Ten for Father's Day

Continuing the practice of putting numbers in my post titles, I ran 10 miles on Father's Day. I was VERY tempted to stay in bed and sleep late, but as I've always said, you shouldn't make a decision about whether or not to run while you're half-asleep in frog pajamas. Yes, that's a Tom Robbins reference for you. Anyway, I had planned on getting up at seven, and that's what I did. It was tough, but I'm so glad I did. I drove about 550 miles to Tulsa and back yesterday to drop off Daughter #1 at church camp, and today I added another 10 miles to the overall weekend total. I knew if I didn't get up and run early it wasn't going to happen since the temperature was forecast to climb into the nineties during the day. It worked out well as clouds rolled in from the north and I spent most of the run under overcast skies. I felt good and was happy to get in such good mileage on an early summer morning.

During today's run I finished up the last part of the Hardcore History series on the Eastern Front of WWII. All I can say is wow. How have we not heard more about this? I'm convinced the war was won there after listening to these podcasts. In America we talk about D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge and those epic events, yet the tide of the war was actually turned in eastern Europe. I've read plenty on D-Day and I know the Allied troops who gave their lives and those who punched through the beaches are heroes. But the absolute carnage and scale of the war in Russia dwarfs what happened in western Europe. I've already put a book on hold at the library to learn more about this, and sadly enough the literature on this part of the war is scarce compared to western Europe and the Pacific. It's an odd scenario in trying to root for one side or the other since Hitler and Stalin butchered millions of people and both were evil to the core. Yet if Stalin's troops hadn't won their part of the war the world would be a far different place. I still recommend the series and think there's a lot worth pondering from the history of the war in eastern Europe.