Here we go again! I finished the Denver Marathon but it was nowhere near a PR. So at the urging of my running coach I am putting in a top springtime effort and I’m training for the New Orleans Marathon. This ones for a Boston Qualifier baby!! I have been training for a month now. I put in a 22 miles run on Saturday and I’m feeling strong. Look out NOLA!
Last night I got my first taste of organized marathon training. My coach, Kathy, had us do some dynamic exercises first before the run. They are designed to help prevent injuries. Some of them, like butt-kicks and high-knees, I had done before but some of them were new to me and involved running on your toes and heels at different angles. We did a lot of strides before the actual workout. That made the 3×5 minute workout seem a lot harder than it should have been. Anyway, I am still looking forward to Saturday’s 8-9 mile run.
Tags: injury prevention, marathon, running, training
It’s a hard lesson to learn. Just last month I ran in my first marathon and did pretty well (3:36:32). About a week after the marathon I thought I was on track to keep up some light running until my next training started. Then the Achilles tendon on my right foot started hurting. I kept running on it thinking I just needed to stretch more. Wrong. I had to completely stop running for over a week and limp around with my bum ankle.
Now, after two weeks with not much running I am running healthy again. I’m pretty sure the injury was a product of over-training so I am now doing more cross-training to keep up my cardio without killing my legs. I just hope that this was enough of a lesson that I will listen to my body more if/when another injury comes up.
Tags: Achilles, cross-training, injury, rest, running
Today was my first run back with the Denver Nike Run club. I am now offically into my summer running schedule and ramping up to the Colfax Marathon. I was able to keep with the fast group today for the first two miles and then I took the loop around Mile High Stadium. When we got back I got some good tips on other running groups geared toward marathons. I need to look up the Colorado Road Runners. They are supposed to be hosting some 20 mile runs soon. My mileage will be there after this next weeks 18 miler on the Highline Canal Trail.
Tags: running
Kate and I have survived another grueling trip to the Caribbean. This time we spent a week in Jamaica at the Couples Resort at Tower Island. I had the opportunity to try SCUBA diving, sailing a Hobie Cat, water skiing, horseback riding and snorkeling. Loved all of it. We ate lots, drank lots, and got a good amount of sun through the week. I would definitely recommend Couples to any couples out there looking for a place to really decompress. When we arrived in Denver this morning it really felt like we had been gone longer than a week. It’s a nice feeling getting back from a trip and not feeling like you need a vacation.
Yep. I’m back at it. Watching what I eat and building up my running to half-marathon distances. Today’s run will be a 9 mile run. Next week 10 miles. I will probably leave my weekend runs at that level for a little while and work on speed from that point. I am already registered for the Colfax Half-Marathon and plan on running in the BolderBoulder and Denver Half-Marathon. I just cannot put in the time it takes to train for a full marathon at this point in my life. Maybe in a few years when my work life can handle it. The biggest problem I have with the training is that I have to run the same distance during the week as I plan on running on the weekend and to run marathon distances I feel you have to train at marathon distances. I don’t have the time to run two hours twice a week. I really do admire people that can put in the time and run like that.
Mahatma Gandhi once said: “There is no way to peace, peace is the way.”
I really have nothing to add to that, I just want you to think about the words.
With those words, please do not reach for you guns when TSHTF. Reach for your videocamera. Don’t cooperate with your captors or your would-be masters. Video their bad behavior and make sure they cannot hide in the shadows or behind their co-conspirators in the judiciary.
Tags: activism, citizens, failure, Government, non-cooperation, peace, video
I am a veteran. Or at least I was a Reservist. I was an Airborne Infantryman before President Clinton took the combat arms units out of the Reserves. I will not try to compare my service to that of a WWII vet or even a current vet from Iraq or Afghanistan. Those people have actually had people out there that wanted to kill them and they have survived. I only make the statement because I have completed Army Infantry School and Airborne School at Ft. Benning, GA.
That qualification is important from the point of knowing what I am talking about only because I have actually been through the training. Army training, and to an equal or lesser extent all military training, teaches soldiers to react and not think about what they need to do. This insures the soldier does what they need to do when they are in combat. More importantly, the Army trains soldiers to de-humanize their enemies. This is intended to allow soldiers to kill enemy troops without remorse. I just had a chance to see parts of the “Band of Brothers” mini-series. I think it was a remarkable piece of work. It also drove home the point about war that I have taken to heart over the years since I was a gung-ho, hard-driving Airborne Infantryman. Soldiers kill other soldiers. That is too clean, too aseptic. More accurately, men kill other men. US soldiers came home from WWII and most didn’t want to talk about what they did over there. This is because they had to find some way to deal with the fact that they had to kill other human beings and had to see many of their buddies die at the hands of other human beings. On the ground and in the trenches, the inevitable situation soldiers find themselves in during a war is doing whatever it takes to make sure that they and their buddies get home safely. There is no glory in war, there is only pain.
So you may be asking, what is the answer to war? My answer is to hold the leaders accountable for their actions. Why would it have been so evil to assassinate Hitler (or insert the out-of-control government leader here) but its OK or even a great patriotic good to send millions of men onto battlefields to kill millions of other men? Really, why does that make sense? America always wants to point to how morally superior we are because we do not endorse assassination, yet we are always ready to send our soldiers into harms way.
If you want something to remember this Memorial Day, I would ask that you remember the amount of pain that our war veterans have had to endure because of the actions of the leaders of governments (foreign and our own).
Tags: Government, Memorial Day, out-of-control, soldiers, war
I am getting back into running. One thing that has always bothered me about runners is sometimes they are runners and sometimes they are just joggers that call themselves runners. Joggers can’t seem to stride out past where their knees straighten out. I know this is nit picking but those people are not runners, they are joggers. In order to speed up a runner just lengthens their stride, joggers have to speed up their pace because their stride length is fixed. To me, joggers are the reason that most people are not runners. Jogging kills your knees with all of the impact. A good running stride shouldn’t shock your knees much more than a brisk walk. Humans evolved strictly for the purpose of running. Not just sprinting, but full-on distance running. We had to run to track and kill anything in the hilly grasslands of Africa. Since we cannot out-sprint most African game we had to run it down over miles. That is our genetic heritage. Now we are just pencil pushers and couch potatoes. If you want to be healthy you need to embrace the runner in you. STOP JOGGING and run like an human.
I attended a very interesting meeting last night. The bulk of the group were big “L” Libertarians but there were also a few of that dying breed of small-government-Republicans. I have railed on about how the Republican party has been taken over by God-and-Guns conservatives. After talking with these small-government-Republicans, I really have to wonder what it is that still makes them Republicans? If you limit government to the level it is supposed to be at, all of the God-and-Guns conservatives lose their ability to legislate morality. That in effect kills most of their platform. Without the “compassionate conservative” spending and the ability for the state to tell you what to do with your body (which may be a sin but isn’t a crime) I don’t think Republicans look that differently than Libertarians. Republicans are still talking about strict constitutionalism but other than a few Supreme Court justices I have seen nothing that harkens back to the days of Barry Goldwater. Even Ron Paul has been show the door by a party he refuses to leave. The only thing I can think of is that the small-government Republicans are operating under the Muslim rule of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. Maybe they should ask the State department how that’s been working for America.
