LA Marathon 2007

My head is going to explode, and my toes hurt!

First my toes–I ran the LA marathon this last weekend.  It was an absolutely amazing, horrible, and wonderous experience all at once.  I have never run a marathon, but have come close to several times in the past–done the training, gotten into shape, but then fallen ill at the last minute and missing the race.  This time I made the race, was fit and charged, but boy did the experience work out very very differently than I expected.  One word — HEAT.  I’ve been training in my hometown of Seattle, where the temperature in the winter is in the low 40s, high hummidity, and overcast pretty much every day.  In January and February I did 6 x 18+ mile runs on the weekends, and while I always hit the “wall” (dark place emotionally, where you start to really go to a negative world where all you want to do is stop running and lay down to die), it was consistently in the 18-21 mile corridor, expected and very much a part of the marathon running lore.

Alas, Sunday race day in LA, i get to mile 14, just past the half-way-mark, and low and behold I’m  starring at a wall unlike any i had ever seen in training–one brought on by severe heat on the course, a balmy 80 degrees in the midst of the concrete jungle that is downtown Los Angeles.  Thus began 2+ hours of absolute shear hell… which culminated in finishing the race in a state of euphroria, with a tremendous sense of accomplishment, and now, a few days later, i’m already starting to get excited about running another marathon–perhaps New York City or Paris, just as soon as my frickin toes stop throbbing! 

Which brings me to my head… which is feeling like it is ready to explode.  At work we are running a different marathon of sorts.  You see, I’ve been at msft for 3 years now, and the course I’ve been on is rapidly approaching a finish line.  The amazing platform and tools that I’ve been working on–WPF, “WPF/E”, Expression Studio, various features of Visual Studio related to WPF+/E, are all rapidly approaching the proverbial product finish line.  At this years Mix event, in Las Vegas April 30th, we will be delivering a hole helluva lot of product and news about our platform vision in the area of UX (user experience)… only problem is that we’re at “mile 21” and instead of my toes hurting, my HEAD HURTS from the crazy amount of work we are trying to get done.  My colleagues on the product management and I are already working the insane hours that usually come in the 1-2 weeks before a big event–but we have 7 weeks to go!  That’s the bad news.

Alas, the good news: the finish line is in site.  Mix, Las Vegas, April 30… just 7 weeks to go 🙂