I can’t believe that it is already September.  The summer has flown by and school is getting ready to start back up.  Yikes! I think I joined with everybody else out there in throwing off my sleep schedule to watch the Olympics – including an amazing marathon performance, lots of new world records, and some great examples of the true Olympic spirit. Watching the Olympics raised the question in my mind, do I have what it takes?  Despite adding on 4 more weeks of marathon training I doubt I’ll run anywhere close to a 2:06, at least not for the full distance anyways.  Weeks 9 10 11 12 are all in the bag.  I’ve now run increased my longest run ever to about 21 miles and I’ve done the distance twice now!

When I wasn’t busy increasing my long runs I threw in some races.  I almost got a 10K PR while running the Hennepin Lakes Classic.  I managed to get a 15K PR two weeks later in the MDRA 15K.  Two weeks and a 20 miler later I set a new PR in the half-marathon distance, by a minute and a half at the Rochester Half Marathon.

I’ve been meeting and getting to know a lot of runners through a tool called Twitter.  It has been a fun way to connect and share about running and other random bit of life.  I even introduced the idea of tagging runs in Twitter so we can see each other’s better.

I am almost a 1/4 of the way to my goal for raising $2,000 to support the great work of World Vision around the world.  This month’s related posts included:

• Mixing Passion with Change,
• Money Well Spent,
• a look at my Running in Africa, and
• a look at what athletes and World Vision are doing in Darfur.

August 2008/2007 Monthly Mileage

Running – 175.5 / 123.26

Biking – 184.1 / 25.3

Swimming – 700 / 0

Last year was an eventful month as well.  I raced a few times, not doing as well as I did this year.  It was also extremely hot last year in Indiana, while my summer here in Minneapolis hasn’t been too bad! So to help deal with the heat I offered some tips to avoid the inferno. I raced a 5K and a 10K. I got a Sansa MP3 player and talked about the other “equipment” I used to run in.  This was pre-Garmin days! In the Olympic build-up year I took a look at an unusual banned substance – Caffeine. Yes, in high enough quantities, caffeine is considered illegal. A fun and popular post that I wrote was titled “Ways to Ruin Your Next Race.”

I hope you had a good August and are looking forward to fall coming!

[tags] Highlights [/tags]