Wow. These little things turn 9 today. It's hard to believe. Here is a pic of their 1st 1K. They were awsome. For their birthday they are going to get their nails done with Beth and a few friends. They are really just girlie girls now.
Showing posts with label running. Show all posts
Showing posts with label running. Show all posts
2008-06-27
2007-08-20
Vacations and broken bones
It has been a while, so let’s see what we have missed.
1) I broke my wrist. I am now wearing a brace that is a pain in the butt.
2) I have not run since I got the brace until today. Not a god excuse. I know.
3) I am on vacation for the next two days. Gotta love forced vacations.
I don’t have much time now. I’ll be back.
1) I broke my wrist. I am now wearing a brace that is a pain in the butt.
2) I have not run since I got the brace until today. Not a god excuse. I know.
3) I am on vacation for the next two days. Gotta love forced vacations.
I don’t have much time now. I’ll be back.
2007-08-09
Running and Being
The problem is that I have done much more being than running lately. I am still on the road. I am eating more than I should and not exercising. This combination is not a good one. I am having a great time, but I miss the family. I wish they could be here to see all the sights I am seeing.
Thursday night, I’ll be on a plane back to the sweltering heat of Austin, TX. I just got off the phone with my wife. In less than 24 hours, I’ll be asleep in my own bed.
Life is going great and I think it all has to do with perspective. I choose to be happy in what I am doing. I love my job. I am learning something new everyday. I have a bunch of kids that still think I am great. I have a beautiful wife that adores me. I have in-laws that I actually love to be around. I have nothing to complain about. All is good.
As part of my reading, Dr. Sheehan wrote, “Shakespeare was wrong. To play or not to play: that is the question. Anyone with a sense of humor can see that life is a joke, not a tragedy. It is also a riddle and, like all riddles, has an obvious answer: play, not suicide”
What he is saying is that the question “to be or not to be” is nothing more than an eloquent contemplation of suicide. You are. In other words, if you are reading this you have chosen “to be.” Good choice. In his interrogative: to play or not to play, Dr, Sheehan is pointing out that we have a choice how we spend the time between being and not being.
The person in the most perfect form is the child. The child doesn’t “know” enough to think of himself as foolish for acting on impulse and imagination. The child is not inhibited by social etiquette that limits volume and speed. My kids play at full speed until they drop. My youngest is the best example of this. We find him asleep in some of the strangest places. There is no moderation. 100mph until you run out of gas. That’s the joy of acting like a kid.
I get the same feeling from running. There is no work, no deadlines, and no politics to distract me when I am running. There is only me and the road. Sometimes I listen to my mp3 player, but often I run without it so I can hear the birds, my feet hitting the pavement, and the other sounds that people in their cars just don’t hear.
I’ll be back for more. For now, I am heading to bed.
Thursday night, I’ll be on a plane back to the sweltering heat of Austin, TX. I just got off the phone with my wife. In less than 24 hours, I’ll be asleep in my own bed.
Life is going great and I think it all has to do with perspective. I choose to be happy in what I am doing. I love my job. I am learning something new everyday. I have a bunch of kids that still think I am great. I have a beautiful wife that adores me. I have in-laws that I actually love to be around. I have nothing to complain about. All is good.
As part of my reading, Dr. Sheehan wrote, “Shakespeare was wrong. To play or not to play: that is the question. Anyone with a sense of humor can see that life is a joke, not a tragedy. It is also a riddle and, like all riddles, has an obvious answer: play, not suicide”
What he is saying is that the question “to be or not to be” is nothing more than an eloquent contemplation of suicide. You are. In other words, if you are reading this you have chosen “to be.” Good choice. In his interrogative: to play or not to play, Dr, Sheehan is pointing out that we have a choice how we spend the time between being and not being.
The person in the most perfect form is the child. The child doesn’t “know” enough to think of himself as foolish for acting on impulse and imagination. The child is not inhibited by social etiquette that limits volume and speed. My kids play at full speed until they drop. My youngest is the best example of this. We find him asleep in some of the strangest places. There is no moderation. 100mph until you run out of gas. That’s the joy of acting like a kid.
I get the same feeling from running. There is no work, no deadlines, and no politics to distract me when I am running. There is only me and the road. Sometimes I listen to my mp3 player, but often I run without it so I can hear the birds, my feet hitting the pavement, and the other sounds that people in their cars just don’t hear.
I’ll be back for more. For now, I am heading to bed.
2007-08-08
Six Flags
It’s been a while since I have posted. I have not made the time. I am sitting in the LAX airport waiting to board my flight to San Jose. I have nothing but time for the next 30 minutes.
The running program has not been what I had planned. There are excuses, but none of them good enough to share. Because of travel timing Beth and I did not run the Moonlight Margarita run as planned. Instead, I took that day off and took the girls to Six Flags in San Antonio. Just the four of us had a great time. The girls rode the Boomerang. It has two loops and a corkscrew. They were terrified, but they made it.
More to come.
2007-07-12
Back on track
I went to Bridge City last weekend with Beth and the kids. I saw my sister's grave for the first time since the funeral. It wasn’t nearly as difficult as I thought it might be. It was sobering. My mom has done a great job of decorating the site with mementos. The headstone is beautiful. How could it not be? It has a picture of my sister on it. The rest of the trip was great as well. We had a party for the June birthdays at Dad’s house with burgers and dogs.
Beth and I went to the track Saturday morning to run. It seems like my old high school stadium shrunk. I remember thinking how huge it was the first time I stepped on that field for 7th grade football. The track was bright red when I was there. We are the Cardinals so it made sense. It is black now. It is a little depressing.
Beth and I went to the track Saturday morning to run. It seems like my old high school stadium shrunk. I remember thinking how huge it was the first time I stepped on that field for 7th grade football. The track was bright red when I was there. We are the Cardinals so it made sense. It is black now. It is a little depressing.
2007-07-03
Perseverance and Inspiration
Many people have been asking me about my experience training for and running marathons. I wrote this quite a while back, but didn’t do much with it. I hope you enjoy the read and gain some insight into where I am on the road to the marathon on 1/13/08.
I was very active in sports from the age of 5 through high-school. I was involved in everything from soccer, baseball, basketball, track, cross-country, football, and water skiing. In college I played intramural softball and soccer. In the Marines I ran way more than anyone should while wearing boots, but loved it.
I got my degree, a “real” job as a logistics consultant, and twin daughters in the span of 45 days in 1999. Between corporate lunches, endless travel, and little sleep when I was home, needless to say, I lost my athletic build for something that was a little more round.
Fast forward about five years. I am in no better shape. I now have a third child. I am no longer consulting, but I am a workaholic who is still out of shape. I knew I needed to get back into shape. My wife was on her way to the bookstore to pick up something a friend had suggested. I asked her to pick up something on running. I figured she’d come back with something like “Running a 5K and having fun”. Instead she picked up Jeff Galloway’s “Marathon: You Can Do It”. When I read the title I just laughed. She explained that it was the only book that looked like a good read. The others looked like technical manuals from the 70’s. I read the Intro and was hooked. Jeff convinced me that I could go from sitting on my butt to running a marathon in only 26 weeks. I checked the website of our local running store and sure enough, exactly 26 weeks to the day I got the book, the Motorola Marathon was going to be held in Austin, TX just 20 minutes north of me.
I went from couch potato to training for a marathon and it felt great. I slowly built up the miles and can vividly remember the day that I said to my wife, “Today won’t be too bad. It’s only 8 miles.” I finished my 27 mile training run with 3 weeks to go and was set for a 4:30 time goal. Then tragedy struck. My father was in a near fatal car wreck on the Monday before the race. He broke his neck and had to wear a halo for 9 weeks. On race day, I was helping him drink through a straw and trying to help him adjust to eating while being immobilized.
About a month later, my fourth child was born. I kept running, but very low mileage. With an infant in the house, I chose not to attempt training for the 2005 Marathon.
Late in 2005, I decided to begin training for the 2006 Marathon in Austin. Now it was known as the Freescale Marathon. In October of 2005 I got a sinus infection that ended up requiring surgery and bed rest in January of 2006. Needless to say, I was in no condition to run the Marathon in 2006.
2007 was going to be the year. I was finally going to get the Galloway book out, type my plan into my Excel spreadsheet and finally run what is now called the Austin Marathon. On August 13th, 2006, my sister, 24 years young, was hit by a semi-truck traveling at 60 mph when she ran a stop sign. She was killed instantly. She was my only sibling. I have a great wife and extended group of in-laws as well as my parents that are all grouping together to cope with this loss. She would have been 25 on April 21st 2007. Doing anything at all has been tough. I stopped running altogether in favor of just being with my family as much as I could.
Last Christmas was especially hard without her. We knowingly spent way more than normal as a form of retail therapy. We knew it couldn’t replace her, but it made us feel better, albeit temporarily. One of the items I splurged on was buying my wife one of the new video iPods. She was very excited about it. A side benefit for me was that it meant I got her old iPod shuffle.
As soon as I got it, I went to the iTunes store and subscribed to about 50 podcasts. I’d listen to an episode or two of each and deleted most of them. I got hooked on Phedippidations.
Steve, the guy who produces the podcast, got me back on the road. He has been someone that helped me a great deal. He turned me on to Dr. Sheehan. Incidentally, I suggest everyone buy a copy of Running and Being. I love it. Running isn’t just something I do; it is a part of who I am. To be the best animal I can be I need to run.
I hate to wax philosophical, but I think there is a reason that things happen. There is a reason that I have been planning to run a marathon for so long and have not been able to. There is a reason I put down the cheesy poofs and started running. There is a reason that I picked Phedippidations over the 15 other running podcasts on iTunes to try. What are those reasons? I don’t know and probably never will, but I am happy knowing that a greater being out there knows exactly what’s going on.
For the 2008 spring marathon season, I have picked the Houston Marathon on January 13th, 2008. In August, I will start a 4 hour time goal training plan found in Galloway’s Marathon book. If anything comes up that prevents me from being in Houston on that day I can fall back to the Austin marathon in February.
To summarize:
2004 Motorola Marathon: Completed training, but missed race due to father’s car accident
2005 Freescale Marathon: Did not train because of an infant in the house
2006 Freescale Marathon: Training derailed by sinus infection, surgery and bed rest.
2007 Austin Marathon: Sister died in August 2006 and pretty much everything stopped for a while.
2008 Houston Marathon: Training starts in June and I will complete my first Marathon on January 13th 2008. Fifth times the charm?
I was very active in sports from the age of 5 through high-school. I was involved in everything from soccer, baseball, basketball, track, cross-country, football, and water skiing. In college I played intramural softball and soccer. In the Marines I ran way more than anyone should while wearing boots, but loved it.
I got my degree, a “real” job as a logistics consultant, and twin daughters in the span of 45 days in 1999. Between corporate lunches, endless travel, and little sleep when I was home, needless to say, I lost my athletic build for something that was a little more round.
Fast forward about five years. I am in no better shape. I now have a third child. I am no longer consulting, but I am a workaholic who is still out of shape. I knew I needed to get back into shape. My wife was on her way to the bookstore to pick up something a friend had suggested. I asked her to pick up something on running. I figured she’d come back with something like “Running a 5K and having fun”. Instead she picked up Jeff Galloway’s “Marathon: You Can Do It”. When I read the title I just laughed. She explained that it was the only book that looked like a good read. The others looked like technical manuals from the 70’s. I read the Intro and was hooked. Jeff convinced me that I could go from sitting on my butt to running a marathon in only 26 weeks. I checked the website of our local running store and sure enough, exactly 26 weeks to the day I got the book, the Motorola Marathon was going to be held in Austin, TX just 20 minutes north of me.
I went from couch potato to training for a marathon and it felt great. I slowly built up the miles and can vividly remember the day that I said to my wife, “Today won’t be too bad. It’s only 8 miles.” I finished my 27 mile training run with 3 weeks to go and was set for a 4:30 time goal. Then tragedy struck. My father was in a near fatal car wreck on the Monday before the race. He broke his neck and had to wear a halo for 9 weeks. On race day, I was helping him drink through a straw and trying to help him adjust to eating while being immobilized.
About a month later, my fourth child was born. I kept running, but very low mileage. With an infant in the house, I chose not to attempt training for the 2005 Marathon.
Late in 2005, I decided to begin training for the 2006 Marathon in Austin. Now it was known as the Freescale Marathon. In October of 2005 I got a sinus infection that ended up requiring surgery and bed rest in January of 2006. Needless to say, I was in no condition to run the Marathon in 2006.
2007 was going to be the year. I was finally going to get the Galloway book out, type my plan into my Excel spreadsheet and finally run what is now called the Austin Marathon. On August 13th, 2006, my sister, 24 years young, was hit by a semi-truck traveling at 60 mph when she ran a stop sign. She was killed instantly. She was my only sibling. I have a great wife and extended group of in-laws as well as my parents that are all grouping together to cope with this loss. She would have been 25 on April 21st 2007. Doing anything at all has been tough. I stopped running altogether in favor of just being with my family as much as I could.
Last Christmas was especially hard without her. We knowingly spent way more than normal as a form of retail therapy. We knew it couldn’t replace her, but it made us feel better, albeit temporarily. One of the items I splurged on was buying my wife one of the new video iPods. She was very excited about it. A side benefit for me was that it meant I got her old iPod shuffle.
As soon as I got it, I went to the iTunes store and subscribed to about 50 podcasts. I’d listen to an episode or two of each and deleted most of them. I got hooked on Phedippidations.
Steve, the guy who produces the podcast, got me back on the road. He has been someone that helped me a great deal. He turned me on to Dr. Sheehan. Incidentally, I suggest everyone buy a copy of Running and Being. I love it. Running isn’t just something I do; it is a part of who I am. To be the best animal I can be I need to run.
I hate to wax philosophical, but I think there is a reason that things happen. There is a reason that I have been planning to run a marathon for so long and have not been able to. There is a reason I put down the cheesy poofs and started running. There is a reason that I picked Phedippidations over the 15 other running podcasts on iTunes to try. What are those reasons? I don’t know and probably never will, but I am happy knowing that a greater being out there knows exactly what’s going on.
For the 2008 spring marathon season, I have picked the Houston Marathon on January 13th, 2008. In August, I will start a 4 hour time goal training plan found in Galloway’s Marathon book. If anything comes up that prevents me from being in Houston on that day I can fall back to the Austin marathon in February.
To summarize:
2004 Motorola Marathon: Completed training, but missed race due to father’s car accident
2005 Freescale Marathon: Did not train because of an infant in the house
2006 Freescale Marathon: Training derailed by sinus infection, surgery and bed rest.
2007 Austin Marathon: Sister died in August 2006 and pretty much everything stopped for a while.
2008 Houston Marathon: Training starts in June and I will complete my first Marathon on January 13th 2008. Fifth times the charm?
2007-06-28
Running in the rain...then getting shot with espresso
The cancellation of a meeting this morning allowed me to get my run in before lunch. It was very humid and hot. It rained on me near the end to cool me off a little. I did 3.8 miles in 41 minutes. It felt great.
Getting my run in early was especially good, because I had a buddy of mine take me to Gumbo’s for lunch. The food was overpriced. The service was not great. I had a cup of espresso poured on me by the waiter. Needless to say, I won’t be going back again.
Getting my run in early was especially good, because I had a buddy of mine take me to Gumbo’s for lunch. The food was overpriced. The service was not great. I had a cup of espresso poured on me by the waiter. Needless to say, I won’t be going back again.
2007-06-26
Crashed!
This pic of my boy shows about how I feel. Today was a scheduled day off from running. My left knee is a bit sore from the long run yesterday. I need the time to recover. I am also going to take off Wednesday this week to allow more time for recovery. I think I'll hit the pool in the morning for some low impact cardio instead.
2007-06-25
Running into Trouble
Repeat after me, “Gadgets are good. Gadgets are good.” Well, I guess I should clarify by saying that gadgets are good when not in the hands of someone who is not going to think when using the gadget. The only thing limiting the number of gadgets I have is my budget. I have to save and justify purchases of gadgets. That may be part of the reason I love them. Anyway, this is how a gadget got me in trouble today. So it is actually a story about how a guy who misuses a gadget can get into trouble.
I run with an iRiver T10 mp3 player and listen primarily to podcasts. I also have a Garmin Forerunner 301 for tracking progress and heart rate. Today, like many other, I went out at lunch to go on a quick run. A quick run normally consists of running through the streets near my office, trying to work a convenience store into the route if I need some Gatorade. A huge advantage of having a Garmin is that I can run any route and know at the end of the run how far I have gone and how fast I did it. If I see a big dog or a wreck up ahead, I just turn down a side street and still get a great work-out without losing the ability to know how far I ran.
The plan for today was to run for 30-45 minutes at a nice and easy pace. I started out slowly and felt really good. About 20 minutes into the run, I realized that I was thirsty and wasn’t quite sure where I was. Another great feature of the Garmin is the “Back to Start” in the map mode that points the way back home. I could have used this, but I didn’t pass a store on the route I had taken. I didn’t want to go back that way. I saw a road name that I thought was familiar. That’s where the trouble began. When I finally “found” myself, I was much farther from work than I thought I would be.
I knew of a store about a mile down the road. The problem with the store was that it was a mile farther away from the office than I already was. I had already been on the road and on the move for a little over thirty minutes. Despite wanting to only run for about 30-45 minutes, I was about to run away from my starting point by another mile. I was really feeling thirsty so I went for the store. I bought some Berry Rain Gatorade, ripped it open and started to ponder the route back home.
I could easily track back using the Garmin and make it home with no issues. Unfortunately, the Gatorade gave me a boost and I started thinking, “I know where I am now. I don’t need to use the map.” That was another mistake. My run ended up lasting 1:47:02 and covered 9.28 miles for an average pace of 11:30.
So what’s the point? Pay attention to what you are doing and where you are going when you run and don’t count on gadgets to do things they were never intended to do. One day, we’ll be wearing the equivalent of the TomTom navigation system, but until that day, we must work with what we have.
dax
I run with an iRiver T10 mp3 player and listen primarily to podcasts. I also have a Garmin Forerunner 301 for tracking progress and heart rate. Today, like many other, I went out at lunch to go on a quick run. A quick run normally consists of running through the streets near my office, trying to work a convenience store into the route if I need some Gatorade. A huge advantage of having a Garmin is that I can run any route and know at the end of the run how far I have gone and how fast I did it. If I see a big dog or a wreck up ahead, I just turn down a side street and still get a great work-out without losing the ability to know how far I ran.
The plan for today was to run for 30-45 minutes at a nice and easy pace. I started out slowly and felt really good. About 20 minutes into the run, I realized that I was thirsty and wasn’t quite sure where I was. Another great feature of the Garmin is the “Back to Start” in the map mode that points the way back home. I could have used this, but I didn’t pass a store on the route I had taken. I didn’t want to go back that way. I saw a road name that I thought was familiar. That’s where the trouble began. When I finally “found” myself, I was much farther from work than I thought I would be.
I knew of a store about a mile down the road. The problem with the store was that it was a mile farther away from the office than I already was. I had already been on the road and on the move for a little over thirty minutes. Despite wanting to only run for about 30-45 minutes, I was about to run away from my starting point by another mile. I was really feeling thirsty so I went for the store. I bought some Berry Rain Gatorade, ripped it open and started to ponder the route back home.
I could easily track back using the Garmin and make it home with no issues. Unfortunately, the Gatorade gave me a boost and I started thinking, “I know where I am now. I don’t need to use the map.” That was another mistake. My run ended up lasting 1:47:02 and covered 9.28 miles for an average pace of 11:30.
So what’s the point? Pay attention to what you are doing and where you are going when you run and don’t count on gadgets to do things they were never intended to do. One day, we’ll be wearing the equivalent of the TomTom navigation system, but until that day, we must work with what we have.
dax
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