Market to Market 86-Mile Relay

On Saturday, October 11th, I ran an 86-mile relay from Omaha's Downtown "Old Market," to Lincoln's Downtown "Haymarket Square," which lies across the street from the Nebraska Cornhuskers football stadium. It was the first year for this race, and it was awesome!

The race started at 7:00 am, and there were 150 different teams running. Each team had 6, 7, or 8 runners. There were 8 members on my team, 6 boys and 2 girls, and we each had to run in order from Runner 1 to Runner 8, doing three legs each. Also, each leg we ran was a different length; mine were 3.23 miles, 4.63 miles, and 4.10 miles, totaling 12 miles. Each person on the team had pretty much the same mileage, overall. It wouldn't have been so hard, but try running as fast as you can for 3.23 miles, and then running again about an hour or so later, and just as hard as before, and then doing it again! It was tough!

Our team finished first, with an overall time of 8 hours 40 minutes. That is a 6:03 average pace. Again, we started at 7:00 am, and finished at 3:40 pm. I can't believe we did it! We were extremely exhausted, but it was so, so much fun. And because we won overall, we get a free entry into next year's race.

I am putting a link on here for you all to see, courtesy of one of the guys on my team. He's a great photographer. He captured some great moments. See for yourself.

Race

They will be having this relay every year, and I have ABSOLUTELY no complaints. This was the most organized race I’ve ever been a part of, seriously, and this was only the first year! Volunteers to the MAX. There were volunteers along the course to make sure you didn’t turn down the wrong road. Everyone should make it to this event some year. It’s great.

Lastly, I was able to get the time for my splits, but the first leg is not accurate. I forgot to start my garmin, so I ran 0.22 miles before I remembered to turn it on. So what I do have is this:

Stage 3 – 3.01 miles (I actually ran 3.23 miles) in 19:46, 6:35 pace, mostly neighborhood/asphalt
Stage 11 – 4.76 miles in 31:55, 6:43 pace, went from loose gravel, to dirt, to limestone trail, to sidewalk, and finally to asphalt
Stage 19 – 4.19 miles in 27:35, 6:35 pace, limestone trail

If you check out these stages on the website I listed, you’ll see that the first two legs were listed as moderate/hard. They WERE. They were extremely hilly, and they were both straight into the wind, which was blowing a good 20 miles an hour. The day started out windy and about 50 degrees, and at 2:30 pm or so, when I ran my last leg, it was still windy and had reached 75 degrees.

This was a great event, and the post-race shindig, as they called it, was excellent, as well. I would recommend this race to anyone who loves to give something their complete and total all. It was a long day (woke up at 4:00 am and went to bed at 12:30 am), but it was worth it. Definitely a great time.

Eggciting!!!

How exciting! I looked outside today and all three birds were back (they come and go and I always wonder if they will be back). They were hanging out, meandering about, looking like they were just shooting the shit.







They left just a few minutes ago, so I stole the chance to look out in their little bowl. Of note: they are forever backing their butts up into the corner of the wall, behind the bowl, and I could not figure out, for the life of me, what they were doing--until today. Seems as though we do have an egg!

Lazy Sunday Afternoon...

Well, I've seen them coming and going, but no real activity to speak of. I know at one point I saw them casually playing around with one another, all three? of them...it seems as though the female actually has managed to keep the two male suitors at hand, and it appears as they are willing to stick around and share the responsibility. I guess the kid will grow up knowing "my two dads," rather than just the one. Well, anyway, here is a photo of two of the three lovers hanging out on a lazy Sunday afternoon...

Birds Mating

I looked out there today, and there were three birds out on the balcony. Two males, and the female from yesterday. I think they are vying for her attention. I took some photos of them doing their mating ritual, I guess is what they're doing. I tried to get one of the male when he was on top of the female. I read up on that, and it appears as though the male does that to ejaculate into the female "cloacal," which is open at just the right time for mating. It only takes a minute for the semen to be inserted, according to what I read.

Bird Love

So about a month ago, we noticed a couple of pigeons seemed to be nesting out on our balcony. They went through several weeks of taking turns sitting on the egg while the other one left for food, keeping watch over the egg to make sure no one harmed it, etc. Then one day the little egg hatched a little birdling.

We were able to watch the birdling grow up, staying in the nest at all times while its parents were out gathering food, flying around, and who knows what else.

I knew one day the little birdling would leave the nest. It got huge! After about 30 days I looked out the window and the little bird was gone! I thought he might come back to rest that night, but we never saw him again. That was about 5 days ago.

We have new visitors. I have decided to keep track of their progress, daily, by taking photos of them during the day. Today I noticed two birds out there kind of nesting, so I took a photo of them, shown below. I think the grey bird is the female, and the other one is the male. The female is considerably smaller. I also took a photo of the nest after they left--they must have just gone out for a date or something. :)

I will continue to show the progress every day until the little birdling has flown the coop!