Sign at hotel in Wynne, AK

It is a little hard to believe that I am recapping November already.  Last year at this time we were finalizing our decision to move to Minneapolis and beginning the process of saying goodbye.  This year we are enjoying our life in Minneapolis, wondering what the next year will bring – but it doesn’t seem like a year has passed.

Last Year I traveled with friends to Arkansas for the Midsouth Marathon.  I ran the 1/2 and they did the full. After the race getting ready to head home we saw the recap of the Men’s Olympic Marathon trials and the roller coaster of emotions that day brought as Ryan Hall had an amazing performace while his friend Ryan Shay had run his last miles.

Later I ran the last of the year’s DINO 15K trail races and it was quite cold! It was a lot of fun though running through the hills and creeks of Fort Harrison State Park.   I also ran in my first Thanksgiving Day race – the Drumstick Dash. Wray Jean, one of the friends I went to Arkansas with, went to Tennessee to knock off another state’s marathon and ran the Harpeth Hills Flying Monkey Marathon.

With most of my racing out of the way for the year, I began to look back on analyze my training plans for the 3 major races.  First up was the Indianapolis Mini Marathon.  My second major race and analysis was for the Bears of the Blue River 10k.

I was also going through my RSS feeds and highlighting some of the blogs I read.  These included Martin Dugard’s Paper Kenyan, Cool Running’s blog, and the Phedipidations Blog.  Also at the end of November Dr Cade, the inventor of Gatorade passed away at 80 years old. I started a feature that continues today – Foto Friday!

For November 2007 my monthly mileage was 52 miles!

This year was a lot different my monthly mileage was double that of 113.6 miles.

I raced quite a few times this month, which helped keep my mileage up.  I ran in the USATF-MN XC Series.  Completing the Rocky’s Run 8k and the USATF-MN XC Championship 10k.  With those races out of the way I began contemplating what the off-season might have in store. It includes another round of the 100 push up challenge.

I finally finished a book called The Sacred Art of Running and started a series taking an in-depth look at the book. The first part was Foundations of a Spiritual Runner, which laid a lot of ground work for the rest of the book.  Next came Spirituality: A Running Definition,  which defined what spirituality means (to the author and the book) and what that had to do with running.

Of course November means Thanksgiving and offering thanks for the many blessings in our life. It also marks the anniversary of Foto Friday!