so, despite the 22 mile run of death, i had a pretty decent, if not-exactly-thrilling and a little-too-sober-for-my-tastes weekend.

friday night was all about not watching the presidential debate and drinking as much water as i possibly could without making my brain float. i succeeded at both; i instead watched an old episode of the west wing and looked at democrat blogs so they could tell me what i should think about the debate, and during the night got up like four times to pee.

saturday morning, i woke up at 5:45 and prepared for the death run. i drank some more water, ate some toast with peanut butter and fig spread, and stuffed my running shorts with power gel packets.

the run was actually surprisingly good. the first 20 or so miles were, in fact, excellent. those power gel packets are little gifts of sugar from god. i paced myself, i drank gatorade continuously, had three power gels and some pretzels, and didn't have to stop to walk once. the last couple of miles were a bit hard - apparently almost everybody hits a wall of varying sizes at mile 20 - but now i think i have the psychological confidence needed to close it all out. whoopee! if you're interested in coming to watch the marathon, some spectactor information is here. i expect to keep a 9:30-10 minute mile pace throughout the whole thing, so you can calculate viewing points based on that. i'll have to ask becca and naomi for viewing tips, since they've run it before. a map of the course is here (in PDF format).

post-run, since i wasn't a complete zombie, i went with tommy to the nunnery to join kriston and susan in cheering for my now third favorite team (behind the redskins and the cavs): the UT, um, i forget their football's team name. but i cheered for them! make them eat shit! sadly, like another football team i wish would do better, they lost to the OU sooners, who are, apparently, a bunch of racist, cheating pigs.

the rest of the weekend was even more unremarkable except on sunday i went shopping with my family, and then had a delicious dinner at the grays' in arlington. it was apple cider-onion french soup, roasted squash and fennel, and grilled pork chops which had had this amazing treatment put on them - they were like, brined in coffee and molasses and i don't know what else for hours, then rubbed with chili and brown sugar and cumin and every other crazy spice and expertly grilled by mr. gray. they were, in fact, so good that i just signed up for two free issues from cooking light and resigned myself to being hounded by them for life just so i can have access to what i think is the recipe that mrs. gray used. i'll post it behind the cut in case anyone is interested.

the dessert was pears poached in wine and pomegranate juice, which was also super excellent. once again i scoured the internet(s) for the recipe, and will post what i think she must have used behind the cut. highly recommended. tommy and i left the grays' full, happy, a little tipsy and loving autumn.