Power outage @ VA

An hour or two of thunderstorm late night on friday, knocked the living daylights out of the DC metro area. The northern VA area where i live, we lost power at around 10:30pm on Friday. Its past 10:30 am on Sunday morning, 36hrs later, we are still out of power.
The pic below is from Panera Bread store in Tysons Corner, my temporary home. Also home to a long line of people, who are trying to get some food, an electric outlet to charge the phones and other essential devices and also surf the internet, the only social life many of us seem to have these days.

I observed a peculiar facet of us, human beings. At first, all i wanted was power (electricity) so i could get some food to eat and hot water to bathe and clean. When i had access to this, from a friends house, i was peeved that there was no internet and or cable. Am sure if cable or internet was available, i might complain that it was slow or there was nothing good on it. Somewhere in the middle of all this, i also lost all my battery charge on my cell phone. Guess how depressed and depraved i should have been.

Men (human beings), you cant have it and you cant have it.

My First 10K @ 1:15:04

So i finally ran a race, after a long time. This time it was a 10K, kind of an upgrade from the 5K i've run before. It was a good time in summer to run, the sky was overcast at the start, a bit of rain during the race. Everything was perfect. Well there has to be a but - right?

There is a but. More like a butt !! Some muscle (i am not an expert on these names), that runs from my butt down my thighs to the knee area (hamstrings ?), kept complaining. I have had these kind of irritants before. They usually go away when i ignore them. This time, i wasnt ignoring them. I was looking out for these and paying them more attention than necessary. So that meant, easing up on my run.

The running was going perfect till about 3+ miles. My usual run is 3 miles. And then from their on, it was slower pace, and a lot of stop and walk syndrome. Well, i must have run my first 3 miles pretty fast, because my overall pace was still about 12 minutes. I am used to 10 minute miles, but that works only for the 3mile runs.

Place Num   Name             Age Hometown       Gun Tim Net Tim Pace 

===== ===== ================ === ============== ======= ======= =====

  317  185  Nathan Douglas   31 Herndon VA      1:11:46 1:11:23 11:30 
  318  734  Mark Lafleur     40 Leesburg VA     1:13:10 1:12:14 11:38 
  319  430  Steve Hart       64 Leesburg VA     1:13:40 1:12:47 11:43 
  320  799  Chris Vallean    39 Leesburg VA     1:14:44 1:14:10 11:57 
  321  819  C.K. Kumar       46 McLean VA       1:15:04 1:14:58 12:04 
  322  2182 Thomas Bradtke   21 College Park MD 1:16:21 1:16:18 12:17 
  323  332  Glenn Smith      56 Ashburn VA      1:17:39 1:16:30 12:19 
  324  570  John O'Shea      48 Sterling VA     1:18:17 1:17:28 12:28 
  325  788  Ron Ecton        41 Leesburg VA     1:18:23 1:17:40 12:30 
  326  272  Dick Coogan      79 McLean VA       1:20:56 1:20:18 12:56 

Leesburg 10K 2011 - Official Men's 10K Results

I am happy i finished. I started the whole thing, with the worst kind of fear. I usually do that, conjure up the worst in my mind. But like i said, i am happy. This means, that i've broken the fear barrier. Like they say in the Mt Dew commercial - Dar ke aage, Jeet hai !!