Damn you Boston Athletic Association!

Kris: So I think the universe is trying to tell me I should quit worrying about Boston.  Here's the sequence of events over the past few months:

1. We decide "Hey, let's make a go at Boston.  Do it smart, take a couple seasons then make a run at qualifying."
2. Get a show-stopping injury while training for last marathon
3. Get to a point where I can "tolerate" my severly diminished training schedule for Boston to allow for proper rehab of my injury.
4. Finish my first week of training (2 runs)
5. THEN spend a week almost incapable of movement because I was severely laid up with the flu (Day 12.....still sniffling and coughing...)
6. Now that I'm back moving again, the BAA announces this crap.....

 http://www.baa.org/news-and-press/news-listing/2011/february/boston-athletic-association-announces-new-registration-process.aspx

If you want the highlights, it's basically that they changed the registration system to allow those that qualify by 20 minutes or more first opportunity to register, then those that qualify by 10 minute, then 5 minutes, then everyone else until the field is sold out.    AND....they removed the 59 second rule AND decreased all the qualifying times by 5 minutes.   Basically crushing our hopes of ever being able to qualify and if we do, we might not even be able to register before it fills up.

Crap.   Crap....crap....crap.....

Fitting photo of how I feel that I have in my work file :)

Mark: I am more then annoyed by the BAA. I can understand why they made the change to a seeded registration based on time, that make sense to me. Granted I can tell you right now what is going to happen, your average runners who barely make their qualification times will never be able to register for Boston because the registrations will fill up by then. What Boston should have done is placed a limit on the number of times that a runner can qualify/register for Boston. With their new system, the same runners will qualify and be able to register year after year and the average runner who's dream is to run in Boston who might be able to just qualify is basically screwed. Since they screwed the average runner, why not take it to the next step and make qualification times harder by an additional 5 minutes and 59 seconds. What a way to crush average runners dreams, thanks BAA you are a true shining light to the running community.

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On another angle of training, I am on my bike a bit more or in spin classes as an alternative to running.  That's been a nice burn but I'm still really feeling weighed down by my/our eating habits lately.  We've fallen into eating way too many calories a day so my weight is back up 3-4 from where I bottomed out. Mark: I hit 10 pounds since my low just before Las Vegas. Kris: It's kind of depressing me but I'm doing it to myself so I'm the only one to blame.  Hoping to tough love myself back into eating right again by considering going on a calorie counting stretch again.   Starting....sometime....maybe tomorrow.  I think what might be the added "push" is the fact that I turn 30 in a little less than 4 months and I want to look good and feel good.   Kind of like what we did before Mark's 40th last year.
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On another note we did have ridiculously beautiful weather this past week and were lucky to finally have a few opportunities to go after geocaches that were more than 10 ft from the car.    We even got Sugar out with us one day for a lunch time cache grab.

Mark: Interesting to note, we used this picture for our #Geocache365 pic of the day on Wednesday, Day 192. We thought it was cute to hang the cache container from Sugars collar and she did such a nice job of posing. If you just glance at the picture quickly you would never realize that was the cache container. Fast forward about 6 hours and I get a email notification that my "Found" log had been deleted, the cache owner did not want a picture of the cache container because as he put it "(the size, the shape, the color etc.) is an integral part of the hide" Excuse me? It is a bison tube pine tree hide, there are thousands of caches just like that around the world. Nothing unique or special about this cache whatsoever. In fact we commented to each other as we were walking up to the cache that we should be looking for a green bison container. The cache hider only has 160+ finds and just the one hide so I understand that he has might not understand that his cache is just a plain pine tree hide. I did try to point out to the cache owner that gallery pictures often include pictures of the cache containers, that is why Geocaching.com indicates that any pictures have the potential to be spoilers. I respected the cache owners wishes and re-posted my find without the link to the picture. Just very annoying and typical when dealing with caching newbies.