Sunday miscellany.

I'm sitting here at work on a sunny Sunday afternoon waiting to see if anyone will come in to do a code review for me and alternately wondering whether I should do any more work before checking in. I'm listening through to Chris's new Mountain Goats album for the first time continuously. It's pretty good! I remember seeing him a number of years ago opening for Lilys at a little anonymous venue in Philly. He's come a long way.

Last night was the Torchlight race associated with the Seafair Torchlight parade. It was hotter than hell, provided that hell is not hotter than 85 degrees. I'm not sure who organizes an unbroken western exposure race route at 6:30pm in July. Well, that's a lie -- I AM sure. It's the organizers of the Torchlight race. I am becoming so cranky with race organizers in my young-middle age. Under the circumstances I was happy with my time. Chopping the 30 seconds or so that I lost in the beginning because of the lack of chip time at the start, I finished the 8k in about 41 minutes. Not my fastest race, but fast given the crap heat conditions of the afternoon. I went with a bunch of other people, some of whom did the 8k and some of whom did the 5k, all of whom had pretty good races. I hate non-morning races. And yet I'm glad I did this race -- it feels like an important race to have done. It's nice to have done local races of local significance. It's situating, grounding, weirdly community-affirming.

This might be my last race until the SJnJ half-marathon on Labor Day. On the other hand, it might not be. Mike is talking about running the FootZone 5k next Sunday, so I'll play with the idea. I need to do fewer short races so that I can up my distance training again, but I have a hard time turning down a friendly local race when other people I know want to run it. We'll see how it goes. I kind of want to hit up some new trails next weekend if I can find anyone willing to go with me.

One more thing: anyone have the new Silversun Pickups album? Thinking of stopping to get it on my way home tonight...