Fort Worth Public Library

So I am big library fan. It is not unusual for me to go online and reserve 5-8 things at a time to pick up a few days later. It is usually a mix of audio books, books, and DVD's.

Recently I had spotted a lot of blog traffic about the book "Unclutter Your Life In One Week" by Erin Dolan. I really wasn't interested enough to buy the book, but I did want to read it so off to the library website I went. Unfortunately they didn't have it. Well I figured since it was #1 on a lot of Amazon.com lists I couldn't be the only one interested. I knew you could suggest books for the library to buy so I filled out that simple form and 2 days later I get an email saying they had ordered 10 copies. Sweet!

Bandera Almost Here!

Well Bandera is six days from today and the weather is looking frigid. Low temps are predicted to be in the teens when I am in the middle of my second loop so this should be interesting. I am scrambling to find some good winter clothing since my usual method to deal with the cold is to just not run.

I am also feeling more fatigued and sore after my runs lately so that is definitely not a good sign. I am just going to take it easy this week and grunt my way through this race. I am sure it will be a blog worthy experience.

Bandera

I have been totally neglecting my workout duties the past 5 months and find myself in less than ideal shape. My solution, signing up for an ultramarathon that is 31 miles longer than I have ever run before. My time to train, 3 weeks.

This is not going to be pretty.

El Scorcho Tres Recap

For those of you who don't know, my buddy Ryan and I decided to run 30 miles for his 30th birthday. Well that was three years ago and now it has turned in to an annual Ultramarathon with over 500 people running it this year. We are proud of the great event Scorcho has become, and man it can be a lot of fun and work all at the same time.

This recap is going to be short, basically just a weekend timeline. Ryan usually does a great all out recap on his blog so I may just leave that up to him.

10am- Toilets delivered to the park. Toilets were the wrong kind, without the locking mechanism, but didn't have much choice in refusing them at the time.

11am- Run over to Fort Worth Running Company to pick up some supplies. Got an awesome new headlamp for the race.

1pm- Head over to Costco to pick up food, water, extra coolers, and various other race goods. It is amazing how much money you can spend when you are taking care of 500+ people.

4pm- Make sure I have everything gathered up and in the car ready to go.

6pm- Had to stop by work and pick up all the radios. It takes a lot of wall plugs to charge 16 radios.

8pm- Start unloading. Gotta get aid stations, packet pick-up, PA systems, parking area, and a ton of other things set up and ready to go. Jmoney had already set up most of the course during the day so that was a huge help.

10pm- Volunteers and runners start to arrive. GandaMan and Six Pack make a run through the course to check on everything. Still running around trying to get everything set up.

11pm- Last minute details, dealing with the sheer number of people, almost showtime

12:01am- Race starts, I get to lead everyone off (on bike of course), dropping glowsticks while I pedal to give runners a better visual guide of the route (new idea this year that everyone seemed to appreciate)

12:15am- Aid stations are getting crushed but volunteers are handling it well

1am- Things are starting to settle down, runners going through water and cups like crazy

2am- Some of the 25k speed demons are finishing, everyone is finding their rhythm, have to make a run to CVS for hand wipes for the Aid Station Volunteers

3am- Keith Pierce finishes the 50k in 3:08 (new course record), most of the 25kers are starting to trickle in. We are starting to run low on cups so we make a Wal-Mart run

4am- Thing are starting to get quiet, mainly just 50k runners left.

6am- Sunlight starts to break and we do our best to cleanup as much as we can, enjoying cheering on those runners still out on the course, between the volunteers and runners it is just a great group to be around

7am- Cleanup begins hard and heavy, unfortunately it is mainly just the race directors and a select other few. The volunteers had been with us all night and done an awesome job so you they headed home. Hopefully next year we can have some extra help with cleanup after the race.

9am- Finish up at the park and proceed to go and drop of supplies and equipment.

10am- Dirty, Sweaty, and Stinky, but screw it we are going to Ol' South Pancake House to eat some breakfast.


Personal Timeline after 10am

11am- Drive back home and get ready to drive the wifearoo (who surprised me by showing up at El Scorcho), back to Austin.

11:30am- quick shower and on the road headed south on I-35

2:30pm- In Austin taking care of errands

4:30pm- Find myself enjoying life floating around in Lake Travis with a beer and some great friends.

12:30am- Finally pass out back in Austin at Dori's apartment. First time I slept since the start of El Scorcho preparations.

One unforgettable weekend!!!!!!!!

AC Outage Culprit

So my air conditioning atthe house went out yesterday. Turns out this
little wire was the culprit.

New York Part 2-Shake Shack

These are all pictures from the famous Shake Shack in New York. This place is crazy busy at lunch, but we managed to catch it when it was relatively slow. It really seems like a New York version of In-N-Out which means that it is really good. As you can see I really enjoyed shake. The burgers and fries were awesome too.

Interesting Costco Item

This made me do a double take on Costco.com today. Very interesting.....

If things ever got that bad I don't know if I would be that worried about eating.

Great Time of Year!

For those of you who don't know this Sunday is "Selection Sunday" for the NCAA tournament. It is the best time of year to be a college basketball fan. I am looking forward to filling out my brackets next week.

Also, I am heading to New York for a few days of RR tomorrow. Should be fun. Hopefully the weather will cooperate and my plane will get out of here on time.

Upcoming Vacation

So I am heading for New York, NY this weekend and hope to get a run in around Central Park. My only experience with New York City was a brief four hour period when a couple of buddies and I passed through on a 22 state road trip back in 2004. I have entered the lottery for the NYC Marathon a few times, but have yet to make the cut. Looks like it is going to be about 40 degrees colder than the weather here in Texas so my running tights will be making the trip with me.

Training run.

So this is another little photo from out on the trails in Fort Worth.
This photo was taken just south of Overton Park back a few weeks ago.
It is actually right off the Cowtown Marathon path.

Organic???

So we bought strawberries from wall mart today vs. The usual organic
kind we get from target or central market.

Something tells me this little monster is genetically modified.

Training run.

This is a picture I snapped during a recent training run. I have been
using this river crossing a lot as of late. FYI it is right next to
colonial country club for all of you familar with the trails.

Cake!!!

My fantastic birthday cake from work!! I was quite impressed. Probably the best birthday cake i have had since grade school.

Birthday breakfast

So my awesome co-workers threw me a great birthday breakfast.

Good morning.

Who wouldn't want to go running this morning!?

Crossfit

So I have been playing around with this workout program called Crossfit. It is pretty well known now and gaining in popularity daily. My problem with it was I really didn' always know how to do all of the components of the workouts that they post on the website and my gym wasn't really set up for it. Well I finally decided to offically join GSX Athletics and their Crossfit group. Yesterday was my first workout and.......

I am torn up today.

The workout looked innocent enough. Do 150 Kettle Bell Swings and do 10 Burpees every time you had to stop or pause. I hadn't ever done that many Kettle Bell Swings before so I was unsure of how it would go. Well let's just say that about Kettle Bell Swing #70 I knew I was in trouble. 4 sets of Burpees later and another 80 Kettle Bell Swings and I was dead to the world.

My group partners looked much better than I did after the workout and I am not even sure I did all 150. I know I came close, but I started to lose count toward the end when it got really tough. I am going to have to work on that because I don't want to cheat myself.

By the way the girls in the group did the same weight I did and smoked me.

Overall it was a fun experience and I can't wait to to get back for my next class. The camaraderie in doing the workouts in a group is awesome.

Next time I will try to grab some pictures. I was too busy trying to catch my breath to worry about it this time.

Bandera Trail Run 50k

Since I can only post one photo at a time from my iPhone here is the
one I chose. It best summarizes the Bandera experience.

Quick Post About Bandera

This is from an email I sent earlier to Ganda Man (Whom I paced for the last 50k of Bandera). I will post pictures and more info later, but here you go for now.

"I never thought I would finish up a 50k in the dark, in cold weather, with insane wind, with rocks sliding out from under my feet, on steep inclines and declines and yet still feel like a pansy because I was finishing with all of the 100k runners who looked like they had been mugged and beaten after having done the whole damn thing twice."

Energy Fitness Athletes

During my workout today I ran into a few regulars at the gym Trip Littleton and Patrick Martin. I see these guys in the gym all the time so no news there. Well I get back to my office and find my monthly Energy Fitness info email. It turns out that Trip recently finished the Ford Ironman in an amazing 10:43:38 and Patrick smoked the marathon course at White Rock this past weekend to finish in 3:14 which qualifies him for Boston. Amazing performances from both of these guys.

It seems I am surrounded by good athletes which is a great motivator to always try and improve so I can compete.

I am pacing Gandaman for the last 50k of Bandera so hopefully that goes well and afterwards I can start training to take some time off of my marathon pace.

El Scorcho Dos Lights

I was thinking back today to El Scorcho Dos and what a crazy day we had. Running a night race brings a whole new set of challenges on top of the normal things required for daytime runs. One item in particular that tends to be a recurring issue is the lighting situation in Trinity Park. No other event in the park has the light requirements of El Scorcho so it is tough to get the city electricians that when we say that we need "All" the lights on in the park we are not over exaggerating. 

This year Gandaman and myself did an inspection run the night before the race to check on the course and found that 90% of the lights in the main area were not on. I quickly hopped on the phone to Mike, the supervisor in charge of Trinity Park who told me the electrician had already been out and turned on all the lights that he could.  Mike assured me he would look into more and get back to me if there was anything he could do. 

To make a long story short Mike ended up trying to contact the electrician with no luck so he drove all the way in from Burleson to check on the situation on his day off. After being unable to get into the electrical box due to a recent key change Mike and Jim from the Parks Department literally took a blowtorch to the lock. The lock gave up the ghost real quick with that kind of effort and lo and behold the lights were never turned on. 

Those of you at El Scorcho know that some of the more strategic lights never came on, but without the last minute efforts of Mike and Jim we would not gotten we would have had only a couple of lights at the Gazebo area. 

So what does this mean for next year? Well looks like Ganda and I get to spend the Friday before El Scorcorcho showing the course to the electrician and fielding the inevitable questions of what would possess anyone to come out and run an 25k/50k in the middle of the night. Should be fun!