Mostly Success & Germans

I'm happy to report that I accomplished my goal of setting a half-marathon PR (Personal Record) in last Saturday's. Unfortunately, it won't officially go in the books as a PR. I'll explain later.

It was a near perfect day for a race. It was cool and dry. About the only thing I could have asked for was some cloud cover. The Martian Marathon is a fairly small race and doesn't have much crowd support but the scenery was nice along the parkway on Hines Drive.

My new GPS watch helped me keep my pace. I don't know if I would have been able to do it without it. About half of the runners had some sort of GPS watch that calculates your pace in real time, the overall time and the distance.

The race is out and back which is cool and depressing at the same time. It's cool because you get to run in the opposite direction of the rest of the runners and cheer each other on. It's also depressing because you get to see all of the seemingly out of shape people that are totally whipping you run past.

The problem began at the turnaround. Whoever was in charge of placing the turnaround somehow put it 1/6 of a mile too far, thus adding 1/3 of a mile onto the course. I noticed the problem at mile 7. My watch read 7.36. "That's weird," I thought. Mile 8 was equally behind. At mile 9 I starting noticing other runners giving frustrated looks to their watches at each mile. I finally asked someone else how far their watch was reading. It was off by the same amount as mine.

I decided that I was going to let the cone planter defeat me. There wasn't much of a chance of beating my previous time with an additional 2 minutes worth of running tacked on so I aimed for the point where my watch showed 13.1. I probably looked a little strange sprinting to down a random stretch of road and then stopping to walk. I only walked for 20 yards or so then sprinted to official line.

My time? 1:51:47, two minutes faster than my previous PR. It feels good to be slightly less slow than before.

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This is my daughters' favorite meal ever, probably because it's basically dessert disguised as a meal. It's one of the great wonders of the universe.

German Pancakes

2 - 9x13 pans (glass works best)

2 cups flour
2 cups milk
4 eggs
½ cup sugar
4 pinches salt
6 Tbs butter or margarine – divided

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. While oven is heating put 3 Tbs butter in each pan and put in oven until melted. Mix all ingredients and pour half of mix into each pan, on top of the melted butter. Bake 15 to 20 minutes or until golden brown. Bubbles are normal.

Top with sour cream, brown sugar and fresh fruit, especially crushed strawberries.