So we headed up to Brushy Creek on Wednesday despite the threatening skies. Really not a bad drive. It took us 45 minutes with very little traffic. I’m trying to run the entire Sunstroke Stampede series this year so there are a few more trips up North in our future. We’ll see if Julie stays on board.

I started a little too far in the back of the pack, and I probably lost a few seconds trying to navigate around people. I find it hard to find a good spot though. That said it was a pretty decent first race. I finished in 27:05. Which is a pace of 8:41/m. Not even close to my best time from last year – 25:19, but I’ve been slacking.

Next Wednesday – 5/21 – is at Town Lake. Just park on the North Side of the lake right under I-35. The run kicks off at 7pm and is $10. Just bring the cash to the park and you can run. No pre-planning necessary. I’d love to see some of my blog readers out there. It’s a great run.

<a href="http://www.mapmyrun.com/run/united-states/tx/austin/103160537" _fcksavedurl="http://www.mapmyrun.com/run/united-states/tx/austin/103160537">Run around the AMD</a><br/><a href="http://www.mapmyrun.com/find-run/united-states/tx/austin" _fcksavedurl="http://www.mapmyrun.com/find-run/united-states/tx/austin">Find more Runs in Austin, Texas</a>

I don’t have much to say about this route. I ran into a little old German lady who told me it was wonderful that young people walked. I was running. I’m chalking it up to a language barrier.

I mostly ran around AMD. AMD has some really nice trails right near my house that all have prominent “Private Property” signs. Punks.

I also ran into some people who lost their wiener dog. I didn’t see it unfortunately. Managed to put in less than 10 minute miles which is really good for me with all of these hills. Still not used to these hills.

&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mapmyrun.com/run/united-states/tx/austin/568032201&quot; _fcksavedurl=&quot;http://www.mapmyrun.com/run/united-states/tx/austin/568032201&quot;&gt;bull creek route&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mapmyrun.com/find-run/united-states/tx/austin&quot; _fcksavedurl=&quot;http://www.mapmyrun.com/find-run/united-states/tx/austin&quot;&gt;Find more Runs in Austin, Texas&lt;/a&gt;

It’s a Thursday so I had to go into work today. I ran at lunch. Did my normal Bull Creek route. The route is pretty easy, but it’s littered with rocks and boulders. Plus there are a few perennially wet places. I’m convinced I’m eventually going to injure myself out there, but so far I’ve been lucky.

Today I was jumping from boulder to boulder (these are in the ground, not tall ones), and hit one at a bad angle. Felt a little pain in my ankle, but I ran it off pretty quickly.

Now this afternoon I got up after sitting for a while and I can feel light tinges of pain when I walk. I’m really hoping this isn’t one of those slow burners. Those always seem to be the worst.

I’d run on the road if that didn’t seem even more foolhardy.

&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mapmyrun.com/run/united-states/tx/austin/547141413&quot; _fcksavedurl=&quot;http://www.mapmyrun.com/run/united-states/tx/austin/547141413&quot;&gt;Country Club Creek via Pleasent Valley and Wickersham&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mapmyrun.com/find-run/united-states/tx/austin&quot; _fcksavedurl=&quot;http://www.mapmyrun.com/find-run/united-states/tx/austin&quot;&gt;Find more Runs in Austin, Texas&lt;/a&gt;

So this was my Friday run. It’s been a long stressful week at work, and I didn’t get to start running until 4pm on Friday. It’s a decent route. Wickersham is still a pain. I took Stella with me, and my back was killing me from the hills at the end.

I haven’t been writing much because of the work. It’s been taking a lot out of me. We finally finished painting the exterior of the house last weekend. It looks fantastic, but it was a massive amount of work. And we still have to clean up all the drips around the house.

We got a big screen TV a few weeks back when we unexpectedly got our refund from Newmark. Every so often, Julie and I decide that our eyes are failing us and upgrade the TV. This led to 4 hours on a Friday night with a toddler at Circuit City. In the end we were happy with the TV. I managed to convince Julie to get a blu-ray player since the main purpose for our TV is to watch movies. I ended up returning it for a playstation 3, though after reading reviews online.

This of course led us to need new furniture. So the day after we headed off to Ikea. We put together a Besta solution that would put the TV on a nice cabinet, and we got some Besta bookcases that house all of our CDs in a manner that should not kill small children should the decide to climb on them.

Oh, and in the middle of this I finished my newest play – The Automat.

This past week was mostly a blur. One of the cabinets we planned for the living room was to be suspended over the TV. Julie always underestimates hanging things on the wall. She seems to think the reason I don’t want to put on child safety features is that I don’t believe children will ever use them. Rather than the fact I’m lazy and don’t want to spend 3 hours trying to attach a bookcase to the wall. Julie yet again assumed that hanging this cabinet would be a quick ordeal. Of course it was another 3 hours. 3 hours of holding the cabinet while we tried to measure. Tried to find our studs. Put in drywall anchors. Quite a pain. But it’s in.

Only 1000 more projects to go.

<a href="http://www.mapmyrun.com/run/united-states/tx/austin/899336311" _fcksavedurl="http://www.mapmyrun.com/run/united-states/tx/austin/899336311">Big and Little Stacy and a detour to manlove</a><br/><a href="http://www.mapmyrun.com/find-run/united-states/tx/austin" _fcksavedurl="http://www.mapmyrun.com/find-run/united-states/tx/austin">Find more Runs in Austin, Texas</a>

Decided to check out Big and Little Stacy today. I took a detour and looked at the houses near Oltor and Parker. There’s some cute stuff in there. Then headed over I-35 at Oltorf. Ran past Travis High.

&amp;amp;lt;a href=&amp;amp;quot;http://www.mapmyrun.com/run/united-states/tx/austin/698839896&amp;amp;quot; _fcksavedurl=&amp;amp;quot;http://www.mapmyrun.com/run/united-states/tx/austin/698839896&amp;amp;quot;&amp;amp;gt;parker lane kicked my ass – twice!&amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br/&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;a href=&amp;amp;quot;http://www.mapmyrun.com/find-run/united-states/tx/austin&amp;amp;quot; _fcksavedurl=&amp;amp;quot;http://www.mapmyrun.com/find-run/united-states/tx/austin&amp;amp;quot;&amp;amp;gt;Find more Runs in Austin, Texas&amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;gt;

So this is the route I ran today. I’m trying to make Fridays my long run days. Plus I just like picking up the hike and bike trail. But I had no clue I went that far! The first part was nice. The trail was pretty much deserted. I did encounter a man with his car parked just off the trail (I don’t know how he got his car on the trail) with no pants on. He had underwear on thankfully.

Other than that I was having a nice time tooling around the lake. It’s really pretty this time of year. Looking at the apartment complexes on the south bank they’re demolishing for condos. Noticing that UT is building a business school off of Riverside. Then I got to Parker. I wanted to run up parker because there’s lots of interesting architecture, unlike Pleasant Valley my normal haunt that is all apartment complexes. I made it all the way up to Woodland running, but I had to stop and walk. It was too much. Something about hitting the flat bit after the climb made me even more tired. I crossed woodland and started running again. Passed a house that looked fairly similar to ours. Same brick. Same beams. It was smaller and had fewer windows though.

After crossing Oltorf I made it all the way up to my friend Erin’s apartment complex before having to walk again. It was so steep there that I passed a kid who was having to walk his bicycle. I had a pleasant run through Mable Davis and then came on home. All in all, a nice run.

Oh. And it appears I ran 8.5 miles. I didn’t think I’d gone that far. I think the map would be more impressive if you could tell that my starting point is only a quarter of a mile from 71.

I’d been wondering where I’d run once we move to Southeast Austin. And if it was possible to get to the hike and bike trail. I found this trail today:

trail map

If they eventually finish building it out it should be really nice. Right now, from what I can discern it’s only about 1/3 done.

Update: Apparently Chicagoans aren’t so wimpy after all.

Am I the only Texan runner who thinks those Chicagoans are wimps? Granted I don’t run marathons (because, they have side effects like, you know, death), but 88 degrees? Balmy.

On Saturday I ended up walking 4 miles with my mom. She wanted to run with me, but she really can’t run. She runs really fast, then gets winded and has to walk, then runs really fast, etc. Then I ran two more miles with Stella so I’d actually get the run in. This pushed me into exercising for about 2 hours in the late morning which is not when I normally exercise. I went home and drank a 16 oz glass of milk. Then 3 16 oz glasses of water. Then as we headed out to Fredericksberg I got a 60 oz soda (it was only .30 more expensive than 32 oz), and drank most of it. Then I downed two beers. I was a little worried about water poisoning at that point. But, what the heck. In any case I didn’t feel great again until about mid-afternoon Sunday after a 2 hour nap.

Fredericksberg was fun though. We had a nice time with the kids. I danced a waltz with Stella, and a polka with Julie. The polka was horribly romantic. I do miss social dancing with Julie. Just not enough opportunities to do it these days.

The beer was actually German at Fredericksberg’s Oktoberfest and the sausage was far better than Wurstfest. We capped the evening with dinner at our favorite biergarten there (I got their mixed sausage plate appetizer because I must have as much sausage as possible), and I got a Dilly Bar from Dairy Queen on the way out of town. All in all, a very nice day.

So, I get up to run at 6:30. It’s gotten to the point where it is dark for the first half of my run. The other day I was running and a guy ran onto the trail in front of me. I was slowly gaining on him, and I figured he could hear me behind him.

So I added a widget on the left to keep track of my running. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep it up to date. I’m using a site called runometer which looks to make it easier to keep track of what I’m doing than the “official” site. Plus this will let me stop managing my iPod with Julie’s computer running Vista.

The only problem with posting my runs is that my iPod is a little jacked in the distance department. I’ve looked at a 5k I ran competitively (that should be pretty darn close to 5k in distance), and compared that with what my iPod thinks. If my iPod thinks I’ve run a 5k I’ve actually run 4 miles (rather than 3.2). Just to let you know that I’m not as slow as the widget makes me out to be.