This joke Mom got from Wendy Honey. It shows Michaelangelo’s David, who returned to Italy after spending time in the US.

Looking back at my time for the Lyon marathon 3 years ago, I notice that Annecy was a personal record for me. 3:15:43 in Lyon versus 3:15:37 in Annecy.

If I continue to improve at the rate of 2 seconds per year, I will run a 2-hour marathon in the year 6546.

Update: The people in charge of the race say my real time was 3:15:37.

This morning I ran the Annecy Marathon. Annecy was better organized than Grenoble, and nicer to run than Lyon. Stunning mountain scenery, excellent frequency of refreshments, lots of time far away from hustle and bustle, and near perfect weather.

At 8:30 a.m. when we as many as 1600 of us started the sun was already bright but not warming us much. The temperature rose during the morning, fine for t-shirt and shorts. I would guess about 5 C to start and 15 C at the end.

1600 people meant the first 3 km, in town, were crowded. That bothered me in the beginning. Yet it also forced me to warm up gradually. I aimed only to finish, not run fast. I did not, however, hit real trouble today until after 41 km. That may be due to a gentle start and a stressless first 32 km.

Much of the Annecy route consists of an asphalt bike path with fine limestone gravel shoulders. When you get tired of the asphalt, the gravel makes a nice change, and vice versa. Nice touch.

At the 26 km marker, a fellow runner said, “Why don’t you go after the 3:15 balloon. It’s only a little further up.” I replied that this one was for fun. Too much stress at work. Besides, I was saving my self for the real race. Marathoners know that the last 10 km is the hard part.

After 32 km, the 3:15 balloon did not seem to be moving further away. The route was very slightly downhill, too. So I gradually went after the guy with the 3:15 balloon. Caught him right at the 38 km marker. Figured with only 4 km to go, I should speed up rather than slow down. He caught me again at 40 km. I was starting to get tired. He said, “Hang on.” I sped up.

He caught me again after 41 km. Maybe we only had 800 m left. But my legs had started to cramp. Then he looked at his watch. He said, “Shit!” He picked up the pace.

The guy with the 3:15 balloon put about 100 m into me over the last several hundred meters. I don’t know my real time. I was not timing this one. Yet I had started out at least as far behind the 3:15 balloon as I finished, due to the crowd. So this was perhaps a PR for me.

Now ready to do something other than run for a couple of weeks.

The preamp I have been using with the old microphones lying around seems okay. With the guitar it adds little noise, much less than the software simulating an amp with the gain on high.

Trouble is, as Olivier explained to me the other day at work, the phantom boost of +48 V only works with a mic plugged through the XLR (3 prong) input. So instead I turn the gain and output way up. Then I have to add a noise gate with a fairly high cutoff. Luckily the software has a built-in pitch correction function. Otherwise all would truly be lost.

After breaking up an old MIDI file into its constituent instruments and reassigning each to tracks, I re-recorded an old idea that came to me in Strasbourg over 10 years ago. The lyrics, which I found on a 3×5 card written with a fountain pen, have no meaning at all, even if you manage to decipher them.