Chandra and I ran the 35th Annual Butte-to-Butte 10K (that’s 6.2 miles) this morning. We each finished a little over one hour. C came in about 20 seconds ahead of me, as I expected. She’s a great runner, and way better at pacing herself that I am.

There were tons of people out running the 10K. From what I heard there were almost 6,000 10K runners. Afterwards we went over to Travis and Rachel’s for a post-race breakfast which was fantastic. Most of the attendees had run the race and it was fun to compare notes on what parts were brutal and to what degree we held it together throughout the race.

Last night, I spent some time paring the songs on my iPod shuffle down to the bare essentials for what I would need on race day. Here’s a playlist of the songs that cycled through my iPod during the race. Little Cream Soda by the White Stripes started the race off. Roulette Dares by The Mars Volta helped me fly down the first hill. Chris Duarte’s, How Long came on while running through the hottest and hardest stretch. My Morning Jacket was the meat of the music, and I have Bruddley to thank for getting me into those guys as that propelled me through most of the race.

King Crimson’s Happy With What You Have To Be Happy With took me into mile 5. The Raconteurs’ Consolers of the Lonely got me over the train tracks, and KTU’s Absinthe was the final track I heard as I tried to sprint to the finish line, and failed miserably. I had to stop a couple hundred yards from the marker, hold back vomit, and then jog feebly over the end. On my next 10K I’ll finish stronger.

Anyway, here’s a shuffled playlist, courtesy of Last.fm of the full set of songs that came across the player while running. A couple of them I had to skip through, but they’re still good tracks.

Awake and out of bed around 7:30am. C gets it in her head to make blueberry muffins, but not for today’s breakfast. They’re for tomorrow’s breakfast before we run the Butte-to-Butte 10K at 8am.

The morning was spent dealing with issues in one of our application deployment environments. It was functioning differently than all other environments. The decision was made to completely re-build one of the offending machines from the ground up, in order to address the problems.

Lunch at Evergreen indian buffet with Todd, Chris, and Dan. Larry joined us late. Talk was mostly on the Olympic track and field trials which are in town. One topic under discussion is how do they choose who goes on the men’s and women’s relay teams? Since there are no trials for those teams, and they don’t pull all the individual competitors in, how do they fill out the spots?

Plans were made for a fun run with Dan and Todd next week. I don’t know if I can keep up with those guys. They say they don’t run fast, but I don’t trust them. They do say we’ll finish off the run at Villard St. Pub for a pint, which sounds good to me. The carrot on the stick approach always works.

After work C and I went over to campus to check out the scene around the track and field trials. We didn’t actually have tickets to get in, but there’s a whole village of tents and booths and activities set up around Hayward Field right now. We ate dinner and drank beer at one of the food tents on the artificial turf fields next to the rec center and watched some of the events on the giant TV screens they have set up.

Now, syncing the exact right tracks to my iPod shuffle (whose name is “Pre”), stretching, hydrating, setting out clothes for the morning and soon off to bed for the 6am wake-up call.

We have a busy weekend ahead, which I’m sure I’ll reflect on and document in short order. I’ve hit a bit of a roll blogging this week, so I’m going to try and keep it up.

Today presented two informative moments illustrating how I am not a very integrated person:

1) I need to call contractors and get bids on our bathroom remodel. Efforts up until now have been fruitless. I never think to do this unless I’m in the bathroom taking a shower. And I think to myself, I HAVE to make some calls and get this thing moving. As soon as I’m out of the shower and off to work, I forget about this urgent need.

2) I ran out of allergy medicine yesterday, and whenever I felt an itch in my sinuses I thought about how I had to go to the store and get some more drugs. But as soon as the itch went away, I forgot about it.

I would consider myself an immeasureably more enlightened person if I were able to recognize what is necessary more readily, and make plans to address those needs regardless of whether they are pressing at a present moment. That might indicate a person who has a sense of prescence that extends beyond the current moment and their immediate condition.

This would be a good measure for the quality of one’s being. You are more or less yourself in regards to how you recognize and address what is necessary.

A rare, mid-summer thunderstorm blew through the area last night. I only know this because Chandra told me this morning. She marveled that I didn’t wake up for it, but after this weekend, I was beat.

Alex, one of Chandra’s ex co-workers, and his dad, Don, are staying in the studio for the better part of the next two weeks. They’re in town from Portland to attend the Olympic Track and Field Trials here in Eugene.

The event has the town all abuzz. We don’t have tickets, but plan to check out the festivities around Hayward Field later this week.

This morning Alex and Don took us out to breakfast at Morning Glory Cafe, a vegan and vegetarian breakfast place near Chandra’s work. I had the tofu chilaquiles, which were very tasty.

After a weekend of working outside in the long, hot sun, it was nice to switch it up and work inside at the office. I added another relatively productive day onto a string of productive days, both in and out of the office. I’m on a roll.

After work, Chandra and I went out for six-mile run. We ran from the center of downtown, up part of Skinner’s Butte, past the climbing wall, and onto the river bank path. We then ran west to the foot bridge by Valley River Center, and back along the north-side of the river all the way to the Autzen foot bridge by campus. Then from campus ran back downtown.

This was a hard run for me. I couldn’t get a good rhythm going. At times I ran hard ahead, but there were stretches where I couldn’t keep more than a very slow jog going. I’d like to be a little stronger than that when we run the Butte-to-Butte 10K on Friday.

After the run we decided to check out the new North African restaurant, Cafe Maroc, near my office. It was a very interesting dining experience. They give you the option of eating with your hands, and give you a warm wet towel and a dry one to keep clean in between courses. We did good, although I did manage to spill cous-cous on myself a little bit.

It’s still early, but I’m tuckered. So, I think it’s off to bed.

I found this great Adrian Belew video over on his web site. A great self-produced overview of Ade’s career. In case you don’t know Adrian Belew is the musician you’ve heard but didn’t know it. If you’ve ever listened to David Bowie, Frank Zappa, Talking Heads, Paul Simon, Nine Inch Nails, Laurie Anderson, or Tori Amos, then you’ve heard Ade’s playing.

Of course, if you’ve listened to King Crimson you’ve heard Adrian, but you probably knew that if you were listening to KC