Poster boy

A month later and I still crack up when I see this. Yeah, that's me in this advertisement promoting the 2011 Georgia Marathon. And if this ad in any small way makes you want to register for next year's race, you can click here to sign up!

Up for a Challenge

Once again, I'm trying to raise money for the American Cancer Society, but this time, I'm not asking anyone for money, just their support as loyal fans!

Let me explain. I entered the Movement Challenge, a contest sponsored by New Balance and Rodale publications that according to its web site, "combines the excitement of racing, the fun of a running community, and the passion for a cause you care about into an exciting Movement for social awareness."

To make a long story short, I'm trying to win a $25,000 donation from Rodale and New Balance to the ACS, as well as a full-page public service announcement that will be published in Runner's World, Running Times, Women's Health and Men's Health sometime in 2011.

All participants must score points by doing one of the four things: A. Run races and rack up mileage (every mile gets you 100 points). B. PR for the year in a race (that gets you a 500-point bonus). C. Recruit fellow runners to join the Challenge (if they cut and paste the referral code from your profile page into the referral space on their applications when they sign up, you get 100 points), and D. Get fans to sign up to the Challenge as fans (10 points each per fan).

So the key here obviously is to run races and kick enough ass to PR in them. Right now, I'm 12th in the competition, but I have a heavy race schedule this fall that features two marathons, two or three half marathons, and a lot of my favorite ones scattered over a 3 1/2-month span. I looked at the people ahead of me in the Challenge and something inside me tells me that I have a good chance to overtake a lot of them, so we'll see what happens.

Meanwhile, I'd love to recruit as many runners or fans as possible. If you are a runner who wants to take a stab at this Challenge, then please, please use my referral code -- 0e07d093-7264-4b6b-9e0d-e6abcae505f4 -- because I'm going to need ALL THE HELP I can get!

Speaking of marathons, it looks like Hartford's going to be a go for October. I've picked up some serious mileage over the past couple of weeks, and after Labor Day, I got a couple of very long runs lined up.

As for Marathon No. 2, there's a 90-95 percent chance that it could be in another country, actually a faraway island called Barbados in early December. Eighty-one out of 128 runners finished it and 55 finished in under five hours, so if I pull a royal stinker a la Boston the past two years, I still have a chance at a top-50 marathon finish!

Crazy from the heat

Last summer, we had a miserable June that featured 26 days of rain or some sort of drizzle, and after that month, we had a number of beach days that felt like they were few and far between. This summer, it looks like we’re getting 92 days of sun, humidity, and no escape from the heat!

During the past three weekends, I ran in five road races, and all five had one thing in common -- they all took place in temperatures well into the 80s.

Now if I had the choice on whether to run a race in the heat or in the frigid cold of the winter, I’d always choose the heat because I always have a tough time getting going during the winter. But this month has been brutally tough and it’s reflected in my times in these races -- in four races that I’ve done at least once or twice in the past few years (Glocester 5.5M, Little Compton 4.8M, St. Mary’s of Cranston 5.5M, and New Bedford’s Fisherman’s Tribute 5K), I’ve had slower times by at least a minute-and-a-half.

Hopefully the weather gets cooler and soon, because my next two races are very big ones -- the legendary Blessing of the Fleet 10-Miler on Friday, July 23, and the Johnny Kelley Ocean Beach 11.6-Miler 15 days later.

Back on my feet (and on the road) again

It's been more than a blog since I have blogged, but I’m happy to report that I have been slowly picking up my running over the past few weeks. I tinkered with a handful of races near the end of May and I ran in my first Red Rooster Ramble in two months last Thursday night. I’ll be running in two more races this Fourth of July weekend and I’ve already mapped out my race schedule right up into Labor Day weekend. I‘m looking at anywhere from 12-14 races from here until that Monday, so things look pretty good.

Of the races I ran last month, there are two 10Ks I ran (both on Memorial Day weekend) that are worth mentioning -- the new 10K by the Bay in Warwick and the infamous Woodstock 10K in Woodstock, Conn. The 10K by the Bay was very well-organized for a first-time race with a mostly-flat course, tons of volunteers, and a nice barbeque afterwards. It only drew 121 runners, but once word gets around about how great this race was, I’m sure that number will balloon to over 200 next year!

As for the Woodstock 10K, which ranks in my top 10 list for favorite races and most challenging courses, this race again took place on a beautiful day and again gave me a run for my money on Child’s Hill -- the dreadful final mile that is straight uphill and very challenging! Nevertheless, Woodstock is a very beautiful, quaint, country town, and someday, I might check out the Woodstock Fair that takes place there every Labor Day weekend.

Twenty-one days of rain

It’s been a few weeks since I updated my blog, so this afternoon, I opened my blog and found myself gawking at a blank ‘new post’ screen for the past 15-20 minutes. I really don’t know what to write because I haven’t ran or had to urge to run for the past 21 days.

I don’t know if my experience at the Boston Marathon zapped my love for running or because softball season is here and it’s going great -- I’m batting .546 and I think I lead the league in runs scored. I really don’t know.

I tried to map out a schedule for road races this summer and my mind just wandered elsewhere. I haven’t been looking up things at coolrunning.com or seeing what’s up on any other runners’ blogs (I actually check out 13 or 14 of them on occasion -- one of them might be yours!) I have this Thursday night off, and when I usually get this day off, I take off to Warren for the Red Rooster Ramble, but not only don’t I want to run in it, I don’t even want to show up to help out with the run and grab some good pizza afterwards.

A fellow runner told me I’m in just a slump, but how can you have a slump that only consists of one race? Besides, if I was in a slump for softball, all I need to do is take some BP, take a couple of pitches in each at-bat, and I’m right back on my feet again, going 2-for-4 or 3-for-4.

As they say in pro boxing, “You’re only as good as your last fight.” My last ‘fight’ saw me get an embarrassing ass-kicking, so I guess that’s how good I feel.

Boston Massacre II

There’s this one scene in the 2000 remake of the film “Gone in 60 Seconds” when Nicholas Cage’s character, Memphis -- a retired car thief, who under dire circumstances, is forced to steal 50 cars in a span of 72 hours -- scouts a 1967 Mustang Shelby GT 500 he calls “Eleanor” in a parking garage that he plans to steal, but has failed to do so on past occasions.
While Memphis is getting a closer look at the car, his friends began to softly talk among themselves:

Donny: Eleanor is Memphis’s unicorn.
Freb: What's a unicorn?
Donny: Fabled creature, you know, the horse with the horn impossible to capture. It's the one car no matter how many times you try to boost, something always happens. They had a rough history. She almost got him killed a couple a times. Flipped one on the Harbor Freeway.
Kip: He went off the Long Beach Pier once.

After watching this scene in this film last Friday, I realized something -- the Boston Marathon is my unicorn.
For the second straight year, I went to Hopkinton determined to do well and looking to have a good marathon and I ended up in Boston bloodied, beaten down, and staring at a horrid time attached to my name in the final results.
And it sucks. I trained harder this year than I did for last year’s race. Aside from a dismal run at the Stu’s 30K in Clinton, Mass., everything went well in the months leading up to this event. I even ran a 4:12 at the ING Georgia Marathon in Atlanta.
And I bombed -- again. I feel like the Buffalo Bills of the early 1990s who lost four Super Bowls in a row. I get on the biggest stage -- and in running, that stage is the Boston Marathon -- and things come crashing down.
This year, things began to come crashing down for me at the end of Mile 15 when I started cramping up in my right thigh, then my left thigh. A mile or two later, when I was trying to run over and grab a cup of water, I stepped the wrong way on a T track in the middle of the street and twisted my right ankle. Then I was starting to feel cotton-mouth, even though I was taking in fluids every other mile or so. Then my nipples bled. Then came Heartbreak Hill and some increased pain in my ankle. Then came the cramps again.
The next thing you know, my 4:12 in Georgia blew up into a 4:56 in Boston. I saw a picture of me crossing the finish line; my fists weren’t waved in the area and I didn’t look like I wanted to celebrate. I felt like the Russian men’s hockey team when they came home from the 1980 Olympics with a bronze medal after they were upset by the United States in Lake Placid.
I really don’t know what happened, and while the pain and swelling in my ankle have finally subsided from that unmemorable day, I still have been questioning myself 10 days later. I haven’t had the urge to run -- I haven’t gone 10 days in a row without running since the end of December -- and I haven’t looked ahead to running any races in May or June.
Looking back on everything, maybe running four marathons in a span of 6½ months wasn’t a good idea. Maybe I burned myself out and I didn’t know it. Maybe when I jokingly told another runner that I hoped to finish in 4:59:59, I subconsciously set that time for myself. Maybe, maybe, maybe …
Again, the Boston Marathon is, as I heard a runner call it, “The Holy Grail” of marathons. No one really cares about how superb you do in Atlanta, Las Vegas, or Newport or any other marathons. It’s Boston that people associate marathons with, and for good reasons. The history, the tradition, the best of the best running in this race, the streets lined up with fans from the start of the race to the final 0.2 of a mile on Boylston Street. I can go on and on …
I will admit, there have been some very good things to come out of the race. I raised $701 to the American Cancer Society and I had an excellent time at the DetermiNation breakfast the morning before the race and the expo. I ran in front of thousands of fans, and I didn’t get mauled by any crazy Wellesley College girls.
But would I ever do this marathon again? I doubt it. Maybe I’m jinxed when it comes to this race. I really don’t know. But one thing’s for sure, this race is my unicorn, just like the one on the Boston Athletic Association logo -- but a lot whiter and with bigger wings.

I kept my promise

Next week is the almighty Boston Marathon, but this weekend, I decided to have a little bit of fun -- “the calm before the storm” -- and run in two 5Ks, the RIDA Nutrition Fuels Fitness race at Goddard Park in Warwick and the Officer Thomas Giunta 5K in Fall River.

I wasn’t shooting for any big times or fantastic finishes in either race -- just a good run in one of my favorite parks for a 5K and then my old hometown. I did land a much better time at Saturday’s RIDA event (22:36) than I did at Sunday’s Giunta 5K (23:32), but I think I had a good enough excuse for that time.

I wore a running skirt.

Yes, like I promised at the end of January, if I raised $700 for the American Cancer Society, I would run in one of southeastern Massachusetts’s biggest races of the spring in a skirt. So I raised $701and I kept my promise. And it really felt weird, not because it’s every day that you would see a guy running in a skirt, but it was tough to adjust to one.

I wore the leopard-print one that I put in my final January post and matched it with an old Poison concert t-shirt (a member of my running club who will remain nameless offered to double his donation had I wore it). I got a lot of strange looks from some folks and a lot of laughs from others, but I pinned on the back of my t-shirt a sign that reported I was doing it for the American Cancer Society and some people praised me for what I was doing.

As far as the race, right from the start, when the race took runners up a hill for the first three-fourths of a mile, I felt the skirt being really loose around my hips. Was it going to fall? That’s what I asked myself, so I tried to get a bit comfortable by starting to run with a little bend in my hips and I kept my strides a little shorter.

Then halfway through the race, I felt some “freedom” in my skirt and “stuff” starting to “fly” about. But I managed to keep things under control, especially with a lot of fans on each side of the course, and continued to run at a 7½-mile pace.

Meanwhile, the reactions to my skirt continued. I got some long stares from some folks who seemed to try to figure out what was wrong with the picture of me. I freaked out one little boy, who yelled, “Hey mom, that bald man is running with a skirt!” Some old guy on Bedford Street absolutely lost it and started gurgling something in Portuguese.

As for the rest of the afternoon, I put away some chourico and peppers and Fall River chow mein at the post-race buffet and went to the Elks Club on North Main Street for the second post-race party, which included six kegs of beer, some more food (hot dogs and Portuguese soup), a live band, a raffle, and some very, very good company.

And there was some good news that came out of this race. In addition to the record number of runners (somewhere around 1,350) that registered for the race, it was announced that this was NOT going to be the final race, which was advertised as the 16th and final race on the web site and quickly picked up steam around the local running community. It seems like a local police officer is going to carry the torch and take over as race director, so that was very good news to hear! I will be back, but as for the skirt ...