Today starts the NHL playoffs and with temperatures overnight hitting freezing and parts of the country seeing snow, it definitely feels like hockey weather! I’m a huge hockey fan, so I love this time of year and I even found a contest that you fill out the NHL playoff bracket just like you would for the March madness tournament and the prize is a dinner with the lead singer from Five for Fighting (host of the contest) and tickets to an L.A. Kings game next year! It’s not 100% clear how you win the contest (i.e. most correct picks, random drawing of entries, etc.), but it was fun to fill out the bracket anyway, since I’ve been trying to get people to fill out NHL playoff brackets for years!

I was trying to find a picture of my first 5k race, which I did at the 2011 NHL All-Star Game, and while I know it’s probably floating around somewhere in cyber space, I can’t seem to find it right now, so instead, I found a picture from the fan fest where they had various player’s equipment to try on. I picked Marc-Andre Fleury’s goalie equipment to try on… though I was only able to put on his pads, jersey and helmet. You can see the pants laying on the floor behind me – it was either the pads or the pants, but there was no way I was going to be able to put both on. There was also skates and gloves, but I could barely move as it was!

2014 Race Calendar Update
I’ve officially registered for 2 more races this year. For the 4th year in a row, I’ll be running the Run! Ballantyne race that my company sponsors a team for, but this year I will be running the 10k. I was really on the fence as to whether or not I was even going to do the race at all (they offer a 5k and a 10k option), but it’s always a lot of fun to socialize with everyone during and after the race and peer pressure won out today. The biggest reason I was hesitant to sign up for the race was because of the 10k course – it’s a 2 loop course where you run almost completely back to the start line (up a major hill) before heading back out to finish the second loop of the 10k. This really doesn’t appeal to me, though I understand that given the traffic in the area, there probably aren’t really any other options, but that will definitely be a mental barrier that I’ve got to get over in the next month.

I’ve also registered for state #11 on my quest for 50, Texas! I’ll be in Texas for a work conference in early June, so of course I had to see if there were any races in town while I would be there and I was able to coordinate my travel to complete a 5k before I need to start working. I’ve now officially registered for 12 races in 2014 and only need 2 more to complete my 14 in 2014 challenge.

Are you picking up more races now that the weather is warming up? Who will you be rooting for in the NHL playoffs?