mormons, bridges, and 6.214 miles

so. an entry about me.

a week ago i found myself in picturesque (really!) salt lake city, utah, for work meetings. a decent trip, actually– made good progress in requirement discovery sessions, had a decent steak, and accidentally found myself being driven around temple square in downtown SLC. i\’m a bit of a 19th century architecture geek, so i found the LDS buildings pretty remarkable, specifically the salt lake temple.

anyways. it was a short trip, and i landed at MSP around 8:45 on wednesday night. after hitting the ground, i flipped on my cell phone and noticed i had a text from wadE. i don\’t recall the exact message, but it was something to the effect of \”is everyone ok on your end?\”

i wasn\’t really sure what to do with that, exactly; there was enough turbulence when we were landing to make me jump into the lap of the nice elderly gentleman sitting next to me, so i assumed it was a tornado. i was typing back to him when i overheard someone in the row behind me say what actually happened. because i have a tendency to panic (thanks mom), i immediately thought it was the stretch of 35W that goes over the minnesota river, a trip that i and my loved ones make frequently. after a hasty and frightened phone call to sara, i found my error. not that it makes anything any better.

i drove over that bridge twice a day when i lived in st. paul. i can\’t imagine a more frightening experience. if this isn\’t a sign that we need to rethink alternative transportation options– instead of winking and nodding at expansion of LRT– i don\’t know what else we can do. other than pray for those who have family members and friends who were lost or hurt .

lastly. i\’ve done (..counting..) five to seven 5K runs in my life, the last one coming in april of 2004. since then, my once rigid running routine has fallen by the wayside. for mostly the right reasons. however, lately, i\’ve been feeling the need to re-up the running. in an attempt to jumpstart these efforts, i signed up for the hennepin lakes classic 10K two months ago. it\’s farther than i normally run, but not impossible. plus i had two months to train up. right?

i didn\’t do any training.

so, at the end of last week, i was going to bag it. already making up excuses as to why i wouldn\’t do it. and then i did my regular route in apple valley both thursday and friday nights without much of a problem, and decided i\’d go with it. the worst that could happen is that i have to stop and walk, right? embarrassing, but sometimes i need to get knocked down a peg or two. so, sunday morning, 8:15… i was off. nearly two laps around lake calhoun, and i made it, meeting my goal of finishing in less than an hour. not exactly proud of my time (57 minutes) but considering i didn\’t do a lot of training, i was incredibly happy. plus i\’ve decided to make running a regular part of my schedule again, something that i haven\’t really stuck to since 2002. hoping that a) i\’m able to do a 10-mile run next summer, and 2) i start looking less like this guy.