Time For Broad Street

It has been a while since I last blogged. I am going to have to blame Facebook for that. It is addicting, and I welcome anyone to request me as a friend.

It is now less than 12 and a half hours until the Broad Street Run. It seems like yesterday I was signing up and now it is upon us! My first major race and the excitement has been building all day.

I went to the expo this morning with my son and brother. We arrived at Lincoln Financial Field a little after 10 and the line was incredibly long to get in. It moved quickly though.

The expo was pretty cramped, and whoever planned the layout was pretty sneaky. When you got upstairs you had to go all the way to the right to the end and get your BIB. Then you had to turn around and go all the way to the other end to get your shirt and bag. In the meantime you had to pass every single vendor that was set up for the expo.

The only thing I bought was a t-shirt for each of my kids, and a case of GU. The GU was a great deal, only $22 and I was able to mix and match flavors. I got a few I like and some I have not tried yet.

So here is my plan for tomorrow... My goal is an incredibly slow 1:45. I will run the first two miles at 11:00 pace, then the next three miles at 10:30 pace, and the last five miles at 10:00 pace. That will give me a finish time of 1:43:30 and a 90 second margin of error to reach my goal!

I posted that plan on my Facebook page for all the world to see. I risk failing in front of all the Internet world, but if I pull it off I can look like a running scholar. lol

So, I am not as prepared as I thought I would be at this point, but I am very confident that I will have a good run.

Good luck to everyone racing this weekend!

DNS

Well, today was my first DNS, but for good reason.

A few posts ago I talked about a 5k that I signed up for with the intent of a new PR and possibly going sub 30 minutes for the first time. A few days after that I realized something was significant about the date.

My son's first t-ball game.

So it was obvious which I would go to.

It was fun watching the kids play t-ball. They all had these great bog looks of excitement on their faces and were having such a great time.

And I saw a runner in my son this week. At his t-ball practice the kids got in line and ran around the bases. My son, being the shy one, ended up being the last one in line. He loves to run and I could see it in him. He wanted to sprint ahead of everyone. He had to hold himself back not to pass the others and he had a look of determination on his face.

I can see in him, that primal desire to run. There is an animal in him that just wants to run free.

I need to feed that animal.

Merry Christmas!

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday all year, but Christmas is is also special to me. First because what we truly celebrate with this day is the birth of Jesus Christ! Secondly it is growing more special because of having a family, with two awesome sons. One is 5 and the other is 2.

There are three stages to a man's life. He believes in Santa, He doesn't believe in Santa, and finally he is Santa. It was fun last night, clearing out the cookie bowl and leaving only a few crumbs. My oldest was in awe at how hungry Santa was. The look on his face all morning was priceless!

My dear wife bought me two Under Armour cold gear shirts, and they feel great. I did not use them on my run this morning, because I like to wash my clothes before wearing them. But I can tell that my cold runs will now be much better with these shirts.

So let me wish you all a Merry Christmas, and remember that born this day in the city of David is a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord... who is for all people!

Future Runner

I have two sons. The youngest will be two next month and the oldest is five years old. They frustrate the hell out of me sometimes, but they are everything to me, and truly a blessing from God.

When I finally got my Forerunner 305 a couple of weeks ago, there was only one person as excited as me. My five year old son. The reason he was so excited was because I told him that when I got my Garmin, he could have my other running watch. It is really nothing more than a timer and a very poor heart rate monitor that uses the pulse from your fingertip.

As soon as I opened my Forerunner, he ran over to the desk to get his new watch.

The next logical step was to get him shoes. We went to Foot Locker and tried on a few pair. We settled on a nice looking pair of Nike Shox. My son likes them because they have the "shocks" in the back and he thinks they can make him run faster and stop him from falling.

After the shoes I promised to take him for a run. We finally got our first run in this afternoon.

There is a field down the street from us, so I figured we would run down there and run around the field a bit. Of course this was before my long run this morning. (See previous post). My legs were killing me, but I took him out anyway.

He ran along the sidewalk, and I paced him in the shoulder of the street. I told him to take it slow at first, (more for me than him) and keep upright. He was doing well and he looked so adorable running down the street. I wish I had my video camera with me.

We got to the field and saw a deer. Then we ran around the field a bit. We raced and had fun. He controlled the running and decided when to walk. I am impressed because at moments we were running a 9 minute pace. Now to just keep him interested in running... Maybe he will BQ before I do.

I used my Garmin because we had to have our running watches in order to run. I also thought it would be neat to show him our path of the run and were we had gone. Most of this is walking, but we ran a lot of it...