This year was a great year for running goals! I ran two marathons on my own before getting injured due to changing my desk/chair setup and needing to take a long break. I basically got sciatic and learned to do some better core stretches. I’m rebuilding now and hope to get back up to speed soon.

For 2011 I ran 1,198 miles in a total of 175 hours. Which breaks down to 8 minute 46 second miles.

For 2012 I’m going to be traveling a lot through May so it’s going to be hard to do a lot of running, especially in South America where there are not great trail runs in cities. So I’m going to take it slow and try to rebuild up to about 100 miles a month and I hope to get up to marathon length again by the end of the year. And depending on how things go maybe an ultra at some point if I’m feeling great!

I ran my first marathon today! 26.2 miles! I was planning to run 22 to 23 miles, but felt good around 21 and decided to just go for it. I think I can go a lot faster as my last 6 miles were all under 8 minute miles as I figured out I had to start moving if I wanted to finish in under 4 hours.

Running conditions

1. No sleep – I had a green tea and coffee yesterday so I couldn’t sleep. I gave up at 7am and just got up.

2. Carrying 3 liters of water, pair of socks, gels, salt pills.

I tarted at 9.35am and finished at 1.29pm. Temp wasn’t bad like 85 to 80 most of race as I picked a path that is 70% on trails surrounded by woods. Some hills.

Totals and cool stats…

Length: 26.2 Miles
Time: 3 Hours 54 Mintes
Average Heart Rate: 146
Calories: 3,155 kCal
VO2: 53ml/kg/min
EPOC Peak: 92.9
Respiration Rate: 37 bpm
Altitude: 1,243 ASC, 1,374 DSC
Max Speed: 8.83 mph
Avg Speed: 6.70 mph
Peak heart rate, 192, but I think that was a fluke reading.

I have no idea what VO2/EPOC and some of that is.

Splits…

Mile 1: 8.52
Mile 2: 8.18
Mile 3: 8.41
Mile 4: 9.12
Mile 5: 9.17
Mile 6: 9.44
Mile 7: 11.59
Mile 8: 9.06
Mile 9: 9.18
Mile 10: 8.51
Mile 11: 9.10
Mile 12: 11.50
Mile 13: 9.38
Mile 14: 9.00
Mile 15: 8.46
Mile 16: 9.07
Mile 17: 10.48
Mile 18: 8.10
Mile 19. 8.30
Mile 20: 8.49
Mile 21: 7.45
Mile 22: 7.35
Mile 23: 7.47
Mile 24: 7.34
Mile 25: 7.42
Mile 26: 7.17
Last .2: 1.34

You can definitely see the water breaks to refill my giant water backpack, or change socks. Plus when I figured out at Mile 21 that I had to book if I wanted to stay under 4 hours.

Fun!

April was a great running month! I’ve been slowly increasing my workouts as I train for a marathon (and just longer runs in general) and I ran 112 miles in April even though I was on vacation from the 19th to 30th.

Stats And Averages
My longest run in April was 16 miles, which is the longest I’ve ever run. My fastest mile during the month was 6 minutes 7 seconds during a speed workout. So my average speed per mile was 8 minutes 25 seconds.

So I got to Frankfurt Germany yesterday and made it to Europa Park by about 2pm. Yes, the work conference is at a theme park. And of course with it being Sunday there was no food easily accessible. So being super tired and jet lagged I crashed with no food. I slept around 10 hours and read for a while before departing for German breakfast…

So why do I love Germany so much? German breakfast is fucking awesome. And what is even more awesome, they literally were serving the same breakfast rolls I had when I was in high school on a trip to Berlin and my host mom served breakfast (which I love (they are so good)). Here is what I ate for breakfast:

Coffee (rare for me but jet lag)
1 Breakfast Roll
1 Wheat Breakfast Roll
1 Whole Wheat or something slice of German Bread
1 Piece Bacon
1 Piece Wurst
1 Piece Random Pig Something
1 Egg
1 Random thinly sliced pig something.
1 Another random thinly sliced pig something (also delicious)
1 piece Swiss cheese.
1 glob of 3 fruit jam.
1 glob of real butter.
2 pieces of Bree cheese.
Apricot Yogurt
Raisins
Fruit Salad that had MANGOs!!!!
And, 1 of the most delicious cinnamon bread hunks I’ve ever had.

I can’t wait for breakfast tomorrow, because there is even more to try.

So after I ate this awesome breakfast I accidentally invaded Poland, I just couldn’t help it, I had so much energy and I just accidentally took it over. Oh well. If anything the Versailles treaty should have limited the awesomeness of the German breakfast, no way would WW2 have started.

And later I ran 15 miles, longest yet! Awesome trails through this area and got to see a lot of the surrounding country side. And made it to some small town that had a cool church.

I spent Thursday to Sunday in Miami on South Beach and had a great time, the conference was well done and they had some great speakers! I was also impressed with South Beach, although not that I could ever live there. Unless I get an operation that infuses me with three popped collars, hair gel, fist pumping, non stop base thumping, and general douchery. I should note it did have great beaches and lots of normal people.

It also made me realize I am super burned out and need a vacation to let my mind rest. I ended up skipping the conference parties just because I needed too and catching up on reading and just nothingness. The weather was amazing, a solid 80 degrees and a gorgeous boardwalk to run on. I ran on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday I did my longest run in a while with 12 miles. I’m doing a marathon training schedule Apey gave me, and going to see about a marathon later this summer I think.

Oh and Cuban food and coffee is awesome. I already knew this from my time living in Boca Raton, but I really miss cheap delicious Cuban food…

I read 4 books and I highly recommend this book that talks about factory girls in China and was just an amazing story (and very well written). Talk about hustlers, I can’t wait to see what those girls do over the next 40 years with their kids and careers. I can’t imagine leaving town at 16 to get a job and navigate such a crazy world, what an adventure!

Please pardon any spelling mistakes, I’m super tired. I’ve actually been getting up while I was there at 7am or 8am to run in the mornings or for the conference.

Over the last few weeks I’ve have had a blast, I played Fright Flight with Liquor and Cleats, went to the Rally To Restore Sanity, and then played Harvest with our college alumni team back in Fayetteville. Liquor and Cleats got second at Fright Flight and our Alumni team lost in semis at Harvest, but we did win the spirit disc (and both were costume tournaments with great people which are always fun). Fright Flight is one of the funniest tournaments I’ve played in and I’m really looking forward to playing Paga in Italy again this year.

Some pictures of the DC rally below:

Just got back from trying the Bergen Peak trail run. It was really good although I’m not used to the elevation gain during the initial part of the run. The trail was low on rocks for the most part and pretty soft on the feet, the backside still had snow on it though but walked a good chunk of that. Ended up running the first three miles which was a ton of elevation gain, walking a mile, then running another 3, walking a mile, and running the last half mile. Good little run especially when it warms up, and there are some trails in the plains below it if I had wanted to extend the run by 3 to 4 miles.

Working on getting my runs back up to an hour as winter always drags me down to only 40 to 50 min. Running on a treadmill just sucks for any longer then that.

Some good info on this trail below:
- Map, Review, and pictures!
- Info and Driving Directions. It’s past lakewood after I70 and not too far from Denver.

What I love most (and hate if you are there) about Italy is that they will never be any kind of economic threat to the rest of the world, ever… Why might you ask? Because if you are wanting to buy a drink at a disco, you might think oh i’ll go buy a drink, but nay, you must first buy a ticket in a very long line, and then after that you must go to another line to present that ticket for that drink, oh and they don’t really take credit cards very well, and they have nothing like a tray to hold all the orders. I’m so glad I was not born in Italy as I would have shot myself in my sober sober head years ago from frustration. I encountered this again with sandwiches etc. My only guess is they like lines, or they like to pretend they are employing twice as much people, or they like being inefficient.

I exaggerate a little as I wasn’t that frustrated (mostly cause they have a lot of cheap wine which makes you very patient), but it is very evident they will never be able to complete globally with the USA and China’s and even Japans of the world. It’s just sad to see. Beautiful country through, and at least they make great ice cream.

I am also basis as I HATE their “soccer” team, I use quote marks as their team is mostly just a bunch of pussy actors who spend their time practicing their dives. And when I start to love a head butting french man over you, you might be in trouble as a country.

Venice was absolutely amazing, most expensive place I’ve ever been though. Go for a day or two and see a dieing city and just imagine how amazing it would have been 300 or 400 years ago.

It was a great trip, the beach tournament was fun and after a few days feeling more confident in that I know how to play on the beach. After that headed to Cique Terra and Venice, not a lot of pictures but most are from those locations.

Steve and Rose visited for a week from Ireland which was a blast! Big thanks to Chappy and Liz for letting us stay at their house and Liz for teaching us all how to snowboard and getting us a big discount on our passes! Apart from a small fluke wrist fracture Steve suffered we all did well and by the end of our second day were able to turn! A few more days and we would probably be falling a lot less. I’ll try to post some photos and videos when Rose posts them.

I had one monster fall where I hit the back of my head, thank god for helmets or my brain would be splattered all over the snow. I switched from Regular to Goofy on my second day and I think that is going to be the way I go in the future, but a bit tough to switch everything in your feet and mind. By the end of that day it was going well and I can see how addictive snowboarding could be.

I’ve been having a hard time finding the perfect sled for this year but luckily Slate has a great article on the best sleds and I went with the Airboard 180! Rumor is you can go up to 80 miles an area, control your direction easily since it has ridges on the bottom, and go off jumps with little worry besides fear of death! It is the only sled that is advertised as needing a helmet.

Visited Arizona for the first time for regionals this last weekend. Our team did great and I had a good time apart from having to adjust to waking up so early from my normal schedule. Thank god the temp was only in the low 90s as the previous weekend it had been 105 both days. We almost got to nationals but lost a key game on game point.

Arizona was really pretty in a desert way. I really don’t know why that town is there and can’t imagine they are going to have enough water to last another 100 years. I read the wiki entry and sounds like some old guy build some canals which started the entire mess.

Heading to Fool’s Fest this weekend to play some ultimate frissbee (Lawrence Kansas). Should be cold and wet which will suck but going to be fun to play with everyone and first time to get to play with Dmarsh in a long time :). Plus I’m hoping the Mongolian BBQ we used to go to all the time is still open as its delicious.

Been reading some good books lately, a lot of books I would have had to buy in paper format are actually being published to the Kindle at the same time which is just awesome to see! I’ve already saved enough to buy two kindles I estimate just off the savings. I read In Gallant Company last night which is volume 3 in a series of books about a boy in the British Navy as he slowly becomes a captain and all the adventures. The author is Alexander Kent and they are quick to read and very entertaining. I think there are like 20 volumes so should keep me busy for a while. I also just finished Manhunt by James Swanson a few days ago. It tracks the assassination of Lincoln by Booth day by day and was really interesting. I’m not sure in history class they fully explained that Booth and his conspirators had planned on killing the secretary of state, vice president, and president in the same night. What blows my mind even more is that the Vice President was staying with no security in a normal hotel, and they found a knife and revolver in a room nearby and the guy had just not gone through it. Very different from today and weird to think that any person could walk up to the White House and make an appointment to see the president.

Been working like crazy which isn’t a surprise, things are going very well and we are hoping over the next few months for clean up to really finish so we can push forward with growth and finishing a lot of much needed projects. I’m looking forward to around three months from now when we finish a lot of clean up on the backend and maybe I can take a short week off to travel somewhere nearby.

Joel, Dmarsh, Steve and me went cross country skiing this weekend. The route we choose was quite a bit harder than the other two I had done because the path was packed down and very icy. So going up hill we either had to walk or put on skins so that we didn’t slip backwards and fall to our fiery deaths. It was a lot of fun coming down though and even though we all fell quite a bit I managed to do ok. I can’t wait to get better so we can actually ski some of the more remote areas.

I finally went skiing (cross country) for the first time and it was awesome! Ended up going back and renting skis again a few days later and did a trail on our own on some far away snowy mountain. Here are some pictures of me and Lizzie trying to trudge through very deep snow and falling on slippery ice. Going to start going as its good for me to get out of the house and see that bright bright object in the sky.