Back at it

Well, Rachel is now nearly 5 months old. She's sleeping better for the most part, and our life has now retained some semblance of normalcy. I've started sneaking out every now and then for a run in the mornings when I can. I find that it helps me stay awake during the day if I can get my run in the morning.

I am going to try to do a better job at maintaining this blog for running and plus add a few personal thoughts and updates on the family. I've had blogs in the past for specific races (if you'd like to see the blog I kept while training for the St. Jude's Marathon in December, just go to www.myspace.com/palassis1). But it always seems to peter out and I lose some of the memories of those times in my life.

A little background that I promise never to bore you with ever again. I turned 32 in May, I am extremely happily married with 2 beautiful children (Luke is 3.5 and Rachel is 5 mos). Running has been my hobby for about 6 years now. I have 3 marathons under my belt, and countless race t-shirts in my closet. I live in the thriving metropolis of Easley, SC, where the drivers seem to take a special satisfaction in making me dive into a ditch at the last minute to avoid a very painful collision with their vehicle (Seriously people, would it kill you to swerve just a little into the other lane if there is no oncoming traffic?). I am by no means a fast runner, my PR for 5K is just below 22. I don't think I'm built for speed, but I can slog through high mileage runs and have a certain tolerance for pain. My PR for the marathon is 4:07. I want desperately to break 4 hours before I leave this world. We moved to the upstate from Savannah, GA in Oct 2007. The wife is from Gaffney and I am from Columbia and we both went to Clemson, so we were definitely excited when we found out we were returning to God's country.

On to today's run... most of my runs up to this point have been a 4.2 mile loop. We just returned from a vacation and my Garmin 305 is still packed up somewhere. But the old fashioned wristwatch shows it was completed in 40:20. I waited a little too late before getting out, it was probably in the low 90's by the time I started at 9:45. Not a breath of wind and no cloud cover. But hey, its getting me in better shape for those fall races. I am going to try to attach my running stats using the online log from "RunningAhead." Had to stop once in one of the very few shaded parts of the course for a breather.

I am a novice at this blogging thing, so if there is anything I left out or you would like to know, feel free to ask.

Jay