Kids these days

I came across this article today at work, and thought it deserved some more attention.

A four-year old, running 65km, in just over 7 hours. I did the math, and it works out to 6:30 per kilometer. This makes me feel startingly inadequate. When I ran a half-marathon, a mere 21(.097)km, I clocked in at about 1:57, which works out to around 5:35 per kilometer. So, I have him beat on speed, but this kid ran more than three times as far. And let's not forget, he is four. To be fair, his training regimen is a little bit more intense (he runs 10 hours a day!), but I am simply astounded.

Interesting tidbit about how is mother was going to sell him until another couple adopted him, which is a bit sobering, but really only serves to underline how amazing a feat that is.

Snakes on a plain

In the last months, life has settled into a predictably mundane routine. Although the insertion of playoff hockey over the last few weeks has livened things up a bit, the situation was in need of a bit of excitement.

The solution? Snakes!


A road trip with the roommates to the Narcisse snake dens was filled with mild hiking, brief learning and good old-fashioned snakery. The science of the snake dens is pretty interesting: underground caves formed by weak acids eroding limestone creating networks of subterranean caves; first time snake den-izens finding their way via a chemical trail laid down by the veterans; comments on the ritual of mass reproduction; it's all there on signs for visitors to read. A helpful interpreter even told us all about the cold snap of '99, when the snakes were in such a hurry to go inside that they jammed a series of corridors and suffocated.

But let's not kid ourselves: the best part was joking around and playing with snakes. Even though the sun also decided to take the weekend off, meaning most of the snakes spent the day underground, there were still enough snakes that many ventured beyond the enclosures to be held, gawked at and antagonized by onlookers. The particularly ornery resident of den #3 (I have decided to call him Edwin) pictured above seemed to enjoy threatening us by opening his fang-less mouth at the toes of our shoes.

I'm a bit curious about how the town of Narcisse got its name. It didn't appear to be overly self-loving or egocentric, nor did it seem a very mythological place. It also didn't fit in with the Scandinavian theme of the area (Arborg, Gimli, etc.)

And, for your reading pleasure: It seems my roommate has written his own account of things.