20,000 miles in Brooks, and counting...

On Thursday, I passed another big milestone: 20,000 miles of running in Brooks shoes. I remember the 10,000-mile-in-Brooks milestone like it was yesterday, although it was 230 posts away, and 3 years ago. My 3rd post actually and the one which triggered my application to the Brooks Inspire Daily program. Did I put the 20,000 miles on the road map and my to do list after that? Not really but now, I'm thinking I may well aim at 30,000 miles if nature, health and God allow... Now, it took me 8 years for the first 10,000 miles, 4 years for the next 10,000 but do not expect the next ones to take only 2 years. This is only my second job...!

To celebrate, I used a pair of Trance as I had a total of 9,996 miles in this model. Not just one pair of course, but 10, from the original and first model, to the Trance 8. I was an unconditional of this product line when I first picked Brooks but moved to much lighter shoes after having read so many good things about barefoot running. Here is the spread of all these miles across the various models I've used since I felt in love with the Brooks brand in March 1999:

After reading Greg's first post on Saturday, I must say he is dead on: how lucky are we to be able to run so many miles and enjoying the outdoors, especially in the Bay Area, or compete and test our limits in races put up my so dedicated race directors and volunteers, not to mention the support of our relatives (see the video I included in last week's post for some sarcastic humor about this). This morning, I felt lucky indeed because, running long distances, I was able to run further than The Strip in Vegas. Running in Vegas is not really fun because you keep crossing roads at huge intersections. Or slaloming through the crowd later in the day... Or going though inhospitable neighborhoods... Agnès and I were in Vegas this weekend after winning a nice package at a fund raising event and I will actually be back at the Venitian in two weeks for IBM's huge celebration of SOA, BPM, Decision Management and other connectivity and application integration technologies, Impact 2011 (#impact). At the end of the week, a group of runners goes for a very early run at Red Rock Canyon. They rent a bus but I wanted to see what it would take to go there from the hotel and ended up running to the entrance of the park and back to the Venitian, for a total of 32.5 miles or 52 kilometers, just under 4 hours (3:55). Slightly uphill through Vegas going West toward the canyon, and rather boring along the 10 straight miles of West Spring Mountain Road, but I now plan on running to the start of the group run (half marathon warm-up) and take the shuttle only for the way back, to be on time for the conference. Another short night in perspective with a 4 AM wake-up call... If you are reading this post, if you will be at Impact, if you like to run and have not received Kramer's invite, contact me!

Back to the hotel, we had a romantic gondola ride on the amazing artificial canal at the Venitian and, after this ultra on 3 GU gels and 2 bottles of water, I was starving for an ice cream!

We also had a short visit from Diane, my ex-assistant at ILOG when I arrived to the US, who know lives in Las Vegas and was at the origin of this package from the Sands Foundation. It was great to see the three of you, Diane, Joe and James!

A perfect Italian day before flying back to the Bay Area which is still under the rain. A total of 87 miles this week, mostly flat and mostly under the rain, except for today's run in Las Vegas where the temperature was 65F this morning.

Arrivederci and have a good week!