Topical Tuesday (11)

When I write my blog entries, I almost always edit my photos first, often placing them on the entry in the order I want them, and then finally writing. With the old saying of a picture being worth a thousand words, sometimes I’m tempted to just publish them for a short amount of time, maybe an hour, before even writing anything, just letting the photos tell the story for me. It was really tempting to publish the photos on this entry without comments for quite a while.

As a teen, I really enjoyed writing, even winning a scholarship to attend the Center for Creative Youth, a summer program at Wesleyan University, an intensive program in which my concentration was creative writing. When I think back to the major essay I read at the audition process, a day in the life of a dog, I still cringe a bit, though somehow it worked.

I’ve sort of shied away from writing a bit since then, though working on my blogging 3xs a week goal, helps a lot.

As you may have noticed, I recently had some blog entries pre-written and posted as I’ve been in Florida to prepare for and run in the 17th annual Walt Disney World Marathon. In this Topical Tuesday I’ll be talking about some things that happened on the trip on the first few days, starting with my plane ride on American Airlines. (With the sole exception noted, all photos on this entry were taken with a friend’s Canon Elph camera, on loan to me while I try to decide on a compact camera suitable for runs and travel. I did miss my Leica on the trip very much).

Though I always take photos from my seat on my plane trips, I honestly think the photo above is one of the prettiest ones I’ve ever taken.

This next one was taken as we were flying over mountains in Colorado, a photo that would prove to be ironically funny later on after I landed in Florida and found out they were having one of the coldest January’s in recent memory

I don’t know what it is about airplane flying that gets to me, I’m just always in the mood to hear about the online food choices. Not that I always get them, I just find them a fun part of the journey. I know the prices are excessive (they have a captive audience the way movie theaters do), yet I absolutely had to find out how good (or not) a $3 cookie billed as gourmet was, so I ordered one and happily milk was still free.

To my delight (and somewhat to my surprise) the cookie was wonderful. In fact, the only way it could have been better has had they been able to serve it warm, which of course, would be a logistical nightmare in flight. The cookie was so good in fact that I also got one with milk on the return flight.

In addition to getting to run in a new state (that makes two out of the ten I need to complete to be a junior member of the 50 Staters Marathon running club), the visit gave me a chance to hang out with my mom and stepdad who live in a city that’s about an hour and a half away from Orlando. Knowing me as well as they do, the second night I was there they made sure to take me to Boston Lobster with an all you can eat buffet featuring sushi, crab legs, crab cakes, mussels, clams, oysters and whole lobsters. My mom took this photo of me:

and then I used my iPhone to take this one and post it immediately to Facebook with only the caption of “Dinner!”.

One of my main concerns about the trip, and one reason why my mom, stepdad and I were staying in Orlando days before the race, was how smoothly I could pick up my race packet and number. My mom thought the race expo was quite crowded, however, it was much less packed then I’ve seen others. Then again, about 75,000 people signed up for the half marathon and marathon events (with about 5000 of them signing up for both, the Goofy Challenge), and not everyone came out days early to beat the crowds. Here’s a shot looking down at the expo.

The hotel we stayed at is Shades of Green, for those in the military (including those who have retired) and their families. My stepdad is retired U.S. Navy with over two decades of active service. Shades of Green used to be called The Disney Inn, it’s still a Disney Resort, and there’s a Mickey Mouse in the lobby. Here’s another photo of me with Mickey from my mom (she’s camera shy, so she prefers taking photos of me).

It’s something of a tradition for me to take and later post a photo representative of where I slept the night before a big race. While the hotel room was nice, it was kind of nondescript, so for my pre-race hotel photo, I snapped a photo of the grotto the night before.

One year of Galloway Training!

A year ago, I made one of the best decisions of my life, to start training for a marathon. Inspired by Julie, a runner of many marathons in my Community Bootcamp class, I joined a group of motivated runners meeting in Willow Glen at 7:00 a.m. on Saturdays. (Since my Bootcamp class meets at 6:00 a.m., I actually sleep in a bit those days.)

Technically, I started the Galloway group, the one of which I’m a member meets at Athletic Performance, at the end of a season. The group I joined up with was winding down, having only a few more runs before the season started again, however, Jenny Lockwood, who was the leader of the group, graciously told me I could run with the group a few times to see if it was for me, so I ran with them several times. Jenny is pictured above discussing the imprortance of woven running socks to a fellow runner.

My first run with the group was 6 miles. The group was scheduled for 5 miles, yet as 6 miles was a perfect distance, so the group, me included voted to gp the extra mile.

I started the Galloway program with a run-walk interval of 2 minutes to one minutes or 2:1. I’ve tried out 3:1, 1:1, even 4:1 for short runs, truly 2:1 is the best fit for me.

Just a few weeks prior to my first half marathon the group was treated to having the program’s founder, former Olympian Jeff Galloway come speak to us as a group.

Among other things that Jeff talked about, he mentioned that running has many benefits including making you stronger, possible weight loss (when combined with the proper diet), increased overall health and possible life extension.

Jeff spoke at length to Sid about his injuries. Sid had injured his IT band, yet was determined to keep running. Jeff advised him how he could do so, and later gave him further advice over email. Seeing Sid run even though there was some pain for him, and seeing him at the finish area of the San Francisco Marathon was a huge inspiration for me.

Jeff graciously signed copies of his books, one of which was the textbook for the class. I had him sign something different than a book, an item I could take with me on races (photo to follow later in the post).

After Jeff spoke to the group we had a regular running session. We were scheduled for a short run to a nearby school, a timed one mile run around the school’s track and a run back for about four miles. I ran the mile in the fastest time I had to date, perhaps motivated by Jeff being there.

After the session, some of us stayed for an additional running clinic with Jeff. As part of the clinic Jeff watched us run individually, then instructed us on how we could improve as individuals. Here he is talking with my friend Felix who went from casual exercising to running my first half marathon with me.

Jeff instructed me further that my overall leg motion and gait was correct, however, I needed to stop swinging my arms out so much (a problem I still struggle with on the longest runs).

The thing I wanted Jeff to sign most was my running shirt. As Galloway members we got two, one long sleeved one and no sleeved version. I had Jeff sign the white shirt I’m wearing in that and this photo below, and wore it to my first half marathon.

Race Day Volunteer

This entry will be my first test of the publish with a future date option of the WordPress App. Right now it’s 6:30 p.m. on Saturday, if this works it will publish at 12:30 p.m on Sunday. (The photo above was taken on race day as I got to my station. Though it’s grainy and all orange, I kind of like the gritty effect.)

Today is my first time volunteering with a marathon. In 2008, I started working out in a regular basis. New Year’s Day 2009 was my first race, a 5 mile run to start off my new resolution.

I have run two half marathons and two marathons this year, and each event has had great volunteers. Since I’m still in recovery mode from my first one, today I will be giving back to the running community.

*****************************************

Volunteering was a good and instructive experience for me. I was placed at the intersection of Bird and Minnesota Aves. It was so close to the meet up place I walked there (assignments were given out randomly at 6:15 a.m.)

I got to see the start of the race and the runners at their freshest and near the end, my station was in mile 2 and mile 24 of the race as much of the race was run back on itself.

Notable points included:

– The male pace leaders (two run by me the second time almost in line) and the female leader were all separated by the rest of the pack by a lot.

– I saw very few people with water belts (like I wear), and none of those that did were near the front

– Near the end of the day, everyone had less energy: runners, spectators, and volunteers like me

– Even though my cheering (my job to both cheer on runners and guide traffic/keep street traffic away from runners) wasn’t always original peppered with phrases like “Good job!” “Looking good/great!” “You can do it!” and calling to the runners by name, by things on their shirts or to the pace groups directly, it seemed appreciated by most people.

While I still enjoy running more than being a spectator or volunteer, I will definitely volunteer or help out with future races in some way.