Was good while it lasted ....

So last night the Senators ended their season or should I say the Senators


season ended. The latter is more appropriate because they played hard but Lundqvist was on and when he is on he is hard to beat. I will readily say that there were quite a few calls throughout the series that were questionable and sad to say that they frequently were not in favor of the Senators. But refereeing is what it is.

The team had a great season, especially given the expectations at the beginning of the year. If this was their building year then the next couple of years should be great.

So for now - the beard comes off. Hopefully next year it goes more than 2 weeks.


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Ch-ch-changes

The last couple of weeks have been busy and not just for me but for Kris as well.

On my side I wound down my career at Entrust after more years than I can remember. There were certainly a lot of great years and I learned a lot from a lot of great people that worked at Entrust as well as people that I worked with during my years there. But as they say (or at least my Mom does), "change is as good as a rest" and it was time for a change.

Today I start with a company called Venafi. The market does have some intersection with the market Entrust is in but there is a broader market as well. I will be helping Venafi build their Government business from a sales, product and marketing perspective so I am very excited about the opportunity.

But my change is little - Kris has decided to become a Patriot. For those not from the area that means she has decided to attend George Mason University. She had applied to 3 schools including VCU, GMU and Mary Washington. She was accepted at all three but after visiting them she decided GMU was the place for her. I am very excited for her. I know that there will be challenges but I know that we will be there to help her through those.

I guess now I can consider myself old with two college aged kids .... but I could not be prouder

Easter

We had a great Easter with the girls. We shared our Easter baskets filled with chocolate, jelly beans and other candy and then had a nice barbecue. It was nice and relaxing without too much sugar :-)

Tika and Sam did have some fun with a little Angry Birds stuffed animal that Bree sent with Kris for Sammy.


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Cherry Blossom 2012

So the official results are in and posted so time for a recap.

I had not been running all week, a slight tweak in my upper calf had been bothering me so I did some elliptical and stationary bike the past week. I had been running well before and had a great 5 miler the beginning of March, ran just the race I wanted to, so I was comfortable that a week of taking it easy on the road was not going to punish me.

I woke up early Sunday and had a quick breakfast of English muffin, Canadian bacon, OJ and a banana. A very global breakfast :-). The temperature was hovering in the mid 40s so I was more worried about La being warm than me. I had already planned a throw away jacket for the start. As always I plan to metro into DC for the race - it is fast and easy to do this and the metro is close to both the start and a Starbucks for Laura. We got to DC in lots of time but the porta-John lines and the lines for bag drop meant I got to my corral with only a few minutes to spare so I was not up as close to the front as I wanted.

I did not do any real warm up as the crowd meant I would be paced a bit slow for the first mile or two so I figured a good warm up period and I would not be too frustrated like I was last year wanting to run fast from the start and no room to do it. I was in the second corral so after the elite women went I only had one group starting in front of me.

As I expected the first two miles was a bit slow but not as bad a last year when I was in the third corral. I felt good throughout - picked up the pace on the small rises, no real hills, and had lots of energy to kick when I needed to get around someone. I ran light - just a bottle with Gatorade and some ClifBloks stuffed in the pocket. I like the taste of the Dark Cherry. Turns out they are the ones with the most caffeine so no wonder it gave me such a kick.

After the first 5 I took a look at my Garmin and saw I was just a few seconds behind plan so I picked it up. I did actually run the second half faster than the first - 7.5 mph for the first 5 and 7.7 for the second. As I came to the last rise with 1/4 of a mile left I kicked it up again and crossed the line under my 80 minute plan, finishing in the top 17% - 2846/13974. I felt great - I had cut almost a full 5 minutes off my 2011 race.

After a day of thinking about it I do feel I had a bit more in me that I did not leave on the course. Maybe this is a good thing as I have another short race in a couple of weeks and then a half-marathon in May. Maybe I leave the big, leave-it-all-there race for one in August or September. But it is good to know that I feel like I have more.

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A Quick Race Report

Today was the 40th running of the Cherry Blossom 10 miler.

Unofficial results - 1:19:17 - almost 5 minutes faster than last year.

I will do a full report when results are official