Thursday, July 22, 2010

Finish Lines!!

July's been a big month with two big finish lines crossed. On July 2nd, my book Patterns-Based Engineering: Successfully Delivering Solutions via Patterns was released. Myself and Celso Gonzalez had spent the past couple of years (yikes!) working on this project and it was a big moment when the book shipped. We're still busy with the book - but now its all about supporting the release. We have a website up to support the book (to which we are frequently posting), have articles underway, and are setting some dates for webcasts. So still busy, but busy in a new way.

The other finish line was the completion of the powderface42 - trail marathon. The race was this past weekend, been resting up a bit before posting this. The race is tough - running through the mountains just outside of Calgary. Although not possible (as the start/finish line is in the same spot) - it seemed as though the entire race went uphill. Total elevation gain for the race was just under 5k feet - so quite a bit of climbing (and descending). There was a couple points where the climb felt steep enough that I started to consider whether it would be better to climb using hands and feet.

Along the way, there were a number of ponds/marshes/creeks to cross. The ice cold water felt great for the feet! As for injuries - I managed to mostly emerge unscathed. I was sore, of course, from the running and climbing, but otherwise feeling good. I did kick a tree branch along the way, so a toe was quite sore, but it looks like all of my toenails will be staying with me. I've included a few pictures taken by my support crew - will look to link to some more once the official pictures are released.

In bringing the two events back together - in the time that it took to write the book, I've now run two marathons and 3 half-marathons. Before starting the book, I'd never run in a race. All told its been a long effort (running and writing) - and its great to reach these milestones.


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