This probably should have been posted a month ago but better late than never. Amy and I went camping at Assateague Island National Seashore back in September for a long weekend. Joel, his sister Jess, and her fiance Paul joined us on Saturday night.

Despite the gail force winds and rain we were welcomed with on Friday night we had a great time. Okay, I am exaggerating a bit about the gail force winds, but it was very windy and rained for a good eight hours straight. Not exactly the ideal weather for tent camping. I should also mention that we camped at the national seashore campground on Assateague. We were on the oceanside of the campground with only sand dunes separating us from the beach. Our site was all sand so it makes things a little tricky trying to keep sand out of the tent, but if your careful its not bad. There is also a state park adjoining the national seashore, which also has a campground. It turns out that the facilities of the state park are a lot nicer than the national side. The national facilities include a single porta-john and outdoor shower for each group of 15 or so campsites. The State facilities have an actual building with indoor showers and toilets, it is a little extra a night (I think $5 or so), but very worth it in my opinion.

We spent most of the day Saturday walking around on the beach and just relaxing. We drove around the island and saw some wild ponies, most of which hang out on in the marshes on the bayside. They do have campsites on the bayside, they have a great view of the bay, and the sites are grassy as opposed to sandy, but the mosquitos are really bad in the summer months. I would definitely suggest the oceanside especially if you are camping in the summer.

Here are some pictures of the trip, you can see our campsite, as well as some of the bayside sites, ponies, beach, etc.

So my cousin Andy has convinced me to run a marathon. He had recently run a 10 miler and while talking with him about it, I mentioned that I would be interested in running a race with him. At the time I had been casually running a few times a week for about a month and was thinking of doing a 10K, but he suggests a marathon. I’m not one to back down from a challenge, so I run with it.

A month (more or less) later here I am writing this post. I’ve bought a new pair of shoes, mapped out a training plan, and signed up for a 10K qualifier in November. And now that I’ve officially announced my intentions on running this marathon, looks like there is no turning back. So far, training has been tough. Boy, I’ll tell you, things have definitely changed since high school. I feel like I have the legs of an 80 year old. My shins feel like they are going to crumble into dust and I’m only up to 7 miles on my long runs.

Okay, I know, enough whining about my pathetic marathon training. One thing I should mention is the application I’m using to keep track of my training progress. Its called MapMyRun, and it allows you to plot your runs on a google map interface as well as store daily training records to a personalized calendar. It has a boatload of other features too such as elevation and distance calculations of your runs; and pace, speed, and calories burned for each of your training records.

I should probably also mention the training schedule I am using. The creator of the schedule is Hal Higdon who has many famed accomplishments included longest contributing writer to Runners World, author of best selling Marathon: The Ultimate Training Guide, and eight time Olympic Trial contender.

The marathon I’m planning on running is the Suntrust National Marathon, which is scheduled for March 29, 2008.

I went offshore fishing with Joel a few weeks ago out of Ocean City, Maryland aboard his coworkers boat. We had beautiful weather and even better fishing. We were fishing 20 miles offshore on some lumps known as the chicken bone, ham bone, and sausages (makes you kinda hungry huh). The days catch included a Albacore Tuna, and three Wahoo, one of which was over 50 pounds. I took a video of one Wahoo we caught (below), and uploaded some pictures I took as well.