Operation Jack

Fighting autism, one mile at a time.

Special Help From Afghanistan … For My Daughter!

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My daughter Ava has a project in her kindergarten class called Flat Stanley. They take this little paper guy called Flat Stanley and color him and send him somewhere far away to get his picture taken. When my son Benjamin (now in the fourth grade) was in kindergarten, we sent his to a cousin of mine who lives in Las Vegas. Flat Stanley went out on the Strip, hit some slot machines and played some blackjack.

But Benjamin was kindergarten well before Operation Jack, so I didn’t know nearly as many people as I do now. I was thinking of various places I could have sent Ava’s Flat Stanley — Alaska, Maine, Miami, the Midwest — but then I realized I made a connection last year with U.S. Army Major John Atilano, who’s currently deployed to Afghanistan. I’ve chatted via email and Twitter with John a bit over the past six months and he’s a great guy.

Flat Stanley!

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One Thing I DON'T Miss About Last Year!

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If you’ve never been here before, last year I ran 61 marathons and a couple of ultramarathons to raise money and awareness for Train 4 Autism. My middle child, 7 1/2-year-old Jack, is severely autistic so I did that in his honor and named it Operation Jack. Now four months into 2011, there are some things I kind of miss — the Biscoff cookies on Delta, meeting new people every weekend, having a slew of people tracking every step I run … there are some things I enjoyed. But one thing I don’t miss is not being around my family. I had to leave every weekend and while I got used to it, I sure don’t miss it.

I had an awesome weekend with my family and I was going to write a recap Sunday night for yesterday morning, but I was watching the news about Osama bin Laden and didn’t take the time to write anything. So, here goes.

Real quick, before I get rolling, we had a photo shoot for the kids on Friday evening and here’s one of the proofs we got back for Jack. LOVE IT!

We'll definitely be buying this one.

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My Worst Run Ever

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So lately, I’ve been talking a fair amount my best run ever, my run last week in the Boston Marathon. I asked for a suggested blog topic for today, and somebody suggested my worst run ever. That’s an easy one for me to write about. And I even have a picture! It was my first race, the Southern California Half Marathon on December 3, 2005. That race was definitely one to forget. Too bad I have the memory of an elephant!

In a way, that race started six weeks earlier for me. I was at work and one of my co-workers asked me if I wanted a donut. I told him no way, I hadn’t run four miles that morning to let it go to waste over a donut! He didn’t know I “ran” and he asked me if I wanted to run a half-marathon he was doing with some friends about six weeks later. I asked him how long the half-marathon was and he told me 13.1 miles. 13.1 miles. Really? Why would any person actually want to run that far? I had run 6 miles about two times 6 1/2 years earlier (well, if you include the mile or so I walked). 13.1 miles? Only an idiot would do something like that! [Read more…]

Reality Check

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I was living it up in Boston last week after running my first sub-3. I was celebrating with friends, grinning from ear-to-ear as I got a ridiculous inflow of praise via text, email, Facebook and Twitter. I did it. I got it done. I worked hard and made it happen. I was listening to songs on my iPod like “Standing On Top Of The World” by Van Halen and “Moment For Life” by Nicki Minaj. I was pretty proud of myself. And really, I needed to be humbled. [Read more…]