IT'S 5:00AM - WHERE ARE YOU?

The alarm clock rang at 5:00am.
I am an athlete. Athletes get up and workout everyday whether they want to or not.

But it sounds like it’s raining and it’s supposed to be in the mid 40’s. This bed sure is warm.

Get out of bed right now! We’ve got miles to run! We’re never gonna make it to Boston if we sleep all the time.

Hold on a minute. There I hit snooze. I think about what you said and get back to you in 9 minutes.

The alarm clock rang at 5:09am.
Get UP NOW!

Listen, we have our Monday morning meeting today at 9:00am. Unless we get up right now and really get moving we will never get our miles in and make it the office by 8:00am. I’m gonna hit snooze and we’ll try again tomorrow.

Let me tell you what we’re going to do. We are getting up right now and get dressed fast. We are heading outside no matter what and we are running at least 5 miles. Don’t you do it! Stop don’t hit the button.

See ya in 9 minutes sucker!

The alarm clock rang at 5:18am.
Look it’s too late. I’m not even arguing with you anymore. These covers are too warm. See ya in 9 minutes. Click.

This went on until 6:45am. I don’t know how I can hit the snooze but for an hour and forty five minutes but I can. And by the way, my alarm clock is across the room. I have to get out of bed to hit snooze. I can promise you that this whole operation does not make my wife happy at all.

So soccer practice was canceled due to bad weather. Yea I can go to the gym and get my miles in. I am still trying to get back in shape after the 3 ½ weeks off so most runs are just easy until I get the mileage up. I couldn’t remember what I was scheduled for today but I knew it was at least 5 miles. I ate a Snickers Marathon bar before coming to the gym. It sat in my stomach like a load of bricks. After two miles I thought I was going to die. I walked for 30 seconds and tried again. A guy I grew up with got on the treadmill beside me and we started talking about the economy. Before I knew it I was at 7.5 miles. Well you can’t stop on a treadmill on an uneven number. I hit 8 miles and 1000 calories. ( I like to track calories because it tells me how much cake or cookies I can eat later and not feel guilty. I’ll talk about that another day. I run, so I can Eat!)

I have been reading a couple of guys blogs. Both guys are weeks away from sub 3:00 attempts and both guys are 10 years younger than me. They are also both injured right know and that really scares me. I stretched real good tonight and I’m going make a serious effort to stretch everyday.

Pretty good day. Tomorrow, I hope to get up early. We’ll see.

IT DOESN'T ALWAYS HAVE TO BE ALONE

I ran 5.2 miles today through the Yorktown Battlefields. I ran around a 9:00 pace and stopped nearly every mile. It was a great run!

Not because of my performance, the pace was slow and I felt really strong. I didn’t need the walk breaks my heart rate never got going really. What made this run special was that I ran with one of my good friends that’s just getting back into running. My buddy used to be a College XC runner so he knows what to do, it’s just been a matter of doing it. Two kids and a lot of years latter and he’s just getting started again.

Running is definitely an individual sport, but I really love an easy recovery run with a good friend, or even a newly made friend that I know nothing about. I have meet people in a parking lot at 6:00am and by 8:30 and 17 miles later I end up knowing stuff about these people that their close friends never had the time to ask.

I ran all summer with a group of guys from my neighborhood. By fall these guys were close friends. We all decided to travel one weekend and run the Kiawah Island Marathon in Charleston, South Carolina. Due to too much racing last fall, (3 marathons in one month and Kiawah a month later) I had to DNF at the half marathon point. I waited for two of my friends to finish and it was very emotional. One guy was trying to break 3:40 and he was so close. I was screaming at him during the finish you would have thought that I had a thousand on him to win the Kentucky Derby it was great. My other friend had always grown up in his big brother’s shadow. His brother had run a 4:00 marathon and that was his time to beat. After several attempts and at the age of 50, he beat his brother that day with a 3:50. For the last ¼ mile I kept screaming you’re gonna beat NED! It was very emotional and a great feeling.

Sometimes it’s not about the performance but about the experience. Running for me isn’t a sport but a lifestyle. And I really enjoy sharing that lifestyle with new and old friends.

First Day Back

Yesterday was my first run in 3 1/2 weeks. I have never had a flu that kept me down like this thing did. I ran my normal 5.2 mile loop through Yorktown. I started slow and steady and I felt really good.

Yorktown is a great place to run. It's a natioanl park where Washington beat Lord Cornwalis and where America won it's independence. The park has nearly 20 miles of paved asphalt tour roads. These are asphalt one ways roads that are about a car and a half wide. On a normal 6 mile run I might see one car and they are only driving around 15 miles an hour.

The tour roads are mostly covered by large trees so they are great to run in during the summer heat. The roads take you through the actual battlefields and the encampments where the French and American soilders fought the British. Today the area is large fields with green grass. Since the entire park is protected the area is full of wildlife. It is common to be running at dusk and look out across a field and see a herd of 30 or 40 deer.

Running through the battlefields is so peaceful. It is always time that I can spend with my thoughts. The only sounds are the wind and birds in the trees. When work is just terrible all I want to do is put my shoes on and run through Yorktown.

The terrain is rolling and there are several decent hills. It is a great place to run. The national park backs up to a city park that has miles of dirt trails. I can go out and run 25 plus miles and never cross the same path. Oh and this is only a mile from the house. I'll post some pictures soon.

The FLU

I have had the worse case of the flu. This is the end of three weeks of being sick. I missed a whole week of work and had a fever for 5 days. I've never had anything like this in my life. I lost almost 8 pounds and I really didn't have it to lose.

Three weeks without running has almost killed me. I have gotten mean and all I think about is running or working out. I dream about running. This has almost gotten crazy.

I tried riding my bike Tuesday and it wasn't pretty. I made it about 30 minutes but I had to pull over three times with severe caughing fits. When I got home from the head down I was great but my head almost exploded with my sinus pain.

Tonight I biked for 45 minutes and didn't really have the cough as much. I had 2 fits but didn't have to stop. Tonight my sinus pain hurts so bad I can't even eat. My doctor said that my flu gave me a sinus infection. I have some meds but it isn't helping enough.

I'm going to run this weekend no matter what. I just can't stand it anymore. I've missed my spring marathon and my first triathlon is Saturday. There is no way that I can compete in a race right now.

This is a part of running. There are ups and downs. There is health and sickness. In my glass is half full way of thinking, the flu is better than IT band or pulling a muscle or an ACL tear. I'll get over the flu.

What are you doing now? I'm going to Disney World

I took my kids to Disney World last week. It really was a lot of fun but it definitely wasn't a vacation. My wife planned the whole trip and really did a great job.

We were scheduled to fly from Virginia to Florida direct on Airtran at 12:30 on Saturday. We arrived at the airport at 11:00am. When I walked into the terminal the Airtran there must have been a hundred people in line. What is going on? Someone told me that the flight had been canceled. Are you kidding what am I going to do with my kids? The wife an dkids found a seat and I waited in line. After about 10 minutes my oldest son comes over and says, "Mom says call the airlines like they do on the Amazing race." Sounds good. I called the airlines and finally got us booked on an 8:30pm direct flight with 5 seats together. Almost everyone in front of us got booked on a 5:30am flight the next day. UGHHHHHHH! Good call dear.

Spending a whole week with my family was great. I had so much fun with them and it was great to see the excited and really happy. Discipline in a family theme park is the easiest thing to do, and my kids quickly figured it out. Everyday the boys stretched their boundaries until waiting in line became a Little Rascals episode.

I only ran twice during the week. 5 miles both days.

The family was shark bait at Epcot.

All of us for a photo.
My little monkies.

The monkies outside of Magic Kingdom. Don't let the cute little girl fool you. She can hold her own with the two brothers.

Who Am I

Ok, there isn't anything to watch on television and I don't even have anything saved on the dvr worth watching so I decided to ramble for a while.


So who am I. I am 36 and a father of 3, a son 7, another son 5, and my little girl is 2. I've been married for 11 years to my college sweatheart. I live in Yorktown Virginia and have lived here all of my life except when I went out of state to college. I own a contracting business and it is a lot of work.


I started running in 7th grade and have always been pretty good at it. In 8th grade I was fast enough to go up to the high school and run cross country and track. Probably one of the worst things that I ever did. I was talented enough to hang in there and finish all of the workouts but I ended up spending more time in the trainers room than anywhere else. I had stress fractures in both feet, hip flexior problems, IT band issues, and even a broken arm that required surgery and a screw in my wrist. I was tripped while running the freshman mile and broke my wrist. Even then I ran the rest of the season with cast. By the end of my sophmore track season I was done. My coach had completely burned me out. He knew how to get us to peak each season, he just didn't know how to keep us healthly so that we could peak as seniors.


I went to Clemson University and studied Construction Science. I did my share of partying and trashing my aerobic systems. After college I went to work for an industrial construction company. We worked in the areas shipyards and coal plants. Breathing that mess all day on top of the 2 packs of ciggarettes that I smoked for 10 years and I was a walking time bomb. I always kept my weight in check. At my largest I weighed 185 lbs and I am 5'11.


My wife told me one day that she wasn't going to get pregnant if I was still smoking. And she really meant it. We went on a week long cruise that summer and during that week I went "cold turkey." A year later my lungs had cleared and I started running again. It was really tough. I would run 800yds and then walk 200 yards. Soon the miles increased and one cold February day I ran 24 miles in our local park. I was hooked again. I loved how I felt running long. I loved laying in bed a night and my legs felt spent. It's great.

That was three years ago. I ran my first Marathon in March 2007 and then ran 3 more last fall. This year I am going to really work on my training and see how my speed improves.

Got a Call from the Doc

So I have felt like I have been running on fumes for the last month. I mean tired. So tired I can't hardly even get out of bed in the mornings. So tired that I don't think I have the energy to keep my eyes open. Not sleepy muscles nut like I am completely running on empty.

Then I got the flu. I have 3 kids and they just bred disease and sickness. The little suckerbaits are like petri dishes that go to school and coleect every nasty disease culture that they can find nd bring them home. The flu this year was some evil stuff. I ran pretty good on Wednesday night but by Thursday morning I had a fever and a bad case of the chills. I went to work for a few hours and then came home to get in bed. I put on thick socks, sweat pants and a hooded sweat shirt and got under the covers. And shivered for hours.

Anyway, I stayed home Friday and didn't have anything to do so I started looking at my running journals. I track everything I eat, the weather, my runs, how I feel and other stupid stuff. I was trying to figure out why my performance was off and why I felt so bad. I noticed that I was eating a whole lot more during the summer. During the summer I drank a 32 oz Gatorade after every run. During the winter I drink water. I was eating smoothies with protein at night, now I was drinking a cup of hot tea before bed. I was eating a bagel, 2 scrambled eggs, cheese and 2 slices of ham or turkey for breakfast. Now I am eating one package of instant oatmeal. So I came to the grand conclusion that I need to up my calories.

Great News! Eat more! Yea it isn't that easy. I figured I am only eating about 2000 calories and I need between 3500 and 4000 calories a day. So I have started drinking Gatorade after workouts. I started eating big breakfasts again and trying to eat more during the day. After a week or two of this diet I would have thought that my energy levels would perk up. No such luck. In fact I feel even worse. My wife told me that I needed to get a physical and get a full blood work up. I actually listened to her and made an appointement.

So I went to the doc's office and he checked me out. My blood pressure was great. They weighed me with my clothes on and I got a lttle perturbed. I mean I'm a distance runner. Weight is a big deal for us. They just thought I was crazy. I looked at the nurse and told her that I run marathons, of course I'm crazy.

Then the masochist nurse stuck me with a bunch of needles and drew a bunch of blood and I was done. The doc was supposed to call me the next morning. He called and said that everything looked real good except for my hemoglobin count was 13. Ok Doc, what does that mean to me. Well he said that hemoglobin is how the blood carries oxygen to the muscles. If my hemoglobin is low then I can't get as much oxygen to my muscles. My performance will suffer and I would feel tired. I might look pale. Hey Doc that's me! I feel like that. He said that he was going to run a few more tests and call me later. He said not to worry because it is a fairly common occurance in distance runners.

Hopefully this at least explains some things. Now I just gotta fix it.