Friday, November 9, 2012
Mark your Calendars!
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Waving the White Flag
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| Picture from Stubhub.com |
It’s so easy to give away advice like it’s growing on an oak
tree, but when it comes to advice for myself, my head tends to harden and my
ears fold over drowning out any advice that I need to hear. Well, the good news is that no matter how
hard I tried not to hear my advice, the pain in my hamstring was louder. For the second time in a year I’m pulling out
of a marathon. Last time was because my
heart wasn’t in it and now I’m just suffering with this nagging hamstring. I have to be smart about this, if I lined up
for this marathon I would do all I could to get through it and in doing so
injure myself more. And with this
unsettling weather coming in we won’t even be venturing to DC now. I wish those still running the marathon the
best of luck and I will be crossing my fingers that this storm turns away for
you.
I hope to be healthy enough to lead the first hill workout
on Thursday, November 1st at 6PM meeting at Council Rock South. Following that workout we will be heading to
Chow for our monthly Speedsters happy hour.
We have a lot of activities coming up in the next few weeks: The return of Hill Workouts on Thursday
evenings, Happy Hour, Expo, Expo, Trenton Half Water Stop, and a flag football
game/tailgate. Busy busy.
Till we run into each other again…
Monday, October 22, 2012
Been a Long Time...
It’s been awhile since my last post (hence the Led
Zeppelin), it’s actually been a long time since I ran. That’s because I’ve come down with another
injury! After having a decent summer of
racing and training I strained my hamstring.
The first hint of this injury came during a long training run in Tyler Park;
I was coming down agony and literally felt agony. I stopped to stretch the hamstring thinking
that it had tightened due to all the marathon training miles. Well, I was a mile from the boat house (where
I was parked) and ended up doing a mix of jogging and walking to get back. I rested the next few days as a precaution,
showed up at the track to do 8 Yasso’s and was only able to do three due to the
hamstring pulling again. I stopped to
stretch and tried to continue only to be forced to wave the white flag.
I took off again, this time for two weeks which was nice
when it came to my studies, but not to my fitness, that went to hell along with
all my training. There’s just something
about studying and snacks that go hand and hand…I decided last Thursday
(exactly two weeks off) that I would attempt an easy flat run. Though I was able to get through 5 slow
extremely tough miles, this was not comforting.
The hamstring nagged me the entire time and for hours after. It’s so hard to believe that everything can
go up in flames faster than it takes to build them, even though I use to tell
people that it takes 8 weeks to get in shape and only 8 days to lose it all. That may not be accurate, but any one that
workouts consistently can relate to what I’m saying.
I’m supposed to be running the Marine Corps Marathon this
Sunday, and I have no clue how that’s going to happen. It’s too late to defer, too late to get the
money back for the hotel and I did sprint to class the other day when it was
pouring outside and the hamstring didn’t act up…so...I know the smart and
proper thing would be to join Allyson on the side lines with the rest of the
spectators (oh yeah Allyson’s hurt too similar hamstring injury, are injuries
contagious…), this would be the responsible thing to do. My plan currently is to go for another test
run Thursday and see how this one goes before I pull out the lounge chair and
claim my spectator spot.
Till we run (or limp) into each other again…
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Respect the Marathon Please
It’s been
quite some time since my last post, mostly that’s contributed to me not being
acclimated to this semester’s schedule yet.
I have been extremely busy with my classes and this being my last
semester at the community college before I transfer to West Chester (hopefully
that is, being I have not heard back from them…), the classes I’m taking are specific. This means I don’t have a choice of when or
even where I take these last four classes.
“Where” is what inspired me to post tonight.
One of the
classes I must take is only available at the Perkasie campus and only on Wednesday
nights. I have found this class very
enjoyable and it’s partly hands on, so I love that aspect of this particular
class. The instructor is really good at
what she does and when it comes to education she really seems to know her
stuff. I really feel that there is a lot
that I can learn from this person, but not tonight…
Just to make
this clearer and possibly more fun, even though when this took place I could
barely contain myself, I will put the situation in a play format.
Setting:
Classroom
Topic:
Putting things into perspective for young children such as the number 100 by
showing the children 100 items (pennies, lollipops, kick balls, etc.).
Random
student: Can you give another example
for this?
Instructor: Okay, take the Boston Marathon for instance;
I’m not sure how many miles it is but…
CT (Excited, but sort of annoyed that
this is the example being used when the distance is not known): 26.2 miles!
Instructor:
Oh, you have run the Boston Marathon!?
CT (Proudly):
Yes! I have run a total of 9
marathons.
Instructor:
That’s great! Back to the example, the
Boston Marathon is 26 miles.
CT: .2 miles
Instructor:
Excuse me?
CT: A
marathon is 26.2 miles.
Instructor:
I’m training for my first marathon, but I don’t think my marathon is that many
miles.
CT: Well, you’re not doing a marathon than.
Instructor: I
am doing a marathon it just isn’t that many miles.
CT: Well, if it’s a marathon you will be running
26.2 miles.
Instructor: Okay let’s get back to the example shall
we. If you wanted to put the distance of
a marathon
into perspective for your students, you would take them to a track
and after they run one lap you would tell them that they need to run at least
49 more laps to equal the distance of a marathon.
CT: They would have to run a total of 105 laps
roughly on a standard 400 meter track.
Instructor: Oh would you look at the time.
THE END!
As a runner
this can become tiresome to explain to non-runners. Without a doubt if the word gets out that I
ran a marathon over the weekend, there will be at least one person that will
come up to me and say something similar to “I heard you ran a marathon this
weekend; How far was this marathon?” And
don’t get me started on the people who think that I have done the Hawaii
Ironman because I have done a triathlon!
Till we run
into each other again…
Friday, August 31, 2012
The Floor is Yours
I spoke a little bit about the Bucks County Speedsters Blue
& Orange Track & Field Day in the Speedster Quarterly, and I thought I
would do something different this year.
I thought instead of me writing a bias recap on an event that I
introduced to all of you; I thought I would open it up to all of you. We all know that I enjoyed the day and was
proud of all of you for not only competing, but for contributing with bringing stuff
that we needed and for also cheering each other on no matter what color the
clothing. The only thing I would like to
add is that Phil had the funniest moment of all, when he approached me about
the starting pistol not firing. I took
one look at the gun and said to Phil “I take it you don’t own a gun?” He replied with a simple no. I shook my head and said Phil you have the
blanks loaded on the wrong side. We didn’t
have any misfires so Phil must have figured out how to load the blanks.
I would love to hear about your track meet experiences, what
made you laugh, what was your favorite part of the day, what you didn’t like,
what should change. I’m curious to know
what volunteers and athletes alike thought and experienced. The floor is yours. You can either respond to this email/face
book post or comment on the bottom of the actual blog post.
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Education First
All the tape is down in the house and we’re back to our
normal routines including me back to class tomorrow. I’m excited to be starting back up, because
it’s my last semester at Bucks County Community College and also the last
semester as a sophomore. The only issue
is that my class schedule this semester will prevent me from getting out on
Tuesday nights. Don’t freak! Allyson and Harris will be filling in for
me. “Education First” that’s what I
would tell my brother when I was his legal guardian at the ripe old age of
21.
So, tonight’s hill workout was my last one for a little
while (don’t miss me too much), but it was still a good one, including some
really great quotes from fellow Speedsters.
The first great quote came from Steve and was directed toward “Twenty
Questions Tobias.” Eric is so inquisitive
and what he wanted to know tonight was what hill we would be running up and
Steve kindly responded “Does it matter they all suck?” The next quote came at the end of our
workout, after I found out that Charlotte had to yell at this group of parents
that were standing on the path that we were using. I too said something to these parents about
moving when I passed, they didn’t listen very well. In any case when I heard what Charlotte did I
jokingly said “so much for recruiting anyone new tonight,” after Charlotte got
done laughing she responded with “you don’t want them anyway, they don’t
listen, you will be yelling at them all the time.” She made a good point; I had a hard enough
time teaching you all proper track etiquette…
Coming out tonight:
Eric, Steve, Charlotte, Sharon, Rich, Kevin, Denise, and
Chris Evans who came out to his first hill workout ever and made it look
easy. Nice job everyone and I will see
you Thursday after class.
Workout:
1 mile warm-up
5x400 (600)
1 mile cool down
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