P: Hot Tub Action with Jessi, Ipswich Appleton Farms Run, and Other Sundries

Dudes:
I turned in my last academic paper of my graduate degree. Now I just have to buckle down and focus on my creative writing thesis, and all will be f-ing awesome!!! This week was tough, trying to bang out that paper on modern poetry while working on rewrites for a magazine essay contest. I was at the computer lab until 3:30am one night and 2am another night...not a pretty sight.

On the plus side, I did get to see JESSI!!! who's been here inBoston for the week to attend a conference. Shewas very prestigiously selected by her dept to attend, so it was kind of a big deal. I met her Wed night at the Doubletree hotel in a random part of Boston/Allston that's by the highway, and it's technically only 1.1 miles from my apt, but via public transport it would take an hour and 2 buses. So I walked, and it was kind of weird to get there. BUT it was totally worth it because then we dipped into the HOT TUB --holla!--and Jessi told me more about the various workshops she was attending, and then I got to take a sneak peek at some sample cases of high school students who were potential admittees to Hahvard. Naturally, this was all very nostalgic of the SATs number crunching days of our last two years at Bronx Science, where we were all in a mad panic about where we'd be applying based on what our test scores and GPA were (thankfully I applied early to Swat so I got to avoid much of that hooha).

We then headed to Back Bay for dinner at Typhoon, where we were joined by Jessi's colleague and her sister. It was a fun night of sushi, convo, and of course, the hot tub. It's so great to see old friends in new cities.

Then it was back to paper writing.

This morning I actually ran a 5k race in Ipswich, of all places. It's on the North Shore, some 20ish ? miles north of Boston. Apparently it's one of the oldest cities in all of America, and the race was on Appleton Farms, which is also one of the oldest continuously operated farms in America. My friend/former boss' boss Rebecca invited me to go with her husband Bob, and they are pretty bad-ass. Rebecca is 60, Bob's 71, and every weekend they're running races, hiking in NH or Vermont, biking... last summer they climbed Mt Kilimanjaro, a few summers before that they ran from the border of Mexico all the way up to Canada. I think it's awesome that they found each other--to have a life partner that enjoys all the same activities that you do. At this race (it was a very small race--just 200 ppl and I was the only person of my age group, essentially) it was all couples in the 30s and 40s, and then little kids or preteens. Some of the couples brought their baby strollers. I noticed this was also the case with the two other races I've run outside of Boston--the 5k in Portsmouth/Dover, NH and the aborted half-marathon in Newton. Who are these people, how are they so fit, and what on earth brought them together? Do they run so much because there's a social pressure WITHIN the couplehood to get up early and go for runs? Or did they come together through running? How do you do it with kids? And why do these women in the 30s and 40s have WAY better bodies than I do?

Rebecca noted that everyone in the race looked very English, unlike in Boston where everyone seems to look Irish. She's white and fair-featured herself, so she's allowed to say something like that. Then I looked around and agreed with her. Perhaps it made me a little wistful.

Anyway, the race, as mentioned, was on a farm, so you're passing cows (and occasionally cow manure), horses, a babbling creek...it was kind of cool. Also, my race time was ridiculous!!! I am still waiting for the test results to come out incorrect, but I had a PR (a personal record):

Mile 1: 7:29 min
Mile 2: 15:40
Finish: 24:11 (although it REALLY should have been 24:09)

Average speed: 7:48 min/mile

WTF?!!! I've never run that fast in my life. Regardless, I used it as an excuse to eat 2 lunches today and I'm now on my first dinner. I will probably have my second dinner circa forty-five past midnight.