Happy New Year

I’m noticing most of the posts in Blogland don’t have a lot of content about running.

I’m sure that everyone is savoring the last few moments of the holiday season and will get their running back in gear in 2008, me included!

I plan on bringing in the New Year in a very low-key manner.

Upon completion of the New Year’s Eve Race, I’m sure we’ll stick around and have a few toast with other Downtown Runners/Walkers that will be there.

I’m not one to go out and celebrate New Year’s Eve, due to the number of amateur celebrants out there. In addition we’re supposed to get a few inches of the white stuff, which always makes for fun driving.

So keep those 2008 resolutions practical and attainable and I’ll see you in the New Year.

Oh my Aching Head

This post will be short and sweet. Oh my aching head!

Sandy and I had our annual Post-Christmas Pre-New Year’s Eve Open House.

Good times were had by one and all, just a little bit more on my part.

Football Frenzy

Tonight the New England Patriots will be trying to achieve regular season perfection in the NFL. This is such a big event that the game will be televised on two major networks, as well as the NFL Network on cable. Now I’m as big a football fan as the next obsessive guy (Go Packers), but three stations carrying a regular season game!

I’ve always wanted to see the television networks give better coverage to running road races. How can you televise a marathon in thirty minutes? Now I realize that most of the viewing public want to see the elite runners and who wins the events but wouldn’t it be nice to see some of us middle of the pack runners? I love seeing the human interest stories of the runner that overcame some sort of obstacle or encountered an event on their life that pushed them to the limit.

Okay, time to go in the basement and get on the trainer. This daily blogging is going to be interesting!

BLOG365

I joined Great Lakes Running Girl’s BLOG365 team, so expect to read a lot of thoughtless ramblings in the upcoming year!
I’m also in charge of volunteer recruitment for our local New Year’s Eve race and it’s getting down to the wire. Where are all of my volunteers?
It’s not like you have to be a world-class runner to be a volunteer.
I’m sure that most races encounter the same problem of trying to lure non-runners to help out at running events. What type of enticement can you have for them? What would make people give up their precious time to stand and hand out fluids?
The lure of a free T-shirt and all of the Gatorade you can drink obviously isn’t enough.
We try to tell every runner that they need to be on the other side of the fluid station to get a real feel on how important volunteers are to having a successful event. As I said in several emails to my running club, ‘how would you like to have a serf-serve fluid station when you trying to run a PR?’.
We even need people to pour beer after the races have concluded. These volunteer spots filled up pretty fast.
Hopefully we’ll have enough volunteers and a great event.

Happy, Merry, Joy, Joy

Happy Holidays to everyone in Blogland. 2007 was a year that started off promising but along came Father Time, a few unexpected injuries and a knee surgery. Oh my!
Now is the time to come up with blogging resolutions for the upcoming year.

You know the ones like, ‘I’ll post something everyday’ or ‘ I’ll make my post better and give them more thought’.

Well, I’m not a big New Year’s resolution person. I think you can make changes whenever there is a need.
So I’ll continue to miss days without post and have post that makes no sense to anyone but me.

So bring on 2008!

Twas the Days before Christmas....

Okay, who stole my extra days of shopping?

I cannot believe that it’s four days until Christmas! I had such high hopes of shopping and being finished before the actual day. As someone said to me earlier this week, “..the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
I will complete my shopping before December 25th!

My Greatest T-shirt

I just read Pat’s blog and he has a picture of his running club’s T-shirt and he calls it the greatest running shirt ever and it got me to looking at my collection. I still have the first T-shirt from my very first 10k race and it’s my greatest running shirt.
This is just a plain old ordinary blue T-shirt with no special logo but it symbolizes the start of my running career. It is a little tattered from many machine washing cycles and the threads have grown apart to the point of almost seeing through it. That shirt became my lucky race shirt. Just as Tiger Woods has his red shirts that he wears on the final rounds days, I wore that to race in.
So who else has a great running T-shirt or even the first race T-shirt they received?
Another season of the Biggest Loser has come to an end and the twins (Bill & Jim) cleaned up. They were the big money winners with each losing over 50% of their original weight! Alas, I didn’t win in the Fantasy Biggest Loser League but I didn’t end up in last place either.

Tuesday's Thoughts

It must be true what they say about misery loving company. PT Girl and I have a new leg training partner in Vinnie.
Now Vinnie has some back issue but he is mainly trying to improve his leg strength for cycling. He completed the Make-A-Wish 300 Mile bike ride this year for the first time and he is hooked. He already has tree trunks for legs but he wants to maintain what he has.
Now it’s so easy to back out of a workout when you do it alone, but with two other folks waiting it will be impossible to miss!
I’m trying to compile my 2008 race schedule and so far January is the only month that I don’t have a race. This is probably a good thing knowing the weather and my current conditioning. I’m looking at a 5k on Superbowl Sunday or a 4 Miler the following week. I’m committed to the Country Music Marathon & ½ Marathon in April but that’s as a Team in training coach.
It’s Tuesday, so I’m off to run with the Downtown Detroit Runners and have a few adult beverages afterwards to replenish the fluids lost in the run.

Ramblings of a Runner

I’m typically not a superstitious person but I am looking for my lucky rabbit’s foot.

I’ve been able to run for three consecutive days and that’s starting to worry me.

I was reading an article that basically stated that injuries start to manifest themselves into other types of injuries.

That’s right, I’m in some weird sci-fi type of injury spiral that could be never-ending.

It’s been about three or four years of one injury after another, all leading to time away from training or not being able to perform at my peak.

I was always able to explain my way out of bad races by saying that I was injured or coming back from an injury. Then it got to be more mental than physical. I was uncertain if I wanted to go through the effort and pain of training properly.

Did I want to run to the point of feeling like I was about to cough up a lung?

The line between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ pain was being blurred in my mind by my injuries.

Would running through this pain cause me to have another setback?

Did I need to continue with that additional lap?

These were the questions that I would ask myself and the answer was always, No!

I began running races with other people I knew were slower just so I didn’t have to push myself anymore.

These injuries had brought me to the point where I had lost all confidence in my running abilities. I was just going through the motions.

Even with all of the negatives that were occurring in my running life I stayed close to the running community. I still talked to other runners and cheered whenever I had the opportunity. Being around a ton of positive folks kept me from wallowing in my self-pity for any extended time.

Now I’m not out of the waters just yet. I still have aches and pains that medication helps overcome and the years of pounding the pavement are catching up with me, but I’m going to at least try!

So all of you wonderful bloggers out there in blogland keep those positive vibes coming and if you see an old guy on the side of the road, just honk!

Let it Snow, let it snow......

Well we finally got dumped on with the wintry white stuff, so running will get a lot more interesting. This is definitely the time of year when watching golf tournaments in California or Florida look so appealing.
I have yet to step foot into a shopping mall for any type of Christmas gifts and the clock is starting to tick faster with each passing day.
Why do I do this to myself each year? Why can’t I just start buying stuff and labeling envelopes in August?
Everyone in Blogland already seems to have their 2008 racing schedule lined up, so I guess I have to fall in line. I will probably concentrate on the shorter distance races in 2008 and leave the marathons to Team in Training. It will be like the times when I first started running. So be on the lookout for my 2008 list of races.

Gift Question?

Okay all of you running animals out there. What would you say to a Christmas gift of 13 local races for the 2008 season? One of the local running stores has a deal where you purchase entry into 13 races for $75. I think even if you raced in half of them it would be worth the money!

Tuesday's Turn

If it’s Tuesday, it must be a Downtown Runner’s run, but the weather was really crappy. It rained the entire day with a fog over the city and it looked really cold. I say all of this because I stayed inside at work and dreaded the thought of running in the cold rain.
They had also forecast freezing rain, so the ride home would be lousy also. Since I had to deliver the route maps, Sandy and I went to the restaurant with the plan of just dropping them off and going home.
Well the temps were in the thirties and the rain had stopped, so Sandy decided that we would run!
It turned out to be a good run, of course I was overdressed.
I finally think my right knee is getting better. I was able to run without any twinges of aches for about three miles.
Of course my legs and respiratory system are having issues of their own.

Oh my aching head.

This weekend was the beginning of the holiday parties and it started with a bang!

The Downtown Runners & Walkers of Detroit held their annual gala and it was extra great this year! We had a great turnout and the liquid refreshments were cold and plentiful. It’s also an annual event for Sandy to run in the Jingle Bell 5K in New Baltimore. I’m typically still suffering from the night before, so I’m just a spectator. It’s amazing that she has run this race for the last six years and her finish time is almost always the same. She runs between 25:00 and 25:46, which is fantastic.

Oh that’s right, I forgot about the running stuff that I did in the morning.

The team got its first encounter with the wind at Stony Creek MetroPark. Even though it’s a circular loop around the park, the wind always seems to be in your face. We tried running negative splits so everyone would have a little left in their tanks towards the end of their runs. No matter how hard you try, it is so difficult to run slow when you have a ton of energy.

Congratulations to Bob Delisle for completing his second marathon in Honolulu on Sunday. Bob was part of the Michigan chapter of team in Training and wasn’t sure if he would make it or not. I can’t wait to read his race report.
I’m starting to feel almost normal again, so bring on the parties!

OUCH!

My legs are killing me!

Whose bright idea was it again to exercise with a demon-woman?

I forced myself to get out and run at least 30 minutes and that was about all I could muster.

The actual running wasn’t so bad, it was just getting my leg muscles loose to get going.

We have our annual running club Holiday Party this Saturday, so I’m sure that Sunday morning will be almost impossible to get any miles in.

For some strange reason this party has an abundance of alcohol and food, both of which I partake in abundance!

Mentor-led training but I’ll be out there wit the team tomorrow morning putting in some much needed miles.

The TNT Honolulu team is soaking up the sun and warm temps, I hope! I saw on the news where they were having strong winds, which will hopefully be tailwinds.

Things I learned today

Never workout with Physical Therapist Girl. Ouch!

I talked myself into doing a leg workout with PT-Girl today.

Now normally when I workout in the gym, I’m the social type. I enjoy chatting between my sets and ensuring that everyone around is enjoying themselves.

Well my training partner for today didn’t subscribe to that theory.

PT-Girl kicked my butt!

Here’s the routine we completed:

• Leg Press – 4 sets (90 lbs x 20, 180 lbs x 20, 270 lbs x 15, 180 lbs x 20)
• Walking Lunges/Hamstring Curls (superset) – 4 sets (lunges w/50 lbs) Curls 70 lbs x 20
• Leg Extension – 6 sets (two legs x 2, one leg x 2, two legs up/one leg down x 2)
• Squats – Pyramid down from 15 reps until 1 rep (fortunately we did this without any weight)

I’m sure that there were probably about a thousand other exercises PT-Girl could have come up with but time was my savior. All of this took approximately 40 minutes and most of that time was spent with me trying to hide or get water.

Now I’m just hoping that I am able to walk, let alone run!

MIA, and I don't mean Miami!

I’ve been busy at work and haven’t had a lot of time to post, but I have been running!
I was able to find some hills for the Team in Training group to run on this past weekend. I know that most of them won’t go looking for any hillwork, so I have to bring it to them. It’s awesome to see them take off in their groups and come back feeling as though they could conquer anything. We have a long way to go but the team is really doing well. I haven’t had any issues with my knee other than the swelling, which doesn’t want to go away. I am feeling all of the usual aches and pains of running outside in Michigan. I’m jealous of the guys in Arizona and Florida this time of year. This is also the time of year when the holiday parties will be going on each weekend until the end of the year. So I have to be extra careful in my eating and drinking, I can’t just go out and put in the miles to burn that stuff off any more. Okay, time to get back to work and have a great week.