I ran 10 miles today and was reminded of a very serious condition that I've become afflicted with. Please take time to watch the video and take the steps necessary to avoid this terrible affliction.
Saturday, September 22, 2012
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Good Running Weekend
One of the things I enjoy about running is seeing real progress. When I first started running again late last year and early this year, I was running anywhere from 11:30 - 12:30 per mile.
My half marathon training program has 3 running days per week. Saturdays are my "long run days". This past Saturday my long run was 8 miles. I'm usually pretty sore after a long run, but this past Saturday I actually finished the run fairly invigorated. I made my typical walk down to the store and bought my post run chocolate milk and a bag of ice for my ice bath. I went home and soaked in the ice water for about 25 minutes. On Sunday morning, a day which is usually a non-running day, I ran the Scioto Miles 5K run at Easton Shopping Center. I had my best run of the season, finishing in just over 30 minutes or 9:44/mile. My 8 mile run the day before was run at faster than 11:00/mile.
So, I think it's safe to say now that one of my goals for the Columbus Half Marathon in October is to run the entire half marathon without any walking breaks. This would be the furthest I have ever run without a walk break ever in my life.
My second goal would be to beat my time from my last half-marathon.
My "ultimate goal" for the Columbus Marathon would be to run a personal best. That would mean running about 10:36/mile to finish in 2:19 or better. That should be a tougher goal for me to meet this time.
Once that day is over I will jump in to training for the Myrtle Beach Marathon, which is in February. I am scheduled to run the Las Vegas Half Marathon in December, and will be using that as my long run in my marathon training for that week.
It would be nice to be able to run the entire marathon with no walking breaks, but considering I still have not done that for a half marathon yet, that may be a little bit too tough. But for now I'll focus on my half marathon. I'll start setting goals for the marathon when it gets closer to that day.
My half marathon training program has 3 running days per week. Saturdays are my "long run days". This past Saturday my long run was 8 miles. I'm usually pretty sore after a long run, but this past Saturday I actually finished the run fairly invigorated. I made my typical walk down to the store and bought my post run chocolate milk and a bag of ice for my ice bath. I went home and soaked in the ice water for about 25 minutes. On Sunday morning, a day which is usually a non-running day, I ran the Scioto Miles 5K run at Easton Shopping Center. I had my best run of the season, finishing in just over 30 minutes or 9:44/mile. My 8 mile run the day before was run at faster than 11:00/mile.
So, I think it's safe to say now that one of my goals for the Columbus Half Marathon in October is to run the entire half marathon without any walking breaks. This would be the furthest I have ever run without a walk break ever in my life.
My second goal would be to beat my time from my last half-marathon.
My "ultimate goal" for the Columbus Marathon would be to run a personal best. That would mean running about 10:36/mile to finish in 2:19 or better. That should be a tougher goal for me to meet this time.
Once that day is over I will jump in to training for the Myrtle Beach Marathon, which is in February. I am scheduled to run the Las Vegas Half Marathon in December, and will be using that as my long run in my marathon training for that week.
It would be nice to be able to run the entire marathon with no walking breaks, but considering I still have not done that for a half marathon yet, that may be a little bit too tough. But for now I'll focus on my half marathon. I'll start setting goals for the marathon when it gets closer to that day.
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
What Were You Doing?
Yesterday, as we remembered the events of 9/11, I heard a lot of talk about where people were and how they heard the news of the attacks on that day. It made me think, not only of where I was at and what I was doing that day, but where I was and what I was doing when I learned of other significant events.
On 9/11 I was at my apartment. I was preparing to buy my house at the time and was scheduled to do a final walk through inspection that morning. I got a call from my dad saying, "Did you see?" I asked "See what?" and he told me to turn on the news. When I asked which station, my dad told me that it didn't matter. By that point both the north and south towers of the World Trade Center had been hit. I talked to my dad while we both watched events unfolding on TV. I then called my older brother and asked him if he had seen the news. He had not yet heard of the events. As we watched and talked about the events the news began reporting a plane had crashed in to the Pentagon. Before leaving to meet my realtor I watched as the first tower collapsed. I drove out to the house I was preparing to buy and started thinking about how all of these events were affecting the emergency dispatchers and how many calls they must be receiving. I also started wondering if I would need to go in to work. Dublin, OH was pretty far away from New York or Washington DC, but these were unprecedented events that would surely have an impact everywhere. Sure enough, when I got home from my walk through, there was a message for me to call work. When I called, my supervisor told me to get to work. The emergency operations center had been opened. During that day we got some calls of fights at gas stations, where people were waiting in long lines to fill up their tanks, reports of vandalism to some businesses that people perceived as being owned by people of Arabic decent, and lots of calls of "suspicious people".
That was my 9/11 experience. But like I mentioned earlier, yesterday brought to mind some other events that have occurred in my lifetime and what I was doing when they happened. I can remember the Watergate Hearings on television, though I had no interest in them at 7 & 8 years old. I remember the "Handshake in Space" when rockets from the United States and the Soviet Union docked in space for the first time. I remember the "Miracle on Ice", the only hockey game I have ever watched, as the young US team beat an "unbeatable" Soviet team to advance to the Gold Medal round of the 1980 Winter Olympics.
But my first "what was I doing" moment, was when I heard about Ronald Reagan being shot by John Hinkley. I had stayed home sick from school that day and got a call from my mom telling me to turn on the news. I didn't know it, but earlier they had said that the President had not been hit in the assassination attempt. By the time I had turned on the television the President had been rushed to the hospital. I remember thinking that no President who was elected in a year ending in "0" since 1840 had left office alive, and I thought this was going to be a continuation of that "Indian curse". Of course it was not.
The next event that I thought about was the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion. I was in the Army at the time, stationed at the Defense Language Institute - Foreign Language Center in Monterey, CA. I was learning German there when one of the instructors walked in to the room and told my instructor, in German, "Das Space Shuttle ist explodiert". I think I would have understood what he was saying even without the seven months of German language training I had up to that point, but three of us in the class all confirmed with each other that we were correctly translating what we had heard. During our next break we went to a classroom with a television set and watched replays of what had happened. The first time I saw it, I jumped when the explosion occurred. We didn't stop classes that day, but I did go out and buy the San Francisco and Monterey Newspapers that evening.
The next event was when the President Reagan ordered the bombing of targets in Libya in retaliation for the bombing of the Berlin Disco that targeted US Soldiers stationed in Germany. I was stationed in Germany then, and first heard of the bombing on a German radio station. Again, first hearing the news in German, I was sure that I had misinterpreted what had been said. I tuned in to the Armed Forces Network, and sure enough, they confirmed it. The United States had bombed Libya. During morning formation we found out that our commander was at a meeting in Frankfurt and we'd be briefed when he returned. Later that afternoon we found that some restrictions were put in to place in order to protect US Soldiers from retaliatory strikes. A curfew was put in to effect and no US Soldier or US dependent of a soldier was to be out after midnight unless they were on duty or on their way to or from a duty assignment. For those who lived on a base they had to be on base by midnight. For those who lived in off post housing, they had to be in their homes. We were also not allowed to have any "organized activity" outside of a secured area. Now, I was stationed at a remote missile site in Germany, so we didn't have an Army Post. We had the missile site, and we had a barracks, that was it. Typically, when moving as a unit from the barracks to the site, we would march up the road. When this happened, we would have formation by the barracks, which was fenced in and secured, then we'd be dismissed to walk on our own to the missile site. Once we got on site, we'd then re-form and go on with work or PT or whatever was on the agenda for that day. Our morning runs were typically in formation running through the small town of Hardheim, but during the restrictions this would have constituted an organized formation outside of a secured area, so our runs got much shorter, as the missile site wasn't that big.
I'm sure that the more I think about it, other events will pop in to mind, but these are the events I remember. The funny part is that there are some people I work with now who won't remember any of these events. What's even funnier (or sadder depending on your perspective) is that the reason many of my co-workers weren't even born when these events took place.
On 9/11 I was at my apartment. I was preparing to buy my house at the time and was scheduled to do a final walk through inspection that morning. I got a call from my dad saying, "Did you see?" I asked "See what?" and he told me to turn on the news. When I asked which station, my dad told me that it didn't matter. By that point both the north and south towers of the World Trade Center had been hit. I talked to my dad while we both watched events unfolding on TV. I then called my older brother and asked him if he had seen the news. He had not yet heard of the events. As we watched and talked about the events the news began reporting a plane had crashed in to the Pentagon. Before leaving to meet my realtor I watched as the first tower collapsed. I drove out to the house I was preparing to buy and started thinking about how all of these events were affecting the emergency dispatchers and how many calls they must be receiving. I also started wondering if I would need to go in to work. Dublin, OH was pretty far away from New York or Washington DC, but these were unprecedented events that would surely have an impact everywhere. Sure enough, when I got home from my walk through, there was a message for me to call work. When I called, my supervisor told me to get to work. The emergency operations center had been opened. During that day we got some calls of fights at gas stations, where people were waiting in long lines to fill up their tanks, reports of vandalism to some businesses that people perceived as being owned by people of Arabic decent, and lots of calls of "suspicious people".
That was my 9/11 experience. But like I mentioned earlier, yesterday brought to mind some other events that have occurred in my lifetime and what I was doing when they happened. I can remember the Watergate Hearings on television, though I had no interest in them at 7 & 8 years old. I remember the "Handshake in Space" when rockets from the United States and the Soviet Union docked in space for the first time. I remember the "Miracle on Ice", the only hockey game I have ever watched, as the young US team beat an "unbeatable" Soviet team to advance to the Gold Medal round of the 1980 Winter Olympics.
But my first "what was I doing" moment, was when I heard about Ronald Reagan being shot by John Hinkley. I had stayed home sick from school that day and got a call from my mom telling me to turn on the news. I didn't know it, but earlier they had said that the President had not been hit in the assassination attempt. By the time I had turned on the television the President had been rushed to the hospital. I remember thinking that no President who was elected in a year ending in "0" since 1840 had left office alive, and I thought this was going to be a continuation of that "Indian curse". Of course it was not.
The next event that I thought about was the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion. I was in the Army at the time, stationed at the Defense Language Institute - Foreign Language Center in Monterey, CA. I was learning German there when one of the instructors walked in to the room and told my instructor, in German, "Das Space Shuttle ist explodiert". I think I would have understood what he was saying even without the seven months of German language training I had up to that point, but three of us in the class all confirmed with each other that we were correctly translating what we had heard. During our next break we went to a classroom with a television set and watched replays of what had happened. The first time I saw it, I jumped when the explosion occurred. We didn't stop classes that day, but I did go out and buy the San Francisco and Monterey Newspapers that evening.
The next event was when the President Reagan ordered the bombing of targets in Libya in retaliation for the bombing of the Berlin Disco that targeted US Soldiers stationed in Germany. I was stationed in Germany then, and first heard of the bombing on a German radio station. Again, first hearing the news in German, I was sure that I had misinterpreted what had been said. I tuned in to the Armed Forces Network, and sure enough, they confirmed it. The United States had bombed Libya. During morning formation we found out that our commander was at a meeting in Frankfurt and we'd be briefed when he returned. Later that afternoon we found that some restrictions were put in to place in order to protect US Soldiers from retaliatory strikes. A curfew was put in to effect and no US Soldier or US dependent of a soldier was to be out after midnight unless they were on duty or on their way to or from a duty assignment. For those who lived on a base they had to be on base by midnight. For those who lived in off post housing, they had to be in their homes. We were also not allowed to have any "organized activity" outside of a secured area. Now, I was stationed at a remote missile site in Germany, so we didn't have an Army Post. We had the missile site, and we had a barracks, that was it. Typically, when moving as a unit from the barracks to the site, we would march up the road. When this happened, we would have formation by the barracks, which was fenced in and secured, then we'd be dismissed to walk on our own to the missile site. Once we got on site, we'd then re-form and go on with work or PT or whatever was on the agenda for that day. Our morning runs were typically in formation running through the small town of Hardheim, but during the restrictions this would have constituted an organized formation outside of a secured area, so our runs got much shorter, as the missile site wasn't that big.
I'm sure that the more I think about it, other events will pop in to mind, but these are the events I remember. The funny part is that there are some people I work with now who won't remember any of these events. What's even funnier (or sadder depending on your perspective) is that the reason many of my co-workers weren't even born when these events took place.
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