This year I spent my St Patrick's Day in Fairbanks, Alaska. The funny thing was we left 70 degree weather in Okinawa and got to Alaska during unusually low temperatures for February and March. The lowest being -45 degrees F. It has been raining a lot in Okinawa lately but I'll take rain and 70 degrees over 40 below at night with daytime highs in the single digits!

For dinner we ate the the "northernmost southern restaurant" Big Daddy's Bar-B-Q. The beef brisket was great and the cornbread was a little sweet but good as well. We had trouble getting help from the waitress. As you can see from the reviews that's nothing new. During dinner we enjoyed some green dyed Alaskan Amber and Summer Ale. I turned in early while the rest of the group hit the Yukon club on Eielson AFB.

The highlight of my trip has been by far Chena Hot Springs Resort. The outdoor hot springs pool was awesome! It probably wasn't at the 110 average temperature...depending on where you were at in the pool but it felt great. Some of the granite rocks on the sides make great recliners. I sat on one rock half in and half out for at least a half hour. You have to occasionally get back in because the water on your hair, eyelashes, nose hairs, etc. would freeze in about 10 minutes. At night there's limited lighting and you can barely see from one side to the other through the steam. This is great for couples that want some privacy. I don't think I interrupted any couples' quality time. Unfortunately no Northern Lights, but we did see a small strand of the lights a few nights ago.

I finally completed my first marathon! It has taken me over a year to run one even though I started training back in Februrary 2006. The original plan was to run the Kona Marathon in 2006 but I went to Diego Garcia. I started training in Diego for the 3 December 2006 Naha, Okinawa Marathon but tried to sign up in early October and the race was already full. Needless to say I signed up early for the Okinawa City Marathon.



It was a perfect day to run...about 70 degrees with overcast skies and some light showers here and there. For the first hundred yards the crowd of about 7,000 runners walked for about 50 yards to the start line. Each runner tag had a Radio Frequency ID tag that tracked your pace through check points along the course. By my timing I was on pace to finish in 3.5 hours up to mile 20 but the hills at about mile 21 to 22 kicked my butt! I didn't stop running but my pace was walking speed up the hills. This first photo was about mile 10 and I was still smiling. The three amigos photo are my friends Kevin, Cody, and Greg.

My proof of completion...finsiher's list. At 4 hours 4 minutes and 40 seconds I was 884 out of 5,830.







With the RFID tags, you can see one on Cody's number in the photo above, they scanned it at the finish line then you walked/crawled just outside the stadium and they printed the completion certificate with your name and time on there. In the third photo I was concentrating on not stopping to walk! I couldn't quite catch the lady in the yellow shirt on the last 400 meter lap around the stadium track. The funny thing was when a volunteer on race staff asked me to fill out a survey about 10 steps past the finish line and I couldn't even stand up straight. Veronica helped me to the orange slice and drink station and kept asking me if I was going to pass out. At the massage station they rubbed down your legs with packs of ice...sounds like it would hurt but it felt great! My soreness after the race was a lot less than I expected. By the 1st of March I was fine. A 75 minute massage two days afterwards helped.