Catching Up

“Success is peace of mind, which is a direct result of self- satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.” - John Wooden

__________________________________________________________

Well, it has been 17 months and 1 week since my last post. A lot has happened since then. I won’t bore you with everything in between (sadly nothing too exciting has happened since then), but just a few things of note. I left my last blog on mission to conquer my running woes and run a few half marathons to see what I could do. I was in the middle of running 31 runs in 31 days and I had planned to continue on for another 30 runs in 30 days. Well, I ran 58 times in 61 days with some great personal results. The 4 days that I didn’t run were 4 days that I took off between my October and November run challenges. I was feeling pretty rocked after October and needed to rest a few days before running everyday again for November.

After completing the challenge, I had two half marathons lined up in early December. The first half-marathon, the Mistletoe Half Marathon in Winston-Salem was on December 1st, 2007. I had been tracking my MAF test and the last one I did right before Mistletoe was 7:10, 7:18, 7:24. A big improvement from October’s MAF test which was 7:37, 7:56, 7:50. So I had this grand idea that for Mistletoe. I was going to test our MAF theory and stick to a heart rate of 155 for the race and see if I averaged out over 13.1 mile a 7:25/mile pace since that is what my latest MAF result was. I knew my time wouldn’t be fast and I was ok with that, I knew was racing down in Charlotte the following weekend in the Thunder Road half marathon. Well, in theory, it sounded good, but realistically, it was a disaster. Looking back at my splits, the only miles that I actually was under 160bpm for an average was the first two miles, not to even think about 155bpm. My real plan was to run the first 10 miles at 155 and then run hard the last 3 miles descending. Even though I wasn’t on my original plan of holding 155 for the first 10, I thought that I was pretty conservative averaging 163bpm through the first 10 running a 7:10 average mile pace. As expected, my result wasn’t anything great, but I almost successfully completed my goal to descend the last 3 miles. I ran 6:39, 6:22, and 6:28 with a finishing time of 1:32:02, a 7:02 pace.

The following weekend, I headed down Charlotte for the Thunder Road Half-Marathon. With the poor results of the previous weekend, I didn’t really have anything to lose. I had put all this time into running and still didn’t have any results. I decided not to worry about a pace or a HR for that matter, however I was still going to keep track with my garmin. The gun was off and I was rolling. I was pretty amped for this race. It was downtown, tons of people and I ran with my ipod during this race to stay as focused on the task at hand. I ran through the first mile, looked down at my watch and was sure that the race was over...I had just ran a 5:58 mile! Well, as I was thinking to myself what I was going to do next, I figured, “hell, you are here to run , so keep on goin’.” I definitely concentrated on slowing down a bit after the first mile and find a pace that was comfortable to hold for as long as I could. Well, long story short, I somehow held on. As you can see from the picture, I was hurting, but it was all worth it. I stopped the clock that day at 1:24:53, a 6:30/mile average pace.

Well that race last race was December 8, 2007. Not much happened athletically after that. I turned to the newest chapter in my life, my job. I started my new job on January 2, 2008. I took at job at PrimeCare, an urgent care in Winston-Salem. Like most new things, I took this job on full force. I worked every shift that I possibly could have and tried to soak up any piece of knowledge that was given to me. Afterall, I was the new guy, but not only the new guy, a new grad. As I began to take on more and more shifts, I began to work out less and less. Before I knew it, my job had taken over and I wasn’t working out at all. It took me about 5 months to realize it. Looking back, I was amazed how much time went by and how cranky I had become to realize that something essential had left my life, my physical well-being.

My best buddy from PA school, Greg (GP), started challenging me in April of 2008 about a race. As we had spoken weekly on the phone, I think he realized that I had not trained once since early December. I must say this was odd as far back as I could remember since I had moved to Winston-Salem in 2000 that I had taken off completely. It seemed in each phone conversation, we HAD to talk about triathlon. I was denying it at the moment, I was copping out saying I was done with triathlon. He would say, “Man, when are you going to start training again?” His continual prying into my brain about my triathlon days got deeper, “Are you ever going to make it back to the sport, have you just given up?” As I was able to fend him off with my nonchalant excuses, he used a different tactic, challenge. At some point, I think he said something along the lines, “Man, it would be sad if I beat you the Lake Logan Triathlon.” Well, to give you a bit of background about Greg, he is a pretty big dude. Former Tight End at Oregon State, I think he was in the 250's during his prime there. Needless to say, he is a Clydesdale. I think he was down to 220, but still, I was thinking, “is he serious, he was going to beat me.” Well, I finally obliged to the challenge. It was on, August 2nd, Lake Logan Triathlon, an Olympic distance race. I was 8 weeks out and on June 1st, I began my daily training. Once I committed, I made an outlandish bet. I figured if we were gonna race, something was going to be on the line. The bet was, if I beat GP by 18 minutes, he would buy me dinner. If I didn’t, I owed him dinner. Well long story short, I lost. I beat him by 12:35 that day, 5:25 off the winning bet time. For excuse purposes :), I ran a 44 minute 10K, pretty slow considering. Had I ran what I have previously, it would have made it for a close race. In the end, it wasn’t about who won or lost, it was about the journey, the friendship and personal challenge to get back in shape. Even though I wasn’t back to the fitness had been previously been in triathlon, it was a start. It was also learning how to balance work and personal life, not an easy task.

Well, September/October rolled along and I found myself slowly creeping back to working more and training less. This time, I realized it much sooner and decided I was going to ride through the winter. I was on fire with riding until about mid February of this year. I had been at Primecare (PC) for about 15 months and I was getting fairly frustrated with our leadership. I didn’t feel like they had me in their best interest. It seemed the leaders at PC were living along the mantra of “working more, paying less.” My interest to look for a new opportunity became greater. First and foremost, I needed to find a job allowed me to train more, which meant to work less. In 2008, I averaged over 55 hours/week, way too much working! There were a few opportunities out there for me to take, but one in particular seemed to put me “back to the good ole days.” My brother had taken a position in Boise, ID. He had been laying the seed for a few months, “it would be nice to have you out here.” Well, in February of 2009, St. Alphonsus offered me a job in Orthopaedics as the first Ortho PA.

I started work on March 23rd and have finally settled in. I think Boise is going to be a great fit for me, tons of outdoor stuff to do and I look forward to cross country skiing in the winter for a different fitness stimulus.

Just as I left the blog 17 months and 1 week ago, I have begun my run challenge – 60 runs in 60 days. I have no race plans for the year yet, we’ll just see how it goes.

Getting it rollin',
John