First of all, a belated natal day greeting. Older, wiser, and feeling…younger.

This morning, with the temperature at 15 degrees, I ran the local “Santa Shuffle 5k”. With all the runners donning Santa hats, who could be cold? This was my first run in my Newton All Weather shoes which arrived just in time for the onset of frigid weather. Thanks to you, I’ve been a Newton runner for one year, now.

I’m sure this will be a special Christmas for you and your wife as you anticipate the birth of your first child.

Peace,
Joe

We tried to allign ourselves with Euorpe recently and change to metric weight but loads of people (mostly old) complained that they couldn’t order cheese at the deli in grams. So we are stuck using both. My daughters are taught to measure in centimeters but asked their height in feet and inches. Madness.

Rant over.

An easy way to ‘translate’ Celsius to Fahrenheit: “double it and add 30″. So, 8 C = 46 F. It isn’t perfect, but it’s really close at around room temperature. You’re off by a couple of degrees at most for either really cold or really hot. I’m a Canadian but lived in the US for a few years and had to learn this translation trick myself – in reverse!

Since you’re getting to be so darned international, this trick might come in handy to translate race reports. I think it’s only the USA and Britain who do NOT use Celsius, after all…

I agree with you about the Christmas period. I use the extra time to do a little more running than usual. I love running on Christmas day. I try and fit in a half marathon after the kids have opened up their presents. It chills me out and makes Christmas dinner taste even better.

I ran marathon number 7 on Saturday. I did the Gower Cross Country Marathon in Wales. I wasn’t as prepared as I would have wanted but I had done several good long runs so my endurance was ok if my speed was poor. It was serious terrain with lots of hills and uneven paths as well as a couple of sandy beaches. It had rained for four days so it was very very muddy. Because it had been raining so much they had to change the route to 28 miles instead of 26.2. An ultra!!!

It wasn’t raining we when set off but it was raining by mile 15. After that is was so tough. Just plodding along, mile after mile. It was very slippy even in my XC shoes. My knee started to really hurt with 4 miles to go and the last bit took ages. 5 hrs 53 minutes of running in total, 28 miles and 3900 feet of ascent. I was pleased with my performance. It was slow but you can’t compare it to a regular marathon. I was 113th out of 169 which shows I wasn’t half bad. I beat some very fit looking individuals.

My other big news is that I have enterted the UK Ironman which will take place on 1st August 2010. Scary.