Half-marathon

It's amazing how days blend into each other. There's nothing in the past week to make it outstanding. Oh, except Wednesday. We went to a blood lab and gave blood, a part of the annual checkup. They took quite a bit--I believe 7 vials--from each, me and Maggie. Now we sit and await the results. Actually, they will call us only if something is wrong. So, with a little luck, there'll be no call from the doc.

Today I finally pushed myself over the half-marathon line. I ran 22.1 km in just under 1:50. It felt wonderful, my longest run so far. I needed a few hours to regenerate, but other than that everything was the same as after the shorter runs. But, although the half-marathon went better than expected, it also showed how far I am from the full distance. I felt like I could have gone another 5 km, maybe--and that's a big maybe--even 10 km more, but the legs would definitely not carry me for another 20 km. So, the dream of running a marathon will have to wait to be fulfilled.

Maggie spent the day "planting" a plastic liner to line up the garden bed. She explains that's supposed to prevent the grass to grow back onto the fine soil we bought for our fine plants. Speaking of which, some of our "fine" plants are showing signs of exhaustion. Two specimens (don't ask me which, I can only tell a tree from a flower, if the tree is big enough and the flower small enough) are quite withered. Maggie hopes they'll re-generate and miraculously spring to life. I'm cautiously pessimistic--if they were not in the ground already, I'd bury them.