Salamanders

Running:

Monday was a scheduled off day. There will be a couple more later in the week as we are heading into the final few days before the Lakefront marathon. I've put in my miles, but am a little concerned about the type of miles they were. There have been lots of distractions over the past months. I'm also heading into the race up about 5 lbs from where I usually am this time of year. I really would like to set a new PR (currently 3:12:20), but not sure if this is in reach. The 3:12 was run on the Lakefront course. Plugging my 5K time from this past weekend into the McMillan predictor I see a marathon time of 3:23. My Parrott predictor time for this past week was 3:13. (based on the the theory of George Parrott of the Dead Runners Society that a runner can run no faster in the marathon than he runs his fastest 26.2 miles in a week during training). The Parrott predictor has been the closest gauge of how I will do over the past 14 marathons I've done. Only a couple of easy days of running with some strides thrown in the rest of this week. I'll probably not use the watch either.

Here are the stats through last Sunday.

WTD 34

MTD 170

YTD 1461

ODO 24727

Hunting:

The property Wayne and I looked at last Sunday is relatively small, but it does hold some promise. We found two spots to put stands/blinds. There was lots of deer sign and several spots where trails intersect to set up the ambush. Yesterday I finally bought some new arrows. At the shop they helped me paper tune my bow and select the correct arrows for how my bow shoots. They also speed timed it so I know it's shooting at 270 ft per second. Now I have to sight in again.

Gardening:

I forgot to mention that last week when we closed the pool I found two salamander lizards in the skimmers. I have seen them around before, but never had one in the pool. One had yellow spots and one had blue. Here's a couple of pictures I found so you can see what they look like.