Category Archives: Highlights

November Highlights

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!

October Highlights

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This really should be titled “Marathon Highlights” since most of the month this year and last was talking about marathons! Did I talk too much about it this year? Well it was a major highlight of the year and I spent plenty of weeks training, thinking, and focusing on it (read: obsessing), so you shouldn’t be too surprised.

Last Year though I didn’t talk too much about marathons, but I did share my experiences volunteering at the Chicago Marathon. Here are pictures I took after I was done passing out water. I wrote about some Last Minute Marathon Tips. Maybe I should have read these before my race! Following Chicago there was a lot of talk about Race Directors and marathon planning, so I highlighted a blog directed at Race Directors from the Association of Running Event Directors.

Continuing with the marathon theme I gave a preview of the Men’s Marathon Olympic Trials at New York and wrote about the Marathon Challenge, a PBS special.

I ran the Turn Up the Volume 4Mi race in Indianapolis and felt really good! I began tapering for my Indianapolis Half Marathon, which didn’t go very well for me.

I shared some highlights from a very funny post about t-shirt etiquette. Bad Ben posted it at his site: Bad Ben’s Ramblings which I highlighted. I ended the month on a somber note talking about Indiana’s high obesity rate.

This year my marathon was October 5, so I laid out my race plan and graded it afterwards. I did write a more traditional race review for you before bombarding you with a lot of random charts and graphs. In the following weeks I shared some of my thoughts on post-marathon life, a little like depression and generally lacking motivation. In a final hat tip to the marathon I did some linking to other people’s thoughts and impressions.

I wrapped up my Team World Vision fundraising by talking about my experience in South Africa and finally wrapping it all up. It is so exciting to have surpassed the fundraising goal of $2,000. THANK YOU again to everyone who donated and supported me!

Ok, so there aren’t many non-marathon posts, but here they are: A look at eco-friendly gyms. Protecting our ears from hearing loss by taking care of our buds. I submitted that post to the Running Carnival. I thought these were 5 good tips for fall running.

Monthly Mileage –(as of 10/29)

Running – 75 miles

Biking – 90 miles

September Highlights

August Highlights

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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]

Best of Team Cross for July

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What a month! Summer months seem to go by so fast! It seems that we were gone pretty much every weekend this month. 2 of the weekends were at weddings, we should have gone to 2 more weddings and then celebrating my birthday!

Training continues to go well for Twin Cities Marathon. Weeks 5, 6, 7, 8. Part of my marathon training is raising support for Team World Vision and their great work in developing countries, but specifically in Africa. I continue to share about my experiences sharing the beauty of Africa, sharing a slideshow of pictures from my 8 weeks in Ghana, the importance of education, the hope and joy found in Africa, and talked about Ryan and Sara Hall.

I reviewed a couple of different things this month, including Blaine Moore’s book on Marathon Preperation and Recovery, running on the Midtown Greenway, Pearl Izumi’s Go Running Shorts, and the Hundred Push-Up Challenge. Not really a review but I talked about recent research showing that wearing flip-flops can be bad for your legs and feet. And mentioning research, there is a lot of research being conducted on runners right now, find out if you are eligible.

Last Year was a good month of racing for me. I raced a 5K – which turned out much shorter – and a 10K. I wrote about the infamous and fun to say fartlek run and runners obessions with keeping detailed running logs.

Monthly Mileage: (2008/2007)

Running – 152 miles/143.4 miles

Biking – 85.5 miles/20.4 miles

Swimming – 300 yds

Team Cross Runs and…

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