Monday Mario

When I first knew I was going to be adopting Mario I made a list of names I thought would be cute.  The only ones I can remember off the list are Chandler and Zummi.  Cringe.  When he first came home with me I thought his most notable feature was his almost perfectly symmetrical moustache.

I immediately wanted to name him after someone who had a moustache.  I could only come up with Charlie and Adolf and none of those would do.  One of my friends suggested Mario a la Super Mario Bros. fame.  I was a huge fan of these Nintendo games when I was a kid and immediately thought it was a great idea.  It took a day or two to decide if he was more of a Mario or a Luigi or even possibly Wario (he peed on the couch in his first 24 hours home), but Mario ended up winning.  Now I can't imagine him with any other name.

I spoke much too soon about my legs feeling good the other day. They were downright sore and stiff yesterday.  I had wanted to go for a "long" bike ride yesterday but held off until today to give my body a break.  This morning I went for a 10.5 mile bike ride.  I've decided I'm definitely a wimpy bike rider.  I'm not sure what elevation our apartment is at, but I can't imagine it is more than a few hundred feet above sea level.  It's all downhill to the shore and then all uphill on the way home.  I had to get down into my easiest gear and felt like I was barely moving on the way home.  I read about people doing rides with thousands of feet of climbing and can't even fathom how I'd survive that.  I guess the good news is that since I have to tackle the hills to get home whenever I ride, it can only get better from here.  In the afternoon I went on a 4.6 mile recovery run.  I'm still a tiny bit sore but my legs felt amazingly good on the run today.

I checked the official results from the race and my time was 2:01.xx!!  That is totally wrong.  I hit my garmin at the start and finish and normally I'm within 2-3 seconds of my net time.  The announcer at the finish was also relaying the time and I distinctly remember her saying "2 hours, 3 minutes" as I approached the line.  So in the end, I'm going to go with my Garmin time.  

Mario enjoying the view from the previously mentioned coveted cardboard box