Run 12 miles / then Beer Festival

Went to Sacramento for the weekend. We ran 12 miles at a slow training pace in the morning (11 min/mile+). I was surprised it hurt quite a bit. After a shower and clean-up I had a residual pain in one of the joints of my right foot which stayed with me for a week. A couple of people told me it could be a stress fracture. I'm not sure but it certainly was quite painful. Sometimes I think that running slower encourages a heavier running style which is harder on the body.

In the afternoon we went to the California Brewfest beer festival and met Scott and his friend Damon there. The beer fest was a bit different than a UK one. At the door we were given 10 tokens each to spend on 4oz at a time of beer. In the uk the normal minimum measure is a half pint so you have to drink a lot more to sample a wide variety of beer. The token method was a bit more civilized and kept down the quantity of beer we were forced to drink. Another odd aspect of the arrangements were that all the beer pulls were mounted on ice boxes in order to achieve the appropriate temperature. Very odd.

Damon very kindly invited us to join them all for BBQ dinner at their house. Very nice indeed given that we'd only just met. A very nice evening!