Hi everyone,

Well, I see no one has posted too much in the past couple weeks...and I KNOW that you guys have plenty to talk about!!! For me, between the vacations and parties of late, keeping up the mileage has certainly been tough. But, I'll get back into it over the next 4 weeks and hopefully my half marathon in June will be ok...we'll see. The Boilermaker is only 9 or 10 weeks away too!

I was just checking out my last entry that I posted about a month ago. I mentioned a guy named Bill, who I ran with at that running group that I joined a few months ago. We ended up running together for most of that morning - chatting it up for almost 2 hours! He was the nicest guy...he actually founded the running group 30 years ago when he was 30! Unfortunately, last Thursday, as he was hiking Mt. McKinley in Denali National Park, he suddenly collapsed and died of what they think is a heart attack. I couldn't believe it! A runner...an adventurer...a yoga instructor at the Y...a basketball coach...just died in a matter of minutes from an unexplainable natural cause. I stayed at his pace chatting it up the whole time even though I probably could have gone a little faster. I'm glad that I did.

I have learned that when you take on a physical challenge - whether it be running or biking, or hiking, or whatever - the generational gap seems to fall away...it's a forum where we can all relate to each other and become friends instantly.