Well, this will be my last post before Saturday's big event, the Akron Marathon. I've spent this week eating a bunch of carbs, resting my legs, and trying not to think too much about the marathon. It should be a fun time. In case anyone is interested in the results, they have already put up this link which is where the results will be posted (supposedly in real-time). Hopefully I'll do a short post on it Saturday afternoon when I get home, with more details to follow later in the weekend. Friday evening I have to head down to Akron for their big pre-race expo which has a bunch of speakers, vendors and I pickup my bib number and electronic chip. Then back home for an early bed time as I'm getting up very early on Saturday as the race starts promptly at 7:30am. The weather is going to be great, low 70s and partly sunny, though it is going to be in 40s in the morning.

So thanks to everyone for your support (and patience) over the past few months. Time to put all that training to use.

I did a little clean-up work today in my little blogging universe. I officially got rid of 'The Next Blog', my old blog that was dedicated to finding the most interesting (i.e. some of the worst) blogs that Blogger had to offer (found via the 'Next Blog' button). Initially I found some really funny stuff, but it eventually became a chore to try to find one each day and I kept finding the same sort of lame blogs that just weren't as funny anymore. Also I suppose it was a bit mean-spirited at times. Also today, I did my last post on the space race, my old music blog. I have since moved on to Better in a Song, another music blog I work on along with my friend James. I've left the old site up for now since it still gets some decent traffic and I think I did some pretty good entries back in the day that are worthy of a few more reads.

I am still undecided what to do with bradlantz.net, a domain which I purchased almost a year ago. I had considered making it a replacement to this site, but as many negatives as Blogger has, I'm still liking it these days, especially after I made my template change. I'm still considering making it a technical blog, but I know I do not have the time to maintain 3 different blogs (well, 4 if you count My First Marathon, which may or may not continue beyond this Saturday's marathon). If nothing else, it would be a place for me to try my hand at some web development stuff which I'm getting more interested in these days since that is what I'm doing at my new job. So I still have some sorting out to do with all these blogs.

Speaking of the marathon, it is only 2 days away! It hasn't really sunk in yet that I'm so close to the event which is the culmination of 5 months of pretty serious training, especially since I have not been running much these past couple of weeks. I think it could not have come a week too soon because my legs are really starting to feel pretty worn out. I don't think they could make it through a few more weeks of training. Hopefully they still have 26.2 miles left in them.

This past Sunday was the first birthday of my "son", Oscar. It's been quite a year. After getting him when he was only weeks old and could barely even walk, he is now a very active, playful, and slighly overweight cat. Kristy often refers to him as a "pain in the ass", but I've never had a pet of my own so his crazy antics are still amusing to me. At times we wish he was more of a lap cat (very rarely can he be held for more than 30 seconds at a time), but he's great the way he is.

One of the coolest things about having a pet for the first time is realizing that he actually knows me. Whenever I stop over, he winds around my ankles and lets me pick him up for a bit and tries to get me to play. On the other hand, when someone other than Kristy or I enter the apartment, he freaks out and hides. When we had a friend stop over on Saturday, I held Oscar to try to prevent this, but as soon as our friend came in the apartment, Oscar started flailing wildly and I had to drop him, and he hid so well that I could not even find him! Quite odd, but it made me feel good to know that he knows me and likes me.

I bought tickets for game one of the American League Division Series (ALDS) at Jacobs Field. So depending on whether the Indians win the wild-card or the division, it will either be game 3 or game 1 of the series, respectively. Unfortunately, they lost today so their wild-card lead is much less secure. The Yankees and the Red Sox both play tomorrow while the Indians are off, so now we can finally get that pesky 1/2 game out of the standings differences.

Not much going on this weekend. Kristy & I went to the Udupi Cafe in Parma Heights again on Friday for some delicious vegetarian Indian food. Saturday afternoon I did my last long run before the marathon, an 8 mile run that was not one of my better runs. Last night we went to a friends house for "movie night" and watched 'The Wedding Singer' and 'Ghostbusters'. It had been forever since I had seen the later, and the first time I could really appreciate how good Bill Murray is in that movie. It would definitely not have gotten as big as it was without him. Today was TV day and I've done little else. The weather is miserable. Not too hot but the humidity is unbearable. It feels like the jungle. I guess this is the precursor to the rain from the hurricane remnants.

This week will see me ingesting loads of carbohydrates to prepare for Saturday's marathon. It is recommended that 55-70% of my caloric intake to be carbs. So bring on the bread and pasta! I just need to be careful not to eat too much since I will only be doing a couple short runs this week, so I won't be burning too many calories.

The two big things going on for me right now are the Cleveland Indians push for the playoffs and next week's Akron Marathon. Watched the Indians take down the Chicago White Sox tonight to get closer to the playoffs. It turns out they are now looking down on the Boston Red Sox now as they have fallen behind the New York Yankees. Hopefully they both beat each other up next week and limp into the playoffs, ripe to be beaten. The Indians are finally getting all the national media attention they deserve, and some "experts" are even saying they have a good shot at the World Series since they are so hot at just the right time. Let's hope they can keep that fire going for another few weeks.

The marathon is now 9 days away, and counting. Did a 6 mile training run this evening. My 15 week total is now around 320+ miles. That's like from here to Kentucky! Hard to believe I've come this far. Today's run was great so I'm feeling good. I just stopped by the website and saw they have this really cool service where I can register and have friends & family get voice messages and/or emails in real-time with my race progress. Each runner wears an electronic tracking device, so I guess after each mile or so it sends out a message about my progress and estimated finish time. Let me know if any of you are interested since I can sign up 10 different people.

Very tired at the moment but the Indians game is on and I'm hoping they can come back like they did last night. I missed the game last night because my good friend Will was back in town from KC and a bunch of us went out to the Beachland Ballroom to see The National play. It was a great show and I got some really good pictures (it helps to be in the very front) and had a great time seeing my friends, though staying out really late on a weeknight is not so much fun the next day, or the rest of the week.

The new job has been going well so far. It is such a different environment going from a small company to a huge company. There is so much new stuff to take in and they said they expect it to take about two months to get fully up to speed on things! Hopefully I can catch on much faster than that. It's the #1 project in the company and I'm one of the first members of a quickly growing team, so it's really exciting to be on a project of this magnitude and to come aboard pretty early on.

The results are now posted for last Sunday's Buckeye Half Marathon. I finshed #169 / 450, and #14 / 20 in my age group. So not too bad for my first time around. Hopefully I can improve next year and maybe crack the top 5 or better. That is if I decide to stick with the running. I think I will, though I doubt I'll be in a hurry to do another full marathon. Speaking of which....10 days until Akron!

Today was the start of a big week in my life. It started bright and early this morning with the Buckeye Half Marathon in Cuyahoga Falls, which required me to wake up at 6:20am...not something I really want to do on a Sunday. If you want all of the boring details, you can read all about it here. For everyone else, here is the brief summary: finished the 13.1 miles in 1:49:45 (an 8:22 mile pace) which is much better than I expected, unofficially placed #169 out of 500+, and no, this doesn't mean I expect to finish the real marathon in under 4 hours.

Tomorrow will see my first day at a new job. First days usually are less than fun, especially for me since it typically takes me months (no joke) to learn names, which is always embarrassing. But I'm looking forward to a new adventure. I had a nice sendoff on Friday from my old job. It's weird to think I won't be seeing all of my friends there on a daily basis anymore. That was the hardest part of my decision to leave.

Tonight Kristy & I went to the movies and saw 'The Constant Gardener'. The trailer was good and the reviews have been excellent, so I was sucked in. And I was not disappointed. It was a great thriller about a British diplomat (Ralph Fiennes) whose activist wife (Rachel Weisz) is murdered while on a relief mission in Africa. Her husband starts looking into her death and digs up some major conspiracies involving governments and big corporations. It's a great thriller that relies on good storytelling rather than empty effects and stunts. And there is a lot of stunning footage from Africa. So it definitely comes with my recommendation.

I opened up the Best Buy ad in the Sunday newspaper today and was excited to see that this Tuesday will mark the release of Kevin Smith's classic "Mallrats" in a special 10th Anniversary Extended Edition. Is anyone else as surprised as me that it has been 10 years since this came out? I still remember being in high school and going to the local movie theatre with a bunch of my friends the first week it came out, and we were seriously the only ones there. While 'Clerks' is agreed upon as an independent classic, people seem to be polarized on this film. They either love it or hate it. I obviously am part of the "love it" camp. Kevin Smith has not been quite on his game since this movie, most likely a result of movie studio pressure to make his movies more widely appealing. Hopefully we will see a return to form with the release of "The Passion of the Clerks" (which I hope gets another name change before it's release early next year).

In semi-related news, the sitcom debut of 'Mallrats' star Jason Lee is this Tuesday. His new show, "My Name is Earl" will air on NBC at 9pm EST. I'm hoping it's great because I'm a big Jason Lee fan, but all the previews I have seen so far have not left me holding my breath. But hey, what do I know? Apparently critics have loved it so far. I'm more excited to see the new season of 'The Office' which premiers right after the aforementioned show. I'm one of the few fans of the BBC original that has embraced the American version. Hopefully it can survive through a whole season so we can see what direction the show takes since the BBC version only lasted through about 12 episodes before it ended despite being a huge hit.

It's true, Google says so! I ran across this story on Google's blog which notes that "If you do a Google search on the word [failure] or the phrase [miserable failure], the top result is currently the White House's official biographical page for President Bush." Apparently they have received a number of complaints regarding this. They blame it on "pranksters" engaging in the practice of "googlebombing" (wiki) which is people purposely manipulating the search results. Google is reluctant to correct this since it would be modifying the algorithm that their entire engine is built off of. Regardless of your political leanings, it's pretty funny stuff.

Went and saw Sufjan Stevens perform at the Beachland Ballroom last night. It was totally packed and ultimately disappointing. It was my second time seeing him perform live, and it paled in comparison to last time. I wrote a detailed review of the show here.

If you follow the above link you might wonder what you are looking at. Well, 'Better in a Song' is a music blog that I have started with my friend James. We've only been doing it for about a month and are still getting into the groove of posting things. So keep checking back and maybe you'll learn about some new bands and some great new music.

Google unveiled it's new Blog Search today. Hopefully that leads to more hits for this and my other blogs, especially since they are hosted by Google (which I've already noticed helps get me ridiculously high ranking in searches). I haven't used the new Blog Search too much yet, but I like what I have seen so far. I've found myself searching blogs more lately than regular websites, especially to get running/marathon info, music reviews and other personal stuff that you don't get from normal webpages. Technorati has always been my main blog search tool, but I'm willing to give Google a shot, since they usually do things best in whatever they take on.

However, I am getting frustrated with GMail, Google's web-based email service. A number of times in the past month I have gone to check my email and gotten a Javascript pop-up message "Oops...the system was unable to perform your operation. Please try again in a few seconds.". And on a few occasions I've actually gotten a static web page that says they are having issues and to try back later. Worst Weather Ever has also told me of similar issues he has encountered with GMail, sometimes spanning a couple hours. That's really not acceptable, especially since many of us now use GMail as our main email account. Hopefully Google can remain on the forefront in innovation and reliability and not just slide back down to the ranks of being just another Internet company.

Changed things up a little bit today with the blog. The bright green finally got too painful to look at, so I replaced it with an easier-on-the-eye color scheme which I found at Blogger Templates. The only thing I don't like is the text color, but it's stuck on a CSS file hosted elsewhere. So maybe someday I'll get ambitious and get a copy and change some things around on my own. That is if I decide to stick with this look, which is to be determined.

In other news, today was the start of my last week at my current job. An opportunity came along recently that was too good to pass up. The timing was not great, but it was now or never. The hardest part in making my decision was the people I would be leaving behind. While I'd like to think I will keep in touch and remain friends with a number of my co-workers, it is still going to be very different to not spend 40 hours a week with them. But I have hope that everything will work out for the best and that this big change will lead to other much-needed changes in my life.

I went down to Jacobs Field to catch the Cleveland Indians win their 6th straight game and take their biggest wild card lead of the season, 1 1/2 game over the New York Yankees. September baseball is awesome. The weather was perfect, clear and slightly cool. No one honestly thought they'd do this well this year, but if the season were to end today they would be in the playoffs, for the first time since 2001.

It was nice to see a pretty good turnout. Just over 32,000 people (about 75% full) turned out for a great game. I wonder how much of that had to do with the post-game fireworks as opposed to the play on the field. Oh well. The fans that were there were loud and very supportive. The entire crowd was on it's feet a number of times and making a surprising amount of noise. And the fireworks were very good, as usual.

In other sports news, my Notre Dame Fightin' Irish upset Michigan as I knew they would. And Texas downed Ohio State, as I knew they would. Yes, I live in Ohio but I have no love for the Buckeyes. The best part of the loss today is that all Ohio State fans will be much less vocal in their love of the Buckeyes for the rest of the season since today pretty much spoiled it.

Summer is quickly coming to an end, so I'm trying to make the most of what is left. Eased up on the running a bit this week, replacing my early week 5 miler with a 15 mile bike ride on Monday. I then did 8 miles on Wednesday, and am resting up for my big 20 miler tomorrow. Should be a challenge, and my last major hurdle before the marathon in 3 weeks.

Kristy & I finally made it down to the Great Lakes Science Center in downtown Cleveland on Thursday evening to check out the Body Worlds 2 exhibit. It's very difficult to describe, but it's this huge exhibit that features a bunch of real human bodies, stripped of their skin and preserved via plastination, in various poses that show the muscles, bones and internal organs in various forms. It is truly an amazing exhibit that is unlike anything you will see anywhere else. In addition to the entire bodies on exhibit, there are also a bunch of individual organs and various cross-sections that show normal and diseased specimens. Pictures describe it much better than I can, so go here and check out the image gallery to see a very brief sampling of what is included. If you are in Cleveland, you better hurry because the exhibit is only around through next Sunday, Sept 18th.

After the Science Center, we grabbed a late dinner in Ohio City at the Great Lakes Brewing Company. Despite not being much of a meat eater anymore, it wasn't until that night that I tried my first non-meat burger, their vegan Taro Burger. It was delicious, though not quite as big as I would have hoped. So it might be time for me to start trying veggie burgers at other joints. I'm not ready to give up meat, especially some good BBQ, but I've been shying away from beef for quite a while.

Tonight I'm going to check out the Cleveland Indians as they go for their 6th straight win and to keep control of the wild card race. As exciting as the whole baseball playoff race has been over the past month, I don't know if I can keep up with 3 more weeks of this. It's like one loss can decide your season these days. I wish they had a nice comfy lead and could just cruise into the playoffs. Now it's like a month-long playoff.

It seems that it's harder to face the end of a long weekend than a normal weekend. But it was a good one. I had originally planned to go down to Cincy for the weekend and help a friend move, but he ended up moving early. Probably for the best since I would have broke the bank buying gas for the trip (though the Vibe managed to get 35 mpg on it's last tank which was mixed city/highway). Gas is currently at $2.99 in the area, after peaking at $3.09 mid-week. Looks like it is headed downwards, though I imagine that in the not-too-distant future we will see $3 for good. Part of me is kind of glad to see the price soar because it has really brought into focus fuel economy and dependence on fossil fuels. Everyone knew this day was coming, yet chose to ignore it until it finally got here. But finally the auto industry is rushing to improve gas mileage and everyone is talking about alternative energy again.

I moved forward with the marathon training on Sunday, cracking the 18 mile mark for the first time. It was not easy, especially the last few miles, but I managed to run the whole thing. Never thought I would run for 3 straight hours. At this point, it's way more of a mental struggle than a physical struggle. My body isn't exactly thrilled with the crazy distances, but it's getting myself to not give up which is the hardest part. I couldn't tell you how many times I ask myself when running "why am I doing this?". Unfortunately, I don't really have a good answer to that, but I manage to keep going most of the time. I have just one more long run, another 18 miler, on the schedule before I start cutting back for the marathon (part of which will be running a half-marathon in 13 days).

This evening I enjoyed the nice weather by going on a bike ride with Kristy out in the Metroparks in the Strongsville/Berea area, for about 15 miles. There were a lot of people out and it made me realize what a great commodity Northeast Ohio has with all of the great parks and outdoor trails. I can't think of any other cities that have such a great system of parks. I think people usually spend too much time on the negatives when talking about the area and forget about the things that we've grown to take for granted. If it wasn't for the Metroparks, I'm sure I would have never made it this far in my marathon training because running around the neighborhood or the city would have gotten old in less than a week. And the same thing goes for the bike.

Last night, Kristy & I headed down to Akron to watch an Akron Aeros baseball game at Canal Park (which is also the site of the finish line for the Akron Marathon). The Aeros are the AA minor league affiliate of the Cleveland Indians (so there is one more level, AAA, between them and the big league team). It was perfect late-summer weather and we had some excellent seats behind home plate from a friend of hers, and sat with most of the friends and families of the players who are all hoping to make it to the big leagues some day. A lot of times I get fed up with the professional sports leagues and the high-priced athletes and all of the advertising and big money involved. Sometimes it feels more like watching a big corporate advertisement instead of a sporting event. But nights out at the ballpark like last night make me feel better about sports as it's more fun to watch a more "pure" game and see players trying their hardest every single play. I posted some more pictures here from last night's game.