Surly Boy Wonder

My friend and fabulous work mate at Surly, Keith (AKA Surly Boy Wonder–his jacket even says so) has taken to blogging.  He sums up our last Surly Gives A Damn event well and uses the words “lovely” and “talented” in conjunction with my name.

Oh Keith…that will get you far!

Downhill from here

As far as Boston marathon training goes, we have just left the hardest training week in our wake.  That last week was a mighty tough one for me.  Finding myself with little desire to run on two of the five days is never a good sign and my body felt like it was breaking down under all of it.

If you find an extra hamstring laying around, I will gladly take it and find someone to replace my left one.

As a little pep me up, my coach shifted my interval workout from today to Thursday to help with my aged legs, that I am asking a lot of, and then told us that we really only have about 5 key workouts left, so stay the course!

We have 3 interval runs and 2 progression runs.  Which sounds nice.  Right?  The interval runs this week are 10 x 800s, next week 12 x 800s and the following 14 x 800s all at 6:20 to 6:30 pace with 1:40 rest between each one.  Since I am basically speed sensored, stride legnth senored and cadence sensored to my coach, there is no way of getting around these workouts, only going through them.

These are the kind of workouts that can make you crumple into a heap and cry, they can make you wonder what the fuck you got a coach for, they make all the negative things you ever thought about your abilities well up right before your eyes, they make your mind numb and then they allow you to evaluate how much time you can actually tolerate in your pain cave.

At this point, on the way down the hill, it’s all about keeping your shit together, all the way through to the bitter end.

Nothing says St. Patty’s Day like this

Here it is…

The last in the series of what the hell is taking up all my time.

Sunday, the National Junior Olympics for cross country skiing kicked off.  It is being held at Theodore With Park and hosted by the The City of Lakes Nordic Ski Foundation, which is why I am involved.   It is going on all week and will finish up on Saturday night.

Ten teams from across the nation, the best of the best, are strutting their stuff and making it happen.

I am beginning to wonder what the heck I am going to do with all my extra time once this is all wrapped up and I am done kick’n it with sponsors.

Maybe clean the house for the first time in six months.

Catching Snowflakes

Dude, it’s so much easier to catch’em in a blizzard!

Urban training

Boston marathon training has kicked off in full force these past couple weeks.  Our long run this past weekend was 17 miles.

I find 17 miles to be that point in which your body starts screaming at you, it begs you to stop and then you suddenly remember why you told yourself you would never do it again at mile 21 of the race.

Di and I are running Boston together.  I guess I didn’t realize until yesterday that she ran ONE marathon.  ONE…and made it to Boston. Pretty cool.

Needless to say, we have been doing a lot of running in the city.  We have been doing a modified hill workout in parking ramps downtown.  If you want to feel hardcore…try sprinting up a ramp at 6:00 am then do it again and again and again.  That will do it.

What has been great is our long runs.  Not that I didn’t know this before, but we live in such an amazing city.  Our runs have started off by the lakes, meander though beautiful hilly neighborhoods, straight through the heart of the city and then we run along the river.  What else could you ask for?

OK, besides warm weather.

Murphy the goat

So, along with everything else that is not being tended to with our household that seems to be swirling and whirling these days…the DOGS have made claim to a bit of madness.

I have not trained Murphy. The dog I got on a Surly buzz.  Nor has anyone else in the house.

That damn dog eats almost anything in sight.  I swear it has the dog version of pica.  If you don’t put it away, it is toast.  Good life lesson, unless you are a pair of Dad’s Lucky jeans.

Here is the latest of the trageties…

Cost for a public school library book: $9.99

I wish it could!

Today marks the year anniversary of my dad’s death.  What a year it has been.  Everyone has grown, changed and morphed their ways in order to cope with his loss.

Yesterday, KP was hang’n out with his buddy Joe.  They were asking funny questions of Joe’s magic 8 ball.

Then KP shifted gears and asked, “Will my Grandpa come back to life?”

The reply on the ball was “Nope, not this time.”

In a disgruntled voice he said, “OH MAN!”

What a perfect question from a six year old who loved his grandpa so very much.  How I wish that magic 8 ball would tell us all he would be back.

The void is huge, the hole is deep, life has shifted and that is the way it is.

We all miss him.

Dad, cheers to you today.  We miss you, we love you and we have not forgotten you.

I love you!

Where have I been you ask?

Gone, on so many levels.

My Sponsorship Coordinator position at the City of Lakes Loppet was so much more than I anticipated.  In fact, I am pretty sure it was one of the larger projects I have sunk my teeth into in a while.

It was one of those projects that you thought you wanted to shiv yourself in the temple most of the time and then you got over the hump (then you had to get over another one, oh and another one) and finally as you were rolling on home, you got to see all the hard work you put in pay off.

The entire Loppet weekend ended up being a huge success.  They had record attendance, races filling and spectators that added up into the thousands and thousands.  It was something to behold.

Here is a little clip of the most popular event, the Luminary!

Did I end up skiing in any races?  No.

But, I did end up Ice Bike racing. And, took LAST!  Dead last.  First time in my life, that is a humbling experience and may go hand in hand with this project.

I am going to tell you this…I learned a lot about myself on this go-round and I met some really great people.

Only Nut

As we walked through Pet Smart today, picking up dog food and chew toys so Murphy will stop eating the stairs, KP asked to hang out and check out all the fish while I picked up all our goods.

He was still there, scanning all the fish in all the fish tanks when I came back.  After  a little more time he called us all over and said, “See that one up there? He’s missing an eye.  I want that one!”