Just a few days until pig's feet ice cream

By that I mean, just a few days before I leave for Taiwan. I'm actually really looking forward to this trip for some reason. I go nearly every year, and this year I have to go to work 5 days a week, so I'm not entirely sure why I'm so excited, but I am. I even have my first day planned out... get off plane in morning, avoid succumbing to jet lag (shouldn't be a problem given my sleep habits lol), drop crap off at apartment, go get pig's feet and pork floss flavored ice cream, fall asleep in bowl of beef noodle soup from Xin Jiang Beef Noodles (新疆牛肉麵), win. Maybe I'm looking forward to it so much more this year because of my increased appreciation of running, I mean... there's plenty of stuff to look at, and when I had to stop after 2 miles in the past, it really put a damper on things. In any case, this year should be fun, despite me being a lab jockey 5 days a week.

The good news continues, Chris found me a bike. By found, I mean he looked in his garage haha. It's the old road bike he used before his current one, which means it's shorter (good for me since I've realized finding a smaller frame is next to impossible on a budget). In any case, it looks to be a decent bike from the late 80's... purely speculation from the picture... which should prove to be more than adequate for use as a commuter bike and the occasional long ride, at least until I save up to buy really nice frame. So cheers to that, and much Chinese food is owed in the upcoming year!

Today's run was also tremendous. More Memorial Day pigging out yesterday. Crapton of roast chicken, hotdogs, and chocolate cake = very happy (but heavy) me. So I expected a bad run again. Something along the lines of maybe a shade over 5k at around an 8 minute pace. Well, I started running and wouldn't you know it, I just didn't want to stop. It might've been because I finally changed up my iPod running playlist, but I felt tremendous after the first mile, which is when I usually hit a wall that lets me know if today'll be good or not. Actually, I ran with a side stitch for the first 5k, but the legs felt fine so I pushed through. Final distance... 7.08 miles in about 56 minutes. Again, I'm going off the clock on my iPod so I have no clue how accurate my timings are (I really need a Garmin Forerunner), but it paces out to a sub 8 mile for just over a 10k. I can't complain about that... especially on a day where I'm not running for time. Oh, and on that 100 mile goal before Taiwan? I think I've covered about 44 miles already, even with my day off, so 56 over 8 days seems perfectly doable.

I really want to tag this post 'success' as it's a nice change of pace from the failroll that I had going, but I don't think I'd use that tag enough to justify it...

distance for the day: 7.08 miles
distance biked for the day: 0.00 miles

distance on the year: 211.81 miles
distance biked on the year: 142.68 miles

edit: this is the coolest thing I think I've ever seen... France does it again (by it, I mean win)