Ok, Here it is...The finish line for my marathon on Sunday. I ask that everyone pray, hope, wish me luck or do whatever you do so I can finish with a respectable time (definition of respectable time - before my wife dies of boredom waiting on me)

Man life is short, but sweet for certain. Dave Mathews

As everyone knows by know, I commute to and from work either on foot or by bike, and therefore have met pretty much every runner/walker/biker in passing. Much to my chagrin, a fellow runner died while running yesterday in Chattanooga.

From the chattanoogan.com:
Popular County Engineer Mike Howard was jogging downtown Wednesday morning when he collapsed and died. A longtime YMCA football coach and assistant scoutmaster, the 56-year-old Howard was the father of six children ages seven to 35. Click to enlarge.

This post could be long, but instead I'm going to send you to another site to explain it all. I want to do something like this so BAD!!!! Something extreme! This weekend at the bookstore I read about these people who took months off to bike across the country. How cool would that be! And then I read about others traveling around the world. So what is so extreme that I thought it warranted me mentioning on this blog?

A guy is swimming the ENTIRE AMAZON RIVER!!!! He has been swimming for over 54 days!!!
Folks, the Amazon river, is longer than the Tour de France!!! Talk about some mad PR this guy should be getting? Come on American media, the elections are a year and a half away, and this site only has a page rank of 4!!!! Give me a break!

Here it is: http://www.amazonswim.com/main.php

I blasted up Lookout Mountain after work on Friday! It felt great, I passed a fellow cyclist on the way, who admitted he wasn't up to the task, and I am using the term blasted because on the upper-half I was in my middle-ring - which is a HUGE accomplishment for me.

I rewarded myself with some nice, huge blueberry pancakes and applewood bacon at Aretha's which has the best food and the worst service Chattanooga, TN has to offer.

I did absolutely nothing else for the rest of the weekend except for yard work as I'm trying to take it easy for next Sunday.

One of the things I really like about other blogs is the pictures. Something that I am amazingly and ironically bad about! So here is a couple from the mountain I'll be climbing this weekend.

Peace!

INSPIRATION!!!!

A lot of any type of training/preparation for any BIG event is INSPIRATION. One of the many places I for inspiration is tompeters.com

The sight has a lot of stuff on it, but the best in my opinion, is of course the free stuff!!!

He get's paid a lot of money, by a lot of people, and still posts all slides on his blog for free!!!!

Lastly, I have done a remarkably bad job at updating my links on the left, so that is this weekends project, along with switching out winter clothes with summer clothes.

However, one of my training buddies told me about this race

And it looks too fun!!! I think my wife and I are going to do it with him and his wife so I am super pumped!

This weekend my goal is do some hard training, but have an amazing time, so I'll update you on that goal Sunday, as hopefully, I'll be drinking a cold one, thinking about my achievments!

Travelling Contradictions!!!

As I was running into work this morning I couldn't help but think about what a contradiction I am, and always have been. In high school, I rode bulls, and was on the swim team and cross country team. Not exactly the most complimentary sports, but I didn't care! I had fund doing all of it.

This morning, I was wearing a cuban cigar t-shirt, while wearing my Ironman visor. To wit, it was interesting that I bought the t-shirt in the Mexican Riviera, the visor in Kona (of course) and my shorts I bought in London (manchester united, for all you soccer fans).

And this has absolutely nothing to do with training for an ironman, but being a prior marine, and being extremely funny, I had to pass this along:

Marine Corps General Reinwald was interviewed on the radio the other day and you'll love his reply to the lady who interviewed him concerning guns and children. Regardless of how you feel about gun laws you gotta love this!!!! This is one of the best comeback lines of all time.

It is a portion of National Public Radio (NPR) interview between a female broadcaster and US Marine Corps General Reinwald who was about to sponsor a Boy Scout Troop visiting his military installation

FEMALE INTERVIEWER: So, General Reinwald, what things are you going to teach these young boys when they visit your base?

GENERAL REINWALD: We're going to teach them climbing, canoeing, archery, and shooting.

FEMALE INTERVIEWER: Shooting! That's a bit irresponsible, isn't it?

GENERAL REINWALD: I don't see why, they'll be properly supervised on the rifle range.

FEMALE INTERVIEWER: Don't you admit that this is a terribly dangerous activity to be teaching children?

GENERAL REINWALD: I don't see how. We will be teaching them proper rifle discipline before they even touch a firearm.

FEMALE INTERVIEWER: But you're equipping them to become violent killers.

GENERAL REINWALD: Well, Ma'am, you're equipped to be a prostitute, but you're not one, are you?

The radio went silent and the interview ended.

My apologies!

Here I am posting other cities web-site and here is MINE:

Bike Chattanooga

Formating is still a little rough, but great content!

I went to a friend's birthday party last night, and threw down on some nice fried appetizer, salad for dinner, and chocolate cake for desert. So needless to say, this mornings run, didn't feel very well.

On Friday, I am going to hear cyclist/speaker/author Don Miller

Which led me to a lot of really cool links which can be found below:

http://bikeportland.org/resources/links

http://www.granfondocycles.com/links

http://www.topozone.com/map.asp?lat=35.10692&lon=-85.35908&symshow=n&u=4&datum=nad27&layer=DRG
It looks like my signal mountain run had about 1,700 ft of elevation change!

Completely Random...

The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest her or his patients
in the care of the human frame, in a proper diet, and in the cause and prevention of
disease.
Thomas A. Edison (1847 - 1931)

So I know I just posted about eating organic, and am really pumped that DiGornio (spelling?) has started a new line of organic pizza.

Here is a link to the oatmeal I eat in the morning. The web-site is really fun to see how the company got started.

I've been doing a lot of soul searching lately do to a recent "retreat" I went on, about what is really important to me. I've really been blessed with an amazing group of friends that are very supportive and uplifting.

I say this, as it relates to training for an ironman, because it seems that every endurance athlete I have met is uplifting and supportive, as opposed to conventional sports (golf, football, basketball) where there is more smack talk than anything.

It's also interesting that pretty much every company involved with endurance sports and organic food truelly cares about their consumer and making their lives better and more enjoyable (AND HEALTHY!!!). For these reasons, I believe we are in the middle of a pradigm shift, towards more of these products, and less of mass-market, one-size fits all.

Let me know if anyone know if registration is still open for the following races:

http://ironman.com/events/ironman/louisville

http://www.oarevents.com/event.asp?id=88&catID=1

Information on the web-site's were pretty sketchy.

As for the Knoxville marathon, it's finally taper time. But I had so much fun last Thursday on my new 13.5 miler on the way to work, I'm going to do it again this week, and do some climbing on the bike.

You know your doing some hard-core training, when after your morning workout you woof down some organic oatmeal, then at lunch you go for a bike ride up a mountain while throwing back a couple of power gels, and then for dinner you eat some turkey bacon and demolish an entire package of Bisquick (2.5 servings)with some orange gatorade.

I had a nice run on Saturday. My legs got a little numb towards the end, but my time was impressive for me. I didn't run 20 miles but I ran around 19 miles and it was up a hill for the western folks and a mountain for the eastern folks (Elevation: 1,790 feet above sea level).

I'm pretty pumped about the great weather we have been having. I'm probably going to do some climbing (with my bike) on my lunch breaks with a fellow cyclist. This will work out great, getting running out of the way in the mornings and cycling in the afternoon.

If I keep this up and throw in a little after-work swimming. I should be in good shape for summer triathlon season.

Please note, the "space ship" house is the half-way point and it is for sale!

Yesterday I found out about Mission Organic 2010 from the Clif Bar web-site. Basically, only 3% of food consumed in the U.S. is organic and they want to increase that to 10%. So I signed up (and of course get a free organic starter kit). I already eat pretty much all organic when it comes to breakfast (oatmeal, or Clif Bar) so I think I'm already accomplishing my part of the deal.

You can sign up here

It's been an OK week training. I was supposed to do a 10-miler yesterday, but I ran 6 miles and then went cycling instead. The weather was just too good to pass up.

Since I'm doing a marathon on the first of April and doing a century on the first of May I have been thinking about how to appropriately converge my training. So this morning while I was running up a big hill I thought - "What would Dean Karnazes do?" Of course, he would just do both and not worry about it. So on Friday and Saturday, the weather is supposed to be awesome so I plan on running at least 20 miles and climbing at least one mountain.

This is CRAZY

PAIN!!!

This is what I felt this morning on my 19-miler. But, I definately am rewarded. I ran the first 6 miles in 45 minutes (7.5 min/mile), the next 8 miles in 1:05 (8.13 min/mile), and the next 5.1 in 47 minutes (9.21 min/mile). I was very proud of my half-marathon time at 1:52. So this means I ran 19 miles in 157 minutes for a nice 8.26 pace. To qualify for Boston I need to run a 7.06 pace. Runner's World had my projected time at 3.45, which I would be extatic about! And that isn't even taking any consideration into the 6 miles I ran before the half marathon.

Peace-Out!!!

"It is not the critic that counts. Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes up short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and who spends himself in a worthy course; who at best knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who at worse, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be among those cold, timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat." --Theodore Roosevelt
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"Things happen to you out there. You get put in a position where you have to make a choice of either going on or not going on. You get to a point where you can make the decision either way....if you go on you win, if you stop you lose." -John Collins, Founder of the Ironman-