Blog Master G

Today is my 32nd birthday. I’m writing that down so I don’t forget (as I hear tends to happen with age). However, I officially stopped counting after 30, and have actually caught myself forgetting how old I am sometimes (or at least not thinking about it as much as I used to). Of course, I don’t feel a day over 29.

Growing up, I was always in a hurry to grow up. I always wanted to be older than I was. I was the youngest camp counselor at my summer camp in Lake Tahoe (at 15 when the required age was 16); I even had a guy in my tent once who was older than I was.

I find that interesting because I’m also a kid at heart. I do take my “grown-up” responsibilities — the mortgage, the bills, the job — very seriously, but I also love to have fun. I enjoy life and get as much out of every day that I possibly can.

On this day every year I’m reminded what an amazing wife, wonderful family, and great friends I have. I feel really fortunate, and I love you all. Thank you for all the kind birthday wishes.

It’s a beautiful spring day here in Saratoga Springs — finally — and is about 60+ degrees now. The skies are blue, the sun is shining, and I can’t wait for Jen to get home from work so we can get out of the house to celebrate my birthday.

It’s been a long winter here in Upstate New York, and hopefully with the improved weather will come improved attitudes of Upstate New Yorkers. That’s one thing that really brings me down about living here: Too many people just seem so unhappy and miserable all the time. Maybe it’s just the weather or people who are down on their luck or people who feel like they’d rather be somewhere else. But I don’t let it bring me down. I run by. I smile. I wave.

The older I get, the faster time seems to pass me by. So I guess it will become more important with each passing day to stop and reflect on life.

Life is beautiful and I love every moment of it.

Saturday, March 7 marked my 16th career distance race and the 3rd of 2009: The Runnin’ of the Green (Island) 4-Mile Race on Green Island near Troy, NY. It was a beautiful, sunny, and warm day. And based on the McMillan running calculator I use to predict and target my goal race paces, this race was my best yet since it raised the bar by which future race paces will be measured.

Previously, my best race was CIM, where I covered 26.2 miles in 3:19:34. Using that time in the McMillan calculator, my target time for a 4-mile race was 26:47 with a pace of 6:42.

I set my goal for the Runnin’ of the Green to be a 6:40/mile pace.

Given the near-perfect weather and my 6:48/mile performance in my previous 4-miler (when I won my division on a cold, hilly course), I felt really good going into the race, even though I didn’t know what to expect from the course — it turned out to be pretty flat and pretty fast.

Of course, flat, fast courses draw strong, fast runners. Lots of them. Plus this race was the first race of the 2009 Adirondack USATF Grand Prix Road Race Series — and my first as a member of USATF. 🙂 So based on results from previous years, I didn’t have any expectations about another division win or even a top 3 finish.

Regardless, I raced my heart out and gave it my all.

In the first mile I fell victim to what I always remind myself not to do: Come out too fast. I got caught up in the excitement and over-compensated for my last race, where I felt like I hadn’t come out fast enough. When I passed the official race clock at Mile 1, it showed 6:17 (6:26 by my Garmin).

Shortly after that, the pack began to thin, runners fell back, and I started to pass a number of other runners. Though my pace slowed in Mile 2 to 6:45 (by Garmin), I kept a pack of runners ahead of me in my sights and didn’t let anyone else pass me. Ditto for Mile 3, which looped back around past the Mile 1 marker (6:53, my worst mile of the day).

I was really paying for having come out so fast, but I wasn’t about to give up. For me, the race didn’t begin until just before Mile 4.

With a little more than a mile to go, I heard a guy right on my heels: He had probably been trailing me the whole race and was making his move. This forced me to pick up my pace so that he wouldn’t pass me. I kept my eyes on that pack of runners ahead of me and with just over half a mile to go, I made my final move.

I really turned it on, leaving the guy on my heels in the dust, then passing another solo runner in front of me. As the finish line came into sight just over a small hill in the final stretch, I busted out my signature sprint  to the finish with everything I had left — flying past at least half a dozen runners in the process as I crossed the finish line.

Mile 4: 6:27 (by Garmin).

Official time: 26:24 (26:22 by Garmin.) I had smashed my target time by 23 seconds and come in 4 seconds/mile pace better than my goal pace. So now when I check McMillan, I see that I should be capable of a 3:16 marathon. Rockin’!

My Runnin’ of the Green (Island) 4-miler splits (by Garmin):

• Mile 1: 6:26
• Mile 2: 6:45
• Mile 3: 6:53
• Mile 4: 6:27

I placed 98th overall out of 469 runners.

It’s an awesome feeling to see that improvement and to get faster by the week.

After the race, one of my blog readers, Paul, recognized me and said hi; he said he had seen me before the race, too, and recognized me by my sunglasses. It’s always fun to meet people who read my blog. Thanks for saying hi, Paul!

Before the race, I also met a former mayor of Kinderhook, who knew my father-in-law.

It’d been about 4 months since the last Saratoga Wine Club #8, the economy was in the toilet, and cheap wine was in the air. So on February 22, 2009 — yes, I’m blogging about an event only a month old! — Jen and I hosted Wine Club #9: Recession Edition.

The mission: Find a bottle of cheap yet good wine. We devised a formula that would reward cheap wine that still scored well. Some tried the opposite strategy — bring an expensive bottle and hope the high scores would carry you — but it backfired. In the end, the two cheapest wines reigned victorious: Two-Buck Chuck (now $2.99 a bottle, thanks to inflation) secured the #1 and #2 spots.

Jen cooked up some delicious eats, we tallied the scores, and Annette & Todd’s Charles Shaw Cab secured the win with the highest milliliter score, which factored in volume of wine to calculate the ML Score by taking the average score and dividing it by the price per ML. They took home the $30 winner’s prize with an ML Score of 1,158 (each participant contributed 5 bucks to the pot). Alexis got second place with 1,119 ML points and a $15 prize with her Charles Shaw Chardonnay. And in third place with a $5 prize was Justin’s $3.99 Renee Barbier Mediterranean Red with 1,041 ML points.

As for those pricier wines? They got no love from the ML Scores. Sarah & Eric brought one of the more expensive wines of the evening, hoping the high scores would boost their bottle, but in this cheap wine contest, there was no such luck. Their bottle of Sterling Sauvignon Blanc, which happens to be one of my favorite wines, got last place by ML Score with 334 ML points.

View more photos here and check out the score sheet with the ML formula here (you can see actual wine scores and random comments on the second worksheet).

What, no wine club since September 2008? Au contraire! Wine Club #8 was a Halloween theme back on October 30, 2008 and hosted by Alexis and Annie at Annie’s place. And yes, I’m only now — 5 months later — blogging about it. I’ve become the ultimate slacker on the blog front. But better late than never, right?

With spooky names like Cockfighter’s Ghost and Gnarly Head, how could you go wrong? As I recall (and the pictures suggest), the Cockfighter’s Ghost Semillon, brought by Anne and Tom, was the winning wine that night. I guess that’s the problem with waiting so long to blog about something: You forget the details of the event and have to rely on the photos.

The food was delicious, mullets and viking horns were worn, and another fun evening went down in Saratoga Wine Club history.

View more photos here.

And yes, there’s been another wine club since… stay tuned for the next post.

March 2, 2009. Woah. And the last blog entry I wrote here was February 7. OK, I’ve officially been slacking on the Blog Master G front.

Too many online presences, too little time. Life online was much easier when I only had a single blog to maintain. Now I have everything from my Facebook profile to my technology blog (also slacking there) to my work blog. I also have a Twitter account for work and recently created a couple accounts for myself (mostly to reserve the names), should I one day be inspired to start publishing to yet another online outlet (I even have 3 followers on my new Twitter account before I’ve even posted anything).

Random updates of late (so I can’t be accused of not living up to my tagline — (Everything I Do) I Blog It For You):

• I’ve been fighting a stupid cough for the past week; I rarely get sick (maybe 1 day per year), so this is especially unusual for me.
• On February 18 I donated blood for the 15th time in my life. Maybe being down a pint of blood, combined with all my running and still going out to party and drink, has contributed to this damn cough.
• Father John’s Cough Medicine rules (see below photo, which I uploaded to Facebook on Saturday after purchasing from Menges & Curtis in downtown Saratoga Springs).
• I upgraded this blog and gabeanderson.com yesterday to the latest version of WordPress (2.7.1). I was previously running 2.3, I believe, so I was really in need of an upgrade.
• We hosted a really fun Wine Club last Sunday, so I need to blog about that (and the previous Wine Club on October 30, about which I apparently never blogged, either).
• Jen and I did our taxes yesterday (or, at least, organized everything to send to our tax preparer), which is always a good feeling.
• Jen and I went on a hot date last night to see He’s Just Not That Into You, which, yes, is a chick flick, and which yes, I really enjoyed.
• I ran 155.4 miles in January 2009 and 107.25 miles in February 2009. Yeah, I know, I’m a slacker. I blame it on the shorter month and on being sick the past week.

Gabe & his new friend, Father John, compounding fine cough syrup since 1855

I did it: I won my first race! At least in my division (male 30-34). It was the Polar Cap 4-miler in Lake George, which was the second race I ever ran last year. Coincidentally, I wrote in that blog entry a year ago: “I think it’s realistic for me to aim for a top 3 finish in my age group for one of these races.”

Indeed.

November 2008 brought my first Top 3 finish in the Santa 10k. Last month I placed 2nd in my division in the Winter Wimp. And today I placed 1st! Woohoo! Of the last three local races I’ve run, I’m 3 for 3 in Top 3 finishes.

 I was 13th overall today with a finish time of 27:12 (my Garmin said 27:10) , which is an average pace of 6:48 per mile. I took nearly 7 full minutes off my time last year and nearly 2 minutes per mile.

The course was much hillier than I remembered, with a big hill right at the beginning, then a long ascent in the 3rd mile, which made for my slowest mile of the day (6:57). The final mile had a bit of a downhill and went by pretty fast, so I really turned it on, clocking in a 6:35 4th mile as I flew across the finish line with a maximum pace of 5:20 in the final mile.

In the beginning, I really made an effort not to go out too fast, but I think I may have held back a bit too much (6:52).  I tried to make up for it in the second mile (6:38), though. On the first hill I started passing people and ran pretty much a solo race most of the time. I overtook one guy just past the second mile and kept the lead pack in my sight almost all the way home (no one passed me the entire race, which is always a good feeling). I thought I’d be able to pass one more guy in front of me, but he kept a solid lead, so I couldn’t gain on him.

I met a couple nice people — the 2nd overall women’s finisher, who took my finish line photos; and a guy who runs  a marina at Lake George.

I felt really good and am still riding the high of victory. I was awarded a gold keychain medal and will carry it with pride.

I went straight to the library, where Jen’s working today, to show off my bling. I was proud, and so was she. It was only a bummer she’s missed my past two races. Darn scheduling.

My Polar Cap 4-miler splits:

• Mile 1: 6:52 (hill)
• Mile 2: 6:38
• Mile 3: 6:57 (hill)
• Mile 4: 6:35

Last weekend the gang assembled for another rockin’ Chowderfest. The Chandlers hosted the pre-party. Bloody maries and mimosas before noon meant that 9pm would feel late. Really late. Those of you on Facebook have already seen a selection of photographic highlights from the day, and those of you who lived through it have seen them all.

For those of you in neither category, here’s a sampling (yes, chowder is conspicuously missing from all photos):

If you’re my friend, you can also friend me on Facebook.

I was out of town for Chowderfest ’07 (and I’m not sure what happened in ’05), but here’s a trip down Chowderfest memory lane from other years:

• Chowderfest ’08
• Chowderfest ’06
• Chowderfest ’04

After major events like yesterday’s inauguration of President Barack Obama, I love perusing the front pages of newspapers from around the world, including the San Francisco Chronicle and New York Times, shown below (SF Chronicle PDF of today’s front page here). It’s also fun to navigate the interactive Newseum map and mouse over locations around the U.S. and the world to see the papers. You’ll see a common theme: The Obama inauguration is world news.