not even sure where to begin

There is now a wedding ring on my finger and I cannot stop twisting it around and around. It feels sooooo good, too.

The last week for Julie and me has been an absolute blissful, nonstop, whirlwind, adventure. I am pretty sure I had about 3 or 4 minor heart-attacks when the weather became uncooperative for a bit on Saturday. I am also pretty sure on Saturday before the wedding I had to hit myself repeatedly on the chest like Chris Farley in those Chicago Bears/Bulls SNL skits, but then the sun came out after the pouring rain stopped and we had an absolutely spectacular setting at the Lyndale Peace Gardens.

There is too much to write about in one blog so I will say this:

I am an extremely, extremely fortunate human being. I love Julie so much. I have a wonderful family on all sides, and the greatest friends a guy could ever ask for. Thank you to all of you for one helluva weekend.

I was so tired on Monday, but I managed to get outta bed (even though I couldn't sleep and was wide awake at 3:30am) for the greatest Memorial Day celebration on planet earth: The Brian Kraft 5k. Now keep in mind I was fueled for this thing by mainly beer and over processed meat products and very little water, yet it felt surprisingly easy running out on the south Minneapolis roads.

There were some faster young bucks in the field so I did not want to leave anything to chance once the "gun" fired and have it come down to a sprint finish. Even though I still would have pulled it out, I have a lot of 5 min pace in my legs at the moment and to drop it down to a 60sec quarter mile at the end would have been extremely difficult.

First mile, 4:28. Feeling surprisingly easy. Second mile, 4:32 with some wind in the face. Still feeling great. Mile 2.01 major, major, major side stitch which made mile 3 an agonizing 4:50. I had to dig real deep to keep on trucking as it felt like a knife was being repeatedly jabbed in my right side below the point of the rib cage. Although I experience this frequently in races this one was probably attributed more to dehydration, lack of sleep, a lot more beer being consumed than water, and a fast pace. I am confident I would have run 10 seconds faster than the official 14:24 if not for the effing stitch. It was not present on the cool down so that it a good thing.

Overall though a good, solid effort. I continue to feel the fittest I have in years. The run also set a course record and I picked up 200 bones in the process. There were a lot of fantastic people out at Lake Nokomis. Glad Julie and I trekked over there Monday morning.

Dam to Dam 20k this weekend is up next and then two weeks to go until Grandma's. Still some work to be done, but I am confident and excited about the prospects.

Thanks to all of you who celebrated with Julie and me or who sent positive thoughts and energy our way. It doesn't get any better than this.