Austin

I'm in Austin this week for a bus conference. I flew in on Sunday, the 4th, and will be flying out Wednesday afternoon. Before leaving, I decided that I would work hard to get plenty of sleep, eat right, and run during the conference. I usually fail to do all three. Last night I went to bed at about 9:30 - which was a good start. I woke up at 6:00 this morning and headed out for a run.

Unfortunately, my Garmin died about 5 minutes into the run. Somehow the battery went out even though I had charged it for several hours over the weekend in preparation for my trip. I was pretty unhappy at first, but decided to make the best of it.

My hotel is on the southern end of downtown near the convention center (4th and San Jacinto - Residence Inn). I ran north up San Jacinto/Congress toward the Capital building and UT. I enjoyed running through the campus. It was pretty dead at this time of the morning, which I appreciated b/c running in traffic is not much fun. Generally speaking the campus is pretty nice. Much different than Harding, but it has a lot of character for a university of its size (50,000 students I think).

Running around the Capital was fun also. Its a pretty awesome building that puts many other state capitals to shame. After circling the capital, I ran west on 6th street in order to check out REI and the shopping center on the west side of downtown. Of course REI was closed, but I wanted to make sure I knew where it was b/c I plan to head back there during the trip.

After visiting REI, I headed back to the hotel. Fortunately, the hotel has a hot contentinental breakfast and I sure made use of it. The Texas shaped waffles were awesome.