Marathon

I signed up for the Seattle Rock N Roll Marathon, which will be held on Saturday, June 27th. Although it's a few months away it is already causing a mixture of excitement and anxiety in my life. It's tough in my busy schedule to fit in my runs. For some reason I think it's tougher to go for a run at the gym than to go for a swim. Perhaps because it takes me longer to cool down and to recover afterwards.

This weekend was my first training run that took some planning and motivation. It was 8 miles. And it took 28 laps around the track at the skating rink. Sure, I had other runners and skaters to watch, and music to listen to over the speaker system, but it still became boring. I'm going to have to work on some techniques to get me through the long runs. All of my weekend runs from now on will be at least 8 miles.

My iPod arrived today. It's my first. So, I'm working on my playlist now. Uploading all of my CDs to the computer so that I can import them to Leonard. I think that's a good name for him. He is green and he's a nano. And he's a fan of MJ, especially the Thriller album.

I've been thinking about the name Leonard this week, because that's the first name of the mathematician, Euler. And Leohnard Euler is the answer to a coded riddle in the algebra book that I use with my freshmen. The textbook authors thought it would be fun (or funny) for students to work on an extended problem only to find the answer is "Leohnard Euler". Lucky for us though, I caught this before we assigned it to our students. So, one of the other teachers is working on a similar riddle, but now the answer will be "Flamin' Hots". The kids will love it.