My Progress

I am about 50 minutes away from finishing up probably the most productive and awesome memorial day weekend in the history of the world. Why, you might ask? let me give you a bit of a glimpse into how productive I can be...

as you know, i have been working on a little retaining wall in my back yard for the past month. well saturday, a friend from work (thanks vince) helped me get the wall almost completely finished. It looks very profession and basically just kicks ass. We didn't finish because I ran out of blocks cuz i need to do one more layer than I originally expected. no biggie... i need like 6-8 more blocks and I am good to go. once I figure out how to post pictures on this blog, I will definitely be posting them.

if that wasn't enough productivity for one weekend, today (memorial day), I mowed my lawn, whacked some weeds (literally not figuratively), and then did some light weeding. but wait, theres more. I then spent about 6 hours working on my final project for my class and accomplished a whole ton of crap. i think we probably have like 3 or 4 hours of work left to do which is impressive cuz it isn't due until thursday {patting myself on the back}.

so obviously i got a lot done this weekend... but how was it awesome? i ran 9.5 miles this morning with the group in the wissahickon. on top of all this, i still had plenty of time this weekend to spend with the most amazing woman!!! yay!! best weekend ever... :)

My Committment

Another blogless week has passed, and I fear that my blogging is flailing like so many other hobbies in my past. I enjoy doing it, but I have been hard pressed to find the time to do it. maybe when i get more committed to my training throughout the summer it will be a good outlet... we will see.

I learned an important lesson last saturday. As I believe I stated in the last entry, I had a bit of a head cold late last week. Saturday morning I was feeling ok... the joints weren't hurting so I figured i was fine for a 9 mile or so run with the Philly runners... a group i run with. I completed the run, struggling the whole way, and basically totally crashed when I got home. I felt like total crap the rest of the day, and by the next day, the head cold had moved its way to my chest. so know, I had a serious head/chest cold and ended up staying in the whole weekend. the lesson is... sometimes it is best to not run and just let my body recover, even though i don't feel terrible. a guy i run with, jim, was mature enough to cancel out of a marathon he was planning to race this weekend because of a nagging achilles injury, which is definitely a very wise move, because of the risk of a more serious injury. hopefully if I am ever faced with a similar situation, I will act as maturely (sp?) as he did... props to jim!

I got my bricks for the retaining wall in the back. This wall has typified projects around my house... i start out with all sorts of plans and goals and get tired of working on the job long before it is completes. however, I am going to do my best to make hella progress tomorrow. I am even bailing on the saturday morning run to save energy for working on that (and I still have a bit of a cough). Hopefully, the next time you hear from me, i will have a bitchin wall in the back yard. chicks love retaining walls... or maybe it is dogs love trucks... i forget.

total mileage for the week will probably end up around 12 or 13... not to shabby considering the bad cold I had. next week I am going to have to start buckling down a bit... which could be tough cuz I have my final project (yay it is almost summer) due for my class on thursday. i think I can smell the freedom!!

My Week/Weak Recap

So it looks to be friday already and my last post was on monday. It is pretty crazy how time can fly even though the whole time, it seems like time is dragging. For example... every day this week, work was a struggle to get through, but now that it is friday, i can't believe 5 days have already passed. Craziness. here is a bit of an update on the whole week... not that much notable happened.

I got a call from the dermatologist and he said the biopsies said that the stuff they removed was pre-cancerous so they have to hack into my back and cut out all of the stuff around each biopsy location. I already had two similar procedures so this will make an even four. yippee. it isn't a big deal... just go in for a half an hour... get some stitches and a few weeks later remove the stitches. hopefully won't cramp my style too much. also, I got another cold. apparently according to my blog entries, I last got a cold in late february (i knew blogging would be good for something), so I guess it has been 3 months. but still... a cold in May, come on. I guess leading the rock star lifestyle while being an engineer isn't a good combination... and by rock star lifestyle I mean getting to bed at 11:30 and waking up at 6:30. Move over axl rose...

I got a few good runs in this week though... not much mileage but I felt pretty good at a quick pace for me. The 12 miles i did put in were all under 8 min pace, which i was happy about. I ran more at night this week than normal, so maybe that had something to do with it. I can still feel the soreness in my right ankle... but it seems only when i am pivoting and I am not wearing shoes. It never hurts when running or walking, so I guess I shouldn't be too concerned. Maybe I twisted it playing basketball or something last week and it just needs some time to heal up (crossing my fingers). I hope so, cuz I have big plans for doing my first marathon this fall and I can't be hampered with a gimp ankle!!

I ordered the blocks for my retaining wall today... they should be here thursday so I can do the job next weekend. it is going to be awesome. a little pricier than I was hoping, but it will look awesome!!

My Poor Preparation

so for my class I am taking this semester, we had a presentation about a position paper that we wrote earlier in the semester. It is somewhat mind-boggling to me how different I am in the professional world and the academic world. In the professional world, I think of myself as successful and motivated. However, in the academic world, I have always been a bit of a slacker, simply doing enough to get by and only that much. This reared its ugly head today during this presentation. Last week, I spent a little time putting together the slides for the presentation, but didn't even do a complete read through of the paper, which later proved to be a gigantic mistake.

so i stumbled my way through my slides and then handed it off to my partner who did about the same. we finished up our presentation in like 8 minutes (supposed to be around 15) and then opened up the floor for questions. All questions went something like this, "tell me more about this." My response was generally, "um... I didn't do extensive research into the specifics of how this works, but the general concept is this." Then the teacher asked some questions that we totally misinterpretted and then sat down assuming we just failed the class. That might be a bit of an overstatement because the whole paper (abstract, paper, and presentation) is only worth 20% of our grade, but it could have gone much better. Maybe i should try to start applying some of my work ethic to my school work... or maybe I should just finish school... both options are good ones.

My Manual Labor

There is something so pure and beautiful about manual labor. This afternoon after my run and lunch, I continued digging out my little retaining wall behind my house. It was one of the warmer days of the year and it was right during the heat of the day. But I got out there with my shovel and dug up the last section of the existing retaining wall. By the time I was done, I was totally sweaty, dirty, and physically spent. it was awesome... i feel the same way about shoveling snow, which I think I have mentioned in a previous post. Shoveling snow is even better because you see the beautiful results of your work immediately. which is much different than what I do at work everyday.

So I played basketball yesterday and I noticed a couple nights ago that I have some soreness in my right ankle. It seems almost like a bone issue. I have never had a stress fracture or anything but for some reason it just seems like how one would feel. It hasn't affected my running or normal walking, but when I a pivot on it... it just seems like the bone is being stressed and gives a pang of pain. maybe I am just being spooked... hella possible.

My Knifing

so I got to go to my yearly dermatologist appointment, which happens every 2 years. for those of you who don't know (and care), a couple years back I got two moles removed off my back because they started looking all precancerous like... so i have two bad-ass scars located symmetrically on my back that look like knife or bulletwounds... at least that is what I tell the ladies. So i went in and I wasn't impressed with the nurse at all.. she asked me what my story was and ended up not listening at all... interrupted me half way through and said, "now strip down to your underoos" or some derivative of that... i can't be certain what she said and then she walked out.

the doctor on the other hand is a super nice guy and i wish all doctors were like this guy. so friendly, great calming voice, very confident in what he does. he even convinced me it was a good idea to cut off two more moles off my back. or they were biopsies or something but he doesn't expect them to result in anything, they just looked a little fishy. but I was happy to oblige to anything he said... it is amazing how different of a reaction you will get from someone just by the tone of your voice. i had another interesting thought (at least it seemed it at the time) today that I figured would have been good blog material, but I have since forgotten.

anywho... i didn't run today or yesterday, but I am going to get back on the horse tomorrow morning. right now I am listening to ben folds new cd... the song "landed" is great... similar in vein to another great BFF song, philosophy, but different enough to make it interesting.

My Genetics

so I was planning on basically laying around all sunday (today) but the weather outside was simply gorgeous so I had to do something. I started off the day with some breakfast and a little chapelle show that recorded during the week. then I sat around for a little bit more then decided I had to do something outside. so I went for an easy slow run... 4.9 miles at 10 minute pace. It was a little relaxing and necessarily slow because i had just eaten some cheerios.

after I got home... i kicked it outside a while on the lawn talking to my madre, cuz it is mothers day and all, and then i think i ate some lunch. left over manicotti... it was just as good two days later. then I started working outside. I started out with some light weeding and ended up tearing apart the retaining wall I am going to practice on. The digging was killer on my back. Of the many glorious traits I have inherited from my parents, the one that concerns me most right now is the whole joint problem thing.

so my mom has had arthritis since I can remember and my dad has had all sorts of knee and back problems. I think I am pretty much pre-destined to have to stop running and being active all together because of some combination of joint/back problems. As a 26 year old guy who is not over weight, a little digging shouldn't make my back hurt this bad... at least I don't think it should. i was able to get through the digging by stopping like every half hour and stretching my back and doing some fake yoga poses that stretched it. after doing this, it felt a little better for a bit and then just kept getting worse and worse. Hopefully by doing this I am just buidling up some of the muscles in the area instead of causing any damage. i guess we will see...

my pictures from the broad street run are posted on the website www.broadstreetrun.com if anybody wants to look me up. my bib number is 368... enjoy!!

My Broad............... street run

Here is my race report for the Broad street run which I ran this past sunday. it is a 10 mile race that goes from north philly to south philly along broad street the whole way.

The skys were angry the day of the race... and my stomach would later prove to be angry as well. I got to the race way to flippin' early, ended up at the race site around 7:00 cuz i planned too much time for traveling to the start. It wouldn't have been a big deal except it was cold and rainy... which would have been fine if I was running the whole time... but I was only standing... which would have been fine if I wasn't supposed to be loose for the race... which would have been fine if I didn't care how I did... but I did. So, I stood around for an hour, chatted with a bunch of Philly Runners who were also running the race, met up the other members of my team (yay Last Minute Wonders B!!!) and then went to the starting area when they called my pace.

I have a small confession to make. When I made the last post about wanting to run a 7:15 minute per mile pace, that was a bit of a half truth. that was my public "would-be-happy-to-get" goal. In my mind, I really was hankering to break a 7 minute per mile pace and thought I might have a chance at it. So i lined up at the front of the 7 minute pace sign. The race started and things went pretty smoothly... I felt strong for the first 5 miles and my awesome splits are indicative of this (6:56, 6:56, 6:54, 6:55, 6:59). I could not have imagined I would ever have splits that even. During this time I slapped a bunch of kids hands, something I have always wanted to do in a race but never did... I was probabably smiling for a quarter mile after this. After mile 5 I started to lose some steam and my splits got progressively slower and i started having flash backs to the ceasar rodney half marathon in March. 6-8 went by in splits of 7:00, 7:05, and 7:15.

About a half mile before the 9th mile marker, there were some people with a stereo that started playing "gonna fly now" just as I was approaching them. As ridiculous as it sounds, it gave me quite the boost for the last mile and half. Mile 9 went by in 7:07. Mile 10 I felt very surprisingly strong and even had a little left over to smoke a few people at the end... always fun. The last 50 meters I started sprinting a bit and got the funny rubbery leg feeling that I remember having for the first time when i ran a 5k in high school cross country... and it felt the same as it did 9 years ago... totally out of control and a little bit spooky. Mile 10 fell in at 6:45. My elapsed time was 70:49 but I was able to sneak a chip time of 69:58, just two seconds under my goal!!! nice...

Now onto the issues with my stomach. generally when i run anything more than 4 miles I carry gatorade because I get really bad stomach cramps if I get dehydrated. Today I had my usual gatorade, but everytime I tried to drink, I felt like I was going to hurl. so I ended up drinking only like 2 oz in the 10 miles, which is nothing compared to a normal training run. After the race, I had terrible stomach cramps for like 2 hours possibly because I didn't drink enough when I was running... obviously I am doing something wrong with my diet or something leading up to the race... who knows. something to work on for the next race.

overall, I think this was my best, most mature race yet. It also was an amazing feeling to go to the start, see people you know running, run the race and see people you know running, and then finish and trade stories with people you know running. it was one of my better race experiences to date (only done like 8 races). thanks pr.