Words of Folly

on a rainy day

2009-02-28T21:05:00.006-05:00

Following way too much work lately a rainy day was just what I needed. So I started poking around my pc and before you know, I committed yet another act of visual violence:

2009-02-22T21:10:00.002-05:00

The good news is that the muscle issue in my right leg is on the mend, I managed to walk a couple of miles today and could probably have kept on going, so that is really encouraging.

So what does a guy do when all he can do is sit on his butt? Let's see. A couple of weeks ago we went out and shot the footage for the upcoming "half marathon course video" for the Earth Day Run. Camera work and editing provided by John Olson, the one man powerhouse behind SCRUNNERS.COM. The co-executive earthling, Ms. Hill Speedster, managed to make contact with a band from Clemson so the video will have a soundtrack. Check them out at picturemefree.com The moment we have the paperwork signed (yeah there's legal stuff everywhere) the video will be uploaded and available for your enjoyment. Is real easy being a race director with that kind of talent around.

Earlier today I committed yet another act of visual violence, the web page for the Sun Rise Run. This year is the 30th Running . This is one summer race you'll want put it on your calendar folks it's a John Lehman production and if you've run any in the upstate you already know that John's events are some of the best shows around. You can even sleep in, the race don't start until 6:30AM .

so just how is quantifiable is this "green" thing ...

2009-02-08T09:15:00.002-05:00

Over the past couple of months I've been explaining the basic philosophy behind the earth day profile of this years Greer Earth Day Run quite a few times. Basically we're trying to improve on the two of the key factors in going green: Transportation and packing material. So how about some numbers. Coming right up. I was cleaning out a pile of paper and I found 3 fliers from similar events. Heavy paper, pleasing to the eye and like all such things, 100% trash the moment you are done with them. It so happens I have a highly accurate electronic balance, so I worked out the average weight of the 3 fliers and the weight of the flier we've been using in limited quantities. Scaled up to 10000 fliers, for the purpose of statistics, the 3 standard fliers would weigh in at 334 pounds and the earth day flier at 70 pounds or 21% of the other guys. So we are making do with a fraction of the material and that has huge ramifications on the transportation as well.

microphonic disconnect

2009-02-06T05:59:00.004-05:00

Something about war plans rarely survive first contact with the opposition, well apparently so goes it for the best laid plans. We had this great idea for a kick-off party at the track club meeting last night. By the time the microhone cord fell out the third time I'd kind of lost momentum and decided to cut it short. Oh well. We did manage to give away some bibs though and we sold more so compared to last year at this time we are way ahead.

Miss hill speedster got there early and taped a bib under the seat of a chair. Unfortunately she'd taped it under a chair right where I wanted to sit and was told I couldn't. So I had to go find a seat at the other end of the room.

If anybody knows the person that won "the hidden bib" please remind her that we need the registration form filled and returned, she left before I could get with her.

Got Earth ?

2009-01-30T23:08:00.004-05:00

Sometime in early December I accepted the gig as Race Director for the Greer Earth Day Run and my life took a turn for "busy". Partly the event was 5 short months away and everything pretty much had to be bootstrapped. In situations like this it is important to hire somebody smarter than yourself, so I hurried up and talked Ms. Hill Speedster into being my co-executive earthling.
All this is really very fitting, can't run because of my bum leg but at least I can help out and get a race going. Admittedly it doesn't appear be doing much to maintain cardio but it's something.

So, here we are 6 weeks later and in a week we are going to open registration, This opening date just goes to show how crazy this ride has been, first we set "open registration" to 2/15 and then yours truly felt that was sandbagging so I put 2/1 on the early flier. Well, as usual, the middle ground has it, 2/6 it is. So, whats so hard about having people sign up and pay? Funny you should ask ...

The event is "The Greer Earth Day Run" and that kind of obliges management to make sure the event is "gentle on the planet". So what defines "gentle on the planet" and how can we make the event more earth friendly, or greener as people are likely to say. So going back to a conversation we had a couple of years ago while out running where we were addressing the subject of the enormous waste of resources taking place in your average road race event, we decided to address the two major causes of waste, generically known as "transportation and packing material". In road races you can drastically reduce those by eliminating the race packet and hence, packet pick-up. Great idea, but how do we do it, and there's your answer as to why we needed a little time to figure this out.

So, this means we will take on-line registrations and mail the race number (BIB) via the USPS, has worked for years for Peachtree, we just had to figure out a method to make it work for us.
Actually at first I really wanted to just sell the bibs in grocery stores like Bi-Lo and Publix but I have to admit that I don't have a process to handle that. We like the idea though, so we are test marketing the idea and selling bibs in ONE store, Fleet Feet on Augusta Road. One store is all we can handle right now. So, if you don't want to shop on-line you can still get a race entry, just go to Fleet Feet and you can sign up and they will hand you the bib right in the store. Look mom, no packet pick-up, and we'll hand you the T-shirt at the finish line. By some simple estimations this approach should save about 20 000 miles on your cars and several hundred pounds of paper and plastic. We ARE planning on creating an electronic racepacket or at least we hope we'll get time to assemble it. So, even if you don't sign up on-line, be sure to give us your e-mail address.

Stay tuned for the continuing saga of Flemming and Ms Hill Speedster on the road to Greer!

oh and I almost forgot, the webpage up, Check it out

Happy new year... with a tale

2009-01-02T12:23:00.002-05:00

I have a bad case of tendonitis so that kind of puts a damper on the running which, in turn, puts a damper on the blogging. Then Megan wondered if anybody had a winter running story. Well, I don't but that never stopped me in the past. You get 2 points for figuring out the obscure movie reference towards the end. Happy 2009 peeps.

The adventures of Lena

It was a dark and stormy night; Special agent Lena Olaugson of the St. Paul office of the Federal Bureau of investigation was having yet another panic rummage through her laundry hamper for some running tights. She really needed to unwind after another all-nighter hunting some daylight deprived scumbag and she hadn't had time to do laundry the past couple of weeks. Winter in Minnesota just brings out the scumbags by the busload she thought. Thank goodness for running. Lena was an accomplished marathoner with 85 marathons on her 36 year old 114 pound frame. Come to think of it, her size usually made the scumbags underestimate her strength. Million dollar smile and petite frame is not what most people associate with an accomplished Krav Maga instructor and top Female at the camp Perry presidential shoot, the Olympics of the shooting sport. Ok, tights, check! Now where is that ipod, Sven had better not have borrowed it and left it at the gym...again. How can a cop be that spaced out she wondered while she rummaged through the kitchen drawer. Ok! there it is, Lena let out a satisfied sigh at the realization that not only was it in the drawer where it was supposed to be, it had enough of a charge to last for a couple of hours. Lena left the house through the garage, not too cold she thought, only 2 below and perfect traction for the yak trax she’d attached to her adidas supernova’s. Lena kind of jogged in place while she waited for the Garmie to pick up the satellites. Lena double checked that her compact Glock was tucked well in her tights, she just couldn’t imagine running “naked”. That is no fire arm. Kind of an occupational affliction she thought as she took off down the street. Easy at first, she felt the satisfying grip of the yak trax under her shoes and after a few minutes she switched it up to her 7 regular minute cruising pace. No need in busting anything tonight she decided. 20 minutes in she caught a movement out of her right eye, something was wrong. She turned her had. Well waddaya know, somebody was holding somebody a gun point. As a sworn officer of the law she decided to take action, she stopped running and hid in the shadows while she pulled out her cell phone and called for some backup. She observed for another minute and then decided that a couple of scumbags holding another scumbag at gunpoint was kind of an unfair fight, after all there was only three of them and one her. She pulled the baby Glock out and charged. FREEZE she yelled and then she realized that the guy holding the gun was a detective with the St. Paul PD. The detective realized he’d been caught red handed doing dirty work for the local Mafioso and swung the gun around and fired two shots at Lena. Lena reacted instinctively and fired while running, but really, even the hottest momma at camp Perry can’t get much precision out of a baby glock while running. She closed in and then the guy just took off, shoot he must have been a track star in college. Adrenalin kicked in, Lena hit 5 minute pace and gained on the prey. Only 2 more yards and she’d be able to knock him over when he turned around and dropped another round in her direction. Lena dodged the bullet, stopped and paused long enough to squeeze off a deliberate round. Bam, right between the eyes; Lena watched as the shot “cut his motors” and he dropped dead right in front of her. She waited for cavalry to arrive. No more running for her tonight, she’d have to go back and do the paper work. At least she got a few miles in she thought and hey, that chase would count for some speed work. As a bonus she could upload the garmie file as supporting evidence for her report.

The 1388 plan

2008-12-14T10:45:00.008-05:00

Still struggling with the muscle issue so it is not like I've done a lot of running and THAT is beginning to mess with my head. I am making some progress but it is slow and at this time my hope that I could maybe do the half in TR on 1/3 is pretty much gone. I could certainly attempt it but I'd have to carry a cellphone so that I could call a taxi in case the pain thing flared up again. So, the 5K it is. Looks like I'm going have to violate Flemming's 3rd law of road races: "Don't sign up for a run if you can't do the distance on sign up day". I need something to focus my running and a half marathon would be just the ticket and looking at the calendar, the ING Georgia half marathon on March 29 is about the perfect time. Gives me some time to work through the muscle issue and also get my mileage back up. Been topping out at around 10 -15 miles a week oh no no no it ain't fun babe, it ain't fun for me at all... babe.

On the gear front I had cleansing, as you may or may not have noticed your shoes and apparel have little tabs that say something like 2/06, meaning they rolled off the stitching line in February 06. Well I noticed that my shoes, all of them, were 2 years or older. Comfortable or not, time to go shoe shopping; so I drove to Gaffney and had an intimate relation ship with the outlet stores. I can now blame my muscle issue on new shoes in stead of old shoes. Progress ;)

Also, in coming to terms with my 5K future I've looked at 5Ks, eventually I'm going to be so sick of the number "5" that I'll start expressing it in base 2 just for variety, 101 sounds so much better, try "I just did a 101K in 27:40" and I can assure you people will go "WOW!". Actually 5000 in base 16 would be 1388 and that is a pretty cool number so there it is, Flemming's 1388 plan:

- 1/3 NY resolution run 5K
- 1/10 Run for the Grasshopper
- 1/17 - nothing yet. suggestions welcome
- 1/24 RDT the bestest little 5k on both sides of the reedy( already signed up)
- 1/31 Charlie post classic

Drove out to Furman yesterday and hung out around Paladin Plaza for the duration of the PMRR. Great running weather but a little chilly for just hanging out. Was all good though, Brian did another PR and Miss Hillspeedster secured another age group award and with a better time than last year. You folks are just way too fit :)

2009 - Part IV - Crisis at the end of the tunnel

2008-12-04T17:34:00.004-05:00

So I made an appointment with a knowledgeable person to get some advice about this annoying muscle issue. He listened to me for about a 1 minute then he asked me how I stretched and lets face it he was very professional about he told me what I'd been doing was, at best, a complete waste of time, at worst, completely counter productive. He then proceeded to show me a couple of OTHER ways , 4 to be specific. Well hot diggity, did he manage to focus right on the issue, holy smokes. Then he declared, that I suffer from "sitting down". Well duh yeah, until I get voice activated computers a la star trek, it is sitting for me.
So far so good, I've continued the walk/run on the hamster wheel thing and it really is less painful. GOOD. NO! make that GREAT.. and then yesterday morning after my hamster wheel workout I was stretching and the aforementioned knowledgeable person paused briefly while walking by and said "I forgot to ask, do you run every day", well yes I do I responded and he said "well maybe you shouldn't do that" .

Good lord, here I thought there was light at the end of the tunnel, and instead there is a crisis. WHAT? not run every day? But but ..

OK so I know he has a point, but I really really feel like rationalizing something fierce now..

2009 - part III

2008-11-29T14:31:00.002-05:00

And it gets worse. I went to the gym to see if I could actually spend an hour on a treadmill. Here's how I accomplished that. walk 5 minutes, run 1 mile, walk 5 minutes, run 1 mile .. etc etc.
I spend the first 5 minutes debating the running pace with my self, over do it and the experiment could die in mile one or sandbag it to Nth degree and it'd just be a joke, so what to do. The verdict became 11 minute pace for running part. Good choice, it worked. In fact it worked so well i think I could have spend another hour on the treadmill. Admittedly the right hamstring is a little "tight" but no shooting pain!. Well I did try and finish the exercise off at 8:30 pace but that was sheer folly, took less than 3 minutes for the hamstring to tell me that.

OK! now we have the contours of a plan. if I can keep this up, the walk run thing, then at least I can maintain some cardio and burn some calories. AND...AND if I can apply the principle to the half marathon out in TR (why I always wanted to do a 3 1/2 hour half marathon ) on 1/3 then that's 4.22 5K's right there :)

2009 - part II

2008-11-29T11:13:00.002-05:00

Not sure what brought this on, some sort mind drift caused by me turning my emails off yesterday morning so that I've now had about 24 hours completely off. Idle minds are the devils playground or something..

So if my primary desire was to run 13 half marathons in 2009 but I have a muscle injury which keeps me from running more that 20 - 40 minutes at the time, then half marathons are out and 5Ks are in. What's the 5k / half marathon equivalent?

12 x 13.1 = 157. 2 miles

157.2 / 3.1 = 50.7 which round to 51.

So I'd have to run 51 5K's. Holy smokes. Think of the environmental impact, just the travel and the energy it took to grow and process the cotton for 51 butt ugly T-shirts.

I know there are a ridiculous number of 5K's out there, but shoot are there 51 I could actually go to? I'd have to do 2 some weekends just to make the whole thing come together. I could cheat and do a 10K, and unless my leg falls off, I will.
No matter how you look at it, this is an endurance sport, not the 5K run but finding, scheduling and actually making it to the start line for fifty one 5K's
This is crazier than the 7 marathons on 7 continents in 7 days thing. And Idon't have a Lear jet at my disposal.
OK, so strictly running list 23 5K's for 2009 at the time of this writing and quite frankly Lexington seem a little far to drive for a 5K, then again a challenge is a challenge.

2009

2008-11-27T13:24:00.002-05:00

A couple of weeks ago I made a pilgrimage to Office Depot for the laminated year planner calendar thing that I, among other things, use to plan out my road race schedule for the coming year.. I’d really like a year of nothing but ½ marathons since that is my favorite distance. So I started mapping that out and, blergh, life gets in the way. I have a nasty muscle issue that I need to resolve first (figure what triggers it and then fix that) . This thing kind of does me in after about 20 – 40 minutes, some what speed dependent, but if I take it easy I can sometimes last 45 minutes. Tried mind over matter, that approach gave me 20 minutes of blissful running and a VERY painful 40 minute walk home. ARRGH!

And then yesterday it hit me. YIKES, I may be looking at a full year of nothing but 5Ks. Double Yikes, I hate 5K’s. Mostly because I’m not getting a good workout and there is nothing for me to haul off ‘cause I’m not fast enough and then there’s the walker issue, people that walk 5 abreast and high five every time they conquer another 1/20th mile without spilling their coffee. How many 5Ks would I have to run in a year to make up the distance? That is probably like 45 5Ks. YIKES. Maybe I could find a way to do 4 per weekend. The solution is obviously to spread the mileage out and thank you dear blog for letting me work through this. To get a better mileage base in I can obviously run both in the morning AND evening. Now why didn’t I think of that before.. life looks a lot better.

Happy thanks giving peeps!

Oh why and wherefore, part II

2008-11-23T12:22:00.000-05:00

So, reading back over the previous installments in this exercise it is obvious to me that I’m doing road races for pleasure.

That being said, I’m not a marathon maniac/junkie/50 states must be run, twice personality. I honestly don't care if I’ve run 3, 4 or 50 states. I’ve travelled enough and it got old after a couple of years. Not obsessed with numbers either, so I don’t log mileage. It’s immaterial. Yah, Garmin is not going to make a lot of money off me. Well at least not for the wearable running computer. If I get the urge to quantify a distance to match it up with the watch for a pace approximation, I hop in the truck and do the classic “Chevy Certification”. It’s pretty accurate and since my day to day running is in the same neighbor hood I have it all measured out anyway so it’s close enough for my use. One of my personal amusements is listening to Garmin users obsessing over 1/10th mile discrepancy. They can’t possibly have read the specs of their devices. I could possibly be talked into a SUUNTO device with a heart rate strap since HR is a number that appears to be important, even for me. But I digress.

What makes me pick one road race over another, well, I established that I run for pleasure, which then suggest to me that I pick a particular event on the expectation that it will provide more pleasure than another event. So since putting one foot in front of the other is the same if it’s done the street outside my house or on Kiawah Island I’ll have to define the pleasure factor.

The pleasure factor.

What defines the pleasure factor for a road races. When ever I start thinking about that I seem to go down the road of what I DON'T like. Supposedly that means absence of these annoyances defines a good event? Not sure if that is a valid approach, but since this is a thinking aloud exercise, I’m going to try one on for size.

One year I ran Kiawah there was no water at the finish line and there was not a person in sight at the finish line I could ask where they had the water,, I had to go pull the bottle I had stashed in the bag check. Not a good thing.

So I’m taking this to mean that I get less pleasure from disorganized events.

Conversely let’s try another tack. There’s an 8k road race in Laurens, the little river bridge run, that I thoroughly enjoy and have enjoyed every time I’ve run it. Again the running part is, well, running. So it's the place and event that makes it different. At the LRBR they have taken their small town appeal applied to a road race. And it comes across as you feel “welcome”. I loved when the chief of police was explaining the whole course and that he was really concerned for everybody’s safety and runners should please please stop any officer on the course if they had any questions. Can’t beat that!

To be continued ….

Apparently Preparation makes a difference

2008-11-16T08:54:00.006-05:00

My daugther asked me for some old pictures and I started poking around in "the archives". Came across this picture from the 2007 PMTR 11K or big loop or whatever we called it last year, I think "11K" was this year, same trail, new year. But I digress.

The PMTR 11K 2007 finish line

The PMTR 11K 2008 finish line

And then, of course, my favorite picture from the 2007 event

Oh why and werefore .. part I

2008-11-15T18:48:00.009-05:00

Back in May I posted a brief piece on "why do I go do road races". Well the subject came up in an e-mail chain this past week and I'm now determined to give this subject another whack.

As it is, I can step right out on the curb outside my house and run as much as I please without having to pay somebody a race fee or sign a waiver. The fact that I DO go partake in running events suggest to me that even though I've failed to identify the valued items by name, the value I perceived meet or exceed the cost of participation (race fee plus T & E); in short I think it's worth it.

Before diving into this I think would be an idea to attempt to define what a running event is. On the surface, people line up behind the start line and when the gun goes, then run and try to win. Nah.. don't think so.
A modern day running event with open registration is hardly a single event, even if the brochure says it is. There are at least two (actually I think there are many more but for the purpose of this illustration, two will do) distinct events taking place: The seeded, very competitive, group up front and then there's "the rest of us". Personally I'm squarely in the last group. It is not like I'm in danger of winning any great price.

Since this is going to be a "thinking aloud" exercise, here are some of things I know I enjoy about running events (in no particular order):

- I like running in the crowd and just being completely anonymous
- I like the urgency of a run, even training runs have a clock
- Finding obscure races in little towns is a great opportunity to see the state
- standing around in middle of the crowd in January and not being cold
- Seeing miss hill speedster blow by me .. :)

To be continued ...

PMTR for GTC members

2008-11-13T10:13:00.002-05:00

If you are a member of the GTC, log in to the website and go to the photo pages. I collected pictures from several peoples cameras and created a small slide show of the event. If you have pictures from the PMTR 11k you'd like to have included, let me know.

09:00 AM, its the law!

2008-11-08T13:33:00.005-05:00

This years 10K+ PMTR started at 9 instead of 8... please thank your deity. Cut the volunteer stress rate in half. We actually had time to get all set up before the race was over since we had 1 1/2 hours to prep. Good Planning. Good crowd I hope the runners enjoyed themselves as much as we did setting it it all up. It was a blast. Here's a picture of "the pancake crew", also known as Melissa, Marion and Charles. Stax pancakes rock!

Bituminous Banter

2008-11-05T19:15:00.004-05:00

Have not been running outside since before runfest, have had to make do with the treadmill version (shall spare you the why and wherefore ) . Oh but it was good. It is a totally different workout and I'd almost forgotten. Ran my core 3 miler and tagged a bit on the end just for good measure. Her royal puppiness have had to make do with speedwork (aka chasing squirrels in the back yard) for a couple of weeks and was more than a little happy to finally get some real miles in.

And the road whispered sweet nothings to shoe.

scientifically...

2008-10-31T09:20:00.004-04:00

For those of you that don't follow the science of sport blog, here are the links to their latest opus on heatstroke. Very interesting from a runner's perspective.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Qualms before the storm

2008-10-24T07:32:00.001-04:00

Yet another existentialist crisis (YAEC) . It is really weird, usually you’d experience some form or other of anticipation anxiety before a big event, be it the release of that mega piece of insight and solutions you worked on for 3 months and took you 7 days to edit or the road race you defined as a target race. Well, over the past few days I’ve had some really weird qualms I’d never have expected; I’m dreading training. And just writing that makes me go “WHAT!? Get a grip buster!”. I wrote up my training plan in ms-excel about a year ago and it was really nice and nothing came of it .Nada, zip, blah! Just looking at that plan makes me wonder what happened, and ok, a lot of stuff happened, life has a tendency to get in the way of the best laid plans. But shoot, blaming it on “life” immediately brings on the “what a cop out” response. I had a fairly decent running season culminating in the Atlanta Half marathon in March at which point I declared myself recovered from last years accident. I was right where my training plan predicted I’d be and life was good. Enter summer and work. Lots of summer and lots of work; don’t get me wrong I love both summer and work, I get a lot of pleasure out of both, but when it interferes with my running, we need to talk.

This is the runfest weekend and in about 30 minutes I’m going to be at Flour field but come Monday it is back to running season and I’m still working on my angle of attack. Somewhere in the back of my head is the this rumble that I want to do “the full goofy” at Disney in ’10 and if that is going to happen I’m going to not only need training plan, I’m going to have to stick to it… for a year. Qualms before the storm.

May the miles be with you!

Long week ahead

2008-10-13T07:39:00.002-04:00

How to have a running blog when you are not running? hmm I could rename it. Words of Waddle... A day to day record of dealing with a dog that needs a 5 miler everyday.

You go near the closet where the shoes are and her hackles come up. Shoes? varoom! she sits down right in front of you and looks oh so cute. Me daddy, you and I, run yes ? Her hackles are obviously there to detect running, or express "possible running on the horizon". I think we'll rename them "rackles"...

This is going to be a long week.

Cosmic ban renewal

2008-10-12T23:37:00.003-04:00

Apparently my cosmic ban on accidents and stuff expired. I got sick, lost voice, a touch of fever a general feeling of malaise and blah blah blah. No running since Wednesday so come this afternoon I had a strong bad case of withdrawl. Not to mention her running puppiness was about to call animal cops on me for withholding weekly mileage. I tried for 3 miles and made 1 mile, apparently I really should take it easy. BUT IT WAS A MILE!

Lucky 13 - part two

2008-10-05T11:05:00.003-04:00

Back in September I dealt with the existentialist crisis inherent in the "more road races than usual" conundrum. A tip of the hat to Heidegger and Camus, here comes the second installment.
So I did road race #13, The Lauren's hope 5K out in Fountain Inn. I've done that event every year they've had it and it is has been interesting to see how it has developed. Obviously the event is a fundraiser and as far as I can tell they are having some success with that but for the purpose of this blog I'm going to focus on the actual running event. The first year was rather chaotic, I put out and and did so well I felt pretty confident there was at least going to be an age group award for me. So I stuck around for the awards and was somewhat disappointed that I didn't win anything after all, oh well such is life. Then a while later they published results and lo and behold yours truly was an age group winner. What up. So I just had to ask the race director, i.e. Lauren's dad, what the story was. Well the story was that they had totally messed up on race day and were in the process of making amends, which involved moving the trophies around. Ouch, that has got to hurt :) .. Anyway it makes for a good story. Year two they had chip timing.
Remembering that humble start, you can tell they've come along way. They are really well organized. Actually I'd say they have more volunteers than they know what to do with, Exhibit A: 5 water stops in a 5K is about 5 more than what is required. I guess I could bow to the pressure of "you have to have a water stop" but 5? holy smokes:)
As for the course, I think that is part of what makes me come back to that event, there is something about that course that is just right, not quite flat yet not hilly and not too many switch-backs.
Given my recent experiences, I had a plan for this event to just take it easy, no busting anything just try keep an even pace and claim victory if I could get through it without any muscle issues. This is an approach commonly referred to as "sandbaggin'" and sand bag I did. Mile one 10:01; yay for mister sandbagger. I have the other splits on my watch and quite frankly, I haven't looked, 'coz I just don't need to know. That's mental sandbagging. I came, I saw, I sandbagged. However, it worked, no muscle issues anything and I could just have kept going. A phenomenon also known as "jogging". Yeah yeah

Now I may have to figure out if there's a #14 in the pipeline this year, 14 is a weird number so now I may have to make it 15...

27 Seconds of pure WOW!

2008-09-28T13:05:00.005-04:00

WOW!
Haile Gebrselassie knocked 27 seconds off his previous record and produced a new marathon benchmark of 2.03.59.. .

HOLY SMOKES, or is that Heiligen rauch since it was in Berlin. I have no idea how they do it. Go Haile!

Say after me: WOW!

Dam Revenge

2008-09-27T12:54:00.003-04:00

As I may have mentioned once or twice, last years Irmo dam run was not a success for me, I finished dead last, right after the guy in the walker. What happened was that I tore a muscle in, oh, mile 1 and ended up walking the rest for the fanTAbulous finish time of extra:Sucky:22 or whatever. Whats more, the dam run was not on the dam because the dam was closed for construction. So, all in all, it was a fiasko as far as I'm concerned. Dam run.

Time for the grudge match, revenge, rache, hevn, vendetta, wraak ...

Thanks to her royal puppiness, the hyper hound, aka "the dang dog", I got up around 3:00 AM well in advance of the alarm clock that was more in mesh with a 5:15AM departure for Irmo. Well first I got about 1/10th of a mile down the road and the check engine light came on, hit the on-star button and had them do a remote diag. No biggie, fix on Monday but it kind of set the tone for trip.

Got to the registration desk, friendly people, chatted a little, and they handed me a T-shirt and a hand written bib in return for my registration slip, then I walked back to the truck to deposit the T and I realized that I hadn't paid. So I walked back to the registration and wrote them a check.

That was my first ever handwritten bib, but, hey, Grete Waitz won her first New York marathon with a handwritten bib so we know it is not about the quality of the bib :)

Great morning for a run, a little on the muggy side but all in all it was very civilized running weather and the dam was great and oh so flat, the total pancake experience. Actually they should call it the Dam Park run, since it begins in a park, crosses the dam and ends in a park.

So the running part, well guess what, I got a muscle cramp in mile one and got so uhm, enthused about finishing, that I managed to run trough it until the beginning of mile 4 when I had to walk until I found a post of sorts to use for stretching so with on and off walking mile 4 kind of dragged on for a bit and I hit mile marker 5 at pretty exactly 11 minute pace. could have been a lot worse, like the guy in the walker could have blown past me. But no, and lo and behold the cramping started to ease off and by mile 6 it was pretty much gone. I got my dam run in and shoot, I might even do again sometime.

2008-09-23T07:18:00.003-04:00

In sheer defiance of the USATF and the RRCA I occasionally don a portable music device when I leave the house on foot. Then disaster strikes, the newer nano (ok so I have two, well three really but I took one apart) develops an issue with the pause/play button; i.e, it became unresponsive. Grr! now I have to deal with a warranty claim and I so enjoy dealing with consumer tech-support that I procrastinated for about a month but eventually I had to bite the bullet and do something. Much to my surprise the process was painless, fast and completly devoid of BS, I opened the ticket on-line, the sent me box to ship thing in and all in all it took less that week from opening the ticket 'til I was reloading my playlists on the replacement device. Props to apple computer for having a process that works!!