Back in the Saddle

After what I see to be a sizeable hiatus, I’m getting back to the blog.  It was a heck of a summer, in many ways.  As a teacher, I obviously have my summers off, and free to spend with my family.  My wife works in the schools as well, so all four of us (the two of us and the kidlings) were home all together.  We got in a nice trip to Colorado, and some other fun family time. 

The downer of the summer, and mainly the reason why the blog went silent is that my dad got sick and passed away at the end of the summer and early fall.  That event, obviously, took a toll on me, and occupied much of my time and energy – physically, emotionally, spiritually, and otherwise.

That said, I’m getting back in the game.  Since my last post, I have run four half marathons!  Not too shabby for a runner who, a year and a half ago, ran his first 5K and had to take a walk break.  (And look at me, referring to myself in the third person.  Who am I – Bo Jackson?  Jimmy from Seinfeld?  Elmo?) 

In the past months, I have done the Minneapolis HalfMarathon, the Urban Wildland Half Marathon in Richfield, MN, the Surly TrailLoppet Half, and the Monster Dash Half.  I also did a funky little race in Minneapolis called the Tri-Loppet (it’s a triathlon, but with paddling, running, and biking – perfect for those of us who HATE swimming).

I’ve written race reports for some of those races – I’ve tried to write over the past several months, but they pretty much came off half-assed and, to be honest, not very well written.  I’m going to try to pencil-whip them back into some semblance of shape/coherence and get them on the blog.  

I also am working on some shoe reviews, gear reviews, and book reviews.  I just ordered a pair of the new Skechers Go Run3s, which I’m super excited about, and I just picked up a pair of Merrell Bare Access 2s from 6pm.com for $40.  Not sure if I’ll write up a review on those – pretty late to the party, since the BA3s are already out. 

Finally, immediate goal for the blog will be to chronicle my road to my first marathon.  I’m on the verge of signing up for the Med City Marathon in Rochester, MN.  It’s on May 25^th (Memorial Day Weekend) and from all the reviews I’ve read, it sounds like a really nice race.  I’m hoping to use this space to keep myself honest and accountable as I train, fret, get excited, get tired, get sore, and get excited again about the training process (at least as accountable as a blog with zero current readership is – at the bare minimum I feel like I’m putting it out there in front of God and everybody, for some sort of scrutiny).

I’ll be posting on a hopefully regular basis from here on out, and especially starting on Monday, as I officially start the marathon training.  

Race Review - Lake Johanna 4 Mile

First, I should say that this race isn’t a full-fledged race, but more of a spring tune-up type of affair.  The Minnesota Distance Running Association (MDRA) puts it on, and it’s free for members – membership costs $25 per year.  In fact, it’s a members-only race, but the fact that my $20 (I got a deal for signing up at another event) got me 3 free races got me to fork over my dough-re-mi.  (For those of you in MN and interested, the other freebies are a 7 miler next weekend and a 4 mile trail run in April).   I just joined the MDRA a coupe of months ago, so this was my first race with them.

Overall, it was a fun race, and, more than anything, it was good to get back out and running with a pack of people again after the winter.  It was my first race of the season.  Big props to MDRA for scheduling it at the crack of 11:00 am - the sun was up, and so was the temperature, kind of.  

The course was basically a four-mile loop around Lake Johanna, which sounds really nice, but actually only the first and last half miles were within sight of the lake.  The rest was going through residential neighborhoods, which I don’t mind at all – most of my running is through neighborhoods, at least as I begin my runs. As I’m sure that you can relate, the only really tough thing about running through a quiet residential neighborhood is resisting the temptation to steal garden gnomes.  My running jacket has really small pockets, luckily, so I was able to restrain myself.  Most of the good gnomes were already taken (I'm a very middle of the pack runner) or solidly frozen into the ground anyhow.

The only other thing about the race that was iffy was that about a mile of the course was on Snelling Avenue, which up in those parts is a two-lane, divided highway with a speed limit of 55.  It had a generous shoulder, and we were running against traffic, but it still made me extra vigilant, especially as I was running in the couple of turn lanes that were on the course.  You never know what kind of yahoos are out on the roads.

The course itself was nice, with just a couple of hills, none too steep, and just right for a challenge.  The people running the event are super nice as well, and the registration was easy – no advance registration, and the race was just for members, but they were very welcoming and I saw that several people in line with me joined the MDRA today.  Pfff.  Newbies.  They are most assuredly not old-timers like me, who joined, like, a whole two months ago.

It wasn’t officially timed, but there was a big clock at the finish.  This wasn’t a big deal to me, because my race time was measured by the good people at Nike+ and NASA.*  Plus, and even more important in the end-of-race discussion, there were cookies, bagels, and juice (you like-a the juice?) and water.  Plus, they has a huge table of door prizes – jackets, shirts, race entries, hats, gloves, and my favorite category of swag, etc.  I won a really nice piece of J.S. (Jack Squat).  Drawings and raffles aren’t my thing – I never win (I know everybody says that, but I have literally never won anything in a drawing or a raffle).  It was fun to stand with everyone else and pretend that I had a shot at it, though.  [Cue the violin music here, playing for ‘poor me.’]

All in all, it’s a really nice race – very casual, and all of the organizers and runners were chill.  I got some comments about my fluorescent Skechers Go Run2s (more on them in an upcoming post).  More than anything, it was good to be back out, especially after running alone in the dark of morning all winter.

I apologize for no pictures - I'll make sure that my phone is fully charged next time I'm out.  Bad, bad, newbie blogger (picture me hanging my head in shame...)

Thanks for reading!

* I always like to think that NASA is involved in my runs because they probably had a hand in getting the GPS satellites into space.  In fact, I’d like to take this opportunity to thanks them for being an official sponsor of this blog and my running in general.  Welcome aboard, NASA!