Weekend; Lumberjacks

Linda and I spent the weekend in northern Minnesota near the town of Fergus Falls. We were at our friends cabin to help the take down some trees. It's an abandoned tree farm of pines. All in nice neat rows. The trees are generally unhealthy because they are overgrown. So every 3rd row has to go to save the rest.

Some of the pines will be used in the floor of a new cabin to be built. So Jon hired a guy with a portable saw mill to come and cut the trees down to planks. The whole process was fascinating to watch. The machine would take a length up to 20 fee long. Then itwould cut down four sides with a bandsaw to square it up into a beam. After that it was a matter of cutting 1 inch planks from the beam. It took a bit of time to do - about 4 logs per hour.


More Flickr Photos

Race Report; Twin Cities Marathon, 10 Miler

Last year I did the full marathon. It was a thrill but I wasn't interested in doing it again. Mostly it was the amount of training involved and the cut it made into my bike training. So this year I decided to do the 10 mile race held at the same time as the marathon. We ran the same last 10 miles as the marathoners and finished ahead of them.

It was already 70 degrees at 7 am when the race started. A strange day for Minneapolis but just fine for me. I like the heat. The race started at the Metro Dome in downtown Minneapolis. Linda dropped me off along with my neighbor Angela who was also going to run the 10 mile. Angela also met up with her running partners from work (Medtronic, the race sponsor).

We started in the last wave of 3 which turned out to be a big mistake. All of us were faster then those people so we spent the first part of the race ducking and weaving. It was like trying to run at the half time of a Vikings game. Crazy.

The race was really nice just like last year. Lots of cheering spectators and a beautiful route through St. Paul to the state capitol building. I ran really strong and felt great the whole way.

I finished with a time of 1 hour and 15 minutes which beat my goal of 1:20 by 5 minutes! My average pace was 7:32 per mile. My friend Angela, who I left after about 500 meters due to all the weaving, finished just behind me at 1:20. An awesome finish for her first running race.

The photos at the top were ones I pulled down from a profession photo service that was at the race. If you are so inclined, you are order photos of me here. They are really expensive in my opinion.