Holy Smokes- Blazin' in Boston

2:03:02

Wow.

That's the finishing time for this year's Boston Marathon by Kenyan Geoffrey Mutai.

Here's the kicker- it's 57 seconds faster than any marathon EVER, and it's not being considered a record by international racing bodies because of a "strong tailwind."

My take- the guy got screwed. I firmly believe in the expression "don't hate the player, hate the game." It's not his fault he had a tailwind. He got a once-a-century opportunity to kick some major ass in the premiere competition of his profession, and his rightful crown is being withheld due to Mother Nature. That's the same Mother Nature everyone else had to deal with today. Don't kill this guy's buzz just because the conditions were right for an epic day. Sounds to me like an epic fail.

My hat's off to you, Geoffrey Mutai. You ran it. You earned it. You're the best. Enjoy it.

B's Peeves....Jelly Donut Day Edition

I know this is supposed to be a blog about running, but it's my only outlet, so I'm gonna use it to get something off my chest. Here's what's Peeve-ing me today....

Since most of the people who read this blog are my friends and family any way, you all know I lived in Chicago for 9 years and loved every minute of it. That said, I could never figure out what all the fuss was about every year on Fat Tuesday when offices across Chicagoland would explode with Jelly Donuts. Inevitably, there would be a (usually very large) admin assistant with a last name of Kowalski, Wisniewski, or Walczak who would spend the entire day trying to convince me that because they came from a "Polish bakery," they should be called "Paczki," and not just "Jelly Donuts." Baloney.

Look, I'm all for having cultural traditions that center around food. Thanksgiving is one of my favorite days of the year. A large part of why I run is so that I can participate in these traditions without looking like a Wisniewski by the end of the season. But if you're going to have jelly donuts on Fat Tuesday every year before you make your minor Lenten Sacrifice, then let's just drop the charade and call them what they are.

I figured that a move to West Michigan [where "if you ain't Dutch, you ain't right,"] would reduce the annual dependence on fried dough balls, but alas, they're all over the office today as well!

So to get to the bottom of this, I consulted The Omnicient Narrator- Google. In this case, Google Images specifically. I first googled "Jelly Donut," and got this image in return:

Next, I googled "Pazcki," and got this image in return:

Notice a similarity? Yup, they're exactly the friggin' same! So from here on out, it's not Fat Tuesday, it's not Mardi Gras, and it's not Paczki Day. It's Jelly Donut Day. End of sermon. Homer Simpson would be proud.

The Few. The Proud.

News out of Chicago today- the 2011 Chicago Marathon has sold out in a record 31 days! Amazing to think that there are 45000 nut-jobs like me who know by February that they'll want to run 26.2 miles 7 months later. This makes me part of the Few - 45,000 is relatively few compared to, say, the population of China, and the Proud - if by "proud," you mean "nut-jobs."



No major news on the local front, I just thought it was amazing that the race is already closed. You'll see in my first (maybe second) post that I said it normally sells out by early April. It's 3/3, and the only way to get in now is to sign up with a charity or find someone on Craigslist looking to profit from a distance running nut-job.

On what it means to be "in training..."

I left my last post explaining that I was doing plenty of running, but I hadn't started "Training." What's the difference? Glad you asked....

Running is an admirable pursuit. People run in all sorts of ways for all sorts of reasons, but when you boil it down, running is a series of workouts. There's no specific purpose in working out, save for fitness maintenance, weight loss, etc. It's easy to get in a workout on any given day, to work out the morning after getting liquored up the night before, etc.

Training is a mindset. Training is a process by which a person runs with a regular frequency and intensity with a specific goal. Our local YMCA runs a "Couch to 5k" training program which helps people take their first steps toward finishing a 5k fun run. That training program is no different from a marathon program- it provides a collection of runs, rests, cross training, nutrition, sleep, and work/life/exercise balance in order to help its participants achieve a goal, whether it's a Personal Record (PR), winning a race, or simply crossing a finish line. And, yes, that was a run-on sentence. It's my blog, I can run-on all I want.

See the difference? When I'm running, I'll gladly go out and get blitzed on Friday night because I can go to the gym on Sunday instead of Saturday. When I'm training, I have a Friday dinner of lean protein and simple carbs (menus are another post), go to bed at 10pm, and hit the trail around 7am after a specific breakfast. In training, it's important to get those runs done on Saturday so I can cross train on Sunday.

So now I'm "in training" for the Riverbank Run. I've got 10.5 weeks until race day, so I'll run 4 times per week at set distances in order to be prepared but not over-trained on 5/14/11. I'll save the actual Hal Higdon training program introduction for another post, but I'm now basically on the T,W,R,Sa schedule with rest on Friday, cross training on Sunday, and strength training on Monday. Lots of updates coming as I progress...

On "Winning:" If I hurry up...I'll be late.

The Fifth Third RiverBank Run 25k here in Grand Rapids is on May 14th, 2011, and I plan to win it. Well, at least I plan to "win" it. I was talking to a friend on the phone one day after a half marathon. He asked me what I had been doing that morning, and the conversation went something like this:

Pete: Hey. What are you up to?
Me: I just finished XYZ Half Marathon.
Pete (unimpressed): Cool. Did you win?
Me: Not exactly.
Pete (disappointed): Oh. Well, let me know when you win one.

And on the conversation went.

Now, as the great blues man Howlin' Wolf once sang, "I was built for comfort, baby. I ain't built for speed." I'm not ever going to win a race in my life. I'll always be just a number in the middle of a pack. But if I can train for a race properly and finish a race properly, then I will have acheived my goal. And when you achieve a goal, doesn't it feel like you've won something? When I crossed the finish line in Chicago in 2009 in 4:29:45, I felt like I had just won the whole dang thing. That's why I'm doing it again, and that's why I'm blogging about it. I want to win it again, and I want to share it with my friends and family in a way I didn't understand 2 years ago.

So the RiverBank Run is GR's biggest race of the year, and I'd like to finish in a time that is close to last year's time of 2:19:21 (or so). That would be a "win." In order to train for races, I usually use Hal Higdon's training plans (another post), which say that you need 12 weeks to properly train for a half marathon. As of tomorrow, I'll have 11 weeks left for the race, and the 25k is a bit longer than a half marathon (15.5miles) anyway, so I probably should have tacked on an extra week.

Long/short- I'm behind on the plan. I'm not necessarily behind on my running, but I'm behind on my training. Big difference, which I'll save for yet another post. Either way:

If I hurry up...I'll be late.

Two Eighteen...

...Ugh.

When I got back into the "swing" of things around the end of January, I finally got up the nerve to get on the scale. I knew I had gained some weight through the holidays as many people do, but I wan't really sure how much. The result? 218. Yup, I weighed in at a porky 218 and wasn't happy about it. That being said, I have to admit it wasn't a surprise after how much I'd ignored my running in January.

So 218 is my kickoff weight, and I'm bound and determined to make that my "ceiling" for quite some time. I'm glad to report that after yesterday's run, I had pulled back to 214.5. Still not where I should be, but moving in the right direction.

Believe me, this is NOT a weight loss blog. I'm just marking my starting point, and I'll have semi-regular updates as they relate to my level of fitness and preparation for the marathon later in the year. In 2009 when I ran my first marathon, I was at about 210. Last winter (2010) at this time, I was actually at the lowest I'd ever been as an adult at about 206. I had plenty of time to work out (read: unemployed) and didn't eat out much (read: unemployed).

I'm hoping to be a bit below 210 when this fall arrives. Hopefully carrying around a few pounds less will allow me to run a bit faster and beat my previous time. That's the goal.

In the meantime, I'll continue to focus on eating better and continuing my workouts. When you boil it all down, the science works like this:

IF YOU BURN MORE THAN YOU TAKE IN, YOU WILL LOSE WEIGHT.

I don't buy the carb thing, the unprocessed thing, the raw thing, the organic thing, or any other "thing" selling books these days.

7 miles (in 60 minutes!) yesterday and rest today. Running Monday, Tuesday, and Saturday this coming week. Not a lot, but it's a busy week. 'Till then, keep on running!

Blizzard Augustus

I never knew that a "blizzard" can only be defined as such if there are certain amounts of snow and wind that result in certain levels of visibility over a sustained period of time. I think we should start naming blizzards like we do hurricanes. You know, we all remember Hurricane Andrew, Hurricane Katrina, or Hurricane Ike, right? Every season starts with the beginning of the alphabet, and we alternate between culturally diverse names for men and women. I'm going to take some artistic license here and call what happened yesterday Blizzard Augustus.

Well, Blizzard Augustus kept me from the gym (and work), but it didn't keep me from getting a good workout.

Here's a cool shot AET took in the early afternoon after the storm had cleared:

At first, our house looked like this:

Then I had to shovel my wife's side of the driveway to get her to the hospital for morning rounds. Here's a shot of the fruits of my labor:

The snow day meant I got to spend the whole day with this guy:

And this girl:

So thanks Blizzard Augustus, for getting me a "cross-training" workout, and for keeping me holed up with my boy, my pup, a fire, and a bunch of kids sledding in the back yard. Can't wait for your sister Beatrice!