Open House and Run

Sounds like some kind of directions you might give to someone with a tiger in their house: "Open house and run".

Saturday I attended the Urschel Laboratories, Inc. 100th anniversary open house courtesy of Surly. Very impressive, I must say. First of all, for a privately owned company that's being run by the third and fourth generation and is still in business has to be very rare in this day and age. Usually, it seems that the next generation either gets ahold of the company and runs it into the ground or sells the whole show to some conglomerate and lives like a king until they squander all the money. I had been inside the company on a previous occasion and due to the nature of the work (they make slicing and dicing equipment for food products, primarily), it was very clean. It was spotless on Saturday with everything freshly painted. They make most everything in house having their own foundry, machining and welding facilities. It was obvious that the owners are proud of the business and they value their employees highly. It was also very obvious the employees were justifiably proud of what they do for the company. Thanks for the tour and continued success.

I ran the Hub Run today. I "blistered" the first mile in 9:45 but that includes shuffling in the crowd to get to the starting gate. I finished with a 9:54 pace that included a little race walking along the way. I was looking for about 30 minutes and only missed my mark by about 30 seconds. Not bad for not training. My back was hurting a little and my legs felt a little wooden but my cardio is pretty good. Beautiful day for a race and there was a huge crowd by Hub Run standards. Over 1000 runners and a bunch of walkers as well. My only complaint is that someone needs to tell some of the younger runners about running etiquette - things like start towards the back unless your a fast runner and don't just stop on the course without checking behind you first. I about ran over a couple of the little shavers who went out like gang busters and 3/4 of a mile later they just stopped in the middle of the road. It's good that they're out there though. They just need a couple of pointers, that's all.

Finished up the weekend by going to the grandson's birthday party. Nice way to cap off the weekend. Back to the dentist tomorrow to finish the root canal. Always something to look forward to there.