to ourselves. We did spend a little time at the trailhead looking at the water, and I enjoyed the pedestrian bridge (it is made out of metal and I think it is cool). It was a great way to end a Sunday.

Last Sunday we went a little closer to home. I wanted to take Meredith south on the trail that I had run on to show her a swampy area that I thought was pretty, plus had the advantage of having a cool wooden walkway to tromp around on. I assured her it was only about a ten-minute walk.

About ten minutes in, we had not come to the swampy area yet, but we did see a very confident cat chilling on a tree limb over the old canal. This cat had much confidence in his balance…

We did finally make it to the footbridge, after a mere 25 minutes or so (what can I say?). I was pleased that the goose that thought he owned the swamp was out in regal splendor. Twice before when I had run by, he had let me (and everyone else in the area) know that I was trespassing by announcing it loudly. He was just in his element.

We also saw Canadian geese on the water, and they took off from the water, which was fun to see. There were some ducks hanging around as well. The swampy area used to be a junk car lot, but beavers had dammed the area, so it flooded, which is much prettier than a junk car lot. We did not see any beavers, although they are still supposed to be around.

We wandered back to the car, again in a fairly leisurely fashion. That had made three weekends in a row of taking advantage of area parks, but it probably will end there for now – today it is in the 80s, and I’m hiding in my air conditioning.

Fall is here, so it must be theater season! As readers know, Mer and I have season tickets to Actors Summit Theater (we had the good fortune of buying the season tickets just before we decided to buy our new house, so the theater season could still be funded). Last Saturday evening, Mer and I got dressed up (hey, this IS our social life for now!) and went to see Richard Dresser’s Rounding Third, a comedy about Little League baseball. Richard Dresser wrote the play after having his son tell him that the son’s coach had devised a strategy where slower base runners would get “hurt” and fake an injury so that faster runners could be on base. It got a little more complicated in that Dresser coached for awhile as well and found himself wanting to win at all costs. So, he wrote a very funny play about it – a coach who wants to win no matter what, and a new assistant coach that wants the kids to “just have fun.”

The interaction worked really well. Yes, both coaches were stereotypes to a large degree, but they worked. Seeing the must-win coach seething pretty much every time the have-fun coach spoke was really funny. Oddly, both Meredith and I found ourselves more on the side of the must-win coach, which is funny, because we both thought at the start of the play that we would like the have-fun coach.

The play was not terribly deep, but it was very entertaining, and it did make you think about where on the win/fun scale people should be. It is only a two-man play, and the actors pulled it off very well. My only slight complaint was that the must-win coach used an awful lot of strong language, which was probably part of the character, but it was so frequent I wished it had been scaled back some – I think the idea could have been communicated with the same punch through body language. Still, on the whole, it was a fun evening.

I had a bit of a rough night last night, before my second half-marathon attempt. I had a dream that I had a great race, only to find out that I did not have my timing chip on my shoe, and so I had no results. I woke up several times before the alarm was supposed to go off at 5:00, but Mer got up to use the bathroom at 4:55, so I just got up.

I had a yogurt, two English muffins with (smooth) peanut butter, and a granola bar. I figured that would last me pretty well – I ran 16 miles two weeks ago on one yogurt, and last week I ran 13 miles on no breakfast. I made sure to attach my timing chip, I attached my bib number (after Mer found me two safety pins, bless her!), and even remembered my watch this year (I forgot my watch for last year’s Towpath half-marathon). I felt a little nervous, but okay.

Mer joined me in the car, and we made our way southward to Akron. Akron added the Roadrunner Marathon five years ago, but had also added a half-marathon this year. Akron also encourages two and five-person relay teams to run the marathon, so I was expecting quite a crowd. We parked in a city garage and walked the two blocks to Inventure Place, the starting area. I was surprised – I was supposed to meet my boss, Jim, and we were going to run the race together. After going to the runners’ expo, we walked over to Inventure Place and agreed on a spot to meet. When I rounded the corner this morning, I was surprised to see that spot covered in porta-potties. I told Mer that was the meeting spot, and she asked which one Jim was in.

The starting time for the race was 7:00, and we got to the starting area at 6:15, so it was still dark. I used the extra time to use a bathroom, which is an interesting experience when it is still dark outside. When I got back to Meredith, she was with Jim and his wife Andie. Jim also introduced me to Gary, a friend of his that was going to run at our pace, but for the whole marathon (wow!).

We stretched out, and Jim and Gary took a quick warm-up jog – I have never bothered with warm-up jogs – I figure I’ve got lots of time to get loose during the first few miles. We then made our way to the starting chute. We were looking for the 7:30/mile group (Jim’s and my goal was to break 1:40 for the race), and we kept walking forward and forward. We finally got very close to the front and found our area; I was a little nervous at how close to the start we were. A couple of different ministers of different faiths prayed for the race, we heard a very good rendition of the national anthem, and then the race started with the ringing of a large bell (which was a cool twist on the normal starter’s pistol). We were off!

I won’t bore you with mile-by-mile descriptions. There were some moments I liked. The race started on a slight downhill toward the valley and Akron’s interesting “Y”-bridge. We got to run over the bridge. That was cool in itself, but once on the bridge, I got to look east and see the first hints of the sun coming up. It was very pretty. After a two-mile loop, we got to run over the other side of the “Y”-bridge, and I got to see the other Akron bridge standing out against the sunrise. It was very nice.

We entered the city again, and I got to kiss my biggest fan. She always screams and jumps up and down, so I always see her; I get to run over and kiss her – it is a tradition dating back to my first marathon in 1998. She gets to stand around in the 50-degree weather to see me for 15 seconds, and her reward is a sweaty kiss. What a great wife. Jim asked me afterwards if I got a charge from kissing Mer, and I told him that I run marathons so I can kiss pretty girls in the crowd.

We were running very strongly, and I felt really good. We were putting in 7:20 miles, and even a few 7:10s or better.

CVCA, where I work, has an unusual number of distance runners working there. At Akron this year, I, Jim, and Dale were running the half. Julie was running on the relay team. CVCA alum Steven was running the full marathon. Two other CVCA alums who are brothers were on a relay team. Somewhere around mile eight, Jim mentioned he had seen a former CVCA employee, Lindsey, running. At that point I asked Jim, “What is it about CVCA that attracts running nuts?”  I then heard over my shoulder, “Hello, sir!” I turned to see one of the Founding Fools, Michelle, running next to me. She had mentioned awhile back that she was training to be part of a relay team, but I had not heard if she was still going to be able to run. Seeing her like that, in the middle of a race, was a huge kick. I shortly asked Jim, “What is it about CVCA that attracts running nuts and Fools?”

Around mile eight or so was Firestone Park. It was just a little after 8:00, so the sun was streaming through the trees at a low angle, and it was gorgeous. It was such a pretty day – in the low 50s and a blue sky and no wind. It was great.

I was beginning to wonder when I’d see Akron again – it seemed like it had been a fair time since we had left downtown. As soon as I thought that, I looked up and saw we were entering the University of Akron’s campus. That was a fun boost – it was neat to run on the paths on campus. It was around here (mile nine or so) that I started to pull away from Jim and Gary. I did not mean to leave them, but I was feeling really strong. It was not some burst-of-speed breakaway; it was rather a slow pull-away. When I saw Mer again after the University, I kissed her and kept running. She later told me Jim was right behind me.

Mer also told me that after I kissed her, a reporter from the Akron Beacon Journal told her he had seen the kiss and thought it was cute, and so he interviewed her. He found out it is our tradition, and asked her about where she worked and lived and so forth. I may have to buy a paper tomorrow and see if she is in it. As a funny aside, the reporter was surprised to find out that Mer worked at CVCA; he said he had interviewed a man before the race who had been sleeping under a CVCA blanket (the alum, Steve).

I then ran past Inventure Place again (I had not expected that!), and kept going toward the “Y”-bridge. Instead of crossing the bridge this time, the race turned left. As I started down the hill, I heard Jim yelling, “Matt! Go left!” – we were at the point where the marathoners went to the right to keep running, and where the half-marathoners turned left on to the Martin Luther King, Jr., highway, otherwise known as the Innerbelt. It was a little weird running on a three-lane highway. There were far fewer runners now that the marathoners were gone, and the crowds were gone as well (not surprising – it is not easy to get out onto the Innerbelt as a spectator). There were two solid hills on the Innerbelt – the second one was particularly hard on tired legs. But, it was followed by a nice downhill back into the downtown area. I thought we were going to have to run up a good hill in Akron, but the course turned (yay!).

The race finished in my favorite ballpark – Canal Park, home of the Akron Aeros. We actually got to run on the warning track – we came in in center field, and finished about half-way between home and first. I felt really good, and I was able to put in a near-sprint at the end.

So, I finished, and I did really well. I finished in 1:35:41 (a 7:19/mile pace). I came in 54th out of 1132 finishers (top 5%), 47th out of 593 men (top 8%), and 10th out of 103 in my division (top 10%). I was super happy with the finish.

Jim came in shortly after I did, at 1:37:15, so we both made our goal of breaking 1:40.

The website results had some ranking system that factored in age. According to that system, I was ranked “Local Class.” I feel pretty good about that. Jim, who is 54, ranked “Regional Class.”

I did some thinking along the lonely stretch of the Innerbelt. 1 Cor 13:4-5 defines love by saying, “love is patient, love is kind…it is not self-seeking.” I was thinking about that passage in light of Meredith. Here she was, getting up at 5:00 a.m on the only morning of the week where she can sleep in, standing out in the cold for over two hours, all so she could cheer me on. That is love. She is a gem, and I love her.