I ran my first marathon today! 26.2 miles! I was planning to run 22 to 23 miles, but felt good around 21 and decided to just go for it. I think I can go a lot faster as my last 6 miles were all under 8 minute miles as I figured out I had to start moving if I wanted to finish in under 4 hours.

Running conditions

1. No sleep – I had a green tea and coffee yesterday so I couldn’t sleep. I gave up at 7am and just got up.

2. Carrying 3 liters of water, pair of socks, gels, salt pills.

I tarted at 9.35am and finished at 1.29pm. Temp wasn’t bad like 85 to 80 most of race as I picked a path that is 70% on trails surrounded by woods. Some hills.

Totals and cool stats…

Length: 26.2 Miles
Time: 3 Hours 54 Mintes
Average Heart Rate: 146
Calories: 3,155 kCal
VO2: 53ml/kg/min
EPOC Peak: 92.9
Respiration Rate: 37 bpm
Altitude: 1,243 ASC, 1,374 DSC
Max Speed: 8.83 mph
Avg Speed: 6.70 mph
Peak heart rate, 192, but I think that was a fluke reading.

I have no idea what VO2/EPOC and some of that is.

Splits…

Mile 1: 8.52
Mile 2: 8.18
Mile 3: 8.41
Mile 4: 9.12
Mile 5: 9.17
Mile 6: 9.44
Mile 7: 11.59
Mile 8: 9.06
Mile 9: 9.18
Mile 10: 8.51
Mile 11: 9.10
Mile 12: 11.50
Mile 13: 9.38
Mile 14: 9.00
Mile 15: 8.46
Mile 16: 9.07
Mile 17: 10.48
Mile 18: 8.10
Mile 19. 8.30
Mile 20: 8.49
Mile 21: 7.45
Mile 22: 7.35
Mile 23: 7.47
Mile 24: 7.34
Mile 25: 7.42
Mile 26: 7.17
Last .2: 1.34

You can definitely see the water breaks to refill my giant water backpack, or change socks. Plus when I figured out at Mile 21 that I had to book if I wanted to stay under 4 hours.

Fun!

I’m a trailer whore it’s true… so check this out, a movie about the Red Tails.

I love a good drama it’s true, but what is amazing are true stories like this, American fucks over huge groups of people, and yet the vision America presents seem to be worthy of the sacrifice even when groups face huge discrimination back home. One thing I love about America is that it is defined by the people who choose to be here, and that the people who make up America believe they can define the reality American will present in the future. I hope this continues forever.

Plus if it’s all made up, that seems almost even more American :)

It doesn’t feel so bad, I’m probably in better shape then any other point of my life, even with death sitting on my shoulder ;). Plus just imagine how awesome my mid life crisis is going to be considering I buy night vision goggles and python skinned cowboy boots in my teens and twenties. Certainty something to look forward too.

I also made some plans for the next couple years. I’ve been wanting to travel some more and spend another year abroad. So in late December or January I’m going to head down to Nicaragua for a while to visit Joel and Laura. And then travel around Central and South America until late May. I will spend at least a month in both Argentina and Brazil, and I’m still working on other locations (probably Uruguay/Chile, and hopefully Panama to visit a friend). Then in May/June I’m heading to Australia for a year as I got my visa to go there! I haven’t done any reading yet but I believe they have nothing poisonous or deadly on the entire continent, just cuddly little koala bears.

Check out this great trailer for an upcoming movie! Really well done trailer (and i should know as I watch them all)!

And also check out this one, looks amazing too!

Check out this awesome article here about finding the tree used in the filming of swiss family robinsons! I’ve been wanting to go to Tobago for a few years to try to find it, I think I’ll plan a trip and it will not be easier to find that, their swimming area, and their beach! Awesome! (Maybe for my birthday!)

As a kid seeing the fake tree as disney world was awesome. I always wanted to live in a tree.

I’ve been trying to book a place in San Francisco for about a week through AirBnb and so far 3 people have turned us down saying they are booked during that period. What the hell is the point of using Air BNB if nobody tells them if they are booked during that time. Worthless!

Frustrating experience and very likely I won’t be saying anything good abou them to friends. Not even that much cheaper then a hotel.

Way to go bolton!

I still love love love my Kindle and I think it is the best product of this decade. In the past three years I’ve read barely any books on paper. Yesterday I started reading a paperback for the first time in 14 months and realized I was getting annoyed because I couldn’t read while eating since it required two hands part of the time in order to hold both flaps open (which is not a problem with the Kindle).

Base on my rough calculations from Amazon’s page I have bought 362 Kindle books or newspapers since I’ve had one. Plus you save money as most books are slightly cheaper!

I strongly recommend you go buy one! Here is my original Kindle review too! Batter life on the new ones is just amazing.

April was a great running month! I’ve been slowly increasing my workouts as I train for a marathon (and just longer runs in general) and I ran 112 miles in April even though I was on vacation from the 19th to 30th.

Stats And Averages
My longest run in April was 16 miles, which is the longest I’ve ever run. My fastest mile during the month was 6 minutes 7 seconds during a speed workout. So my average speed per mile was 8 minutes 25 seconds.

I love Google, here are some interesting stats they give me on my behavior with their searches and web behavior.

My hourly search activity over all of last year:

As you can clearly see I’m not someone who is often up at 6am in the morning ready to go. In fact most of my searches from 5am to 8am are probably because I stayed up the entire night, or I’m in a different time zone :).

So which days am I most active in searching?

I wouldn’t have guessed it but my most active day is Wednesday, I have no idea why.

And what about monthly?

This is for 2010, I was on vacation in February so I’m impressed that I was able to still do so much searching. I’m guessing the spikes are when I am learning new stuff, or trying to figure something out. For example Dec spiked as I was figuring out how to use Google App Engine, some python, and also learning about my new home in DC. And the downward spike in March is because we had some major issues at work, and I was spending all of my time responding to things.

Pretty cool stuff, I wish Google would do a lot more here but they probably don’t want to scare everyone :).

Click the above to enlarge it, this is a map of my facebook connections, if you want to try out the app it is pretty cool.

So I got to Frankfurt Germany yesterday and made it to Europa Park by about 2pm. Yes, the work conference is at a theme park. And of course with it being Sunday there was no food easily accessible. So being super tired and jet lagged I crashed with no food. I slept around 10 hours and read for a while before departing for German breakfast…

So why do I love Germany so much? German breakfast is fucking awesome. And what is even more awesome, they literally were serving the same breakfast rolls I had when I was in high school on a trip to Berlin and my host mom served breakfast (which I love (they are so good)). Here is what I ate for breakfast:

Coffee (rare for me but jet lag)
1 Breakfast Roll
1 Wheat Breakfast Roll
1 Whole Wheat or something slice of German Bread
1 Piece Bacon
1 Piece Wurst
1 Piece Random Pig Something
1 Egg
1 Random thinly sliced pig something.
1 Another random thinly sliced pig something (also delicious)
1 piece Swiss cheese.
1 glob of 3 fruit jam.
1 glob of real butter.
2 pieces of Bree cheese.
Apricot Yogurt
Raisins
Fruit Salad that had MANGOs!!!!
And, 1 of the most delicious cinnamon bread hunks I’ve ever had.

I can’t wait for breakfast tomorrow, because there is even more to try.

So after I ate this awesome breakfast I accidentally invaded Poland, I just couldn’t help it, I had so much energy and I just accidentally took it over. Oh well. If anything the Versailles treaty should have limited the awesomeness of the German breakfast, no way would WW2 have started.

And later I ran 15 miles, longest yet! Awesome trails through this area and got to see a lot of the surrounding country side. And made it to some small town that had a cool church.

I’ve been listening to Pogo and his YouTube page for a while! Great stuff and here are a few of my favorites:

Listen and watch more at Pogo’s webpage!

I spent Thursday to Sunday in Miami on South Beach and had a great time, the conference was well done and they had some great speakers! I was also impressed with South Beach, although not that I could ever live there. Unless I get an operation that infuses me with three popped collars, hair gel, fist pumping, non stop base thumping, and general douchery. I should note it did have great beaches and lots of normal people.

It also made me realize I am super burned out and need a vacation to let my mind rest. I ended up skipping the conference parties just because I needed too and catching up on reading and just nothingness. The weather was amazing, a solid 80 degrees and a gorgeous boardwalk to run on. I ran on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday I did my longest run in a while with 12 miles. I’m doing a marathon training schedule Apey gave me, and going to see about a marathon later this summer I think.

Oh and Cuban food and coffee is awesome. I already knew this from my time living in Boca Raton, but I really miss cheap delicious Cuban food…

I read 4 books and I highly recommend this book that talks about factory girls in China and was just an amazing story (and very well written). Talk about hustlers, I can’t wait to see what those girls do over the next 40 years with their kids and careers. I can’t imagine leaving town at 16 to get a job and navigate such a crazy world, what an adventure!

Please pardon any spelling mistakes, I’m super tired. I’ve actually been getting up while I was there at 7am or 8am to run in the mornings or for the conference.

This chocolate was really good, I couldn’t turn it down. Someone is right, salty + sweet is good.

Oh and check out this cartoon, funniest thing I’ve seen this year.