Hot damn we have a lot to cover! Im just sitting here in my blog laboratory, sipping on a fine blend of berry concoction I blitzed up in my new Magic Bullet. I'm really starting to suck at staying on top of this blog writing, so I've purchased a journal that will be an important component in the b-lab's daily operations.
This journal will be my idea bank, where day-to-day misfortunes, experiences, and activities can be noted. Anything super cool should be jotted down, but not limited to: How do ants cary sticks, stones and 18 other injured ants on their shoulders? That is like humans carrying cars. Imagine you were in a situation where the city tore up major roads every summer and made us all late for work; shit, if London, Ontario just rang a bell, then you can relate to this situation. Now put yourself in the ants shoes, or -0.0000475 size feet if you will. Ants are pioneers, they are a tough species and have it pretty hard if you ask me. Pre-pubescent boys find pleasure in burning entire colonies with magnifying glasses, ravage them by the thousands with hockey sticks and cans of Raid, flood their trenches with alcohol and light a match, etc. Well now these little marching bastards are getting very strong and versatile like I witnessed the other day. There was an ant walking sideways up a wall, with a chunk of a bell pepper on his back, and he was bringing it to his brothers and sisters. I was fascinated that a creature the size of a dot could not only walk sideways up a wall, but put the team on his back by possessing powers humans could only dream of- carry something 30x your size. So sitting in traffic one day, admiring the construction workers smoke their cigarettes and give all of us assholes the middle finger, I began to think that we need to become like ants. Instead of feeling miserable, honking, swearing, and remaining in the same spot for 30 minutes, I imagined beasting out of my vehicle and tossing the Honda Civic right there on my shoulder. As the car sit there on my shoulder, I would walk around smiling at these construction workers, saying, "How do ya like me now, ya leatherfaced bastard?" Then I would just weave in and out of these late, miserable people and plop my car down where the coast was clear.
That is just an example of something you would find in my idea bank journal. I can also use different techniques such as brainstorming and bouncing ideas off each other to make the blog more interesting and insightful for smart people. If you are a University or College student and find yourself here when you should be studying or wrtiting a "paper", as they call it these days, then the least I can offer you is some insightful reading material about ants and construction workers. If you don't gain any knowledge from the blog, then you should go back to reading formulas and the cut and dry language found in your calculus textbook.
So now that we have most of the the rubbish flushed from my medulla oblongata, Let's reflect on the fireworks that exploded not to long ago. The last time I was on here I gave a pretty lame race recap on a very sub par 10km race I had ran. The next race on the schedule would be the Springbank Half-Marathon which went down on September 9th. I started to buckle down after that 10k to get ready for the half and I went into the race on a big mileage week, big mileage for me being 90miles with 2 tough workouts on the monday and thursday prior. On the monday, I ran a 10mile tempo in 54;30 and the thursday was 8x 1km (2;54-3;08) on the track. Long story short, I was going to run this half marathon with legs that could barely climb a flight of stairs.
I had a lot of family come watch me, and big thanks to Josh Robinson and Clint Smith who were down on the route with my bottle (even though I barely took a drink with my stomach all jacked up). It was also nice to have Coach Loney and his boys out there yelling at me at the 10k mark. Before the race I put the initials of Ally and Trevor on my hand as well as my race bib. I think it's something I will continue to do in my races this season and dedicate the work I do for them. So the gun went off and there was a pack of about 5 or 6 of us for the first 7ish kilometers. At that point Adam Stacey and I thought it was necessary to start pulling away from the pack and it was the two of us until 10k. The first 10k was a little slow (34:40) and Adam put a gap on me and I didn't feel like making a move yet. I could see him the entire way but was never able close in on him enough to make it a race. He ended up winning, I finished second with a 7 second PB of 1:12:24. I was happy with my result because this course was a lot tougher than Burlington, where I ran my previous personal best. Just wanted to say thanks to my cousin Rob who attempted running me into the finish with 200m to go, he definitely got me sprinting when I saw him. He tore his ACL like twice or something crazy and he was still out there running around and popping out of bushes to cheer me on with his wife Tracy and their kids!
So I think I nailed this race in terms of where I wanted to be with my training for the New York City Marathon. This is where I started to question what I wanted to do with my running, work, school, etc, however. I started showing up to the Fanshawe cross country workouts because I can't get enough of it. The atmosphere of fall cross country season, the coaches, the team and the culture of it all..I just needed to be there. I had my eyes set on NYC and nothing was going to change my plans to run that marathon. On the eve of the last day to register for classes at Fanshawe, I was laying in bed thinking of every positive and negative outcome of me coming back to school. The positives definitely outweighed the negatives and I texted Coach, and Clint telling them NYC was irrelevant at this point and we had unfinished business to take care of. Pulling the plug on NYC was a really tough (and expensive) decision but I was relieved at the same time. I don't see any marathons within the next 5 years for this guy, need to have that footspeed and the marathon will come later. So I'm back as a student athlete running for the Falcons, and we're working hard to be 1 spot better than we were last year. Here's a link to last saturday's Fanshawe Invitational and my first race back since Nationals last season.
http://www.londoncommunitynews.com/2012/09/falcons-soar-at-invitational/
Over and Out
