31 MAY – 5 JUNE Training Week; My Daughter; Blue and Gold Stars

This is a unique entry, one that I’m going to keep short, but for good reason. At left is a picture of my newborn daughter, Grace Victoria Cavanaugh. She was born at 1:36am on Sunday, June 5th in Wellington, New Zealand. She was 7 pounds, 2.5 ounces at birth, and you can see she had quite a bit of hair. Her mother, Rachel, is resting and both are very healthy and happy…this is…a real blessing. We’re very, very lucky parents, and look forward to a lot of enjoyable difficulty (I’m certain that will make sense to all that have children).

Training wise, I was able to get in a 20 miler, at a 7:20/mile pace, before we had to go to the hospital on Saturday. That was a nice session, giving me great confidence that I’ll be able to put in a full marathon effort on 19 June at the Wellington Harbour Marathon. I consider this a “next step” towards a good performance at the Naseby Water Race 50 Miler at the end of August (my qualifier for the Western States 100 next June). My weekly total for training was about 65 miles, another jump upwards. I’ll likely cap training for the 50 Miler at about 80-85 miles/week. We’ll see.

Also, there was a nice piece in the New York Post ~ written by a woman whose son was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. Tough to understand that transition from being a “blue star” mother to a “gold star” mother…I doubt anyone could fully comprehend the magnitude of the sacrifice.