Last year, as I have mentioned, I rewarded myself with a trip to Europe after passing my exams for work. I never really got around to posting anything, as that time in my life was quite busy! The trip was very last minute, but all I knew was that I wanted to do something active. I narrowed it down to Argentina, Peru and the Alps, but didn't make my final decision until about three weeks before I left, which is totally not like me. I finally decided on an Alpine vacation, since September was the perfect time of year for hiking in the Alps.

I started off my trip with a pit stop in New York for Labor Day to visit with my parents. After having a great time wandering, running and eating with them, I headed East once again, this time to Frankfurt, Germany. Why Frankfurt, you ask? Well, it's a long story, but basically it was much cheaper to fly to Frankfurt and take the train to wherever I wanted than to fly to where I wanted. So, Frankfurt it was! I took the red eye, which put me into Frankfurt in the morning. I immediately found a train to Munich, and had a very enjoyable train ride southward. I arrived in Munich in the late morning and although I was quite tired, I had a quick coffee, grabbed my camera, and headed out to see what I could find.

Glockenspiel

The best part about Munich was all of the fresh fruit stands, beer stands/halls, the bikes and the bakeries. Don't get me wrong, there were a ton of awesome buildings and of course there was the Glockenspiel, but I really enjoyed the laid back biking atmosphere and the smell of fresh bread. I got my fill of it all, literally and figuratively, and then headed to the Lidl, which is the European grocery store, for some supplies for the next day. Perhaps my kilo to pound conversion is off a bit, but it seemed like the fruit there was really cheap! 

Hofbrauhaus

Fruit Stand

I went to bed around 8 pm and woke up the next day around 7 am very refreshed. Take that, jet lag! The first thing I did was to take a nice run around town. The funny thing was that it seemed like there were no other runners out. I saw two other people the entire time I was running, which was about 6 miles. I ran up to the English Gardens (Englischer Garten) which is a huge park. The coolest part of that was that there were surfers in the waterways! I guess that is one way to get your surf on when you don't have an ocean nearby!

Picnic Lunch

English Garden Surfers

After my run, I had a nice breakfast of bread, cheese, cold cuts and fruit and I boarded a train headed south towards Austria.

Have you ever been to Germany? What is the price of an apple per pound where you live? Do you eat out when traveling or do you picnic?

Dear Monday -- Please go away. You are not as fun to play with as Saturday.

Dear Sleep -- Why have you abandoned me? We had such a great time on Friday night, but last night, you were gone.

Dear August -- You are so far away but you are already full. Why does it seem like everything happens all in the same month? I am looking forward to you but dreading you at the same time.

Dear Hair -- Today we will part ways. I am not sure how it will turn out, but I am sure that most of you will be gone.

Dear Running -- I miss you.

Dear California -- Your weather has been great and I love it. However, we really, REALLY need some rain. I would gladly sacrifice a few nice days now for good fruit prices later on!

Dear Toilet -- Why are you running?

Dear Closet full of work shirts -- Why don't any of you fit any more? Did I get taller or did you get shorter? I think it's time for you to be replaced.

Dear Readers -- who do you want to write a letter to today?

I am taking the lazy way out today and copying one of my favorite bloggers by doing a quick recap of the week, TGIF style.

The highlight of my week was my extra day off on Monday. I went for a leisurely run and it was a beautiful day and the sun was shining and I couldn't have asked for a much better day. Except if the day included a breakfast with thick cut bacon, an avocado bubble tea and a few really good craft beers, which Monday did include!

The low point of my week was a sickness that has taken hold of me. It started with an overall achy feeling and a minor sore throat and blossomed into a can-barely-swallow or concentrate kind of thing with a side of headache and exhaustion. It's really put a crimp in my running style, which was not really doing very well in the first place. 

The best book I read was probably Orange is the New Black. I am currently also reading Wonder and Behind the Beautiful Forevers, which are both really good so far.

This week's workouts were not super great. As I mentioned in the "low point" section, I have been sick for most of the week. Luckily I did get a chance to go hiking on Saturday and snowshoeing on Sunday, as well as my leisurely run on Monday. Other than that, I have been lying pretty darn low, workout wise.

The best money I spent was a on a lot of good food and a couple of new beers on Monday! I tried a 7 Seas Rude Parrot IPA, the Maritime Jolly Roger Christmas Ale and the Fremont Triple Trifecta.

My plans this weekend include some trail runs (hopefully) if I am not too sick, a lot of reading and relaxing if I am, and a bunch of errands, such as grocery shopping and cleaning.

What are your plans this weekend? What good books have you read lately?

Last year, after running the Jedediah Smith 50k, I said to myself that I probably would not run this race again and that I would rather, "sit in the sun and drink beer and watch everyone else run by me 6 times." Unfortunately, this year it was supposed to rain, so I signed up for the race again.

It is a 4.9 mile loop on the American River Bike Path that you do 6 times, plus a little out and back at the beginning to bring the total up to 31 miles. However, as I mentioned in this post, it is the first Pacific USA Track and Field (PAUSATF, otherwise known as "PA") race of the year, and after having some down time in December, it's fun to get the season started, to see some of your racing buddies, and to get the legs moving.

The course is set up so that the start/finish line is in the parking lot of the park, so you can park your car and open up the back and have a personal "aid station" right there in the parking lot. That is what we did.

Car Aid Station and Finish Line Party

Although it was supposed to rain the entire morning, it actually only sprinkled on us a few times. It was also very warm and humid, as opposed to last year, when it was quite chilly! Since I had sprained my ankle a few weeks back and was still taking it easier on myself, I went into this race with the attitude that I would just run it at a steady easy pace and that if I felt ANY pain, I would stop and walk or just not finish at all. It's not worth injuring myself worse just to finish a silly race.

The first out and back was fun, as you see everyone in front of and behind you. It is about a mile and a half long in total. It got back to the start line in 13:19.  Then the loops start....

Loop 1 and 2 (58:13 and 44:31 / 8:49 and 9:05/mi): I ran both of these with a friend, and we kept up an easy conversation as we ran along. These miles went by quickly, until she stopped to go to the restroom and I carried on.

Loop 3 (44:09 / 9:01/mi): I put on my headphones in order to dull the boredom. I got lapped by two of the lead runners at the beginning of this loop. I remember thinking that last year I was nearer to the end of this loop when they lapped me.

Loop 4 (45:44 / 9:20/mi): My headphones died, leaving me with nothing. I kept getting passed by the lead runners, and it was fine, but it did keep reminding me that I was not running as fast as I should be.

Loop 5 (46:52 / 9:34/mi): As I started this loop, my ankle was starting to feel a little stiff. It wasn't really in pain, but I was starting to baby it, and this caused the other side of my foot to start to ache. On top of this, the fact that I hadn't run in three weeks was catching up to me. I told myself that if I could just finish this last loop, which would take me to a marathon distance, in less than 4 hours, I would walk the last loop. I got to the end of the fifth loop at 3:59.

Loop 6 (53:24 / 10:54/mi): As I neared the end of loop five, a friend said to me, "hurry and finish so you can have some soup", and in my mind I was thinking that I really could not wait, but on the other hand, now I was going to walk! I started to walk along and in my mind I was doing running math: if I walked a 15 minute mile, it would take me about an hour and 15 minutes to get to the end; if I ran a 10 minute mile, I could be done in 50 minutes. So I started to run once again.

A bit of a puddle

I finished in 4:52, which is about a half an hour slower than last year. However, I felt pretty good, aside from some soreness in the bottoms of my feet, which haven't been used as much lately as they normally have. I came in 4th in my age group. What I didn't know is that I was only 1 minute behind the 3rd place girl and 3 minutes behind 2nd place. If only I hadn't walked on that last lap!

The best part about the race was that we sat around afterward eating and drinking beers and watching everyone else come in and it only rained on us a little bit. I used to head home right after I raced, but one of the things I have learned over the years is that we don't run these for the race itself; we run them for the after party!

So, another Jed Smith in the books. Will I run it again? I want to say no, but the answer is probably yes.

Have you ever repeated a race? Do you stay after races or do you go home right away? 

I normally yield to no-one in my defence of MPs and their workload; the sense of public spirit that has led them into parliament; the fact that they are significantly under appreciated etc.  But tonight, such warm, positive feelings evaporated. They are a bunch of workshy charlatans who wouldn't know a hard day's work if it came and danced in the aisles of their under used committee rooms.

The reason for my onset of annoyed angst has nothing to do, of course, with a misplaced attempt to bring my students to the heart of the mother of parliaments to watch a twilight session of the Houses in operation.  Having checked the daily schedule s of both Houses it looked as if there might be enough to keep them going until the noted adjournment times of 10.30 pm.  Admittedly the last Commons debate, on the vexed topic of nut allergies on flights could, it might be argued, have yielded fewer lengthy considerations than some other important elements of the body politic, but with counter-terrorism and the HSBC scandal on the agenda of the Lords,  7.30 didn't thus seem to be a particularly risky time to arrive for at least one chamber to still be operating; surely our hard working representatives would be bringing their fine minds to bear on the important details of their country's legislative agenda for a little while yet? After all, it was only Monday.  Half days in public service normally don't crop up until at least Thursday do they?

Not a bit of it.  Our evening journey to Westminster had been in vain.  The pleasant officials on duty at the gate broke the news to us gently but firmly that there were no sittings still going on.  Business was done. Democracy was on hold.

Getting a bunch of teenagers to agree to extend their working day is never easy.  When it's proved to be in vain it is well nigh a disaster.  There was no explaining away this one.  My earlier  exhortations that they were in for some high level political debate looked as hollow as an Easter egg.  A lame group photo later, and our trip was done. 

MPs workloads? As mythical as Stephen Fry's God.

The first of the powerpoints (from the lessons) for AS students are now up and published here (Link also opposite for easy access).  I will keep adding to the resources on the "SGS Politics Extra" blog, including relevant resources to complement AS Unit 2 and A2 resources for Global Politics (3D) and the US (4C). 

It was conventional wisdom that the AV referendum in 2011 had effectively 'parked' the issue of electoral reform for a generation or so.  Just, of course, as it was conventional wisdom that the Scottish referendum would also 'park' the issue of Scottish independence.  Neither of these wisdoms look very secure now.  In the case of Scotland, the problem was that the referendum was never allowed to run its proper course as with a week to go David Cameron and his fellow English party leaders changed the issue to something that wasn't on the ballot paper - gerrymandering of a high order.  In the case of electoral reform, Professor John Curtice's interesting figures look as if they too could bring the issue of reform firmly back into the main stream - and, since they were published by the Electoral Reform society that's probably what they were intended to do.

Professor Curtice notes that the key factor for success in the First Past the Post system is the geographic concentration of votes, and he further adds that this is effectively undermining the national claim of the system to be a "winner takes all" one.  His findings (full report here; Electoral Reform summary here) suggest the possibility of a Labour Party which comes second in votes securing the highest number of seats, and being shoehorned into government by an SNP which may well have come only sixth in terms of UK-wide votes, but have enough seats to secure Labour a majority in a coalition.

Curtice looks at the relative prospects of the smaller parties, on whom much of the election outcome will depend, and finds that the SNPs geographic concentration of votes could well propel them into winning significantly higher numbers of seats than the more geographically spread UKIP, even if UKIP scores significantly more votes.  To add to the possible post-election chaos is, of course, the fact that not only will SNP MPs only hail from one part of the UK, but - since the notorious devolution 'vow' - it is part with barely any domestic issues actually decided at Westminster.

Curtice discussed his report on the 'Today' programme (scroll in to around 45.55 minutes) and it makes fascinating listening.  No longer is the issue of whether FPTP throws up another coalition the only point of discussion.  Just as crucial, given the SNP surge in support (largely at Labour's expense in Scotland) is the question of who the coalition might actually comprise.  Thus, to the disproportionality of FPTP is added the unresolved headache of an incomplete devolution settlement.

If this looks like an issue of unfairness to the main parties - and I suspect it is the Tories who would make the most ground on this - then they might like to reflect that their own leaders have led them to this potential impasse.  All three leaders were guilty of panicking att he sight of the Scottish referendum polling figures, and unforgivably altered the basis of the referendum with no thought to the consequences.  In addition, only Clegg campaigned for reform of the Westminster system when he argued for the AV option in the referendum, although his acceptance of a hopelessly skewed referendum question (which only posited AV as an alternative, rather than the principle of proportionality) showed, at best, considerable political naivety.  David Cameron and the rest of the Conservative Party, meanwhile, have consistently failed to consider the inequities of the FPTP system, and then fell foul of their coalition partners in the tit-for-tat of blocking Lords reform (the Conservatives) and constituency boundary changes (the Lib Dems).

Whatever mess emerges after the next election, it is an irony that the men responsible for its genesis will also be the ones charged with resolving it.

Although January is a symbol of a new year, and you can essentially wipe clean the slate and start over, it is still one of  my least favorite months. Luckily I live in a place without snow or extreme cold, which means I am still able to go outside each day to run or hike, but for some reason, I am always a little bit glad when the month is over.

Running: The month started off great, with a New Year's day run with friends, a marathon Fat Ass on the first weekend, and many other great days out on the trails. Since I am training for a few upcoming races, I am supposed to be running roughly 50 - 60 mile weeks, and I was on track for that. Unfortunately, mid month I sprained my ankle and was unable to run for the last couple of weeks of the month. I ended up with about 189 miles for the month (out of approximately 275 total planned miles).

Reading: Due to not running as much, it allowed me to step up my reading game a bit. In January I read 5 books. Actually, all of them were pretty good! My favorite was probably The Tipping Point (4 stars). The other four were:

China Dolls (4 stars) 
Little Big Lies (3 stars)
Goodnight June (4 stars)
Astray (4 stars)

Traveling: I went up to visit my parents for MLK weekend and had a great time hiking and exploring and playing board games with them. I even took the dog and she had so much fun running around off leash, acting like a dog. We also had a salamander hunt, ate Mickey Mouse waffles and ran a few miles on the snowy PCT. In addition to that, I went up to Sonoma county to see the Styx in concert. I haven't seen so many cougars in spandex pants all in one place in a long time!

Exploring with Mom, Dad and Emi

Misc: I was dogsitting a lot in January, so in addition to my running miles, I probably walked an additional 20 miles just by walking the dog twice a day. Also, since I could not run, I took advantage of a sunny day and took a really nice long bike ride around town. It was a lot of fun, although I may need to buy some of those funny padded shorts if I am going to do long rides in the future! My tush was sore the next day!

Alameda bike ride

How was your January? Did it go by quickly or slowly? What is your least favorite month of the year?

Well yes, for a few days, is the broad theme of a Huffington Post "exclusive" today.  The piece is an interview with former Lib Dem Defence minister Nick Harvey, who speculates that if David Cameron decided to resign as Conservative leader following a poor showing in the election, a hung parliament could result in coalition negotiations taking place with Nick Clegg holding the fort as interim Prime Minister.  Far-fetched?  Absolutely.  And we still have three months or so of wild speculation making headlines as news 'fact'.

The problem for Clegg, anyway, seems to lie closer to home.  I've always maintained that if disillusioned Lib Dem voters voted Labour, as a protest against the Lib Dems' willingness to be in coalition with the Conservatives, then many of their seats would actually fall not to Labour but to the Conservatives, from whom the incumbent MPs took the setas in the first place.  Clegg's Sheffield Hallam seat is one example - once a Tory stronghold, he seized it from them in 2005.  However, a Survation poll of the seat, reported on Labourlist, puts Labour ahead of Clegg in that seat.  If there is a momentum towards the Labour candidate there, then it certainly seems likely that the anti-coalition vote might be able to coalesce around him to the extent that it takes the seat and deprives Clegg of any further involvement in negotiating new coalitions.  Nevertheless, it is still worth remembering that the seat is a prosperous, and actually quite rural one; certainly not natural Labour territory under a left-wing leader.  I wouldn't write off either Clegg or the Tories just yet.

CORRECTION: I have said in the post above that Nick Clegg won the Hallam seat in 2005 from the Tories.  In fact, he succeeded Liberal Democrat MP Richard Allan, who won it off the Tories in the meltdown of 1997.

Nick Clegg has also now gone on record to ridicule the Survation poll findings.

  

Short post this, really to highlight an interesting piece by Catherine Gegout on the Nottingham Uni politics blog about the new Italian president Sergio Mattarella.

For all those who thought Italian politics had no chance of ever not being mired in corruption - Gegout notes that Italy is the most corrupt state in the EU - the choice of Mattarella seems to mark a turning point.  His election as president by parliament also represents another piece of anti-Berlusconi manouevring by current prime minister, Matteo Renzi.  Well worth heading over to the article and getting a bit of quick immersement in Italian politics.   

There is a long history - dating all the way back to the 1970s in its modern form - of Commons sketch writing, which is to say reporting the proceedings of the House of Commons and our noble representatives as they sit debating our best interests within it, and doing so in a humorous fashion.  Andrew Alexander possibly started it in the modern newspapers, Frank Johnson and Edward Pearce have been masters of the art, and Quentin Letts keeps the satirical bile flowing today, amongst others.  It's almost as if these collected writers believe that either the Commons isn't funny enough on its own merits, or that the ludicrous pomposity of the inhabitants we have sent there needs exposing on a regular basis.

There is no better forum for such scathing wit than the weekly Prime Minister's Questions.  I'm not sure whether this regular bun fight has ever provided much illumination, but it has certainly been operating several stages below the average playground brawl in the hands of the current incumbent and his opposite number.  And Cameron was the man who once piously announced he would do away with "Punch and Judy" politics.  Honestly.  Politicians and their promises.

Anyway, I mention all this, in a rather long-winded way, to flag up the Spectator's brilliant Lloyd Evans, whose report of today's seemingly dire PMQs is, frankly, a masterpiece of richly comic observation.

His description of Cameron as a man who is "slipperier than a jellyfish emerging from an oil-slick" has an almost Wodehousian quality to it, while he describes one Labour backbencher as "a floppy haired Scouser who looks like an angry Beatle".  His greatest description today, though, is of the SNP's Angus Robertson, of whom he says "the stars that twinkled at his birth allotted him a superhuman store of charmlessness".   There's every chance we come away from chortling over Evans' sketch rather more wise in the ways of PMQs than if we'd simply watched it.

Business leaders like Stuart Rose of Marks and Spencer have been leaping in to the political arena to attack Labour's policy proposals, but it doesn't look as if this is doing much to shift the Tory position.  It has been flat-lining at around 32% for a year now.  Admittedly, Labour too has failed to shift things, remaining a mere 1% ahead of the Conservatives in the first month of this year, despite the high-energy campaigning.

It is more than probable that despite the attention being focused on the election - still over three months away - in the Westminster village, few ordinary voters are taking much notice. The biggest electoral trend has been the increase of the SNP's position in Scotland, which is likely to act to the detriment of Labour, but could cause a significant problem for all of the English parties when it comes to getting English legislation through parliament (a difficulty highlighted today by William Hague's inability to unite the parliamentary party behind his English laws proposal).

The Conservatives can draw little comfort from Labour's position in Scotland.  They remain under threat from UKIP, but more importantly have failed to move their opinion poll position despite concerted efforts to do so and the running of a narrative that seeks to confer on Cameron the benefits of incumbency whilst targeting Miliband as unfit to be Prime Minister.

Adam Bienkov has a piece on Politics.co.uk today analysing the polling situation, and he has this cutting but on the nail comment about the Tory party:

After a year of strong economic recovery and declining trust in Labour and Miliband, any other governing party would expect to be sweeping up support by now. The fact that voters would still rather plump for almost any other party instead, suggests that the Tories have fundamental problems they are simply refusing to face up to.

There are occasionally signs of realisation. The party's continuing low support among the young, ethnic minorities, working class voters and indeed anyone outside the South East of England, have been repeatedly raised by some figures on the fringes of the party. Occasionally these concerns are listened to. Usually they are ignored.

In fact rather than face up to these problems they have instead retreated back to the same electoral comfort zone that has failed to win them a majority for over twenty years. Endlessly banging on about immigration, Europe and welfare have failed to win dividends for the party for decades and yet they continue to do it anyway.

They say madness is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. Well the Tories have been doing the same thing for almost a quarter of a century now and yet still they stand back in amazement when the opinion polls refuse to budge.

This absolutely encapsulates the Tory problem, as I mentioned in an earlier blog post.  Their failure to reach out to a wider electorate remains their Achilles heel, and yet they persistently look to the wrong answer - the belief that they just need to be more right-wing.  How many election defeats will it take for the moderate right to re-group and form a genuinely popular centre-right party?

My earlier post suggested that the Labour party had had a pretty dire week last week, so by way of balance here's some good news for the would-be Labour supporter.

First off is the report on Labourlist that the party has increased its membership.  Once you acknowledge Labourlist as a cheerleader for the party, it is nonetheless the case that they have produced figures that would give some cheer to Ed Miliband as he looks at a membership rise that appears to be beating the Tories (at 194,000 Labour members to just under 150,000 for the Tories).  Mind you, the Tories' Grant Shapps also claims a number of 224,000 if you include non-paying 'supporters', which seems like a very dubious calculation.  None of those figures, by the way, is particularly cheering for the parties, representing as they do somewhere around 1% of the electorate.

If that isn't enough to cheer the Labour leader, he might also want to gloat a little at the results of a Lord Ashcroft focus group poll, reported by Guido, that has most voters likening David Cameron to Dick Dastardly when asked to compare party leaders to cartoon characters.  Not that Miliband's cartoon alter ego - Elmer Fudd - is much more encouraging.

Miliband has also been doing a Q and A with younger voters, and while his answer about his life experience outside politics might have been wanting (he noted he had been a Treasury adviser and a lecturer at Harvard - lecturing about politics!), the Spectator's Isabel Hardman reports that he generally came across well.  All the more effective for being so regularly lampooned as a sub-human weirdo.

And then there are the people who "really, really, really" like Ed Miliband, which is good news for students like my school's mock election Labour candidate, who maintain that Ed Miliband is in reality a visionary and articulate leader who will wipe the floor with Cameron.  Well, it turns out Tom is not alone, as the Spectator's 'Steerpike' discovers the tweets that rave about Miliband's amazing quotes.

Finally, it seemed that Conservative Home had ventured into popular culture when I noticed the sub-heading "A replacement for Merlin - at last".  Could this be a reference to the BBC's tortuous road to finding another popular family fantasy programme, after the cancellation of "Atlantis" in only its second series?  Alas no - the Merlin in this story was a rather prosaic voter contact database, now being replaced by the less ambitiously named "Votesource".  The BBC's search presumably continues.

This weekend kicks off a new season of racing that I thought I was ready for but now I am not so sure. (You thought I was going to be talking about football, didn't you?) Last year, I started off the season with the same race as I will this year, the Jed Smith 50k. I remember last year thinking after I had finished that I was, "never going to run this race again." It is roughly a 5 mile loop on pavement that you run 6 times in order to get to 50k (31 miles). However, it's amazing what 9 or 10 months will do, because I signed up again this year. However, I have been nursing an ankle injury, so I may just go sit on the sidelines and cheer.

In addition to Jed Smith, there are a few key races I will be doing this year that I am really looking forward to.

- Gorge Waterfall 100k: This race is close to Portland, in the Columbia Gorge area near Cascade Locks. I have been hiking in the area before and so I know that it is beautiful. The course has a ton of waterfalls on it as well; you can see them in this video by the Ginger Runner (go to about 2 min. to see the course). It is an out and back with about 12,000 ft. of elevation. I am looking forward to it, as I am traveling up there with some friends and we have rented an airbnb in the Hawthorne district of Portland and we will stay for a couple of days in addition to the race. I am really hoping it does not rain though! 

- Lake Sonoma 50M:  This race is one of those that always brings the big names. It is an out and back with about 10,500 ft of elevation gain. It is also a Montrail Ultra Cup race, meaning that the top two men and women qualify for an entry into Western States. Last year the top men were Zach Miller, Rob Krar and Sage Canaday. This year there are some good local boys such as Alex Varner and Dylan Bowman. These men will finish in about 6 hours, whereas I will be hanging out about 4 hours behind them. However, it will be fun to be part of such an important race. (This is a good video of the 2014 race by Billy Yang).

- Tahoe Rim Trail 100M: Yes, I did it; I signed up for a hundred mile race. Am I nervous? You betcha. I know I can finish, unless something goes horribly wrong, but I would like to do well. I know it is my first hundred, so my goal should really just be to FINISH. However, I would like to finish well under the 35 hour cut off time if possible. This will be a great race; I have done the 50M before, and the 100M is two 50 mile loops starting at about 7,000 ft. with a max elevation of about 9,500 ft. and a total gain of about 20,000 ft. There will be literally dozens of people there who I know, which I feel will be good motivation to keep moving. This race will be like a huge all night party with all of my friends.

In addition to these, there will be smaller, local races thrown in the mix, as well as times when I will be crewing and pacing friends for their big events. All in all, it is shaping up to be a great racing season and I cannot wait to kick it off!

Do you have any big races on the calendar this year? Will you travel for them or do you normally stay closer to home? If you are not a runner, what big plans do you have for weekend trips this summer?