GETTING THE BOOT

Re-reading my last post, I didn’t appear overly concerned about my foot. After limping around for 4 days, I finally made an appt. to see Dr. Langer. I was able to get in on Friday before heading out of town. He took x-rays but wasn’t able to see a stress fracture. Still, he put me in one of these just to be safe;



His thoughts are that a couple of weeks in a walking boot early on are better than 6-12 months on lingering pain.

Today is actually the first day when the pain is barely noticeable. So maybe I’m progressing. Needless to say, I didn’t run the half marathon. I’ll call it an $80 donation to the Ashland Chamber of Commerce.

I was thinking more about my running career post from the other day too. Typically, I’ve relied on my running, more than my career, when it comes to pushing myself and having things to focus on. Now that my running is in the crapper, I wondering if that exacerbates how I feel about my career. I’m just throwing ideas out there.

Finally, how’s this for lame? I subscribe to Rachael Ray’s magazine. No, it’s true. Anyway, I got a new issue the other day with a letter stating how big the issue was, along with all the fabulous stuff inside. Well, because the issue was so big, they decided to count it as 2 issues towards my subscription. I’ve never heard of anything so lame. Luckily, it was my last issue anyway.

Quote of the Day;

“Every marathon becomes a theater for heroic acts.” – Dr. George Sheehan

MOMENT OF WEAKNESS

After Friday’s 10 miler I looked back in my log book and found that it’s been 14 weeks since my last double-digit run. I enjoyed it so much that I ran another 10 miles on Saturday, giving me 46 miles for the week. Should I be surprised that ball/big toe area of my right foot is sore today? The frustrating part is that it didn’t bother me at all yesterday. However, stay off my feet for 8 hours and all the sudden it hurts.

I was up at 5 anyway, so I got dressed to run. Eventually I made the wise decision to wait and see how things felt at lunch time. Well, it’s lunch time right now and I’m blogging rather than running, so it looks like a zero in the log book today. Hopefully it’s just a little tender and tomorrow morning I won’t even think about it.

I gotta give a shout out to NBC Chicago for live-streaming the Chicago Marathon. Not only that, but on the course they had Toni Reavis following the men, Joan Benoit following the women, and Ed Eyestone was in the studio. I thought the NBC staff also did a decent job of bringing up topics and asking questions and then letting Toni, Joan and Ed do their thing. They even managed to fill in with some special interest stories that didn’t seem to take away from the coverage. My one (minor) gripe is that kept flashing the World Record splits up on the screen even though it was pretty obvious that a new record wouldn’t be run.

So after my back-to-back 10 milers and watching the Chicago Marathon, but before my foot pain, I had a moment of weakness and I signed up for this weekend’s Whistlestop Half Marathon. My goals are very modest at best – I’d be shocked by a 1:40

Finally, congrats to Ryan Hall on his 5th place, 2:08:04 finish at Chicago. I know everyone thinks he should be running sub-2:05 every time he starts a marathon. But consider this, of the top-9 qualifying times for the Olympic Trials, Hall has 5 of them, including the 3 best times.

Quote of the Day;

“Regardless of what some people think about American distance running and it not being a big deal to be on top of that, I think it is. I’m going to go into the trials very low, very humble, and know that it’s going to take a war to get onto that team.” – Ryan Hall

RUNNING CAREER

As the day progressed yesterday, I felt worse and worse - runny nose, constant sneezing, tired, etc. I didn't feel much better today, so I called in sick. I took advantage of the day off to catch up on some of the running-related emails that come through my in-box. Usually, I sign up for a bunch of stuff, but end up just deleting it or never reading due to lack of time. Well, today I had time so I clicked on an email from flotrack and ended up spending probably an hour watching various videos, including a bunch with Ryan Hall as he talks about running Chicago this weekend. There's also a fun series called Run Junkie where they review what's going on with the high school, college, and professional ranks.

After that I opened an email from competitor.com and saw that they have an online magazine. The October issue even features a couple of articles from Minneapolis's own, McKenzie Lobby.

Like most times when I have a cold, the best I feel during the day is when I'm out running. So I headed to Lebanon Hills and ended up running 10 beautiful miles. I'd have to look back, but that's probably the furthest I've run in 3 months. Not only was it a great run physically, it was a great run mentally. Actually, the whole morning was a great mental boost. So much so, that I'm ready to declare that I'm back. No, I'm not back physically - far from it. But I feel like I'm back mentally and want to focus on getting back into running shape. I'll even throw this out there, 2012 TCM, baby!

A whole bunch of things have kind of snowballed lately and they have me wondering if there's a career to be made with running. Obviously, I'm not talking about collecting prize money as a slow Masters runner. I'm referring to other avenues, such as, writing, coaching, running organizations, retail, etc. When I think about Flotrack, Letsrun, Runnerspace, Competitor.com, TCM, MDRA, Team MN, etc., there must be money to be made.

McKenzie has the following quote on her website;

"I think that if you were advising young people going out into the job market, in this very tough job market, I'd say: find something that you're passionate about, regardless of what the prospects are. Do what you are passionate about and stay interested in it and it will work out for you somehow, one way or another. Because there's unemployment among lawyers for Heaven's sake, there's unemployment among MBA's, so why go the practical route?" - Garrison Keillor

Along those lines I once read the advice "Find what you love to do and then find someone to pay you to do it." As a father, that's what I'd like to pass along to my kids. But it's kind of hypocritical if you're not passionate about what you do. Or is it just telling them not to go down the road you did? In any case, I don't hate my job - at least not most of the time, but I'm not passionate about it either. Is it too late or is there a way to make a living at the only thing I'm passionate about, running?

Quote of the day;

"There's no place I'd rather be than on the start line of a marathon. Man, you feel alive." - Ryan Hall

HERDING CATS

Another year of coaching 3rd – 6th graders is in the books. Throughout the year we joked that it was like herding cats. It was definitely organized chaos, at best, when you have 37 kids and 2 coaches. We threw a lot of new stuff (games, relays, obstacle courses, etc.) at the kids this year in order to keep it fun. At times it’s really hard to get a feel for what they like and don’t like – especially given the rather large differences in age and abilities between our runners. After our last practice I got a very nice thank you card from one of our 6th graders. He mentioned how much he enjoyed running for us and much he’d miss it. He was very grateful for everything we taught him and said he’d be sure to use it throughout his “running career”. It was very touching.

I do try to share some “secrets” with the kids to help them improve, like running the tangents, keeping their effort up all the way over the hill, changing their stride to match the terrain – stuff like that. I feel like I can expand on this in the future, but I don’t want it to feel like I’m lecturing them either. I guess now that I know someone is listening and feels like it’s helpful information, I’ll try to add more next year.

In my last post I mentioned a glaring error on the Houston 2012 site. If you’re wondering what I was talking about, they listed results for 10,000km. It should be 10,000m or 10km – not 10,000km or 10m. I know it’s sad that; 1) I caught this in the first place, 2) it bothers me and 3) I blogged about it. But I have nothing better to do.

Running still has its ups and downs for me – and I’m not talking about the terrain. After a 34 mile week, I only ran once last week. I don’t even have an excuse why I didn’t run. This week I’ve run 6-7 miles every day. Both my knees have been achy. I’m wondering if it’s due to all the time off and my body getting used to the pounding again. The pain is the worst when I’m going up stairs.

Quote of the Day;

“You must be fast enough. You must have endurance. So you run fast for speed and repeat it many times for endurance.” – Emil Zatopek

PASSING FANCY

If you happened to go to the TCM expo (via 35E north) did you happen to notice the sign on the Children’s hospital that advertised their newly update Emergency Room? Almost makes me wish I’d gotten in an accident so I could check it out. If I’m in an accident in say Bloomington, now I’m going to have to request that the ambulance takes me all the way to St. Paul. Seriously, isn’t that a waste of advertising dollars? If I need an Emergency Room, I’m picking the closest one around.

I really enjoy the excitement and energy surrounding marathon expos. Sunday I woke up to nearly ideal racing conditions – ideal, at least, for the first 2 hours or so. After that, I imagine it got toasty along Summit for the runners. Things like that make me want to run another fall marathon some day. Then I think about running 20-milers in July and August and the moment passes. Maybe I can work something out where I jump in around mile 22 (after the St. Thomas hill) and run pass the TCRC RV at mile 24. Then I’ll loop back to the RV and hang out with everyone for the rest of the race. I don’t have all the details worked out yet, but I have a year to figure them out.

Sunday’s race also got me fired up for the 2012 trials in Houston. I was checking out the Houston 2012 website to get a better idea of the top qualifiers. For the second straight time, runners can also qualify by meeting standards for a half marathon or even a 10K. For a list of athletes that have qualified (as of 9/25), check out this page. One reason I bring it up is because there’s a glaring error. (Hint: look at the different qualifying distances.)

I don’t have a QOD handy today, so I’ll just “borrow” from Letsrun.com.

Quote of the Day;

“I prefer to celebrate and remember how great he was, how great an athlete. I had a wonderful conversation on how fast that he thought he could go. (He believed he could run at least 2:02.) That we won't see him again is hard." – Chicago Marathon director Carey Pinkowski talking about Sammy Wanjiru