Would you call me crazy if I asked for seconds?

Would you call me crazy if I asked for seconds?

 That’s all I could think of as I was bent over a park table upchucking whatever food I had that day…  four miles on the bike and I am coloring the pavement different colors…    Would I be officially crazy if I wanted to do this for a second round? 

 Prior to the trip I called every bike store in a 70 mile radius looking for a road bike.  Every store but one only had mountain bikes to rent (give you a good idea of the type of area I am in). Right after I dropped my GF off at the airport I made a beeline for some small country store in the middle of nowhere.  As I walk in I see the only road bike they have for rent sitting atop the shelf.  It almost had a heavenly glow about it that was drawing me in…  saying pick me, pick me!!!

 The second I sat down on the bike I knew instantly it was to small… but running short on options I fork over the cash on a pay-by-day basis and happily take it out of the store.  I threw the little frame into the car and take off for another 40 miles before I find the place that I want to ride.  

 Now a smart person would pick an area where you can spend a few miles getting warmed up and getting acquainted,  but I am not here for the pleasantries…  I am here for another reason. Go hardcore or go home. I start at the bottom of the hill and take off.  Quickly my 20+ mph turned to 17, then to 16 and then to 15 (maybe lower) and I was able to hang around that for a while. The first 2.75 miles wasn’t too bad. Nothing that I haven’t done before… (it was still 95% up hill) but the real climb starts right now. 

 I start jumping up out of my saddle, pounding away inch by inch. I can feel the temperature starting to drop as I am gaining elevation and my ears are popping. My seat saddle sways back and forth and all I could think about was the water fountain that’s at the top. I looked at my Garmin and it’s somewhere between six and seven miles per hour. At this point I am starting to think that running this would have been a FASTER option, but I came here for this hill and this hill alone.  

 The worst part of the climb is the last .5 miles to the top. I am now at a combination of sitting for two revolutions and out of the saddle for three or four. It’s the only thing that could keep me going..  my legs were on fire, my chest was burning, but I couldn’t let this hill beat me. My Garmin is flashing 3 MPH and I all I can do is laugh to myself and think how STUPID I am to voluntarily put my body into situations like this. But each push gets me closer and closer to the top. Finally I reach the crest. OMG it felt soooo good!! But only for a second.   

 Four miles on a bike = 25-26 minutes = almost a 2000 ft elevation gain over four miles

 That second of joy was quickly killed as I instantly felt sick.  I got off my little angel that took me up to the clouds and set her against a  tree as I made it about 10 steps to a picnic table before I started to lose my lunch for the day…   and all I could think of… I think I want to come back for seconds tomorrow…

 Afterthoughts:  I didn’t ride to much further that night, I was sick to my stomach.  I really need to look up why that happens to you when you work your ass off… but anyway. The ride back down was crazy fast. I rode the brakes down that steep part and still hit 40 mph..  but looking back at that ride… it was worth it!  I love the challenge, I love the burn, and I love to know that I go and do what others might think is crazy.

Hangovers

Either social or solo you can never turn down a goodnight…    you could be ripping them down one by one or slowing enjoying and soaking it all in for what it is… the pain the morning is still the same.

 The second I roll out of bed and hit the floor I know that I am paying for last night dearly.  I can’t believe I forgot the IB Profin when I went to bed.   Maybe I didn’t get enough water… who knows, but I feel it as I stumble and almost come crashing to the floor during my first few steps.

 I HATE YOU PLANTAR FASCITIS…  you’re a horrible hangover from last night’s good run!

 Whether its my fun social runs or I am ripping intervals up around the track!   You still make me pay dearly in the morning.

TBT Beer Dash

 After taking almost a week off from my crazy day of pain and plantar fasciitis  (20 miles of running in hills of San Antonio with the last 10 miles at a 6:38 average and then hopped on the bike and rode for 30 miles) I decided to grab my shoes and hit up the local TBT Beer Dash.. 

 

After getting our race delayed by almost 30 min because of some silly bike race they kicked us off.   All I have to say is that 3K HURTS.    It was 3 laps of pain on the Crit course in downtown Tampa.  It was tons of fun but the only pain point I have is that by the time we rounded out the first lap and started the second we were dodging people walking and jogging.  

 All in all I finished 4^th place overall and I was happy with that after almost a month without speed workouts and a week without running due to a nagging injury!  (the race winner ran a 4:03 mile last year… so I am ok with losing to him.)  If you would like to look at the rest of the pictures of the race click here.

-Lazy Runner

Where it all began (running that is)

Everything went dark and when I mean dark, it was pitch black.. I could hear everything that was happening around me with incredible clarity but my eyes just would not work, it felt like I was trapped and locked away and unable to escape this prison no matter what I did, but within a flash I was back at the party…. Wow. There is a huge crowd in the corner of the yard by the fence, so I walked over to check out what the commotion was about.. It’s party so there is always something interesting. When I walked only to find a kid sitting against the fence with his eyes rolled back into his heads and 2 people slapping him across the face yelling and doing anything to get him to wake up… Then I realized that the kid was me. But once again I had that trapped feeling, I somehow couldn’t make it through the crowd of people and no one could hear a word I was saying, but I could hear everything the girl and they guy were saying as they were shaking me and slapping me across my face. The final thing I saw and hear was them say, “dude, I think he is dead.”

What felt like a split second later the sun was shining down my face and I was in a random house, that I knew wasn’t my buddies house. Somehow I awoke early enough to stumble 2 miles down the road to the church that my parents were supposed to meet me at for Sunday morning service along with a ride back home. All I could say is that I didn’t spend that much time in the service because I spent most of the time in the bathroom vomiting the deadly cocktails I had the night before. After 2 solid days of being sick I finally wondered back outside to the real world to hang out with my friends. One of my buddies pulled me aside and told me that he ended up at the party and found me outside against the fence.

“When the cops came to end the party, the debate of the night was either to you to a hospital because you were past the point anyone should be or to hide you because in letting you go to the hostpial it would be a guarantee that people would be arrested for letting you get to that point along with certain substances that were in the house.”

It’s an easy guess to see what happened. He told me they drug my body to a neighbors house so the cops wouldn’t find me and hopping that I would pull out of it by morning. I don’t know if it’s true or not but he said that he also sat next to me for a few hours just to make sure I was still alive before he took off himself for the night. Before saying goodbye he told me one last thing. “Hope that night taught you one thing. You really need to figure out who your real friends are, everyone that you thought was your friend left you there to die when they were faced with the choice of helping save you or saving themselves from getting in trouble. And If you keep hanging with these people you will become these people.”

And I think that was the last conversation I had with him, and come to think of it I don’t think I have ever seen him again.

I am sure my parents were on to something by this point, because shortly after the school year ended they sent me off to Arizona to go work for my uncle and aunt on their ostrich ranch. Seventy five percent of the time I was on a the ranch I was left there by myself to take care of everything. Everything from long hot days digging ditches in 118 degree heat to tilling fields for planting. But it gave me a lot of time to think… All I knew is that I had to change something, somehow.

After a long hot summer of ostrich ranching, school started back up in Cocoa Beach, Florida. It was on day two, a group of the soccer girls came up to me as I was leaving for home and started their sales pitch on why I should run cross country this year:
• The soccer team didn’t win a single game last year. Anything you do in preseason can help the team fair better this year.
• It will be good for the extra exercise.

And my response included these things:
• Runners are dumb idiots that run around without a purpose and without goals.
• Who the hell wants to wear short shorts like that?
• Runners are so stupid I throw things at them (karma keeps coming back to bite me in the ass on this one, I am still searching for the punk that nailed me with a open beer bottle at 55+mph during one of my 6am runs)
• Running is just plain stupid!

So that night I went and I thought it was settled. Running was dumb and I was never going to do it.

I didn’t expect what was going to happen on Day 3. The girls came back over to me and brought part 2 of their sales pitch, “Just run behind us” and being an adolescent teen driven by hormones along with Cross Country having all the hottest girls in school on the team… I was sold right there on the spot!

Looking back on everything that happened, running came into my life at the right time. Robert Frost says it best that when he came across the 2 different paths in the woods, taking the road less traveled would make all the difference. And it truly did…

Miami Update:

Its official!!! My bib has been transferred from the full Miami Marathon to the half Marathon. The whole purpose of the switch is because I thought that it would be easier to take 8 minutes off a half marathon than 8 minutes off a full marathon. It’s actually almost 9 because my last half marathon PR is 1:30:54. I’m trying to qualify for the NYC Marathon before the end of the month.

But just wait!!! I know what you’re going to say… With the Marathon you can spread that out over 26.2 miles rather than 13.1, and I do agree with you that in a typical situation it would be doable along with smarter! But my training from MCM, late Oct to the beginning of Jan, consisted of only a few miles a week.

So the odds are against me to get a 1:22 Half:

• I don’t have time to pick up the mileage to something crazy to get in shape without the increase of injury
• My best half marathon is a 1:30:54
• Less than a month of training
• 2 long runs over 10 miles in the last 3 months
• Packed on some additional weight (dang double stuff Oreo cookies sitting in my work drawer)
• You can’t really reverse engineer your BQ time down to a half marathon… some people say the math just doesn’t work out
• My coach is already predicting a meltdown halfway through the race
• I have a history of taking off too fast and burning out (not fading) it’s so bad the running group calls it “Pulling a Ben”
• Might be a little too focused on having fun for this trip

But there are some positives that I am pulling from:

• Ran 10 miles this week in Clermont on the hills and averaged a 6:40 pace
• Had a great track workout this week: 400, mile (5:24), 800, 800, 400, mile (5:18) and an optional extra mile of 5:36
• Ran 15 last week and kept the first 10.5 at a 6:59 pace and hammered the last 4.5 to make it an overall average of 6:47
• I am reading a running book to help with the mental game “Running the Edge”
• I starting to embrace the pain feeling of running again!
• The desire to run with one of the runners I look up to! He is also running NYC!
• I have recently had a mental shift during the track workouts where I am starting to control effort through different types of kicks at different places during the workouts (Still suck at holding a pace, but I know how to hold an effort level)

So feel free to start putting wagers down for what Lazy Runner will run at Miami! Will it be NYC quals or Bust??

On another note, I live in Tampa and there are tons of social runs all over the city! But there are none in Brandon so I decided to start one! I have the info below if you would like to come and just hang out with a bunch of other runners. (You don’t have to run if you don’t want to!!!)

I would like to invite you and whomever else you would like to bring to Run and Wine (they also serve Beer) event on Thursday Feb 2^nd at 6:30 pm over at the Cork and Olive in Brandon.

I know that all across the Tampa Bay area there are successful social running events, but nothing really in the Brandon area so I was hoping that this would be a great trial run.

Date: Thursday February 2^nd
Run Time: 6:30 pm
Social Time:7:00 or 7:30pm – whenever
Location: Cork and Olive
2086 Badlands Drive
Brandon, FL 33511
Run Location: Brandon Parkway (The path is lit up)
Facebook Event:
http://www.facebook.com/events/#!/events/302861949750500/

Most Excellent Christmas Gift EVER

I just want to give a shout out to my GF who went through the thick and thin to find my pics from my first marathon!  

Super Quick Race Recap:  MCM 2009

Pre-training

I vowed never to run a marathon until at least my 30s because I didn’t want to be one of the crazy….  Wait.. I really just didn’t want to, so please pick an excuse for me and we can utilize that one.   But I knew when I decided to take up the challenge, I would start with the Marine Corps Marathon.  So in the spring of 2009 some cute girl that I knew from college shot me an a message…  “you should run MCM with me..” and being the dumb single guy, I signed up, and in the following weeks she found a boyfriend.

Training

So let’s fast forward a few months I have run absolutely 0 miles in training for my first marathon, when my friend Capt C introduces me to some red head that needed a training partner for a few runs.   My entire training regiment for this marathon was 3-4 runs a month and I only ran when I was running with Red.  There are tons of fun stories here but I will save for another time…  This is also where I picked up the nickname “Lazy Runner.”

The big day

This being my first marathon, I decided to bring a camera with me to capture all the moments that I thought were cool during the race (I really used it as an excuse because all my friends were running sub 3 hour marathons and I quit running after college.)   The first 10 miles were amazing, I stopped and took pictures of everything that was cool and somehow at that point I was still ahead of the 3 hour group.  Shortly after that my lack of training started kicking in, but my spirits were soaring.  The next 16 miles were split up with a lot of walking and picture stops (rest stops), and all smiles.  I could not keep the smile off of my face.  There was so much excitement, thousands of people cheering you on, I was giving out hundreds of high fives, stopping to thank the Marines at different mile markers for their service and their support.  Overall I stopped during the race 62 times for Kodak moments, had an amazing race, and finished with a 3:49…  And then took 6 months off of running… 

Pictures during the race

It was 26.2 miles of all smiles! 

At the time I ran for the Lockheed Martin F-35B Marathon Team, which was awesome.  Having crowd support throughout the race and being able to show off one bad ass fighter jet!  Stuff like this makes me glad that I am hanging out on the American side of any battle.

Last note:  Who are you cheering for this weekend for the Oly Trials?

Have a fun weekend!!!

15 or 16 on deck for the morning!!!    How much do you have one deck!!!

Goodbye Miami Marathon!!!

So I think it’s official, I am pulling out of the Miami Marathon.  The original plan was to run with Marathon with Jeff, JE, Beth, Mandy, one of Jessica’s friends from the Midwest, and anyone else in the Brandon  group that is shooting for a 3:30-3:35 marathon.    Knowing that I wasn’t going to go out and hammer the race I became LAZY with my training (maybe a good week I would get 8 miles in).    

 But everything changes yesterday morning when a friend posted on FB that he entered the NYC Marathon lottery… so I tossed my name in also.  Its only $11… what have I got to lose…  within hours people started pointing out how they have qualified for a guaranteed entry!  I want a guaranteed entrée!!! I just have to take my 8 minutes off my half PR with 27 days left to go and almost no training since the Marine Corps Marathon.

 So I sent in my bid to downgrade to the half at Miami and make that my race to qualify before the Jan 31st deadline…  I will keep you updated when its approved.

 Let’s see if I can make this happen so I can run NYC this year!!!

Ohh the weather outside is frightful… and the speeding cars are so delightful…

Picture this… I am up in Michigan in a small town that doesn’t even have stop lights in their downtown district and within a half mile from being downtown I am off in Farmland.  Its dark (10:00pm) and somewhere in the 20s (way too cold for a Florida boy) and I decide to go out for a run… 

I am sure the ones that know me outside the blog will shrug this off as another crazy run, where Mr. Lazy Runner will go run and not think about safety, but this time I decided to play the safe card and I bought a headlamp to wear! (I didn’t know the area, the moon wasn’t out, all the roads are dark, and to top it off all my cold weather gear is BLACK…. And come to think of it, I think I already lost the headlamp somewhere)

 So the run begins with me trudging through the dark off in lala land thinking about the last year and the Christmas party I was at and all the other things that runners think about to keep their mind off the freezing cold wind.  As cars drive by I made sure to shine my headlamp right into their eyes, even if they were heading the opposite direction.   I have a head lamp and the roads are dark.. I don’t care where you’re at, I want you to see me!  (It’s about safety and not narcissism). 

 About 1.5 miles away from my starting location I am running down a dark country road (speed limit 55mph) and 2 cars show up over the next hill flying toward my direction.   The first car acted like every other car that has driven by me before this point.   He slowly pulls into the other lane giving me 10 feet of space, the second car behind him does the opposite… 

 The next car drives right into the gravel where I am running.  Most sane runners would probably dive into the ditch or over the ditch to spare their lives… I on the other hand yell some profanity and make a calculated sidestep out of the way before the car plows my legs over, while swinging my fist with everything I have.  It’s a good thing I didn’t I didn’t connect with the car because I probably would have shattered everything in my fist (and I also realized why I can never hit the 60mph ball in the batting cages).   A second later the car slams on their brakes and the first thing I can think of its some stupid teenagers that are turning around to dick with me and either try to fight me or run me over again.   I lower to the ground while screaming a few more choice words and pick up a handful of rocks that I am about to use to pepper their windshield.   And then a lady pulls up and rolls down the window. 

“ I thought I hit you,” she said.

“Well you didn’t, but you got F’nn close,”  I snipped back.

Then she tried to defend herself by saying she almost hit another runner at 2am that was running in the road the same way… (that’s her defense… really)  I asked her if they also had a headlamp and she said yes.    It took everything in my body not to throw the rocks and pepper her car and then take off into the corn fields where no one could ever catch me… but I told her that she needs to be more careful and watch out in the road before she kills someone (and I thought I wasn’t going to have an issue because I bought a super bright headlamp this time).

 My next few miles of my run flew by as I was using up the excess adrenaline pumping through my veins and battling the cold wind in my face.

 After turning around I started to realize that the cold weather… was starting to feel really cold.  I thought I dressed for the temp but I didn’t dress for the cold wind that blew  through the farm fields.  Around 4 miles into my 7 mile run I started to feel that something just wasn’t right…  you know those feelings that your body is off because of the weather or that something was different.  I had to stop and figure it out.  Let’s just say that one of the hit songs right now is LMAFO’s “Sexy and you know it” and he has a line in there about “Passion in his pants” well… whatever the opposite of Passion… that’s what I was experiencing as I shinned the light down checking to make sure everything was alright.   I looked down in horror at the “Lost Boys” thinking that this shrinkage was worse than jumping in the ice tanks after every workout in college.  The water there was in the 40s… but the temp here without the wind chill factored in was in the 20s.  It showed as I freaked out.  

 I don’t know how you cold weather athletes do this all the time…  its cold outside and it affects parts of your body that shouldn’t be affected when your training…. So how do you guys deal with the cold weather?

 Anyway…  the rest of the run was uneventful and all the rest of the cars gave me plenty of room…. The second I got back to Jenny’s parents house I hopped straight into the shower and warmed myself back up before enjoying a glass of wine! 

 Stay tuned for my second Michigan run….  (so glad to be back in FL now).

Hot vs Cold

BRRRRRR..... This will be me this weekend

 

 I have to ask you all out there, how do you deal with running in the cold 2-6 months out of the year?  I am only asking because I am up to Michigan tonight and the highs are in the 20-30s.   As a Florida boy I can run easily when its 99 and I actually enjoy it!  Except on track days…  and the end of a LR, and the…  whatever I enjoy the heat!  (its 72 in my office right now and I am wearing my MCM jacket).

 But what would you choose?  To run in the cold or run somewhere its nice and warm?

Or a good run in FL (no this is not me...)