OUCH!

My knee hurts like a sexual partner of a woman with children! I’m going to take a few days off and load up on drugs. Just two days of running and this happens? More to come!

Houston we have a problem!

Okay, it’s not a real big problem like I need surgery or another round of Physical Therapy.

I need to find my running mojo!

I was going back over my past years running logs and I must have lost it sometime between March 2007 and November 2007.

I was thinking of putting a photo on the blog but I can’t find one. It is amazing all of those runs and races when I carried it with me and not one stinking photo.

It doesn’t weigh a lot because I would have noticed the extra weight. Should I put an ad in the lost & found?

I guess it’s like they say, ‘you don’t miss your mojo until the well runs dry’!

It was my mojo that got my butt out the door on those days when I didn’t want to run.
It was my mojo that made me run that extra mile because I could.
It was my mojo that made me run faster than a speeding bullet.

I need to find my running mojo!

Something just hit the Fan.....

Oh what a tangled web we weave………… Criminal charges were filed today against Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his former Chief of Staff Christine Beatty in connection with the text message scandal that has enveloped the mayor's office.

Can't Quit Now

To race or not to race, that is the question! I’ve been straddling the fence about entering a few local races, since I’ve had soooo many running related injuries. One part of me just wants to run really slow and not have to put forth the grueling effort necessary. Then I read an article about Derek Jeter in Men’s Health and he talks about how competitive he is and how it was instilled in him as a child.
Well, I’ve always been competitive, especially in team sports. Then I was introduced to these individual competitive activities and I fell in love with them. I always look forward to pushing myself physically past my preserved limitations.
Sandy has been prodding me to run a race like I used to. Fellow runners have been asking me for the past few years when will I be back.
I’ve know quite a few runners that are no longer running for various reasons and they stay away from races and exclude themselves from social activities where a lot of runners will be. I don’t want to end up like that.
So, I’ll go and register for a few races and give it my all, whatever that is now. I’ll be able to feel the agony of defeat and the associated pain. I’ll be the really old guy that little kids point at and EMS unit travel behind.
I’m not saying that I’ll be able to generate the speed from my past but I ain’t gonna quit!
Thanks to f&#king Derek Jeter!

Of Mice and Men

A new study has shown that 1 in 8 baby boomers will develop Alzheimer’s disease. This has always been a fear of mine to go out for a morning run and never come back, ala Forrest Gump!
I guess the good news out of this latest discovery is that regular exercise has been shown to prevent the disease from developing in mice. Damn lucky mice…..
If I doomed to Alzheimer’s, am I accelerating the process by killing off brains cells with the beers that I consume after exercise?
I have taken a few days off from running to give my knee some time to get back to almost normal. It’s a vicious cycle to run on it to the point of discomfort and then rest it back to almost normal., then run on it…………
I’ve finally completed my NCAA March Madness picks on Running Jayhawks Charitable Brackets and I have Tennessee winning the tournament. Now it’s not like I have any inside information or even keep up with the college game. It was just a matter of picking and choosing and Tennessee came out on top.
Since we only have Michigan State form the high-five state in the tourney, I couldn’t go with my heart pass the second round.
Go Vols!

Happy St. Patty's Day

After a horrendous attempt at running on Friday, I was able to get out with my TNT group and put in 10 miles without any real problems. I try to be in several places at one time so it was kind of different for me to run with the group for a long period of time. I didn’t have any issues with my knees, so I’m chalking this up as a good day. I also knew that Sunday would be a long day since I was volunteering for our local St. Patrick’s Day 4 Miler.

Flash forward to Sunday morning ……………

You ever say yes to something and really feel good about it until the time comes to do it? It’s bad enough that I have to be subjected to working forty hours a week and waking up in the dark. The weekends roll around and I get up earlier than normal for team training. Now I have to miss out on my Sunday beauty rest to stand in the cold? Okay, I just wanted to vent. This race has grown dramatically over the last few years. The weather was ideal for running but cold for volunteering. I was able to find a spot on the course where I could stand on a two-foot block to be a little visible as the runners went pass. Now remember, I’m a 6 foot 4 inch Black guy at a foot race, how visible do I have to be? Anyway, I can’t believe the number of runners that wanted high-fives as they passed my corner. Fortunately I was wearing gloves and didn’t contract nor pass along any germs.
To make for an even longer day, we have a tradition of taking part in the actual St. Patty’s Day parade. I think it started as a joke to see if they would allow a group of runner’s entry. Now each year we have a theme for our float (pickup truck) in combination with the passing out of beads. This is the most walking that I’ve done in quite some time. Now I remember why I run as opposed to walk.

Flash forward to Monday moanin’………….

Hangover Day and the weather turned back to the ever present hue of grey! Since I didn’t run on Sunday, it was my intentions to get in an early Monday morning run, well the weather obviously didn’t pay attention to the calendar and we had another day of temperatures below freezing. Any reasons not to go pounding the pavement in my delicate state, so I opted for Good Morning America.

WTF?

This sucks! We get two consecutive days of decent weather and my knee starts to bother me to the point where I didn’t want to risk running on it.
Okay no problem I’ll just go back to the gym and do some strength training. Well my head is so f#%ked up from the not running that I can’t concentrate on lifting. Now it’s one thing to schedule a rest day and enjoy going to lunch and using ‘real’ utensils, as opposed to sitting at my desk with finger foods. But to be forced to do nothing really sucks!
This is only going to lead to consuming a few more beers tonight to wash my sorrow away!
I’ll get in some additional miles with the TNT group tomorrow morning, at least that’s the plan!