Motive Half-Marathon Course

Needless to say, with all of the wedding activities, UT Longhorn games, and craziness at work, my training has been suffering. I did manage to run 18 miles the week of the wedding, but have only run 8 miles in the past 2 weeks prior to Saturday. My Team in Training group has a regularly scheduled long run on Saturday mornings, but I have missed the last three. The last long run I did was 8.2 miles so when I found out this week's run was the whole Motive Half-Marathon course of 13.1 miles, I was more than a little initimidated and anxious. Not only that, we had a "reorganization" at work on Friday so I went to happy hour Friday evening with my new boss and had 6 beers since he was buying. I don't think that's quite the kind of carb loading I should be doing, but the run went surprisingly well. I did the whole run it about 2:24 minutes which included a 7 minute bathroom stop and a couple of water/gatorade stops.

My primary goal was to finish the distance with a secondary goal of running the entire distance without any walking. I accomplished both! It's is really amazing what your body can do if you put your mind to it. Of course, I also remembered why I was out running on Saturday morning, to raise money and awareness for the Leukemia and Lymphoma society. I recently received an email saying that our honored hero is now an honored angel, a 6 year-old boy lost his battle with cancer. I feel very fortunate that I am physically able to run and run simply because I can.

This was the run that I really needed to complete to reinvigorate my training, and to give me back my self-confidence. I have already completed the course, so the Motive Half-Marathon in 3 weeks should be fairly easy. My goal now is to establish a Personal Record. Did I mention that the weather was a perfect 58 degrees? There is one mean hill on the course that increases over 250 ft over a distance of one mile. See my heart rate graph below; the red area is the altitude:


Heart Rate, Speed, Distance, and Altitude Graph

As you can see, I need to calibrate my Polar s625x as it only shows 12.8 miles instead of 13.1.

Married? Yea, Married

Well, Richard and Lauren finally got married in Houston after 16 months of engagement and one postponement. They were originally supposed to get married on the weekend of September 24th, but it was postponed due to Hurricane Rita; they were married on Friday, October 14th instead. As I said in my Best Man speech, things happen for a reason, and I think this makes for a funny story and makes their wedding more unique, memorable, and meaningful. You know they say it is lucky if it rains on your wedding day, so Richard and Lauren should have a tremendous amount of luck since there was a hurricane on their original wedding day.

The wedding was beautiful and went off without a hitch which was a bit surprising since Lauren had to undo the original wedding in 2 days and replan it a few weeks later in less than 5. Also, since it was a Friday night wedding (due to church availability), most of the wedding party were unable to attend rehearsal on Thursday night as most folks don't live in H-town.

Congratulations and Good Luck, Richard and Lauren!


Congratulations! Richard and Lauren are finally married.


My nephew, Kaleb, at Richard and Lauren's wedding. He looks sharp in his little tux.


Matt, myself, Richard, and Steve celebrating at the wedding reception.

Victory is Sweet

My training really suffered this week, and week-to-date I have only run 4 miles; however, I do plan on going to Town Lake later this afternoon so I should finish the week with a meager 8 miles.

Part of my distraction was that I went to the 100th anniversary of the Red River Rivalry this weekend in Dallas. Since the tickets were going for over $300/each on eBay, we decided that we would just get scalped tickets on game day for less. Due to the sold out crowd there were not that many tickets to be had, and the prices were going up quickly as game time approached, so we ended up getting desperate and paying $280/each for the OU side in the end zone. Ouch! So much for our brilliant plan, we should have bought the tickets on eBay.


The OU fans weren't happy that we were sitting among them...especially since we destroyed them :)
By the way, those aren't index fingers.

Actually, the OU fans weren't that bad except for one loud mouth that my brother offered "a warm glass of shut the f*** up." I have never been to a Texas vs OU rivalry game so it was sweet that we won with the largest margin of victory in 64 years!! We let the scoreboard do the talking.


Final score Horns 45, Sooners 12!!


Vince Young after the game.


Richard, Tyler, Sara, and myself after the game (with Big Tex in the background).

After the game we had dinner with my sister, her fiance, and my nephew, Kaleb. Kaleb is so cute. He wanted to go home to Austin with us, and when we went to the car to leave, he got in his normal seat in the back of my car, put his seat belt on, and wouldn't get out (until his mother started counting...you know the ominous count..I think she only got to 2 and he was quickly out of the car).

It was great fun and I look forward to going again next year.

IBM Uptown Classic 10k

This morning I ran the IBM Uptown Classic 10k with my friend Sara.


Starting line of IBM Uptown Classic 10k

Although the temperature was only around 80 degrees, it seemed really hot and I started struggling around mile 3. I guess it was the humidity. Around mile 5 I started to get my second wind and ended finishing in 1 hour and 2 minutes, a 10:07/mile pace. Although that's not fast, it is a personal best for me; I think the last 10k I ran in April I averaged around 11:00/mile.


Crossing the Finish Line.

Afterwards, I had free Mangia pizza and watched the John Wayne Gacy clown.


Freak John Wayne Gacy Clown.

I had 2 beers and 2 glasses of wine on Saturday night and considered that my carbohydrate loading; however, I don't think that works so well. After my 8.2 mile run two weeks ago, I gained significant confidence but had a wake up call this morning. If the half-marathon were today, I would be walking at mile 7; I really struggled to finish this race.