Saturday

Today was fun.

Last night I drove home to my parents house and ate dinner, I went to bed kind of early because I was running a race early the next morning.

This morning I woke up at 6:00 a.m. and drove to Brookeville, OH to run in the annual 5 mile Picnic Run that they have in conjunction with a little festival. The race went alright, I got ninth in 28:10. I was disappointed with the time, but I haven't been doing much speedwork so I guess it was ok for having mostly done milage training.

Anyway, while I was waiting around for the awards ceremony one of my buddies that ran with me came over and handed me two tickets to the US Senior Open that was going on at the NCR course in Kettering. He had to go with work and somehow he ended up with two extra tickets. So that was pretty sweet. I spent the rest of the afternoon with my brother watching some Professional Golf. Now I am just hanging out at my parents house until tomarrow afternoon, air conditioning and free food are nice.

I love running

As you might have inferred from the title of this post, I enjoy running. I was reminded of this yesterday as I ran with some guys on the team up in the Kenwood area. We met at French Park at 7:30 pm in the hopes that it would be a little cooler (being as the temperatures had hovered near 100 for the previous two days) and proceeded to run a good 11 or 12 miles. It was very refreshing. Running during the summers has not always been that fun for me. Often times I run by myself and I'll run the same course over and over. But even though it was ridiculously hot, yesterday was just one of those days where I felt like I was "in the zone." Yes, I realize that it's kind of a corny phrase, but I can't think of a better way to describe it. You can feel that slight burning sensation when you take a breath and the lactic acid building in your legs, but it doesn't really matter, you just keep cruising and it feels like you could run forever. But anyway, I love to run and I think that everyone should give it a try.

Guatemala Pictures

Well, I finally got my pictures from Guatemala posted, you can get to the site from the link on the right that says "My Photos." I didn't have enough space to post all of my pictures, so I tried to pick the best ones or the ones that best represented the people and the experience. Cool. Peace.

Live 8 is Great 

Live 8

Let me just say that this weekend was amazing. I had the privilege to be able to attend the Live 8 concert in Philadelphia and spend the weekend with an awesome group of people who live in a community called The Simple Way in inner city Philly. Friday after work I picked up my friend Zach and we drove for 10 hours through a mini monsoon, got lost and ended up in New Jersey, but finally made it to Philly at 3:30 am. Needless to say I crashed and slept pretty well. The next day we got up and worked at a thrift store run by The Simple Way. It was fun to hang out with some of the people that live there and meet some of the neighborhood kids. I cleaned the store a little, sorted some clothes, and delivered some of the clothes they couldn't use to another organization that would sell them to make rags. At about 1:00 pm we went over to the Live 8 concert going on at the art museum on Benjamin Frankin Parkway. The concert going on in Philadelphia was just one of many going on across the world, their purpose was to raise awareness for the G8 Summit that is taking place July 6-8. Basically the 8 richest countries in the world are meeting to discuss poverty and the foreign spending, specifically in Africa. We got there about an hour after it started and it was packed, it was estimated that there between 600 and 800 thousand people in attendence. We made our way through the crowd and got reasonably close to the main stage. The concert was pretty cool, there was an ecclectic mix of performers. Linkin Park, Jay-Z, Keith Urban, Jars of Clay, Maroon 5 and many others were there. It was incredible to be a part of the largest lobbying event in the history of the world. After the concert we went to an exhibit on Iraq and ate dinner near Independence Hall. That night five of us slept on the roof of one of their houses, and as you can imagine, in the inner city on 4th of July weekend there were fire works going off all around us until 4am. It was just cool to lay there and watch them. On Sunday a group of us went to mass at Sacred Heart church in Camden, New Jersey. Afterward we ate lunch at a place called the Camden House, they were some of the nicest and most hospitable people that I have met in my entire life. We got back to The Simple Way around 2:00 pm and I packed up my stuff in my car. However, before I left I was able to juggle with Shane and Joe, two guys that live at the Simple Way. It was a lot of fun. So far this summer has been incredible, both through my trip to Guatemala and this weekend, God has been showing me so much. I am excited to see what God has in store for me as I look toward graduation next year and what lies after that.