I thought this was pretty cool.
Deena Kastor and Ryan Hall will be running in the Bolder Boulder this year. They are Two of The Best Runners in The U.S.
I’m sure they won’t bother me as I try and break a world record. I have running shoes older than they are.
Things are going too fast, spinning out of control, I can’t keep up with things, I suck.
Next thing you know is, I’m going to wake up and it’s the morning of my marathon. What seemed like at one time a long, long way away, is now right on top of me, and it’s feeling heavy. In one way, I’m glad it’s here and I can’t wait, but on the other hand, I want a couple more weeks to prepare. But as one great philosopher said, “It is what it is”. I will do the best that I can and I’m glad that I’m able to do it. There are so many people out there with MS who need a wheelchair to get around, and here I am complaining about not being totally ready to run 26.2 miles. What a dolt.
My youngest son Michael, announced this week that he and his girlfriend Heather are engaged. To each other no less. I’m sure everyone who knows them are not surprised. They have been shacking up now for 4 years and I guess that they decided to make it official. No date has been set, but it will be sometime next summer.
My daughter FINALLY graduated college. I think she breaks the record for the most number of years in college to get an associates degree. I believe that all total she went to college for 6 years to get a 2 year degree. Actually she was there for 4 years before she decided to can her one degree she was after. I’m sure it will come in handy down the road sometime. Yeah, that’s it.
In case you haven’t noticed, the Wings and Pistons are in the playoffs and are doing well. The Tigers are up and down, but the good thing is that they are in a weak division.
This week will be more rest and less running as I wind down for the marathon. I am getting a massage, which will be great, and I promise to go bed early.
The Colfax Marathon is almost here. May 18th to be exact, and I am tapering down. But I feel like I should be getting in more miles since I missed quite a few runs with my quad problem. But wisdom tells me that I should not be getting in more miles, and that I need to taper more than I need to get more miles in. So, it doesn’t appear that I will break any records, so I’ll just take what I can get. The leg feels almost 100% better, so in that respect, I am happy. I ran hard for the first time last night, and I could tell that I have lost some speed. I guess the Kenyans and the Ethiopians are safe for another year.
After this marathon, I think I will take it easy and just run to keep in shape. Possibly run a couple of half marathons, and some 10K’s, but not do another marathon this year. At my age, 43 53, I need some rest. I keep getting injured, so it’s either my mechanics, or I’m over training. Either way, I’m going to take it easy on myself.
Coming up after the Colfax, is The Bolder Boulder, which is an awesome 10K. I think that they said that it was the largest 10K race in the U.S. Last year they had 50,000 runners, and my son Jason came in from North Carolina to run it. Of course I beat him, and in fact I beat him so bad that he’s not coming this year. Too bad.
Well after a whole week off from running, I ventured out on Saturday to test my leg and see how it would hold up. I was quite surprised that after 5 miles, I felt great. I was scheduled to do 20, and I was hoping for 10. So instead of turning around at the 5 mile mark, I pushed onward. At one point, between 7 and 8 miles, I came to this uphill portion which in itself isn’t bad, but then Mr. Wind decided to exhale and it seemed like I was walking for a mile. In Colorado near the foothills, it can get extremely windy. I think at that point, I would have been wise to turn around, but as I’ve said before, I’m not too smrt smart. I turned around at 10 miles and headed back knowing that for most of the run, it would be downhill and the wind would be at my back. My leg was feeling fine and I was determined to grind it out. The only problem was that my body had other plans for me. At about mile 14, my leg started to hurt, but not really too bad. Then the unthinkable happened. Yes, my friends and family, I got gas real bad! Hey! Someone has to admit it, and that someone is ME. I stopped running for fear of having my nice $40 running shorts ruined. How embarrassing. I ended up walking the final 4 miles with my butt cheeks firmly clamped together. After awhile, it all made sense. My body was telling me that I needed to take it easy on my leg, but instead of making my leg hurt, my body gave me gas.
Today I feel great. My leg is a little sore, but overall it feels fine. I think that this week will be the deciding point to see if I’ll be running The Colfax Marathon on May 18. After this week, I start to taper, so I need to get in some good quality workouts so I can gauge my fitness and see how my leg is holding up. I’m confident that this will be a good week and that I will be back on track. I just need to find the bathroom.
I had a feeling this might happen. I woke up Saturday and drove to the Greenland Trail race that I was going to be doing, and my leg felt pretty good. There was still some soreness, but not too bad. Before the run, I was able to do some easy quad stretches, and I didn’t feel any pain at all. As I stated in earlier post, I have been having a sore quad muscle. Anyways, I started out running slow, mainly because of the trail conditions, and the number of slow runners in front of me. After mile 1, the elevation started going up and within a span of 4 miles, went from an elevation of 6,875 to 7,425. I believe that was my downfall. I still ran (of course. I am a male!) and once I started going back downhill, I thought I’d be fine. The course is 8 miles, and I was going to do 16, which meant doing 2 loops. I hope I didn’t lose anybody there with my overly educated math skills. I finished the first loop and started back on the 2nd 8 miles. Well after a little bit of elevation gain again, I was toast. My leg really started hurting, and I tried to over compensate for it and ended up starting to put a strain on my knee. At this point I stopped, put my tail between my legs, and turned around. I was officially a DNF (did not finish).
It’s not so much that I didn’t finish, it’s that I think that I really did some damage to my leg. Today it hurts like hell and I had a hard time going up and down stairs. I’m really worried that this is going to set me back on my training and maybe even make me postpone doing The Colfax this year. That would really suck.
This weekend I am going to run in the Greenland Trail 50K. Not that I would run 50K though. There’s actually a 25K and an 8 Mile run. I’m going to do the 25K which is about 16 miles, on trail, with altitude. I was thinking of wearing a back pack full of rocks just for fun also. I was going to run this as a race, but my left quad (I love saying quad. Quad, quad, quad) has been hurting the last couple of days, so if it’s not better by Saturday, I’m going to take it a bit easy. My marathon is 4 weeks away, so I don’t want to be doing anything stupid. But then again, I’ve never been one to be real smrt smart.
How do you like my baseball prediction so far? 2 ways you can look at it. The Tigers suck and they are in last, or the Tigers are just getting warmed up and they are only 4 1/2 games back of first. I’ll go with the latter.
I never did do my 6 word memoir. I’m such a slacker and I apologize for my slackification. I was thinking of this;
“I used to be wild and crazy, now I’m just mild and lazy”
I think that’s slightly more than 6, so I’m still working on it.
I know weather is crazy all over the country, but this is ridiculous. This past Tuesday in Denver, it was 85 degrees! Then on Wednesday, it was 35 and snowing. It’s global warming mixed in with the new ice age.
Baseball season has started and it’s time for the totally clueless fan to say how great his team is. Just about every team has a shot to win 100 games and win the World Series. But baseball is so hard to pick because there are so many games and you can tell when a team just “phones it in” and doesn’t play hard. They just played an extra inning game the night before a Sunday afternoon game, and they don’t care. But they did that in the old days too, and the players I grew up watching, never phoned it in. I believe the biggest change in the game today is the money that the players make. Why play hard when you get paid an obscene amount of money? The players of yesteryear played hard to get to the playoffs because of the extra money they could make. Nowadays, that’s pocket change for them. Having said that, here’s my fearless for sure prediction for the World Series. It’s going to be the Detroit Tigers versus the Chicago Cubs.
On a completely different topic, I was “tagged” by Kristen of the blog Run Faster to write a six word memoir. Here are the rules;
I haven’t done anything with this yet because I haven’t really taken the time to think about it. I’ll get to it soon I hope.
This is my first entry using my new computer. After 7 (?) years, I finally got a new one. The old one still worked and would do most of what I wanted, but I could tell it was getting to be like me. Takes awhile to get going and it may sputter out before it’s done. My CD/DVD drive wasn’t working which was bad because I couldn’t upload any songs from a CD to my MP3 player and most importantly, I couldn’t install the software that came with my Garmin that Diane bought me for Christmas. Well no more of that gigabyte breath! Now I am totally hooked up and there’s no excuse for me to not make the Olympic Marathon team. Really, how did they run marathons in the old days without knowing elevation gain, mile splits, and a feature that gets you back to the start? Now I can upload my run for the day and it will tell me everything, even how long my bathroom break was. I’m just now starting to figure out the features of this and once I have that mastered, I will still be the humble person that I always was.
I did 22 miles today and my calves are rebelling against me. I’ve pretty much just stayed on the couch most of the rest of the day, and I even give my calves a gentle massage. But they seem to be mad at me. When I get up to walk, they crunch up in a little ball and refuse to move. Don’t say anything, but I think that they are a bunch of babies. Nothing worse than baby calves! My run itself was nothing much to write about other than some of the awesome views that I saw. At one point, I’m running around this golf course that is right at the foothills. Very nice.
I didn’t get a chance to run as much this week because I had a chance to have a root canal done on Tuesday. No really. I don’t know if it was luck, or karma, or someone watching over me, but I got the pleasure of someone drilling my tooth, and extracting the nerve. I think that right now I should stop writing and go get a lotto ticket. It just doesn’t get any better.
I wonder if they called it Runnin’ of the Green because most people looked a little green since it was the day after most of the St Patrick’s Day celebrations. The day before this race was not a good way to prepare for this run for me. In the morning I ran 12 miles of which 4 miles were at a 7:30 pace. Then Diane and I went downtown and took in the ambiance that was St Patrick’s Day. And although it was 2 days before my birthday, we were celebrating that also.
The race attracted over 3,000 people which is crazy. The thing that gets me is the numb nuts that are up towards the front of the start line, and they have no business being there. There were people (I call them people, not runners) that after a mile were walking! This made for a really slow start for me and also made me frustrated.
The weather was very nice, around 40 degrees, but a little windy. Also downtown Denver has a few streets that are nasty hills! Other than a few dogs and a couple of strollers (don’t get me started on that stuff!), there were no other major incidents to speak of. I ended up doing 32:36 which was not too shabby I must say. That put in in about the top 10% of all the runners that day. 367th out of 3112 runners. The best part however is that they have Killian’s beer at the end. Slainte.
DST has officially started, and that means that spring is here as long as you don’t live in Columbus, OH where they got 20″ of snow yesterday. Serves them buckeyes right. But for most of us, it means putting away your headlamp and reflective vest (unless you run in the morning where now it will be darker), and heading out the door with renewed vigor. It is amazing what power daylight has on someones mental well being
Here in Colorado, it has been documented that we receive an average of 300 days of sunlight per year which always puts us in the top five. You see a lot of people walking around with smiles on their faces and with seemingly not a care in the world. Oh wait, that’s the students from Colorado University in Boulder that are high.
Did a 20 mile run yesterday and even though I’m feeling a little bit sore, overall I feel good. There were some hilly sections which were a little bit strenuous, especially that hill in the last half mile. But that’s over with and this week is a recovery week which I actually don’t like, but I know is essential for avoiding injuries. Plus this coming weekend is the start of a 3 day St. Patrick’s Day celebration (along with my birthday, hint hint), so a nice short run on Saturday will be most welcome before I start to have a few pints.
I was diagnosed with MS about 4 years ago and I am one of the lucky ones. I don't have too many problems associated with it, and the disease has actually slowed down. I took up running 3 years ago just to see if I could do it. So far I've run 3 marathons in a year and a half.
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