Sure, I go to Kentucky a lot but I hardly really get to spend time in my hometown. The couple of times I've actually been in my hometown, it's always been a whirlwind of activity that I actually don't get to sit and enjoy being home. To avoid this happening a second time, I decided to take a couple of valuable vacation days and spend a few weekdays in my hometown. It was good.

My time outside started off playing with the dog and getting stung in the bottom of my foot by a wasp before going on a run. I got to do some valuable trail running that I had greatly missed this last year. Also, to avoid the running around everywhere, my mom decided to have a few friends and some of my Louisville family over for a big dessert night so I could visit with a lot of people in one shot. The dessert night was a great time with a lot of good dessert! However there was one problem. I couldn't hardly eat any dessert...

I had two races early the next morning.

So the morning after the party I roll out of bed around 5am and drive to Henderson to meet an old WKU teammate Mike to head to Sebree, Kentucky (if you haven't heard of the town that's okay...) to run a 10K AND a 5K....which were both an hour apart.

Aside from the Beachathon the week before, this was my first real road race. Aside from the fact that we ran a 10K and a 5K that close together, it was tough! The course was hill after rolling hill which really bit me in the butt. Turns out the great city of Chicago lacks much in the way of hill running so a year of avoiding hills took it's toll big time in the 10k. Heat and terrain aside, Mike and I finished 2nd and 4th respectively in both races. I even won a doorprize for coming the furthest away to run the race.

Well, I came to see family but hey, who wouldn't drop $300 on airfare to run the Sebree Fourth of July Firecracker Run?

After heading to Henderson and hanging out with Mike and his wife Donna, I went home to brace myself for the next bout of travel. No, not back to Chicago. Lake Junaluska, North Carolina. It's okay if you've not heard of that place either. Lake Junaluska is a retreat center ground that my parents worked at as college students, which is how they met which in turn is how this website (aka ME) came to be. So the place has some sentimental value to say the least.

So after sleeping until 5am the morning before, We get up at 3am that Sunday morning to arrive there around lunchtime. Before the rest of mom's family from Atlanta arrived to meet us at the HUGE house that they were to stay at that week. As the rest of the crew arrived, mom and I were in the kitchen cooking up a storm of southern cooking. Dinner concluded, we took in some fireworks and I turned in early.

After all, I had a 5am run and a plane trip the next morning.

So I slept in until a whopping 5:45 am to get up and run behind my grandfather, who was on a bike. It's noted here that my internal clock registered this time as 4:45am since my internal clock still reads on central time, even though I woke up in an eastern time zone.

I'm convinced Central Standard Time is the time zone God lives on.

I cruised through a quick uptempo 8.5 mile run, grabbed some breakfast, took a few photo-ops (not my idea) and then headed to Asheville to fly back to Chicago. I spent less than 24 hours in North Carolina before returning to the Windy City.

By the way, the Asheville airport was hands-down the smallest airport I've ever been to. Three gates. That's it. It was a real mind-bender to arrive in O'Hare after leaving there. However quick and hectic it was, I had a great weekend back South!