Wow! Been a while

How'd so much time go by so fast? I say fast, but if you'd been living it with me it'd be so incredibly slow. Personally there's some stuff going on that's kind of messing things up in my life and all that. It's super frustrating how little control I have over all this stuff and yet it affects me profoundly. Through it I've managed to keep running. Not like I've wanted to and not with the focus I should be running. It's not that I'm not still enjoying the running. God knows I need the time out there running to clear my head of the cruft from real life. The problem has been eating. It's hard to run when there's no food in you. I've lost a bit of weight from the past few weeks. On the one hand that's nice because there's less of me to carry around out there while I'm running. On the other hand it's hard to have decent energy when there's not much food going in, and sleep's been a complete wreck. Not a recipe for great running readiness is all I'm saying.

I'm still intending to race on the 15th. My training has slipped. It's not what it should have been. I know. It's only a 5k, but it's my first 5k on the ground and not on the treadmill in weather,  (Mostly sunny, high of 73 is the prediction so far but that's a week from now) My best friend won't be able to be there to watch me cross the finish line. He told me he wanted to go, but wasn't going to be able to go, our schedules didn't line up so it'll be just me out there. That makes me sad, but the part where I know he'd have gone if he could have, that means a lot to me. It means everything to me.

So, just a quick post to let you know I'm still out there running, still on here posting, and still going to be racing on the 15th.

Run for Ronald 2010

I'm going to talk about this a couple times for two reasons. 1) It's my first race and 2) It's for a charity I think is kinda cool.

I found the Run for Ronald 2010 race on Active.com a great site for finding events to participate in near you. They have running, biking, swimming, and other type events you can find near where you are or where you want to search. Registration is free and it's a great site. I highly recommend Active.com if you're interested in finding races of any length.

On May 15th, at 8am I intend to be lining up near Kiwanis Field in Des Moines, IA to run my first 5k. My goal is, to be honest, finish it. My secondary goal is to finish it in under half an hour. But I'm not trying to put a lot of pressure on myself. I just want my first bib and official finish time. One of the things I've heard about runners is that the difference between runners and joggers is the race. I get that it's a race against myself and my PR (Personal Record).

So. A friend of mine has stayed at a Ronald McDonald House before because their son needed medical help far from home and well, hotels can get spendy if you're there for a while. The Ronald McDonald House provides housing for people who have kids in the hospital. I think that's a great reason to raise money so that's my first race.

Long Run on Saturday & Race News

So, I went almost two weeks without running due to work taking me out of town. Now, while I probably COULD have run. I didn’t. I was beat when I would get done with work and it was all I could do to make myself go for a half hour walk every other day.

So, when I got back home the first thing I did was fire up my iPod, tune into week six of C25k and run. I ran an hour instead of 36 minutes and wound up running 5 miles. I didn't mean to do that much on my first day out in a long time, and the last mile was at a brisk walk but still, that was pretty decent distance and time for first time out. Next were two days back to back off, and tomorrow is another running day. It's good to be back home and back on a schedule again. I like running and missed it while I was gone.

I used to use gowagon.com for keeping track of my runs online but then they merged with their parent company buckeyesports.com and that site, while functional is pretty ugly. So, I've imported my runs over to my new log at the dailymile.com, you've probably noticed the giant honking widget on the right from dailymile.com. I'll be switching to the smaller widget soon, but I was pretty thrilled by the five mile run so I went with the big one.

I've registered for my first 5k race. It's in Des Moines, IA and is a charity race for the Ronald McDonald House: Run for Ronald 2010. A friend of mine's kid has wound up going to the hospital quite a bit and they have used the Ronald McDonald's House sometimes while they're there. So, if you're interested in making any donations let me know, or just drop it in any McDonald's. The money is for a good cause and they're there for people who need the help.