Stand by for more posts

I have not posted for a long time but I am still here and not going anywhere.  Standby for some more race reports

motivational quote of the day

I wrote this quote down yesterday that was posted on forbes.com. 


"There is no adversity capable of stopping you once the choice to persevere is made"


-- Jason Kilar

Chasing Down the Golden Unicorn article form Runners World

This is an article I found at Runners World.  It is entitled "Chasing Down the Golden Unicorn" by Pegleg83 on Runner World "The Loop".  Apparently there are others out there that have a shared experience. 




Editor’s note: This post comes from The Loop, an active community of bloggers hosted by Runner’s World. “Loopsters” share their running experiences and give each other tons of encouragement. To get involved, post a comment on someone’s blog or click the “Add Content” button and then select “Blog Post in The Loop” to start a blog of your own. Each week, we’ll select a post from The Loop and highlight it on the RunnersWorld.com homepage.


Someone (supposedly Einstein, but that's debateable) said insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results.


Yet that's precisely what I'm doing. Laying it on the line for a goal, hoping this time it doesn't turn out like the last 3 times. Going through the training, the speedwork, the intervals, the tempos, the long runs. The 4:00am alarms, early bedtimes and long morning runs on weekends instead of sleeping in. The blisters and chafing. Fatigue, sore muscles and endless hunger.


The blood, sweat and tears of marathon training.


In chasing my dream of Boston qualifying, it hasn't been easy, and it still hasn't been accomplished.


Not for lack of trying, though. God knows I tried. The Loop knows I tried. My husband, who saw me struggle through those planned race days that became stay-at-home-to-nurse-an-injury days, knows better than anyone that I tried.


Having run my first and only marathon in late 2013, the minute I crossed the Rehoboth finish line, I knew. I wanted that minus-12 minutes for a BQ. I would not give up until I had it, from that day forward.








It's a good thing I didn't know how severely “from that day forward” would get tested. That was 2.5 years ago. If I make it to BOS2018, my current goal, it will have been 4 years since I started my very first BQ-attempt training cycle.


4 half-marathons: DNSed. 2 marathons: DNSed. 2 marathons: DNFed. 3 season-altering, sometimes season-ending, injury stints lasting from 10 weeks to 9 months. I'm no longer sure where my comebacks end and my “I'm-backs” begin; they blur together in a roller coaster ride of renewed hopes and dashed dreams.


This word became my mantra, my anchor, my something-to-aspire-to in every journey back. Be the fiercest you can be at something else if you can't run. I learned how to swim. I biked and spent time in the gym. 





I'm on the other side of injury again, the circle complete. I just wrapped up my highest run-mileage week since September, 2015 (+ 55 miles on the bike).





I want to believe.


I want to envision myself succeeding.


I want to be positive.


It's hard when you've been burned, though. I'm on the brink of this thing, I can almost taste victory. But I can also remember limping home from a 7 mile easy taper run, 2 weeks before Marshall Marathon last fall. Crying because I knew my dream was deferred again. 


What if I have to go through what I did the last two seasons… God, I cannot endure it again. How many times would it take to defeat me? How often will I repeat the lunacy? How insane am I willing to be?


Oh, I'm not scared of the training itself: the miles, the sacrifices, the pain, the fatigue. That's the easy part. In a sense, I've trained for this goal several times over already, an endless training cycle that bore no fruit.


But the skeletons of injuries, the ghosts of DNFs past… those are what haunt me. Battling and defeating the demons of fear and failure is a bigger task than any miles I must run.


Because I know how quickly things can go so wrong. How the tides of fate and (mis)fortune can wash up on your shores and obliterate your meticulously constructed sandcastles. How every shred of running fitness can wither away and your identity as a runner feels misplaced and abandoned. Experiencing not just weeks or months of setbacks, but years of chasing something that eludes you. Watching your friends achieve the dream... a bittersweet triumph that rejoices with them while a quiet longing inside cuts open and bleeds. 


You almost cease thinking about finishing the marathon of your dreams because you desperately want just the chance to begin it.


My chance to set foot on the start line unbroken and healthy has begun. It's wreathed in fear, baptized by the tears of previous disappointment, but it's starting. I breathe daily a hopeful, anguished prayer: one more run, one more week, one unbroken training cycle. Please give me my shot at this. Please don't break my heart again.


2.5 years of trying, for a goal that's nearly 2 years in the future, boiled down to the next 14.5 weeks. Trying something that has thrice failed me before. Running the miles, putting in the hours, taking the risks.


Insanity? Maybe.


Well, I say I'm in good company here. Obstacle-race runners and trail runners and road runners and ultra-runners and CrossFit runners. People running for 24 hours  and people trying to run a mile in 5 minutes. Folks busting their butts for a 5k PR or a marathon PR. Streaking for God-knows-how-many-days, running for healing from addiction, depression, a breakup or just running to stay fit and healthy. Qualifying for the frickin' Olympic Trials. A quick glance around at what you people are doing and daring and dreaming indicates that the Loop is a collection of lunatics. At least, lunatics to those looking in.


You know what's worse than insanity? Mediocrity. Complacence. Life lived without challenge, adventure, quest.


The golden unicorn beckons. I close my eyes during a run and envision finishing the Wineglass Marathon with that number on the clock. The sweeping strains of "Sweet Caroline" coming across the sound system at the gym moves me to tears. I could no more abandon this dream than I could stop running altogether.


And I would rather have a dream deferred a hundred times than never have a dream at all.





Photo credits to: Roger Beutler, Donald Danlag, and Dave Frederick

Enduring to the end.......

Brad Wilcox, who is an educator at Brigham Young University and author of many books, said "Enduring to the end doesn't mean going on without errors; it means to keep going on despite errors."

Here is a picture I took of a slot canyon I hiked through personally.  It was amazing.

St. George Marathon 2015 Race Report -- Pre-Race

St. George Marathon 2015 Memories

Thanks to the St. George Marathon website here is a good picture of the start area.  On the left hand side of the picture all of the people are trying to get their drop bag to the U-haul truck at the last second.  At the start line they have a corral for the hand cycles and wheel chairs, and then a corral for the elite runners and then it is a free for all after that.

Pre-race

I was able to stay the weekend with Paul, my buddy whom I have been friends with since 1990.  It was great to stay with him and not have to pay an expensive hotel bill.  On Friday morning I went to the St. George temple only to find out that it was closed for cleaning.  I walked around the grounds, sat on a bench and meditated and prayed for a while.  It was peaceful and fulfilling.  I went to the marathon expo in my suit and tie, although I left my suit coat in the car.  I saw Golden Harper there.  He is the founder of Altra running shoes and a fellow Orem High Tiger Graduate.  I bought a pair of Altra Paradigm running shoes that he personally outfitted me with.  They were last years model and hence a year old so I was able to purchase them for a discounted price of $58.  They look a little goofy because the toe box is extra large to allow the toes to expand upon impact.  You get used to their look and they are comfortable.  I also bought three pair of “feetures” (or something like that) ankle socks, and a pair of Asics running shorts.  I bought the shorts specifically because they have pockets to put stuff in during the marathon.   

Race morning, Paul dropped me off at the bus loading area.  It was great not to worry about having to find parking etc.  There was a mega long line to get on the buses since I didn’t get there for the early bird buses.  Eventually this other gal, whom I had started talking to, and I, melded into the line.  Then as we were going forward in the line two guys got in line right behind us and it turns out that they were the line leaders for an impromptu line as well.  So, it was just a free for all.  Some people being model citizens and waiting patiently at the end of lines and other cutting in line at will.  Upon arriving at the start I headed straight to the port-a-pottys.  After finishing there I had enough time to go and give my drop bag to the guys at the U-haul truck which is always a fun experience at the St. George Marathon.  There are over 7,000 participants at the start line and probably 3,000 of them try to get their drop bag in the truck in the last fifteen minutes before the start gun.  There is a mob of people with only about four volunteers taking bags so people just end up launching their drop bags in the general vicinity of the truck from way far out.  The volunteers start out trying to catch the bags, then they try to dodge the bags, then they just step out of the way entirely and everyone throws their bags in.  Then I went back to the bathrooms for a second visit just to make sure that everything was taken care of.   

Upon getting out of the bathrooms, I heard the national anthem so I new we were ready to get going.  I thought I could muscle my way up to where the 3:15 pacer but quickly realized, this was like a rock concert and it was shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip standing room early.  So I went up the side on the outside of the chute.  There was a line of runners there about one deep waiting to sneak in on the side instead of waiting at the back.  I spoke out loud to no one in specific that I want to be up there, and maybe I could hop the fence or something. A guy next to me said “or we can just open the fence” and then proceeded to open up a panel on the chute gate.  I complemented him on his actions and said a quick thank you.  I think there were probably a few more participants that went through that opening in the gate behind me as well.  I joined the lemmings heading off the cliff for the next 26.2 miles.

Trump for President?

Since this is my blog I can post things that interest me right?  So here I go entering the realm of politics.  Here is an opinion article for the Deseret News by Ralph Hancock.

I was only a lukewarm supporter of Mitt Romney as a 2012 presidential candidate, but I was very proud of his no-holds-barred denunciation of Donald Trump on Thursday. He must have been aware that his detractors would immediately reduce his motive to his own presidential ambitions and ridicule him, Trumplike, as a weak “loser.” But, regardless of the immediate consequences for him or for the nomination contest, Romney did the right thing in plainly depicting the character of the Republican front-runner.
It’s amazing and depressing that so many seem to need Romney to call attention to Trump’s rank dishonesty, or to remind us that “this is an individual who mocked a disabled reporter, who attributed a reporter’s questions to her menstrual cycle, who mocked a brilliant rival who happened to be a woman due to her appearance, who bragged about his marital affairs, and who laces his public speeches with vulgarity.” And I’m glad Mitt didn’t fail to censure Trump’s frat-boy sexual attitude and behavior: “There is a dark irony in his boasts of his sexual exploits during the Vietnam War. While at the same time, John McCain, whom he has mocked, was imprisoned and tortured.”
What is most depressing is that none of this background information should be necessary to anyone of sound judgment who observes Trump for two minutes: “the bullying, the greed, the showing off, the misogyny, the absurd third-grade theatrics.” And Romney hit just the right note, one that again should be obvious but that we are usually too sophisticated to acknowledge, when he connected the political and the personal: “All (presidential nominees) … bear the responsibility of being an example for our children and our grandchildren. … Now, imagine your children and your grandchildren acting the way he does.”
Of course, private virtue and statesmanship are not the same thing, but neither can they be entirely separated. A man who cannot govern himself cannot govern a people, much less a free people. Those who know Plato’s account of the Tyrant in the ninth book of "The Republic: must experience a shudder of recognition when Romney states an imperative that would be obvious for a healthy self-governing people: “His imagination must not be married to real power.”
The only thing — though impossible, no doubt — that would have improved Romney’s speech would have been some recognition of the responsibility that the Republican establishment bears for the creation of this monster. To Plato again: in the eight book of "The Republic" we learn that the vices of an extreme democracy (think: “populism”) are produced by the narrow self-interest of the wealthy class: the oligarchs see the world through the lens of their economic interests, profit from the immiseration of the lower classes, and fail to instill solid virtues of character in the next generation.
This account resembles our Republican elites in too many ways: concern for our families and for society’s moral fabric has too often been window-dressing, the middle class’s very real anxieties over economic stagnation have been inadequately addressed, and the outrages of political correctness have passed largely uncontradicted, all because of the corporate elite’s narrow and short-term interest in business as usual. Now the GOP is paying the price in the blind and incoherent outrage channeled by the repugnant Trumpster.
A friend nicely summarizes the “very bitter choice among three bad options” left to us who have seen the Republican party, despite its defects, as still America’s best hope:
“1. Aim for a messy convention in which delegates rally around a non-Trump candidate after the first ballot. This might work but it would be horrible, because Trump voters would feel twice as betrayed by the party as they do now. This is The Romney Option.
"2. Let Trump take the nomination but disavow him. That means you probably hand the presidency to the other party, and Trump supporters hate you for your betrayal. The Ben Sasse Option.
"3. Get behind Trump and ride the wave. This might actually lead to victory, but at the cost of losing any moral or intellectual coherence to the party. Self-respecting leaders would defect, leaving only Trumpites whose loyalty to the party is itself suspect. The Huckabee Option.”
The choice is not easy, my friend observes, because “parties matter, winning matters, principle matters. You can't always have all three.” All very true, but one choice is easy for me: NOT 3 — not Trump.
However Romney’s denunciation of Trump might be assessed strategically, in the long run, the utter sacrifice of decency and honor cannot be a good thing. If everything blows up, then the example of standing for some principles can make a difference, someday, somehow — a positive difference for our souls, and, we must pray, for our republic.

Ralph Hancock is a professor of political science at Brigham Young University and president of the John Adams Center for the Study of Faith, Philosophy and Public Affairs. His opinions do not necessarily reflect those of BYU.