Different Tiers of Happiness

I'm not sure I'll have time between now and when I leave so I thought I better write these down and make them known so I hold myself accountable for this upcoming little jaunt I have this weekend. These times might not mean much to you, but pay attention and read along and you might figure out why they mean more to me. For my marathon on Saturday, my different levels of happiness will depend on the time I get. In order from slowest to fastest they are:

4:14 or better (happy): this was my time in Fargo this past May. It would be nice to be able to improve upon this time after a full spring, summer and fall of training and racing.
4:08 or better (happier): this is my current PR set exactly 10 years ago as of this Saturday, on 11/01/98 on my 30th bday.
3:59:59 or better (even happier): if I'm going to beat 4:08 I might as well try to get under 4 hours, right?
3:58 or better (happiest): yes, Wade, you and your PR are still a small reason why I'm running and one I hope to beat someday so I can have bragging rights (it's a guy thing).

This isn't to say that if I bomb on Saturday all hope is lost. It's my birthday so I have to make the most of it. If I don't have a good run let's just hope there's a "water" stop along the way that has some barley and hops in it. I might have to stop for a pint or two and say Happy Birthday!

Marathon recap to follow early next week. Check back to see if it's about my running success or birthday success.

Not My Study, But I Hope It's True!

One of the many reasons why I run. Read this article and then get out there and postpone the need for a cane!

A White Halloween

I didn't carve my pumpkin last night just so it could get covered by snow today! October 26th and it's snowing. Too early! One of the things I like about MN is the change in seasons and the variety they offer. It helps you to appreciate the season you're not currently in. For example, during the heat of July and August I think about winter and how refreshing the cold weather would feel at that moment in July. Now that it's here though, it's too early and will make for a looooooooong winter if it stays like this or gets worse.

Makes me wish I was in Ireland or Indiana.

Boys' Night

Tonight was the night the kids and I look forward to a lot this time of year. We carved our pumpkins! We went to a farm outside of New Prague to pick out the perfect pumpkin for each of us. It's amazing how that farmer can grow my perfect orange sphere each following year after thinking I already had it the preceding year. Devon keeps saying his is the perfect one. Conner claims his is the perfect one. Boys, I've been doing this a lot longer than you have. Mine's the perfect one! :) Of course I tell them theirs are each the perfect ones, but secretly I know better. Shh, don't tell them though.

We started out by Daddy-o cutting the top off of each and every intention was for each person to scoop out the innards in their own pumpkin. That worked for about 2.5 seconds after I got done telling them that was the plan. Devon actually did attempt to. He scooped awhile with the spoon and then did stick his hand in there and yank some out after some coaxing and seeing me do it. Conner...not so much. He just sat there with his spoon daintily taking one or two seeds out at a time, making sure his hand didn't touch the sides or any of the stringy, hairy, slimy innards. After awhile I caved and helped him out. Maybe next year he'll be brave enough to touch it and do it himself.

Conner did get to man the knife all by himself this year though and he did a great job cutting his (pumpkin) face out. No blood anywhere! Devon drew what he wanted on his and then I cut it. Before I cut his though, I confirmed he wanted it cut exactly how it was drawn. It's not the most symmetrical faced pumpkin on the block, but I dare you to look at it and not chuckle. You should have no problem picking out which is whose. We all like them all!

Of course this activity isn't complete until the seeds are roasted so we got that taken care of too. I didn't even burn those this year so the 2008 Pumpkin Season was a success!!

Happy Haunting.

P.S. I know I'm taking a great chance in jinxing things here, but the weather looks perfect so far for the marathon next weekend!

I Love The Taper!

I had my last "long" training run last weekend and it went quite well I think. I had the help of Kimmi and Kris to keep my mind preoccupied and get me through the distance, so thank you very much ladies. I won't say which is which, but one of them ran the first 11 plus miles with me and then went home and partially died even though she's of Ironman caliber and I made the other one entertain me and talk more during the last hour and a half than she probably did the rest of the entire day. If I have a successful race I owe part of that to you two. Wanna come to Indy and do it 1 more time to get me through the race?! :)

Speaking of the race, tomorrow is the day I start to become neurotic about it. Tomorrow marks T -10 and anyone who's ever done any racing knows what that means, don't you? Yup, I get to start checking the weather forecasts multiple times throughout the day! Tomorrow it'll just be a couple of times, but by the time the day or two before the race comes around I'm usually looking at the updates hourly. I know it's so unproductive to do because I can't do anything about changing the weather, but hey, it's just part of the routine now. I'll be taking clothes for all scenarios anyway so why not just watch the weather the night before the race and leave it at that, right? That'd be too easy. I guess I want to know beforehand if the weather is going to be crappy so I can mentally prepare myself.

The Taper Period is weird. You train all season and always look forward to the 2 or 3 weeks before the marathon so you can rest up, but once it gets here you feel like you haven't done enough and want to get out there and do a couple of more training runs. At this point there isn't anything you can do to physically improve other than rest up, but that's the last thing you can make yourself believe. It's a matter of trusting what you did up to this point will help you succeed. So does that mean self-doubt is more prevalent than self-confidence? Ah, that's too deep for something that's just meant to be about running.

I better go find something else to do for the next 10 days.

Thursday Night Date

Had a date tonight. Nope, not another one with my buddy Shawn. This one was with someone more important and a member of the female persuasion even!

I suppose I could try to string you along, but I won't. I took my daughter, Kayli, to the Guthrie to see the musical The Little House on the Prairie.

It was a good show. Beautiful voices, but the songs and a few of the characters didn't really jive. One of the cool things about this musical though (and you had to grow up watching the show 30ish years ago like I'm not too afraid I did to really appreciate this) is that Melissa Gilbert, who played Laura Ingalls in the tv show back then, is in the performance for this production run. She plays Laura's mom this time around though. I don't think she could've pulled off still being Half Pint.

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I got Booed at work yesterday morning by a coworker. Can you believe it? Don't you wish you worked there? Actually, it's a good/fun thing. It's a secret "Boo" as in Halloween. It's loosely like the secret Santa, chain letter thing. I don't know who started it, but I got to my desk yesterday morning and there was a little decorated Halloween bowl filled with candy sitting on my desk with a Halloween poem and instructions and a Boo sign. I have to leave the sign hanging on my wall to show that I've been Booed and secretly do the same thing to 2 others - leave a little treat/trinket and the instructions and sign - within 24 hours and then each one of them does it 2 people and so on and so on. Eventually if everyone follows the instructions the whole office should have boo signs hanging by everyone's desk. I think I'll take mine down so people think I haven't gotten it yet and maybe that way I'll get more candy.

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Another good run today with a little bit of speed work thrown in. Confidence is gaining heading into these final 2 weeks.

I'm Back (I Hope)!!

Just had to get this down while I'm still feeling 'high' from it - had a great 7 mile run over lunch today! Woo Hoo!! Hopefully Saturday's experience won't repeat itself anymore this training and racing season.

...But comparing Saturday's run to today's has made me wonder if I've become a warm weather training wuss.
Saturday - sunny, low 70s (slightly warm by a runner's standards)
Today - overcast, low to mid 50s (perfect running weather by my standards)
I used to think I did pretty well in the heat...maybe not.

It Was So Bad I Got Passed By A House

Spent the weekend in Rochester with family. I was looking forward to this weekend for many family related reasons:
-I haven't seen my parents for awhile
-haven't seen my sister and her kids for awhile (you too Ken)
-it was my nephew's birthday
-was going to get to watch my nephew in his final football game of the year (in his first year of playing)
-and was going to get Kayli for the weekend and be with her for more than just 10 minutes.

Everything turned out great family-wise. All the kids played wonderfully together (no tears), Thomas liked all his presents (or maybe it was just all the cash) and the football game ended in a tie so there was no pouting by either team. Mom even made some of her awesome vegetable soup from a recipe that's at least 4 generations old now and some apple crisp from apples the kids picked Saturday afternoon. For the most part I ate healthy stuff, it's just the amount I ate that might be called into question.

The only downer to the weekend was my training run. After my nephew's football game Sat. morning I was going to run back to my sister's house. They live about 15 miles outside of the city so I mapped out a route to tack on a few more feet to come up with my 22 miler.

The game ended so I got set to run while the fam took off, planning to see them again in the 3-3:30 hrs it would take me. The first couple of miles started out innocently enough, but early on I could feel that I wasn't getting into "that rhythm" and it felt like more of a struggle than it should've. Then the hills started. I never realized Rochester was as hilly as it is, but then again I've only ever driven through it and never had to do a run like this one.

I knew I was in for a long afternoon when just before mile 9 I already had to stop at a Kwik Trip for a mental break more than anything and to top off my water bottle. Not a good sign. I struggled through the next couple of miles and came upon a semi that was pulled over to change a flat tire. It was an oversized load as they were hauling a pre-fab house addition. My new goal was to get to my next turn a few more miles down the road before they got that fixed and passed me back. That goal was shot down. I was running so slow I eventually got passed by a house. I just chuckled...it was just that type of run.

Long story short...Mom and Dad took all the kids to the apple orchard after they left the football game. On their way home from there they decided to check on me. They came across me at about mile 13 and with the way things were going I opted to end the run and jump in the van. I decided it was better to cut my losses rather than beat myself up over another 9 miles. I've already done one 20 miler and knew I had another coming up again this next weekend so I just chalked this one up to it being a bad day and I'll try it again.

It does put a little chink in the armor though and cause a few doubts to creep in. Hopefully this final long training run will go well and put those doubts to rest. My silver lining to the failed run is that I planned properly by putting in multiple 20s so if the first 1 or 2 do go bad I have another crack at it. I'm also trying to convince myself that I didn't want all these long runs to go well. I didn't want to peak too early and then bomb during the actually marathon. This way, my bad run is now behind me and shouldn't happen on race day.

Yeah...just like I planned it! ;)

GRRRR!!!!

This day went south in a hurry. Can't salvage anything from it so I'm going to bed.

And They Paid To Do This?!

Yesterday was the Twin Cities Marathon. I've run this one 3 times and now that I'm on the "50 marathons in 50 different states" quest I doubt I'll run it again anytime soon. This year I opted to cheer on some TNT family members (i.e. teammates), a coworker and another friend. For a couple of them it was going to be their first marathon each. As with many things, your first time is a memorable one. I still remember #1 better than #2, 3 and 5 and just as well as #4, 6, 7 and 8.

This wasn't going to be just a casual spectating day. They were going to be out there for 26.2 miles. I wasn't going to take it easy and just cheer for them once at one spot and that be it. I made plans with Amy to spend Saturday night at her house as she lives in S. Mpls and close to the course (you may remember her from previous posts when I took over her house during my triathlon weekend. I might have to start paying her some rent. Her place has become Race Central for me.). Amy and I have done a couple of marathons together so we know what it's like to be the runners so we wanted to use that knowledge on the other side of the ropes and spectate.

We got up early to watch the early 10 mile race that was also being conducted with a start time an hour earlier than the full marathon. This race drew interest because it was the Women's National Championship for that distance so that meant the best runners in the nation at that distance were going to be racing. There was a lot of local buildup for this race because 2 of the potential winners had strong MN roots. Amy and I drove to the 2.5 mile spot on this course because it was close to her house and watched and cheered from there. When the leaders came by they were flying! Their race pace is probably not much slower than my 100 yard, 100% effort sprint and they seemed to be doing it with ease. We stayed for awhile and watched most of the other 5,000 people running the 10 miler and saw many familiar faces.

It soon became time to go though as we wanted to get into our first position along the marathon course at mile 7 before those runners came by. We initially were going to ride our bikes from Amy's house to this mark, but since we stayed and cheered longer than we thought for the 10ers we opted to drive to there instead. Turned out to be the best decision we made all day! We got there in plenty of time, but as soon as we did it started to rain. No worries though, we were prepared and had our umbrellas.

As we waited it started to rain harder...and then a little harder...and then a little harder. There were even a couple of lightning flashes and thunder claps. I've lucked out in my 8 marathons and have never had to run in the rain. The only thing I could think of while standing there was thank God I'm turning 40 in a few weeks and am training for another marathon on that day otherwise I might've been out there doing this one with my friends!

The runners started coming by, the leaders, then gradually bigger packs and then before we knew it the road was packed with the 11,000 runners who signed up for the race. I'm sure there were some who didn't even start when they saw what the weather was going to be like, but not our girls! They're sweet, but they don't melt when they get a little wet.

First came Dana and Kris right on cue at the pace they should be, smiling and actually looking like they were enjoying themselves! Luckily they saw me first and yelled out otherwise I may have been standing there all morning waiting to spot them. Shawna came by a few minutes later, gave her an extra ring of the cowbell and then looked for my final personal runner I was cheering for (all the while cheering for everyone else who was going by). This last one was Suni, my coworker. She was probably the one I was most nervous for so as more and more runners went by and I didn't see her I became more and more nervous and anxious. Did she already drop? Did she even start because of the rain? It came to the point when we couldn't wait around any longer if we wanted to get to our next spot and catch those who had already gone by so we left. Sorry I missed you Suni.

We drove back to Amy's house to get some cheer supplies and the rain was starting to let up. I opted to jump on my bike at this point, regardless of what the weather was going to do the rest of the day. I figured with my familiarity with the course and the way traffic would be right around the course, biking would be quickest and allow for multiple stopping points. I put on my rain pants, grabbed my Spiderman backpack I was using for the day (thanks Conner!) stocked full of baggies of fruit, pretzels, umbrellas, cowbell and homemade posters and was off!

I cruised down to Mile 14 and waited for my girls to come by (funny, for some reason my main focus was on a handful of female runners. Hmmm...:)). I figured I had some time so I whipped out the posters and held them up, one for each of my peeps. Being of obnoxious (but effective) neon colors with big block letters I hoped they would see them from a distance and get a charge out of them. The one I made for Kris just had her last name on it - MIELKE is Amazing! A few minutes before they came by some guy ran by and said "hey, thanks". Not thinking anything of it other than that was kinda weird I just replied "sure, you bet". After the race was over I looked up their results and saw that there were 2 other runners with the last name Mielke so apparently one of them thought the sign was for him too. Sir, if it helped you at all at that point, then yes, the sign was for you too!

Kris and Dana came by right on pace target, got a good smile out of both of them and they kept truckin' along! After they went by, I just flipped the signs over and had one ready for Shawna and Suni (hopefully I'd see her this time). Shawna came by next at about the same interval as back at mile 7 so she was right on target too. I threw her a bag of fruit without her breaking stride and she motored on. Now it was Suni's turn. Where are you Suni? Another minute or two went by and all of a sudden I see this blur come shooting over to me from the side. It was Suni! Yeah, she did make it and was doing great! I got a quick sweaty hug and she was back on her way.

My next spot was just before Mile 22, after the last major hill and right before Summit Ave, a long, seemingly-never-ending, 4 mile straightaway that has a slight incline to it that seems like you're trekking up Mt. Everest at that point in the race. D & K maintained their front-running status and were first upon me. They were both still looking strong! Kris was one of the rookies coming into this marathon so every step she took after the 20 mile mark was a personal record and new distance for her. She looked like she had done this before! Check out her blog and marathon recap here. She grabbed a bag of pretzels at this point to replenish some sodium and like the Energizer bunnies they just kept on going! Suni and Shawna came by separately so I was able to attend to each one individually and run with them for a few paces to assess their well-being. There was no quit in anyone and they knew the finish was getting nearer!

After having done this marathon 3 times I knew Summit Ave was more about the mental toughness than the physical aspect at that point. I cruised down a couple of miles and positioned myself for 1 last cheer spot to hopefully give my girls a little boost to help carry them through. I got out the posters one last time and knew this time if they were looking up and ahead at all and not down at their feet they'd see and recognize them from quite a ways away. They all gave me a smile and/or a thumbs up so there was no doubt they were going to finish.

The matter of finishing was never really an option or thought for any of them. The thing that amazed me though about each of them was that they were still right on target or faster despite running in the rain the first 10 miles! Earlier in the day I thought that was going to slow everyone down. Not these amazing runners though!

Unfortunately I didn't make it to the Finish Line to see any of them cross as the crowd got thicker the closer I got and I had to weave and eventually walk my bike through the pack and around. I was able to meet up with Dana and Kris though and their perma-grins. We had someone snap this picture of us. I laughed when I got it emailed to me from Kris today because of the rip in my rain pants. Yes, that's a rip, my fly isn't open. I had shorts on underneath. Getting on and off my bike all day and swinging my leg up and over I ripped 'em at some point and didn't even know it until Dana pointed it out after the picture was taken. Thanks for waiting to tell me! :)

Also, notice the blue sky after they're done racing! Murphy's Law.

The night ended appropriately with a group dinner with 9 of us, mostly runners from the day celebrating their accomplishment. Big meals, a couple of drinks and most definitely some dessert. The only thing missing was a little dancing to see how the legs felt at that point. After your Ironman, Dana and Kris, we're definitely going out dancing!

After watching these ladies, and everyone else, it has fired me up a little more for my marathon coming up. I wanted to be out there running with them! That's a good sign and hopefully I'll be able to do as well as they all did!

Pity Party - Get Over It!

Spent last night in the doldrums of solitude. I guess it was about that time, I go through that on occasion. Not too often, but every now and then I do wish/want/need someone to come home to.

I’m a grown-up. I make my own decisions. I’ve made the decision lately to not be dating or at least to not actively pursue those options, but last night on the drive home I wanted to be going home to someone…not to an empty, quiet house. I tried to stay busy once I got home, but that didn’t last long. Cleaned one of my bikes, but spent most of the night sitting in front of my computer playing spades, hearts and backgammon online. Yup, that’s my exciting life down in Lonsdale.

Wasn’t even really looking forward to crawling into bed because I knew my body pillow just wouldn’t snuggle back the way I wanted it to.

I asked myself why I’m not dating. Others have asked why too. My answer to them has been I don’t have time. With all the running I’m doing lately and the demands of a marathon I feel like I don’t have the time or the little time I do have should be set aside for more training. I think that’s a cop-out answer. Truth be told, I think a more appropriate answer is that I’m a chicken (not too far removed from my turkey pals I’ve been meeting lately on my runs).

Dating back before my marriage was hard, stressful enough. Especially for someone who’s quiet and reserved. Throw onto that dating resume now the terms divorcee and single parent and that immediately minimizes the dating pool. Not knowing how someone feels about those 2 big issues I now carry with me makes me even more skittish to take the initiative, along with still being quiet and reserved. I’m the kind of person who usually likes to gather the facts before making a decision. I just can’t go up to a woman and say “hey, let’s go out” without knowing first if she’s interested in me and knows what baggage* I bring. That’s just the way I operate I guess, but it does make this part of my life harder.

I think people do need others in their life romantically, we shouldn’t go through life alone. Studies have shown that (I’m not going to take the time to quote or find ‘em though so you’ll just have to trust me). When I’m out in public or at social gatherings I notice other couples and their interaction and wish I was with someone too. I do want that romantic partner again, but am too chicken to do anything about it.

Oh well, that’s my sob story for tonight. Don’t feel sorry for me, that wasn’t the purpose of the post. I’ve made my own decisions and will continue to do so.

Maybe I’m PMSing.

*Baggage is just an easy term to use. It in no way should imply my kids are an encumbrance or anything negative.