My Meandering Blog

Philly Marathon 2008

2008-12-01T20:35:00.010-05:00

Sigh.... I wish onomatopoeias were more effective when written. Getting this marathon behind me has been an enormous weight off of my back and chest. Here is a bit of a race report from what I can put together from memory.

The weekend leading up to the marathon, my beautiful wife came down with a serious chest cold and was knocked out of commission for the entire weekend. I was extremely worried about getting the same chest cold. I ended up getting a bit of a head cold on Tuesday, but thankfully it didn't move into my chest. I was feeling almost 100% by Saturday so I figured I was good to go for the race the following day. I picked up my race packet and the walk through philly was bitterly cold.

The race day started uneventfully with some Multi-grain Cheerios and a banana. I got to the start line without any hiccups. The race started and the first mile went by pretty slow. It was flippin' cold out, but I had on a few layers and I warmed up within the first couple miles. My plan was to start the race slowly and eventually work up to my goal pace of between 8:15-8:30 per mile. The following graph should give you some idea how the race went:

As can be seen from the graph above, the race went pretty well for the first 18 miles of the race. I was right around target pace and I felt pretty strong. After 18, my legs started tightening up and the pain in my legs start building to a level where I started questioning whether I would break 4 hours. I made a deal with myself that I would run to mile 21 and start walking for a minute or two and then run until the next mile marker, a similar stategy I had employed during my first attempt at 26.2.

I was able to run to 21 and I was right around 3:00 hours. I quickly did the math and figured out that I could average around 12 min/mile for the remainder of the race and barely sneak in under 4 hours. I started my strategy at 21 and I was able bang out the last 5 miles around 10.5 min/mile pace and cross the finish line in 3:55:25. After I crossed the finish line, I stopped my watch, bent down, put my hands on my knees, and breathed a huge sigh of relief. 4-6 months of training behind me and I accomplished my goal.

After eating/drinking the world's sweetest recovery food (warm chicken broth with rice), I started on the long trek home. The walk to the car was cold and painful (i had a serious blister on my right foot) and the walk up and down the stairs of the parking garage was painful due to the soreness that had already set in on my legs. But a small price to pay for finally absolving myself of the 2005 NYC Marathon memory.

22 miler

2008-11-02T08:34:00.003-05:00

Yesterday was my 22 mile run. Ay yay yay... that was a doozy. My legs started losing steam at around 17 miles and I felt like the last 5 miles were a death march. The first half of the run I think I was running 8:30s, but I definitely fell off that pace after mile 16 or 17.

I was extremely sore for the rest of the day and my legs are still aching like never before. I guess that means I am actually training above and beyond what I have done in the past, which is a good feeling. My left knee is still a bit sore after the run. I didn't tweak it or anything while I was running, but I think the pounding eventually got to it.

This run pretty much signifies the culmination of the ramp up for the marathon and it didn't give me the confidence that the marathon will go well. Hopefully, come marathon day, my legs will be a little better rested and I will be able to pull out those 8:30s for the first 20 miles and then get through the last 6 at around a 10:00 minute pace. That would put me at a 3:50 finish, which I would be quite happy with.

Total mileage for the week was just above 35.

20 miler

2008-10-19T22:51:00.002-04:00

I completed my 20 miler yesterday morning. I certainly wasn't burning up the sidewalks, but I finished in about 3 hours... right at 9:00 pace. The weather was perfect again... low 40s when I started. My legs started tightening up around mile 17, but I was able to finish up. After I finished, my calves cramped up pretty seriously. I have never had muscle cramps after running, so I must be pushing my self near my limits or I haven't been eating well enough. Overall it was about 31 or 32 miles for the week. I would have liked to hit 35 but maybe 2 weeks from now when I do the 22 miler. Eesh... i do not look forward to that.

My knees feel pretty good today (one day after the run). Nothing notable about the run... no squirrel attack and no parade.

18 miler

2008-10-05T09:46:00.004-04:00

This weekend was my scheduled 18 miler. It was gorgeous Saturday when I woke up, 50 degrees and slightly overcast. My longest run up until this point was a 16.4 mile death march before PDR in hot and extremely humid weather. I blamed that miserable performance on the weather, so I had high hopes for this morning.

The run was a completely different story from that run 3 or 4 weeks ago. I wasn't running at a blistering pace (around 9 minute miles the entire run), but I wasn't overheating and I wasn't progressively slowing down. I made it to the turn around with out many problems other than some aching in my knees. I have a feeling the aching is due to the age/mileage on my shoes, so I purchased a new pair. I didn't want to break them in today, but they should be ready by next long run. The last couple miles of the run were a bit of a struggle, as my legs started burning something fierce (similar to the PDR sensation), but I was able to finish up with enough gas to make it up the final hill near my house.

All told, the run ended up being 18.2 miles in around 2:45. Not quite the pace I was hoping for the marathon, but I will take it. Ohh and I got attacked by a squirrel on the return part of the run. I was running near some bushes and a squirrel lept out in between my legs and tried to trip me. Thankfully he didn't claw or bite me, but we both left uninjured from what I could tell. And for those wondering if squirrel fur is as soft and fuzzy as it looks... it definitely is.

To blog or not to blog

2008-09-30T10:58:00.004-04:00

It has been another 5 months or so since my last blog. I have long considered shutting down the blog, because an unmaintained blog is worse than no blog, in my opinion. However, I have never given up hope that I will actually return to consistently blogging, but it seems I just never make it a priority.

A quick summary of the races in the past 5 months.

Broad Street - 1:10:31 - I was pretty happy with this race, even though i was 2 minutes off my PR. I was nowhere near the shape I was in when I PR'ed so I was pleasantly surprised by my performance.

Run for your life 5k (september 9, 2008) - 20:54 - This 5k is run through Great Valley Corporate Center and is one of the hilliest races I have run (other than the pretzel city sports races). I was pretty pleased with my time for this race and I think it will set me up for a sub-20:00 5k on a flat course. I don't think I will be running any 5k's for at least a couple months, but maybe the reindeer romp in december.

PDR - 1:51:who cares - This race was probably the worst race I have ever run ... including my 4:45 marathon. The race fell in the middle of a week long bathroom remodel, so I wasn't very well rested for the race. I had been training fairly consistently and had peaked in the low 30's for mileage/week (which is pretty good for me), so I figured I would be able to get a reasonable time for race, regardless of how well I was rested. I was definitely wrong. After the first mile or two (near my goal pace of 7:15-7:30ish), my legs were burning and I considered dropping out of the race near the art museum. I decided at the 5 mile mark that I would treat the race as a training run and finish no matter what the time. The last 8 miles of the race were pretty much me stumbling towards the finish. I am not sure if it was the lack of rest or the lack of significant speedwork that doomed the race, but after a week of sparse running, I think I have finally progressed to the acceptance part of my grieving.

I am running the philly marathon in a little under 8 weeks and my training is going pretty close to plan. Before the PDR, my training peaked with a 16.4 mile run and I hope to return to long runs this weekend with an 18 miler. If everything goes perfectly, my goal for the race is anything under 3:40, but I would be pretty happy with under 4 hours. Based on my long training run paces, I think the 3:40 is reasonable... but who knows what my body will do when I hit the 20 mile mark.

Pre-BSR Jitters

2008-05-03T14:30:00.003-04:00

I stopped playing soccer sometime in March (the team I was playing on disbanded for the time being) and my ankles and knees haven't felt better since I started playing again. I should probably take this as a sign that maybe soccer isn't my sport anymore, but I love the competition and it is nice to get back into something I have missed for almost 10 years. Even though my ankles would probably regret it, if the team gets back together, I plan on joining up. Sorry to everyone that will hear my complaints about soccer injury after soccer injury, but I can't keep away.

The Broad Street Run is coming up tomorrow and I am quite nervous. It has been since last September since I have raced (and pretty much that long since I have blogged) and I am quite apprehensive because I am not where I would like to be with my training. I am never where I would like to be with my training, so I should be used to the feeling. My goal for tomorrow is to break 70:00 and hopefully have a fairly evenly paced race. If I can accomplish this, it will be a good start to a few other summer races, 10k in chalfont and possibly a couple of the West Chester XC series 5ks.

I have been entertaining the thought of making another attempt at a marathon this fall. I am considering philly because it is no traveling, reasonably flat, and hopefully comfortably cool. NYC was fun and it would be nice to go out there and take it on again, but maybe I will take the easy road. No matter where I am going to run it, I will definitely have to commit to it within the next month. I will not half-ass my way through another marathon (one was hard enough for my fragile ego to take), so I want to give my self plenty of time to increase mileage so I don't risk injury. eek... marathons scare me...

My Kryptonite

2007-11-11T22:39:00.000-05:00

Not to compare myself to superman (and in the running sense I am very far from superman), but my ankles are my kryptonite. Last week, I resprained my left ankle during a soccer game. This rash of ankle injuries is beginning to show me (no matter how resistant I am to accepting the fact) that i can't do everything I want at the intensity that I want. I can play soccer, but I should also expect that I am likely to get injured and my training for running is likely to be interrupted. At a minimum, I need to learn my physical limits and train/play inside of those. I am so ridiculously competitive that once a game starts or a race starts, it is hard for me to not compete as hard as I can.

I decided after this last ankle injury that I will continue to play soccer, but will wear an ankle brace while playing. It limited my range of motion, but I didn't roll my ankle, so that is a start. I have also returned to the road for some limited mileage. I have been running without the brace without pain, so that has been encouraging. Eventually, I hope to get back on the trail again to break up the monotony of the road.

My Run for Life 5k 2007

2007-09-19T12:16:00.000-04:00

Last night I ran the Run for Life 5k in the Great Valley Corporate Center. This year was the 3rd annual running of the race individuals from our company. The first year our team placed 3rd, the second year we didn't have enough people for a team, and this year we set a record with the number of people running on our team (5... woo hoo!!).

As is probably apparent from my blog or lack there of, I haven't been training as consistently as I would like. I still have some lingering soreness from my ankle injury over two months ago. It may have been a better idea to take a month or two off of running to let the ankle heal up completely, and then get back into it. Who knows... maybe next injury I will take that tactic. but anyway, back to the race...

The course is quite hilly and I didn't expect any PRs out of my legs. The first two miles of the course are mostly downhill so I told one of my co-workers I would run the first mile at 6:15 with him and then ease off the pace and see what happens for the remainder of the race. The first mile came and went with a 6:13, followed by the second at 6:37... then the hills began. I slowed to a snail's pace and I believe the third mile was just under 8:00 pace. I was running in no-man's land for most of the race, so there isn't much to report. I finished with a time of around 21:13 (not official yet) and got around 26th place of around 230 people. For this course, I am pretty happy with the result. All the members of our team placed extremely well, everybody under 23 minutes, which was great. Sadly it wasn't quite fast enough for the team awards. We lost out again to the likes of Centocor, Vanguard, and Community Volunteers in Medicine (the recipient of the fund raising money). I am not sure of our team place, but we probably placed 4th or 5th.

Hopefully this race will lead into a great fall training season culminating with two successful races. The first is the 10k bridge run where I PR'ed last year with 42:11 and the second is a 5k to be determined (possibly the reindeer romp). My goal for the 10k is anything under 42:00 and the 5k is to break the seemingly unbreakable 20 minute plateau. I didn't get the 20 minute 5k this summer, but i think there is a chance by year's end.

My 2 Week Hiatus

2007-07-22T14:30:00.000-04:00

About 2 weeks ago, I tweaked my ankle playing soccer. It wasn't anything serious, I just caught a ball on my toe and it twisted my ankle. I was able to play through it, but have had soreness in my ankle ever since. It seems to be improving every day (except the day i "had" to play soccer because it was the final game of the season), so I believe this week I should be able to make it back to running regularly. Soccer is also on hiatus until september sometime, so that also should give me more time to focus on my running. I have a feeling my 5k goal may be long gone, but who knows, maybe I will put together a good streak!

Tomorrow, Kristin is starting a new contract job working for a big law firm in philly!! Way to go Kristin!! We were planning on doing a dry run of the commute today (and probably grab some food in the city), but SEPTA has closed down the El from 69th to 40th street for the weekend so we would have to take a bus around that part. It kind of defeats the purpose of a dry run seeing as how it will be completely different tomorrow, so we may figure out something else. Anyway... good luck tomorrow Kristin, you are going to do great.

My Soccer

2007-06-23T14:11:00.001-04:00

The last few months I have been playing indoor and outdoor soccer typically once a week, but twice a week for the last couple weeks. I played soccer for probably 8 years when I was a kid, and I had not played for probably 10 years. It has been great getting back into and I am finally getting some ball skills back and feeling a little more confident out there.

I am always shocked by how bad of shape I am in when I try to do any other activity other than running. When I first started playing soccer, my legs and torso were sore for probably a week. it is amazing how your body adapts to whatever you typically do and sorta atrophies for everything else. I still get sore every week, but certainly a lot less. Soccer has also been cutting into my running time because of the time committment and the soreness. Long-term, it is probably better to mix up my activities. I was able to get my weekend 10 miler in today and it felt great getting on the road. It was probably 70 degrees and beautiful when i was running this morning. I was definitely not burning up the road out there, but a nice leisurely run.

I may not make too much progress towards my 20 min 5k until after the twice-a-week season is over, but who knows, maybe soccer will help my speed on the road.

My WC 5k #1

2007-06-13T06:43:00.000-04:00

There is a summer 5k Series put on by the Chester County Running Store and the WC girls cross-country team. I have had a long term goal of breaking 20 minutes in a 5k, but haven't had a good 5k since April 2005, when I got a 20:24 at the clean air 5k. There are no marathons coming up for me this fall, so I am hoping this is the summer that 20 minutes falls. There are 7 races in the series, so I am hoping by number 7, i am a sub 20 5k-er.

There was some serious rain in the late afternoon, so I figured that the course would be a mess. But a quick warm-up before the race calmed those fears, because all the trails seemed quite runnable. Before the race, I learned from chatting with folks who had run the course before that the course was pretty hilly, which made me skeptical of this being the course to break 20 minutes. The race was maybe 80-100 people but people took the start pretty seriously. The course ended up being not as hilly as I expected, some rolling hills, but nothing ridiculous, and I felt pretty well paced the entire race. About halfway through my lungs started tightening up, which made me think back to my asthma attacks during soccer as a kid, but no attack every came. I missed all the mile markers, so I don't have any concrete results that I ran an even race, but it felt like I did, but I only passed/got passed by a couple people.

Overall, I finished in a somewhat disappointing 21:15 or so. Cutting 1:16 off a 5k time in two months may be a tough, but we will see. If I stick to my plan of intervals once a week, I think it can be done.

My Autism 10k

2007-06-08T21:49:00.000-04:00

This past weekend I ran a 10k up in Chalfont, PA. The race was tiny (probably only about 60 people). One of the guys I work with was running it so i decided to as well. The day ended up being a warm and humid one. Nothing too exciting to report about the race. I started off way too fast with the first mile clocking in somewhere around 6:15. The 2nd through 4th miles went by without any hitches around my goal pace of 6:45. The fifth mile felt like a death march and I think the heat and humidity were getting to me. I was able to pick it up for the last 1.2 miles and finished up around 42:15 which is only a few seconds off of my PR, which is 42:11 at the Ben Franklin Bridge 10k. The great part of the race was that I won my age group and got a $10 gift certificate to dunkin donuts. The first edible prize I have ever won. sweet...

the other day I was reading an article about the government giving subsidies to companies that are refining coal into a liquid form that can be a replacement for foreign oil. While I am all for relieving our dependence on foreign oil, I guess I always hoped we could get away from producing greenhouse gases at the same time. I am not an expert on alternate fuel sources and I won't claim to be, but the interesting thing about the article was reading peoples responses to the article. There were a ton of people who said things like, "Global warming hasn't even been proven to be man made". Whether global warming is man made or not, it seems clear that global climate change my have catastrophic consequences... so no matter the reason for it, we should fight it as much as possible. Even if it is not man-made, wouldn't it be nice if we could reduce our carbon dioxide emissions and slow the process? seems logical...

My Caesar Rodney 2007

2007-03-11T13:33:00.000-04:00

Today was the Caesar Rodney half marathon in Wilmington, DE. For those that don't know, it starts in downtown Wilmington, somehow winds up and down all hills in Delaware, and then ends up essentially back where you started. This is my 3rd year running Caesar Rodney. My first year I ran my best half marathon to date (1:37:37), but last year, as with many of my races last year, was about 8 minutes slower. My training has been pretty consistent, but consistently low mileage (in the low 20s per week), but I have been getting in some sort of interval work (either 800s or miles) every other week. I had quite mixed feelings going into the race this morning... confident because I had done more interval work in the last six months than I have in my life, but quite nervous because of the worries that my mileage hasn't been high enough.

I didn't get much sleep because we needed to go out for some well-deserved celebrating Saturday night and the Bush consipiracy against all democrats (i.e., moving up daylight savings time... actually it is in the name of saving energy, so I can't fault him for trying, though I would like to... and I think I heard on NPR that the amount energy expended to update software around the US for the new daylight savings time may offset the savings... either way, i hope it saves a little), but I did grab a quick nap saturday afternoon so I figured I would be fine. I got out the door to the race without any problems, but I was still a bit nervous for the race.

When I got to Wilmington, I met up with a bunch of Philly Runners and tried to find a few people to run with. Alex G and Steve G were around my pace so the plan was to run the first few miles with them and then reasses and adjust pace from there. In the past couple years, I have always started off way to fast and then died at the end so my goal was to start at around 7:25 miles and work my way down from there. After the cannon went off to signal the start, the first miles flew by in just over 7:00 min/mile pace. I was concerned because I had a feeling I knew where this story would end, but sadly I forged ahead. At some point Steve G. left us for a quicker pace. Miles 4-8 are quite hilly and my pace dropped down to about 7:35 through the hills. Alex and I split up around mile 5 and I embarked on the last 8 miles alone. I eventually caught back up to Steve G (maybe around mile 8) and started seeing some of the other faster PRs (the course doubles back on itself) flying by.

From 9 to 12 the course is mostly down the hills we just climbed and I knew I would pick up some time there. The downhills were pretty tough on my shins and I my feet felt quite heavy pounding into the pavement. After mile 12 I knew I was going to get a personal record (PR), but was too scared to look at my watch to actually figure out how my overall time was shaping up. It seemed easier to just monitor each mile and keep it at the right pace, which at this point of the race was around 7:10, than to look at the big picture of an overall time. I turned the final corner and climbed a hill that seemed like a 100% grade and a million miles long. I finally crossed the finish line in around 1:35:21 (not official), which is about a 2 minute PR. The team I was running on, The Electronic Karate Blitzkrieg Of Destruction (TEKBOD for short) came in first and I got a blinking medal. Quite blingy. I will probably wear it around to complement my Heelys.

So I finally beat a time from about 2 years ago. My half marathon PR had been looming over my head for 4 races and it is quite a relief to finally break it. It feels good to be back to where I was in 2005 and a PR at Broad Street would be icing on my running the past 6 months (10k PR, Half marathon PR, and 10 mile PR??).

I wanted also to announce congratulations to Kristin for finishing the bar exam. I saw her studying everyday for 2 or 3 months on top of working full time. For maintaining her sanity, she deserves a medal... perhaps she can have the flashy bling I received today. Anyway... congrats Kristin, I am so proud of you!!

My three months

2007-01-06T21:36:00.000-05:00

Apparently blogging has become a quarterly event for me. I think during my last blog, I was about a month into classes. Classes this quarter turned out to be a ridiculous time commitment. For my first time since starting my masters, i took two night classes. I wanted to power through the last year of class and finish by this march. Sadly, it turned out that both classes had fairly time-intensive projects, so I was spending nearly every night after work and every weekend day working on my projects. The good news is that I passed both classes and only have one quarter with a single class left!! I have been working on this part time for about 4.5 years, so this is going to be a pretty big relief when it is done.

Also this past quarter was Kristin's last quarter of law school and she presumably has graduated (the professor have something like 4 decades to post final grades). Congrats Kristin! And, she has started a new job full-time, so congratulations again!! The bar is looming in her future though, so there hasn't been much time for celebration. but we found time to squeeze a little celebrating in...

So much to talk about...My car has been progressively burning more oil on startup, so I finally did something about it today. With much help from vince, we were able to change all the valve stem seals which I am hoping will stop the oil burning. It was a pretty crazy procedure cuz I had both my cams out sitting on the bench and basically all parts of the head off without removing the head. Things seem to be running well, but I won't know for sure until I start it on a cold morning, because that is when it was smoking most. We did adjust the valves and it got rid of some of the tapping in the valvetrain, so that was good. ohh and it still runs.

What else... ohh yes... running. lots to talk about here as well. i ran the ben franklin 10k a couple months ago, and I got a pretty big PR. I checked and my last 10k PR was a measly 44:41, but this time I got a 42:11. I felt pretty good the whole race. I think I went through the first 2 or so miles with Steve G. from philly runners and then he took off from there. No miles I ran were over 7, so I was quite happy with the race. My mileage the past couple months has been down (probably 15-20 a week), but I have been getting some quality intervals in. I have been running 800s and 1600s with a guy from work over lunch at a nearby park. I think they have been helping my speed a bith, because I have been comfortably able to run sub 8:00 for some longer distances (i think i did an 8 this week at a fairly comfortable 7:50) so that has been encouraging. I at least plan on doing the ugly mudder at the end of february and the Caesar Rodney half in march, so I need to start upping the mileage. I can't be petering out at mile 10 again in this caesar rodney. A PR is a must.

One other development on the running front... New Balance stopped making my shoe, the 1221, or at least updated it, so I tried on a couple other pairs of shoes and just went with the upgraded model, the 1222. Apparently one of the upgrades they made was to make them blister little toes on the outside. I have been wearing some normal cotton socks, so I may try the thin, smoother running-type socks tomorrow. See how that goes. Also, I logged into the cool running website and tried their running log. It seemed allright, but apparently they are so concerned about your informations privacy that they just delete all your information for the next time you try to log in. doesn't seem like much of a log if it actually doesn't keep a log of anything. similar to seinfeld's problem with rental car agencies who are extremely good at taking reservations, but aren't as good at holding them.

My Commute

2006-10-10T08:41:00.000-04:00

I tried commuting to work on my bike yesterday with some success. I made it to and from work without dieing. It was actually nice to get into work and already have a nice workout. The trip into work is about 10 miles each way which isn't too bad, but there is no path into work that has either generous shoulders or any sidewalk. I guess that is what you get for living in the suburbs. Thankfully there is plenty of room to drive my stretch hummer. i stupidly started home at 6:00 p.m. not thinking it would get dark by 6:30... oops. I guess next week if I do it... I need to leave work by 5:00.

since the PDR, I have been averaging in the low 20s for mileage with a long run of about 10ish on the weekends. last week was well below this because of the great flood of 2006 in my basement due to a rupture washer supply hose and a wedding on saturday. Congrats to Gina and Mike! I am running on a team with a guy from work and some of his cohorts from the westtown school in the 10k Run the Bridge across the Ben Franklin Bridge. Obviously I would like to set a PR, but I am fairly certain my fitness isn't there. I think my PR is somewhere around 42:00. I shall get back to you on that...

My Duality

2006-09-12T14:05:00.000-04:00

the past week has been disappointing running-wise. I got a head cold last tuesday, so I took about a week off running to try and heal up, but now it moved to my chest which makes running even harder. I think i may try for 3 or 4 miles tonight to see if maybe some light exercise will help shake this cold. so the total for last week was a whopping 5 miles. and this the week before the PDR... bleh. I was hoping to get back below 1:40 at the PDR, but that seems like a bit of a stretch now. I am supposed to run a 5k tonight and I am at least hoping to break 21:00 again, but the lungs may not hold up. 13.1 miles also sounds pretty damn long right now.

however disappointing this past week was running and health-wise, my personal life has made up for it 10 googol-fold. I got engaged last sunday to the most amazing woman in the world (and I would be saying this if you weren't reading it). I knew it was coming obviously, but it is still a bit of a shock to think of myself as a fiance. Not that I don't think I am husband material, i just still think of myself as a young kid... but I guess this is that first step into what some may call adulthood. Kristin and I also pulled off a great party this past saturday night with a great mix of people. and this past sunday was the first day of the football season and my fantasy football team won. i don't deserve the win, but I will take it.

My Old Home

2006-08-26T07:32:00.000-04:00

So it again has been too long since I last blogged. Life has kept me pretty busy so it causes my blogging to be lax. I should start blogging during lunch or something, perhaps that would cause me to be a little more consistent... but I don't seem to get much inspiration when I am at work. ohh well...

last weekend Kristin and I went back to minnesota to visit some family, friends, and show her the place where i grew up. the trip was a lot of fun cuz I got to spend a lot of time with my brother and sister, friends from college, and with Kristin. A rare trifecta that has never been realized in the past. Thanks to murph and courtney for letting us crash there, thanks to petie, struck, raver, ben, herrema, and tim for taking the time to hang out with us. EP looked less different than I expected after 3 years, but I guess it takes a little longer to change a city. I did take a look at the high school though and it is simply ridiculous. They must have added like 3 new wings to the building since I last saw. It is simply huge!!

Running over the last 3 weeks has been pretty consistent. I forget when I last blogged, but 2 weeks ago I think I was in the mid 20's, this past week I think I only got 15 (due to vacation), and this week I will again be around 25. I am not going to set any records at that mileage, but i am pretty happy that I have been fairly consistent and I seem to be injury free. Even my ankle has been feeling better than last year. My pace still seems pretty slow compared to my effort, but maybe that will come with more time.

an interesting note... for those of you running folks out there who use the sue and pauls gmap pedometer, http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/, I poked around a little bit about the whole elevation thing. apparently when calculating distances it doesn't take into account the increase in distance due to a an elevation change. so the hillier the course you pick, the last accurate gmap will be (the number estimated by Gmap will be low). Not that I am dissing the tool, because it is great and I use it all the time, just something to keep in mind if your courses generally involve ladders because they will not be counted.

My OC

2006-08-05T11:40:00.000-04:00

Bad vacation karma has been following kristin and I this summer, but I was hoping that our 4 day vacation in ocean city, maryland would break our streak of bad luck. We drove down wednesday after a half day of work, checked into our hotel, and decided 20 blocks wasn't too far to walk to the boardwalk. so we hit the boardwalk to find a meal and within 5 minutes of walking on the boardwalk, kristin gets crapped on by a seagull. my next thought was fear of what might happen for the rest of the trip if it is already starting out unlucky...

the trip ended up being great. Relaxing, reading, and running on the beach, ate some good food, I think I only drove once during the 4 days, which was sweet. on the board walk we noticed a place called marble slab creamery. this sounded eerily familiar to the chain ice cream store where I occasionally binge on the apple pie a la cold stone. quite good. I decided to do a little research into which came first... here is what I found. I had never run into another marble slab creamery but apparently it is also a big chain with 350 stores (compared to cold stone's 1314) and they basically do the same thing... but which came first? It turns out cold stone opened its first store in 1988 in Tempe and Marble Slab opened there first store in 1983 in Houston. huh... who would have thunk it. apparently the franchise fees for marble slab are higher (8% for marble slab and 6% for cold stone) so maybe that has stifled their growth. who knows...

the week of the OC trip I run just under 20 which isn't bad because of the vacation factor and this week I should finish up over 20. My inconsistent training has certainly been apparent in my performance on the runs, but at least I am still running and no injuries to report! yay!

My Dodo

2006-07-20T21:23:00.000-04:00

I never really knew much about the dodo (other than the fact that it was extinct), but today a colleague at work mentioned the dodo and mentioned that it would never walk the face of the planet again...ever...like not even once. for some reason that hit me funny cuz I have never really thought about what extinct means. there will be no jurassic park-like rebirth of the dodo, or any other extinct creature. it is just extremely permanent and saddening to me. I was curious to see if the dodo's extinction was an improvement to earth made by humans or whether they went extinct from natural causes.

i looked it up on wikipedia, best site ever, and they say the reason is not certain, but they suspect that the population was nearly wiped out before humans ever arrived on the island they inhabited. humankind helped the situation out by bringing non-indigenous species that wreaked havoc on there nests onto the island and we needed there forests more than they did so we took them. either way... they are gone... forever... like not even in a zoo. that is a just a strange concept for me. next time you have a drink, pour one for our fallen dodo brothers. here is the link to the wiki entry on the dodo. The strange thing about the dodo is that it states that the Dodo is currently extinct... currently extinct has the connotation to me that they can come back... like migrating birds... i have a feeling they may not make it back.

my running is a bit more on track... i should get over 20 miles again this week so it is good to be back to that. nothing of note other than all my joints seem a bit achy... i think my shoes have gone past there healthy life so I may need to purchase some more. did a run at westtown school tonight with the dodo colleague... beautiful campus.

My First Morning

2006-07-17T21:40:00.000-04:00

Today was the first day I was able to get myself out of bed for a run before work since the double trouble probably... which I am thankful for because it turned out to be around 400 degrees today. Only 51 more and all books would have gone up in smoke... sadly it did not happen. Perhaps tomorrow cuz it is supposed to be another scorcher.

I haven't gotten a week above 20 since the double trouble and Bonnaroo. Maybe this week will be my week for 20 again. I would like to be in reasonable shape for the PDR in september and I only have 2 months left. gotta get a move on that whole training thing... oh well.

this has been a truly inspired blog.

My Double Trouble 2006

2006-06-26T13:18:00.000-04:00

My race day started off at 7:30 after a night of some tasty food, a couple episodes of House (a great show), a couple episodes of scrubs (another great show), and a late night whooping in Uno by Kristin. We started playing Uno a few months ago and I consistently beat her in the first few sessions, but now it seems as though the apprentice has become the master, cuz I can't win a game. I awoke hoping this Uno-slaughtering was not an omen for the race to come.

The drive out to French Creek went quickly, but the clouds looked quite ominous. I met up with Kevin from PR after registration and had a quick jog before the race to try and see how things were working. I immediately got sharp pains in my stomach... so I stopped running, and thought to myself, "things seem to be in order... lets race". In all previous Ron Horn races, I have started near the front of the pack and went out quick at the beginning. This race, however, after the start, I got stuck in the middle of the pack and was quite frustrated for the first 1/2 mile or so because the course was pretty tight and there wasn't much passing room. The course eventually widened a bit and I was able to get some open running room. I didn't see any mile markers (i believe they had them last year) so I really had no idea of the pace I was running, but I felt fairly strong throughout the race.

The rain came midway through the race and was initially welcomed for the cooling effects, but later cursed for the "Each of my shoes weighs around 4 lbs and every time I push off I lose half the energy because it is so damn mucky"-effect. I ran in normal street-training shoes and i wonder if trail shoes would have been any help in those muddy conditions. I don't remember many specifics about the race, but I was extremely happy about how my ankles faired throughout the race. Last year, my ankles were rolling all over the place and were incredibly sore for at least a week afterwards. This year, I didn't twist my ankles until after the last water stop, around ~7.8 miles I believe, and even those ankle twists were relatively minor.

I finished the 15k in around 1:25:xx for a 51st place finish which I think is around a 1.5 minute improvement over last year, which I am happy about. I can't imagine running another loop and I have immense respect for anyone who completed yesterday's 30k. Mad props to them.

My Bonnaroooo!!

2006-06-20T13:42:00.000-04:00

this past weekend we went to bonnaroo. For those of you who don't know, Bonnaroo is a yearly music festival in TN that generally has hippie type music. It is about a 13.5 hour trip one way (total of 27 hours driving packed into 3 days), so the driving was long, but the trip was definitely worth it. We got to see a bunch of cool bands, camp out, and meet some interesting people... definitely a fun weekend.

this week, however, I am reaping the consequences of my rock star/trucker lifestyle. I started getting a cold monday night and I am hoping to recover by this weekend for the double trouble on sunday. I am hoping to hit the road tomorrow to make sure my legs still work, but maybe the break from running will act like a taper on sunday. I think last week I only got 2 runs in for a total of around 14 miles, but one of those was ~9.3 miles (about the length of the DT) with 7 of those miles on the trails in Ridley creek state park. I ran 2-3.5 mile loops of the same trail course and I was able to drop the second loop to under 30 minutes, which sounds slow, but felt extremely fast. it is a hilly course so hopefully it is somewhat representative of the double trouble. we will see on sunday... i ran it in 1:24:xx in RCSP which is a couple minutes faster than the DT last year.

My Self Discovery

2006-06-12T20:20:00.000-04:00

I discovered a skill this weekend that I never knew, nor expected, I had. Beer pong. Having been through 4.5 years at a public university you'd expect that I would have played the game. Not being one for drinking games in general, I guess I somehow steered clear of it throughout college. Saturday night, we went to a party at a friend from ISU's house, and kristin and I took on the reigning champions of beer pong. Before our arrival on the beer pong scene, they had held the table for maybe 2.5 hours without a loss. Kristin and I warmed up our form (had a few beers) and challenged the champs. the first game started out ugly... i think we had 1 cup left to there 5... then we went on a tear. we eventually lost the first game by one cup... but being a bit of a competitor, i had to redeem myself. Even though both Kristin and I have no depth perception, we were able to dethrone the champs in the second game. the next challengers were old pros at the game, but again fell to the our depth perception challenged team.

We ceded the table after this match cuz I didn't want to drink too much... but I am certain we could have beaten any who challenged us. another discovery this weekend was the love of the shmisquit from Sheetz. i partook in this delectable sandwich on my way home from the party and was pleasantly suprised by the heartiness of the meal.

running wise... i got 26 miles in this week including 7 on the trail tuesday and a few more on saturday with seebo and ian. Even though they were going easy on me, i was toast by the end of the run. This week is going to be cut short due to bonnaroo, but I will hopefully still break 20. I plan on doing another 10 tomorrow night with 7 on the trail at ridley creek. i love those trails... my ankles were pretty sore after last tuesdays trail experience, but the soreness gave in before saturday's long run so that was very encouraging. what doesn't break my ankles, is hopefully making them stronger.

My Financial Question

2006-06-06T10:42:00.000-04:00

so I was watching an episode of the daily show last night that is about two weeks old. There was a piece about Bush signing an extension for his tax cuts that gives a break to capital gains and dividends. My question is this... supposedly these tax cuts were put in place to stimulate the economy, to help it grow. A few years ago... this would have made sense... the economy was sluggish and the fed dropped interest rates to help stimulate it as well. But why sign this tax cut extension now? The fed is concerned with inflation and continues to increase interest rates in hopes to curb inflation... and slow the growth of the economy. It doesn't quite make sense to me why we are trying to stimulate and curb growth of the economy at the same time. if we are trying to curb growth of the economy, why don't we just tax investors more?

granted i know nothing about economics and i am sure there is some sort of counter arguement as to why both of these moves make sense... but it just seems counter-intuitive to have one foot on the gas pedal and the other on the brake. Speaking of break....

tonight I am planning on 7 miles of trail at ridley creek state park. I am hoping that my weekly trail runs will strengthen all the stabilizer muscles in my ankles so I don't have as many problems rolling my ankles. hopefully this run goes better than sundays and mondays cuz I felt like crap during both.

My Great Weekend

2006-06-04T19:35:00.000-04:00

Well folks... it is done. The wall is complete. I was 99% done last weekend, but I ran out of the caps that go on the top of the wall. I purchased them this week and finished it up this afternoon. thank god it is done... now all I need to do is find something to do with the 4500 lbs of extra wall blocks I have. My neighbor has shown interest, but if that falls through i am thinking perhaps e-bay or craigslist. here is the picture you have all been waiting for...

that is one small part of the great weekend. what else made this weekend great? Yesterday morning (saturday), I ran with PR and was hoping to get about 10 miles in at about a 8:00 pace. Yellow Shorts was there and he was planning on running 7:00 pace for the whole loop. I knew that was way above a pace that I could sustain, but I figured I would try to give him some company for as long as I could. I was able to keep up to about east falls bridge and we made it out there about at his goal. I was completely toast by this time and a little concerned about finishing up the last 4.25. Jim kept up his pace and I think I slowed down to about 9:00 pace for about a mile and a half. the last 2.5 miles I was able to bring back up to about 8:00 pace so I was pretty pleased about the run. All in all, 10 miles in under 79 minutes. I was (am) quite pleased. Total for the week is around 28 miles. the mileage is slowly creeping up... yay.

saturday night, kristin and I painted the town red... then went home at around 12:30. I guess that can't be considered painting the town red (not that I even know what painting the town red means)... but i had a great time. tasty food, the best company, and an early night. how could it get any better? this morning we woke up late... then like red blooded americans... went to IHOP, gorged on there eerily delicious pancakes and an enormous omelette. i say eerily delicious because something that tastes that good must be one of 3 things: 1.) not natural, 2.) not good for you, or 3.) laced with a controlled substance. whichever it is, i imagine as long as it isn't a daily occurrence, i will probably live.

also... props again to my sister for completing her second 5k for the grand ol' days in St. Paul. I am definitely going to get a run in with her when we visit in august. Nice work murph. my next race is the double trouble... the race I fear.... why do I fear it? read the blog from last year's race. I have a good feeling it will go better this year.

My Sister's First Race

2006-05-16T13:09:00.000-04:00

Congrats to my sister for completing her first 5k (the Komen race for the cure in Minneapolis on Mother's Day)!!! I am so proud of you, Murph! I received a phone call the next day listing 4 more races she was doing in the upcoming months!! hehehe... running can be quite addicting!!

This past week I logged 25 miles and included a solo 10-miler. This was encouraging for 2 reasons. First because I increased my mileage by about 10% over the previous week and second because I was able to get myself out the door to do 10 miles by myself. when i was in the best shape (probably this time last year), all of my long runs were with PR. When I had trouble finding time to get the long PR runs in my schedule (aka last summer and fall), i didn't have the motivation to get out the door by my self and log the miles, so hopefully this is an encouraging sign of what is to come this summer and fall training season.

My Partially New Front Wall

2006-05-09T12:40:00.000-04:00

Here is a picture of the front wall after the first weekend of work. I did some work this past weekend as well, finished the left wall, but I didn't make much progress on the smaller right wall. Perhaps this weekend.

This past weekend was the BSR, but as I stated in my last blog, I decided not to run it. A lot of the people I ran with got PRs so that is great. Reading their race reports made me miss being in the race even more. I guess it should teach me to be out of shape!!

This saturday I ran the loop with english mike. It was a leisurely pace, except for the last mile or so. I think the last quarter clocked in around 1:34, so we were moving by the finish. I felt great during the run, no joint problems, didn't feel too winded. that is until i stopped running... as soon as I stopped i got extremely nauseous and got an intense headache. I ended up getting sick on the drive back to my house. It seemed like any liquid i drank that morning was just sitting in my stomach not getting absorbed... very strange. i threw up... drove home... took some aleve, slept for an hour and felt better. i think i am switching back to gatorade from the Clif shots drink... i blame that.

also, i put in 5 miles last night with the last 2.5 at about 7:30 pace. it was nice to see that I could still put in a few quick miles. it is certainly a start to getting back to where I was.

My Front Wall

2006-05-03T10:17:00.000-04:00

as many of you know... i have begun the epic battle of rebuilding the retaining wall in front of my house. To many, it may not seem like an epic battle, but to those motivational disadvantaged like myself... it will without a doube be quite a struggle. To increase the reader's involvement in the project I will include pictures of the progress of the wall.

Here is a before picture. Note the mop on the top of the wall, which I believe was some dead juniper.
I started last weekend and with the help of two guys from work (thanks vince and stan), we made some pretty serious progress. I will try to get a picture up this weekend.

ohh yeah... running. I haven't been great about running the last two weeks. the whole stomach thing kept my mileage down for a week and then the wall last weekend kept the mileage down last week. I think this week, I will be back up to around 20 miles (assuming I get int he planned 8-10 tomorrow).

Broad street run is sunday but I opted not to run. I think it is best that I focus on just getting my mileage up, doing house work, and plan for some races during the summer and fall. Here are some races i have been kicking around in my head: the double trouble, the River 2 Sea relay (if I can convince people to do it with me), PDR, possibly the philly marathon, maybe a random 5k or 10k. looking at that list actually makes it sound like a lot of races for me...

My Curse

2006-04-26T10:04:00.000-04:00

So it seems that I may be a bit cursed... or perhaps I am cursing myself. A few days ago, i posted a blog stating that my running has been reasonably consistent. a few weeks in the low 20s, steady improvement in mileage... no joint problems.

Then this past friday night, after a bertucci's binge and a quick hour nap, i awoke with an intense stomach pain. the pain was eerily familiar to a pain I had last summer after an eating binge in New hope. Similar to last summer, I woke up in the middle of the night, as sick as a dog after a bar of toblerone. Finally, at 6 in the morning, i woke up the woman and asked her to go to wawa and purchase a gun to put me out of my misery. In lieu of the gun, she was sweet enough to purchased some pepto, which i pounded for an hour an a half and finally fell back asleep at 8.

So, since the latest stomach episode, i am still trying to get back on the running horse. I tried monday, ran about 1 block until my stomach was pissed. Tuesday, ran about 1.5 miles til my stomach had enough, and today I am hoping for 5 during lunch.

the front wall effort starts this weekend. it should be fun... i need to figure out how to post pictures so i can do a before and after.

My Last Six Weeks

2006-04-18T15:49:00.000-04:00

I fear my readership has dwindled since my posts have been scarce, but I feel I must update the world on my past six weeks of running. I feel my report may drop the price of a barrel of sweet crude (sounds tasty) below $70... so I must perservere (sp?).

So within the last 6 weeks I ran the Caesar Rodney Half Marathon which I ran last year as well. The race was pretty ugly for me. My training leading up to the race wasn't great so I didn't really expect too much out of it. I ended up finishing in 1:45:XX, which is about 8 minutes slower than my time last year at the same race, which is my current half marathon PR. The last few races have been disappointing, but the beautiful weather of late has helped my running spirits and the training has been going better in the last couple weeks.

I have integrated some cross-training in the form of basketball to my routine. I have been trying to play a couple times a week to help build some leg strength and hopefully help with the stability of all my joints. who knows if B-ball will help or hurt this, but it is also fun as hell to play. My past few weeks have been consistent at least in the low 20s for mileage, but I think it will give me a good place to start if I am to train for something serious in the fall. The broad street run is coming up in a couple weeks and I am on the fence about running it or not. This has been my favorite run (and best race IMO) to date and I would love to do it again... but it lands on a weekend where I will probably be finishing my retaining wall in the front (remember the test wall in the back last summer... i am starting the full monty in the front next weekend). we will see...

I have been entertaining visions of a sub 4:00 marathon in philly this year...

My Ugly Mudder 2006

2006-03-02T11:29:00.000-05:00

This year's Ugly Mudder brought much apprehension for me and some freakin' cold weather. Apprehension because I know I have not been training as I should be and cold weather because... err... well bush's environmental policies are throwing the worlds climate into a manic-depressive state... or maybe cuz it was middle of February... both feasible... but I blame bush.

Sunday morning, I met up with John from PR and we made the trip out to reading to the Reading Liederkrantz, which is a German singing and sports club. Supposedly when we showed up, the locals (or at least a guy at the race, he may not have been a local) said it was 17 degrees out. I figured it was perfect shorts weather. I feel more comfortable running in shorts than pants... i feel all constricted in pants and i couldn't allow that constriction to hamper what was planned to be an exemplary performance. After registration, we sat around wasted time and one of the other people running the race said something about there being 500 steps in the middle of the course... which I believe was bit of a hyperbole. it is true that there are stairs, but I would guess on the order of 30-40 steps.

anywho... the crowds were enormous, supposedly 860 people started the race. I probably started about mid-pack which was extremely frustrating. The course was changed from last year to help with the crowds... about a .25 mile was added to the beginning of the race before entering the trail. This was a great idea because the crowds did thin out a bit by the time we hit the trail... but even still... up the first hill i was ready to start pushing people off the trail... so I ran off the trail and passed a bunch of people. about a mile in John, who is much faster than I but got caught up in all the crowds, finally passed me.

The course was really hilly, which was the same as last year, but a significant change from last year was the missing 4 inches of snow to run on exposing an extremely rocky trail. About 4 miles in, I was rolling my ankles almost every few steps. The more tired they got the more often i was rolling them. I need to focus on doing my ankle strengthening exercises before the next trail race I do, because I think that was a major problem in the double trouble as well.

The last hill was again ridiculous with people yelling at the top. I was on all fours trying to scramble my way up... i finally made it after about a minute of struggling and ran to the finish line. My time was 1:08:16 which gave me a 77th place finish out of 849 finishers. This time was about 3 minutes slower than last year, but with the extra quarter mile and the state of my fitness, I am pretty happy about it. John also did really well and pulled off a 28th place finish, which is especially impressive for his first trail race ever. nice work!!

My Homework #5

2006-02-23T16:21:00.000-05:00

So my class hasn't been going as well this semester as semesters passed, so I really wanted to do well on the most recent homework assignment, HW5. However, this assignment was a programming assignment which generally means it will take longer than all the other assignments.

so I spent probably 20-some hours on it, including taking all of today off of work...but i have finished it and I hope to do well on it. this will help balance out the zero I got on the first assignment. well... we will see how it turns out... it being my grade. i was hoping to get a run in today, but the assignment thought otherwise. tomorrow morning though, I will definitely get some miles in. This upcoming sunday is the ugly mudder, which I am excited for... my first race since the marathon. I am definitely not what most would call prepared for the race, but it should work out ok assuming i don't do anything stupid. unless I get eaten by the enormous dog that was near the end of the last ugly mudder, there will be a race report coming early next week.

My Impressive Leaders

2006-02-13T14:48:00.000-05:00

this past week, I was pretty happy with my running. I ran 4 days, which isn't what you would call impressive, but 3 of those were mornings before work, which I am very happy about. The total for the week was around 21 miles so it was quite an improvement over previous weeks, but hopefully the quick increase in miles won't cause more harm than good. we had a big snowstorm here this past weekend so i got a lot of shoveling in and my upper body is quite sore because of it. Hopefully the snow won't hamper the running too much, but if I slide back a bit this week, ohh well.

hmm... i saw the best news headline over the weekend. "VP Cheney Shoots Man". I figured this was some other VP cheney, but no... it was the second in command of our country. Impressive... Now I feel even more confident in our governments ability to run the military. not that accidents don't happen to me ever, but I still haven't shot anyone... and I am not even vice president... yet.

this isn't making any sense...

My Escape

2006-02-05T23:04:00.000-05:00

So the last 4 days I spent enjoying the beautiful spring-like weather up in burlington vermont. I am pretty sure that this weather is a rarity this time of year, but kristin and I definitely enjoyed the beautiful weather. It was awesome to get away from all of the craziness that is life here for 4 days and enjoy the slower life for a while. i don't really know where I want to end up long term, but burlington, VT would certainly be on the list of possibles.

When I got back, I ran 5 miles at around 8:30 pace and I felt pretty good. My ankle has definitely improved since I started running again and it doesn't really bother me much at all. I don't know if that is because it has healed some or just that I totally ignore the pain now. either way... i am quite happy with the progress. i only ran like 7.5 miles this week which is pathetic but at least I am running. I am hoping this week I will get more like 15-20 miles again, but who knows.

My Recovery

2006-02-01T12:58:00.000-05:00

So it has been about 3 months since my last blog posting and this hiatus has been due to a multitude of reasons, all involving alien abduction, but have returned to the the road, the trail, and the blog-sphere.

This past sunday, I ran about 7.25 miles according to the GMap pedometer (aka the sweetest free tool ever) and it was the first time I have felt good on a run since the marathon in november. I have been running somewhat regularly since Jan 1st, but i hadn't run any longer than 5 miles until this past sunday. I don't think I am in bad shape (not as good as I was last year), but I think the reasons I have felt like crap when running is more mental than physical. Yah, my ankle is still sore, but getting over the mental hump of not doing as well as I wanted to on the marathon was more of a challenge on these runs. After sundays run, I think i have finally moved on.

in the two months I wasn't running, i was supposedly resting my ankle, but the soreness was still there when i started running again around the first of the year. The doctor doesn't think the soreness is anything too serious and I can run on it, but if it starts to get worse, I should be concerned. i plan on testing it thoroughly in the first quarter of the year with the ugly mudder at the end of february and the caesar rodney half-marathon in mid-march. i did these races last year so it should be interesting to see how my fitness/racing prowess compares between this year and last. I imagine I am probably not in as good a shape as last year, but we will see. my butt is much sexier so maybe people will run behind me by choice so I will still finish well. who knows... who cares... apparently I am tired.

My First Marathon

2005-11-08T15:48:00.000-05:00

so for those of you that don't know I just ran my first marathon in NYC this past weekend. It was quite the humbling experience from a running perspective, but an amazing event none the less. This is something I posted on the philly runners message board, so hopefully it makes sense out of context.

the start of the race went pretty much how i expected. It was crowded, there were people peeing everywhere, and I couldn't get enough room to just run and had to focus a lot of energy on not killing anybody. As E. Mike mentioned, the bouncing of the bridge was quite creepy and I noticed my self shortening and quickening my stride, in an attempt to get away from the natural frequency of the bridge, thus single-handedly averting total structural failure of the bridge (ala tacoma narrows). I have no idea what my splits were for any of the miles, but I know after the first 5 miles I was pretty much on pace. And by on pace I meant around 9 minute miles, which is about the pace of my long, training runs. I think around mile 5, I caught a glimpse of E. Mike, and I tried to make my way towards him to pace with him, but I couldn't make my way through the crowds and lost track of him.

At around mile 8 I saw my girlfriend and two college friends who were traveling around the city cheering for me. It brought a smile to my face to know that they were hopping all over the city to see me run. Up until this point, things were going well, my stomach felt great (which has always been a concern for me), I was on pace, and things were looking good. Shortly after that, my lower calves started tightening up, immediately followed by intense pain in both my lower calves and my arches. I am not quite sure the cause of the pain, but it stayed with me the entire race. Sadly, this new calf pain, swamped out the general, comfortable, soothing soreness in my right ankle I have been dealing with for 5 months now. Because of the tightness, it seemed I was landing on my toes, which seemed to make the tightness and pain worse, which made me land on my toes more, which made the tightness worse....

I knew once the pain set in that there was no chance at keeping a 9 min pace the entire race. I figured... I would try to keep up running until the halfway point and figure out a new strategy then. The strategy turned out to be approximately this. At every mile marker, I would walk approximately one minute... then run anywhere between 5-10 minutes... and then walk again when I wanted to. by this point in the race, i just wanted to get to the finish line to get a marathon under my belt. One thing that has never happened to me in a race was that I got really hungry. This could be a result of the later race start than I am used to or the length of the race, but after the halfway point, I basically grabbed as much food as I could. Twizzlers, bagels, gels, anything i could get my grubby mits on I ate. I saw a tin can... but passed on it because i don't think it had any sugar in it...

I saw my cheering section again at mile 15. I stopped showed them some love and my butt, and then moved on. Each of the last 11 miles was a race by itself. I was doing my best to run to the mile marker, walk to regroup, and then start the next mile race. this worked and got me to the finish. the walk to the family reunion area seemed like another marathon, because all I wanted to do when I was finished was give them all sweet, salty hugs and say thanks. who knows if I am going to do another marathon... everybody keeps telling me I will, but I am not too certain I will. I am not sure I have committment to training/motivation that is required to prepare for a race over a half marathon. who knows... i have been wrong in the past.

kristin, thanks for supporting me through all of my training, and thanks to struck and raver for making the trip out to cheer me on! Hi Granda!!

My PDR 2005

2005-09-22T12:57:00.000-04:00

it has been too long since I last blogged, so here is a race report for the Philadelphia Distance Run, which I ran this past sunday. My first competitive (if you can call it that... maybe organized is a better word) race since high school was last years PDR, so this was the only race I have ever run twice. Granted, the course had changed, but the city and distance were the same.

My plan for the race was to run the first half at 7:30 min/mile pace and then pick it up to 7:15 or 7:00 after 7 or 8 miles. I think I prepared for the race pretty well, ate well for a few days leading up to the race, rested well for a couple days, and had a clif bar about an hour before the race starts. So i felt that my goals were pretty reasonable. As far as a time goal, I was hoping to get a PR, which i think is 1:37:37, but under 1:36 would have been sweet.

This was the first race I had ever run that had corrals based on times for each runner. my first experience wasn't the best because the corral I was in, #2, wasn't big enough to fit everybody so i started outside the corral and jumped in a little after the gun went off. About a mile in, I caught up with a fellow philly runner, who I ran with for a bit, and then we went our seperate ways. I missed the 1st and 3rd mile marker but I ran the first 4 miles in about 7:18 each, which I was very happy with. At this point in the race i wasn't even winded, but I was sweating quite a bit. The temperature was cool (i would have preferred about 10 degrees cooler), but the sun was pretty bright so i think it took a lot out of me. After the first quick 4 miles, I finally settled into a 7:30 pace. I kept this pace up until around mile 9 when I started to die a bit. The strange thing was, from mile 9 - 13.1, I thought I was running progressively faster and faster, but it turns out I was running progressively slower and slower.

I am really not sure quite why this happened, possibly because I am just not in good enough shape, perhaps I am not used to the clif energy drink I started using in the past month, or perhaps I just didn't have it in me today. the race certainly wasn't a disappointment, because I think I ran about as well as I could have that day. my chip time was 1:39:13 which is about a minute and a half slower than my Caesar Rodney PR, but I was pretty happy with the race.

The sad part about the race was that this race report was so boring. NOTE TO SELF: don't write race reports when incredibly tired.

My Hunger

2005-08-30T13:08:00.000-04:00

I forget if I have already used this title... i seem to remember there being an incident with wendy's which had a similar topic... I will check later and report back. (don't hold your breath)

after getting some sort of stomach thing this weekend and eating nothing but dry waffles and jello (thanks baby) for 36 hours, I finally feel the long lost pangs of hunger... which means I am almost back to normal... which is a term I obviously use loosely. because of this stomach thing, I totally missed my scheduled 13 mile run that i was planning this weekend. That puts my last two attempts at long runs, one of 12 and one of 13, to a run of 10 miles and no run at all. So if I keep the same ratio between planned training/actual training and planned marathon mileage/actual marathon mileage, I will be able to finish about 10.48 miles of the race. Have no fear though... that will be the whiniest 10.48 miles you have ever heard run. i can't type today... every sentence sounds like a jarbled mess. ohh well...

I finally went to the orthopedist last week about my right ankle and he suggested wearing some big springy orthotics in my normal shoes. I have been wearing them for about a week and I haven't felt any improvement in my ankle... yet. I am supposed to go back sometime in october, so it may take a while for it to improve. It has something to do with the fact that I walk like a 300 lb man... and i way over-pronate, which pinches some tendons on the outside of my ankle. As you may or may not know, I don't generally trust doctors, but this guy gave me a fairly good explanation of what was happening, and was willing to sit through all of my ridiculous questions.

and I'm spent...

My No Frills 10k

2005-08-13T13:38:00.000-04:00

This past Tuesday, I ran my first race, the South Jersey Athletic Club No Frills 10k, since the double trouble, about a month and a half ago. During this month and a half, I think I took two weeks off training so I had a feeling this race was going to be a huge step back. But i needed to get in some mileage and I need to start getting back on the horse if my NYC marathon experience is going to go well.

The race started right across from my girlfriends apartment building, so that guaranteed me at least one fan. It turns out, the throngs of other fans I was expecting never existed. Who would have thunk it. As has become a mantra for my most recent race experiences, i started off this race too fast. About halfway through the first mile, i realized i was in trouble at my current pace and slowed down a bit. About this time I got smoked by a guy pushing a stroller with a kid in it... seriously... but he was hella fast so i don't feel too bad about it.

The last few miles of the race were pretty uneventful... i got settled into a pace and in the last mile, one gentleman was trying to pass me, so I let him and then latched on to him. he pulled me all the way to the finish and then I outsprinted him in the last 200 meters. that is one of the great feelings when racing... kicking it in at the end and having the other person give up. even though I didn't know him, it was still a lot of fun for me. I guess that is my competitive spirit. my time ended up being 44:41 which is less then spectacular, cuz it is a 7:12 pace, which is 12 seconds slower per mile than my best 10 mile race which was only a short 3 months ago. obviously I have my work cut out for me in the upcoming months if I want to get ready for NYC. as soon as I get these damn stitches out, I am really going to focus on my running!! the running bug has hit me again... yay!

My Readjustment

2005-07-23T03:13:00.000-04:00

For the last year or so, I have had the feeling that I have kinda gotten this whole life thing figured out... not that I was perfect by any means, but I figured out how it works and how to be a well adjusted young man. but as cliched as this sounds, the last week has kinda put me in my place on a couple different levels... and by my place, I mean this... that I will continue learning about life, people, relationships, and myself until the day I die.

So i haven't run in about a week, which to most normal people sounds like a way to relax. not that more proof was necessary, but I must not be a normal person. By not running this week, I think I have created more stress in my life. Why haven't I been running? This nagging ankle injury (can I even call it that) that has been bugging me for a couple months. I have a sneaking suspicion/hope (i cross my fingers on this one) that it is because my current pair of running shoes have too many miles on them. I bought a new pair and I hope to start running again in the next couple days. this whole ankle injury has proven that I am not totally invincible... not that I ever really believed that, but it was a nice thought.

I also learned a thing or 20 about what it is like to be in a healthy relationship. without going into any details, there was something that I thought was normal that is most likely not normal or healthy in a relationship. Thankfully, I have the most patient girlfriend in the world, so I just wanted to say thanks for being understanding. The most shocking part of this whole realization was that I have thought of so many cases where I totally misinterpretted the situation (or just never thought that my interpretation was weird), which made me feel like quite the dufus. but apparently that is how you learn.

i am a bit tired so i am sure none of this made sense but ohh well. at least it made my fingers more toned.

My Double Trouble

2005-07-18T16:35:00.000-04:00

This past weekend (actually june 26th) I ran the Double Trouble 15k/30k trail run. The race was managed by the same person who managed the Ugly mudder, which I blogged about previously. The race is set in the scenic french creek park (which apparently has a national monument of a furnace... ehh?) and is either a 15k or 30k race. The trick with the race is that you can decide to run either the 15k or 30k during the race. If after the first loop you feel that you would like to do another... you can!! needless to say, because of my lackluster training, I was in no shape to run 18 miles on a hilly, rocky trail.

similar to the ugly mudder, I started off quite fast to get ahead of the crowds before the single track started. (note to the reader, I took a 3 week break between writing these two sentences) however, unlike the ugly mudder, I didn't slow down after the first quarter mile. For some reason, most likely pride, stupidity, or both, I tried to keep up this pace for the next two miles. I am guessing I was somewhere in the top 15 at this point. After mile two, I realized that there wasn't a chance I was going to keep up my current pace for another 7.3 miles. I slowed my pace somewhat drastically and went into "tried to finish to maintain your dignity" mode. It felt like I was getting passed by nearly everyone on the course, but by mile 8 I didn't really care... I just wanted to finish. Kristin came to cheer me on at the race (thanks, btw, you are the best!!) so I had to finish, so I just trudged on to the finish at what seemed like a 15 minute pace. I believe I finished in the top 25% with a time of just under 1 hour and 27 minutes. just under a 10 minute pace... which I thought, considering the tremendous heat and lack of training, wasn't too shabby. I don't think I can make this years half-wit half marathon but maybe at next years ugly mudder, I can bounce back and maintain my "goat" nickname.

After the race, i had some very intense soreness in my lower legs, on the outsides of my shins, just above the ankle. I could barely even touch that part of my shin without yelping like a puppy. I can only venture to guess that the muscles that were so sore were stabilizer muscles or something and the rocky terrain overworked these.

For those that are keeping track, I did finish the rear wall a couple weeks back and i think it looks pretty darn good. I did some weeding around there and laid some mulch so hopefully the garden bed will stay clean. I now need to start attacking the jungle that is the rest of my back yard... (more to come on the status of my ankle and other exciting subplots)

My Busted Stones

2005-06-13T23:40:00.000-04:00

The retaining wall is 95% done. Sadly, a general rule states that the last 5% of the work will take about 95% of the time. Using that rule of thumb, my wall should be done approximately the same time global warming is remedied by Bush's environmental policies. I finished the last layer of blocks and I am currently in the process of finishing up the cap stones. Funny story about these cap stones...

So the wall I am building has a corner in it and they don't sell cap stones that have the correct surface finish on two sides to be used for corners. so what I have to do is break my own cap stone and make it the right length and then it will have the rough surface finish. The general procedure for this is to score the brick/stone along the line you want to break it, then chisel it out a bit on the line, and then smash it until it breaks. I tried this today, and after my 15 minutes of scoring and chiseling (I thought I did a damn good job), i hit the brick hard with another brick and it broke along some line that was no where near where I wanted it to, and was about 45 degrees off of square. thankfully, I have one extra so I will have to consult the experts tomorrow, aka guys at work, and then give it a whirl another night. I am so close to finishing, I can taste it. mmm tasty brick. it looks like I have a castle in my back yard.

so I have been dealing with soreness in my right ankle for the past month (first blogged about it on may 14th). I am wondering if I should take some time off (maybe a couple weeks) from running and maybe just let it recover and then start training for the fall season. I would hate to miss a couple weeks of training cuz even after a couple days of not running, I feel I am losing fitness, feel energyless, and I am quite grumpy. I might wait until after the double trouble to see how it feels... if it is still sore maybe I will do a couple weeks of biking or something. we will see...

My First Track Workout in 8 Years

2005-06-03T19:19:00.000-04:00

This morning I got up at 6 o'clock to run my first track workout in about 8 years (senior year in high school... yes I am old). The track workout went a bit like this: ran a 1 mile warmup, then ran 2 fast 800's (going for 3:00 per 800) with 800 m jog in between, then I ran 2 400's (going for 1:30) with a 400 m jog in between, then I cooled down for a .25 mile. All told, 4.25 miles. even though I only did 4 legs at a fast pace, I am already feeling the soreness in my legs. which I guess is a good thing. I don't know if my 6:00 minute mile pace was reasonable, for my speed but i got pretty close on all of them... within 10 seconds I think. maybe next time I will try to get a couple more 800's in or shorten the rest period or something. i should really look into how to properly do track workouts for my racing goals.

i forgot to get my additional blocks for the wall today... so depending on what tomorrow morning brings, I might pick them up then and finish it up (looks like the weather isn't going to cooperate so much). but I do plan on enjoying my freedom from class (turned in the final project wednesday night... yay!) this weekend. this will involve sleeping in and not doing anything and it will be glorious!!

My Progress

2005-05-30T23:06:00.000-04:00

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

2005-05-27T20:05:00.000-04:00

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

2005-05-20T20:16:00.000-04:00

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

2005-05-16T21:43:00.000-04:00

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

2005-05-14T20:46:00.000-04:00

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

2005-05-11T23:11:00.000-04:00

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

2005-05-08T21:02:00.000-04:00

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

2005-05-03T21:54:00.000-04:00

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.

My pre-BSR jitters

2005-04-29T22:57:00.000-04:00

The broad street run is coming up this sunday... for those that don't know, the broad street run is a 10 mile race through Philly from north to south on broad street. it is a net downhill course and is supposedly one of the fastest 10 milers in the country. It is pretty darn big too... something like 15000 people or something... at least that is what the bib numbers go up to.

As with every other race I have run recently, I have a bit of the pre-race jitters. Why do I get nervous for something that really has no bearing on anything in life? I guess probably because running is something I am trying to improve at... and the success of me trying to improve or not is pretty blatantly obvious... if my times go down... i am improving. Interestingly enough, all of my races thus far have been a personal best, and I am a little nervous for that first race that isn't. Sunday won't be that because it will be my first time running the distance, so it is a guaranteed PR, but still. I have set a goal pace of 7:15 and I will be pretty disappointed if I don't get it. i guess I can always get it next year if I don't this year.

on top of the pre-race jitters, my ankles, knees, and leg muscles have been very tired and stiff all day. After getting up from sitting around at work, i feel like an old man... i hobble around a little until my legs loosen up. hopefully that doesn't screw me for sunday. i am going to run an easy 4 or 5 tomorrow to get the legs loosened up, so hopefully i will be in tip top shape.

My Appetite

2005-04-26T23:04:00.000-04:00

So I am a big fan of eating. I am not really sure why I like eating so much, maybe the taste, maybe the fact that I can, maybe just cuz I get bored when I am not eating. A strange thing happened though when I got home from work today. I was really hungry, but all I wanted to eat was something that filled my stomach, it didn't even have to taste good... just something that was easy, gave me calories and filled an empty space in my belly. It was a strange feeling, but maybe I didn't eat a big enough lunch or something and just needed calories, or maybe I was just too lazy to think about cooking something tasty. I ended up having spaghetti with feta and olive oil which I like... but I just wanted the spaghetti and I would have eaten it plain if I had too.
i ran at ridley creek pretty hard today... ran out on white and then did the blue to white loop twice in about 32 minutes round trip... not that that means anything to anyone but me... but i think i could ahve done it in 30 minutes no problem.

My Asynchronous-ness

2005-04-24T22:12:00.000-04:00

As discussed with my friend today over IM, the quality of my posts has gone down in recent history... as has the frequency. Somehow I think they are somewhat related... perhaps not as much interesting stuff has been happening to me lately, or perhaps I am becoming jaded and the stuff is still happening, but I am not enjoying the quirkiness of life. Either way... to remedy the problem, I am going to try to blog more to vent more thoughts and hopefully flush out any blogging block.

here is an interesting thought for all you runners, or other excercisers, out there. I talked with laura about this today... what do you think about when you are a running and do you remember what you think about and the thoughts you have? I seem to never remember anything specific that I think about when running... i remember general topics of thought, but not individual thoughts. it is a little bit like a dream... but with more motion and stiffness afterwards. actually I take that back... i did remember something after the fact and this is a bit of a longwinded story...

so when I was running today I heard a whining when a car drove by... and I was like... hmm that sounds like a super charger. and being the engineer that I am I start thinking about when to use a supercharger vs. a turbocharger and what the plusses and minuses are for each. when I was thinking about the supercharger, i was like... when freeway driving at constant speeds superchargers are less efficient because they are driven through a gear or belt directly from the motor... where a turbo is driven from the exhaust and is thus more efficient. There is a name for the type of loss and I couldn't for the life of me remember what it was called... something loss... totally was drawing a blank. it had something to do with evil creatures that suck blood or nutrients from something... like a leech or a lamprey eel or something... i just could't remember the word.

Later that afternoon at the zoo, I was looking at some of the plaques that they have in front of the animals and I saw the missing word... and it was parasitic!! a supercharger is a parasitic loss. when i saw that I just started smiling... it was funny...

My Absence

2005-04-23T19:09:00.000-04:00

So it is has been a week since my last post, and that is unacceptable. However, my excuses for this week include a friend being in town, ran a lot, school, work, and computer trouble. I know... i am an engineer and I think I have more trouble with electronics than an 8 year old, but it has just been a bad streak for me. my stupid internet connection on my normal pc is on the fritz... it is all over the road... like changing from 11mpbs to 1 mpbs to 5.5 to 2... it is just weird. for a day or two I was totally off the internet... not sure what I did to fix it... but it has been fixed... sort of.

With my run of 11.75 miles this morning, I think I broke the 35 mile mark for the first time in my life which was pretty exciting. I think I will be in pretty good shape for running broad street next sunday. I will just finish up the week a little easier than normal and I should be good. My friend brian was in town this week so I was able to run with him twice and once with the guys from work... so all in all I only ran by myself twice out of 6 times... which would normally be like 5 out of 6 times. so that was good. it makes putting the mileage in easier when someone else is suffering with you!!

I think I just ate 4 servings of tortellini. it was an impressive feat. i went shopping around 5 oclock and realized once I pulled out of the driveway that I was really hungry... but I didn't get home to eat something until 6:30... poor me. so i gorged myself on tortellini. carbo loading? hmm... not so sure. I am pretty proud of myself today cuz I did tons of cleaning and tons of laundry. the stuff piled up this week so it was nice to have a day to myself to just get caught up with everything. don't get me wrong, I love being around people, but it is always nice to retreat from the hustle and bustle of life for a day and just focus on me... more specifically my clothes and filthy house.

My Retaining Wall

2005-04-16T16:00:00.000-04:00

So, ever since I moved into my place, my front yard has been the eye sore of the neighborhood. I have this wood retaining wall sorta thing that is slowly creeping its way down the hill of my street. It is also sporting a cornucopia of dead plants and tree type things, both never-greens and some ivy. Every time I drive into my drive way I am just embarassed that i live there and haven't taken care of it by now. I figured my year-long grace period was finally over so I began tackling it.

I talked to a few people at work about how to fix these retaining walls and the concensus was to get rid of the wood and replace it. However, if the wood was still good, you could salvage it by just rebuilding it... so I was hoping that would be the case, but I really couldn't tell because of all the dead foilage (said like marge simpson). So my first task, and one that I completed today, was to rid the retaining wall of all the dead crap. I did that... which included much stumping pulling and weed yanking... but it is mostly done. It looks a ton better without all the dead crap, but the retaining wall looks like it is in bad shape. the wood is pretty rotted out so it looks like I am going to have to replace it... which is going to be a ton of work.

i ran a 5k this morning and I was pretty happy with my time. I ran around a 6:30 pace I believe.... i can't quite be certain because I screwed up the old watch again. Apparently when I get really tired I can't function well enough to understand what the two buttons on my watch do. you think it would be pretty straightforward... stop and split. how hard could it be? apparently very hard. anyway, when I get my final time I will certainly post it here.

My Lost Boys

2005-04-13T22:12:00.000-04:00

So I went running yesterday during lunch with a couple people from work. They are trying to get into running and I also want new people to run with so I said, hell yah I would go. So we went to ridley creek state park and found some hiking trails that we could run on. The trails were pretty darn fun, lots of good hills and stuff. One of the dudes was beat by the first time up a hill so he started walking so we said we would drop back to him every split in the trail to tell him where to go. So me and the other guy kept going and going. Somehow, me and the guy i was running with split to find the walking guy and I kept doubling back to find the walking guy but somehow I missed him. eventually we all got back to the car safely after 65 minutes of being on the trail. about double what we wanted to do but still fun. it was a nice break from the work day.

for some reason, my body still hasn't figured out that I am losing my hair and insists on still giving me zits. i think that is a bunch of crap. i only have a couple, but they still piss me off. maybe I am doing something wrong... maybe it isn't good practice to smear lard on my face twice a day. I never saw anywhere that I shouldn't so it must be good for me. i started tackling my front retaining wall. all of the dead evergreen things in there are a pain in the patoot, but I need to get it done eventually so I might as well start now. it will probably be at least a month until I finish the whole project, unless some sort of miracle occurs. speaking of projects, my closet is still nowhere near done. since the weather broke, I am focusing on the outside since I can work on the inside when it sucks outside. it probably won't be finished even for next winter. that is how slow of a worker I am.

My Congratulations

2005-04-11T22:47:00.000-04:00

First I would like to congratulate Kevin and Stephanie on their new beautiful baby boy, quentin michael. He was born yesterday and I hope I get to meet him sometime in the near future!! Congrats!!

This past weekend was the best weekend that I have had in sometime. The weather set the stage for the whole weekend. It was probably the most perfect weather anybody could ever ask for in the history of the world. simply beautiful. On top of that, I got back into the running groove this weekend... over the past 3 days I have ran 18 miles which I am really happy with. I got some yard work done and it actually looks like I am making some progress towards something. it is slow progress mind you, but progress nonetheless. And... i hung out with some cool people this weekend that capped off the fabulous weekend.

There is something about getting to work early that also puts me in a good mood. This morning I got in before 8 oclock which is probably one of the earliest times i have ever been at work. it makes me feel all productive even though i am probably not any more so. I had an orientation for some math tutoring volunteering today and it seems like it should be pretty cool, but could be a bit of a challenge. hopefully I can be a little helpful. we will see.

My Adventures Part Trois

2005-04-10T08:40:00.000-04:00

Sorry for not blogging this past week, I was in Mobile again, and this time without easy internet access.

So I have a couple of loose ends relating to luggage that I need to tie up relating to last weeks story. On monday, I went back to the airport and officially filled out a lost baggage form on my way back down to mobile. I get a call that night from the baggage delivery folks to verify my address. I give them my work address cuz I will obviously not be home to pick up my bags. The next morning I receive another call from the courier service wanting to verify my address again and the address they give me is totally wrong. somewhere on F street? So I tell them the right address and at this time I know for sure that I will never be seeing my bag again.

Surprisingly, they deliver it on tuesday to the office so i was happily surprised to hear that. Ohh and one other thing... the thursday night when it was raining so bad (see the My Ark posting), i went running right? Well my clothes had not fully dried by the morning so I had close my luggage with some clothes and my running shoes still wet. Needless to say, by the time I opened them up 1.5 weeks later, they weren't the most fresh smelling things in the world. i wore those clothes to the party last night...

Last night I went to a birthday party for one of the girls I run with. I had tons of fun... they are all great people. I ended up drinking maybe 3 or 4 drinks, and like clockwork, I woke up at something like 4 a.m. this morning and couldn't get back to sleep for a while. damn drinking, why does that happen? there has to be some medical/biological reason why my body does that... anybody?

I ran 10 miles yesterday (saturday) and felt like crap and I am going to do a short 4 or 5 today. I am trying to get back in the swing of things running-wise now that I won't be traveling much for a while. Hopefully I can break 25 miles this week.

My Adventures Part Deux

2005-04-03T16:30:00.000-04:00

Hopefully I will finish the story in this installment... otherwise I will have to figure out what comes after deux... troi? I don't know...

So the rest of work went off without too many hitches, other than the fact that right before we left, we toasted a circuit card on a valve, but no biggie, we can replace it later. I hop in the car and head to the aiport. I get all checked in for my flight and get through security, then realize my flight is delayed over an hour. it was still going to be possible that I will make my scheduled flight to philly, but just in case the guy set me up with standby on the next flight to philly. When I was standing in line there was an older woman, something like 70's or 80's and I think she was doing everything she could do not to stab the gate agent. She kept doing this very uncomfortable "I am going to kill someone soon if I don't hear what I want soon" laugh and looking around at any one that was listening. I was half-hoping that the flight would be cancelled just so I could see an 80 year old woman stab a 25 year old man. comedy gold...

The flight ended up being delayed another hour so it left about two hours late... after we land i turn on my cell phone and it is 9:31... and the last flight to philly leaves at 9:40. So I am thinking I have 9 minutes to bolt to the next plane which happens to be in a whole different terminal. nice. but luck was not with me on this day because we ended up sitting on the runway for about 10 minutes before we got to the gate. so I get off the plane, look at the monitors, and the last flight to philly shows that it has departed. so I pull a charlie brown shoulder slouch and still head to the gate where I was supposed to catch the plane with hope of some freak accident of the monitor being wrong. I get there show them my ticket and they say no joke, "Here's our DiBona!!" I thought that was pretty humorous. So the gate agent tries to put me on the flight to philly in the morning, but all of the flights are full so she would have to put me on standby and then I could possibly be stuck in the atlanta airport for the whole day. but she proposes another idea...

I could fly into newark that night, and figure out a way to get to philly. either by train or car. my bags would still get to philly the next day, but I would at least get home tonight. so I say, what the hell, and she put me on standby for the flight. So I am the last person that makes it on the flight via standby so I figure my luck has finally turned for the better. After an APU issue, apparently this plane didn't have one, we got off the ground and we were on our way to newark. I get to the newark airport a little after midnight and I make what proves to be a very bad decision by not checking for my baggage in newark. I figured the gate agent would have known whether or not my bags would have been sent there or to philly, but apparently she didn't. So apparently, according to the delta folks, my bag is sitting somewhere in the newark airport. They put in a request to have it forwarded to philly about 30 hours ago, but absolutely nothing has happened since then. No wonder all the airlines are running in the red, they have no clue how to do anything correctly. I am pretty sure I could find a route for those bags in about 10 minutes using orbitz (its called send it back to atlanta and then on to philly... they have flights every hour). ohh well... nothing important was in there other than my toiletries and my running shoes, which were wet at the time of packing, so they might be all moldy and ruined by the time I get them.

So after this mistake, I went to national and rented a car. basically i paid the money for the rental, and then you walk out to the parking garage and then steal whatever car you want cuz they leave the keys in the car and they aren't assigned to anybody. it was pretty strange. I ended up paying for a mid-size and got a full-size cuz I didn't know what the difference was. ohh well. so I make the two hour trip to philly without any hitches. ohh by the way... the rain that we got in mobile thursday and friday... was the same rain I had to drive through to get home. all told, i ate 9 servings of pretzel and cheese combos and ended up getting home around 3:30ish in the AM.

anyway... i ran 5 miles today despite having a bit of hangover and I felt so much better after doing it. after abusing my body the last couple days, I finally did something nice for myself and it felt great. I really need to start getting back in the groove with my running. Before the half marathon, I was really cruising, but things have really slowed down... maybe this week will get me back on track (my goal is more than 25 miles, 20% of the way there already!!).

My Adventures

2005-04-02T12:53:00.000-05:00

So yesterday was one of the more action packed days in my life. This entry is going to be a long one so grab a box of frosted mini wheats, some gatorade and a comfortable chair. I am quite tired so please ignore all of the grammatical errors, because I am sure there will be many.

The day started out exactly how the day before it ended... lots of thunder, torrential downpours, and lightning multiple times per minute. how is this possible? did I only sleep for 15 minutes? Nay, I got nearly 7 hours of sleep...it was just that big of a storm. Supposedly mobile got around 8-12 inches of rain in parts... thats a lot. I was hoping to run that morning if it wasn't raining, but it was so I decided to just get everything packed up and take a little time to go over some notes for the day.

I go down to the hotel lobby for the free breakfast at around 6:03. I start grabbing food to eat and the lady brings out the bisquits so I grab one of those. Then from the corner of my eye I see the lady staring at me all pissed off. I look up and she says something like "well I guess I was ready to start serving breakfast". Keep in mind this was continental/buffet type breakfast where there really isn't any "serving" going on. So I know the day is going to be a bad one if it starts out with me being scolded by the breakfast woman. I apologize and say sarcastically something like "ohh sorry, let me put this back", then she says, "no its fine". then I say, "then why did you say anything in the first place" and by say, I mean think to myself 24 hours after the fact.

I hop in the rental, a pontiac sunfire, and I start making the trip to the work site. As I pull out of the service road from the hotel there is a big lake that I have to drive through. I could still see the bottom so no big deal. Meanwhile on the radio, the DJs are saying how that it is a bad idea to drive through any of the big puddles and that peoples cars are getting stuck and floating a way. The trip goes smoothly until I am about a mile from my destination, where I come upon a large lake that has taken over the roadway. Keep in mind I have no clue of a secondary path to get to my destination, so if I can't make it through this way, I am hosed.

A couple trucks give it a go and make it through, but I am still skeptical of the sunfires ability to ford a river (just like in oregon trail), but I see a maxima make it through and I am like ahh, what the hell. so I give it a go. i hear the water sloshing around on the body and I am thinking to myself, I am going to start floating away soon or my car is going to stall. sadly, I didn't install the snorkel on the sunfire before I left so I was a little concerned. I slowly made it through and made the boat to the ship with no problems.

After on board, I prepared for my moment to rub elbows with the powerful. Today, the chief of naval research, an admiral, was coming on the ship to look at some of the work we were doing. Nobody else from my company (or my project for that matter) was there so I had to give a brief (maybe on 3 minutes) overview of the work we have been doing. So here I am standing here having one on one face time with probably the most powerful man I have ever met. I give my little spiel and he says some stuff about it is good to see this work being implemented, good job, and pats me on the shoulder. I know it sounds pretty gay, but I thought it was an impressive gesture from the dude.

my fingers are tired and I am only halfway through the story... maybe I will write more later on today or tomorrow.

My Ark

2005-03-31T21:32:00.000-05:00

So it has been rainy crazy hard here in Mobile for a majority of the day. Right now i can see it lightning at least a couple of times a minute out of the corner of my eye. There is some good that comes out of all of this rain...

First. The temperature is around 70 degrees so it isn't like one of those miserable 45 degree rains we have been having in philly the last week or two. It was a nice change. Secondly, the nice rain gave me a chance to do one of the things I love to do... running in the rain!! because it was warmer, i didn't fear getting pneumonia so I braved the rain and ran around 3 miles. It wasn't far, but it was nice getting totally drenched. I haven't done that in a while... i think that last time I did that was with Tim my junior year at iowa state.

an update on my arm... i can get my arm to about 15 degrees from straight... then I get an intense pain in inner elbow area. It feels like I just curled 299 lbs 43 times. but alas I didn't... couldn't... and never will be able to. it probably didn't help anything that i was climbing all over stuff today. remember this... it is hard to climb up stuff with one gimpy arm and one left arm (aka tiny).

My Triumph

2005-03-29T20:02:00.000-05:00

I have finally conquered my lack of TV problem. I stormed my way back to best buy (9 days after I purchased the VCR) and demanded with harsh words (like "please" and "I would appreciate") that they replace my faulty VCR. I also gave them a tongue lashing about how open box doesn't imply piece of crap, and by tongue lashing I mean I thanked them for the good service and purchased a new CD as well.

It is nice to finally be using technology that originated in the 80's... like cable TV and VCRs. This glorious day could not have come at a better moment (well 9 days ago would have been better but...) because scrubs has a new episode tonight!! nice...

Has anybody seen Requiem for a Dream? Remember the way the guys arm looks after his arm gets all gangrenous (sp?) from shooting up with a bad needle? My right arm looks about like that. It is getting more and more purple by the day. The soreness is still there, but hopefully it will start subsiding. yesterday after I got groceries, carrying those to my house was insanely painful. the arm doesn't quite straighten yet... and it seems to have good times and bad times... ohh well.

I ran a slow 4 miles this morning. it looks to be another light mileage week because I have to head out of town for work tomorrow. In fact it will probably be a light blogging week as well because I prolly won't have internet access when out of town. After not bloggin in so long i figured I would have tons of stories to tell, but it seems I have none that are interesting. Maybe blogging helps me see the interesting in the most mundane of days. or maybe it was just a lame 4 days.

My Good Deed

2005-03-24T22:44:00.000-05:00

So I figured, I am healthy individual who isn't getting laid, so at least I am not at risk for STD's. How can I use this to my advantage? I figured I would be a great candidate for giving blood. So I sign up to give blood at a blood drive at a local hospital for this morning. I go in at 8:30 for my blood-letting appointment and go through the obligatory game of 20 questions. I won and they sent me back to the fun chairs where they let me lay down. So they do there business and get my blood flowing. i fill up the pouch in good time and they apparently ran into a bit of a snag with the hardware when they were trying to stop me. The ended up messing with my needle for like 5 minutes and finally get everything squared away. The lady asks if my elbow always looks like that and say, Yah I think so. I have bony elbows so a little bump isn't a big surprise for me.

They end up having to take a little blood from the other arm just to make sure that they have what they need in order to use my blood for a transfusion. Then when I am holding the gauze over the new puncture wound, I look down at the first one and see that there is a big bump on the inside of my elbow. So i get the attention of the nurse and say, "that bump isn't normal". So they put ice on it and hope for the best. At the time my elbow was pretty stiff and it didn't bend well at all cuz of the swelling. they say that i will probably get a nasty bruise and I should ice it on and off all day.

so I get to work and my arm is pretty much gimpy. it is a bit of a challenge to drive stick cuz the shifting arm doens't have much of a range of motion at all. i am able to do it, but not without much complaining. My arm keeps getting stiffer and stiffer, so I end up going to the store and grabbing a bag of frozen pees and use that for icing my arm all after noon. It is around 11 pm. now and I can start to feel my arm stiffening up again, but hopeully a good night sleep will do it some good. i hope this doesn't effect my driving tomorrow cuz I am making a trip down to visit the folks with my sister who is flying into town tomorrow!! rock!!

ohh yeah, i ran a slow 2. 5 miles this morning. nothing of note. didn't feel too bad, didn't feel too good.

My Vengeful God

2005-03-22T21:13:00.000-05:00

So apparently someone upstairs, and I mean that in the reference-to-a-higher-power kinda way not the literal someone-is-currently-above-me kinda way, doesn't want me to watch TV. As I may have mentioned before, I bought a VCR to use as my TV tuner for my lame busted tv, but was missing an RCA cable. So I purchased a fancy RCA cable from radio shack, with diamond plated tips for increased conductivity, and got home all excited that I would be able to watch Scrubs tonight. So I plug everything in and I turn the VCR on. I see a picture on my TV and nearly jump for joy... then the VCR starts making funny sounds like it is trying to play a tape... makes some more sounds... and then turns off for me, which I appreciated. I turn it back on... see a picture (no sound mind you) and then it makes the same sounds and turns it self off again. So me thinking I am all clever that I can trick the machine to work right, I try sticking a tape in during this startup procedure. It sucks in the tape and then makes a horrible squawking sound and then spits it back out. Apparently open box from best buy means that it won't work at all... so they might have well just put a big pile of crap in there... at least then I wouldn't have wasted my time trying to get it hooked up to my tv. i would have said... oh it is a piece of crap in a box... wow I got hosed. nuff said.

I also learned another important lesson today. Zebra cakes (made with 95% zebra meat) are no good as a pre-run treat. After work today, I ran the normal 4 mile loop. I was just trying to get some mileage in cuz I have been slacking bigtime lately. After about 3 miles I got a huge cramp that made me actually stop and walk in the last quarter mile. I haven't done that in a while. So you can run and eat your zebra cakes too, but not in the reverse order.

My Sappy Music

2005-03-21T22:04:00.000-05:00

So, I think I need to stop listening to all of this lovey, depressing, awesome music!! If that wasn't a cohesive thought, I don't know what is. I have been listening to all sorts of guster, coldplay, five for fighting, john mayer, basically anything that is kinda laid back and lovey-ish. i guess maybe cuz I am not getting any of that through life, I need to rely on music to give me. I guess it probably isn't unhealthy or anything... just makes me really reflective (is that a word). And by reflective I don't mean like I wear reflectors, just makes me reflect on stuff.

enough pointless rambling... on to something very important. i ran mount misery today and it was certainly very freaking hard. if I did that once a week, I would destroy everybody on the trail races. That is one hell of a hill. anywho... i ran it with a friend from school and it was good to run with someone during the week. then we went and grabbed some john harvards... good bear... good bread... and good ravioli. how could I complain!! lame post sorry

My Old Bones

2005-03-19T20:52:00.000-05:00

So I figured out everything I would need to buy if I were to make a media center PC for my living room. It looks it would cost somewhere around 800 bones. Not too shabby when you think about everything it could do... but not really worth it when I need to spend money on other things, for example, the ass cheek implants I have been looking to get for some time. So for now I think I am going to hold off. I was thinking if I could get it for closer to $600 bones I might pull the trigger, but that doesn't look like it is going to happen. maybe in 6 months...

I worked out in the yard all day today... and my body seems to be a little pissed about it right now, hence the title. all my joints hurt, which I guess could be because of my cold or cuz I did physical stuff all day. My neck is pretty sore as well, but I have a feeling that was due to some shower time clumsiness when I was trying to reach out of the shower to get more soap and ended up on the floor. It would have been pretty funny to get on tape if it weren't for the whole me being nude thing!! maybe that would have added to the comedy of the tape...

My Mourning Period

2005-03-18T19:16:00.000-05:00

So the loss of the TV is getting less and less aggrivating every day. I figured out that if I just bought a cheap VCR i could get away from even fixing the TV. But who wants to buy a cheap VCR when i could the accomplish the same thing by creating a media center PC for 800-1000!! This way I could change channels through the computer, record TV (sorta like tivo), play mp3s in my living from my computer, and get speakers for a little stereo system. Now wouldn't that be sweet? I am not sure what I will do yet... thankfully I can play DVDs so I will probably watch King Arthur tonight (i just want to get it out of the way... i have heard it is terrible).

I ran 4 miles this morning... nothing spectacular to right about it. i don't even remember what I was thinking about when I ran. It was kinda like a dream though. I have a hankering I am coming down with another freakin cold. I am not sure how many this has been in the past 12 months, but it seems it is an infectious circle at work. We are helping to breed the world's toughest cold... nice!! My blister on my foot is finally recovering... i wore my fancy socks running today so maybe that helped!!

My Electric Tragedy

2005-03-16T20:34:00.000-05:00

So, I was sitting on the floor in my house, around 8:15 this morning, eating honey nut cheerios, trying to roll some of the tightness out of my soleus from the mornings run of five miles, and watching the morning's episode of Arrested Development (this has kinda become a habit). All of a sudden, the TV changes from Video 4 to channel 5. And I am like... WTF? So I try to change it back with the remote to no avail... the TV does nothing. so I pause the DVD and replace the batteries in the remote because I have been having problems with them lately. I put new batteries in the remote and still nothing.

I walk up to the TV and use the buttons on the front to try to change it back to video 4. For some reason all the buttons on the TV seem to be all F'ed up because by holding the increase volume button, it sometimes changes channels and sometimes switches between video1 and a channel. Nothing freakin works at all, but somehow after hitting some seemingly random sequence of buttons, I get it back to video 4 and finish watching the episode.

I get home tonight from work and I try to figure out WTF is going on. I try unplugging the TV for a couple minutes like they suggested on the website, but it still didn't work. So I get online and sony has some online help people that I have found out don't even use logic. So I tell him what is happening and he asks me to take the batteries out of the remote for one minute and then put them back in. The whole time I am thinking, how the hell could the batteries in my remote f-up my whole TV, especially the buttons on the front. of course this doesn't work, he has me try unplugging it from the wall again and then is nice enough to send me a link to a website where I can find a local service center. Wow... impressive... equisitely trained. I hate tech support people... i haven't had a good tech support experience in years.

So I am faced with having to bring my damn TV to a service center where they probably won't have any clue what is wrong but will be nice enough to charge me anyway. Just what I needed... i just got I Heart Huckabees from netflix too. ohh well, maybe I will have to do something productive this weekend.

My Foul Mood

2005-03-15T08:59:00.000-05:00

I assume everybody has heard the expression, "Waking up on the wrong side of the bed." Well, I think I did that this morning... not in the literal sense but in the cliched grumpy sense. I stayed up too late last night watching episodes of the office (very funny series by the way... the guy Tim is hilarious), and when I woke up today, I felt like I had been clubbed over the head with the unhappy stick. I am assuming mostly it is cuz I didn't get enough sleep and cuz I have my final for my class tonight, but at least after today that will be over. I will certainly get to bed early tonight, especially if I am going to be this pissed off in the morning if I don't get enough sleep.

anywho... yesterday morning I did a slow "stretching out" run just to hopefully get rid of some of the soreness. Surprisingly, i am not too sore today so maybe it helped a bit. I will probably eesume normal training tomorrow... possibly with the delco RRCs... we will see. hmm... nothing else is too new... just wanted to be vent my angst a bit...

My Caesar Rodney

2005-03-13T21:18:00.000-05:00

Choosing the title for this entry was tough because there were so many options... my positive splits, my collapsing legs, my blown start. I figured this was more specific so if down the road I need to use a more generic title, it is still available.

So I met up with some folks at Lloyd hall that needed rides down the race. The trip down was uneventful, and we got to the race about an hour early for registration and a bit of warm up. As I said yesterday, I didn't really have any clue how fast i was going to be able to run, but after talking with a bunch of people i was going to try to pace with Steve G. and Mony... cuz they were about the same pace. The race gun sounded like a freakin cannon and I must have jumped 2 feet in the air. and we were off...

i felt good for the first mile... up until i got to the first mile marker and I saw that I did it in 7 minutes. not a good sign for things to come... cuz I knew for a fact I couldn't run 13 miles at 7 minutes per mile. The first 3 miles went by at the same pace and for some reason I couldn't get myself to slow down. I think it was mostly pride because I wanted to stick with the group of PRs, who were way out of my league. After the hills started I think I banged out a couple miles at 7:45 pace... which I was fine with. After the hills leveled out at mile 8 I got back down to 7:30 miles and I woudl ahve been happy to continue that pace. Around mile 10, my left calf tightened up and continued getting worse and worse. Mile 11 came and my right calf responded by tightening up as well. So here i was with only two miles left, two gimp calves, and absolutely no energy. Thankfully I had some gatorade left that i was carrying with me and it tasted like sweet ambrosia. I don't think it gave me any more energy but it certainly tasted pretty sweet. From miles 9-13.1 people were passing me left and right. I knew I had a PR locked up and I just wanted to finish. Running the ugly mudder, i think it made me a little soft because it gave me the option to stop on the uphills. This thought ran through my head on the final .25 mile hill. But i figured if I was going to give it my all, stopping and walking wouldn't be that. I somehow made it up the final hill, across the finish line, and to the pizza.

My final time was 1:37:37 which is a PR by 19 minutes. I am extremely happy about the time I ran, but I wish I had ran a better race. Now at least I know where my limits are and need to work on my pacing a lot! I look forward to my next race just to even out my splits!! The posting has been pretty trite, but I am tired like a beaver... tonights sleep is well deserved!!

My Nerves

2005-03-12T21:33:00.000-05:00

so tomorrow is the caesar rodney half marathon and I am a bit nervous about it. my nervousness stems from me actually trying to push my self in this race. not that I am generally a slacker when it comes to racing, but I don't know if I have ever actually pushed myself as hard as I can go. how do I know this? because I have never crashed in a race and normally i still have a ton of energy at the end... with the exception of the ugly mudder but that was just a strange race to begin with. the only other half marathon I have run i did in 1:56 and my goal is to break 1:40. that is going to be quite a stretch because I think I will have to average just over 7:30s. why does this make me nervous? because I am a freak about failing at anything... so we will see how it goes.

tonight i went to some italian restaurant in south philly and had a chicken parmigiana that was about the size of my head, literally. probably wasn't the best pre-race meal, but it was awesome. anywho... it is past 9:30... way past my bed time...

My Firefighting

2005-03-11T19:36:00.000-05:00

Today at work, it seemed that nothing was going right. First, we were looking to do an upgrade on a system we recently installed and found out some of the hardware we were going to use for this upgrade isn't compatible with the stuff already installed. Later on in the day, I receive a phone call from one of the companies that is operating the system (one of the nicest guys in the world by the way) and apparently one of the PCs used in the installation BSOD'ed (blue screen of death for those non-geeks out there) and wouldn't restart. Nice...

For some reason today though, these failures didn't bother me at all (probably because they weren't something I did wrong... if they were I probably would have flipped out). Everything will get fixed on both problems because of my fabulous firefighting skills. I have heard girls like guys with skills, like bow-hunting skills. Anybody?

I didn't run today to rest up for sunday. The knees were a little sore today, but I think that is from yesterdays somewhat hard run and the fact my shoes are looking at retirement on sunday. They are right up around that 400 mile mark. The reserves are already sitting in their cubbyhole getting acclimated to their environment (for those of you who have never been in my house, i keep my shoes in little cubbyholes). It is kinda funny, i compared the old shoes to the new ones (exact same model) and my old right shoe has an insane angle to the heel cup if looking from the back of the shoe. That must be cuz I run funny on it. Just thought that was interesting... i wonder if they have shoes that are good for people who's shoes do that.

My DelcoRRC Deflowering

2005-03-10T20:20:00.000-05:00

I ran with the Delaware County Road Runners Club this evening after work for the first time. They ran a little longer than I was hoping, and a little faster. I ended up doing about 6.5 in just under 52 minutes. So a little faster than 8 minute pace. After this run, I think I will start out CR at around 7:45 pace and then try to pick it up after the first few miles. Get up the hill... let it level out and then pick it up to maybe 7:30. I think that will give me at least a PR by at least 15 minutes so I am pretty excited... but not as confident as I would like.

Whats the deal with my health these days? Anybody now? I just got over a cold maybe 2 weeks ago and I woke up this morning with another freaking sore throat... it think it is a bunch of crap whatever is going on. It could be just the dry cold weather we have been having that caused my sore throat this morning cuz it went away after I was up and aboot (yes, I spelled that wrong on purpose), we will see tomorrow morning. i think i need to start eating more vegetables or something, maybe that will help. I can't remember when I last had something green. well I had green peppers on my cheesesteak today... does that count? prolly not... ohh well. you only live once... might as well make it as short as possible, right? ohh wait... that doesn't quite sound right...

My Superglue

2005-03-09T22:49:00.000-05:00

I forget when or where, but I remember hearing, reading, or seeing somewhere that super glue is a great way to heal up an incision in a pinch. This is going to sound as cheesey as can be, but I think I have the best friends and family in the world. This week has been a tough one on me so far, and I have leaned on my friends and family heavily to help me through it, and I just wanted to say that whoever said time heals all wounds is full of crap, they should have said, "Time, superglue, or my friends heal all wounds". much more appropriate... and to all you friends and family... new and old. thanks... you are the best...

Somehow, I must have sub-consciously known that this was going to be a tough week for me cuz I splurged and bought some stuff on amazon. I got a flogging molly and guster (parachute) CD. Both are awesome!!! It is amazing how gaelic rock and poppy rock can lifts ones spirits. I ended up rocking out in my kitchen doing dishes and loving every minute of it!!

ohh yeah, this is supposedly a running blog... i haven't run since monday. maybe tomorrow morning. I have the alarm set but we will see what happens. halla back

My Dreary Day

2005-03-08T21:16:00.000-05:00

Holy crap… is today the most downer of a day on the record books. I woke up after having a shitty night sleep to the most bleak looking weather ever, around 40 degrees, dark, and rainy. I had decided to not run today to rest up the legs for this weekends big half-marathon. Then it started snowing and all of the rain started freezing. Finally it stopped snowing and now it just getting freakin cold out. Thankfully, I have to look forward to a drive into the city to go to a class I have no interest in sitting through with a homework assignment where the highest possible score I will get is a 20 out 100! Nice! overall, a pretty crappy day… but hopefully we will get some sun in the near future to cheer things up a bit!

I was considering trying to run with the DelcoRRC tomorrow night, but decided against it because I want to get a present for my brothers birthday, and I want to get that in the mail so it actually has a chance of getting there on his birthday. Maybe I will meet up with them on Thursday night. Nothing else bloggable has happened, but maybe my run tomorrow morning will give me some inspiration.

--- update at 9:00 p.m.

So it looks like the windchill will be 6 when I wake up tomorrow morning, so i probably won't hit the road... just to warn you die hard readers who were looking to get an update on my running.

The day started to take a turn for the better late today. It happened in the place I would least expect... class. I was dreading going to class tonight because I would sit through something that I didn't understand and just get more frustrated. But... i actually understood some of the stuff in class. Then, I yawned and I felt a little like a little weight had been lifted off me. I think for some reason I was tired and the yawn was just me I was admitting i was tired and it released some of the tiredness. tune back in for more rantings of a lunatic.

My Pit

2005-03-06T20:20:00.000-05:00

Last night I went to the Flogging Molly concert at the the Troc. I had heard the CD once or twice before the concert and liked the whole Gaelic rock theme so decided to go. Never having been in the pit of a concert before, I was a little worried/scared about going in the first time, but a couple friends decided to go in, so I figured what the hell. I ended up having a great time getting tossed around the pit and wasn't at all fearful of my life. It is kinda cool cuz if while getting tossed around you fall on the ground, there are like 15 people there to get you back on your feet. One drawback of being in the pit was that by the time we left, I was drenched with sweat. The even worse part, was probably only half of it was my own.

On the running front, I banged out a quick 5 miles today. I think I averaged around 7:45 or 7:50 for all five miles, with the last 2.5 coming in under 7:30. I have been considering doing the half-marathon next sunday at a pace of 7:30, but after today... I am not to sure I can hold up that pace for 13.1 miles. I did it for 2.5, but multiply that by 5 and I have a feeling it might be a little harder. We will see...

My Spackling Knife

2005-03-05T15:34:00.000-05:00

Where, oh where, has my little spackling knife gone? Oh where, oh where could it be? Damnit... all I wanted to do today was try out a little spackling in the closet to see how smooth of a wall I could get, but alas, my spackling knife has come up missing. A couple weeks ago when I re-caulked around my tub, I lost my caulk gun and caulk. They ended up being in the bottom of my toolbox, but it took me about an hour to find them. Yes, I already checked there, and no, it wasn't there. If anybody has any ideas where it is, let me know.

I ran with PR today and put in about 9.5ish miles. I did the loop in around 66 minutes which is just under 8 minute miles which I was pretty happy about. This run puts me at an even 25 this week which I am pretty happy about, especially considering the pain I was in at the beginning of the week. Speaking of my achilles....

I watched troy last night. I wasn't hella impressed with it. The fight scenes were pretty cool, but the movie got a little cheesy at times. For example, when achilles killed that humungous guy in the beginning and all he did was a running, jump stab... and that made him an amazing warrior... come on now... anybody can do that. One thing i did like about the movie was it made orlando bloom look like the sissy that he is. 'bout time...

My Recovery

2005-03-04T18:01:00.000-05:00

Today, my legs are finally feeling near 100% after the ugly mudder this past weekend. I ended up not putting too much mileage in this week (I think I am only up to about 15 ish for the week), but I was on travel for a good portion of the week so that makes doing much of anything a struggle.

Does this happen to anyone else? Any time I drink more than 2 or 3 beers, I really sleep like crap that night. For example, last night, I went and grabbed some beers and played some foosball and air hockey with some folks on travel with me. I probably had 3 or 4 beers and ended up getting to bed pretty early to catch a 7:00 a.m. flight. I woke up around 3:00 a.m. and I couldn't fall back asleep until my alarm went off at around 5:10. There is nothing more frustrating for me than not being able to fall asleep. I think I was also a little anxious about sleeping through my alarm. ohh well I will be sleeping in my comfy pillow top bed tonight with my comfy flannel sheets. I will certainly not have a problem falling asleep tonight!!

My Ash-heels

2005-02-28T18:29:00.000-05:00

I did a bit of a recovery run today, a slow 2.5 miles around my house to try to loosen up the muscles that were screaming after yesterdays race. My achilles/lower calf area is very sore in both legs, hence the title of the post. I forget what book it was, but in some classic literary work, somebody referred to Achilles as ash-heels, and I remember my english teacher thinking that was clever because his only weakness was his heel. Ahh, the simple pleasures in life.

It is snowing again here in Philly... hopefully the last of the year. I am excited for the shoveling I get to do tomorrow. There is just something about shoveling that I simply love. I think the fact that is just straight manual labor and the fact that you can just put your work in and instantly see the results is something very beautiful, especially because I don't normally see progress like that at work. And it gives a nice arm/back workout that I most desperately need. I have been neglecting anything that could be construed as a resistance workout... not because I don't think it is a good idea... but simply because I am lazy. and speaking of laziness... this is all the effort I am going to put into this post...

My Ugly Mudder

2005-02-27T16:44:00.000-05:00

The ugly mudder is a 7 mile trail race up in Reading, PA on Mt. Penn. the website says that the course is pretty hard and stated that you would probably run 1.5 to 2 minutes off your pace for a 7 mile road race. I figured, based on this, that I should be able to do 8.5 or 9 minute miles and finish up in under an hour.

I drove up with 4 other guys from Philly Runners, a group I run with, and one of the guys has done a similar race before and suggested going out very fast at the beginning or you will get stuck behind a bunch of slow people in the singletrack parts of the course. so I started out at a pretty brisk pace... that is until we got the first hill. Because of the recent snow, the footing going up the hill wasn't very good so it got pretty backed up. I ended up trying to go wide of the course to pass some folks ... but I don't think i made up much ground with that tactic. It took so long to get to the first mile marker, I had come to the conclusion that they weren't marking any miles on the course... it took around 10 minutes for the first mile.

The hills were unbelievably hard and they seemed to be coming from some infinite supply. I don't know if I have ever felt such pain in my quads before. It was by far the hardest race I have ever run. I was able to make it through the first few big uphills without walking and was promising myself that I would make up time on the uphills and not walk. By the hills in the 5th and 6th miles, I had resigned my self to catching up to the person in front of me who was walking, and then walk behind them. Still a reasonable goal. Apparently there was a beer stop just before the 5 mile marker, but I completely missed it... i must have been delusional because I thought we ran by the pagoda, but apparently nobody else saw it.

For crowd enjoyment, 100 yards from the finish the course ran up a 75-yd mud hill that must have been 100% grade. I was able to make it up the hill by clawing my way up with both hands with one of the guys from the group laughing at me from the top. Overall, the race was a ton of fun, I was very happy with how I ran, and all of the pain was worth it for the Fudge stripe cookies and twizzlers at the end! I ended up 21st overall with a time around 1 hour 6 or 7 minutes ( a pace of just under 10 mins per mile). I don't know what place I got in my division or how many total runners there were yet, but I will update this post when the official results are posted.

My Unoriginal Thoughts

2005-02-26T09:48:00.000-05:00

I have decided that the naming for each blog entry will start with "My...". this is a rip-off from the naming convention for the Scrubs episodes and will reflect my steve-centric view of the world... which this blog is surely to highlight.

I made an Ali like return to the road this morning. I ran just under 5 miles this morning. The first 2.5 coming in around an 8 min. pace and the return 2.5 coming in at just over 7:40 pace. I was pretty happy with the run because the cold didn't really effect me much... a little more coughing than usually, but no real problems. My legs felt a bit like bricks, but i guess that is to be expected after taking 4 days off. the strange thing was that all of the little aches and pains in my shins and feet were still there. I figured the time off would help them heal up a bit... nothing serious... just my body telling me that I have both shins and feet. thanks for that.

Tomorrow is the ugly mudder and it looks to be nice weather, though a little cold (~25ish). I plan on bringing my camera, so if I get any good pictures I will definitely drop the link on here. wish me luck!!!

My First Blog

2005-02-24T19:49:00.000-05:00

So this is my first ever blog entry. Who knows if I am going to stick with it or even if I am going to enjoy doing it. It seems like a good place to vent off all the random thoughts I have in my head everyday, so we will see what happens. Chances are this blog will be read by no one and entertaining to even fewer... but ohh well. Maybe it will be cathartic (sp?) for me.

So this whole getting a cold thing sucks. This is the second cold I have had in about 3 months. Because of the cold, I skipped running the last two or three mornings and I am planning on taking the day off tomorrow as well. I am running the ugly mudder sunday, so maybe the cold is a bit of a tapering in disguise. Granted if I cough up a lung on saturday, I am not sure how much tapering will help my race time. Hopefully I will get back on the road on saturday to make sure my legs still work. It will be my first trail race and looks to be a sloppy one!!

Being a minnesota boy at heart, it pains me to whine about the weather, but come on... lets finish up with the snow already. I can't wait for spring...