Persevering--in Honor of NyAnn

Today I ran to honor NyAnn's spirit.  I ran inspired by NyAnn's spirit.  The freedom of outdoors.  Living to the fullest.  Never backing dow.

I left from my house and ran over to Regester headed toward Loch Raven.  First mile 8:04.

Second mile--on to Loch Raven, around the Mars and post office, and back to Northern Parkway to head more into the city--7:42.

Third mile--continuing along Loch Raven and onto Woodbourne--7:37.

I ran across Woodbourne to where it turns into Homeland--7:27.  

So far so good.  I was supposed to run 8:15 to start and get faster by 15 seconds per mile.  A little too fast to start but okay.

Then I ran across Homeland to Charles and turned north on Charles.  A good amount of up.  I could not get faster--7:28.

I continued north on Charles.  No faster: 7:32.

Then, I reached a much flatter area and thought to myself, I have a choice.  I can go for it or I can hang.  I said to myself, I am not out here just to hang.  I thought to myself--I am here to see what I'm made of and what I can do.  I thought to myself--persevere.  

So, I ran the last two at 6:59 and 6:55.

Then I ran home at 8:15.

I didn't hit the 6:30 I was supposed to and being stuck at 7:30's for an extra two miles was not on plan.  But I enjoyed the run overall.  I loved doing a progress outdoors.  I loved the challenge.  I gave it what I had.  I surprised myself by really pulling those last two down.  And I think that I captured the spirit that NyAnn lived out every day.

I hope to continue to do that.  Although I only know I ran past her once in person and I only followed her on social media for a little over a month, I think that she has a spirit very much like mine.  Live.  Love.  Learn.  Share.  Count every day as a blessing.  Always look on the bright side of life.  

Total miles--1506.  Just keeping on moving. 

Runspiration Through Visualization x 2

This week for the first time that I remember I saw a friend use the term "runspiration".  In other words, inspiration for running.  Or perhaps inspiration from others running.  Or perhaps a bit of both.

What was interesting this week was the contrast between the runspiration that came when I hadn't been running for a while and runspiration that I can achieve after running for a while--particularly with the same training partners over and over again.

When I started running a lot a few years ago, I remember struggling to run alone.  I remember that I enjoyed the time alone to think but really didn't know how to get inspired when I was alone.

I finally became inspired more when I started running with others and watched people who could run faster than me.  Particularly people who could run long distances faster than me.  I remember in the first year of training with a Charm City Run training group watching the person who has now become my most frequent training partner and marveling at how fast she and her two friends ran without ever stopping.  I stuck with the people the coach (in her wisdom) had recommended I run with (who took a more appropriate long slow distance pace and tended to stop for water and nutrition) and it did pay off.  But I always marveled at and was inspired by the other runners who could go what seemed amazingly fast.

After two seasons of running with the safe recommendations, I decided to run with the person who has become my most frequent training partner.  I like to run a bit faster in my workouts and not stop for water or nutrition.  In the time since we began training together consistently, we have run miles and miles together.  Today was one day when she was not feeling up to running.  But I ran a workout just about as good as if I had been with my training partner.  The interesting thing was that drawing runspiration came pretty easily even when I was alone.  Specifically when I reached Greenmount and 33rd about 6.3 miles into the run, I felt myself slowing down and losing focus a bit as I thought about running up Greenmount as it turns into York Rd and heading toward home.  The runspiration came when I thought about how my training partner would take the hill and after only a brief time of losing my focus, I got it back.  My overall pace was 7:51 with the last nine miles being at 7:45.  Life was good and it was a run just like if I had been with a partner.

The other runspiration this week also occurred when I was not with the person who provided the runspiration.  Specifically, my friend who needed a boost to her confidence on Tuesday and tried to make it through a 3200m time trial runspired me to try it for myself two days later.  When I did, I succeeded in running faster than I had for that distance at any time since I was 17.  Interestingly enough, my friend's not being able to finish (she made it through 2600m before her own mental block) runspired me to work harder to make absolutely sure that I finished and finished as strongly as possible.  It was also pretty amazing to get my runspiration and my post-high school personal best with only me (and no one else near my pace) on the track.  

So, after all this time of running with people and taking runspiration from seeing people achieve in person since 2010, I am able to take runspiration from just thinking about the approach my friends would take.  And that may be extremely helpful the next time I race.  If I can take that thought process and be runspired in the race and keep my focus in a race at race pace like I did today at a workout appropriate pace, perhaps I'll be able to raise the bar for my races too.

Runspiration in the end is mostly about overcoming the mental issues I've found plaguing me the last several races I have run as I try to keep pace throughout but reach a point at which I find it difficult.  We will see where all this "runspiration through visualization" rather than "runspiration through watching" takes me.  

Keeping a Hand Written Journal

For several years my blog has been like a public journal.  In the past week, I felt like I needed some balance of things that I am willing to write out for public consumption and things that I write out because I need to proces them.  So I pulled out an old notebook.  And I pulled out a pen.  And much like the experience of writing hand written thank you notes transforming the experience of writing thank you notes, this did too.  It is different when I hand write.  I slow down.  I think more.  I try to make it neat (although having gotten C+'s for penmanship in elementary school it will only ever be so neat).  And it will mean more to me some day in all likelihood.  And if there are ever moments I want to share, I still can.

And after three days of just getting back into the swing of things, I have started a gratitude journal.  Things I am grateful for.  From today.  From years ago.  But all of which made me grateful and all of which made me into the person I am today.  What a bright outlook on how to begin.  Maybe at some point I will share what I have been grateful for.  But for now, it is all about processing what I think of and why I am grateful and how I can take all of that forward.

I don't know if everyone feels so empowered and inspired when they journal.  But I am glad to say I do.   

My First Post Boston Marathon Blog--Living Life to the Fullest

It took me a while to be ready to write after running the Boston Marathon and experiencing (from afar--thankfully) the events afterwards.  I wrote this to share with a small publication within JHSPH that is run by students but thought I would share here as well.  I will have a lot more to write about the marathon in the coming weeks. 

Inspiration from an Eight Year Old I Did Not Know

People sometimes ask me why I lead such a busy life.  I see it as a rich and full life that also happens to be busy rather than just a busy life.  But, leaving semantics behind, I would like to use my Boston Marathon 2013 experience to frame and answer to this question once and for all. 

On April 15, 2013, I ran my first (and for the foreseeable future only) Boston Marathon.  I had worked for three years to get there.  I decided to run a marathon in January 2010.  I started my training for the 2010 Baltimore Marathon in May of that year and over the next 22 months ran a total of four marathons before I finally qualified for Boston.  April 15 was described in advance by one of my training partners as the pinnacle of the running side of my life and she encouraged me to reach for greatness.  From my 3 AM nervous wake up until I finished the race around 1:20 PM, the Boston Marathon was something I could think of as the best running experience I ever had and while I did not run my best marathon time ever I spent every minute of my 3:15:56 with the goal of reaching for excellence in my mind.  Then, even for the first 90 minutes after the race the day continued to be the best running experience ever.  I met up with the two men with whom I’d traveled to Boston.  We all accomplished what we wanted.  We enjoyed some post-race activities and were preparing to return to our hotel and come home. 

That was when the explosions occurred.

My two friends and I were on the subway when someone noticed information about the explosion on Twitter.  Everyone reached for their phones.  As information began to emerge, the subway was evacuated.  We were left wondering about the extent of what happened as multiple emergency vehicles raced by and needing to find an alternative means to return to the hotel.  When we arrived at the hotel more details emerged.  The most heart wrenching of all the details to come out that afternoon and evening was that an eight year old boy who had been there to watch his father was one of the three fatalities associated with the explosions.

That was difficult for me because I have an eight year old.  While my own family had never intended to join me in Boston, they could have.  And no one could have predicted when the explosions were going to occur.  If my family had made slightly different decisions and the attack had been planned slightly differently, that could have been my son.

Reflection on this point led to an interesting Facebook post exchange with a young woman I had mentored when she was a student in the Schreyer Honors College at Penn State, where I had done my undergraduate work.  After she posted about glad for my safety, I posted back, “Thinking of the development I have seen in you since I mentored you in SHC at PSU and the way I lead my life (so busy and so full) this is just a reminder to live life to the fullest EVERY DAY since each of us has no idea when life as a whole or some important part will be pulled out from underneath us in a way we could never guess.”  After that we shared a back an forth about how this same sentiment motivated us both and how I could take at least a little credit for her sharing the sentiment with me. 

My life is full because I don’t want to miss anything and I don’t want my wife and sons to miss anything either.  This point was emphasized by the loss of life not only for the eight year old but also two relatively young other individuals in the explosions and the many serious injuries that will leave lives changed forever.

Do I do a lot?  Yes.  Is it too much to try to fit in?  Possibly.  Do I sometimes wish I had more time to just sit around?  Yes. 

However, when I ask myself what I have gained by leading a full and rich and busy life I find the following.  I have found the person I love to spend my life with (married nearly 21 years now), found multiple personal and community activities I love to be involved with (running, Sunday school teaching, worship band at church), found a job I love and have been successful in (full professor and now vice dean), and brought up three boys who are now 17, 13, and 8 to experience all that life has to offer them at those ages. 

Finishing the Boston Marathon in a near personal best time gets me past one item that was a long-term goal.  However, it was just one goal.  I am only 43 and have what I hope are many years to live and many miles to run before I die.  However, if something had happened to me as a runner on Monday, I would enter whatever comes after life on Earth not worrying that I had missed something. 

The death of the eight year old on Monday is an inspiration to me to renew my commitment to the premise by which I have led my life up to this point and to take that commitment joyfully into the future.  Reaching one goal shouldn’t make me complacent.  It should simply set me up to set and reach other goals.  If the goal is not to miss anything in life, then my wife and my sons and I will be busy. But I think it can be a joyful and happy form of busy reflecting the passions that each of us have for different things in life in which we wish to excel and that we wish to enjoy.