Yet another day where I wanted to sleep in but I couldn’t. I volunteered at the Portland Marathon again and it requires standing around from about 7AM to 11:30AM or so. This year it was cold and rainy but we didn’t see many runners with problems. We had a couple of people on sag wagons, a couple of people with foot problems, but that was a lot less than most years. In fact, last year we had to call in a couple of ambulances. Unfortunately for me, though, by the end of the morning my hands were numb and my butt was cramping from standing around.

Just like most years, people I was watching for made it by me without my notice. Last year my sister ran by yelling at me and I didn’t see her. This year, I saw her but didn’t see her friends nor did I see Sean and Shirley from the gym. Sean had a goal to beat my time of 4:13:34 and I don’t think he did it. Which is a good thing, because I don’t want to train for another marathon to see if I can best his time, starting some sort of weird leapfroggy challenge that probably wouldn’t get very far because I don’t think my knees would take it. It’s been 10 years since I ran the San Francisco Marathon and I think once is enough for me. He beats me in lots of other things, like regularly deadlifting 85 pounds more than I do, so I get to be four minutes faster than him in this odd circumstance. In any case, congratulations to all the marathon participants!

I spent the afternoon shopping for clothes. Actually, I spent the afternoon being a clothes hanger for clothes that were picked out by Devon and Tiffany from the gym. I had to get some clothes that fit, because my jeans are mostly falling off of me now that I’ve lost some weight. I hate to tell you about my khaki pants I wear for customer visits. If I don’t wear a belt, they actually do fall off. I had no idea that every single thing cost about $135. I thought THMFIC at the gym was kidding when he said I had to spend about $700 on presentable jeans and a shirt and he wasn’t kidding. OK, so I also bought a couple of pairs of shoes, but still. I told my brother-in-law and he commiserated with me, saying, “It’s hard to see how out of fashion you really are.” $135 for jeans instead of $30 for Levi’s on sale and they don’t even double-validate your parking.