Posts from — August 2007

When we moved to our new place a few years back, we inheirted the existing fridge.  It’s old, the ice maker doesn’t work, but the front of it is acrylic (or plastic or something).  The best part - magnets don’t stick to it. Not that I’m against showing off the kids latest creations,  it just is one less source of visual clutter in the kitchen.

I’m still catching up on my newsfeeds from vacation time (Google Reader still says I have 100+ left), but came across a post on Unclutterer that extols the same notion: Unclutterer: Try giving your refrigerator a facelift. I like their suggestion on finding a new place for the kids artwork. We’re contemplating a minor face lift to the kitchen (some paint and probably new cabinet hardware) and might work in the frame idea in.

I don’t know why I always find the Super Mario Theme amusing when played outside of the video game itself  - like on guitar or piano. I didn’t even own a Nintendo Game System growing up (though I did have an Atari 2600). This one takes the cake.  The Super Mario theme played on Tesla coils:

[via UNEASYsilence]

The marathon post from yesterday garnered quite a bit of inbound traffic (beyond the normal Google searches for “Thomas Recall.”)  Thanks for all of you who stopped by - hopefully you’re still here. In following some of the referral links, I stumbled across a few other bloggers who are also in training.  One that struck me was A Marathon Leap, who has a countdown calendar on her front page that reads “…and there are 58 days until the Chicago Marathon.”  As they say - Hole-ee key-rap!  That is not to say I don’t think I’ll be ready, but, dang! that is coming up quick.

The main meme across everything I read seems to be how much the heat sucks for training.  Can’t say that I disagree there, but I think I’ve been lucky weather-wise through the whole training process. I’ve been consistently running three days a week since April 14th and have been rained on twice, yesterday being the only time it actually got me wet of any mention. I do know there were probably a couple early midweek runs that would have been rain soaked if I’d done them outside and not on the treadmill, but the only time I can fit those runs in was very early morning and given the time of year, it was pitch black outside.

The weather for this Saturday looks to be ok for the morning. My nine miles should take me just over an hour and a half, and if I squeeze it in the morning I should stay dry and relatively cool.

I remembered the other day that I announced my insane plan to run the Chicago Marathon, then let it fall off the radar in terms of this blog. Since I do get asked a bunch, “How’s the marathon training going?” I thought I’d answer.

First some perspective. I’ve never been athletic. Sure, I participated in some sports pretty much up to freshman year in high school (soccer and wrestling), but I was far from the star athlete. On the contrary, I was the one who fell prey to the cruelness that is youth, being called “fatso” and other colorful names. In college I treated my body like a temple in so much as the money-changers did back in the bible before Jesus kicked them out.  That is to say, health and fitness were not good friends of mine.

A few years back started to get serious about my health and fitness.  We joined a health club after we moved to Brookfield and I started working out on a regular basis. In 2005 I participated in the Hustle Up the Hancock stair climb and quite surprisingly didn’t collapse. As a mater of fact, I actually had a lot of fun. Quite a few people in their congratulations joked, “What’s next?  A marathon?”

At first I dismissed it as folly.  Me? A marathon? That is a good one.  But in my training for the stair climb, I did a lot of running (albeit on a treadmill) and found I actually liked it more than most of the another cardio options at the club. I decided to enter the Crazylegs Classic 8k run in 2006 and ran the five miles in around 55mins.  During the race I remember thinking, “Could I do this for another 21 miles?” and the answer was, “maybe.”

The big challenge was the time.  Beyond the physical commitment, training for a marathon takes a lot of time. The long runs on the weekend take several hours to complete, and there there is the commitment to all the mid week running. Most programs are at a minimum 16 weeks. My wife was pregnant with our second kid and there was no way I could commit the time last year.  After much discussion last December I decided 2007 would be the year. While she still thinks I’m crazy, she was willing to make the commitment with me so I could get all my training in.

So how has it been?  In a word, tough.  I’ve only been running for maybe 5 years (running in the sense of jogging/fitness running - I’m not counting trying to sprint between gates to make a connecting flight at the airport) and up until this year I’d run almost exclusively on a treadmill.  At the advice of former co-worker and friend, Adam Hecktman, I decided to follow the training regimen in Jeff Galloway’s book, Marathon: You Can Do It! I started the program back in April with a weekend “long” run of 3 miles.  I moved to running on the road and have grown to love it.  Along the way, I’ve totally fallen in love with running, which must sound weird.  Why would you attempt a marathon unless you liked running?  The marathon was to prove to myself that I could do it; I’m not that slow fat kid anymore. I wanted to get in shape and a big audacious goal like running a marathon was a good motivator.  I still need to complete it, but I know I’ve found a past time that I’ll be enjoying for quite a while into the future.

Around early July, I completed a 16 mile training run.  Afterwards, I felt a little funny, but after massive amounts of hydration and food (it is crazy just how hungry running for three hours makes you) I felt better.  Then on Tuesday for my midweek run, I got a searing pain in my left buttock.  I gave it a few strides, but it only got worse, so I knew I needed to give it a rest.  Then the fear set in.  Is this the end?  I know that most training schedules are pretty strict in that you can’t take a ton of time off from them.  After a week and a half’s rest, I gave it another go, and ran 12 miles with no issues.  Phew!  So far that had been the only snag.

Fast forward to this past weekend - I ran 20 miles this past Saturday and didn’t die.  I felt like I was going to probably around mile 18 or so, but pushed through it. I kept something I read in the back of my head which I’d paraphrase as, “If a long run isn’t that hard, especially the first time you attempt that mileage, then its not doing you much good.”  If got two more really long runs left before the big one (and its crazy to look at this week’s 8 mile run as “easy”).  I know they’re going to be hard, but so far its been worth the pain.

I finally plowed through all the photos I shot on vacation and the following weekend at my sister-in-law’s baby show (I didn’t shoot the shower, but got to do all the workflow on them anyway).  For our 10th wedding anniversary, my wife got me a Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L lens, and the trip was the first I got to use it.  It’s taking some getting used to since the depth of field on it when it is wide open is razor thin, but I’m happy with it so far.  It’s amazing how sharp stuff is straight out of the camera.  Here’s a photo of my son with his coveted tribal armband tattoo from vacation.  I’m pretty sure there is no sharpening applied to this at all.

I also got a great picture of the cake from the baby shower.  This is one of the few I personally took, but I wanted to play around a bit with the lens and my strobe.

Finally in photo “news” I think I sold my first print! Don’t want to spoil it yet, but I got a request for a large version of a Jaguar I shot a photo of at the Milwaukee County Zoo.

Having spend the first 19 years of my live as a Minnesotan living in the Twin Cites, I felt the shot to the gut that everyone else there must of felt after seeing what happened to the 35W bridge.  Even though its been well over a decade since calling Minnesota home, I was still shocked after my brother who lives in St. Paul called me last night and I turned on the national coverage.

Fortunately, all of my family is safe and I hope if your reading this with family in the area, yours are too.  To the city, I wish you a speedy recovery.  I’m proud to say I hail from a city that has so many everyday Joe’s and Jane’s who stepped up to help everyone affected by this disaster.  Listening to coverage on the national networks, it is evident in the voices of all the anchors at the surprise that everyday folks would stop and help another person out if they were in peril (I’m also shocked at just how sensational Fox News is, but that is for another post in another time).