2011

So it has been awhile since the last time I posted. In the interim my little sister has gotten married, I have started a new job, and I have run a couple half marathons and the Philly Marathon. The highlight of course was Brittany and Clayton getting married in October... the day was pretty amazing. I have been studying for my licensing exams, and although the material was initially as foreign to me as Cantonese I am getting there. Like training for the marathon it is a long build-up with a fair share of set-backs.

So to backtrack a bit, I ended up running the Philly Distance Run in September in a very disappointing 73:31. I felt like crap from the start, and the lone enjoyable part of the race was the assortment of very fit women rolling past me as I struggled to maintain anything resembling a respectable pace. Soon after the race I started the new job at Merrill, and didn't make the necessary adjustments to bounce back properly. I still got several 20 plus mile runs in, with one or two being fairly respectable pace wise, but the tempos and planned track workouts fell by the wayside. The fault there was completely my own, and my lack of a real plan hampered any progress at all.

I ran a tune up half marathon in Atlantic City in the middle of October in which I ran a harder than it should have been 74:10. The one interesting part of that race was that I didn't sleep a minute the night before. I opted to stay in AC the night before, and after wishing my friends a good night on the town I went to bed around 11. Four hours later of not sleeping I got up and decided since the race had an early start(7:30 am) I would go eat some breakfast at one of the all night casino restaurants. Five cups of coffee later, and fueled by a Belgian waffle chaser, I was still comatose from the lack of sleep. I warmed up at 6:30 and attempted to get myself pumped up...but kept on thinking that I hadn't slept in over 24 hours. Anyway, I got locked into my goal marathon pace of 5:40 and got the intended workout in but my body was unhappy for days. Not surprisingly when I attempted to do a workout the Thursday after the race I was still fatigued and about 2 miles into a light tempo I felt a pull in my hamstring. From that point at the end of October to the marathon a month later I did one light workout...fours days before the race...in which I attempted to get under 6 min.(2 miles at 5:50 pace). My mileage never got over 50 miles again. Needless to say, my confidence was not flying high going into Philly.

I begrudgingly altered my goals in the days before the marathon, and decided to go out at 5:50 pace. Through halfway I was pretty decent, 77:10, but still nowhere close to my summer goal of 5:30 pace. At 20 miles I was still on pace for a 2:35 but I could feel my lack of workouts and a huge reduction in my mileage catching up to me. I came out of Manayunk in a halfway respectable 20th place...and ended up 10k later struggling in in 41st place with a sobering 2:40:04. Only 15 minutes off my goal set in July...the simple evaluation being: pretty shitty.

So after taking a week or two of feeling sorry for myself I decided back in early December to make a concerted effort to run with other people on a fairly regular basis. The guys from the Breakneck Track Club that I am a part of started to get back into their winter base building, and in the past five weeks I have been motivated by Andy, John, Nick, Breton and Jay. The camaraderie of a training group has already started to make a difference in my running, and the sharing of goals and ridiculous stories on runs have made training fun again. So I owe a huge thanks to these guys for helping to get my head out of my ass and realizing the day to day process of training better be something more than a chore or little will get accomplished.

There are a couple people that have also opened up my eyes to the importance of pushing through things on a daily basis and the necessity of goals in life. First, my sister. A little before her wedding she had a nasty fall while riding a horse(horseback riding is a passion on par with running for me), and she shredded her knee. That was not the official diagnosis, but that is why I went to law school and not medical school. Anyway, after a thorough and painstaking evaluation period she opted to get knee surgery in November. After several weeks of fairly smooth sailing she had a huge scare with a blood clot in her leg. After four days of being in the hospital getting a steady dose of medications and wildly differing advice on what she can and can't do she finally got released. Because of the seriousness of her clotting, she is under strict orders that she cannot ride for quite awhile. Very shitty to say the least. But she has set her sights on getting back in the saddle, and I know for a fact that her daily physical therapy and countless blood tests and medications are all endured with the goal being to get back to doing what she loves. And I have no doubt that she will return stronger than ever.

The second person that I have been motivated by is my Uncle Don. He completely tore his Achilles last year, and has been completely shut out of any running at all. After seeing his impressive but nasty scar on Christmas day I was incredulous that running would be a reality for him anytime in the near future. But after hearing him talk about attacking his daily PT, and the progress he has made already in his comeback I became more and more of a believer. But what solidified my confidence in his return to running was something as simple as a screen saver. What it depicted spoke more than any words could have. A seemingly innocuous photo of a suburban street was his way of a powerful reminder of why he was enduring a daily dose of pain at Physical Therapy. The street in the photo is none other than the first block of his daily run after turning out of his house.

And last but certainly not least the biggest stud that I know is my Mom. Here is a person that has had more surgeries and setbacks in her life than the average NFL running back. But somehow she always manages to keep the big picture at the forefront of her psyche and drives on. For years now she has been battling a degenerative spine issue that has caused pain that you or I could not even begin to fathom. Yet she has managed to wake up at 5:30 most mornings to run stadium steps at the high school, or swim 2 miles in the pool, or do a core workout that would humble most 20 somethings. All of this is done with no fanfare, and no big race in the horizon to spur her on. She does it because of the quality of life it provides, and the clarity it gives her as she moves through each day helping countless people as a special education teacher and as a Mom, friend, sister, etc. She is the personification of living your life to the absolute fullest and not letting limitations get in your way. If I can somehow muster half of her daily drive and energy the Olympic Trials will be well within my reach. It starts now, and while the calendar has reset and we are in a New Year now, the turnover of each day is the big game changer. What are we going to do today to better ourselves?

Eric