Absolutely amazing

I've wanted to post on here sometime this week, but I never found a good window to sit down and type until now...blame school.

I know I talk a lot about Michigan State football, but WTF?!? They were down 38-3 against Northwestern (of all teams) and they end up engineering the biggest comeback ever between Division 1-A teams to win 41-38. Who knew? (It tied the record for biggest comeback ever in all of college football - Nevada also came back from 35 down against Weber State in 1991.) Absolutely amazing.

And how about those Tigers?!? Kenny Rogers is a man amongst boys out there. Series is tied 1-1 going back to St. Louis...it's gonna be interesting! And the crazy thing about it is games 6 and 7 are in Detroit on Saturday and Sunday....and the marathon is Sunday morning....so I think the city is gonna be rocking! Absolutely amazing.

Ok, running talk now. I'm still fighting with myself over what to wear for the marathon. On Friday morning I tried to a simulated run - I went out there about 8:15am and the temp was 39 but felt like 36. The marathon starts at 7:15am Sunday, but that morning is also when daylight savings time ends, so we push the clock back an hour. Plus, it looks like it'll be cold like it was Friday morning. I wore a short sleeve technical shirt and a sort of heavy long sleeve technical short over that, and spandex and shorts on the bottom, plus a pair of gloves. I felt great at the beginning because I kept myself warm, but at the end I was getting to be too hot for comfort. And that was after only 4 miles.

Ok. This past week I was reading the latest issue of Runner's World, and they had a sort of FAQ about the 3 major marathons coming up. One of them was Chicago, and they posed the question of what to wear, because it can get chilly at the end of October. The guy they asked responded, "If it's in the 30s or 40s, wear a long-sleeve shirt made of a technical fabric like Dri-FIT on top of your singlet, with shorts and gloves."

Flash forward to this morning. I wake up, it's 44 degrees with light rain. I contemplate waiting for the rain to pass to run my 8 miles, but also figure it may rain on race day so I might as well get used to it. I wore everything the guy said, except I had a short-sleeve technical shirt and a lightweight long-sleeve shirt over that. Honestly, I felt just fine. The only problem were my fingers being a little cold, but that went away after about 3.5 miles. Nonetheless, that just reaffirms in my head that I'll be alright with whatever I end up wearing.

The run was going great until the last mile, I felt a twinge in my right knee. It's weird because I can't trace it back to anything specific, though it may be when I jumped from a curb to the street in my neighborhood. I stopped with a half mile to go, massaged it, then treated the last half mile as a slow cool-down. All the pain went away (weird....), but then came back during the afternoon. As I recall, this happened to me a few weeks ago and it went away in a couple days after I iced it a bunch. So, I'm confident that this will go away quick too as long as I take care of it.

I'm not a fan of writing such long posts, but I'll end with congrats to Zeke and my friend Steve at the Chicago Marathon this morning. Zeke ran it in 2:58:57 and Steve ran it in 2:56:56.....and they're both 37 years old. I hope I can be that fast at that age!

Absolutely amazing.