The final moments before facing the BIG race.

At this time tomorrow I should be recovering from my 13.1 mile journey around the greater Rochester metropolitan area and hopefully will be cheering in Kiel who will be working to completing a 26.2 mile journey.

I am of course referring to the Rochester Half Marathon which takes place tomorrow morning at 7:00 AM. Today will be a day of picking up my packet, touching base with my friends who are running it, planning and packing my bag, some Advil and ice for a troublesome foot and of course... lots of carbs, anxiousness and nerves!

For those of you familiar with my previous posts on the topic, you might recall how I equated running the marathon with climbing Mount Everest and scaled distances of shorter runs to various mountains of proportional size. (see this post) So in terms of running, I summit Mount Rainier (or the Matterhorn for those of you in Switzerland). I don't take this challenge lightly either because my performance tomorrow is going to be a gauge and milestone for my fitness and ability to progress further towards running in the full marathon next fall at this time.

I don't know why I should be nervous because I have been working towards this goal for almost a year. I ran a 12 mile run without any issues 2 weeks ago. I felt completely comfortable doing so. I have put about 400 miles into training and ran various races over the past year! If you look at my training patterns (generated on www.logyourrun.com) they are probably FAR from ideal... as I have had good weeks and bad weeks where my discipline broke down and I missed some runs.
All I know is that about 2 years ago due to some significant stomach problems, my running dropped off to nearly nothing. I could not even eat breakfast without feeling nauseous! It's hard to run when you can't fuel the engine. I have come quite a ways since then... and I have no plans of stopping.

Goals for tomorrow:
Gold: time of 1:45:00 (~8:00 min/mile pace) --> A lofty goal, but I'm setting the bar high.
Silver: time of 1:51:00 (~8:30 min/mile pace)
Bronze: time of 1:58:00 (~9:00 min/mile pace)
Honorable mention: Complete the race without taking significant (>3-5 minutes) walk breaks.

What ever happened to the phrase "In bad taste"?

Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach center in Gainesville, Florida is planning on burning copies of the Quran (the holy book of the religion of Islam) on September 11. How that is any sort of rational outreach to the rest of the world is beyond me. It's going to put our troops overseas in harms way. He should be prevented from doing this, right?

Well, this is where that annoying libertarian voice in me starts to speak.

People are free in this country to burn the United States Flag in protest, don white robes and burn crucifixes, burn copies of the Quran/Bible, etc., write and air satirical cartoons depicting Jesus and or the Prophet Muhammad, make art works depicting the Virgin Mary out of elephant dung... hell, even an Imam can build a Mosque adjacent to Ground Zero!

What's common between these things? For starters, they are all things that have actually happened (or may happen in the case of Terry Jones' plans)... read the list again, surprising to consider all of this as reality!

One may suggest that these actions are all done "In bad taste". Have we forgotten what this means? There are various things that we are free to do, but choose not to do them because they are simply in bad taste. It is these things that usually are not very helpful at fostering outreach and building bridges to begin with. How much outreach and "bridge-building" is Quran burning (or Mosque building at Ground Zero for that matter) really going to foster? However, the concept of "bad taste" does not seem to matter any more.

Since this is [unfortunately] the case, we are put in a position where we have to civilly disagree. By that I mean we can choose not watch the satirical cartoon and view the piece of artwork we find offensive. We can chose no longer to attend the Dove World Outreach center. Civility is key though because if you wish to disagree by physically harming those who offend you (like those over seas might do towards our troops), that too is "in bad taste" and it just continues the cycle over and over.

Happy Labor Day Weekend.

Labor day weekend 2010 was spent ironically doing just that... laboring! For some odd reason I felt the desire to clean, organize and de-clutter much of the apartment. To pile some more work into my weekend, I had the opportunity to play with a new toy that Emily bought me, a canning starter kit.

Yeah, I know, it sounds pretty lame but when Emily and I went to the Rochester Public Market (recently awarded title of "Best Market in the Nation"), I had this crazy idea that I could take some if this fresh inexpensive produce and preserve it for future enjoyment during the winter. I watched my father and grandparents do this... how hard could it be? Surprisingly, not that difficult at all.

Basically: 1) Cut up stuff, 2) Cook stuff, 3) Put stuff in jars, 4) process in boiling water
DONE!

I made a pretty kick-ass salsa, a marinara sauce (which turned out OK) and just today got even more fresh tomatoes and jars from my dad. I'll keep seeing what I can whip up with this new found skill!

It was not all work this weekend though. Just today Emily and I traveled out to Buffalo to celebrate my grandfather's 80th birthday. Yesterday we attended a welcome back party for a friend of ours who recently returned from the Peace Corps. And of course, most importantly, I drafted my fantasy football team on Saturday night. Let the fun begin!

I also fit in an 8 mile run this morning... Rochester Half Marathon in less than a week.

Don't blink... Summer is almost ov... oh, there it goes!

Summer 2010 is now over (albeit, unofficially) and I have done a poor job of blogging about it.

I will take an opportunity right now to touch on my progress with running this summer and where I stand with that. I'd also like to post some pictures of my recent trip to New York City as well.

July 11 was a big milestone for me in that I ran the Utica Boilermaker 15k (9.3 miles) race for the first time. This happened after years of forgetting to register on time, and having one excuse after another. I wish I had done it sooner! Not only was this the first time I ran this particular race but it was also the first race at a distance over 10k (6.2 miles). About 7 miles in, a feeling of "Yes, I am actually doing this!" set in. That was followed up after the finish by an adrenaline fueled feeling of "Yeah... I feel like I could push my body a little further." That's a great thing considering I am running the Rochester Half marathon in 9 days.

With about 13,000 runners, it was also the largest race I have ever participated in. It goes without saying that the post race party was a great time. Got to meet up with several fellow runners from Nazareth and Coach Love.

I ran a time of 1:22:31, which is fine since I really have no particular frame of reference for what to expect as I run races of such a distance. I experienced some tightness of my Achilles tendons during the 7-8th miles but pushed through it. My legs stood up quite well to the race but in the weeks following I did experience some pain in my foot that kept me from doing much running in the week after. With rigorous ankle and foot strengthening exercises, icing, careful cross training and slowly resuming running, I bounced back pretty well.

Stay tuned, the big one... Rochester Half Marathon is looming on the horizon!

Reason # 2371 Why I Love My Fiance.

Yesterday morning, a group of my friends (Brad, Chris and Kiel) met up at our apartment for our weekly long run. Normally when you return from a long run you feel rather famished and lethargic to the point where it may be tough to be motivated enough to put together a decent breakfast.

Upon our return though, we were greeted with a nice spread of bagels, orange juice, cereal, oatmeal, cantaloupe and bananas thanks to Emily who took a trip to Wegman's for us while we were out. We were more than happy to devour everything until we were replenished.

And that's one of the many reasons why I love my fiance. :-)