10.3

Couple days rest after Tuesday's 10 mile inferno at the Newburyport Yankee Homecoming. Then 6.5 miles on the home Landice, low 7:00s down to mid 6:00s, still a bit hot, no air conditioning in my home "fitness room", otherwise known as the study. Another day of rest (this old body needs lots of those.)

Today, 10.3 miles at 7:07 average pace, splits - 6:56, 7:19, 7:09, 7:10, 7:12, 7:09, 6:56, 7:16, 7:32 (long hill), 6:31. Ten @ 1:11:18, 4 minutes faster than my pathetic Yankee Homecoming performance (let it go.) Started really tired, warmed up, got into a pretty decent relaxed groove around the lake, twice. Beautiful day, hot but not horribly oppressively so, not too humid, breeze, not so bad at all.

Yesterday, we went to Body Worlds 2 at the Museum of Science in Boston. Highly recommended. If you haven't seen it or heard of it, it's an exhibit of human cadavers, dead people, which have been plastinated and posed in interesting configurations. All skin and fat removed (everyone's got a six-pack.) There's a lot to see, I'll probably go back again. I'm not writer enough to express in words what I saw. Definitely not "gross" or creepy or anything like that, for me anyway, as I've heard some project (without yet seeing.)

The creator obviously fancies himself an artist as well as anatomist, and perhaps a comedian as well. It did occur to me that the guy is a freaking sick-o who's managed to find a socially acceptable outlet in the name of science. Probably not, but ya never know.

One trivial observation that struck me was that the belly button, which I naively thought was a superficial scar is actually more a deeper remnant of the umbilical cord than I'd imagined - a truncated tube embedded deep into the abdomen. And the slightness of it all was striking; there's not much to a human body, when the flesh is removed, even the most 'buff' cadavers seemed somehow a little insubstantial and puny.

Anyway, it is what is it is, life, death, science, check it out.