Rants, Reviews and Run-dezvous

Returning home from Erie, I knew what I had did wrong...  1 week earlier before the goal race, the race I had trained for, for twenty weeks, I ran the R&R VA. Beach Half.  Now this race is in August and is usually a very hot event. Not one that I would normally "race" due to the heat! But that year it was the coolest it had ever been and I was at the top of my game... So I raced it. That was not my intention when I started but that's what happened... So I guess I essentially peaked on that race.. I thought  a week was enough time to recover.. but it wasn't. This is why my quads blew out at mile 19. Training started for my second  BQ attempt in December 2015 for  the Emerald Isle marathon to take place in April of 2016, just one week before the 2016 Boston Marathon. This go around we had a whole new plan. There was a new partnership and new goals. On top of that, life had changed a lot for me in the last 6 months! I felt driven to succeed. To sho...

You must expect great things from yourself before you can actually do great things! The confidence to push yourself harder, even though you may fear getting hurt! I took a year off of hard running. I needed to heal. I needed to be whole. I finished the 2014 with a PR 50k. I was feeling really good about 2015. I've been waiting for this! And while the few years before were filled with a lot of races, more than anyone should really do when you are a competitive runner, 2015 was no different. 2 5k's 1 10 Miler 2 Half Marathon's 4 Full Marathon's 2 50k's But running a year full of crazy races was about to change! It was right after my North Face Endurance 50k on Bear Mountain in New York in May, that I decided to train with some friends of mine, of which the majority had just come back from running the Boston Marathon. I thought to myself, if they can do it... Surely, I can too! I never really considered Boston up until now.. I just didn't think...

When you find that something is bringing you joy, the natural response is to to give back to it.. embrace it's culture and learn not only more about it but to be open to learn from it. Running was quickly becoming what I wanted to do more of. So I wanted to give back to it somehow. The local running club served as that answer for me. Here I was.. I knew nothing about running, didn't know many runners and was desperately finding myself wanting to be immersed with it... and I am not sure I really knew why? So I joined the running club when I ran the Frostbite 5k in January 2011, It's their membership run! Registration into the race automatically gives you membership into the club ( you can find that report here ) and from there I volunteered to help out with various races and a few expos, I was learning a lot and made some new running friends. Group runs were perfect for running and meeting people with like minded goals. At the end of that year (2011) at the club...

"....so wait, what are you doing, Ed?" I exclaimed! "I'm going to walk around this track for 26.2 miles to see how long it will take me!" Ed repeated.. He continued on "...I'm running the OBX Marathon in November so it will be interesting to see how long it will take to walk that distance!" "Wow! That's awesome!! I can't run because I have a bad knee that acts up when i've been on it for a long time..." That conversation happened on the high school track during the Relay For Life in May of 2009. Ed will NEVER let me live those words "I Can't Run" down... EVER!! Ed and I met through a common friend under not-so-great circumstances! I was at the tail end of my radiation treatments for cancer when I was asked if I would talk with Ed about what to expect, as he just got diagnosed with the same cancer I had... Tonsil Cancer.  They said it was rare, but I met two others who were diagnosed pretty soon after! ...