Jingle Bell Run

The jingle bell spirit is in the air and if you were down on Naito Parkway in Portland on Sunday you would have heard lots of jingles and people having fun running a 5k for arthritis. If you weren't running you probably would have froze your you know what off! (What's up with this cold...I thought it was supposed to rain here a lot? I'm ready for some rain...I've had enough of the cold from living in central New York!) You would have also seen most people dressed up like Rudolph, Santa, elves, or something in between... or just plain goofy Christmas apparel (like me).

It was first mentioned to me by my friend Chyle whose wife Jana has rheumatoid arthritis. I thought that this was a great way to give to a needy cause and have fun with some new found friends while doing one of the things I love most. In fact now that I think back I did my first ever marathon (Marine Corps Marathon) with Team in Training (Leukemia and Lymphoma Society), and my first 100-mile run for Lupus awareness in honor of my sister in law Janna. Crazy coincidence with Janna and Jana! ;0) Anyway, I think doing charity events are important and very rewarding because it gets you outside of yourself a little bit and helps you appreciate things we may take for granted.

We had a crew of....geez...let's see if I can remember everyone...Chyle, Jana, Dale, Matt, Annie, Tom, Dan, Ken, Allie, Margaret, Carol, Andrea, Starlet, Darla, Leigh, and me. What a colorful bunch!...check out some of the pictures below :0)

I made sure that I wasn't going to race it hard on Sunday morning by going out Saturday evening and doing a decently hard track workout in my Vibram Five Fingers. I had a nice workout with some ladders of 400, 800, 1200 and then back down at like a 5:30/mi. pace. Enough to build up a little lactic acid in the calves and get the legs moving quickly. It's been a while since I've done a workout like that and my lungs were definitely burning! So Sunday morning I had no desire to run fast although I would be lying if I said that I didn't look at the starting line to see who was up there :0) Plus, I had too many clothes on to be running fast ;0) We had a fun time down there and enjoyed a nice breakfast/lunch afterwards. Good clean fun for a good cause!

Next up was checking on my training buddies that ran The North Face Endurance Challenge 50-miler down in San Francisco. I've got to give a shout out to Joe Grant who place 9th overall in an insanely tough field of runners. Joe smoked the tough course in 7:24. The funny thing is I told Joe on our last run together not to come home unless he was in the top ten! :0) Maybe it helped Joe, eh? Our other buddy Nick Triolo was attempting his first 50-miler and totally nailed it in just a hair over 9 hours! Congrats Nick!...all that training paid off...way to go bro :0) That has got to feel good for the both of them!

Well as many of you know and could have anticipated I didn't get into the Western States 100 via the random lottery this year. I must say that I had a lot of fun with the suspenseful process. Cheers to everyone that did get selected and I know I'll get in there sooner or later. Now that obsession of Western States 2010 is over with (well...kind of...) I am getting closer to the final construction of an epic race calendar for the new year.

Time to go take three final exams this week and then fly to New York to visit family and friends. Hope this blog post finds you well...happy trails! :0)