Guus Bosman

On Sunday August 17 we got up at 4.30 am to prepare for our race in San Diego, America's Finest City 2008. It was a beautiful course, the nicest I've ran so far, and Sasha and I were quite successful with personal records for both of us.

On Friday night we walked the last few miles of the half marathon course, pretty much all of it uphill in the beautiful but hilly downtown area. It was good I knew that this was coming at the end of the race; I was mentally prepared and in my calculations I allowed for some extra walk breaks near the end. The over-all result was 2:18, a couple of minutes faster than my previous two races.

A lot of people asked: "isn't it terribly hot in San Diego?" but the weather was great for running. It was sunny, but not humid at all and very bearable. When we returned back in North Carolina 10 days later it took us a while to get used to the warm and humid weather again.

This morning Sasha and I competed in the competitive 5k run during the Race for the Cure event in Raleigh.

This was Sasha's first race, and she did great! Her time was 31:19 minutes. I think she's caught the bug so she'll be doing more races in the future. I was happy with my time too, around 26 minutes. I think I improved with about 10 seconds compared to my first 5k, but I'll have to wait for the official results to be sure.

It was an impressive and emotionally charged event. It's an important fund raiser for the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation, to support research and prevention of breast cancer. There were a total of 30,000 people running and walking (2,600 in the competitive race), and a large number of women in pink survivor shirts. It was clearly not just a race for time, it was a race for a cause. The organization was superb, with clocks at each mile, two water stands at the course and at the finish, and tons of people cheering for the participants.

The smoke has largely disappeared so it was sunny again today. It still smelled a little bit of smoke, but the air is a lot better so tomorrow's race will be fine. Which is good, since it is an event for a great cause, and some 30,000 people are expected to be there for the races and other activities.

I went to Meredith College after work to pick up some things, and the preparations were well under way. This is easily going to be the largest race I've ever ran in, which is cool. We'll meet Petra tomorrow as well, that will be nice.

I haven't seen today's game against France yet, but the last 30 minutes or so I heard on the Dutch radio. Pretty amazing! Sasha recorded the game so I'll see it this weekend. I'm looking forward to the Tuesday game against Romania, but even more so to the quarter finals since they'll be on a Saturday so I'll be able to see the game live.

We just came back from Hickory where I ran the Charity Chase race. It was great fun, and I'm proud of my 2:23 result for the half marathon.

I was 3 minutes slower than in Raleigh two months ago, but the track was very challenging with lots of hills, and it was much warmer also.

It was great that Sasha was there; we left yesterday afternoon and spent a nice evening in Hickory, before getting up at 5.30 am to go to the race. Hickory is nice! We were pleasantly surprised: a cozy downtown area with lots of restaurants and places with outdoors seating.

The race itself was very well organized and there were lots of volunteers everywhere, very friendly folks. The scenery was beautiful, but especially the last two hills were very challenging ("Cemetery Hill" especially).

Tomorrow at 7.00 am there is another race, this time in Hickory, about 2.5 hours from here. We're staying there tonight.

I haven't trained as much as I should have and the course is supposed to be hilly, so I'm curious how it will be.

I don't often watch soccer anymore, but today I clicked on a link on CNN today and saw a picture. "Hey, I know that guy!"

The hero here is, once again, Van Der Sar, a Dutch goalkeeper who I've written about before.