14 miles and a cloud of dust.

Well it was a great day for a long run and outdoors to boot. After the morning business meeting and 40 mile drive home, i returned home around 1:00 pm fed myself and the kids lunch of salami or peanut butter sandwiches.

Then i fired up the Garmin, after leaving it on the charger all last night, checked the batteries for the tunes and headed out. Temps were around the mid 30s and sun was shining. Wind blew a little and after two weeks of not running outdoors....

...i started too fast.

At the four mile mark, i was at 31:00 minutes, with a nice showing of my normal one mile warmup and a few sub-8 minute miles. Then i turned into the wind the wheels fell off my plan of having a fun, easy run.

Ugggh, too fast. i ended up at 2:03:00 ish. Somewhere around an average pace of 8:45.

Truthfully, not terrible. in addition to the wind, i had some icy conditions and although i never fell, and only broke stride once, at the 13.1 mile mark to celebrate a 1/2 under my waaaay early training belt, i never had a good stretch going either.

Could it have been a combo of the wind, the ice, the chill and the lack of a good stretch when running on the treadmill?

At least, i have nowhere to go but up, and 13 more weeks of training. It's not like the marathon is in two weeks from today, right???

Another minor bummer. i had to run the 14 miles relatively close to home as Fun Guv was at work. But at least it was not the treradmill. Additionally, i noticed a difference in the fact that when i make long runs going far from the neighborhood, the stoplights seem to provide some excellent recovery breaks. Not much of this happening with a lot less lights and i really felt a difference.

Now on the the first cut-back week of the plan.

and now a favorite bit from a favorite "Woody"




Whew, i made a whole post with no political rants.....

thanks for reading

Ooooh Yeah!!!!




Now that's funny....



Oh boy, it's gonna be a long time 'till November.

Anyway...back to running

Officially, i registered for the Bayshore last night. So it's on!!!!!

Monday, ran 5 miles. it was supposed to be an easy 5 but.....39:12

Wednesday, ran 5 speed baby speed workout..... 39:00 even

mile 1 8:15 warmup

mile 2/3/4 .....22:35 total

mile 5 8:10

Saturday an easy 14. No really, nothing is easy about 14. Weather is looking sunny and mid 30's (short weather)

Speaking of best laid plans.....i have to bail on the 14 miler with Nitmos. Looks like a need to be home Saturday for a business meeting at 8:00. Dammit!!!!!

Anyway, thanks for reading

Ok, no new cheesy movie lines, no stupid 80's flashback lyrics and dumb movies.


not this post...

this is a rant!!!!


i gotta get this out before tonites run. cause it's just an easy 5 miler, which i'm sure to take faster than the plan, but that's ok....


here's the setup, and quite honestly i've been waiting for something like this.


Ok, Allison goes back home today. We had a good 4 days as she had mid-winter break. i meet her stepdad in Midland, about 2 hours from home. Being that "the market" is closed today, i could work. Y'know meeting and greeting talking about "the market" and stuff. i use the time to drive the 5 hrs total, including a quick lunch and get home.


The nice thing about a teenage daughter, even when they don't live with you, is that they like to play things cool. So after a few minutes of trying to have a conversation, i let her drift off in a little nap as i drive. It's a fairly dull drive can't really blame her. So i figure to listen to some talk/news radio to keep up with events.


...But nooooo, i end up listening to an entire 3 hr episode of RUSH. and i ain't talkin' bout the Canadians

of course, i realize this is playing with matches here, but as i want to appear well versed on the conservative platform, as i become engaged in conversations with coworkers. Big difference here....always co-workers.....never clients or referral partners....to many things can go wrong.

So the Big L starts pontificating on the problems of the democratic party and uses, not once, but twice in a 3, wait soak it in... again....a 3 hour program....

The democrats are so screwed up that Hubert Humphrey received the nomination in 1968 after winning absolutely ZERO states through the primaries....now this is a paraphrase not a complete quote, the content is accurate.

i guess i have a new example of the fact that correlation is not indicative of cause-and-effect relationships. See, i used to like a shark attack correlation example, fer instance;

most shark attacks occur in warm water, ....by that correlation, does warm water cause sharks to attack??? Not really, most people don't swim in cold water.

See.... There could be other factors in play with regards to shark attacks. The two items, shark attacks and warm water, correlate, but one does not cause the other, so let's use the same logic, or lack thereof.....to Rush's example

Hubert Humphrey won the democratic party nomination in 1968 after not winning any states primary, hmmmm....i must say, Rush does make a good point....in thinking about this, i can think of no other factors that may have contributed to HH receiving the nomination. At least nothing worth mentioning while making his point...

nothing at all....

nothing like, oh i don't know.....

The assassination of the democratic frontrunner, uhhh anyone...anyone....??? say his name with me...

Bobby Kennedy.

is there, just maybe, a chance this tragedy may have led to Humphrey's nomination, or perhaps Mr. Kennedy's popularity may have led to HH not winning any states. Could these be contributing factors????

This scares me on so many levels: one, the intentional rewriting of history; two, that sooo many dittoheads won't do the math themselves and use the example while trying to promote the conservative platform; and three, that given the recent and unfortunate, redundant example of gun violence no mention of Bobby Kennedy was made.

okay, it's off my chest.... back to the treadmill tonite....and back to the regular musings of this blog later....

thanks for, letting me rant and, reading

12 miles on the treadmill,

and a little 80's flashback



i gotta admit, yet again to being a huge "Rocky" fan. Number 2 on my lists of things i want to do with regards to running is.....

Finish a good run by taking on the stairs at the Philly Library....in ugly grey sweats and all.....no raw eggs though. we can skip that.

As long as i gotta run on a treadmill for a little while, why not watch something to help me through the tough miles



yeah, just try putting that in the DVD player and not picking up the pace just a little....



Yeah i know this takes few minutes and really my blog isn't intended to be running movie reviews, but hey this is the stuff that's getting through these tough beginnings of training and realization that with Fun Guv working...i need to be closer to home more, so some long runs will have to be in ther basement.

A quick shout-out to Brett, longtime Steer, the basketball version and new runner.

He's setting out to run his first marathon at the Bayshore. Go figure, he's nervous, but just keep trusting the plan and "KEEP MOVING FORWARD"

ain't nothing like your first time



Thanks for reading.

"Though his body says stop, his spirit cries...never!!"

Ok, Dr Animal, knock this one out!!!

a quick running update, with a little local weather thrown in.....After lasts weeks, odd February T-storm, which immediately froze due to minus wind chill, followed by two dumpings of snow, a couple things have happened to the local roads and sidewalks.....They may or may not be plowed, snow blown,...whatever.....If so, three inches of ice,...if not, lot's of snow...So to the Dreadmill, i go....

Monday, an easy 6 miles on the plan....reality, was 6 miles/48:27, roughly 8:05 mile

Tuesday, worked until 9:30 pm, no real crosstrain, unless you count helping people brush snow of there cars after a little seminar i attended. At least i got a nice meal.....seminar???not so great....let's just chalk it up to learning about how to not present financial ideas to prospective clients. And i learned how many people go out on stormy nights without the proper cold weather mittens, hats, scarfs for such occasions.

Wednesday, due to new 4 inches of snow, see previous paragraph, speedwork on the Dread.....1 mile 8:20, 1 mile 7:20, 1/2 mile slow jog, 1 mile 7:30, 1/2 mile slow jog & 1 mile 8:15, total time 40:20

12 miles on Saturday, could be a new dreadmill distance record for me, cause i think the snow will be here a few more weeks, the the plan is for a little bit of crosstraining, thursday, friday and sunday....mostly core stuff, but as little lite upper body work....

i wish i had a scale to keep track of my weight, but Fun Guv took it to work for a little weightloss competition with "the girls" there. So no updates here. Belt is feeling less snug on tightest setting...that's all i got.

Movin On

i wanted to comment on the state of the election, As i tend to think of myself as an occasional political satirist, with no real forum to express myself, other than here. And since in many cases, i feel i may be preachin' to the choir...a la Huckabee (now there's a presidential sounding name, for the shallow side of the gene pool) Really, the references to Hanna Barbarra cartoon hounds...or award winning beagle analogies would be nerve rackingly redundant.....Maybe he can have a pink panther running mate......

but i digress

i guess, being a michigan thing, our little democratic primary, along with florida's is not supposed to count....And all the major players agreed to keep their names of the list. This was intended to show commitment to the process, but.....playing politics like she can, somehow the name Hillary Clinton appears on the ballot, along with some other real minor guys, and a "None of the Above" option.

"None of the Above"....how great was that....because even if i wrote in "Obama" or "Edwards", my vote would have been nullified. So here's the deal, i've already not voted for Hillary once this year.....if pushed to it, could i avoid this again????

Is the enemy of my enemy, my friend??? Since i really think the far right conservatives don't like McCain, Mr. Bomb-Iran, himself....where does that leave me????

Friends have already threatened an intervention if i continue down this road....but really, if Rush, Sean, and Anne don't like the guy.....how bad can he be????

But really, i should like the Clinton's.....Notice how they are always refered to in plural...It's never the Obama's, or McCain's, or Romney's (could of been lot's of "Big Love"-esque jokes there, but...noooo, go ahead quit) back to the point....

i mean i love thinking fondly back on the platform that drove people to vote for Bill, and his famous thumb. It was a platform based on change, it wasn't about experience, it was time to change. Time to bridge gaps and reach across the aisles. It was time to "Don't Stop Thinking about Tomorrow". It was a time for newer, younger ideas....Man, i wish there was still a candidate with those ideas.

So Bill and Hillary, i'm sure you're big fans of my little blog here....a little advise....taken from your own uplifting choice of cheesy pop songs to inspire me to vote...

"Yesterday's gone, yesterday's gone"

Lastly, look sure it's long but hey, i rarely get to post. "Lost" is on tomorrow and it'll most likely be another week before i get to this.

At Rotary Today, we had a guest speaker by the name of Larry Nevers visit and talk about his experiences as a Detroit Police Officer. He actually wrote a book about it "Good Cops, Bad Verdict".

As President of the Club i had a chance to speak with Larry and his wife a few times, prior to today. He even gave me a copy of his book to read, and quite honestly it's an interesting read.

First thing, when i spoke to Larry, he asked if i had heard of him. "well, yeah", i replied ",you sound familiar but i can't remember why, help me out"

"Do you remember Malice Green?" was his response.

Wow, y'know after meeting him and talking to him candidly about the night Malice Green died, his trials, and time in maximum security, i gotta wonder about City of Detroit politics, from the early Coleman Young days to the current fiasco with Kwame.

This is an amazing story in a city still scarred from riots nearly 40 years ago.

thanks for reading

A circle can't fit where a square should be

one week down, 15 to go...

piece of cake, right?

Well, maybe but as business goes, i managed to fit in all the runs this week. Wednesdays 5 miler was on the treadmill, alas, but good time at 39:16 so at least i fit a 5 miler in under 40 minutes. It's been a while since i ran so fast. well fast for me

Saturday was a 10 miler, also on the treadmill. For no more reason than it just makes sense due to Fun Guv's work schedule. Winter icy running is not the best time to be out. Even running through the neighborhood can be treacherous given the icy walks...so i spend the most boring 90 minutes possible trying to enjoy watching "The Goblet of Fire" while running 10 miles in place. Kids feuding with each other upstairs the whole-hearted time.

i really hope the weather is a little better , read, warmer, next weekend as 12 miles are on tap. But Allison is visiting so again i will most likely be trying to squeeze the 12 miles in while trying to hang out with the eldest.

Tomorrow i need to do 6 miles somehow, well indoors again as the temps are in the negatives with the wind chill. So unlike last years winter training, this year i have no excuse and will be running on the treadmill.

How soon till spring???

Anyway, moving on....still staying with running....

i seem to be at a point where i need to redo my mp3 player cause the tunes i've been listening to are a little stale...
Any thoughts???

I was thinking of going with an more 80's hair bands sound and not so early 90's grunge, the cheesy stuff seems to be a little more upbeat.

Isn't this a total guilty pleasure????



Eddie Vedder never wrote a song this happy feel good, don't get me wrong, i'm a huge Pearl Jam fan, but.....

Big shout out to Nitmos, who is contemplating pacing me for a final portion of the Bayshore to help me BQ.

In the immortal words of my PS2 after ripping through "Cliffs of Dover"

YOU ROCK!!

thanks for reading

i'll have to try harder to stump the man!!!

Rock on, c'mon click it!!!!




my latest guilty pleasure of a truly terrible but.....i gotta admit to laughing through the entire movie.




no really...



why is this funny????



it just is

"Y'know it ain't easy when you don't know what you want....

...what do you want?"

Since i only have about 20 minutes to type and two fingers typing is real slow, just a few quick moments

-marathon training for bayshore starts today.....per the plan to your left here....i ran a easy 6 miles at a 8:40 pace. a little quicker than the plan.....

-i promised myself i would engage in this marathon plan, i seem to be blessed with an ability to run a good time marathon while treating myself like garbage, let's see what happens if i really apply myself?

-Super Tuesday, egads....where to start....did slick willie equate South Carolina voters to black voters voting for Obama just for the sake of skin color???? Did Hillary really just shed tears to get a sympathetic female vote???? Maybe i really should have declared myself a candidate???? Well at least the GOP is tackling the issues...

- speaking of the GOP, after listening to talk radio for a week, i still can't figure out how the bunch of slave keeping, agnostic, adulterers sat around the continental congressional table asking themselves "what would jesus do?" before writing the constitution. i mean other than the "hey, there's ten commandments, let's number rights to ten. It'll help citizens convert to the metric system"

time's up gotta go....wife is at work, kids got homework, i have some honey-do's, maybe we'll see a movie before it has to be returned, try to take 5 minutes to update on Wednesday with the results of the 5 mile, 3 miles @ 7:59 pace, or maybe wait and update next after the bayshore (sarcasm again, really)

any thoughts about the source of the quote to title this little entry???? See my answer Wednesday, ...no hints from Fun Guv

thanks for reading