Race Photos

Last Sunday's race photos finally made it online.

Here is just one. If you follow the link back, this is photo #115. I am in photos 113, 115, and 116.

This is the finish line of my first ever 5-mile race.

I finished 44th out of nearly 800 runners. My official time was 36:23 which is a 7:17 mile pace. I am satisfied with that time. You can check out the other pictures by clicking on this photo.

Since Sunday, I have not run this week. As I already stated in my blog, I was sick half the week. In addition to being sick, I had a lot of pain in my knee on Tuesday. I think that I hurt it getting into bed. I need to run.

Later,

me

cita

Hay una maravillosa cita de Jonas Salk, quien dijo: "Si todos los insectos desaparecieran de la tierra, en 50 años habría desaparecido toda forma de vida sobre la tierra…. Si todos los seres humanos desaparecieran de la tierra, en 50 años todas las demás formas de vida podrían florecer."

Está equivocado. Pienso que las especies que cultivamos no florecerían; las hierbas crecerían y los ganados sufrirían – pero todo lo demás florecería.

Race Journal

I ran my first 5-mile race today. Also, the photos from the 2^nd 5K finally got posted today. So, in this post, I am going to talk about today's race and I will include photos from two weeks ago.

I figure that I will start with the oldest stuff first.

Here are the official results from the two 5K races that I competed in on July 12 and July 26. The card number is either my overall place or a close approximation.

GENDER

NAME

AGE GROUP

AGE

CARD NUMBER

TIME

AGE GROUP PLACE

5K TIME

5K PACE

M

Maunderer

30 - 34

30

44

00:21:53

9

0:21:53

0:07:03

M

Maunderer

31 - 34

30

35

0:21:08

13

0:21:08

0:06:48

And here are the photos from the second 5K:

1. This is me at the start. Click on the photo for a larger version. I am near the center of this photo.
   

   
   

2. This is me at the end. I am the one with no shirt on. Personally, I think this photo flatters me.
   

   
   

3. Sorry about the gratuitous exhibitionism here. I know that I might be the only one who can tell by looking but I have lost a lot of mass in my back, arms, and chest. That is what running does. Your body decides it doesn't want to carry extra weight during this sort of long distance activity and so it starts working on shedding non-running muscle. It will be hard to prevent this type of atrophy altogether, but in the fall I will be in a weight-lifting class twice a week and running pretty much all the other days.
   

   
   

   
   

Okay – TODAY'S RACE: It was my first 5-mile race of all time. I (unofficially) finished in 36:22 which is 7:16/mile. I am happy with that time. I felt good. I ran 6:39 in my first mile but I ran a very conservative race. I just didn't know what to expect. By the fifth mile, I had worked all my kinks out and my stomach and lungs were fine (which might mean that I need to speed things up a bit) and I was able to speed up my pace a bit. I think that my last mile was probably my second best mile this morning. That is fine – it means that I can speed up.

Honestly, it wasn't really that easy but I think that it helped a lot to do those to longer runs last week. I just need more experience to get the leg strength and mental strength that I need to speed up some more.

I will put today's photos up as soon as they are available online.

me

Running; Journal

Well, I ran with my friend Steven yesterday. I ran four miles. I felt good. I ran an easy mile to warm up and then I stretched. I then ran a mile. I wanted to run 6:30 or under. Becky and Gabe went to the track with me so I asked Becky to time my laps. I said that I wanted to aim at a 90 sec lap time (6:00/mile). I ran laps 1, 2, and 4 under 90 sec and I ran lap 3 in 92 sec. Becky was only marking lap time and didn't look at the total time but it was less than 6-minutes. I would say that it was about 5:45. I felt good. It felt easy to run that pace. I then jogged two miles at a comfortable pace. I am not planning on running today. I have a 7:00 AM 5-mile race tomorrow. I feel a lot better about it after yesterday's run than I did earlier in the week. During most of the week I have not felt good about tomorrow's race. I have felt tired, tight and heavy. I felt a lot looser yesterday though and I think that resting today is going to be good for tomorrow. I feel good right now. I don't know what to expect for tomorrow. I have never run a 5-mile race. People sometimes ask me if I run marathons and I always answer no but in my mind I think 'I have never competed in anything longer than 5 kilometers'. I don't totally know how to prepare for a marathon but what I am seeing on-line is encouraging. I am doing a lot right. I would run today but I feel like resting for tomorrow's race. Hmm. This is not much of a journal entry.

On a completely different note, I have spent a lot of time today reading about George Sodini. He killed four people in an LA Fitness in Pennsylvania on Tuesday of this week. He walked in with four loaded guns in his gym bag and then shot up an aerobics class before killing himself. He had a blog that documented his deranged thinking as he planned to kill. I did not read the whole thing. I browsed it and read other people's comments on several websites that dedicate a lot more space to this incident than I am dedicating here. It is pretty sick stuff – sort of terrifying really. The whole story sort of humbles me, makes me want to take better care of people, show more decency. But it is all really scary to think that this guy, or somebody like him, could be anywhere.

I will share just one of his particularly bothersome entries:

January 6, 2009:
I can do this. Leaving work today, I felt like a zombie - just going thru the motions. Get on the bus, get the car, drive home.....My mind is screwed up anymore, I can't concentrate at work or think at all.
This log is not detailed. It is only for confidence to do this. The future holds even less than what I have today.
It is 6:40pm, about hour and a half to go. God have mercy. I wish life could be better for all and the crazy world can somehow run smoother. I wish I had answers. Bye.

It is 8:45PM: I chickened out! Shit! I brought the loaded guns, everything. Hell!

It scares me that he did what he did, period. But it also scares me that seven months earlier he walked into the gym with a bag of loaded guns and the intention to unload them into people. How many other times did he pack that gym bag with guns? How many other people are there like this guy, walking around with a bag of weapons and hearts filled with hatred? Wow. This is disturbing.

I feel for the people killed and otherwise affected by this man.

me

Running Journal

This morning I ran about 5K – 12.5 laps at the track. I felt slow and it seemed difficult to run. I mean, I could have gone out and jogged but actually running was a big challenge. I ran all the way without a break and I put a lot of effort into it, but that is the problem – it took a lot of effort. I can't be feeling this way on Sunday when I have to race and expect to go out and run faster than an 8-minute mile average.

I don't even know why I care sometimes. Today was difficult work.

me

Oh My God!

Okay, this is a little more religious than most of my posts, but the whole reason that I am sharing it (i.e. copying and pasting it) is because it made me laugh. Whatever your religious philosophy, I think that you can appreciate this:

The next time you feel like GOD can't use you, just remember...
Noah was a drunk
Abraham was too old
Isaac was a daydreamer
Jacob was a liar
Leah was ugly
Joseph was abused
Moses had a stuttering problem
Gideon was afraid
Samson had long hair and was a womanizer,
Rahab was a prostitute,
Jeremiah and Timothy were too young,
David had an affair and was a murderer,
Elijah was suicidal,
Isaiah preached naked,
Jonah ran from God,
Naomi was a widow,
Job went bankrupt,
John the Baptist ate bugs,
Peter denied Christ,
The Disciples fell asleep while praying,
Martha worried about everything,
The Samaritan woman was divorced, more than once
Zaccheus was too small,
Paul was too religious,
Timothy had an ulcer...
AND Lazarus was dead!

And, He even made a donkey talk!

No more excuses now.

God can use you to your full potential.

me

Running Journal

~5.8 miles; ~50 min; à8:36/mile

Well, I don't know what to say. It was a slower overall pace. I felt slow during the majority of the run. On the up side, I was able to run the whole distance. I think that the most difficult spot was at about mile 3, more or less. I went out with no water but Becky dropped me off and then came back out with some water and waited for me at about the 3-mile point. I stopped for a few minutes to drink it and pour it on myself. Of course, I am not subtracting that time from the overall run time but if I did the pace could be closer to 8 min/mile. I don't know, I don't think that the pace really matters today. Next Sunday, when I have a race – then it will matter. Today, my main reason for running was just to go over 5 miles so that I could get a better feel for the distance I will be running next week.

A few observations from this evening's run:

I felt good for the last mile. I think that it was probably my fastest mile as well.

My feet felt the heaviest at about the 5-mile mark. I was keenly aware of this fact and I consciously worked on picking my knees up and keeping my arms involved. I was running in a basically flat area but approaching the 5-mile mark of today's run there is a slight rise as the road comes up to a railroad crossing. I don't think that that alone was why my feet were so heavy feeling but it could be part of it.

I saw a big brown hawk on a light post in the first mile. It flew off when I went past.

At about mile 4 a sparrow or some other small common bird flew along next to me for about 4 or 5 seconds. I enjoyed the company.

There are a lot of these weeds with a little yellow flower with a red center. I was happy to see them.

Near mile 3, I saw what looked like a very old piece of a dead armadillo. I don't have any idea how long it has actually been there. I was a little surprised by the lack of wild life other than birds. I would like to have seen a live armadillo. Then my run might have taken much longer.

I think that I need new shoes soon. It will have to wait until I can afford them but everywhere I read suggests that running shoes are only really good for 400 to 500 miles. I got the pair that I have now around Christmas or my birthday last year and I ran a few times a week almost every week since then.

I developed some pretty big blisters on my left foot on Friday's run. Yeah, I was really noticing them this evening. I drained them so that they would dry out but it takes a couple of runs for the skin to thicken up and make calluses (which is what I want here). Somebody, say your prayers to the callus gods to get to work so that this running stuff starts to feel better.

Hmm, what else? Not much. Like I said earlier – I felt really good in the last mile. I ended strong. It bothers me a little that my pace doesn't seem very consistent on a run like tonight's but I think that in a race (next week) I will be able to work off the runners around me a lot more. I am not worried at all about going out too slow next week. I tend to start too fast in races and it takes some concentration for me to not sprint out with the much faster runners. I was a middle distance runner (400 & 800m) in high school and that combined with the energy of standing at a starting line with 400+ other runners usually means about a 6:00 to a 6:30 first mile for me. I am okay with that, actually. I just hope that my pace will level out (without slowing significantly) as I get more used to running further and more often.

Anyway, the weather was nice. It was not windy. It was about 85 degrees when I left. Tomorrow, I think that I will do a shorter work out at the track and try to keep my mile time under 7 minutes each mile. It is supposed to be about 92 and sunny tomorrow. I like running in the sun. It just feels good to me. I would rather deal with the heat than the cold any day.

math that made me sick

Last Sunday I competed in a 5K race that I finished in approximately 21 minutes. I had a average 6:48 mile time. Today, I did the math to find out the average mile time to finish a marathon in 3hr. The pace - 6:51/mile. I don't know why, but I felt sick as soon as I figured that out. Can I do it? Maybe. I think so. But I need to take my training much more seriously. Well... well.... Hmm. I think that I will look up a training schedule and get busy.
The qualifying time for Boston is 3hr 10min for my age/gender group. Still, that means that I pretty much have to average 7 min/mile for the whole thing. I can't do it now but I can get there.
me

Running Journal

Thus begins my no-race-weekend running. I just got back from a 7-mile run. I had Becky drive me into the country and drop me off so that I could do it without running circles at the track. Altogether, it took me almost exactly an hour (that is an 8:34 pace). I have to say, in some ways it was much harder than I expected. I couldn't run the whole way. I went to the entrance to the neighborhood (.5 miles from the house) before I did any significant walking though. I was at the neighborhood entrance in 50 minutes (which puts my average pace at 7:41 for the first 6.5 miles). Yes, it took me ten minutes to go the last ½ mile. It was pretty difficult. In spite of the walking later on, I think that the hardest part came at about mile 4. I am used to running 3 – 3.5 miles at the track, so getting over that was a bit of a challenge. I don't know if it was harder mentally or physically. I don't want to over analyze – I mean, it was only 1 hour of my life – but mentally I was willing to go the whole way. At about the halfway point, my arms were feeling somewhat heavy – a feeling that didn't really go away completely during the second half of the run. Near the end, however, it was heaviness in my legs that really made me have to slow down. My lungs and stomach felt good the whole way – they only really seem to riot when I run more for speed. I guess that that is the most encouraging thing of all – I mean, endurance has always seemed as much a question of the lungs and abs for me as for any other body part. I feel good now. I sweated a TON.

My next race is a 5-mile race on August 9. I am hoping to be in okay shape for that race. I want to do at least one more longer run before then so that my arms and legs know what 5+ miles feels like. I am not too worried – I mean, there is no question that I will finish the race, and with a decent time by most standards. But my standards are not most standards. Honestly, I really look at this as me still getting in shape. I think that when I am stronger and more used to running longer distances, I will be able to bring my 5K time down to less than 20 min. That doesn't really feel like a very ambitious goal for me, it only requires trimming about a minute, but I have to start somewhere.

The next race after the 9^th is August 23. It is another 5-miler. It is the only one of the Road Race Series here that I plan on missing. Because of missing it, I won't get the "coveted Road Warrior title". I will be out of the country during that race. After that, the September races are 10K each and in October the races stretch to 10 miles each. Finally, there are two half marathons in November. If I had to run those today I wouldn't be able to do it, but I feel pretty good about getting there by November. Still, woooh. It won't be easy.

Anyway, today was the first long-run weekend. I know that 7 miles doesn't seem like much to a lot of people, but it was a long run for me.

Well, now I REALLY have to run – dinner's ready.

me

A Perfect Metaphor

This is what a 4 1/2 week summer course is :


I love that at 1:33 the door that goes by actually shut on somebody.

me

Aggressive Grass

That is what we are going to be growing in the garden from now on. When I arrived back home after my trip to New York, I found the garden had been basically neglected but because I had put in rows the weeds that had taken over couldn't be mown either. It was a hot mess. Well, I have since re-tilled a few times and the area is now basically plant free. I tilled this morning and raked the area somewhat smooth and then rolled the whole are using a lawn roller that I rented from the Home Depot. It was really smooth and really compacted so after raking and rolling I raked again to scarify the area before spreading some Bermuda grass seed. The packaging describes this grass as an "aggressive grass" that is extremely heat resistant. I am sort of afraid. And for good reason. While tilling this morning, I reached down to pull a tall weed out of the ground next to the fence where the tiller wouldn't go. This weed is some sort of broad leafed grass that grows to be at least three feet tall and in some areas it is as tall as six feet. I think that I have seen grass like this all over the country - it is quite common. Well, this piece wasn't that tall, but it was well rooted. I grabbed and pulled and it didn't uproot at all. Instead part of the stem broke and the other part peeled sharply off the broken piece causing a deep cut across pinky and ring fingers on my right hand. I am sort of worried about the pinky finger. It was cut really deep but the cut was so sharp that it barely bled at all. I went in and wrapped it tightly in a band aid to keep it closed but my hand was shaking as if I was very cold when I went back out to work. Hours later, I changed band aids and it still gushed with blood when I took the old one off. I have been more careful about how I have changed band aids since then.
If the new grass is more aggressive than all that, I am really afraid.

Running Journal

Here are two photos that I copied from the first race of the Summer Road Race Series that I participated in on the 12th. I finished 44th overall. I was 9th in my age group. My time was 21:53. I would like to improve but I am happy with that time. I think that I will probably get slower before I get faster.

This is me at the start.

And this is me at the finish. There is another race this Sunday. Wish me luck. My legs have been bothering me this week. I think that I will be fine for the race but I am planning on slowing my first mile down a bit. I really died off in the last mile of the race that these photos are from (in spite of the fact that I was smiling for the camera in the second one) and I am hoping to have a little more consistent pace over the course of the entire race. I am not sure how well I will stick to that plan, but I will post updates afterward to let you all know.

me

Adivinanzas

1. ¿Qué hace un pato con una pata en un corral?
   
2. ¿Cuál fue el último animal que hizo Dios?
   
3. ¿Cuántas estrellas hay en el cielo?
   
4. ¿Cuál es la fruta más paciente?
   
5. ¿Qué hace una manguera en la calle?
   
6. Cuándo pelo choca con pelo, el pelado se queda adentro - ¿Qué es?
   
7. ¿Cuál es el animal que menos come?
   
8. ¿Qué dijo el mar al pez?
   

Right under our nose

Before 6am this morning:
I was up looking at lesson material for today's lesson. I suggested to Becky that she get up and do some work in the yard that she is planning on getting done today. It is a lot cooler out this time of day and it is supposed to rain today so I figured it was a good time to start. Gabe and Rosco both followed her out when she went out. Rosco peed in the grass and Gabe dropped his drawers and peed right off the edge of the porch.
I took him to the zoo a couple of days ago and he did something very similar. He was at the playground and I got a text message that made my phone beep. I looked down and when I looked back up he was standing in the middle of the playground hosing everything in sight.
I jumped up and grabbed him as other parents laughed at what he was doing. I guess it is funnier when it is somebody else's kid.

Goal tending

I ran the first of the Memphis Runners Track Club 2009 Road Race Series earlier this month on the 12th. I have another race to compete in on the 26th. This was my New Year's Resolution. I think that I am still on track with it, but I have a lot of work to do.
Tonight, I am making another goal - I am going to see if I can stay off of FaceBook for a week. Why is it that this seems like the more challenging resolution here? I can do it, right? It should be no problem, right?
Uff. Why am I blogging about being on FB too much? Why do I just replace one big time leech with another?
Pray for me.
haha
Thanks.

me