Four Days in St. Louis.

Last week I was in St. Louis for four days and four nights. I had a pretty good trip though I now kind of wish that I had stayed longer, because I didn’t get to see Jimmy Legs or a couple of other friends that I’d hoped to. But I did get to do most of the things that I’d wanted to do, and all of the things that I needed to. One reason I needed to go back to St. Louis was to check on the house I own there that I rent out.

There were a couple of leaking bits on the roof that I had to fix. I was terrified that I’d need a new roof entirely, which would have been somewhere in the $6K-8K range. Luckily, I think I did a two-year patch job on it myself, and that I’ll need to replace a skylight and a furnace vent at some point thereafter. Which I can probably do for nigh-on $1,000 or so. Maybe a touch more. The roof will need to be redone eventually, but I had a professional roofing contractor look at it and tell me it didn’t need doing now, or soon.

I kept up my running while in St. Louis, and even turned in this gem of a 10K:

Which made me super happy. I did that run in 84 degF heat, and pretty significant (though not awful) humidity. It’s listed as my second fastest, but it’s only 1 second per mile slower than my fastest. That’s within the margin of error of my device. And it had an estimable hill from the 3 to 3.5 mile mark. This was my first time running in Forest Park, which is something considering I ran in St. Louis for like 2 years before I left for ECC. But the park is 4-5 miles from my home, so I ran at a different and smaller park, closer in.

So, life seems good and I’m doing well. I needed the vacation. BB is back from Iceland and had a fabulous time running there. I’m hoping she’ll do a blogpost soon about it, because the pictures are unbelievable. I think I’m going to have to go back there. But it’s always hard to decide where to go next. We’re making plans, and looking forward to traveling together again soon. This March is going to be a good time to go far, far away.

I also got to go to my Men’s Meeting and to a Friday meeting I used to go to before I was employed. I saw my old sponsor, and spoke Wednesday night. It was really good. Important to do. Good for my soul and my sobriety. Time away from the races is like that. Calm and smooth and restful. Just what I needed.