Thirteen.

No. That's not the number of miles I ran today. Or even the number I plan to run tomorrow.

Nope. That's the total number of miles that I ran last week while on vacation.

Yeah. You can only imagine what a pleasure I was to be around.

The last time we went on vacation, to The Bahamas two years ago, I got up every morning and ran. I didn't know how many miles each day (and it probably wasn't more than two), but I did it every single morning we were there without fail.

We stayed at The Atlantis resort which felt pretty safe to me. I passed the same people every morning as I walked out to the marina to run. I passed them on the way back and I was usually the onsite Starbucks' first customer of the day.

Our vacation this year, though, was to Colorado. Since where we live is fifteen feet above sea level, mountains are an interesting novelty to us. Seriously, once we got out of Texas and into New Mexico and then Colorado, we were stunned into silence over the scenery.

This vacation was not as conducive to running, though. Our hotel was in the middle of the city, and while I'm sure it was perfectly safe, I didn't feel comfortable heading out for a run alone. Because of the high altitude, my ears felt plugged up constantly. I didn't have any serious altitude sickness, but occasionally I would feel a little lightheaded. I didn't think that running outside would be my best bet.

So I was confined to a treadmill, in the evening, after we had basically climbed mountains all day and everyone else was asleep.

I was so exhausted most nights that two or three miles were the most I could talk myself into.

So yeah, 13 miles. I'm not proud of it, but I'm also over it. Even though we had a serious thunderstorm at home today, I drove to the gym and ran my usual 10 miles on the treadmill.

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The Internet is a marvelous thing.

On Wednesday, while we were spending a rainy, cold day in the Mile High City, I registered for the 2014 Houston Marathon.

Houston has gone to a lottery for us regular runners. The race ran into a problem with people buying up entries and then selling them for a much higher price. I'm not a fan of this lottery thing, but I can understand the reasoning behind it.

I signed up, and in a couple of weeks I'll know if I'm in. If I don't get Houston, then I'm going to be looking for a marathon to do in January or February of 2014. Austin is out, because...hills (I'm going to run that one, eventually, but I need to plan out my training a little better), but there are a couple in Louisiana that are possibilities.

I'm still looking for a June race...and I'm not being very successful. It's so hot around here that they are few and far between. I'm willing to drive to the Houston area, but that's about as far as I'm going to go for a 5K or 10K. And with my kids' activities, we're kind of booked a couple of June weekends already.

I'm still looking though.