When is a marathon only 13.1 miles? When you get this text at 2:33 AM: I actually didn’t get it until I pulled into the parking lot at 3:06 AM. They offered marathoners the option to run the half and still get a refund on their race — which is incredibly generous given it was […]
This was never going to be a PR or even a BQ race for me. I’m in the final throes of a head cold, I’m undertrained and over-stressed. The goal for today was simple: sweat out as many germs as I could, get to the finish line, have some street tacos. And by that standard, […]
I’m not surprised. Just incredibly disappointed and sad. We take the day to mourn what might have been and then tomorrow we rise to work toward the future that should be, that stands in opposition to the darkness that has enveloped us all today.
Why couldn’t you help me, Zac Efron! You were my only hope! I should say, I really needed Troy Bolton from High School Musical 3. Because today was a day that I simply could not get my head into the game. Thoughts were 3000 miles away on a work problem. Or 800 miles away worrying […]
Eleven years ago, I ran the I-35 challenge. This is running a marathon in Kansas City, MO, on Saturday, and then driving the 3.5 hours or so to run Des Moines, IA, on Sunday. I was a younger man, and in better shape then. Both of those events way back in 2013 were significantly faster […]
It turns out I and an Otter Pop are my worst enemies. Also the merging of half marathoners and marathoners at mile 24. But I get ahead of myself… The Long Beach Marathon moved up its start time to 5:30 out of high temperature fears. They proved to be unfounded… as did the 5:30 start […]
It’s brutally hot here in California at the moment. A heat dome or heat furnace or maybe just a descent into a level of Hell usually reserved for the Texas panhandle. But it’s been topping 100 for the last few days and into next week. Still, I had signed up for a race out in […]
How it started: How it ended: This was my third time running this event… albeit there was one other time I was supposed to run it but I may or may not have broken a toe and thus did not start (DNS). I was slower than I was in 2016 but not by much. And […]
Egads, has it really been so long? Have I really not toed the start line in almost 3 months? Part of that time off was a torn/wonky hamstring that I finally couldn’t ignore… although it’s still not “healed.” Part of that time off was a general sense of ennui. I used to travel a lot […]
I ran San Diego once before. It was in 2007 as part of the then nascent series of Rock N Roll events. When I did it way back when, I had yet to run a sub-4 race. So it was nice to come back and run this modified course (I swear in 2007 we ran […]