Doin' Work

After setting a new personal record for minutes in a week, I knew there would be a bit of a let down in my minutes. I ended up running 560 minutes, which is fine by me considering I traveled and, more importantly, I was in the presence of my cousins. On Monday, I ran 100 minutes. I came back on Tuesday and only ran 30 minutes, feeling a little tired from all the running I did the previous week. Wednesday, I ran 30 minutes in the morning and then 100 minutes in the evening. On my longer run, I passed by an older man on a bench while I was going through Codman Square, just a few minutes into my run. As I ran by he yelled to me "Woo hoo! It's mardi gras!" I don't fully understand what he meant (I am guessing it was a reference to my clothing) but I still laughed for a few blocks. Later on in my run I passed Northeastern. It must have been freshman orientation, because I have not seen that many teenagers stumbling around since, well, I was a freshman in college. One girl screamed "Yeah, tie-dye!" at me as two of her friends held her up. I was wearing a grey shirt and black shorts. On Thursday, I ran 30 minutes in the morning and did a workout in the evening that totalled 120 minutes. After a 35 minutes warm up, I ran four laps of Jamaica Pond with a two minute jog rest in between each lap. The loop is just under a mile and a half and I was running right at 8 minutes flat for each. I was kind of pissed during my workout because I was doing my math wrong in figuring out the pace I was running. When I got home, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was going around 5:20 pace. I ran 30 minutes the next morning before flying down to Charlotte. Friday night in Charlotte was low key and I got up the next day to put in 90 minutes. Things began to get silly after I got done running and had some lunch. That evening, there was an engagement party for my cousin, Rob, and his fiance, Jamie. It was a great time and I got to see all my North Carolina aunts, uncles, and cousins. There will be no recap, but I will say that I may or may not have a cousin who was pouring full bottles of water over his head. I woke up too late on Sunday to run very long outside (it was in the upper 90s). After eating a sausage, egg, and cheese biscuit from Bojangles, I went to the gym with my cousin, Mike. We each put in half an hour of work and then called it a day. I hope to be back above 100 miles this week and should be able to.

Long Time No Blog

I would like to begin with an apology to the handful of people who regularly check this page. The past month and a half has been pretty packed (other than the past week, which you will hear about later). After the school year ended and we had our week of teachers' meetings, I had a few free days in Boston before I returned to Baltimore for a week. It was good to get back home and see my family (Bailey included) and friends. I only ran 90 miles or so the week I was home, but I had some enjoyable runs. One day, I made it back to my high school to see the current Loyola Dons cross country team and run with my old coach, Mr. Cucuzzella. Another day, I was able to catch up with Matt Schelberg, one of my high school teammates, for a run on the NCR Trail followed by a Slurpee date. Both of those runs were great, but my favorite run by far was with my friend Eugene's little brother Johnny the day before I flew back to Boston. He had been talking crap for weeks about how he could dust me and how he broke two minutes for the half mile and how he ran faster than I did on the Loyola cross country course. We decided to do 80 minutes on the NCR Trail and I entered the run with the sole purpose of making Johnny admit that he was hurting. He was able to hang for just under an hour as I slowly quickened the pace. After he cracked and admitted defeat, I eased off the pace and let my oversized sense of accomplishment from breaking a high schooler carry me through the final 20 minutes. After I returned to Boston, I had a few days to prepare for summer school and then left for Groton, MA. Teaching at Groton was a great experience and I enjoyed my time there, but my running definitely suffered. The school day at Epiphany is long enough, but being around the kids all day every day for three and a half weeks made me appreciate the breaks we do get between regular school days. The combination of mental exhaustion from being around the kids so much, a busy schedule, and laziness kept me from running much and I only averaged around 60 miles a week, despite having some great places to run. I ended up riding my bike many days to mix things up. A few mornings, one of the 8th graders rode my bike along side me as I did my run, which was awesome. Upon returning to Boston from Groton, I got right back into the swing of things, racking up the miles with nothing else on my plate. I ran 800 minutes in my first full week back, which is a personal best for minutes in a scheduled week (Monday through Sunday) and I also ran 870 minutes over a seven day span, which is also a personal best. I am hoping to keep my mileage at around 840 minutes a week until school starts, when I will have to lower it a little. Last, and most importantly, I had a doctor's appointment today and my latest tests showed no signs of any further cancer growth. I am a little over 11 weeks away from the marathon and have already raised $4,860. I will be updating this blog weekly (at the least) from now until November, so stay tuned for the final months of preparation.

Belated Father's Day Gift

In talking to my dad today, he mentioned, albeit sarcastically, that being able to read my blog on Monday mornings brightens his day and gives him the strength to make it through the long work day (or something along those lines). The last thing I want is to make my father trudge through a Monday without knowing how my training and life went the previous week, so I managed to snap out of my post long run food coma and here it is. This one's for you pops. If I had to sum up the past week in one word it would be "soreness." I wore spikes in my 5k last Sunday for the first time since November and my calves were completely torn up the rest of the week as a result. I gimped through a 70 minute run on Monday and then took Tuesday off, hoping to have my legs back under me the next day. My calves were still incredibly tight on Wednesday, but I managed to get in 30 minutes in the morning and 100 minutes in the evening. On Thursday, I was still feeling the effects of the 5k during my 30 minutes in the morning and 120 minutes in the evening. Friday, I ran 30 minutes in the morning and then met up with my friend Natalie and her family who were all in Boston for a family wedding. I then saw Knocked Up and laughed for pretty much two hours straight. Be forewarned, if you talk to me in the next two week, haven't seen the movie, and don't understand what I am talking about, I probably just quoted the movie...and I already know it is lame to have conversations that are entirely movie quotes and don't care so save it. After the movie, I went for an 80 minute run and did not shuffle along like Corey Kubatzky for the first time since Sunday. I had a basketball game on Saturday and my stat line looked something like this:
Steals: 3
Blocks: 1
Rebounds: 11
Points on Fastbreaks Because Nobody Else Ran Down the Court: upwards of 14
Legit Points: about 6
Assists: 2
Turnovers: 2
We won our game and then one of the teams that was scheduled to play after us didn't show up, so I played two more hours of basketball, giving me three hours of hooping for the day. I should have run an easy 30 to 60 that afternoon, but just watched episodes from the third season of Arrested Development instead. Today, I ran 150 minutes in the evening to give me 610 minutes for the week on 8 runs. This is starting to sound like a broken record, but I need to be more consistent in the upcoming week. By the way, the comic above is from www.toothpastefordinner.com and you should check out the site if you like funny things. Also, I did the HTML code to include that link, so eat your heart out Ronald Prescott Loui.

Back on the Right Track

Thursday brought another day of teacher meetings. I generally have nothing useful to input in these meetings and Thursday was no exception. Usually, I try to stay awake and look interested, although more than one person has told me I look angry/in pain during meetings. Fortunately for me, there were some funny discussions to keep me amused. The two favorite moments of the meetings were:
1. When discussing how to align the curriculum so that all classes that teach about The Holocaust could cover the topic concurrently, it was suggested that we could connect it to science by investigating the gas used in the gas chambers. I think we are going to shelve that one for now.
2. Somehow a field trip to New York for the 5th graders was brought up. It was pretty clear from the conversation that there was no way the trip would happen, yet the idea kept resurfacing over and over somehow. One of my coworkers suggested that the kids could take a tour of Central Park with this guy who knows all of the edible plants and "medicinal herbs" in the park. Mrs. Daly quickly moved the discussion on to a new topic, saying "I'm sure there are plenty of people with medicinal herb in Central Park but let's talk about ..."
I ran 30 minutes before the meeting and 100 minutes that evening. On Friday, we had a final short meeting and then I turned in my grades to officially be done with my first year of teaching. I definitely need the break this summer will offer but, at the same time, I am excited for next year. I will teach 8th grade science again and pick up a section of 8th grade math, which should be a good experience. I had a basketball game on Saturday and the plan was to run 30 minutes before the game and 60 minutes in the evening. I ended up not running before the game, going for a 45 minute bike ride, and running 30 minutes in the evening. Today, I had my first race since the Groton 10k: the 5k at the USATF New England Championships. In the morning, I ran 30 minutes at home to begin warming up for the race and then hopped on the train to go to MIT, where I ran another 20 minute warm up. I hadn't run on the track since the 2006 UAA Championships and was somewhat unsure of what to expect. The race played out as well as I could have hoped for, as I was able to clip off 75 second laps the entire race. There was a pack of three runners ahead of me for the first half of the race, but they came back to me at around the 3k mark. One of the guys fell off the pace immediately, leaving me and my teammate Kibrom up front with some guy who was doing tai chi or pilates or some crap at the starting line. Kibrom took off and gapped us by about 20 meters and it was me and yoga man fighting it out for second with 1200 to go. I was able to keep my even splits and dropped the other guy with 600 to go. I noticed that Kibrom was coming back to me and I started to make a move to catch him. In all fairness, he was only slowing because he didn't know where the finish line was (he is Ethiopian and his English is still shaky) but I wanted the win bad. I ended up reeling him in and was a half step behind him on the home stretch. He was able to just barely hold me off by half a second. I finished in 15:30 and I figure my last lap was around 68. I cooled down for 55 minutes to give me 120 minutes total for the day. I had never been to MIT before and I was expecting some nerdiness, but they made the engineering school at WashU look like a frat house. They have this huge window that looks down into their pool area and there are equations and derivations written all over. I couldn't help but think about the scene from Good Will Hunting, "So this is a Hahvad bah?" They also sell Stephen Hawking shirts in their book store. I ended up totaling 650 minutes for the week on 11 runs. The good thing is that I doubled four days. The bad thing is that two of the days I didn't double, I only ran 30 minutes. One exciting development for the week was breaking $3,500 in donations for the Lance Armstrong Foundation. Thank you again to everyone who has helped me so far to reach my goal of $5,000. This post is getting long. I am going to eat a big bowl of ice cream and hit the hay.