I get that Pernice Brothers song in my head every time I think about the Great Gorilla Run. It was a complete blast.

Kai picked Blake and me up at my mom’s house, and we took time for a photo shoot. I’m the one in the purple hat, Blake is in the green hat, and Kai is the naked one (he put on his thong later). One more so you can appreciate the full outfit:

When we met up with some of my Yahoo!’s Your Daddy folks, Joe noticed the Sponge Bob boxers I was wearing and asked “You have Sponge Bob boxers?” “No, I borrowed them from Blake.” (to Blake) “You have TWO pairs of Sponge Bob boxers?” We were looking sharp.

The race itself was fun, although it’s undetermined exactly how far anyone went. The course was poorly marked and some gorillas were wandering off the course, causing much confusion. It’s the first year in SF, so I cut them some slack. All in all, a good time was had by all.

More photos on my Flickr page

One person who was not there was the poster of this comment on the blog post Rusty wrote for Yahoo! Yodel. And boy, that anonymous person who replied sounds like quite a guy.

I stopped at Togo’s for my usual post-tutoring sandwich (because I am rarely up for cooking by the time I get home on Tuesdays), and I was chatting with my usual sandwich guy. He noted that I never get meat on my sandwich and asked if I was a vegetarian. This ended up starting a discussion about my eating habits and how much weight I’ve lost, and ended with me giving a recommended reading list (Eat to Live) and diet tips to the cashier. It’s still so weird to see the look people give me when I put a number to my weight loss, like I’ve just told them that I have done something to alter the state of the world.

In other news, we move to a new office on Friday, which means a day off for me. Helloooooo sleep. Speaking of sleep….

1. Run 7 mile relay leg while sweating profusely.
2. Continue to wear sweaty clothing in poorly ventilated van.
3. After removing sweaty clothes, place them in a non-breathable plastic bag.
4. Leave clothes in plastic bag for 2 weeks in back of closet.

Then when it comes laundry time: Gather. Wince. Repulse.

It’s Bike To Work Day in the bay area today, so I took my brand spankin’ new bike out for a spin. I rode to and from the office, so yay for me. I met up with another Yahoo! guy (there was supposed to be a larger group, but I guess it didn’t work out) at the train station, where the Bike To Work folks had a couple of booths of food, drink, and freebies. The best part of Bike To Work Day? Free Hobee’s coffeecake. Mmmm….. I had planned on not riding home, but on a whim, I decided to give it a go. I only missed one turn when retracing the route from the morning, but I knew it right away and had no trouble correcting my mistake. I forgot to put on my GPS unit for the ride to work, but here’s the data for the ride home.

And since Rachel asked, here’s a picture:

Group Photo

Originally uploaded by jerachels.

Jen posted the group photo taken before the race.
Back row (left to right): Hao, Bryce, Joe, Rusty, Adam, Mayank, Alla, Andrei.
Front row (l-r): Ludo, Ren, John, Jen

Oww, my blisters. And my legs. And, weirdly, my shoulders. That’s right. I ran so much that my SHOULDERS hurt. But it was good.

(more…)

I plan to post photos to Flickr during The Relay, and using the magic of Flickr, they will appear here as moblog entries. The formatting may be a bit funny, but it’ll provide info on my progress. Our team has decided to tag all photos as yahoosyourdaddy, so you can see them on Flickr when we post them.

As both of my readers know, I’ve been training for The Relay. After all this training, it’s finally time! Do you live around Napa, SF, or the Santa Cruz Mountains? If so, come out and cheer and/or throw things on May 5th/6th! Here are the maps to my legs:

• Leg 1 (6.9 miles)
• Leg 2 (7 miles)
• Leg 3 (6.2 miles)

Our team is called Yahoo’s Your Daddy, and we even got a mention in a press release. We notice that Google’s G-Unit team starts 30 minutes ahead of us, so we’re going to try to catch them. All in good fun, of course.

I will do my best to take pictures, if I’m not too busy not dying.

Today, I ran the The Great Race with fellow Y! Bootcamper Tom and our Bootcamp instructor Russ. Of course, to say we ran it “with” Russ would imply Tom and I are much faster than we are. Regardless, Tom and I lined up for the race in the 8 minute mile section in an attempt to get out ahead of the traffic jam, but actually ended up holding a 8-9 min mile pace for the whole run. I ended up with an official time of 34:22, although I definitely crossed the starting line at least 23 seconds after the start of the race (and more like a minute or so), so I broke 8:30/mile and did well enough to finish 475 overall, and 37 in my age group out of the approximately 3,000 entrants. I lost Tom around the 3 mile mark, but he finished only a minute or so behind me. A great showing for his first timed race and his first ever run of that length!

Next up is The Relay in a few weeks, and then there may not be another race until Wharf To Wharf in July. Who wants to run that one with me? It’s a really fun 6 mile race from Santa Cruz to Capitola.

All this talk of exercise is making me sleepy.

The latest press release for The Relay mentions my team. Exciting. Now I just have to not die during my legs, which total to 20 miles.