Today I had the opportunity to do the Rosedale Ride in Austin.
The Rosedale School is AISD’s only school for children with multiple disabilities and the ride is all about raising money for the school. I did the race with one of my great friends and we did the 42.4 mile route and finished in about 2:30!
After we finished… in true Texas style… there was some serious grilling of BBQ…
On top of that, I spotted an FSM logo!
I love Austin. Tomorrow I have a 30k trail race to conquer!
I spent the last week in sunny California for business. While I was there, I got a kick out of running with my Texas running socks. I don’t know why, maybe it’s the part of me that just loves Texas a lot more than California these days.
If you need pair of custom running socks, the Sock Guy does it right.
Anyways, I think I’m finally getting over my knee issues while running. I can’t go full out yet but I’m getting there. It’s a terrible feeling to know that you can push your body harder but your body is saying, no, not yet. I’m going to put my knee to the test this weekend when I do a 30K trail race as part of the Rogue Trail Series.
Here’s to no more excruciating knee pain!
I had the opportunity to briefly visit the Google Open Source Programs Office yesterday with a friend that works there (thanks Shawn). Out of the many things Google does, I truly respect what the Open Source Programs Office does, especially with the Google Summer of Code (GSOC) program. I’ve been mentoring students for the past five years and the experience has always been positive. When I was a student back in the day, I recall working with the Gentoo Linux open source community and how much that shaped me as a developer. It was empowering to work in an open source community and made me realize that’s how software should be developed. I can only be thankful for the experience and pay it forward. I think Google giving students the ability to work with open source communities during the summer and getting paid for it is going to bear some really good fruit in the future of the software.
While I was on the Google campus, I said hello to some sculptures.
The picture above was taken with an iPhone. I guess that upset Google so I scored a Nexus One.
As a long time iPhone user, I will give the Nexus One and Android a shot for a month.
On top of that, I managed to score some more swag…
Although I’m not sure what they are trying to tell me with this particular swag. Thanks Google 🙂
I’m pleased to announce I have decided to join Red Hat.
Gandhi said you must be the change you wish to see in the world. I was given a unique opportunity to change things and am looking forward to it. Look for me to strengthen the state of Eclipse on Linux and improve the state of Git tooling at Eclipse. On top of that, I get the opportunity to spread the Eclipse and OSGi love to the JBoss folks.
I look forward to seeing everyone at EclipseCon and enjoying some frosty beverages.
I was in Raleigh for business yesterday. What’s the first thing I do when I’m in Raleigh?
I hit up Bojangles.
The fried chicken in Austin just isn’t the same. And yes, I have no shame.
Last weekend, a bunch of friends and I crammed into a couple vans and participated in the Texas Independence Relay. The 203.20 relay race started in Gonzales, Texas…
We ran throughout the beautiful Texas countryside… town to town…
I only managed to get two legs in before my IT band said no more. I’m pretty sure this injury was a result of the Austin marathon and over-training… I plan to switch to the bicycle for the next few weeks while I recover. Thankfully, my awesome team managed to pick up the rest of my legs. We eventually made it to the Houston downtown area…
In the end, we managed to get to the San Jacinto Monument in 24:59:10!
I believe we placed in the top 5, but I’m not sure. I’ll know when the final results are posted from the race. On the whole, I highly recommend anyone who wants to do a relay race to do the TIR, there’s no better way to explore the Texas country side.
I was introduced to Fat Bet recently.
I have a couple colleagues participating in a “fat bet” and I’m a bit surprised with their progress. The way it works is you simply wager some money and set weight targets amongst a group of friends. You track the progress of each other online and in the end, the person that reaches their target first will win the most money in the pot. As a bonus, if you’re a spectator to the bet, you get an overview of everyone’s progress via a console…
If you dive deeper, you can see a graph of how close people are to meeting their targets…
So far it seems to be working well. There’s also a comedic bonus of hearing about your colleagues trying to sabotage each other’s fat bet by bringing in donuts and breakfast tacos into the office (human guile at it’s finest).
In the end, I guess an incentive of money tied to people’s pride works well :)?
Last week, I was on business in London but I had a bit of time for pleasure.
I have an extensive bucket list. One of those items was to have fish and chips in London.
Check (I could go without the mushy peas though).
While I was there, I also had the opportunity to tour the Tower of London.
I highly recommend the tour… the English loved their executions. On top of the history lesson, you get to see some sweet armaments…
The final verdict? Beautiful city with a lot of rich history. I could go without the cold rain though 🙂
I’m running the Texas Independence Relay again.
203.20 miles and 40 relay legs of running goodness…
This time I have the honor of being team captain and organizing the logistics of the race. After calculating our current leg times, I’m predicting that we will finish under 24 hours which is my goal. Last year the team finished just about 24 hours and we received 3rd place in the open mixed division.
My goal is to best that time from last year and hopefully finish in the top three again. I will take pictures and document the journey as much as I can!
Yesterday, I participcated in the Austin Marathon which happened to be on Valentine’s Day.
The weather was beautiful in the morning, albeit chilly for Austin. I had a great start, hitting the 5K mark at about 22:27 with the 3:10 pace group. I continued on and hit the 10 mile mark at 1:12:21 with the 3:10 pace group. Just before the half marathon mark, I had to take a pit stop due to some stomach issues and tried to catch up to the 3:10 pace group. The pit stop was longer than I wanted it to be as I ended up crossing the half marathon mark at about 1:35:46 which was slightly behind my goal pace. I kept trying to chase the 3:10 group but couldn’t catch it after my pit stop. I crossed the 20 mile mark at about 2:30:03 which in my definition, equates to dragging ass. I managed to finish the marathon in 3:21:50…
My goal was 3:10 but I obviously missed it this time around. My stomach never felt the same after the pit stop and I had trouble catching up. If I take any lessons from this race, it’s to avoid pit stops at all costs. It breaks your rhythm.
My next marathon will be the Chicago Marathon where I will run a sub 3:10 🙂
