#12 Boston - My Meat Loaf is Your Meat Loaf - August 25, 2005
What else are friends for if not for a yummy meatloaf served after one has just completed a 10 K (6.2-mile) run and the huge disappointment of not winning a single one of the 200 raffle prizes offered! My wonderful obliging friend Elaine did just that this past weekend (love ya tons, oh maker of meatloaf!!). I stumbled into her home after completing my first ever road race for that distance (with a laudable time of 9:22 min/mile, a total of 58:11 (12th in my age group)) and stuffed myself silly.
The race was a benefit for the Melanoma Education Foundation out in Medford, called "The Run from the Sun" and the sun did us a bit of a favor and hid behind the clouds, so that we had only the agonizing humidity to deal with. Well, we lived to tell about it, is all I can say. The MEF folks put up a commendable effort, in particular the raffle at the end was quite impressive and seemed to go on for hours. MC for the raffle and awards post-race was the somewhat nonstandard Gary Leavitt, entertainer par excellence, also known as "The Man of a Thousand Voices". Apparently our friend Gary has been dazzling audiences for more than 20 years - http://www.garyleavitt.com/default.php in a cheesy, but loveable, lounge-wedding-singer type act. All the winking at Gary did not help with the raffle, and I saw one case of Harpoon beer after the other disappear into oblivion (and not in my car trunk as hoped).
Anyway, with this road race I fulfilled both of my New Year's resolutions, climbing Mt Washington and doing a 10 K road race, so there you have it!! I am done for the year!! (yeah right, you are saying now.....) Just kidding of course, I followed the whole thing on Monday night with the Arlington 3 Mile "Fun" Run, which is a regular weekly event that I had promised to attend with my friend Ana - and did my personal best time so far. 8:44 min/mile!!! Not too shabby, eh? Of course the "fun" stops when your back hurts and you have to get the Ben Gay patch out, but a couple of days of rest will clear that right up.....
As you know running alone won't do it, so Saturday we got the ball rolling with a little hike. My friend Rick and I headed for the lovely Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, America's first landscaped cemetery, founded in 1831. (http://www.mountauburn.org/) 175 acres of pure joy for the botanically (http://www.mountauburn.org/hort.htm) and ornithologically inclined, and for those who like to visit grave sites of the dead and the famous. Charles Bulfinch, renowned Boston architect rests here, along with visionary Buckminster Fuller, art partron Isabella Steward Gardner, author and poet Oliver Wendell Holmes, painter Winslow Homer, US senator Henry Cabot Lodge, poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and religious leader May Baker Eddy, just to drop a few names. The trees and plants are wonderful - Rick and I were feverishly trying to apply our "Boot Boutwell Nature Lecture" knowledge, however Rick seems to have some unresolved issues with the maple trees. The highlight of the day certainly was the sight of a red-tail hawk, who was just hanging around and we could not shake the feeling that he liked the admiration and was a bit of a poser....
It is easy to spend several hours there, and after doing just that, it was time for one of Boston's favorite ice cream haunts, Toscanini's on Main Street in Cambridge. Named "best ice cream in the world" by the New York Times (http://www.tosci.com/), they have absolutely dynamite ice cream, with some noteworthy flavors such as basil, burnt caramel, green tea, khulfee (an Indian flavor with cardamom and pistachio) and my choice, a chocolate-coffee-almond concoction called "diesel sluggo". The ice cream had be washed down with some delicious Lebanese food, courtesy of Phoenicia Cafe on Cambridge Street and was walked off doing some serious retailing with my running partner and friend Joanne, who was shopping for an "attend-a-wedding" outfit. The evening was concluded, again, on Cambridge Street at the Hill Tavern, where we drank some beer in honor of the upcoming road race the next day. And considering the stellar time I put up, it worked!!
I am hailing from Washington DC, where I am attending the 4th International Congress on Targeted Anticancer Therapy. My accommodations are at the very swanky Omni Shoreham Hotel (http://www.omnihotels.com/hotels/default.asp?h_id=6) and aside from the conference we will try to have some fun here in our nation's capital. Today we will pop in at the Smithsonian Institution (http://www.si.edu/), and tomorrow night my colleague Matt and I will attend a baseball game between the Washington Nationals (formerly Montreal Expos) and the St. Louis Cardinals.
Until next week, be well!!
Petra
The race was a benefit for the Melanoma Education Foundation out in Medford, called "The Run from the Sun" and the sun did us a bit of a favor and hid behind the clouds, so that we had only the agonizing humidity to deal with. Well, we lived to tell about it, is all I can say. The MEF folks put up a commendable effort, in particular the raffle at the end was quite impressive and seemed to go on for hours. MC for the raffle and awards post-race was the somewhat nonstandard Gary Leavitt, entertainer par excellence, also known as "The Man of a Thousand Voices". Apparently our friend Gary has been dazzling audiences for more than 20 years - http://www.garyleavitt.com/default.php in a cheesy, but loveable, lounge-wedding-singer type act. All the winking at Gary did not help with the raffle, and I saw one case of Harpoon beer after the other disappear into oblivion (and not in my car trunk as hoped).
Anyway, with this road race I fulfilled both of my New Year's resolutions, climbing Mt Washington and doing a 10 K road race, so there you have it!! I am done for the year!! (yeah right, you are saying now.....) Just kidding of course, I followed the whole thing on Monday night with the Arlington 3 Mile "Fun" Run, which is a regular weekly event that I had promised to attend with my friend Ana - and did my personal best time so far. 8:44 min/mile!!! Not too shabby, eh? Of course the "fun" stops when your back hurts and you have to get the Ben Gay patch out, but a couple of days of rest will clear that right up.....
As you know running alone won't do it, so Saturday we got the ball rolling with a little hike. My friend Rick and I headed for the lovely Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, America's first landscaped cemetery, founded in 1831. (http://www.mountauburn.org/) 175 acres of pure joy for the botanically (http://www.mountauburn.org/hort.htm) and ornithologically inclined, and for those who like to visit grave sites of the dead and the famous. Charles Bulfinch, renowned Boston architect rests here, along with visionary Buckminster Fuller, art partron Isabella Steward Gardner, author and poet Oliver Wendell Holmes, painter Winslow Homer, US senator Henry Cabot Lodge, poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and religious leader May Baker Eddy, just to drop a few names. The trees and plants are wonderful - Rick and I were feverishly trying to apply our "Boot Boutwell Nature Lecture" knowledge, however Rick seems to have some unresolved issues with the maple trees. The highlight of the day certainly was the sight of a red-tail hawk, who was just hanging around and we could not shake the feeling that he liked the admiration and was a bit of a poser....
It is easy to spend several hours there, and after doing just that, it was time for one of Boston's favorite ice cream haunts, Toscanini's on Main Street in Cambridge. Named "best ice cream in the world" by the New York Times (http://www.tosci.com/), they have absolutely dynamite ice cream, with some noteworthy flavors such as basil, burnt caramel, green tea, khulfee (an Indian flavor with cardamom and pistachio) and my choice, a chocolate-coffee-almond concoction called "diesel sluggo". The ice cream had be washed down with some delicious Lebanese food, courtesy of Phoenicia Cafe on Cambridge Street and was walked off doing some serious retailing with my running partner and friend Joanne, who was shopping for an "attend-a-wedding" outfit. The evening was concluded, again, on Cambridge Street at the Hill Tavern, where we drank some beer in honor of the upcoming road race the next day. And considering the stellar time I put up, it worked!!
I am hailing from Washington DC, where I am attending the 4th International Congress on Targeted Anticancer Therapy. My accommodations are at the very swanky Omni Shoreham Hotel (http://www.omnihotels.com/hotels/default.asp?h_id=6) and aside from the conference we will try to have some fun here in our nation's capital. Today we will pop in at the Smithsonian Institution (http://www.si.edu/), and tomorrow night my colleague Matt and I will attend a baseball game between the Washington Nationals (formerly Montreal Expos) and the St. Louis Cardinals.
Until next week, be well!!
Petra
posted by My Boston at
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