Short Absence

Although I could blame the moving in or the early training or the team building that has been going on this week for my absence from this blog, I'm not going to.  It really just boils down to me being too lazy and wanting to take a nap after waking up at 6 in the morning for practices and workouts.  On the up side, I've been getting some great training in with the team and feel like I'm getting a lot stronger.  The season opener in the middle of September is approaching very quickly.  That meet in Boone, NC is only open to the top 20 men on the team.  Hopefully coach sees it in my that I deserve to go on the trip, but in the end it's up to him and how well I run before then.

Here's what's been happening to me since my last post.
FRIDAY & SATURDAY
Were absolutely crazy.  I worked the River City Soccer Classic Friday night with my mom to make some money.  Sounds easy enough, right?  Wrong.  I have never seen so many people complain about having to pay to get into a high school sporting event.  These people were on the verge of fighting my mom and I just because they had to pay to get into a soccer tournament.  Have these people never been to a high school football, baseball, basketball, softball, volleyball or soccer game?  Even wrestling, swimming, and track charge admission for the fans!  These people thought it was ridiculous that they were being charged to go watch high school soccer.  It's over now, but I was getting quite frustrated with some of the people who thought they were too good to pay like everyone else.  I was glad when it was over but went to the MHS football game against Jasper.  The tigers were supposed to win their first game in 5 years against the wildcats but that ended up not happening.  I was busy with the concession stand all night anyway, a very hot, low paying job.  Tired and dehydrated, my mom and I went home to get some sleep before tomorrow morning.
We woke up early to sell tickets for the tournament.  This day was a lot easier than the previous evening.  It could have been that there was a cop standing there or that it was a LOT cooler because of the rain that had rolled through earlier but we had much less trouble Saturday than we did Friday.

After the tournament I went home and packed some stuff to move into my apartment at USI.  By the time I got stuff put together and got out to school, I had to go to the meeting for cross.  That ran long and we went straight to practice.  I didn't get to the apartment that night so I slept at home.

SUNDAY

Sunday was move in day for me.  After moving most of my stuff in we had our long run that night at 6:30.  A nice and easy 12 miler with the team.  Love it.

MONDAY-WEDNESDAY
The rest of this week was training, hanging out with the team, and getting stuff I needed for the apartment.  Now I'm pretty ready for school to start.  Tonight's a cookout with the team.  We're looking good so far.  Hopefully we can get a shot at Nationals this year!

Friday's a trip to Lincoln State Park for another workout.  This trip's always a great time to get some team bonding and a good workout in.  I'm SO STOKED FOR THIS YEAR!!!!!

I can comfortably say that my training is back in line.  Tonight was a great night to run.  That's exactly what I did.  After a shaky start to the week of training, I have fallen back into the grove of training and I'm ready to get back with the team and train that much harder with them.

But back to tonight.  I met Clay Willis at Memorial after I finished my duties at the EVSC soccer fields regulating at the gate.  (I took tickets.)  After a brief mile and a half warm up, we jumped into some up-tempo repeats.  They weren't really intervals, or even repeats for that matter, because they weren't really fast or even that challenging.  We just needed a change of pace and that's exactly what we got.  It really felt good to be back on the track and doing some fairly quality work.  All of my training, except for races, this summer has come in the form of miles pounded out on the road, day after day.  I did finish the workout tonight with about 4 more miles on the road.  All together it was a very successful day for me.

Tomorrow dawns the beginning of the school year for me.  I have the opportunity to move into my apartment on campus tomorrow, well today now.  The mix of nerves and excitement is not a foreign feeling to me since I compete regularly, but this is a little different.  I'm living with some guys from the team and have no clue how it's going to go.  I guess if nothing else, it'll give me some good topics for future blogs.

I've got the first TAC meeting of the year in the morning so I need to be going to bed.  This "after midnight blogging" needs to stop.  But, on a positive note, I wrote two days in a row.

P.S.  Sorry for the lack of a title.  Couldn't come up with anything.

Weak After the Down Week

This week has taught me something.  Taking down weeks is not good for me.  A few things could be to blame.

1. I started this week WAY too hard for coming off a down week.  I got excited on my Monday run this week and took it out at about 6 minute pace, leaving me tired for Tuesday's exploits.
2. I biked a lot last week.  Seeing the opportunity of "time off" shortly before I leave my good bike at home for a while, I rode whenever I could, including a ride in the heat on Sunday.  I even cut that ride short because it was too hot and I was getting over a slight illness, which leads to point 3...
3. I was sick Thursday with a lingering headache through the weekend.  Thursday was supposed to be my last day of work at the TJ Maxx Distribution Center off Lynch Road.  I woke up that morning at about 9, unusually early for me on work days, with stomach pangs.  I went back to sleep thinking I just needed to sleep it off like what usually happens, but no.  I woke up around 2 o'clock that afternoon and could hardly walk because I was bent over in pain.  I had to call in on my LAST day.  Whatever, it's over now.  I woke up again at 5:30 feeling a little under the weather, but I ate dinner and then read until 5 o'clock.  that's not a typo, I read until the sun was about to come up.  I said good morning to my sister as she prepped for soccer and school and she said good night to me.  Woke up with a headache but nothing else.
4. I played dodge ball last night for the first time since fall semester.  For some reason, my body doesn't like to twist and throw.  My core was EXTREMELY sore today.  It was a great time and I got to see some people before they go off to school.

Enough of my excuses.  I did get a great run in tonight, 9 miles at about 6:30 rhythm around the State Hospital and the surrounding roads.  There were quite a few people out enjoying the weather which directly affected the amount of yells and cat-calls I received.  All-in-all, it was a successful run.

I'm tired of the flat around my house.  I'm actually looking forward to the hills of the Other Side of Town.  I'm not sure if my legs remember what a real hill feels like to run up when the biggest challenge I get within a three mile radius of my house is the dinky little bump at the State Hospital.  Don't get me wrong, running what used to be water towers sucks but I need a regular run on some hills.

I move in Friday and have a lot to do before then.  Busy day tomorrow.  Time for some sleep.

The Joy of the Down Week

This week's training for Cross Country season is EXTREMELY light.  You notice that the word "extremely" is bold, blue, and in caps?  That's for a reason.  Four days of 4-7 miles in those days with three days completely off?  Unheard of.  I'll let you know how those runs go when I get to them.

In other news I finished the first third of the Lord Of The Rings books.  (For any who don't know, LOTR is a very long story about:

Hobbits

Elves

A creepy human-like character named Gollum

Dwarves

A king and a wizard

and last but certainly not least

A magic ring.)

I say first third for a reason.  The "stories" that were seen in the motion picture adaptation (which I have not fully seen yet) were derived from the great EPIC (again, bold and different color along with caps for emphasis) of the LOTR story.  The epic is split into six books.  Six, not three (a trilogy), or four (a sissy saga about vampires that sparkle), but six.  Six because Tolkien (he wrote the books for those of you who have only seen the movies) is a boss and like all boss-ly authors, he can get away with writing a giant story in a large number of books (see Narnia, Wheel of Time, etc).  I have begun Part II, if you will (Books III and IV for those of you counting), and will continue to read them so I may watch the movies and not be completely confused as most who watched them when the originally came out were.




That's really it.  Just wanted to update this thing with what I've been up to since my ride.


Sorry for the excessive use of parenthetical expressions in this blog.  Remember, I'm not forcing you to read it.

The Excitement of Friday

My day began slowly since I stayed up too late the night before.  I work up about 10:30 and then it got fun.

I decided I was going to take a bike ride.  This ride was not going to be like anything I'd done before though.  It wasn't just a ride through the neighborhood.  I rode the city, and county.

That's the route and elevation changes in the route.

Here's some of the specs from the ride.
Trip Distance: 39.66 mi.
Ride time: 2hr. 2min. 50sec.
Avg Speed: 19.2mph
Max Speed: 33.3mph
As I began the ride I realized that the trip out would be tougher than the return trip.  There was a steady head wind blowing in my face as I rode out Lynch and Oak Hill Roads.  The hills beginning at Mill lasted until I got off Boonville-New Harmony Road.  Those climbs almost killed my average that I was trying to keep above 19mph for the whole ride.  It sayed up until I got onto Hwy 65 going north.  I finally climbed back over the 19mph mark on my way down the hill on Oak Hill leading to the light at Hwy 57.  From that point on I was almost able to keep my speed above 21mph, at least until I got back into the neighborhood.  I sprinted as best I could to finish the ride and keep my average speed as high as possible.

That was just the begining of my Friday excitement though.

I had just gotten cooled off, not showered or anything so I was still covered in the salt of sweat, and my mom told me to get dressed, we were going to TJ Maxx.  She needed me to go with her to return some things that she had bought this past weekend with my discount since I work at the Distribution Center.  I threw some shorts on over my biking shorts.  These biking shorts I'm talking about are the skin-tight shorts that have the padding in them because the seat of the bike I ride is almost nothing.

Pretty minimal.  Very uncomfortable.

The shorts got very uncomortable is what I'm trying to get at here.

We got our business done at TJ Maxx and we were leaving the parking lot.  It's the lot with Target, Dicks, Coldstone, and Moe's in it.  But we were coming from the TJ Maxx area, obviously.  There is a certain interscetion in that parking lot that allows traffic coming from Burkhardt to proceed through the intersection and any traffic leaving the complex must stop.  We were the traffic leaving the complex.  My mom had a slight brain fart and began rolling into the intersection after coming to a complete stop at the sign.  There was a massive Ford F150 entering the complex and they were proceeding through the intersection until they saw my mom begin rolling at which time they slammed on their brakes, allowing the Freestar behind them to rear end them.  There was very minimal damage to either vehicle but both seemed to think that my mom was at fault for "not stopping and being in the middle of the intersection."  They both began yelling at her in the middle of this intersection while traffic kept moving around our van and their two cars that were still parked where the accident happened.  Mom called 911 and reported the accident since she had nothing to do with it and was just a bystander.  We waited for the cops to get there and take some information and get our side of the story then we were gone without a hitch.  Some people are stupid but we have to live with them.

This whole time I had not eaten anything since I got off the bike.  I was starving and my mom was starving so the wreck just made us mad more than anything.  We got over it though when we got to Taco Tiera.  Pretty good tacos  and such there.

That's just about it for my Friday afternoon.  Rest of the weekend to come later.

The Beginning of Anything

I'm not expecting anyone to read this, but I'm sure there will be a few.

It sure won't be interesting, just more or less a journal of the trials and tribulations of the average college kid who likes to do some things, run very great distances and bike even longer distances for example, that other people might find weird or just stupid.  This is going to be a meditation, or a release (haven't decided which), where I look back on some of the things that I thought were interesting.

You don't have to let me know what you think, I'm not doing this for you so it's not necessary.  The grammar and use of the English language will be bad at some points, just a forewarning.
If you want to leave feedback and if you follow regularly what I write and want to see something specific, go for it.  Just don't be an ass about it.  I get enough of that in my day-to-day that I don't need to be taking it online too.

A lot of this will probably be talking about how a run sucked or a ride was great or I had a great time with this person or that person.  If it's not about you, I don't want to hear what you have to say if it's negative, just don't read that post.

If I offend anyone, sorry.  I'll do my best to make it up to you.  If I like you.

Here goes.  I'm stepping off the deep end and going to bed now.  Gotta run in the morning.