So a lot has been going on in the past week or so... most not really that important really. It was the week leading up to the Maui Oceanside marathon. Mostly I had been working a lot with subbing and Barnes and Noble. I had been feeling pretty worn out as I was going on week 3 of about 60 hours a week working. Though the subbing was not exactly hard work. Mostly babysitting. Just the getting up at 6 AM was annoying.
Well in the days leading up to the race we had a lot of people being super nice to us with food and whatnot. One of our neighbors (Lisa) who was born in Worcester and grew up in Spencer invited us to her place for dinner the Friday night with her and her friends. One of them was running the race. Lots of good food was cooked. Little did we know that we were getting into a super religious group. There was praying and blessings being thrown all over the place. Signs were made with religious quotes. But they were really nice and friendly. Lisa was also driving us to the race at 4 in the morning. Plus her friend Lindsey was super cute.
Saturday was a day of relaxing and trying not to do too much. The shin was still sore but I was doing as little as possible to irritate it. Lots of icing. Gordo came over and I cooked a sweet pasta dinner with steak tips. A beer was drank, Gatorade and water consumed. After hanging out for a couple hours Jon and I head to bed around 10 since we have to get up at 3:15. Why do I do these things again?
3:15 AM: we're up and barely functioning. I get my gear together and eat a large bowl of oatmeal with a bottle of gatorade. We trek over to Lisa's and help her pack up her truck. Then at 4:10 its off to pick up some people. This takes way too long as by the time we get to the start of the race its 5:30 and the gun goes off at 5:45. I'm annoyed but roll with it. I take a quick piss, change into my racing shorts, shoes and get to the line. No stretching. Shin is a little sore.
5:45 AM: Gun goes off, Jon and I settle right into about 6th and 7th place. We hit the first mile in 6:07, slightly downhill. By mile 2 and 3 we are right on 19:45 5k pace. At this point we're now in 3rd and 4th place. At mile 4 Jon really has to use a bathroom. Just before the 5th mile he apologizes and veers off to a stall. I'm soloing it now. At this point we have been averaging around 6:30 pace for the first 5 miles. I am feeling pretty good so start increasing the pace. Miles 6-9 are run in about 6:15 pace. I pass the guy who went out with the leader around mile 9 and roll through mile ten in 63:42 feeling really relaxed and smooth. The leader is out of site. He goes on to run 2:37 alone. Since mile 5 I've been alone as the sun slowly rises. I am in robot mode here and not even thinking. Just running. Shin is alright. No major pain. Just a little sore. Before I know it I am coming up to the hills which start at mile 11 and go til mile 17. I've ridden them a couple times so I know what’s in store. Just before the hills though a stupid police officer actually makes me slow down to almost a stop to allow a truck by. This allows a guy who had been about 70 yards behind me for the past couple miles to close in on me. As we begin attacking the hills together we chat a little bit. Then he pushes ahead of me and drops the pace down even faster as we hit the first of the hills. We roll through the half marathon point side by side in 1:23.34. I take the lead and push the pace a little harder. At this point we are going around 6:10-6:15 through hills. No more talking now. Just hard running. Neither of us are breaking our stride as we hit miles 14, 15, and 16. Between 16 and 17 is a pretty steep hill. The last real bump in the road before a long straightaway that winds for miles. I make a hard move here even though we're both tiring. I move ahead of him and push the pace again. This last for about 400 yards when I feel my left hamstring just seize up on me. It felt like someone just gave me the hardest charlie horse ever in the back of my upper left thigh. I went down to the ground instantly. The other guy looked back and slowed a bit asking if I was alright. I got back up and started running again telling him I'd be fine. Getting back into it I ran with him for another 200 yards but the quad kept twitching with minor seizures. As I was forced to slow he pulled away and that was it. I kept runin but my pace dropped to 7 minute miles, 8 minutes miles. Then I had to stop and try stretching. I couldn't figure it out. I had hydrated almost every other mile. Taken in a goo. Sports drink and water. By miles 20 I was running around 8 minute pace and Jon went by me. I tried latching onto him but no good.
Now I was in 4th place. I was still well under 3 hour pace. If I could just hold onto the 8 minute pace I would still finish around 2:55. At mile 21 pony tail guy went by me. He tried getting me to run with him. I stayed with him a quarter mile until my leg seized again and I had to stop at an aid station. One of the people there looked at it and told me I hyper-extended it? A super bad pulled that would continue to hurt and strain while I ran on it. She took a minute or two to do some light stretching (hurt like hell). Then I continued on. I had 4 miles to go at this point. I was determined to finish. With 2 miles to go I was no longer breaking 3 hours. Now it was just getting to the finish. I hobbled, jogged, walked my way to the final mile. At this point I had no idea what place I was in. I was surrounded by fat people who were walking the half marathon race. Finally the finish line was there. I stumbled across it and 2 volunteers got me through the chute. I was checked out by a trainer who said it was not super serious. Nothing torn, some narly bruising along the hamstring. It was strained pretty badly though. No running for 1-2 weeks. Try not to put too much pressure on it for a couple days (I didn't mention that I would be working on my feet for 6 hours the next day). The trainer said it was probably caused from favoring my shin splints on my right leg. I was putting too much pressure on my left leg the past couple weeks.
Well what’s done is done. Jon and I are looking at another marathon in April in Lojola, California. I've come to the realization I race much better when I am doing triathlon training and not straight running. My body just gets too broken down when I am trying to do 80 mile running weeks on top of working 40 hour weeks where I am on my feet all day. Not as young as I used to be. I did take a few positives out of this race.
1. Up until my hamstring went on me I was feeling good. I was tiring but not exhausted. I knew I had a gear left in me for the final 8 miles of that race. I was confident I could have gone to the line with that guy who got 2nd. I rolled through the half point feeling good in 1:23ish.
2. I no longer beat myself up over "bad" races. Sunday I realized what happened was beyond my control. I didn't fall apart because I was out of shape or running poorly. It was a mechanical issue. It happens.
3. I only really trained about 3 months for that marathon and the last 3 weeks coming up to it were injury prevention training. Very little mileage and I still almost pulled off a good time. I figure if I spend the next 6 months seriously training for Placid now I will have a SICK race.
So there is a minor duathlon coming up February 13th I guess. Involves an 800 swim, 800 beach run, 3 mile road run. I think I will be planning on that depending upon how my hammy is feeling.
From this point on until Placid it is time to really get into it. I am living in the perfect training environment so I really have no excuses. I don't have too many distractions out here so I can really get to it.
Survivor Update: Have heard nothing as of yet. I just emailed my agent (yup, still sounds weird saying I have one) asking for the latest update so I will let all of you out there know as soon as I do. I will definitely be going out there for the casting call no matter when it is.
Lastly: This past Wednesday I had my key stolen while subbing a behavioral class at the local high school. I didn't know I was back in Worcester. I know the id who did it I just can't prove anything. It is going to cost me 200 dollars to replace my house key because the locks have to be replaced also. Just my luck huh?
I decided I wanna bump into the kid outside of school. 16 year old punk. Not even a local either. I got stranded at the school for 3 hours while I had to wait for Jon to get out of work and bring me my spare scooter key.
Gonna wrap it up there I think. I am going for a nice relaxing bike ride now then a nice 4 1/2 hour shift at barnes and noble.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Bbbbrrrrrrr.... it's a bit cold
So this is the second time I am writin this. A couple days ago I typed up a whole blog and watched it not get psoted when my computer decided it woul be funny and kick me off the internet. So, second times a charm.
So it's ben a little chilly here in Maui the past couple days. By chilly I mean still around 75-80 with a wind coming off the ocean. But at night its been chilly enough to use a blanket. Kind of like it. I am realizing that when I do go back to New England in the summmer I'm probably gonna be a serious wuss and complain when it is only like 70-75 degrees. I don't know if I'll ever be able to handle a winter again at this point. Though I have been missing snowboarding lately.
We'll start way back with New Year's Eve. It was a super blast. I spent the whole thing laying on the couch not feeling well. Not only did I work that day but I also had a migrane and sore thoat. It's ok though because teenagers were shooting fireworks off right outside my window for a good three hours until like 1 AM. Work the next day was not as much fun as I imagined it would be either. Had to also take the next couple days and ease back into training.
Barnes and Noble has become pretty much useless to me now. I am still on Nook sales and barely even trying at this point. I usually jsut spend my hours there walking around reading off the Nook and occasionally asking people if they are interested in demoing the thing. I think I have maybe sold 3 Nooks in the past week. Oh well, maybe they'll get the hint and move me to something else. Let me tell you selling those things is super boring.
But I have started finally subbing. I went in twice last week (Thursday and Friday). I covered an 8th grade american history class on Thursday. All I had to do was put in a documentary of the AR and have the students take notes on it. Well since I am pretty knowledgable of the War I took it upon myself to do a short lesson along with the movie, giving them notes and whatnot. They did not seem too happy about actually having a class. Friday was 6th grade math. Here it was a little more interesting. The kids were not as annoying either. I already have a couple gigs lined up for this upcoming week too so I'm pretty siked. The only drawback to this whole situation is working the two jobs. I had to work at B&N both days after subbing so I was pulling 14 hour work days. That on top of trying to train is not too fun. I was exhausted for the past couple days. But it's moneya nd right now I'm in desperate ned to the benjamins.
Got my marathon coming up in exactly 2 weeks. The training has been going pretty well, not as great as I wanted though. Got a pretty serious shin splint going on in my right shin. I don't think it will get any worse no that I'm started to taperfor the race. I know one of the reasons for it is standing all day in crappy shoes at work. It will be interesting how this goes though. I have been feeling strong the past couple weeks but also real tired. I have one more workout this upcoming Wednesday where I'll do an all out 5k on the track to get my legs turning over then a bunch of 400s varying in pace. After that it is all about letting the legs recover.
I am really looking forward to getting back to triathlon training. Especially the biking. Have done a couple bikerides in the past 2 weeks and they are so much more interesting than the runs I've been doing.
UPS is being super retarded with the whole bike situation. Apparently they have denied my claim twice saying that after viewing the pictures it does not seem like the accident was their fault. I have appealed them both times and the UPS store in Worcester where it was shipped from has also appealed them causing them to reopen the case. The latest is that I had to resend the pictures to the same place I have sent them 3 times already to be reviewed. This means I am still waiting on them to pay for the busted wheel I had to cough up more money than I could afford to fix it myself.
So the latest Survivor Update: I had posted my video along with the couple thousand other people who are trying to get on the show. That does not mean much to me at all. I did receive an email from the guy in charge of getting the best contestants in front of the casting directors the other day. Apparently my video was liked by the directors which is a good thing obviously. But I was told that the open open casting calls in LA may be happening oe of the last weekends of January. Possibly the weekend of the 22nd-23rd. The same weekend as my marathon; which I paid over 100 dollars to register for and have spend the last 2 1/2 months training for. Serious downer. I asked him how important it is to make the casting calls. I guess it is not mandatory to go to them. This guy told me that I could still get in without attending them but 90 percent of the people picked are people the directors have met in person and were able to have a conversation with. I wold have no real problem missing the marathon if I knew I was going to be selected. But what happens if I attend the meeting and not get picked? Then I am out being on Survivor, out the 200 it cost for the plane ticket to get to LA, cost of a hotel room, and miss out on the marathon I have been training my ass off for (not to mention the 120 dollars). I guess we cross that hurdle when we get to it. For now I'm just going to enjoy living in Maui.
So those who know me I think know that I hate seeing messes laying around the house. If they are in a bedroom thats not really a big deal to me. I'll be the first to admit I usually have clothes laying on my floor. Granted most of the time they are clean clothes and I am good about putting dirty clothes in my hamper. But I on't like having to deal with messes in the rest of the house. How hard is it to put your dishes in the sink? Or pick up trash thats on the floor or not leave messes on the table. It's one of my pet peeves and I try not to make it too big an issue. But when things build up and get really messy the it does get on my nerves. So lately thats what's been happening around the apartment. Not so much with Matt and Jon because they do most of their food eating and whatnot at work. I cook an average amount at home but the past couple weeks have been doing alot of my eating at work because it's quicker and pretty cheap since I get 50% off the cafe food. Which is really good.
So to wrap this blog up; since it's turning into a quite lengthy one, I had a really interesting if not awkward conversation with one of my bosses the other night. Most of my bosses at B&N are women and apparently they all talk with the females employees about guys and whatnot. They go out and get drinks together. well anyway this boss Deb decides to chat with me about whether or not I was seeing anyone, married, dating, the usual questions about my personal life. I reply no to all her questions. Deb is really nice, she's about 50ish and a real cool boss. Let's me do my own thing. Anyway, after she finds out that there are no women in my life she tells me that this girl Jordan who is the other Nook salesperson and I would make a great item. I almost laugh right there. I should have seen this coming. Deb and Jordan are pretty good friends even though Jordan is only 21. So Jordan has been working at B&N for a year or so. She just turned 21 just over a month ago and is not really my type. She is really cool and fun to work with but not the kind of girl I go for. Whereas I prefer the small, fit athletic types. Petite I guess one could say, Jordan is much heavier and does no type of working out. So I can't really tell this to Deb so I dodge the obvious truth as to why I wouldn't want to go out with Jordan and just say that I am not really in the market for a girl at this time. The whole "I don't have the time or money thing." I'm not an idiot. I knew Jordan had a thing for me. She made it pretty obvious at work. Well the next day she was in with me it was obvious Deb had said somthing to her because she definitly kept to herself for the most part while I was there. Oh well, its tough being a heartbreaker. Sidenote: Apparently my boss Deb has a really goodlooking daughter who is like 22-24 and recently became single. Found this out last night. How funny would that be if I got together with her? Cause some drama at work?
So I told this story to Jon on a run the other day and he appreciated it of course. Now him and Matt have been messing around with some girls since they've been on the island and Curtis has his little gf back home. Not sure how that is going to hold up with him being here til the Summer. Should be an interesting development. But Jon did bring up the fact that I have not been really trying to meet any girls since I've been here. I never really put much thought into it really. But I guess I just have no real interest in the whole issue. Most of the girls I've met have not really done much for me. I've never been too into pursuing girls. If one comes around that really knocks me of my feet then I'll do something about it. At the moment there's really only one or two girls I have any interest in being with and they're not located on this island. I;m here to train and enjoy the weather. So I'm just gonna keep on doing what I'm doing and not sweat it.
One final thing: In one night at Barnes and Noble I met Pink and her husband, Helen Hunt and Michael McDonald. Got to talk to all three of them. Pink was aweosme and super friendly. Helen Hunt was a bitch and stuck up, Michael McDonald was like a normal customer. I am told that Jennifer Aniston usually comes in at the end of January almsot every year. I can not wait.
Time to go running...
So it's ben a little chilly here in Maui the past couple days. By chilly I mean still around 75-80 with a wind coming off the ocean. But at night its been chilly enough to use a blanket. Kind of like it. I am realizing that when I do go back to New England in the summmer I'm probably gonna be a serious wuss and complain when it is only like 70-75 degrees. I don't know if I'll ever be able to handle a winter again at this point. Though I have been missing snowboarding lately.
We'll start way back with New Year's Eve. It was a super blast. I spent the whole thing laying on the couch not feeling well. Not only did I work that day but I also had a migrane and sore thoat. It's ok though because teenagers were shooting fireworks off right outside my window for a good three hours until like 1 AM. Work the next day was not as much fun as I imagined it would be either. Had to also take the next couple days and ease back into training.
Barnes and Noble has become pretty much useless to me now. I am still on Nook sales and barely even trying at this point. I usually jsut spend my hours there walking around reading off the Nook and occasionally asking people if they are interested in demoing the thing. I think I have maybe sold 3 Nooks in the past week. Oh well, maybe they'll get the hint and move me to something else. Let me tell you selling those things is super boring.
But I have started finally subbing. I went in twice last week (Thursday and Friday). I covered an 8th grade american history class on Thursday. All I had to do was put in a documentary of the AR and have the students take notes on it. Well since I am pretty knowledgable of the War I took it upon myself to do a short lesson along with the movie, giving them notes and whatnot. They did not seem too happy about actually having a class. Friday was 6th grade math. Here it was a little more interesting. The kids were not as annoying either. I already have a couple gigs lined up for this upcoming week too so I'm pretty siked. The only drawback to this whole situation is working the two jobs. I had to work at B&N both days after subbing so I was pulling 14 hour work days. That on top of trying to train is not too fun. I was exhausted for the past couple days. But it's moneya nd right now I'm in desperate ned to the benjamins.
Got my marathon coming up in exactly 2 weeks. The training has been going pretty well, not as great as I wanted though. Got a pretty serious shin splint going on in my right shin. I don't think it will get any worse no that I'm started to taperfor the race. I know one of the reasons for it is standing all day in crappy shoes at work. It will be interesting how this goes though. I have been feeling strong the past couple weeks but also real tired. I have one more workout this upcoming Wednesday where I'll do an all out 5k on the track to get my legs turning over then a bunch of 400s varying in pace. After that it is all about letting the legs recover.
I am really looking forward to getting back to triathlon training. Especially the biking. Have done a couple bikerides in the past 2 weeks and they are so much more interesting than the runs I've been doing.
UPS is being super retarded with the whole bike situation. Apparently they have denied my claim twice saying that after viewing the pictures it does not seem like the accident was their fault. I have appealed them both times and the UPS store in Worcester where it was shipped from has also appealed them causing them to reopen the case. The latest is that I had to resend the pictures to the same place I have sent them 3 times already to be reviewed. This means I am still waiting on them to pay for the busted wheel I had to cough up more money than I could afford to fix it myself.
So the latest Survivor Update: I had posted my video along with the couple thousand other people who are trying to get on the show. That does not mean much to me at all. I did receive an email from the guy in charge of getting the best contestants in front of the casting directors the other day. Apparently my video was liked by the directors which is a good thing obviously. But I was told that the open open casting calls in LA may be happening oe of the last weekends of January. Possibly the weekend of the 22nd-23rd. The same weekend as my marathon; which I paid over 100 dollars to register for and have spend the last 2 1/2 months training for. Serious downer. I asked him how important it is to make the casting calls. I guess it is not mandatory to go to them. This guy told me that I could still get in without attending them but 90 percent of the people picked are people the directors have met in person and were able to have a conversation with. I wold have no real problem missing the marathon if I knew I was going to be selected. But what happens if I attend the meeting and not get picked? Then I am out being on Survivor, out the 200 it cost for the plane ticket to get to LA, cost of a hotel room, and miss out on the marathon I have been training my ass off for (not to mention the 120 dollars). I guess we cross that hurdle when we get to it. For now I'm just going to enjoy living in Maui.
So those who know me I think know that I hate seeing messes laying around the house. If they are in a bedroom thats not really a big deal to me. I'll be the first to admit I usually have clothes laying on my floor. Granted most of the time they are clean clothes and I am good about putting dirty clothes in my hamper. But I on't like having to deal with messes in the rest of the house. How hard is it to put your dishes in the sink? Or pick up trash thats on the floor or not leave messes on the table. It's one of my pet peeves and I try not to make it too big an issue. But when things build up and get really messy the it does get on my nerves. So lately thats what's been happening around the apartment. Not so much with Matt and Jon because they do most of their food eating and whatnot at work. I cook an average amount at home but the past couple weeks have been doing alot of my eating at work because it's quicker and pretty cheap since I get 50% off the cafe food. Which is really good.
So to wrap this blog up; since it's turning into a quite lengthy one, I had a really interesting if not awkward conversation with one of my bosses the other night. Most of my bosses at B&N are women and apparently they all talk with the females employees about guys and whatnot. They go out and get drinks together. well anyway this boss Deb decides to chat with me about whether or not I was seeing anyone, married, dating, the usual questions about my personal life. I reply no to all her questions. Deb is really nice, she's about 50ish and a real cool boss. Let's me do my own thing. Anyway, after she finds out that there are no women in my life she tells me that this girl Jordan who is the other Nook salesperson and I would make a great item. I almost laugh right there. I should have seen this coming. Deb and Jordan are pretty good friends even though Jordan is only 21. So Jordan has been working at B&N for a year or so. She just turned 21 just over a month ago and is not really my type. She is really cool and fun to work with but not the kind of girl I go for. Whereas I prefer the small, fit athletic types. Petite I guess one could say, Jordan is much heavier and does no type of working out. So I can't really tell this to Deb so I dodge the obvious truth as to why I wouldn't want to go out with Jordan and just say that I am not really in the market for a girl at this time. The whole "I don't have the time or money thing." I'm not an idiot. I knew Jordan had a thing for me. She made it pretty obvious at work. Well the next day she was in with me it was obvious Deb had said somthing to her because she definitly kept to herself for the most part while I was there. Oh well, its tough being a heartbreaker. Sidenote: Apparently my boss Deb has a really goodlooking daughter who is like 22-24 and recently became single. Found this out last night. How funny would that be if I got together with her? Cause some drama at work?
So I told this story to Jon on a run the other day and he appreciated it of course. Now him and Matt have been messing around with some girls since they've been on the island and Curtis has his little gf back home. Not sure how that is going to hold up with him being here til the Summer. Should be an interesting development. But Jon did bring up the fact that I have not been really trying to meet any girls since I've been here. I never really put much thought into it really. But I guess I just have no real interest in the whole issue. Most of the girls I've met have not really done much for me. I've never been too into pursuing girls. If one comes around that really knocks me of my feet then I'll do something about it. At the moment there's really only one or two girls I have any interest in being with and they're not located on this island. I;m here to train and enjoy the weather. So I'm just gonna keep on doing what I'm doing and not sweat it.
One final thing: In one night at Barnes and Noble I met Pink and her husband, Helen Hunt and Michael McDonald. Got to talk to all three of them. Pink was aweosme and super friendly. Helen Hunt was a bitch and stuck up, Michael McDonald was like a normal customer. I am told that Jennifer Aniston usually comes in at the end of January almsot every year. I can not wait.
Time to go running...
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