An AG award, a race shirt and a newspaper article

Man, I'm a slacker....guess I'm taking this recovery period a little too seriously and letting it affect my blogging too. Honestly, not much exciting is going on with my running right now, so not much to write about. Just plugging along. My legs feel good though, so that's good. And I did get in an awesome 12 miler (my longest run since Missoula) last Saturday when I was back in western Montana for my wife's high school reunion. I started from her dad's house and ran out to the Blodgett Canyon trailhead. Blodgett is a narrow canyon with extremely sheer walls that was carved back during the last Ice Age. I had to endure a lot of uphill on the way out, but it was worth it for the views I got of the Bitterroot Valley and the Sapphire Mountains on the far side of it.

Anyhow, on to my original intent of this post. I mentioned in my Missoula report that I won the 30-34 AG, but since I was chugging local microbrews at the Iron Horse, I missed out on the awards ceremony so had to have my award mailed. Well, it finally arrived this week, bringing to an end a couple of weeks of high anticipation. I got a Missoula Marathon bag (which I knew was coming). There was also a mystery manila envelope too, which turned out to contain a certificate saying I had won the AG. Not too exciting. I was secretly hoping for four plane tickets to Boston. Oh well.

I also got my new Missoula Marathon shirt in the mail this week. You see, I didn't actually try on the race shirt I got in my packet while I was in Missoula, but waited until getting back home only to find that the large, which is the size of every other shirt I own, fit more like a medium. So, I emailed the race director and she said she could exchange it for an XL, which fits much better (like a large should).

The third exciting item from this week was the phone call I got on Monday night from the sports editor of the local newspaper. Apparently, he's rrrrrreeeeaaaalllllyyyyy desperate for stories because he wants to write one about me qualifying for Boston (word gets around fast in a small town). He wanted to take some pictures of me running, but when I told him that I usually run at 4:30 AM, he decided that some pictures of me standing in my yard would work just fine. He asked me a bunch of questions about Boston and how I qualified, but while he was here I didn't actually see him write anything down, so this article should be interesting. I'm not sure when it will be printed, maybe in this Saturday's edition (the Belle Fourche Post and Bee is printed on Wednesdays and Saturdays).

So, that's my exciting news for the week! The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally is next week, so maybe I'll have some more interesting tales to tell in the near future....