Sky Show

The biggest advantage to running outdoors is that the environment demands that you pay attention, which keeps your mind engaged. Earlier in the week my attention was drawn to the ground. Wednesday's run on the dam featured several deer sighting, but with multiple snakes also encountered directly on the trail in front of me I was watching my every step.

During this morning's six-miler, it was just about the exact opposite. My eyes were scanning what was above me from beginning to end. Not only did I want to get my run over and done before the sun was up and scorching, I also wanted to experience the uncommon treat of a partial lunar eclipse. I got some pictures, but my digital camera fails to convey the true beauty of the moon's colors and light very well. The shrinking moon fell away to the west, almost as if it was being melted by the heat of the rising sun to the east.

When I began my run, I wasn't decided on which direction on the trail I would go. At the end of the eclipse viewing, my eventual choice was rewarded as I found a crew firing the burner under a large ready-for-the Fourth balloon. A hot air balloon is a simple pleasure made nearly larger-than-life and I stood admiringly and snapped a few photos as balloon and basket sailed up and away over the trees.

On the sun-drenched return leg of my journey, I thought the sky show was over, but it wasn't. A pair of nesting birds -- sparrows I believe -- are raising a brood close to the driveway right off the road. As I approached, I heard them squawk, then turn and perform a high-speed fly-by towards my head. They kept repeating this, pursuing me for about a tenth of a mile as I scampered past, waving them off with my arms.

Good luck finding a program for this stuff on any treadmill.

Everyone else is doing it, and I might not

Happy Summer Solstice! This is the time of year when the words "torpor" and "estivation" become my favorite vocabulary words. This past weekend I found it really difficult to get out and run with the rays of morning sun heating up the previous night's dew. I'm not quite ready to commit myself to the treadmill, but it does seem that the only sane time to be outdoors on the trail is at twilight. And because of the late sunsets, this ends up messing with sleep cycles. It's hard to win this game.

In the height of summer, the running community is already hot about the coming winter. I've been sampling some of the online reaction since the Houston Marathon announced the introduction of a lottery into the registration process. Most of the comments are angry and to be honest, I think they're misguided. Let me put this bluntly:

What will happen with a lottery: Registration hopefuls take their chances; some will be shut out.

What will happen without a lottery: Registration hopefuls take their chances; some will be shut out.

We saw what happened last July when the registration servers got pummeled. Just like a concert for the flavor-of-the-year pop act after Ticketmaster lights up the cash registers, the demand simply outstrips supply. Looking back, I now see how I was part of a cresting "running boom." My first Aramco Half in '06 was the last time that a sellout did not occur. Since then, the day the "SOLD OUT" press release has went out has gotten earlier and earlier, despite a rising registration cap.

If 22,000 is really the limit to the number of participants the George R. Brown Convention Center can handle on a single morning, then I have to ask if it's time to run the Aramco Half on another day. I have to believe that the convention center is the limiting factor, because surely organizers could easily alleviate on-course choke points simply by staggering wave starts more creatively.

Meanwhile, I think my chances are 60-40 (maybe dropping) that I'll even bother to enter the lottery. If I do enter and don't make it in for my sixth consecutive hustle past the ABC13 cameras, I won't be sad. It's been a great five-year "run" and nothing will change that now. The good part of the "boom" is that there are significantly more options now than in 2006. As for Marathon Sunday, I could see myself on the volunteer side of the fence this time in January.

Heights Fun Run

I was reaching around to pat myself on the back. Before I even crossed the start line at this morning's Houston Heights Fun Run, I was pretty darn proud of simply getting up early enough to have breakfast, leisurely drive myself towards Marmion Park in plenty of time for packet pickup, and even get a relaxing warmup before gun time. Yes, the Green 6.2 fiasco still stings.

Beginning at 18th Street, the 5K course is a very straight and flat shot down Heights Boulevard to 5th Street before turning around and returning back to 18th Street -- 26 blocks in total. As the starting horn sounded, I thought I'd be clever and entertain my mind by meditating on a letter of the alphabet on each cross-street.

"A . . . B . . . C . . . D . . . E . . ."

At a half-mile in, I felt the need to go ahead and reach for a PED. In my case, the "PE" stands for Puke Evading, not Performance Enhancing; I had simethicone with me to soothe my guts.

"F . . . G . . . H . . . I . . . J"

We cheered the race leaders coming back northbound as we arrived at the first water station. Mile 1 came for me in 9:23. I knew this pace realistically couldn't last, but it did feel great to lay down one mile at this speed.

"K . . . L . . . M . . . N"

At the turnaround I could already feel my fast-twitch muscles going down for a siesta. Fast Vince was beginning to feel like Fat Vince again.

"P?"

Mile 2 in 10:02: Now with roughly one mile to go, I was struggling to hold pace. I had also lost track of my alphabet musings. This might have been a poor time to attempt a sobriety test. At 13th Street I let go of my fantasy goal of breaking 30:00, because five blocks in four minutes wasn't going to happen.

Mile 3 in 11:05: With the finish line in sight, a couple of other runners and I were mutually encouraging each other in Wizard of Oz fashion. "Follow the yellow big sign! Follow the yellow big sign!" we chanted. I hopped onto the finish mat, looking down to confirm that the D-tag timing chip was still attached to my ankle Road ID. 31:34 was my elapsed time per my Garmin Forerunner. If I didn't fade so much by the end, I could have had a shot at a 10:00/mi overall pace or faster.

Two years ago, I defined success at the Heights Fun Run as making it to the finish line before all the breakfast tacos were eaten. Phil's Texas Barbeque did a great job in covering us, because despite coming in four minutes slower than I did in 2008, I was able to enjoy not one, but two small brisket-and-egg-stuffed bundles of tortilla bliss.

Now what? I'm not sure. But just being within sniffing distance of a 30-minute 5K again is a welcome confidence booster.

Running America

After hassling with more than an hour of Houston rush hour traffic to cover 13 miles to the theater, I settled in with a few hundred others in one of the Alamo Drafthouse's larger auditoriums for last night's Houston premiere of Running America.

This documentary follows ultrarunners Charlie Engle (Running The Sahara) and Marshall Ulrich in the fall of 2008 as they attempt to break a time record for crossing the United States on foot from San Francisco to New York City. Their adventure coincides almost too neatly with the fall presidential campaign. Remember back when we thought that terrorism and the wars on foreign soil would be the dominant issues of the campaign? Well, as Ulrich and Engle started their trek in California and Nevada, the financial crisis story takes center stage instead as the political fight ignites over the proposed $700 billion Wall Street bailout. The filmmakers spent a lot of time interviewing random folks they met in America's heartland about where they think the country is heading.

I found myself with mixed emotions about this movie by its end. On one hand, the actual running portion of the story was great. And outside of the closeup blister-popping scenes, this is a beautiful one to watch, with many great views of America from the road. But I did feel emotionally manipulated as the words of Barack Obama's acceptance speech overlaid scenes of Ulrich arriving triumphantly in Manhattan on Election Day. (Engel found himself sidelined with plantar fascitis earlier in the attempt and couldn't complete the mission.)

After the film, Marshall Ulrich and his wife Heather took the stage for a Q&A period. I had some fun while livetweeting some of their responses via my still relatively new Backflip:

• Ulrich lost only a net four pounds during the entire trip. He was eating 10,000 calories a day -- the same as his entire four-person crew.
• Colorado was Ulrich's favorite state to run in, because he's from there and does like hilly terrain.
• Ulrich used 32 pairs of Pearl Izumi shoes, not because of outside wear, but because the inners were breaking down.
• Charlie Engel is working on a future run across Cuba, after Badwater.
• Ulrich has a book coming out in 2011 about his experiences on this run.
• The best way for a marathoner to transition into ultras is to run a lot! (Duh!)
• Heather Ulrich accompanied her husband during Running America as part of the support crew. She admitted that she was yelling "quit" in her head numerous times, but managed to keep her mouth shut.
• Ulrich has "circumnavigating Death Valley" as a future goal. I'm not sure what this means exactly, but he said it's something that hasn't been done yet.

After the show, I bought one of the DVDs and got it autographed.

Cool: Going home with an autographed DVD
Not Cool: Discovering that it won't play in any player in my living room (three so far).

I have Ulrich's business card, so I'll be sending him an email to describe my problem. Let's hope his organization can make this right.