There's something wrong with this picture

The 2007 Chicago Marathon results book arrived in the mail this weekend--and I thought I ran the race slow. Something struck me as very odd about the cover.

My New Nemesis

Photos from the Soldier Field 10 just came out. If I pride myself on anything as a runner, it is being able to finish with a strong kick. Well, at the SF 10, I let 2 chuckle-heads outkick me in the last 50 yards. The running equivalent of fumbling the football for a turn over at the same location. It might have been able to fade with memory, but now there is photographic proof.

I can write off the backward hat wearing dude. He's not even wearing a number and probably just jumped in at the last minute. However, Casey Piper of Naperville, you are being put on notice that there will be a rematch this summer.

Smirk

Just saw the cover of Chicago Athlete. :)

CARA 2008 Race Calendar

I created a Google Calendar for the races listed on the CARA 2008 Race Calendar.

Grab it:
Add to iCal
Add to Google Calendar

Mamma says they was my magic shoes.

"She said day'd take me anywhaa.." ...

Here is my latest pair of kicks:

Pretty sweet, huh. Just so you don't think I'm bogarting all the magic shoes for myself, here is a link to where you can pick up a pair of these bad boys for yourself.

GPS Watch Envy...

Looking for some good GPS/HRM advice. I decided it might be time to treat myself to some techmology and buy a GPS based watch. So what has finally spurred me on? Jessie is sporting the new Forerunner 405, and quite frankly I am very uncomfortable with my girlfriend having a geekier watch than me.

So the question to you guys. Have these watches really bettered your running lives? All anecdotes, watch recommendations, tips, or thoughts are appreciated.

50 miles? Yes, 50.

How do you respond? Your girlfriend comes to you on Wednesday and says I want to do a 50 mile race in Wisconsin this weekend?

"Why?", I asked with prejudiced: you are somewhat injured, just raced a PR marathon in Boston three weeks ago, another near-PR half marathon and age group win last weekend, you haven't been training, blah, blah. She gave me some kind of long-winded reply about wanting to experience an ultra before going to help Danni at the Western States 100 race. I quickly backed off any kind of reasoning out of this.

The balance of the week consisted of Cheryl plugging through her final exams and diligently preparing all of her gear for the race. I noticed bags appearing in a line one by one in the guest bedroom--at least the treadmill is getting good use.

Sidenote: she had obviously been planning this for longer than what she led on to me. I noticed the race maps she printed for me had dates of 3/15. She won't know I know this until she reads this post. She'll have to do a better job of covering up next time. Bygones.

An adventurous Friday afternoon of driving with bad directions from Google Maps got us to Old World Wisconsin in the Kettle Moraine state forest only minutes before packet pickup closed on Friday night. After which we made a few wrong turns on our way to Janesville where the only decent food we could find was Olive Garden, and we capped off the day falling asleep with the dogs at the Motel 6 hostel.

Less than six hours later, we were back on the road to the 6:00 a.m. race start.

It was fairly low key atmosphere at the start, contrasted with a lot of the road races and triathlons we have been to. But the weather was perfect and there was just a general feeling that 50 miles was accomplishable--all of the people were over the top nice.

Before the race, Cheryl gave me several detailed maps in true-to-Cheryl-overplanning-detail-form of all of the aid stations and instructions that she would make a decision about whether or not to finish first at mile 30, then 37 and so on. I quietly thought, rubbish. She's going to finish this thing--she'll wake up Sunday really disappointed if she doesn't (and, further, she could've run 30 miles at home...she's gonna finish this thing).

I'll spare you the details of the race. In summary, she did great. She mentioned wanting to drop at 37. Gretchen and Gracie, corrected her, got her to down some electrolytes, shared some of their potato chips and got her back on the trail.

More pictures on Flickr.

She finished! 15th woman and 2nd in her age group.

I have to say, Cheryl's performance made the entire weekend worth it. It was fun. Thanks. Happy dog mom's day!

Many thanks to Adrian and Samone. You can see Adrian in several of the photographs with Cheryl. He's from Chicago and was using this race to prepare for his 100 mile races later this year. He really helped Cheryl through the race.

Further, congratulations to the race director and crew. They did a really nice job. All the peeps were great.

What a nice weekend. Well, except for this rain back here in Chicago.

Schedule Updated w/ Ed's Suggestion...

NICE TRAINING PLAN

Rick, you should sell that training plan... its so nice and colorful... (Bill might get jealous...)

I do not see any circles for the lemonade diet on there ?!?

Going on the record...

Okay. I am ready for my comeback now. The achilles is about 90% and after a couple of slow runs, I'm longing to get back into PR shape.

It's going to be tuff, but I figured the first step was to create myself a training schedule. Step 2 is actually following it. So for anyone who cares to join me on some training runs/races this summer, I'm posting my training schedule. Looking forward to trying to keep up with you guys.



Contact me know if you want the Excel version.