The Cradle of Liberty

"One if by land, and two if by sea," or so the tale goes. We just got back from a little trip to New England. We have never been and we loved it. The weather was good, much better than SLC anyway. We walked the Freedom Trail and saw the graves of Sam Adams, and Paul Revere. We also visited Paul Revere's house and stopped at the spot where he was apprehended by the red coats on his way to Concord. It was all very historic.

Where "the shot heard around the world" took place.

The Old North Bridge

Henry David Thoreau's Walden Pond

Buckman Tavern where the minutemen met before being shot down by the British at Lexington

Tara and I had finished sightseeing for the day, but we still had the use of the rental car. So I told Tara that we should drive up to New Hampshire since we'd never been there before. So we drove up and decided to keep driving because we'd never seen Maine before. We stopped in Maine for some freshly caught lobster then drove back to Boston.

26 Miles and 385 Yards

Yes, that is the distance of a marathon or 26.2 miles is close. Pheidippides, a Greek messanger, ran from the battle of Marathon to Athens to proclaim the Greek's victory of the Persians. Pheidippides burst into the assembly in Athens and yelled "we have won" before falling to the ground and dying there on the spot after having run, non-stop 26 miles and 385 yards. Obviously Pheidippides should have eaten less salt, less carbs, and worked on his cardiovascular training more. Nevertheless, we now run marathons in his honor, sort of.

My sisters Dianna, Dorianne, DaNae, along with my brother-in-law Ben and myself ran the St. George marathon on Saturday. We all finished. I am glad to have participated, but it totally sucked more than anything could suck. It was cold and rained the entire time. Most of the course was downhill, and it was downhill for a long, long, painfully long time. Luckily I wore band-aids on my nipples to prevent nipples hemorraging like this dude:

I was slow, real slow, but I finished and I didn't die on the spot. I am sore enough though right now that death doesn't seem like a scary option. Atleast Pheidippides didn't have to go through the recovery stage after a marathon. If you are thinking about runnin a marathon, think long and hard about it. Maybe even try a half marathon. If you think that sucks, a full marathon is doubly sucky. Here are two of the dudes that beat me by over an hour: