It's Getting Closer!!!!!!

T Minus 3.5 Days. The Arkansas Traveller is fast approaching. I mean its here!!! It ought to be an experience. Patrick, Anne Marie, Claire, Vinnie, Holly and myself are heading to Arkansas on Friday. I know they will have fun. I hope that I do. I will blog as soon as I can next week and let you know of my experience.

See yall later!!!

Good Luck to the Tour D'Esprit entrants. Have fun Mike and beware of the tent and the chair.

Hello All

Once again, its been a while. I have been doing the same things as always. Work during the day, go home and eat, sit around for a minute and go to sleep. Wake up and do it again, and again, and again, and again, and again...you get the picture. My twin sister is about to have her baby. She is due on October 7this. However, she is already having contractions and we think little Annie will probably arrive early. Which is funny because my family is notoriously late. I have been training for a couple months for the Arkansas Traveller 100 Mile Foot Race. It is getting very close to arrival. It starts Saturday October 4th at 6:00am. Hopefully I will finish some time before the 30 hour cut off. I ran in a training run which covered around 45-50 miles of the course. I talked to a lot of runners who had completed the race in the past. They all gave me their horror stories as well as their tricks and tips. The general consensus among all of the runners was that 1) I will be in tremendous pain by the end of the race, 2) I will go through highs and lows & 3) I will probably have to fight the urge to drop out of the race at one or more times. However, they all said just to keep moving forward, keep thinking positive and you will finish. Hmmmmm.....its gonna be interesting. I have Patrick as my pacer for the later section of the race and Claire and Holly for my crew. They will be driving around all night in the Trail Blazer from crew point to crew point. Other potential people that will be coming include Anne Marie and possibly Vinnie. Even if I don't finish, I think we will have a good time. I have one more back to back long run before the race. I will be running 30 tomorrow and 25 on Saturday. From then on it will be average and short runs. I will try to keep you posted on a more frequent basis. Yall have fun. Happy Trails!!!

Bartlett Parks Ultra/Dave Matthews

What up people? Well it was an interesting Saturday. I awoke at 3:30 that morning and prepared for the Stanky Creek 40 Mile Run. I got ready and arrived to the start early. I milled around and finally the race started at 6:30. The first two 8 mile loops went by pretty uneventfully. The heat really started to effect me in the third and fourth loop. I think the temperature was around 106 with a heat index of 133. Just a little warm. I found that miles 24-28 were the toughest. I got extremely hot and started to feel my heart beat throughout my whole body. I started walking a bit more and my mind started a mental battle with my body. My mind was telling me to quit once I got back to the start finish line. That would have left me 8 miles short of the 40 miles I wanted to do. When I got back to the truck I was ready to quit when John "Dingo" Manley convinced me to rest for a second and then walk a little to see how I felt. Anyway, I ended up completing the last 8 miles and finishing 3 overall for the 40 milers in 8:42:38. Pretty good for me. After the race, I went home and showered, got dressed and headed over to Mark and Amandas. A large group of us then headed down town to see Willie Nelson and Dave Matthews perform at Autozone Park. The concert was awesome. It included a sweet Grave Digger with Dave and Willie. Tim Reynolds also played with Dave. They jammed out a 15 minute Two Step. They also got all nostalgic and covered "Burning Down the House" and Sledge Hammer". The show was great. After stopping by the Krystals on Union after the show and dropping everyone off, we arrived back at the house around 1:15. What a day!!!

Big Day

Hello all. I have gotten lost. I will try to post more often. I have pretty much been doing the same thing as always. Work-Eat-Sleep routine Monday-Thursday (Fun). I have been increasing my weekly mileage running wise. I am getting right at 40ish a week. I hope to be around 60 or so in a couple of weeks and hold that through the Arkansas Traveler 100 the first weekend in October. Yes I am crazy but I want to try. I feel like I probably will not make it but I would like to get the experience. I will do my best. Anyway, back to the big day. Tomorrow, is the Second Annual Bartlett Parks Ultra. I opted for the 40 mile option. The temperature is going to be 100 without the heat index. Last years shirt said "Tennessee's Hottest Trail Race" and they were right (105ish). I did the 50K last year as my first ever ultra. It was fun. I feel like I should do fairly well in the race. I know the course very well. Anyway, the reason I didn't go the full 50 this time is because we have tickets to see Willie Nelson and Dave Matthews that evening. Its gonna be a long one. Anyway, I will post Sunday and let you know the score.

Long Time No See

Well, I have once again fallen down on my responsibilities of blogging. Here is the recap from my previous blog. The Memphis Ultra put on our first run. The attendance was a little lower than we had hoped, but we know what to fix for next time. It was definitely a learning expirience. Be on the look out for some type of run in the fall. The next race was the Nashville Marathon. We had a large crew of family and friends all go stay in Nashville for the weekend. Some were running and some were spectating. I got to see my twin sister who lives in Knoxville. She was there to see her friend run the half. I like the Nashville Marathon. There is constantly something to look at and there are thousands of spectators. I ran the whole race with Holly. It was her first marathon. Although she has completed the Stump Jump 50K, she had yet to run a road marathon. I think she had a good time. She started to look kinda mean around mile 22 of the race. She put on her "Its time for this to end face". We ended up finishing together around 4:30. Check out the picture on her blog of us coming to the finish line. Our family only got one picture and I am completely blocking all of Holly. Oops. The next race was the Chatanooga Trail Marathon. We were supposed to have the original Stump Jump Crew heading back to Chatanooga but, Patrick and Holly ended up bailing out. So me and Drew headed out on Friday night, checked into the hotel, went to bed, woke up, ran a marathon and drove home. Round trip 24 hours & 10 minutes. It was fast. We ran pretty close together for most of the race. In the first half, we were trading spots but always within about a minute of each other. Then we joined up for the second half. Our splits were roughly the same. He ended up finishing about a minute in front of me around 4:39:00. On the non-running side of life, I have been running around like a crazy lunatic. This is the time of year when everyone wants some type of yardwork done. Long hours and too much crap to think about are driving me crazy. I don't understand how some people have made it this far in life without accidentaly wandering out in traffic. Some people are just idiots that have no clue. INSERT VERBAL ABUSE HERE. There must be something in the water. Anyway, I can bore you with my survival of the stupidest later. My wedding anniversary is on thursday of this week. It will be four years. Time flys. Ella kate is getting bigger by the day and she has started rolling over now. Claire is doing good working from the house and tending the tater tot. Her mom and sister come help out when Claire has to run to appointments. You already know about what I am up to. I have decided, that I need to try and juggle a little more running into my routine. I have slowly been whittling down my miles each week until for the past two weeks I have not run at all. Booo me. I am going to get back on the horse.

Hey People

Just checking in. Since my last post, I have set another personal best. I ran the Germantown Half Marathon in 1:38:42. Before that time, my fastest was 1:44:45. That is 6 minutes and 3 seconds faster!!!!! HUGE! I started out running at what I thought was a decent pace. My first mile was a 6:42. SLOW DOWN!!! My next mile was right at my target pace of 7:30. I felt pretty good initialy. I only had two problems in the whole race. The first was when I got a cramp from a gel that I ate at mile four. I got rid of it by drinking my whole water bottle over the course of a mile. When I got to the next aid station my second problem arose. I had my ipod cranked and was jamming out to some Phish. I was coming up to the aid station and I unscrewed the cap to my water bottle. I ran through, grabbed a cup, dumped it in my bottle, recapped the bottle and took a sip. BARF!!! I had grabbed a cup with Heed in it instead of water. That stuff is nasty. This was the second time in two races that this happened to me. (In the 50 miler, an aid station attendant grabbed my bottle and filled it up with heed instead of water. I didn't notice until I was blowin down the trail already.) I had no choice but to drink it and wait till the next aid station for water. I kept checking my watch as I got closer and saw that I was going to be close to 1:40:00. I wanted to be in the 1:30's so I decided to start pushing a little harder with about a mile and a half left. Coming into the finish, I turned it up a little more. The course has a hill in the last hundred yards that was trying to make me slow down but I pushed through it and ran to a 1:38:42 finish. Overall, it was a great race. It made me appreciate the trails a whole lot more. The road race scene is completely different than the trails. Road racing is like a Sailboat race. Everyone is going as fast as they can, with no time for anyone else. They just want to post the best time they can. The trails are like casually cruising around in a sailboat. Everyone is friendly and will talk to you all day long. Everyone is going to the same place but they appreciate the scenery and the experience much more. Yeah Trails!!!!

Anyway, don't forget to sign up for the 6 Hour Run. Spots a filling up fast and there are only a few days left until the early registration ends.

50 Miles to Freedom!!!!!!!

Earlier in the year Patrick and I decided to sign up for the Carl Touchstone Mississippi 50 Mile race. The day for the race came a lot quicker than I anticipated. That and the fact that I had never run any distance over 34 miles had me a little bit worried about not finishing. However, time was not going to wait on me to get in some extra training. So the day before the race, me, Holly, and Patrick set out on the road towards Laurel, Mississippi. We arrived friday night and set up our camp site 30 yards from the start/finish line. We then headed to the pasta dinner and race packet pick up. It was pretty cool to see wide array of people that showed up to do the race. Some were new like us and some were veterans with Western States Shirts, Boston Marathon shirts, and the like. It was really a motley crew. If you have ever seen an ultra marathon crowd, then you know what I am talking about. Soon we were back at camp and asleep to wake up the next day to try our hands at 50 miles. We woke up to people arriving at 4:00 am for the 6:00 am start. I made my coffee and ate some peanut butter on graham crackers. Soon we were toeing the starting line in the dark. The course was set up as a 12.5 mile loop that we had to complete four times. The first lap went down fairly easy. Patrick and I stayed together and kept our 12:00 minute/mile pace. We figured that we could easily do 12.5 miles in 2.5 hours. That would put us 1:15 minutes ahead of the time cut off. Amazingly, after the race started I didn't have any doubts that I was going to finish. In my mind, someone was going to have to physically take me down to make me fail. After the first two laps, I felt great. Holly had opted for the 20K earlier that morning and was supposed to run the third lap with me and Patrick. When we arrived at the end of the second lap she told me that she was going to wait and run the final lap with me. Cool!! Patrick and I set out for the third lap, keeping our same pace. We were a little bit behind because of stops at aide stations and bathroom breaks, so I was constantly trying to figure what pace we needed to be running. At some point around mile 27 or so, I did some terrible math and decided that we were not going to make the time cut off. I took off and started pushing it hard, leaving Patrick behind. I cranked my i pod and started laying it down. When I got a couple of miles down the trail, I started re figuring on the time and realized that we had plenty of time. At this point I decided that I would just go for it. When I got to the start/finish line at the end of the third lap, Holly was waiting on me. We took off and I new that I had 37.5 miles under my belt and only had 12.5 left. We walked a little bit and ran a little bit. Holly was behind me letting me set the pace. I was walking all of the uphills and sprinting the downhills. After running that route three times in a row already, I knew where to go hard and where to avoid obstacles. Soon we began to see people walking in front of us. This made me want to go faster. We began to pass people left and right. We probably picked off 8-12 people who had run out of gas. Around mile nine of the loop, there is a mile and a half out a back section down a gravel road. Holly told me that she was going to skip this and go ahead to the finish line so she could get my pictures as I came across. With just three and a half miles left, I knew that I was going to finish. Emotions began to flood over me when I was thinking about the accomplishment. I almost started to cry but quickly regained focus and started to pick people off on my way to the finish line. I crossed the line at 10 hours 43 minutes and 21 seconds!!!!! I now have one 50 miler under my belt. Which by the way has a new shiny gold buckle that was awarded to everyone who finished the 50 Miles. Patrick came in shortly after to complete his first 50 miler an get his belt buckle as well. After a short celebratory rest, we all three loaded into the car and headed back to Memphis. We got back into town around 12:00 that night. What a day.

Overall, this was one of the greatest experiences of my life.

I can't wait to do it again.