AN ABSOLUTE JOKE

9 of the last 10 weeks have been below 38 MPW. I ran a whopping 138 miles in August this year. The weather has turned the corner (at least temporarily) and hopefully my attitude has too (at least temporarily).

For awhile I felt like a kid again – at least in the sense that I wanted to achieve great things without working for them.

Now I have just enough time to train in order to get in shape for… winter!

But when you’re retired from racing, I guess that doesn’t matter.

Lately, I been watching a bunch of survival shows of the Discovery Channel like Man vs. Wild (Bear Grylls is the craziest man around), Man, Woman, Wild (the girls even like this one), and Dual Survival (I like Cody’s dry sense of humor). Perhaps the most interesting is Surviving the Cut. As the website says, “Surviving the Cut takes viewers into the intense world of military elite forces training. From divers and snipers to para-rescue men and bomb specialists, the elite and how they earn a place in the coveted units are the focus in this compelling all new series.” Basically, they take all these military personnel that want to join different elite forces and they try to break them physically and mentally.

Watching this show makes running a marathon look like an absolute joke. The show has definitely made me stop and think about things. Of course, I feel like a candy ass for not wanting to run TCM because I haven’t trained properly. There’s no way these guys/gals could train properly for their elite forces training, yet they’re out there doing it – pushing themselves to their limits and beyond. Check out an episode before your next big event and see if it changes your mindset.

Finally, I was writing an article about running in the ‘90s recently. I was in college during the ‘90s and I can really only remember 2 great U.S. runners, Bob Kennedy and Todd Williams. They were head and shoulders above the rest of the U.S. runners. Of course there were other greats, like Bob Kempainen, but he didn’t race a lot due to medical school. Anyway, as part of my research, I came across a great interview that Duncan did recently with Williams.

Quote of the Day;

“Jujitsu is a wrestling art. It’s more grappling-based. I didn’t take it, because I wanted to be an ass kicker; I took it, because I wanted something else in my life that could fill the void of the competitive side of me that was outside the job I had in sales and marketing with Adidas. As far as the drive, it’s been awesome. It’s been a great replacement, because I started in a lower level. I didn’t know anything, just like I didn’t know anything about running when I started out.” - Todd Williams.