GO STATE! BEAT THE ILLINI!

Alriiiiight....this is gonna be a short post because I'm exhausted and I can't think.

MSU plays Illinois tomorrow, and we better bounce back from last week in a BIG way.

Wednesday I lifted, Thursday I ran 4 miles....and somewhere between the end of the run and going back inside my house, I tweaked my knee. I really don't know how, because I can't specifically trace it back to a specific point. It's the the lateral side of my left knee...I've been icing it like crazy, but I wasn't able to run this morning. Today we had to march a couple of miles in the homecoming parade and it felt alright. Sooo...I think this is just one of those things that I gotta take day by day, nothing too serious.

GO TIGERS!!! 3 more games left in the season and they're tied with the Twins in the AL Central.

Told you this was gonna be short.

That's why we're Michigan State

I should have seen it coming. It has happened before.

Saturday night's football game between MSU and Notre Dame was going very great for the first 3 quarters...I mean, as long as you're a spartan fan. It even started monsooning rain in the 3rd quarter, which just added to the craziness. Then for some reason, MSU handed Notre Dame the game on a platter, and the rest is history. Irish win 40-37, see you later. It's not the first time in recent memory that this team has jumped out to a comfortable early lead only to make dumb mistakes and see it evaporate - see Michigan game of 2004, Notre Dame game of 2005, Ohio State game of 2005. I got up early on Sunday (obviously) to get ready for my 20 mile run and I was watching ESPN. They were recapping the game and were asking what the headline of the game should be - "Great Notre Dame comeback" or "This is why you're Michigan State". Personally, I'd pick the second one, how pitiful is that?

So anyway...enough about the game. On Saturday, I barely ate anything after 4pm, and was standing up for most of the game, so I had absolutely no idea about how I was gonna run these 20 miles. Fortunately, the game was never delayed by thunderstorms, and I got to bed around 1am for an 8am wake up call. Perfect. The weather during the 10 mile race also couldn't have been much better. A rain shower moved through right before, but gave way to clearing skies as the starting gun went off. It was cool in the morning so I wore two shirts with a pair of short shorts, but it quickly got warm and started worrying about being too hot...though I ended up being ok. I wanted to go out at BQ pace (7:14/mile) or faster, depending on how I felt, so here's how my splits went:

Miles 1-5: 6:50.74, 7:20.14, 7:17.29, 7:04.47, 7:13.24
Miles 6-10: 7:10.30, 6:57.01, 7:03.93, 7:02.71, 6:51.65
Miles 11-15: 6:53.72, 7:06.37, 7:16.30, 6:51.02, 6:58.11
Miles 16-20: 6:56.99, 6:57.49, 7:07.29, 6:51.90, 6:43.21

First 10 miles: 1:10:51 (7:05 pace)
Last 10 miles: 1:09:42 (6:58 pace)
Total: 20 miles in 2:20:33 (7:02 pace)

For the first 6 miles I was pretty adamant about keeping in between 7:05 and 7:15 pace because I didn't want to tire out after starting out quick, but then I felt like I could pick up the pace on mile 7. Running between a 6:55 and 7:05 pace felt like a real good comfort zone. On the 12th and 13th mile, I caught up with two guys who ran the 10 mile race and were doing a cool down, and they gave me some good advice about running my first marathon in Detroit, so I didn't care that I slowed down a tad. They turned around after mile 13, so I was on my own for the rest of the way. Every split after that was in the 6:50's, save for two - the 18th and 20th miles. Obviously the 20th mile because I finished strong, but on the 18th mile I went to grab a cup of water to wash down my Clif Blocks, but I fumbled it! So I stopped to turn around and get another cup, so that's what slowed that mile down.

All in all, I felt great. I felt like I was starting to hit some semblance of a wall on the 18th mile, but that HAD to be due to all the work I was doing the previous day and night. No way I'm gonna be doing any of that stuff come marathon time.

Yesterday I was sore as hell, no joke, so I ended up biking about 15 miles throughout the course of the day to loosen up my muscles a little bit. This morning I did the obligatory 4 miles on the elliptical to loosen them up a little more. My buddy Phil says that he's not impressed with my running because of a new world record set by joggling...he says I've got a lot of work to do!

GO STATE! BEAT THE IRISH!

It's gameday!

...and it's gonna be interesting. Gametime is set for 8pm and we're supposed to get big thunderstorms tonight. Fantastic.

This game marks the 40th anniversary of the "Game of the Century" back in 1966. MSU was #1 in one poll, Notre Dame #1 in the other, and the two teams played to a 10-10 tie. Notre Dame ended up winning the national championship because that was MSU's last game, and Notre Dame annhialated USC the next week in convincing fashion. The game also featured 20 All-Americans and 30 future pro players. So yea...you can imagine the amount of talent that was on the field that day.

Why is this particular game important? Well...MSU has won 7 of the last 9 meetings, including 44-41 in overtime in South Bend last year. And if Notre Dame wasn't pissed about losing all those times already, we planted our flag in their field after our victory last year. So they'll be out for the kill, especially since they didn't show up last week against the rodents down south.

As for running...yesterday morning I did 5 miles, and the ankle felt alright. It was actually one of the better runs that I've had in a while. At one point though, I started to hallucinate. It was the time of the morning where the sun was just coming up, and I passed thru a part where trees line the sidewalk, so it seemed to be much darker than usual. I daydream hardcore when I run, and I think it just kind of got to me a little bit, but I quickly snapped out of it.

Tomorrow I am doing my 20 mile training run at the Capitol City River Run 10 Mile race. The race starts at 10am...not a big deal, right? Well...read the top of this post again. Gametime is 8pm and games last somewhere between 3.5 and 4 hours, so I probably won't get back to my house until after midnight. Add in the weather...if there's a thunderstorm, they're gonna have to delay the game until the storm moves through, and I guessing we (the marching band) have to stay through all of it. So, by the worst of luck, I might not get that much sleep tonight. But I am definitely looking forward to the run. So we'll see how it goes.

GO STATE!

The elliptical owns me

School always seems to get the best of me...so I'll try to make this short and sweet because I still gotta read a little bit before I call it a night...

On Monday my ankle was feeling a bit of after-effects from the 18 mile run on Sunday, so I've been concentrating on icing it and generally trying to make it feel better. I biked about 15 miles on Monday, then on Tuesday I didn't feel comfortable enough to run on the ankle, so I did 4 miles on the elliptical. Wednesday I lifted, and this morning I jumped on the elliptical for 4 miles again just as a precaution. My ankle feels alright as of tonight, so I'm gonna try for 5 miles in the morning with flexibility to shorten it if needed. There....short and sweet.

Oh, what is it about elliptical machines? I usually go between 180-190 strides per minute, which seems to be a pretty swift pace, but it takes 11 minutes to do one mile. Does anybody know why this is? Does it have to do with the length of the flywheel or something like that? So....when I say I do 4 miles on the elliptical, it takes about 44 minutes, which equates to about 6 miles of running at just under 7:30 pace. I don't know...it's just one of those things I wonder about while I'm daydreaming in class.

2 more days until MSU vs. Notre Dame on national TV!

Keep on truckin'

So I said I was gonna do an easy 4 or 5 miles on Friday morning....well, it only ended up being 3 miles because my left ankle became aggravated and I didn't wanna mess with it, especially with a long 18 mile run coming up this morning. So, before I had to report to leave for Pitt, I iced it and generally tried to make it feel better.

This weekend was great, save for the long bus ride. We left Friday morning, pulled into a suburb of Youngstown, Ohio, in the afternoon to run a practice on a high school football field, then proceeded onto the Airport Mariott at Pittsburgh that night. Usually we stay with host families when we go somewhere...the general deal is we play a performance for a high school that night and then the parents of the students take in around 4 of us for the night and then bring us back to the high school in the morning so we can continue to the game we're going to play at. That's how it always works when we go down to South Bend to play Notre Dame. For some reason, this trip was different, and it was cool to stay in a hotel!

I must say, Pittsburgh is a nice city. I've never been to Pennsylvania before, so it was cool to see the rolling hills of what I presume to be the Allegheny Mountains. The rivers in Pitt also contributed to the nice look. The game went swell too (mostly because we won!), the 38-23 score was closer than the game was because Pitt scored the last 14 points in garbage time. Now it's on to play Notre Dame this weekend on our home turf, 8pm on ABC! You can tell I get excited for these things...

This morning I managed to get up for an 18 mile run. It was tough because I'm all stuffed up since Mother Nature apparently thought "Oh shit, it's still summer!" and got warm again, plus my roomate invited people over last night and they were loud as hell so I didn't get much sleep. Anyway, the run went well. The first 10 miles I ran on the river trail path that happens to be the course for next week's Capitol City River Run 10 mile race. It's an out and back deal, and the halfway point of the race just happens to be right by my house. The leaves are starting to fall here, so seeing some leaves on the ground made me remember why I love running in late September and October. I hit the halfway point (5 miles) in 37:25, which is 5 seconds faster than a perfect 7:30 pace. It was a tad faster than I've been doing my recent long runs, but I felt great so I wasn't complaining.

The next five miles brought me back to my house so that I could grab a couple Clif Blocks and a drink of water, and lose one of the shirts I was wearing. I felt like I was going a bit faster on this portion, but I forgot to stop my watch when I got to my house. So, by doing what I needed to do inside my house, it had to have taken me about 3 minutes max before I realized I needed to stop the time. I stopped it at 41:15, subtract 3 minutes and we have a 38:15 split for the second 5 miles. A little slower than the first 5, but I was still fine with the pace.

Then I was on with the final 8 miles. I ran about 2.4 miles to a 5K course that goes through a student neighborhood, then ran the same 2.4 back and added .1 at the end to make it an equal approximate 8 miles. Around the 2nd mile (12th overall), my ankle started hurting me again, but the pain lessened when I didn't think about it, and then I was fine for the rest of the run. I ran the first 2.4 in 17:44 (7:23 pace), the middle 5K in 23:31 (7:35 pace), and the final 2.5ish in 16:31 (6:36 pace). I think I was a little slower on the 5K portion because my ankle started acting up around the beginning of that, so I took it easy until the pain went away. And man...was I trucking at the end!

Final time - 2:13:29 for 18 miles, good for a 7:25 pace throughout. I'm pretty satisfied with it, this was a BIG confidence booster. I took an ice bath this afternoon and I really feel great now. Bring on this next week...

GO STATE! BEAT THE PANTHERS!

First off, I wanna make a sort of public service announcement. My sister lives in Chicago and got hit by a car while she was running the other night. She wrote something up and wanted me to put it in here for anyone who actually reads this blog...

"I know way too many runners who leave the house without any form of ID--either you don't have pockets or just don't feel like carrying it around. It's not just stupid, it's completely irresponsible. I got my wake up call yesterday--I was out for a run when a car ran a red light and hit me. Fortunately, all my injuries were minor--cuts and bruises and one badly sprained ankle. The worst part was that at the time, all I had on me was my house keys. No cell phone. No ID of any form. No emergency contact information. Had I been knocked unconsious, none of the bystanders would have known who I was, where I lived, that I take medication for asthma, or who to contact for me. Not only that, I have most of my phone numbers of my friends and family programmed into my cell phone, but I know very few off the top of my head--really just my parents' house and my former roomate.
Check out http://www.roadid.com/ They make ID tags that attach to your shoe, or you can wear them as a necklace or wrist or ankle band. I've also seen some running stores here in Chicago that sell cheap tags that attach to your shoe. It's not enough just to have ID, you need to carry emergency contact info so your friends and family can find out what happened. Everyone thinks this will never happen to them, I know I didn't. I just want to get the word out to every runner or walker I know, even if you're just going around the block (I was less than a mile from my house), carry an ID. You just never know."

So that's her story...it's crazy when it hits close to home, and I know I'm guilty of not carrying ID either. Like she said, I guess you never know when something like that will happen.

This week has been one crazy heck of a week...I'm gonna summarize....

Sunday morning I ran what I thought was 16 miles, but I retraced the route and got 15.5 miles....oh well. And I accidentally erased the time from my watch, so I don't know splits or anything! My ankle really hurt near the end because I accidentally stepped in a pothole in the last couple miles, but it felt better over the course of the next couple days.

Tuesday I only did 4 on the elliptical because I didn't wanna stress the ankle and also because I was so darn busy and had to get things done. Today I did a speed workout consisting of 1 mile warmup, 3 x 1600 with 800m jogs afterward, and 1 mile cool down for a total of 6.5 miles. My training plan wanted me to go at 5:34 pace, but the 3 miles ended up being 5:42, 5:46, and 5:37. I ran fairly equal splits though, so I'm happy with that.

Tomorrow morning I'm gonna do an easy 4 or 5 miles as recovery, and then we're leaving for Pittsburgh! It's MSU's first road football game of the season against the Pitt Panthers and we scrounged up enough money thru fundraisers to take the band along! So it should be a great time. I just hope we can hang with them because they look like a scary team...

I'm out.

We will always remember

There isn't a doubt in my mind that everybody remembers what they were doing 5 years ago today.

For me, it just seemed like another ordinary day. It was my senior year of high school, and I was just taking things one day at a time. I was sitting in AP Calc, which was coincidentally taught by my cross country coach, listening to the lecture when I noticed one of the history teachers, Mr. Cobb, walking frantically down the hallway outside of our room. I remember thinking to myself, "What's Mr. Cobb doing in the math wing?" Then, not 3 minutes later, he knocked on our door and told my teacher/cross country coach that a plane was flown into the World Trade Center, but it was loud enough for everybody to hear. Maybe I was still a bit naive, but when I heard the news, it almost was like I didn't immediately know what the World Trade Center was or what was happening to it. Then somebody mentioned "twin towers" and everything eventually fell into place.

When Mr. Cobb made the announcement to us, there were about 10 minutes left in class and we had gone over everything we needed to in AP Calc, so we turned the TV to really any channel and saw the catastrophe before our very own eyes. Then, the bell rang and I had to move on to my anatomy class. It seemed like everybody and their brother had already heard about what was going on, and by the time I got to my next class, the first tower had collapsed. Our teacher cancelled her lesson plan for the day and let us just sit there and watch what was happening. Sometime after that, the second tower collapsed and nobody knew what to say. I don't remember much from then thru band and lunch, but after lunch in my French class, that teacher also cancelled her plans and allowed us to watch the newscast from NYC. By that time, they were showing the plethora of dirt covered civilians walking across bridges to get home, along with a few replays of what had happened earlier in the day. My last class of the day, physics, we actually had to learn something, so I didn't see anything more until I got home.

My mom was working for the state at that time, and since she worked by the capitol building, they sent everybody home early, so it was surprising to see her when I got home. She asked me if I knew what was going on and, although I didn't know immediately, it really had started to sink in. We only talked for a few minutes before I had to go to cross country practice. We spent that day in the pool at the middle school doing a water workout, and the tragedy was about the only thing anybody could talk about. It was weird because it was the only pool workout we did all season.

The next day was as telling as any. It was almost a day of thinking, "did that really happen??" The only thing I remember from the next day was the workout we did for cross country. We took a bus out to the backroads of Williamston where not many cars travel, and we ran 8 miles. Not bad, right? Well...to honor the victims of the previous day, our coach told us that we could not talk at all during the run. It was his way of giving a moment of silence for all of those that innocently lost their lives. Hands down, that was the most powerful and emotional run I've ever done. Really all we could hear were birds chirping and leaves rustling in the wind. Almost all of us ran with at least a couple of buddies too, and when we had a question of where to turn, we had to use hand signals. All in all, those are two days I will never forget.

And here we are 5 years later. In an ideal world, hate would not be in anybody's vocabulary and everybody would be at peace with each other. But...this is the way it is and we have to deal with it on a daily basis. One day we will live with an abundance of safety and not have to worry about things outside of our control. One day...

GO STATE! BEAT THE EAGLES!

Quick review on the past couple days....Wednesday I lifted. Thursday I did a tempo run consisting of 1 mile warmup, 5 miles at 6:00/mile pace, and 1 mile cool down. I like doing my tempo runs on a treadmill, that way I know I'm going at a consistent pace, but man....running in place that fast for half an hour really gets redundant. Well, I guess running at any speed in the same place does too, but you think about it more when you're going faster. Tonight I did a 5 mile recovery run, nothing too special.

Tomorrow is gameday! MSU is playing host to the Eastern Michigan Eagles, and I sure hope this game will be a blowout because last week's game certainly wasn't. It'll be good to see if Drew Stanton can get back to his form of the early part of last year too.

My posts have been crazy short lately...anybody wanna know anything about me? It'll give me something to write about...

Sorting things out

Even though I pretty much decided my September racing schedule about a month ago, I never put in writing on here and updated the upcoming race list on the right side of the page. I am actually not going to do any of them - the Dewitt Trail Run 5K on 9/10, the Playmakers Autumn Classic 8K on 9/17, the Capitol City River Run 10 Miler on 9/24, and the Dinosaur Dash 5K on 10/1. What sucks is that they're all on consecutive Sundays, but they're all part of the Playmakers race series, and any race included in that is tons of fun.

Now, I'm not going to shy away from them completely. The course director of the Capitol City River Run 10 Miler is a veteran marathoner, and he offers course support for a 20 mile training run. Good deal, just what I need - a quality long run in a race atmosphere that will get me ready for Detroit.

My only problem is this: My weekend long runs from here on out according to my training plan are 18, 20, 16, 7, 20, 12, 8, and then 26.2 miles. The only way I can get the said 20 mile training run to fit into my schedule is to rearrange those first three runs to 16, 18, and then 20 miles. I talked to my sister about this since she has run some marathons too, and she told me it should be just fine, but to listen to my body for the second time I do 20 miles. She said most training plans give only one run of 20 miles, while there are some that only go up to 16, so if I feel fine to do that other 20 mile run, then she suggested to take it slow since the first one will be at or above marathon race pace (i.e. 7:10/mile or faster).

Yesterday I biked 15 miles and today I ran an easy 4 miles, nothing too bad, but I did feel a little heavy. Not too sure why. Tomorrow I'm probably gonna lift or maybe go swimming if the weather cooperates...though I should get a headstart on homework...

A win is a win

So even though the Spartans were a 28-point favorite to beat Idaho, we struggled to a 27-17 win. I'll take it because a win is a win, no matter how ugly it is, but this was against a team that went 2-9 last season. Speaking of winning...when are the Tigers gonna wake up and realize that the White Sox and Twins are breathing down their necks??

Since this week was a taper week, I only did a long run of 7 and a half miles this morning. Everything felt great, the weather was beautiful and it wasn't too cold or too warm. It was just one of those runs to savor.

You know...I'm really struggling to think of things to say so this is gonna be another short post. Enjoy.

GO STATE! BEAT THE VANDALS!

Quick post tonight because I gotta be up ass early for morning practice and a noon kickoff vs. Idaho!

Lifted weights yesterday, ran a quality 6 miles this morning. Feeling good, feeling great.

One of these days I'll have time to catch up on and comment on everybody's blogs....