Cultivating Motivation

This article is inspired by Ryan Hall's blog post Keeping The Main Thing The Main Thing.

Additionally, motivation is included in my three principles of athletic training are:

1. Stay Motivated
2. Stay Healthy
3. Train Hard

These can apply to other aspects of life outside of athletics, but often in that realm staying motivated and staying healthy become the same thing with mental training being similar to those two. That is a whole other topic for another day.

As I was running earlier this week I was trying to come up with an analogy for motivation. I have plenty of motivation and I notice that others do not always have the motivation that I have. So I asked myself the question, 'how did I get so much motivation?' Which precipitated another question, 'who or what conspired to produce so much motivation for me?' In this instance I will talk solely about running because spending an hour and a half every day running I have plenty of time to think about my running goals and my progress, which are parts of my motivation.

I came to the conclusion that motivation is like a plant. A tree that starts out as a tiny seed or a flower that starts out as a seed both take time to grow and develop into a fully functional plant. Motivation is exactly the same way. You can not directly give someone motivation the same way that you can not make a plant grow. You can provide all of the necessary resources for a plant to grow and I believe that you can do the same for motivation. 

Addressing my own running career, I started with very little motivation. I ran because I wanted to be in some sort of shape and have a healthy lifestyle. I suppose that is a pretty mature concept for the average 13 year old, but that is why I ran. Then my motivation developed into training for mountain climbing and backpacking early in high school. Later in high school it became a combination of seeing how well I do, as well as the previous factors. I would be lying if I didn't at least mention that girls run, and there is some motivation to that for me.

When I took six months off of running my freshman year of college I returned to running both for fitness but also for the mental aspect. I feel better after more than 99% of my runs. I dare any drug to be more than 99% effective at making me feel better. I would not take it anyway because I have found running and that is my 99% drug. I also missed the competitive aspect of running, which is funny because my freshman year of college I ran four races and was last place in every one.

Later in college the year 2007 happened and that was really the year that formed most of my current goals. Ryan Hall and Peter Gilmore blogged for their upcoming marathons while I was in Costa Rica. That summer Flotrack got off to a great start and consumed hours of my time as I watched professional runners run amazing races. That fall the build up to the Men's Olympic Marathon Trials in New York was amazing with the Chasing Glory series from the New York Road Runners that I checked into every day and a slew of Flotrack videos as well as Runner's World Racing News which I began to check regularly. That November I went to watch the trials with a few friends and I was motivated to run there eventually.

That is the short story of my running motivation. But, there are so many other factors that got me to that point. Had I had the chance to play soccer in Oklahoma or Kansas I might not have taken up running. If I was taller I might have played basketball. If I was bigger I might have played football. If my dad did not take cholesterol medication and my mom did not have diabetes perhaps I would not be motivated to eat well and exercise. If my high school biology teacher had been able to walk perhaps I would not feel a desire to run for those that can not run. Had any one of several coaches told me to go home because I was too slow, that would have been it.

Using the plant analogy I needed my carbon dioxide, sunlight, soil, nitrogen, and water, and all in the proper proportions. Too much or too little of anything and I would have quit. What does cultivating motivation have to do with my life now that I have it? I want to know how I can create that kind of environment for others. Not an environment of dreamers who get nothing done, but highly motivated people with a strong work ethic. As of Wednesday I have run 141 days in a row. I don't know if that counts as a strong work ethic because many of those runs have been slow or short and I was unemployed for part of that. The point is, no one runs 141 days in a row and well over 1,000 miles on a total whim. There has to be some motivation.

I intend to coach a team of high school or college runners some day and I know that if I could put my mentality in each of their heads, we would be incredibly successful, but that is ridiculous because everyone is different I would go insane if most people were like me. So I wonder what sort of general situations can cultivate motivation in a person. I know what worked for me, but I have a feeling that that exact set of circumstances will only present itself to me alone. Everyone has a different history and different cultivating requirements. 

I do not have the answer to the question, 'how does one cultivate motivation in another?' But I feel that just using the verb cultivate instead of create or give or even motivate is a huge step in the right direction.

I Want to Be Part of a Group

I was watching the movie Angels and Demons, which is remarkably similar to the book, and it got me thinking. Specifically, the part where all of the Cardinals go behind closed doors to elect a Pope. How interesting must it be to be in that group? The few people in the world tasked with picking the next Pope.

It must be rewarding to be part of a group that does something beneficial like that. I imagine that most Cardinals work very hard to achieve being a Cardinal. The reward, or I suppose worst part of the job depending on your view, is getting to be one of the few people in the world that pick the human leader of the Catholic Church.

That scene reminded me of several instances from my past. One of those instances was when I desired to be part of a group, yet I did not make the cut.  It took me a long time to mentally get over the fact that I wasn't going to be part of that group. After hours of thinking about it I realized, to the best of my knowledge, that group really wasn't benefiting the community in a way that I thought they had the ability to benefit the community. Instead it created tension and anxiety. The group was very good at recognizing significant contributors, yet when it had all of these significant contributors in the same place nothing seemed to develop for the benefit of others.

I thought about other groups I've been apart of like clubs, teams, social circles, states, cities, and staffs. I asked myself, 'what type of group is it that I really want to be part of?' I realized the answer pretty quickly. I want to be part of a think tank with some of the smartest people in the world that solves the world's problems. After laughing at that ridiculous notion I realized that while I define smart as problem solving ability I have no idea who the smartest people in the world are. I can't name one for certain. Is Bill Gates one of the smartest people in the world? Or is he just an average technology guy with a fair amount of drive that was in the right place at the right time who knew the right people? Is Barack Obama one of the smartest people in the world? Or is he just a really good public speaker that a bunch of people convinced to run for President? Was Albert Einstein one of the smartest people in the world? I think he was. Or is it possible for one of the smartest people in the world to never learn how to drive a car because he was confused by mechanical things?

It's interesting the twists our mind takes. Getting back to the original topic... everyone is a member of society in someway. We are all part of the group. Everyone has a mother and a father and four grandparents, biologically anyway. I wonder as I live in my parents basement, what am I possibly contributing to the world?

Engineers often struggle with the notion that we are in the world to solve technical problems and make people rich. How do I positively address the fact that I helped Sikorsky improve a heat treating process? How does that help anyone?

I want to be part of a group. Margaret Mead said it well, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

A Visit to my Hometown

About six years ago my family left a small town called Sabetha, Kansas. The circumstances that led to our leaving left me with very negative and bitter feelings about the town. The reality is that only a handful of individuals really caused the negativity, a number I could count on one hand. Furthermore they were people I rarely interacted with. They also acted in what seemed to them their best interests. How can I argue with that?

My anger masked the truth. I had the feeling that the whole town was against me, save a few close friends. This time when I returned, for the first time in more than four years, I had the opportunity to see about 30 people that greatly influenced me. These people helped make me who I am. They took an interest in my life. They contributed dozens and even hundreds of hours individually to just me.

For more than six years I distanced myself from most of the town. It wasn't very hard going to school in Massachusetts, living in Wisconsin and working in New Mexico and Colorado. Returning to some of the places that I spent hundreds of hours with some of the people I spent hundreds of hours with was unforgettable. People continually change and the places that we remember have new and different people, so it will never be the same. That is fine by me. What happened is done and as awesome as it was, it had the painful moments as well. I've said and done so many stupid things. For so many things that I did to you my friends I am sorry. I will not live in the past, at least not until I get Alzheimer's or something.

In the one day that we were in town I made more contacts about possible jobs than a month on my own. I finally had the chance to tell a number of people thank you face to face. For sure, I hope that I contribute and share with others the way this little town, with 4% unemployment, shared and contributed to me.

A Full Time Coach

WPI, my alma mater, now has a year round track and field coach. I pushed for that the last several years I was at college because I realized the importance of that contact. Running is a simple sport. Yet I had to learn many of the details on my own because access to a coach was limited. I had plenty of opportunity to ask questions, and I did, yet at 11 AM on a Wednesday when I thought of something, my coach would be at his job. I always envied the other sport players would go hang out with their coach between classes. There is a certain education and motivation that is derived from a coach. The more I understood my sport the better I became. The more I knew my coach the more I understood his methods, and the better I became.

More important than the facilities athletes have, it is about the people the athletes have. I remember distinctly one morning at about 8:30 AM I was working out in the morning, alone, and the basketball coach was working with one of the basketball players one on one in our dusty old practice gym. It was just the two of them, and I think that the basketball player was mostly just shooting free throws. It's not just about the shooting hoops, they were also talking about the most recent game. They were talking about ways to get better. They were probably talking about life in general as well.

First, there is the thought.

Second, there is talking,

Third, there is doing.

A coach can provide many athletes with the thoughts and the talking as well as a way to accomplish the doing. It seems simple, but without some direction most athletes at my former college, or at least runners, would never think of getting to nationals. They wouldn't even realize that nationals exists until their third year running with us and if you haven't made the commitment to work hard to get there by that point you will probably not go. Now with a coach around all the time I am hoping that that seed of greatness will be planted early in their career. Instead of first and second year student athletes dwelling on their suffering compared to high school they might be thinking of goals, and what it takes to get there.

For example, take two runners. Both raced about the same in high school and ran about 40 miles per week. Now it takes a whole lot more than mileage (workouts, injury resistance, mentality, attitude, etc.) to make a good runner but for the sake of simplicity that's all I'm going to talk about. Both runners get to college and their first week they each run 50 miles. Runner A immediately gets stressed out because classes are hard, the running is hard, he is away from his old friends and family, he used to be one of the best on the team now he is not even in the top ten on his new team, and he really only sees the older runners when they run a workout and they are so much faster. Runner B on the other hand is talked to by the coach as soon as he gets to college. The coach tells him to relax and be patient. He says it takes several years to develop as a runner so he comforts the young runner through lackluster workouts and even races compared to what the runner did in high school. The coach continually reminds the runner to be patient and just keep showing up every day. The coach schedules a meeting with Runner B so that they can just talk. Sort of a counseling session where the runner talks not only about running but also about missing his old friends and the classes which are harder than he expected. Runner B leaves feeling refreshed and more comfortable on the team.

The next year Runner A struggles again having never really even done the freshman workload. He skips practice from time to time and runs the same times in workouts and races that he did as a freshman. He still has trouble maintaining 50 miles per week. Runner B upped his mileage during the summer to 65 miles a week and when he gets back to school in the fall is now possibly looking at a spot on varsity (top seven runners on a cross country team). The trend continues and by their fourth year Runner A is running faster than he ever has because he adjusted to college finally. He places well in some smaller races. Runner B has developed every year, despite missing some time running due to injuries because he didn't listen to the coach all the time. He is trying to qualify for nationals and coming pretty close.

It also self perpetuates. A coach who develops some mediocre athletes into good athletes will be recognized by high school recruits. Then several good athletes will come to the program and develop into national champion caliber athletes. Good athletes will continue to come because they see the national champions on the team and want to be that good themselves.

The point is, I have seen my team, my friends, take a number of steps both forward and backward over the last half of a decade and this is by far the biggest step forward in recent history. I am very excited to hear how the school year goes.

Working at Boy Scout Camp

Recently one of my bosses told us that he delights in seeing the Boy Scouts scrutinized in the media for this mistake or that mistake. He said the reason for his pleasure was that the Boy Scouts were doing so much good and were so successful that other people were out to get the Boy Scouts. It is a different point of view to be sure.

I can say with certainty that Boy Scouts changed my life, several times. For example, I went on a ten day backpacking expedition at Philmont Scout Ranch in 2001 the summer after my freshman year. I also ran track in the spring of my freshman year in large part to get ready for that trek. I would have never guessed nine years ago that my exploits in the spring and summer of 2001 would have such life changing consequences. My two physical "hobbies" both took a big step up that year. There were steps before that point and after that point but that specific year was one where I really committed to both sports. Many of the pieces of gear that I bought for Philmont I still have and use occasionally. Those two weeks in New Mexico inspired me to spend a good part of three more summers are Philmont. That fall in cross country I had a breakthrough season and it pretty much cemented my passion for running.

So now as I am most of the way through my fourth summer at a Boy Scout camp I have been doing some reflecting on the whole experience. Why do I spend my summers teaching teenage boys outdoor skills? Why do I spend my summers with teenage boys instead of working with adults at a corporation? Why am I working for 20% of the pay that I thought I would be making with my education?

The answer is actually simple. We staff members don't really ever talk about it but you can see it during a flag ceremony or a mealtime prayer. You can see it when we are trying to get a 12 year old to do the 30 foot tall rappel even though he is crying and his legs are shaking. You can see it when we are handing out hot chocolate after swim tests (or the canoe T exercise) in our 64 degree lake. The reason is that we simply believe in what we are doing. It is honest work that makes kids... better. They have more confidence, more appreciation for the environment, they trust each other. Even though I don't talk to the kids I went through Boy Scouts with too often anymore we still have a bond. Like the 15 degree night in Kansas when the liquid soap turned into a solid. Unless you were there you can't appreciate how interesting it was to do dishes that night.

Someone once said, "it is better to give than to receive." I received so much in my seven years as a Boy Scout that I hope to give back some of that to the next generation. It is very rewarding when a 12 year old with shaky knees and tears gets down the rappel and shows up back at the head of the line five minutes later with a huge smile on his face because he had fun and wants to do it again.

Many people get paid only with money. I get paid with smiles, yells, and quiet compliments. Plus a little money. Life is good.

8th Grade Basketball

I am five feet and four inches tall. That’s about 163 centimeters for you Euros. Basketball is a tall person’s sport. Sometimes I don’t understand things terribly quick. I used to think I was quick learned, I'm not so sure anymore. For some reason I thought I could make a decent basketball player. So when my basketball coach told our team to quit drinking pop (soda, coke, mountain dew, etc.) for the season I quit drinking pop. I was never a heavy drinker and after the first month I didn’t even miss it.

Since then in the late fall of 1999 I have not drank anything carbonated on purpose. I had a Red Bull once and I had an upset stomach for two days. I have also tired punches and beers since that time but the bubbles are just too much for me to handle. I will have an upset stomach if I drink anything carbonated.

This was a significant event in my diet. Each can of soda has 10-12 teaspoons of sugar. How much sugar I have not drank in the last 10 years I have no idea.

It’s strange how one sentence in a 20 minute speech has altered the course of my life. Obviously I have no proof that I would be any different than I am now if I drank soda or beer but I think I would be different. I am convinced that those are calories that would have just never ended up on my midsection. Perhaps when I took six months off of running my freshman year of college I would have gained more weight and never gotten back into competitive running and then were would I be now?

I read a little of Malcom Gladwell’s Tipping Point book where he suggests that small actions can have huge consequences if they come at the right time. Well, an eighth grade basketball coach telling the team to quit drinking pop for the season seems to have lasting consequences for me.

2009: My Year In Review

January: The year started out well with me traveling back to WPI early to work on my thesis. I was also back running after a long term injury. I bought a season pass to Wachusett mountain and I was getting better at skiing by the day.

February: I went to the Mount Washington Valley Ice Fest and had a few good ice climbs as well as talk with people and learn. I also ran my first race in like four months, which while slow was a race I was very happy to run. I also started blogging and teaching the world!

March: Running and researching mostly including a sub 34 10k that was pretty easy showing that I could make a comeback. I also entered the Strage Innovation Awards and won!

April: Research was going full bore and so was the stress. My track season fizzled out due mostly to the stress of finishing my research. There were moments of grandeur here and there that kept me motivated.

May: The stress reached full tilt. I was going back and forth about what I was going to do once I came back from Pakistan. I considered dropping out of school and starting a company or being a climbing bum until the loan companies actually came for me. I learned how frustrating research can be and how deadlines are almost an arbitrary thing because things often finish when they finish not when a month ends. I also ran 52.4 miles in one shot.

June: After a short trip back to Wisconsin to pack my stuff I headed to Pakistan. Wow. Not your average summer.

July: More Pakistan.

August: A short trip to Colorado to use the full extent of my acclimatization then back to Worcester determined to actually finish my thesis. Suffering from a little post-traumatic stress I was determined to work harder in everything that I did.

September: Research was progressing as I was finally figuring out some of the basic mistakes that I just didn't understand before. I ran the Presidential Traverse with a bunch of friends then ran Reach the Beach with a bunch of other friends. The weather was nice and research was going well, more or less.

October: A nice month to be in New England as the leaves change colors and the temperature is nice enough to wear shorts during runs but warm enough that jackets are not yet needed. It's about this time that hot mochas come back into style taking a market share away from the iced mochas. I also had like 400 channels of cable. Work was accelerating, but in a good way.

November: Things were starting to look better. Research was going well enough that I was going to graduate in 2009. Running was going well as I was averaging more miles than ever before. I had finally settled into a great daily routine. In fact day to day life was so good that I'm actually considering going to school again because it was a nice place to be. My future was looking like I would start a company. I wrote a business plan and filed two patent applications. I also published a book. I also ran a PR in the half marathon in the middle of base training.

December: Things got a tad stressful as I finished my research and writing my 104 page masters thesis. However, finishing was a huge accomplishment. It was another huge confidence booster. Unfortunately I also left Worcester after getting to know my friends there so well. A month of great accomplishment and also great change as I enter the real world.

2010: Here I come!

Tying up loose ends

I am graduating in December. My advisor liked the draft of my thesis I gave him last week. However, I still have a few things here in New England I need to do before I leave. Sunday I accomplished one of those, I ran 21 miles to the nearest mountain and ran up to the top. It's the kind of thing you think about for a long time but requires a friend to pick you up because a 42 mile run is a little beyond me at this point.

That also means an ice climb on Mt. Washington and since Baxter State Park just changed the winter regulations I would like to get up there before I leave. It also means spending time with my friends before I leave because I have no idea when I will come back. I'm sure I will but I do not know when. I think that moving around and traveling so much when I was young has kind of made me a mover and shaker. Worcester has a lot to offer. I have so many great friends in New England. But at the same time I feel stale, and reminiscent (not a bad thing but not a great way to live). I run around Worcester alone thinking of the shenanigans we pulled and I smile. A gut wrenching smile because I know we will never have that day to day revelry that we did before. Well, actually I can think of a few situations where we might... But those are rare and probably unlikely. Unless someone wants to come out to Boulder with me and live poor while we start a company and run our legs off.

I try to live with no regrets. For the most part I do but there are things I have done and said that I regret. I am about to go from sophomore graduate student to freshman of real life. How many mistakes have I made? How many more will I suffer through? At what point will I look in to my friend's eye and know that the only future we have is a few emails a year and a Reach the Beach or alumni meet here and there?

On the other hand, who will I meet next month, or tomorrow, that will change my life?

12 Step Plan for Running More Miles

Now running more miles is not really the best goal in the world. Running races faster or losing weight are better goals. Still one of the ways to accomplish running faster or losing weight is to run more. So you run xx miles and a week and you want to run xx or even dare I say xxx miles a week. How do you do it? Here is my 12 step plan:

1. Do a long long run. 18-25 percent of your goal weekly mileage. It doesn't have to to fast. You can walk part of it if you get tired. You just have to finish it. If you run five or less times a week and are training for a marathon you can have a long run up to 30 percent of your weekly mileage.

2. Take easy days. Of course this also implies harder or longer days. Try not to run the same distance two days in a row.

3. Run slower. If your goal is just to cover a distance take it 10 seconds a mile slower, or more.

4. Have some goal (besides the mileage). Trying to qualify for the Boston Marathon or run a PR at whatever distance will help keep you motivated on the cold, wet, windy days.

5. Stretch. I prefer active stretches like swinging my legs before runs and static stretches after my runs. A flexible runner takes less energy to move his or her legs.

6. Run with friends who are trying to do the same amount as you are. If someone else is suffering doing the same thing it makes it more bearable.

7. Run a different route every day. This keeps it mentally new and interesting.

8. Keep a running log. This way you can track your progress and see accomplishment. I use Running Ahead.

9. Do a medium long run. This is kind of a more advanced method but it is good for aerobic development.

10. Run twice in one day. This can take some getting used to but it is a sure fire way to run more miles in one day with less stress on your body than the same distance in one run.

11. Celebrate the little things. Your first 13 mile run! Your first 70 mile week! A 5k PR by only 2 seconds! Keeping a positive attitude keeps you working.

12. Don't be a slave to your mileage. If you are hurt, injured, burntout, tired, or sick take the day off. A day or even a week off now is better than three months off down the road because you didn't take care of yourself.

So those are some steps you can take in order to run more miles. Get out more!

Coaching: The Physical Part

I have only been an actual assistant coach for about a month but I like to imagine that I've been helping mentor my teammates, especially the younger ones, for years. The advantage is that I am so young that I can easily relate to their situation. The disadvantage is that I don't know everything. Also, I am a runner with the other 41 million Americans that run so I can not comment on "common" team sports.

In running a large part of the performance of a race is based on physical limitations. From the 2:13 marathoner to the 25:30 5ker everyone is gasping and has burning legs at the end of the race. For a coach the pressure is on to maximize the performance of the athletes at some race or races. I was reading Brad Hudson's book "From the 5k to the Marathon: How to be your own best Coach" and he gave the following example. In sailing you can take multiple courses to get to your destination. He said you could sail into the wind at a steep angle and go slow or take a more shallow angle and go much faster but have to tack back and forth. I created the chart below as an example:

The point of this is that you can not push your body to the limit every day and hope that it will achieve the results you want as quickly as if you varied the stress on your body. That means taking it easy sometimes and listening to your body. It also means that it is okay to add on more mileage or repeats or run faster if the athlete is feeling good. Why slow down an athlete's progress?

Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers suggests that 10,000 hours of practice is what is needed to move someone from the bottom of the pile to the top. This goes along with what my friends and I discovered by experience: To get better at running you have to run more. So there you have it. The shortest description of how to maximize physical potential that you will probably ever read.

Reach the Beach 2009

I completed my first multistage relay race this past weekend. Reach the Beach is a race that this year was 207 miles long consisting of 36 legs averaging 5.8 miles each and teams from 4-12 people would work to cover the distance. This is the 11th year that RTB has been run. Our team, The Ninjas, had ten people and we came in 10th in a field of 399 teams. Last year, with a slower pace The Ninjas came in 5th. It seems other people trained harder this year.

The race goes from Cannon Mountain Ski Resort to Hampton Beach. Each team is given a number (we were 359) and each runner a number (I was 7). At every exchange or transition area the person that was running hands one of those slap on wrist bracelets to the next runner. At the transition areas the staff keep track of the runner numbers to make sure that the teams maintain the same order. We were fortunate to not have anyone drop out this year so everybody ran their assigned legs. That's a good thing because I was the first alternate and I was pretty tired another four miles would not make me feel better right now.

We had a pretty strong team with maybe half of the team still actually training 50+ miles a week. In total it took us 22:35:17 for an average pace of 6:32. We had several people with legs that were at sub 6 pace and a few people averaged 6:0x pace. Personally I ran 23.1 miles in three legs of 7.2, 7.4 and 8.5 miles and averaged 6:11 pace over all. That is only 5 seconds per mile slower than my half marathon PR. That is also about 2:42 marathon pace, a pace I could clearly not run for a marathon right now. That pace was fantastic for me because I put down 6:30 as my approximate goal pace and I was not sure if I could do that or not. To get that far under 6:30 with only a few weeks of training raises my goals for the rest of 2009. I would like to find a half marathon or something in November where I can knock a few minutes off of my PR.

What carnage did I come away with? I went for a run with the girls yesterday at 8:35 pace and I feel better. However, yesterday and today I am having trouble going down stairs, standing up, and doing anything involving my quads. I'm taking today, Monday, off after 25 days of running and not even bike riding for my first complete day off in like five weeks. It hurts... in a good way. I feel great! I am not injured! I feel more fit then I did four days ago. It is desirable to start a new training cycle from roughly the same place you ended the last one and I feel this preseason indicator was a very strong indication that I will run fast this spring.

Will I do it again? Most likely. I'm reading a lot of Lydiard training and I like the idea of a yearly cycle instead of a four or six month training cycle so I think that spring and summer will most likely be my highly competitive months and fall will be the build up phase where I can take the time to waste myself over 22 hours of torture. In fact, if people are willing to train a little harder, it would be really cool to try and win this thing.

Some rough quotes:

"It's all about the Grape Nuts. They have lots of fiber. I'm probably going to eat a whole box. Do you want some?" - Mark

"There was a female moose in the road and I didn't know what to do. Fortunately, it ran back into the woods before I got to it" - Nick

"Have you even run nine miles this year?" - me

"No, I don't think so." - Matt

After the 9.2 mile leg

"I passed 12 people...(three seconds later) and got passed by 16 people." - Matt I have to give Matt credit because he had a very long leg and he didn't walk at all despite the obvious pain he was in. It helped our team save some time.

"Hey, there's a corner up there slow down." - Paul to me who was driving the van at 5 am.

The first words I heard when I woke up from sleeping alone in a field Saturday at 8 am after an hour of sleep: "I almost ran over that person sleeping over there in the field."

"Oh a real runner." - Some guy I passed in the morning.

On a separate note: Why do I put all of this effort into running and climbing mountains instead of working hard and finishing my thesis? I do work hard at my thesis, but I am in a place where everyone works hard so it is not too unique. Also, people treat you different if they think you are smart regardless of wether you are or not. So many of the hard working students I know are somewhat ashamed or secretive of their talents and accomplishments. Additionally, who really wants to read about the nodes that I'm constraining or how excited I get when the deformation in my simulations is on the same scale as the measured values?

Go, Go, Go!

In the world of backpacking the more you carry the more you have to carry. For example: you want to take camera equipment, a heavy tent, an iron skillet, and a book. Well since you are carrying so much extra weight you need more food. Now that you will be hiking slower maybe you should add another day onto the trip to cover the same distance. You are going to need more food for that day. You see the trend.

I am finding that it is the same with "going". I mean covering ground on my feet. The more I do the more I want to do. I'm in the middle of running 100 miles this week and I realized that 100 miles is not that far. So in a few weeks, after I recover from Reach the Beach, I'm going to do 120s. When I can go on a 20 mile run/hike on saturday, a 19 mile long run on Sunday and the a 17 mile double Monday and still feel pretty good Tuesday and Wednesday I want to work closer to my potential. I'm base building. I'm not supposed to pop out a 5:29 mile on the grass with the boys cross country team after a full workout with the girls team.

If you want to see a play by play of my runs the last few years read my running log. If you read my workouts they have the highs and low all documented. From tearing my plantar and the crying during my first 18 mile run to setting the WPI 10,000 record. It's all there.

Thank you Nike!

Let me fill you in on 2009 in the world of American distance running. I'm not talking about Jenny Barringer's 9:12 steeple, Ryan Hall's 3rd in Boston, Dathan or Matt Tegankamp's sub 13 5000s, or former D3 runner Nick Symmonds' 1:43 800. I'm talking about Nike moving everyone to Portland. When I say everyone I mean maybe 20 of the best 50 athletes in the country. Alberto Salazar (running star of the 80s) and Jerry Schumacher (former Wisconsin coach) along with every type of specialist you can imagine at Nike are helping to make the US a great distance running nation again. Some of the people who are there or will be soon: the Gouchers, Dathan Ritzenhein, Galen Rupp, Matt Tegankamp, Chris Solinsky, Alan Webb, and I think Shalane Flannagan along with a slew of second tier runners who are a little younger and in a few years will be running sub 13s of their own.

Arthur Lydiard said in some of his books, starting in the 60s, that group training was vital to success. The reason being that there is a constant source of motivation because the slower runners see the faster ones and want to get to that level and they can see how much work it takes to get there. For the faster runners, they are forced to continue to work hard or someone will take their place and as one of the examples on the team they have a responsibility to do things right. The Hansons started a group of marathoners in 1999 with group training as one of the focuses. They have had success but they have mostly recruited the blue collar D3 and slower D1 athletes instead of the blue chip NCAA winning athletes. My friend suggested that perhaps Nike was offering many of these athletes two different contracts: stay where you are we'll keep paying or come here and work with the best and we'll make it worth your time. Wether or not that is happening the important thing is that Nike is offering on site help and a great support system to some of the best athletes in the country.

For more information. Read that every day.

New Athletic Center at WPI

Breaking news - As I was standing in line at the Dunkin Donuts I overheard three faculty members talking. Apparently, last night or the night before there was a faculty meeting of some sort at President Berkey's house. He let it be known that he wants to go ahead with the new athletic center. Because of the recession there are certain financial incentives to start building sooner. The total cost of the project is expected to be $50 million. Right now he apparently has a surplus of $7 million that could be used to start the process.

The faculty seemed surprised by the rush to build things. They made a few comments about how their respective departments could use $7 million.

My Company will be a Team

I have been teaching myself marketing recently. Apparently, you don't have to go to business school anymore. You can read in the blogoshpere everything you need to know. However, if you want one site to tell you what you need to know about marketing go to SpotlightIdeas. That particular post has 250 articles from the greats like Seth Godin, Chris Brogan, and many more.

So I am trying to learn about marketing. After reading well over 100 blog posts I realized something: people want to be part of a team. There is room on the team for almost everybody. There are leaders, there are followers, there are lone wolves, there are bench warmers, the aggressive people, the slackers, and so on. Instead of trying to just sell stuff and make money, get people to be on the team.

Okay, bear with me as I try to explain this. First there needs to be an idea, a product, a service, whatever that people want. Not need, but want. This is 2009 people aren't spending money on what they need but what they want. Case in point: I slept on the floor at my new apartment for a week and a friend's couch the week before but I still went to the Bean Counter several times each week to get a mocha or latte. Now I'm borrowing a day bed from a friend for free.

Second, now that you have someone that bought something, you want to keep them around. In the future they will most likely buy more from you, tell their friends, suggest a new product or an improvement to an existing product, write a positive review on the internet, and not create more hassle in your life. Why are they going to do all of this for you? Because you gave them something they wanted and it was everything they had hoped for or better. But how do you keep them around? I mean when you are selling durable goods that could last for ten or twenty years how do you insure that people come back?

Well, inviting people to be part of the process gives them a sense of ownership. Case in point: the benchwarmer on the basketball team. He works out with the team, puts in the time and effort yet only gets two minutes of playing time in a good game. His stats for the year will be less than one of the star players gets in one game. Yet, he is still part of the team. The team would not be the same without him. Most likely, he brings something to the table that no one else does. I know for a fact, having been on the bench and a star player, that there is a lot of value to the "worst" player. To some people a given sport comes very naturally but to others we have to work a little harder. Seeing the slowest runner show up to practice every day and put in the work is inspiring. They work so hard and no one outside of their friends in the sport ever know.

That's great but how does this apply to the corporate world, web 2.0, 2010, and making money? It's open source business. A team links the coach to the benchwarmer. Forget the fans in the stands. Every customer becomes part of the marketing department, the product testing department, and the team. That doesn't mean they need another username and password to clutter their lives. It means that you two will remember each other. The customer spends time with "you" and if it was a good experience they will be back. You then reward them in some way when they come back.

I like to tell the freshman and underclassmen in my sport after several months when they are still showing up: "Thank you". It sounds so simple but how often do people say "thank you"? Spending several seconds to just say "thank you", and perhaps why you are saying thank you will encourage them to work harder and keep returning. Why do I say "thank you"? I care about the team. If members of the team perform better the team as a whole performs better.

This is a metaphor for rewarding customers. It doesn't necessarily have to be saying "thank you" although that is nice. It could be saving them money on future purchases, alerting them to new products or letting them know when their old products are getting worn out. Case in point: I'm from a smaller town in Wisconsin. We have a shoe store on main street with two or three employees total. It is the old fashioned kind of shoe store and looks like something out of the Andy Griffith show. All of the shoes in the back are piled in boxes 12 feet high and 95% of the shoes in the store are brown or black. The owner keeps track of when my dad buys shoes and after several months when that particular brand of shoes is starting to wear out she will call him and let him know that his shoes are wearing out. So he always goes back and buys more shoes. Less than two minutes on the phone generates a visit that makes a sure sale.

So that's it:

1. Have something people want.

2. Get them to come back.

Overtraining

Now I've read about overtraining and I've watched it happen. It is not the number of miles you run or the number of hours you train. You can most likely train a whole lot harder than you ever have before. When I have seen it or experienced it in the past it has been from several recurring themes:

1. Never taking it easy. As a runner when your off day is an hour of biking or swimming and then a little lifting and your off season is less than a week you are flirting with burnout. Many very dedicated athletes train 40 hours a week but have a serious off season where their cortisol or adrenaline or whatever really gets a chance to rest.

2. School or work or personal life drama consume you. Attending a difficult engineering school caused my friends and I to stress out about important projects several times and performances to just plummet. 

3. Ramping up training too fast. Injuries happen this way too. One week you're running 30 miles a week, the next it's 50, and then 70 and then you get injured or feel tired all the time.

So train hard and take it easy! 

Precompetitive Innovation

Some sort of basic science that benefits everybody or at least members (who might be competitors with each other) and is not competitive or commercializable. Or here at Wikitionary. 

To me this means something that everyone wants to know but it is unrealistic for one company to do it alone. For example a high pressure (20 bar) hydrogen gas quenching furnace/facility. In the heat treating industry there are people that want one of these so they can compare empirical test results to that of oil quenching. However, no such two phase low pressure carburizing and hydrogen gas quenching furnace exists for sale. There may or may not be one in Pennsylvania and Poland. It is theorized with some empirical evidence and computer simulations that hydrogen can quench as well (as fast) as oil. Now it seems that simulations of such a process are definitively precompetitive. It also seems that validating those simulations with tests of that process are precompetitive. However, building a furnace however big or small for the express purpose of validating the simulations becomes competitive because building a furnace is the responsibility of furnace manufacturers. That last sentence to me seems not entirely true. If the everyone desires t0 understand the process and perform physical experiments than perhaps everyone should take the hit to invest in the (possibly) first such furnace.

It seems to me that in any precompetitive research that one party will inevitably gain more from the experience than another. For example a furnace manufacturer, an auto maker, and a heat treating company go together on a new project. The project finished and is a success. The furnace company comes out with a new furnace and makes a ton of money in one day for the sale of that one furnace, the heat treater buys a furnace and saves a little money every year for 15 years, the auto maker buys the parts and saves even less money than the heat treater. Everyone saves money or makes more money but that precompetitive project was a different kind of investment for each company.

I think precompetitive research is important to the future of technological innovation because of publicly traded companies that focus on positive earnings every quarter research and development is likely one of the first areas to get funding cut. If all of that R&D can get done by a third party for a fraction of the cost because it is shared by several companies (even if they are competitors) than innovation is more likely to continue. 

The 18K Superchallenge

Legendary among college runners is the coveted trilogy which has no equal in the track world. The 10,000, the 3000 steeplechase, and the 5000 all in the same day. Now it's been done several times over three days by several well known runners like Macharia Yuot at D3 nationals in 2006 or Scott MacPherson from Arkansas at the recent SEC championships where his total time was around 55 minutes. Rumor has it that some runners at Tufts came up with this in the 90s and the goal was to get your total time in less than a hour. One female runner from WPI tried it several years ago at our NEWMAC championships and she won the 10,000 and got fifth in the 3000 but our coach wanted to save her for New Englands the next week so she didn't do the 5000. 

For the college track runner it is the ultimate day. For D3 runners to get a total time under an hour you have to be moderately competitive at every distance. I don't think D1 runners have the opportunity very often to run all three the same day because their meets are generally stretched over several days. Regardless of who you are it would not be easy. Of course if you want to push yourself why limit yourself to an hour? I kind of think that 52 minutes would be nearly impossible except for professional runners who rarely even run two races the same week. It's a unique opportunity to be able to run all three races the same day. For those of us moderately good D3 runners just trying to break an hour chances are no one would even notice outside of our team. It's also a waste of he next week because most likely you would be so sore after that that trying to throw down any workout that week or even a race the next weekend would probably suffer. 

However, despite the sacrifice and stupidity of the 18k Superchallenge for any runner that completes it (that is all three the same day and less than an hour total time) let me know and show me the website with the results and I'll buy you a meal. 

My history of sports

I'm going to do a post about my involvement in sports and the different phases I have gone through. I'll probably do the same with career choices, extracurricular, and school later.

It began with baseball. I've seen videos of myself sitting on the floor of our apartment before I could walk or run swinging a bat to hit the wiffle ball my parents rolled across the floor. I also remember when we lived in Ohio I liked to go to the local park and sometimes run up or down the hill. Mostly down the hill. We also had squirt gun fights a few times although losing and getting soaked brought me to tears a few times. The was also the hide and go seek tag which I've played who knows how many times and that always involves running. Without talking to my parents and looking through old videos that's about it for Ohio life.

When we moved to St. Louis I expanded my horizons and played army a lot which meant lots of walking around and some running here and there. I also learned to ride a bike. Being so small I had this tiny red bike and honestly I saw it a few years ago and I was amazed that anyone that little would be able to ride a bike. Many of my friends were also into roller blading and I hung out with kids that were older than I and I'm not a big person so finding sporting equipment was often a challenge. I remember getting my first pair of rollerblades. We went to a few different stores but just could not find anything for a six year old. Finally at one store just before it was going to close we found this three wheel on each boot pair that fit with a brake on each boot. So I was able to rollerblade but then we played hockey as well so my dad found a hockey stick in the trash who knows where and cut the end off so it fit me.  Another interesting little story is that in St. Louis we went out at night in the winter a few times to this drain that would freeze over and chop the ice with hammers and put it in buckets. I also helped build my first snow cave one winter.

One story that sticks out is that one day at recess we got to play on the big kids playground and they had a track painted on the pavement 16 or 20 laps to the mile and my friend and I wanted to see if we could walk a mile during recess so that's all we did for the entire recess. I think we missed it by only a few laps. I haven't thought about this stuff in years and it's funny to think that I've been trying to see how far I could go since I was six or seven.

When I lived in Enid Oklahoma I was introduced to soccer. There were only three people on the field on each team at any given time.  I think I did ok because I remember playing a lot and not as much sitting on the bench. I also remember the cold days and people using hand warmers but I was not cold enough to need them. 

In Buffalo Oklahoma I played baseball. They had no soccer team. I played the outfield which got boring because unless something is hit your way there's not much to do. It was fun and I played two or three years but after one season of the pitching machine I was out because it was so scary. This ball flies at 50-60 miles an hour right toward you and even when I did hit it the bat shook in my hands so much that it kind of hurt. So I retired from baseball. We also had a basketball team of six people which was most of the boys in our grade. I got a fair amount of playing time and it was always fun to go to games because our whole team fit in a suburban and it was like an hour drive and I like long drives. We also played a lot of games in PE and got to run around a lot. Once we played football so long that we missed 40 minutes of our next class. We had boys and girls PE separate so you get us playing a game and the competition just kind of escalates.

While there we had at least one track meet where we traveled to another school and I remember running the 800 and coming in near the middle or end of the field but still beating a lot of people. 

Finally only once while we lived in Oklahoma my family took a trip to Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park. We went camping for the first time and hiking as a family and had a blast. I vividly remember hiking to emerald lake or whatever the highest lake below flattop mountain and hallets peak is and eating lunch on a big rock and staring at the vertical cliffs and mountains so high above. 

When we moved to Sabetha I went into seventh grade and at that age they started to take sports more seriously. I skipped football because I didn't want to get hurt. I played basketball and scored two points all season. I ran track and was one of maybe 2-3 distance runners. I ran the 1600 because it was the longest event they had for 7th graders. I also distinctly remember watching an 8th grader run a 5:01 1600 and set the school record. It was so impressive. I also went to summer camp at Spanish Peaks that summer and did the hiking merit badge and was never the slowest even with a 20 mile hike that we did on the last day. It was great fun because it took like 12 hours and I totally wasn't prepared for a 20 mile hike. My backpack and water bottles were all wrong and uncomfortable. My family took a vacation after that through Wyoming and Montana and South Dakota. I out hiked my mom for the first time on Avalanche Peak in Yellowstone. So now I was the most athletic in the family.

In eighth grade things started to change. I still did basketball and scored 10 points in the whole season. I was still in PE and got to try a bunch of different sports from wrestling to archery. But in track they finally let us run the 3200. I didn't do too well and often got beat by this one really good girl but never the less I scored points a few times and we had a new kid that also liked to run the long distances and having him there would push me to try and be better even though he lapped me a bunch.

In high school I was always bored after school during the fall of my freshman year so I began riding my mountain bike on this 16 mile out and back route. Sometime in September or October someone finally told me about cross country because I had no idea it even existed. I did track that year. I vividly remember the first day of practice. We ran 4-5 miles I ran 5 miles with the really good runner on our team and the two other freshmen on the track team and it was the farthest I had ever run at one time. I had blisters and I was dead. The three of us sat there on the freshman side of the locker room just in a daze because in middle school we did maybe 3-4 miles total in a long practice here the first day we did five miles. It was a shock. I think I ended up running like a 12:36 3200 and still got beat by the same girl. She was state champion a few times I think so it was really just inconvenient she was in our league. Also in our region but not our leage were these two sisters Amy and Emily Mortimer who I never raced but I saw Emily the younger sister race and she was quite a bit faster than I. We also had a runner on our team that year that was really good as in 4:20s miler and 9:something two miler. He won state in both the mile and 32 and competed at state in the 800 but was too tired to take it seriously so he jogged it. He went off to a junior college and had some success then got injured and had a fight with the coach and I have no idea if he even runs any more.

My sophomore year I did cross country. Somewhere in my brain I'm sure this season changed me. I opened with a 22:02 I think for a 5k and over the season brought it down to 19:09 I think. But the important fact is that on a team of about 10 guys I was 4-5 so I was one of he scorers. I had never been a varsity scorer so to have some importance on the team was great. Our team ended up getting 3rd at regionals and going to state but I got badly sick and even though I ran at state I didn't score so we had a bad day in 2001. Another highlight of that season was regionals i can through the two miles in 11:54 and it was the first time I had broken 12 in the 2 mile. I think that's the race I PR'd in. Also that season I began logging my miles on Million Mile Ultra Run. That includes run and walked and I started from the day I found the website so the end of September 2001. Also during xc that year I did the Multiple Sclerosis 150 mile bike ride in Septemeber which was 90 miles one day and 60 the next. Pretty crazy a 15 year old riding a bike that long and feeling good enough to go to practice Monday. I came back in better shape then I left. After cross country that year I felt good and wanted a new challenge because I didn't want to play basketball or wrestling and after spending 3-5 every day practicing it was hard to not go running. Over Thanksgiving break that year I planned to run to Bern where my mom worked which was just about 13.1 miles. I was planning to run there, eat lunch at the special Thanksgiving meal they were having a run back. When I got to Bern two hours after i started there was obviously no running back. So my dad drove me home after lunch.

After the pain of that run went away I still wanted to run so I found a half marathon from Topeka to Auburn. I had learned from the internet that marathons beat up your body so I didn't want to hurt myself and a half sounded challenging enough. I just ran some and come race day I ran and I don't remember any splits but my time was 1:35 something and I was dead at the finish. I think I cried. Before they let me leave with my mom some woman gave me hot chocolate with extra sugar and it was amazing. It took a while before I was recovered and wanted to run again but that year in track I PR'd again in the 16 and 32. I think I ran on a 4x8 that year too. 

That summer I did my three week long ROCS trek at Philmont and then tried to hike the two highest mountains in Colorado and kind of did it with a total of two peaks over 14,000 and 8600 feet of elevation and 15 miles in about 14.5 hours from 3:30 AM to 6 PM (two hours after I told my family they should start worrying about me).

Junior year more of the same. I got to 18:33 in cross country. I was number three runner on a team with only five people until our top runner got an IT band injury and we didn't have the depth to even score at league and at regionals with all five of us we didn't do well enough to go to state. I did the bike ride again only I did 100 miles the first day so I could get a little patch. I did the half marathon again and ran 1:27:52 and won the 19 and under age group. This is in part due to learning from the internet how to better train. On Friday I would do a long run 8-10 miles and on Tuesday I would run 800 at sub 3:00 pace. My best session was 10x800 at 2:52 to 2:58. It ended up being my first win of any kind. In track I had my best season of 5:03 in the mile and 11:06 in the two. While I would run 5:06, 5:07, and 11:12, 11:18 in high school i wouldn't break either barrier. 

My senior year we had a strong team and got 7th at state which was the best our school had ever done on the men's side as far as I know. Our women's team won the thing. I ran a 18:26 which I attribute to doing Yoga almost every night. Our coach also drove us to the breaking point that season. We had done 6 AM doubles in the past but this year we were doing four 6 AM practices, five after school practices and practice on Saturday. We eased off as the season went along but it was too much. People were falling asleep at the dinner table. I was routinely going to bed at 9 PM. I mean we did win league ( I think) and regionals ( I know) so we ran well but at what cost? I did the bike ride that year and got a yellow jersey for doing it three years but in the winter after xc I had no motivation to run I would try but just feel so run down so I didn't do the half marathon. During track I tried to run fast but 11:18 and 5:06 were also that I could muster. I walked off the track after the 3200 and my friend and i just hugged and cried because it was over. I never thought I would run a track race again. 

I continued running after the school year for fun and did a race the Fire Cracker 5k July 4th and then took 6 months off with not a single step of running. When I started to get back into running in January it was slow but after two months I had to join the track team at WPI because of the team aspect and my competitive nature needed an outlet. The rest is in the WPI archives of my very slow freshman season followed by summers at altitude and finally higher mileage with my first 70 mile week spring break my sophomore year and then KERPLOW I ran really fast and her I am.

100 Mile Run: Part 2 of 2

The excitement began at 6 PM yesterday as Duffty, Ashman and I piled into my car and drove the hour from Worcester to Foxboro to stay at Todd's house. We had a few drivers and pacers back out at the last minute which was probably a good thing because they might have pushed us to run too fast or been negative about the hours of running and a positive attitude is very important in this kind of thing.

We made it to Todd's house and his parents were great they fed us pizza and gatorade. We then played some poker, pool, and fooseball for awhile and watched the Celtics game. Then around 10 we watched the Running the Sahara movie his mom had bought and it was surprisingly good.

Going to sleep just before midnight none of us could fall asleep because we were so nervous and excited about the run. 

We woke up at 3:20 and got everything together. We had enough to supply a small track meet. Food of all types, gallons of gatorade and water, spare pairs of all types of running clothing, extra shoes and socks, towels, blankets, cameras, athletic tape, pretty much everything but pain pills. Todd drove us to the end of Woods Hole. Which is a 2 mile long peninsula with a private road we went down anyway. When the signs said "turn around now" we decided we had gone far enough and and got out and tied out shoes and took a group picture of the four of us and we started running just after 5 AM. We had a slight detour from our plan because a bridge was out but met up with Todd for the first time at 2.7 miles. We then headed out along the road by the beach taking the same course as the Cape Cod Marathon and Falmouth Road Race which is a fantastic road and very scenic. We pretty much cruised easily for the first 11 miles until out first encounter. We stopped at Burger King (before 7 AM) to use the bathroom and this lady asked us "Are you out running?" 

"Yes" I replied.

"That's nice. Are you doing the road race this year?"

"Which road race?" I asked.

"The Falmouth Road Race, it's like nine miles or something." 

"Well not this year." Except for the fact that we pretty much just ran the whole course plus four miles.

"It's a good race you should do it."

We trotted on usually doing a little over 8 minute miles and not walking much. We saw Todd around the 16 mile point and agreed to meet up at the 20 mile mark but he ended up on the wrong road and we ran past just missing each other so we kept running. We started to get worried that he got in a car crash or something because we hadn't seen him pass. Finally around mile 25.5 we stumbled to a deli and I asked to use a phone because I was the only one wearing a shirt and I called my cell phone. Todd answered after two rings, 

"Where are you?"

"Where are you?"

"I'm at Old Post Road." I looked down at my turn by turn directions and see that we passed that 5 miles ago.

"Todd, we're at Fancy Deli or something on Main street".

"I'm so sorry I totally missed your guys I'll be there in a few minutes"

So we waited outside the deli trying to answer questions about our running without mentioning how far we had already ran or how far we wanted to run. When I made the call they other two told a guy they had just run over 25 miles and using graphic language he found that amazing. Todd finally arrived and we decided to go down the road to the marathon mark and take a long break to eat and change socks. So Duffty flew down the road at 6:30 pace to prove something to himself and Ashman and I jogged less than a mile to the end and took some pictures and it took the two of us using a continuous watch 4:31 to run the marathon. Yes I felt pretty accomplished by 9:30 AM.

We took about 20 minutes there and headed out. I ran with Ashman because Duffty's idea was to run 7:40s and rest more and we were content to handle 8:20s or something. We had a break around 28.2 and Ashman was starting to feel it about a half a mile after the stop he said that the next break he would take himself out. The purpose of this run was to push ourselves and he ended up running 31.3 miles or so which is very respectable.

At that stop I started to pick up the pace and try to run with Duffty. Things are a bit of blur from there. I spent most of the 30s close to him perhaps 10 feet or so. We threw down a 7:32 mile at some point which was the fastest of the day. Finally, I just could not maintain that pace so I would run my pace and he would run his and then walk and I would catch up and we'd walk together for a little bit then repeat the process. This was fine but around 35 or so we took a break to sit down and relax and about a mile or two after that he was hurting and decided that if he stopped at all he would not get up again so we took our breaks for the next 7 miles or so by taking our water bottles and walking for a few minutes drinking and then Todd and Mike would drive up and take our bottles and drive two miles ahead. Our rest stops averaged 2-3 miles with the exception of the 10 mile stretch.

Around the early 40s Duffty got less coherent and we didn't really talk much. I took a sit down break in the van around 43 to tell the other two who couldn't see as much as I did that Duffty wasn't looking good. I then ran after him and he said that at the next stop he would be done. So he ended around 45. 

I still have energy in me and I was thinking clearly so I wanted to try and take a crack at 100k. About 10 minutes after I started out alone I was on a high which is a misnomer. I still felts lots of pain just not as much as a low and my pace on a high was maybe 9 minute miles while running. However when I was a mile or two out there on my own it started to get much harder.  All I could think about was the time and the distance. I would look at my watch and then run a few hills which took a long time and look at my watch again but only 3 minutes would pass. Around 48 my knee started to hurt a little and my quads were really hurting from the low. At the 50 mile rest stop (that I reached after 9:05 of running) they took pictures and Mike asked if there would be a mile 51. While 50 miles is cool two marathons is cooler so I told them make it 52.4 and I would call it a day. I took some water and energy jelly cube things and headed out. The gave me directions at 51 miles and 51.6 miles because I didn't want to try and navigate anymore. I also wanted to stick on the sidewalk. While I wasn't stumbling I was afraid of a car hitting me or one of those huge boats on a trailer. When they told me .8 miles to go mI thought I would be able to pick it up. Yeah not so much. I even walked within a half mile of the finish line. The finish was on a down hill and they rolled out the toilet paper finish line a took pictures and I hopped in the van without a single stretch. Total time for two marathons 9:34:39.

Todd drove us the hour and a half back to his house and Ashman drove us the hour back to Worcester. How do I feel? Ok. I mean pretty much the worst I've ever felt physically but I can walk and I showered and besides being really sore I can't feel my plantar fasciitis at all which is great! My left knee hurts but two marathons mostly on the right side of the road in motion control shoes will do that to you. My quads which started to hurt around 11 are toast. A little bit of chaffing in a few different places but nothing that won't heal in two days. Basically, I'm doing amazing. I had a great birthday and I had three good friends share it with me. 

There are pictures and video but I don't have them right now.