To Excel In Life...Run!

Shovel the sidewalk ...a to unge on the flagp ole par od y.      Please disregard my last posting...way too optimistic!      Today's 16 mile run with Dave was easy pace, but only 15' at the start, and a cool 18' by finish time. High's in the 30's for another week means more laundry to be done, more time to get ready and of course icy paths in the morning.      I still don't mind, it's such a blessing to be running nearly pain and injury free ( there's always something nagging, but right now things are ok ) that the cold and clothes are a  minor inconvenience. We've got a great area to run in, good friends to keep us motivated and a marathon on May 11 that reminds us "Hey, did you get a run in today?"      For those of you in warmer climes, enjoy the coolness of a 45' morning run and think of us here in Minnesota. We'll catch up later this year when you're running in 90' heat and we are stri...

     I have to admit, the last half of winter isn't really here yet, but on the other hand by the time mid-March arrives we are ready for tee shirts and shorts! Sure, we'll get some snow, but it will be in the 50's some days and the snow will melt quickly.      On my calendar winter is half over, and it's the tough part that's over!      Trails right now and for the next few weeks will be a constant variation; ice, snow, melt, slush, dry, water. We'll get it all but that's fine with me, it's a sign from Mother Nature that spring is on the way.      Am I starting the celebration too early? I think not. Running the past week it was 12' and it felt good. That means I'm adjusted to the cold and anything over 20' will feel like spring. I'd have to carry a water bottle for the heat if it gets over 30' this weekend!     I can dream. Soon enough the temps will be in the 40's every day and spring w...

PMB...Post Marathon Blues.  I'm sure it's a pretty common affliction, and for sure it's not limited to the marathon. It's caused by a training and racing season full of the very real psyco and phsio combinations that naturally occur due to the physical, mental and emotional elixir running delivers to the body, mind and soul. Whether the concoction is mixed for 5k speed or marathon endurance, it's an addictive potion that's hard to replace once the season is done.  You can't stay "in season" too long either. You need the dry spells, the recovery gaps that clean out the system and let the anguish of hill workouts, intervals and multiple-hour runs drain from your muscle memory, one easy run day after another. This slow leakage of the seasons workouts drips with scar tissue, mad sprints and long drives to the finish line. Natural blood doping at it's finest. It's not by chance our running seasons coincide with those provided by Mother N...

     Weird...two rain outs in the last four days and I don't feel guilty about missing runs. Guess that's another reason I'm so amazed at Mark Covert's continuous days running streak. Mark is now in his 45th year of running each and every day...yes, each and every day for 44+ years. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Covert )      My oldest brother Al and Mark have been friends since their college days, running together and then coaching against each other for many years after. There are so many long runs in life; jobs, friendships, hobbies, annual 'things' we do/visit/ enjoy...it really wasn't that long ago in the grand scheme of things that life ended pretty early for most folks. Short and hard with a brutal ending.       I feel lucky to be living in these times. So many things we can do, so many choices we can make. Could I have run on the rain out days? Sure, but I'm not a daily runner. Six days a week max is about a...

Dang, it's nearly the end of July and I have not posted in almost two months! Got busy training for Grandma's Marathon, ran ( well, ran most of it...did fade and walked a few times - ugh! ) took an easy week of training and am back at it again. Ran 3:44 in Duluth, just over 4 minutes off pace but I'm pleading humidity. It was a fantastic training season running with my wife Jeanette and our friends Bryan, Stan, Dave and Mike. Nobody hit their time at the event, but the journey there was awesome and we are all pumped to run a fall marathon. Cooooooler days!      Also spent a couple of nights a week the past two months watching my youngest play Junior Legion baseball, it's been very enjoyable seeing him have a good season with nice kids on the team, good coaches and solid parents. The team has done well and Harrison had his best pitching outing as a player this summer, going 7 innings in a three hit shut-out. Really fun to see him do well and watch his teammates step ...

     It's been an awesome training season, one that I know will be tough to beat. As our training group recovered from last fall's Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon during October and November, it was clear that Grandma's 2012 was becoming our focus. Dave, after completing his first ever marathon at MTC, was the first to sign up. I think it took him a whole two days to decide. Jeanette and I held off a bit longer, completing our official registration in early January for the June 16 race. Bryan added his name to the entry log as a back-up to his Ft. Collins, Colorado marathon sometime in March. Mike, the newest member of our long run training group, signed up in April. We have one more member of our group that has yet to register. He had not thought about running Grandma's until about four weeks ago when I made the suggestion, based upon his training over the past six months.      He finished his first marathon last fall at MTC, our five person trai...

     Planning, doing, experimenting, tweaking. We make an outline and do our best to keep on track, but we need to remember things change along the way. Our group is now just 8 weeks out from the Grandma's Marathon race, and as we whittle down our training days it has become apparent that each week we'll need to look behind and ahead to make sure we maximize our workouts.      We are in a transition phase, moving form mileage focus to performance focus. Easy days need to be easy, days off kept in the schedule, and hard days are becoming increasingly more fun ( when you are in shape, it's nice to be able to let loose during a workout ). The next six weeks we will be making sure we are improving, but watching signs that we are not overtraining.       Two points to keep in mind as we dial in the last two months. 1- Just because we can doesn't mean we should! ( sure, we can run faster some days, but if we over train ugly things h...