Livin' the Dream in Lima

So... (as if you didn't know already)... I am running my first marathon on Sunday. I am excited/nervous/petrified/happy all at the same time. I know, it takes talent to feel all those feelings at once. In discussion with some of my friends/co-workers, a lot of people have told me, "Just run for fun! It'll be such an accomplishment to finish!" And yes, it will be a huuuuge accomplishment to finish a marathon! But, the competitive side of me thinks about the numbers. My finish time, pace per mile, negative splitting. After running competitively for 8+ years straight, I'm not quite ready to just "run for fun." According to several online "running pace calculators", my half-mary time (from November) of 1:36 puts me at about a 3:20 marathon, 7:38-pace. Yikes! That is crazy fast (for a marathon). So, in a desperate attempt for reassurance, I emailed my former coach last week asking for advice. [ Side note : He has run many, man...

Do you know what today is?  For all the math-minded people out there… it’s Pi Day! Get it? 3.14! March 14th! As a math teacher, Pi Day is a big celebration. We threw all caution to the wind in the classroom today, and participated in various Pi-related activities. Now, a crash course in Pi for those of you who can’t remember back to their math studies days… Pi is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. No matter the size of the circle, it always comes down to 22/7, or approximated as a decimal 3.1415926…… The cool thing about Pi is that it goes on and on forever and never ends. One of the things we did as a school was we hung up the first 1500 digits of Pi around the building. Each student was responsible for creating three digits of their own, and then we put them up as this super-long trailing number throughout the building. In my classroom, we played a game called “Circle Nim,” a two-person strategy game of placing various-sized circles on a piec...