Guus Bosman

This weekend we made a wonderful trip to Washington DC. On Saturday we arrived in time for lunch at The Boulevard Woodgrill in Arlington, the area where we lived for two years. Lunch there was great, just as we remembered it, and it was a lot of fun to be back in the Courthouse area.

We spent time in Georgetown and in the evening we went out around Dupont Circle, with an excellent late night dinner at Pizza Paradiso. A very small, very friendly place with very good pizza.

Sunday morning we visited "Pride Of Place: Dutch Cityscapes of the Golden Age" in the National Gallery of Art. This exhibition is a corporation between The Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis in the Netherlands and the National Gallery, and combines works from those museums with many other paintings from all over the world. I first read about it in December when it was showing in the Netherlands.

We spent a long time in the gallery; it was truly wonderful. A highlight of the exhibition for us was "View of Hoorn", by the relatively obscure painter Abraham de Verwer. Together with the two Albert Cuyp paintings this work was a beautiful showcase of 'Dutch light'.

"But can New York revert to New Amsterdam?"

The New York Times has an article about Dutch bikes, which 'may be the first status symbol of the Great Downturn':

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/fashion/16CODES.html?em=&pagewanted=all

I just did a great trail run at the Eno River (where we walked with Ettie and Gerben).

Sitting in the sun now and Jaap just fixed the website (thank you).

Life is good.

This morning was Raleigh Rocks, a half marathon starting in downtown Raleigh. It was my first half marathon this season, and finished in 2 hours and 14 minutes. That's 5 minutes better than when I did this race last year, but well short of my best of 2 hours and 2 minutes (in November last year).

To be honest, I had underestimated the race and just didn't train enough, especially in long runs. I started the race well, with a consistent 9 minutes/mile speed, something that I wanted to try to break my PR. But at mile 4 or 5 I started slowing down -- I just clearly wasn't ready for this speed. One point of light: this time I made sure I didn't start overly fast. In previous race my splits for the first 2 miles or so would be around 8 minutes, way to fast. Miles 7 and 8 starting to get difficult, and miles 9 and 10 through the greenway did me in. It didn't help that after 10 miles or so I started getting blisters on both feet, something that doesn't usually happen to me. My feet may have been still soft from a fairly brutal training run in 2,5 hours of rain and mud two weeks ago.

Still, it was fun to race a half marathon again and Raleigh Rocks is a very well organized race. I particularly liked that there were clear mile markers every mile. Up to the next race, May 17th in Cary, NC, and yes, I will step up my training in the next 6 weeks.