Frog Log 2005

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February 21, 2005 - Edinburgh (United Kingdom) • Chris: Phil is now at my family's place in Morinville (Canada). I am presently in Edinburgh, Scotland though, so I will have him sent here.

March 1, 2005 - Edinburgh (United Kingdom) • Chris: I will check with home, but I am not sure what method they sent Phil. If it is surface mail, then it might take a couple more weeks. I have found some great runs my friends and I want to take him on though. Up to Edinburgh Castle, Calton Hill, Arthur's Seat, and we might even take him with us to the famous Roslyn Chapel... I'll let you know as soon as he gets here.

April 7, 2005 - Edinburgh (United Kingdom) • Chris: Phil is here!!! Just got tied up in the transport from Canada to here.

April 11, 2005. Dear Phil, I am looking forward to running with you someday, hopefully you come and visit me close to a marathon or other race of sorts so we can run together. Also, my little boy (three years old) would want to run with you but his laps are still reasonably short. - Klaas (Netherlands)

April 27, 2005 - Edinburgh (United Kingdom) • Chris: We (my girlfriend and I) took Phil on a tour to the Highlands with us, sailing, and for a couple runs and walks. Here is Phil with his wee sheepy buddy. Here is Phil with Ian, our bosun at the sailing school. And here is Phil with his not so wee sheepy buddy.

May 17, 2005 - Toronto (Canada) • Sally: I am happy to report that Phil has enjoyed his time in Toronto. Spring has been slow arriving this year but by the time the "Mississauga Half Marathon" arrived, we had great weather and a great run. Phil would have liked to have worn the number but it was just a bit too big for him, so he agreed that I would wear it and he would have his photo taken beside it. After the run, Phil was content to relax on the balcony in front of the flowers which we planted later that afternoon. One of the high points for Phil was seeing the CN Tower. He perched on the railing (assisted by a little sticky tape to ensure he didn't lose his balance), with the CN Tower in the background, and reflected on his brief but happy stay here. Phil is a fine frog and we enjoyed his company. Bon voyage Phil.

May 24, 2005 - Charlottetown (Canada) • Carol: We have seen where Phil has toured the world from the Great Pyramids to the CN Tower, while participating in many races. Most of us who like to take part in a road race or two realize they don't happen without a great deal of work on the part of volunteers. Phil expressed an interest to just that and help he did. Each year at the end of May the Prince Edward Island Red Cross put on a multi-sport relay with over a thousand participants who run, bike and canoe. Phil was on our support team. He held life jackets at the ready, he pumped air in bike tires, and he was a spotter for when our runners came into the transition areas. Our six-person team could not have gotten through the day without Phil's help. As a way of saying thank you to Phil for all his work, we did a tour of Prince Edward Island the next day, on his agenda. Phil had a change to help with the relay event, tour our beautiful North Shore beaches, practice some great golf and a visit our famous heroine known worldwide, Anne of Green Gables. Phil, like so many other visitors had to see where she lived. Phil had a party the night before he left Charlottetown. The next day he nearly missed his plane because of his lack of discipline when it comes to "Maritime" beer. At one time during the night Phil whispered in my ear: "I'm a drinker with a running problem" and then fell asleep. Thanks for the visit to Charlottetown, Phil. Hope to see you on the road sometime. All the best Phil, keep in touch.

July 2, 2005 - Daytona Beach (Usa/Florida) • Jerry: Fifty-seven weeks ago, Phil was invited to visit us in Daytona. He is a very popular little frog. Phil journeyed to us from Canada. Upon Phil's arrival in Daytona Beach we immediately took a family photo with host and hostess, Donna & Jerry Hiatt. A busy week was planned for Phil and his first public appearance was to be at the "Pepsi 400" at Daytona International Speedway. Phil arrived a little late to attend the races but he did have a photo session with some race fans and Beachcomber members: here is Phil eating pizza and Hanging with Rick, Phil's racing idol Dale Earnhardt, Phil tailgating, Phil giving Peggy a nuzzle, Phil sitting on top of banner watching over the Beachcombers, and Phil with fans. After a full day at the races, Phil had a good nights rest to be fresh for the Saturday morning run on the beach. He couldn't stay long since he had to get to his job as "lifeguard for a day"! Here is Phil getting set for the day! "Oooppss better turn around and face the ocean!". "Phil, turn your whole body around!". "That's much better!". And Phil is ready to shout: "Hey up there! Look at me! I'm guarding the beach!". But it is too late, Phil is already gone. "Phil, get back on your tower!". "I've been in the sun too long! Those feet look mighty big!". Oh boy! It's Saturday night and Phil is ready to party! There is a fiftieth birthday party and here is Phil with the Birthday Boy! Come on, isn't he cute? But what does he do? Phil is just taking a sip, and here is the proof that Phil likes wine and beer. Hey, wait a minute: is this Phil or Phyllis? The birthday party continues. "Get out of the gifts Phil! They're not yours!". Here is a photo of Phil between two roses, Phil at the Bank (?), and another one with Phil enjoying the party (we are sure by now Phil likes pretty girls!). Poor Phil! He had one big headache Sunday morning but got up to run anyway! That was some birthday party! Too much party for Phil! He had to rest after his run. Phil had a wonderful time in Daytona Beach. He met and ran with many new friends on the beach and around the city. It was fun having Phil visit the Beachcombers but now he must be on his way to his next destination! Where? We are not sure but our friends at Run The Planet will be letting us know soon. Phil has his bags packed and ready to take on his next adventure! Good bye Phil! We hope our path will one day cross again ole buddy! It sure has been fun knowing you!

July 16, 2005. Phil needs to do some high altitude training. Phil is cordially invited to visit us in Colorado. We offer lots of races and breathtaking runs (literally). We are at the Western entrance of Rocky Mountain National Park. We are also the home of the boreal toad. We love Phil! - Jeanne and David (Usa/Colorado)

July 20, 2005 - Palm Springs (Usa/California) • Hunter: Phil arrived today. It is around 108 °F (42 °C) in Palm Springs today, a bit hot for a run. He may revert to his froggy roots since we swim more than we run in July. Phil went to a Palm Springs City Council meeting with me today and got an introduction to American Civics.

August 22, 2005 - Grand Lake (Usa/Colorado) • Jeanne and David: Phil has arrived this morning in great shape and is adjusting to the altitude (8700 feet). We shall keep him entertained and comfortable.

September 15, 2005 - Appleton (Usa/Wisconsin) • Phil: Hi from sunny Wisconsin. After a long journey from Colorado it was great to get out and stretch my legs. The staff of the Community First Fox Cities Marathon Festival of Races (Debbie, Jesse and Sue) was here to greet me (they have been waiting three years to meet me). I met Bob the Bear who had a special marathon shirt made just for me. How do I look? We are off to the Green Bay Packer football game this weekend (maybe I will get to meet Bret Favre or Bubba Frank) and then on to the northern woods of Wisconsin. I will write again soon.

September 22, 2005 - Appleton (Usa/Wisconsin) • Sue: Phil is having a blast! We are going to visit the famous Clydesdale horses today. They are in town for Appleton's Octoberfest and hopefully a visit to the "Fox Cities Marathon".

September 24, 2005 - Appleton (Usa/Wisconsin) • Sue: Phil really enjoyed his visit to the "Fox Cities Marathon Festival of Races". We kept him pretty busy: Phil started out his weekend with photo opportunities with the legendary Bill Rodgers and some of the local running club who were at the Marathon office to help with bib stuffing for the race. At the Health Expo Phil was preparing for Sunday's marathon and decided to show the guys - Ron (his running partner), Steve (a member of the area running club), and Ryan (the pace car driver) - just how many push ups and squats he could do.

September 25, 2005 - Appleton (Usa/Wisconsin) • Sue: Sunday's race was a little wet, and Phil explained to Ron that there is no better weather than a misty cool day as they both kindly removed their rain gear for this photo. They made it all 26.2 miles and even with big smiles at the finish line. Phil's medal was a little big, but he wanted to display it proudly.

September 26, 2005 - Appleton (Usa/Wisconsin) • Sue: On Monday, before Phil had to head out for his next destination he helped drive and unload our trucks and pace cars. Rodger tried to shade Phil from the hot sun as he helped with the heavy soda cases and Stephani chauffeured Phil to the post office to reach his next destination. Good Bye Phil, it was great having you visit, the door is always open to come back and visit us again - Your friends at the Community First Fox Cities Marathon Festival of Races.

October 1, 2005 - Sheboygan (Usa/Wisconsin) • DuWayne: "Phil runs with he little groups too". Phil this weekend met the F.R.O.G. running group (Fabulous Runners of Greater Sheboygan) and ran a group run with four of the members available that day, out of the 18-25 runners. Here is Phil with DuWayne, member of the F.R.O.G. club an operator of http://scrunner.8k.com along the shores of Lake Michigan. Here is a picture of Phil meeting the Call-to-run frog (unnamed at this time), and Phil at home in the F.R.O.G. running group meeting house of Ron Nytes. Tomorrow Phil will run the 25th running of the "Lakefront Marathon" in honor of long-time member of the Badgerland Striders who recently passed away. The race director will be running the race in his honor with ultrarunner Roy Pirrung.

October 2, 2005 - Milwaukee (Usa/Wisconsin) • DuWayne: Phil the Frog participated in the 25th anniversary "Lakefront Marathon". He ran in honor of Paul Kutschera. Here is Phil with American Champion ultrarunner Roy Pirrung, attached to his bib, and here is Phil and Roy at the finish line.

October 12, 2005. I would like Phil The Frog to join me on a ten mile run through Umstead Park in Raleigh, North Carolina. It'd be great for Phil 'cause he'll eat some juicy horseflies that pester the runners along the trails. - Philip (Usa/North Carolina)

November 14, 2005 - Umeå (Sweden) • Phil: Ouch. Umeå. I've never heard of that town before. And I know for sure I've never been that far north. Luckily, global warming meant that the temperature stayed above the freezing point for most of the time. My host Stefan seemed nice, but complained about being sick and refused to take me out for a run. The first couple of days I felt that was okay, I needed some time to get rid of the jet lag anyway. And then Stefan introduced me to Kurt, who let me join him in running a marathon! Kurt was excellent company and I think I saw Stefan throwing out mugs at one of the waterholes along the course. (They are both members of the organising club Jalles TC). It took us 4:02.46 to complete the marathon. A couple of days later Kurt brought me for another jog in the Gammlia forest, along a hilly track where they use to hold world cup events for cross country skiing. And then back to my host - who still complained about his cough. I waited. And waited. Their 2-year-old daughter Tyra tried to cheer me up by running around in the house, but I was too concerned about that cat to really enjoy. I guess that my host wanted to cheer me up, so he took me to Copenhagen in Denmark. We stayed in a nice hotel and I had the opportunity to enjoy a close encounter with Tuborg beer. And the promise to take me out for a run in Denmark? Nope. Still blaming that cold, but I suspect it was the beer that made him sleep late that morning. Back in Umeå I waited some more. Started sleeping most of the days. I had to begin making plans about my escape. And finally, my host put on his running shoes. That was the moment I had waited for. I was prepared to jump but before I knew it we were back home! "A test run", he called it. The following morning he went out again, bringing along a guy named Jesper. And then my opportunity came. They went up on a bridge spanning the Umeå river, and Stefan put me on the railing. While he was fumbling with the camera I bravely jumped... But I missed the water. Even worse, I got stuck in a hole, blinded with mud in my eyes. I could hear them trying to spot me from high above, and even if I tried to be as silent as only a bored frog can be, they went down and found me. If I only had jumped five meters more to the left, I would have landed safely into the freedom of water. Anyway, Stefan was quite nice about the whole thing, helped me clean my eyes and promised that he would - at last - ship me over to United Kingdom. Otherwise, it's nice to be in a country where they really love frogs. I remember watching the Swedish national soccer team playing on the television, and the fans were doing a frog dance in the stands - I was touched.

November 17, 2005 - Warminster (United Kingdom) • Andrea: Phil arrived in Warminster today. He had a very quick journey from Sweden and appears to have brought the cold weather with him. As this is England, we offered him a cup of tea on arrival which he enjoyed. Phil and I then headed off to my Rosemary Conley Diet and Fitness Class. This class is taught by Judith Bosworth in Warminster and I have been attending it for almost two years. Phil agreed to pose for a photo with the class and helped me out with my sit-ups at the end. Phil and I have made great plans for the next week.

November 20, 2005 - Warminster (United Kingdom) • Phil: I've been having a fun time here in the UK, although we haven't been running yet! Andrea hurt her back in 2003. She had a bad fall whilst climbing in the Dolomites in Italy and her running has never been the same. What is it with these runners who invite me to visit? By the time I make it, so many of them are injured. I'm beginning to think I should travel with a physiotherapist. However, Andrea's promised me a run with the Warminster Running club on Wednesday night. I arrived Thursday evening just in time to head off to an aerobics class with Andrea. I had fun with the women in her class. They even did some swimming strokes as part of the routine (front crawl, back stroke, and breast stroke). Friday and Saturday were spent relaxing in Andrea's office at the University of Southampton and her house. On Sunday we went rambling/hiking with some of Andrea's friends from the aerobics class, Barbara and Helen, as well as Andrea's husband, Ian, who took the photo. Andrea lives in Warminster which is a small market town on the edge of the Salisbury plain. Our walk was from Heytesbury back to Warminster along the Imber Range perimeter path. The path is a 30 mile loop on the plain around the village of Imber. The British Army took over the village and the surrounding plane during World War II to use it to prepare for the D-Day invasion. After the war was over the villagers were not allowed to return and the plain is still used by the army. We could hear the army practicing with their big guns out on the firing range and I was a bit scared that they might get too close, but Andrea and Ian assured me that we would stay far enough away so I could just enjoy the walk. It was a very cold and misty day and a hoar frost had coated everything including the spider's webs. The views from the top of the ridge were eerie, but beautiful, with just the tops of the other ridges sticking up above the fog trapped in the valleys. It wasn't as good as a run, but not a bad alternative.

November 22, 2005 - Warminster (United Kingdom) • Phil: Today I went to work with Andrea again. She teaches Physical Chemistry at the University of Southampton and wanted my help teaching her first year laboratory class. We had to get up very early as she takes a train to work at 6:42 am. On the way in Andrea explained the experiment to me. We were going to use Beer's law to measure the amount of dye in a cough sweet. I was a bit confused as the only Beer laws I had encountered were in Salt Lake City where the beer can't be more than 3.2% alcohol and they certainly couldn't use that to analyse cough sweets. I discovered that Beer's law was an equation that related the absorbance (how dark the colour of a solution is) to the concentration of the dye. We were going to make up a series of solutions and measure the absorbance using a colorimeter. Now that I understood the experiment, I could help her students to get good results. While I was in the lab, I got weighed on a very sensitive balance. All the running I do around the world pays off and I'm still a fit and trim 32.5216 grams. I also tried out the Earth's magnetic field NMR instrument. Apparently an MRI scanner uses the same type of measurement although it's a bit more complicated. Andrea's students think she's a bit of a mad scientist, but they seem to really enjoy their Chemistry course. Tomorrow I'm going to see Andrea's research labs.

December 15, 2005 - Jakarta (Indonesia) • Phil: I finally arrived in Indonesia. It seemed a long time to go thru customs. I am here in Jakarta visiting Barbara and runners in the Jakarta Free Spririt Running group. Barbara had sent a driver to pick me up. I was so relieved to be out of my traveling case. I love the warmer weather. I could hardly wait to get to the pool for a little sunbathing. I thought it was pretty neat there was a cook ready to prepare my meal. I could get used to living here. Here is me wrapped in a 100,000 Indonesian rupias bill

December 16, 2005 - Jakarta (Indonesia) • Barbara: I have finally received Phil. He came yesterday so he was up and running this morning, although he thought 4:30 was a little early to be out. Phil will go to Jakarta International School today with my son. There are children from 56 countries at his school. We will travel to Singapore on Sunday so I will take him with us there as well for a few days.

December 16, 2005 - Jakarta (Indonesia) • Phil: The alarm went of at 4:15 am! I couldn't imagine what I was getting up so early for and then I realized we were going running. Who goes running this early? We were out the door at 4:30 and then two other runners showed up to run with Barbara. Their names were Zane and Andy. Here is me with Andy and Barbara. They all seemed a bit chipper to be up at this hour. They run together five days a week, although on some mornings they start at 5:00 and on Saturdays they don't start until 6:30. I went to the Jakarta International School with Barbara's son Nicholas. He goes to the middle school and later on went to the elementary school with Alexandra and visited Mr. Pearce's 4th grade class. There are students from 56 countries at the school and a Bali statue. These kids had as many stamps in their passport books as I did.

December 17, 2005 - Jakarta (Indonesia) • Phil: This is the day everyone sleeps in and doesn't start running until 6:30 am. All the runners meet at the zoo every Saturday morning to run inside the zoo's grounds. There were runners from Belgium, Korea, Singapore, America, Great Britain and Australia this morning; although they have lots more runners, a lot of them had already gone on holiday to their home countries. Here is me on a palm tree at the zoo, and here is me in a photo taken a little closer.

December 18, 2005 - Jakarta (Indonesia) • Phil: The alarm went off at 4:30 am so we could eat a little before we started a two hour long run at 5:00 am. They do their long runs every Sunday and run somewhere different each week. This week they ran to Senayan Stadium, which is where the Indonesians meet each Sunday to run around the outside of the stadium. We got back home, took a quick shower and then we were off to the airport to fly to Singapore for a short visit.

December 20, 2005 - Singapore (Singapore) • Phil: I got to have fun in Singapore. The first morning, I even got to sleep in as it is a rest day for Barbara. Thank goodness she sleeps in one morning a week! I got to visit the Singapore Athletic Association office and the National Stadium with Hayley. I really liked Singapore with all the shopping and Christmas lights out everywhere. I really liked to just hang out at the pool. I understand after running here why the "Singapore Marathon" was named one of the hottest marathons in the world.

December 22, 2005 - Singapore (Singapore) • Phil: Time to leave Singapore. We catch a flight back to Jakarta. I enjoyed my stay, but tomorrow I will be off to the Embassy to make my journey on to Korea.