TTT: Getting Ready, Vine, I Fought The Law?

1. Final Touches: I've kind of been approaching my 22-mile run as I have my marathon - without the taper of course. I've been trying to mentally prepare myself for it as much as possible this week, and starting today I'll increase my carb intake and will hydrate hydrate hydrate. I have one more hard run to get through and then Friday and Saturday will be about resting, recovery, easy runs and the final preparation. As I said in Monday's post, this is the dry run for the marathon, so the approach should mirror it somewhat as well. There's not much I can do at this point to improve my chances for Sunday. Either I've trained well enough to put myself in a position to succeed, or I've not. There's no such thing as cramming when it comes to long-distance running. Wednesday's run gave me 51 consecutive days worth of running, so I think I've done well to get here. Now I just have to see the job through.

2. On The Vine: Have you heard of Vine? It's a social media site that features six-second videos. I think it's only an app, not a site. Anyway, it's like Instagram where you can share and view pictures but with six-second videos. There's not a lot of activity on there, probably because it's so new. Well, because I really need to spend more time on social media, I downloaded it. So, find me on there at... hmmm... it says my full name but wanted my Twitter handle... uh... Luis Bueno or RunnerLuis I suppose would work. I have no idea. It does sound like fun though. Some of the videos I've seen on there are pretty clever, even if they're so short.

3. Evading the Law?: About a week or so ago, I may have avoided a ticket. Or I may have just gotten paranoid over nothing. I was driving on the freeway, not really speeding because as a general rule I try not to speed. There were a lot of slow cars that day so I went around them and got into the fast lane. I came around a slight curve when I saw a California Highway Patrol officer on the right shoulder. I passed him and glanced at the speedometer. I'd taken my foot off the gas pedal slightly and saw that the needle was dipping gently towards 70 mph. That's not ridiculously fast speed here in SoCal, but was it enough to get the CHP's attention? I looked in my rear-view mirror and saw the car put its blinker on and start to pull out onto the freeway. GASP! My stomach was in knots. I haven't gotten a speeding ticket since 2005, when I started to really change the way I drive. And I didn't get want to get one now, especially since I've been so careful to drive safely for such a long time. Up ahead, there were two big rigs on the right two lanes, and ahead of them an exit. I figured it was worth a shot, got ahead of the trucks one at a time and then went down the really long off ramp. I expected to see the CHP behind me throughout all of this, but saw nothing. I stopped at the light to make a right turn onto a street, again expecting the CHP behind me, and again saw nothing. I pulled onto the street and immediately stopped at another light, expected the cop, saw nothing. At this point I thought I might be safe but wasn't sure, but a few minutes later when there was nobody behind me I figured I really was safe. Nobody ever pulled up behind me or anything, so I was relieved. Shaky but relieved. Did I elude a CHP? Honestly, I doubt it. I'm guessing that's kind of difficult to do, but I am glad I didn't stick around on the freeway to find out for sure if I was a target or not.