I’ve mentioned a few times that I wanted to talk about the greatest soccer team of all time, the Orange Strikers. I’ve been putting it off and putting it off, but I can’t delay writing about them. They’re playing for the FINAL TIME in franchise history this weekend and I’m going to be fortunate enough to be in attendance. What a great team (only one loss ever) and what a fun bunch of 8-year-olds!

OK, so my son Benjamin plays for the team in AYSO. I have to say, though, with the teams he’s on, and all the teams I was ever on as a kid, this team has been the most enjoyable team I’ve ever seen. It’s been pure joy to watch these kids have so much fun. And on top of it all, they won their region championship, so they get one more chance this weekend to play in an area tournament.

First things first, though … I need to take care of a little Operation Jack housekeeping. If you’ve never been here, I’m a marathon runner and a father of three children, not in that order. My middle son, 6-year-old Jack, is severely autistic. Next year, I’m going to try to run 60 marathons in his honor to raise money and awareness for a great charity called Train 4 Autism. T4A is a great charity that helps people train for races and raise money for autism-related charities. Our strongest base is here in Southern California, and I want to do what I can to help build new bases nationwide. This is my stupid human trick, jump on the bandwagon!

OK, I’m going to talk about the Orange Strikers, but two quick things:

I Need 30 Seconds Of Your Help!
Between now and December 11, there’s a contest being put on by Chase that’s going to award $25,000 to 100 different charities nationwide. The winning charities will be the top vote-getters at a Facebook group page. So, this is a way you can really help out in less than a minute. Just take the following three steps:

1. Click HERE to go to the Chase Community Giving page on Facebook and join the group.
2. VOTE FOR OPERATION JACK.
3. (Optional, of course) Click the button to post in on your wall and tell your friends.

You’re all here because you believe in Operation Jack. Take a minute and help this thing go viral. 100 charities are going to get a huge holiday bonus. Let’s be one of them!

OK, I’m going to talk about the Orange Strikers, but one more thing:

Facebook Changes
If you’re a fan on the Facebook page, you might have noticed we created an Operation Jack group page instead of a fan page yesterday. This will make it easier to communicate with you. I’m 29 days from kicking this thing off and that’s when it’s going to start getting exciting. Make sure you’re over there on the group page. It’s here, or on the Facebook button on that page.

And going back to that contest and going viral, PLEASE, if you have friends in your address book on Facebook who might be interested in Operation Jack, please send them an invite to join the group!

OK, The Orange Strikers!
These guys are so much fun. Coach Peps and Coach Darren are great and the kids have really developed over the course of the year, individually and as a team. As a competitive guy, it’s been fun to watch them improve. But 100 times more important than that, because these guys are only 8, it’s been a blast to see them have so much fun.

I went to just about every practice and stayed for the duration. They worked hard, but laughed harder. Nothing but smiles on the faces of these kids. And these guys are a team. They just want to win. They’re unselfish. The best player on the team gets along great with the worst player on the team. Like I said, it’s been my favorite youth team of all time. It’s everything youth sports should be, and I’ve been lucky to be a part of it as a parent.

Anyways, they won their region championship in the playoffs in amazing fashion. On November 14, they won their first playoff game. I think the score was 3-1. The game was never in jeopardy and they rolled pretty easily. The semi-final match was a different story.

They took a 1-0 lead, but surrendered a late goal for a tie. But in the playoffs, one team has to advance, so it went to penalty kicks. At first, the teams alternated five times. If it was still tied after those five kicks, it would be sudden death — one kick for each team until the score wasn’t tied.

All the hard work, all the practices and all the games came down to those five kicks. Sure enough, it was tied. So it went to a sudden-death kick. And then another. And another. After six sudden-death kicks (11 penalty kicks total), it was STILL tied! The Strikers were the home team, so the other team kicked first. Our goalie made a stop on the 12th kick, and our best player was eligible to kick.

Coach Peps (the player’s dad) asked him if he wanted to take the kick. The kids on the team were all jumping up and down with excitement and the kid was cool as ice. There was no doubt he wanted that kick. It was like watching Mariano Rivera come in for the 9th to put the hammer down. He nailed the kick and the Orange Strikers won the game. Oh, and I brought snack for that game — donuts. We finally got to eat them!

They won their finals game that afternoon 1-0 on a fourth-quarter goal by the same player who kicked the game-winner in the semifinal game that morning. What a great way to cap the season — a region championship! They earned trophies that were about as tall as they are.

This weekend, they get some bonus ball. Two games on Saturday against other region champions, and at least one game (maybe two) on Sunday. And that will be it for the Orange Strikers. It’s been a fun ride, but I’ll miss watching them play!

OK, That’s All I’ve Got For Today
Not like it wasn’t enough. If you actually reached the bottom of this, thank you! Have a great weekend!

Do you know how hard it is to write a blog when your foot is sitting in a bucket of ice? It’s really, really hard. But I have things I need to post, so I’ll just fight on. It’s like mile 23 of a marathon and I’m cramping. I have to go on despite the pain. OK, that’s weak, but it’s all I’ve got. Well, I’ve also got some information about a super-cool contest, some changes with our Facebook page, some people I’m thankful for and the greatest soccer team of all time. Oh, and an ice cream update, of course.

First Things First: Super-Cool Contest
As I mentioned yesterday, and as I’ll probably mention between now and December 11, there’s a contest being put on by Chase that’s going to award $25,000 to 100 different charities nationwide. The winning charities will be the top vote-getters at a Facebook group page. So, this is a way you can really help out in less than a minute. Just take the following three steps:

1. Click HERE to go to the Chase Community Giving page on Facebook and join the group.
2. VOTE FOR OPERATION JACK.
3. (Optional, of course) Click the button to post in on your wall and tell your friends.

You’re all here because you believe in Operation Jack. Take a minute and help this thing go viral. 100 charities are going to get a huge holiday bonus. Let’s be one of them!

Facebook Changes
If you’re a fan on the Facebook page, you might have noticed we created an Operation Jack group page instead of a fan page yesterday. This will make it easier to communicate with you. I’m 29 days from kicking this thing off and that’s when it’s going to start getting exciting. Make sure you’re over there on the group page. It’s here, or on the Facebook button on that page.

And going back to that contest and going viral, PLEASE, if you have friends in your address book on Facebook who might be interested in Operation Jack, please send them an invite to join the group!

Seven Days After Thanksgiving, Here Are some Mortals I’m Thankful For
It’s been a roller-coaster six or seven days for me and some of you have said and/or done some big and little things that have really made a big difference to me. I’m sure I’m forgetting a ton of you, but (alphabetically by first name), thank you Ally, Emil, Erin, Erin (yeah, both of ya), Heather, Jamie/Jenn, Lori, Laura and Morgan. I’m sure there’s more of you, but thank you guys for your support.

Ice Cream Update
I’m the king. 43 now. There’s a NASCAR/Richard Petty reference for you. Yeah, my streak is up to 43 days in a row eating ice cream or frozen yogurt now, 66 from tying my record, 67 from passing it. Peanut butter fudge swirl again last night. Worth every calorie, although it’s low-fat. Still super tasty. Capped off a great day.

The Greatest Soccer Team Of All Time
I was going to talk about my son Benjamin’s soccer time, but I’m getting tired. I lied. Tomorrow. They’re so much fun and I can’t wait to tell you about them.

That’s All For Today, Friends
29 days until Operation Jack kicks off, not that I’m counting! See you back here tomorrow! Have a great Thursday!

Yesterday morning I found out about a great FREE contest sponsored by Chase that could really help Operation Jack, and I knew that I had no doubt I had to blog about it immediately. Like today! It’s extremely simple. If you have Facebook, become a fan of Chase Community Giving, vote for Operation Jack, then tell everybody you know! 100 charities will win $25,000. It’s a 30-second process, and I get nothing out of this, but it could breathe HUGE life into Operation Jack!

Just click here and vote for us! PLEASE! Oh, and spread the word. If it’s too confusing to send them the link to the page on Facebook, just send them here. As you noticed, I have that announcement page up now, and everybody will see it once per visit for the next two weeks until the contest is over.

Post it on your wall, tweet it, tell your friends to tell their friends … it’s really easy, and I’m begging! Begging! Begging! I’ll think of something I’ll do if we pull this off. But get to it! We can do this!

Running Update
I finally snapped out of my funk and went for a run yesterday. I took it hard and pounded my legs for 10.1 miles. Not really a long run for me, but I have a marathon next weekend I want to well at, so I have to keep the miles down. I took a stumble and cut up my knee, but that wasn’t even my worse gaffe of the day. On my way to lunch, I stepped off a step and missed in and totally rolled my ankle. Yes, the ankle I sprained so badly this summer I had to take five weeks off of running.

I panicked, because this isn’t what I need right now, but it didn’t swell and it didn’t feel anywhere near as bad as it did last time. I was really surprised it wasn’t worse, because I landed sideways on my foot after about a two foot drop. Thank God!

This morning, I went out for nine miles, nothing to it. I’m feeling good. I’m a touch sluggish from my lack of running last week, but nothing major. I kind of like tapering. I should just run a race every weekend.

Ice Cream Update
I had some peanut butter fudge swirl ice cream last night. If you go to Ralphs to get your groceries, it’s their Private Selection generic label and it’s DELICIOUS. It’s probably my favorite right now.

Anyways, I’ve very quietly worked my latest streak up to 42 days, my second-longest ever. If my math is correct, I believe this makes it 158 out of the past 161 days that I’ve had ice cream. I’m 67 days shy of tying my record, 68 from breaking it.

That’s All For Now, Folks!
I need to keep these blogs short so that I don’t take all night writing them and it doesn’t take you all morning to read them! Have a great Wednesday everybody. I’ll see you tomorrow. Can’t wait to tell you about the Orange Strikers! Big games this weekend!

I’m going to talk about how we found out Jack has autism, but first, I need to clear up something. If you read my blog regularly, you know I’m always on an emotional roller coaster. Normally, it’s a pretty good ride, but not always. I had my latest throw-in-the-towel thoughts yesterday, but I’m over that now. I’m done throwing a pity party for myself. I wasn’t seeking feedback, but I got plenty of it and I’m grateful for it because it was very reassuring. And really, with the first race on the schedule one month from today, it needs to be all or nothing at this point. And I’m voting for all.

I really don’t like being this way with you guys, but I am who I am and I’m not going to fake it in my blog. Tiff got a little mad with me over the weekend because for about the fourth time in the past five months, I’ve waffled on whether or not I should do this. So please, forgive me for my incessant whining. You guys are my biggest supporters and I appreciate your enthusiasm. I’ll just start counting down the days until go-time. We’re at 31 now and I’m looking forward to meeting as many of you as possible next year when I run 60 marathons to try to build awareness and raise money for Train 4 Autism.

Anyways, yesterday, one of my loyal readers, Erin Fortin, asked me to blog about how we found out Jack had autism. No problem. Thanks for giving me a topic!

When Jack was younger and we took him for his well check-ups, he was behind on all the age charts. When he was 18 months old, we had him evaluated by specialists per a recommendation from our pediatrician. He was at the 6-month level for speech, which was an eye opener. So, he immediately qualified for in-home early intervention services. I wasn’t particularly concerned. Our oldest son was slow with his speech and speech therapy fixed him right up. It would be the same thing with Jack. Or so I thought.

He’s had therapy at least four days a week for 2+ hours a day since before his second birthday. When we was about 2 1/2, I remember coming home from work one day and I was in a hurry to rush out to a ballgame, but Tiff looked very concerned and told me she needed to talk to me. I was wondering what foolish purchase she’d made. But what she told me was something that was beyond surreal. She told me that the woman who ran the agency that was providing the services really thought that he had autism.

Well, I instantly went into denial. I have an uncle who’s severely autistic and there was no way I was going to have a son like my uncle. That wouldn’t happen to “me”. Surely he was just behind on his speech and he’d get there. But Tiff gave me a pretty good rundown about the reasoning and it all made sense.

You know that feeling you have when somebody dies and you know that there’s absolutely nothing that you can do to undo that? I felt that way about Jack’s autism very quickly, maybe even that day. I’m not comparing autism to death, and it’s treatable, but what’s done is done. I knew right then that this would be something Tiff and I would be working with for the rest of our lives. At the beginning I was optimistic that he would fight through it and mainstream, but that optimism has a carbon half-life and it fades by the day.

On November 7, 2006, about six months after that day that Tiff talked to me, we finally got Jack in to see a pediatric neurologist. Yeah, nobody wants to take their kid to see a pediatric neurologist. But we wanted to get a diagnosis just to confirm. He was 3, not anywhere near talking, and clearly in his own world. I really don’t think he knew who we were at that point.

The neurologist was very, very cold and unfriendly. She did her observation, left the room for about 15 minutes and told us to clean up the mess Jack made, then came back in and asked us what we’d been told. We told her we’d been told that he probably had autism. She asked us if we had any reason to doubt that. No, we didn’t, but we wanted confirmation. She asked us why we were expecting to hear anything different, and told us that yes, he was autistic. The adjective she used was “severely.”

That doctor is very, very reputable in the autism community, but I don’t think she could have been any colder to us that day. Maybe it’s no big deal to her since she probably diagnoses 20+ kids per week. I thought she could have shown a little more compassion, though. I’ll never forget that visit. I didn’t think Jack was actually severe, but the more time has gone by, the more I realize she was right. He’s 6 now, not truly talking, still in diapers, still way behind. He rated lower than a 1-year-old on certain things he was tested on recently in school.

So Erin, that’s how we found out Jack has autism. He’s a cute little guy, super sweet and very nice. I hope we end up taking the family trip out to Cleveland so you can meet him.

That’s all I have for today. If anybody else has any blog ideas questions for me, don’t hesitate to let me know! Have a great Tuesday!

I launched Operation Jack in July because I wanted to give it six months before it started to see how it would go. If I was confident with how things were going, or even somewhat close to confident or optimistic that things would be OK, then it would be all systems go. But if all signs pointed towards failure, I’d just call it off and run off into the distance with my tail between my legs. One thing I forgot to think about was how I’d call it off if that seemed like the smart thing to to.

I’m not writing this to solicit any kind of pick-me-ups or anything like that. I’ve gotten plenty of that over the past five months and I haven’t even done anything. I’m just writing about what’s on my mind right now. Today, I’m thinking that’s the purpose of my blog, and there’s no reason to sit here and fake a smile. I try my best to stay positive, but I’m human, which means I’m far from perfect.

If I took all the emotion out of this, this would be the time where I walk away. Things aren’t going anywhere near where I’d hoped they would be at this point. I hate talking about money, because this isn’t all about money — it’s about trying to help Train 4 Autism grow. But the reality is that it takes money to make this happen and it’s something I can’t ignore.

I wanted to raise a lot of money for charity, and I wasn’t worried about it heading in. I set up a foundation that would help cover the expenses and everything extra would go straight to Train 4 Autism. But it’s not working the way I thought it would, and to be blunt, I’m terrible at fundraising. I’m thoroughly convinced at this point that I way overestimated how much I’d be able to raise, so I’m looking at three options.

1. Back out. Call it off now. This was part of plan, to call it off before it started if it looked like a no-go. That’s kind of what it’s looking like. We still have all the money we’ve received from donations, and I’d return it all in a heartbeat. I’m not keeping any donations for something I’m not doing. I’ll be out for some things I’ve fronted for, but whatever … life.

2. Go forward, do everything I can to raise money, try to come close to costs. I really have a problem with this, because I want money raised to go to charity. I don’t want it all going towards airline tickets and entry fees. If that happens, what’s the point of it all? Push and push for a year and leave my family every week to raise money to participate in races but raise no money for autism charities? That would be pointless.

3. Go forward, contribute everything I can from what I raise to autism charities. That would be a huge bath we’d be taking. We’re not one of those families with a ton of savings and this will just cost us our vacation budget for the next couple of years. This is pretty much not a realistic option.

And really, in this economy, I should have known better. It’s a terrible time. We’re all feeling it. I think I got too excited. Now, I’m about as stressed and worried as I was excited. I don’t think I’ll really back out. I think I’ll probably scratch and claw my way through it and come out of the year realizing it wasn’t what I’d hoped it would be. But I really feel terrible and selfish to be going through this and trying to raise money knowing that there’s a good chance it’s not going to do much good.

Whatever. It’s all out of my control anyways. I have the ability to make my own decisions, but I don’t have any control over what is going to happen. I know I shouldn’t stress, because that’s showing a lack of faith, and I know better. But this is what’s on my mind, and since it’s my blog, that’s what I’m writing about today.

I feel like I made a decision to try this, and by not protecting my family with an exit plan, I set us up for this. I’ve got four people who depend on me and it really kills me to let them down. So, I have a big decision to make on this and it’s going to come down to the input I get from three people. Whatever I end up doing will be the lesser of three evils.

Running Update
I had a great run on November 21. I went 26.75 miles at a 7:56/mile pace, which is about a minute/mile better than when I did my first 26.2+ run after coming back from my sprained ankle. For a training run, it was right where I wanted to be and I felt like I was back.

And then, I didn’t want to run any more. I took the next day off for my birthday, and in the past 8 days, including today, I’ve gotten up to run every single day. I’ve gotten dressed and ready to run every single day. Three times I’ve gone running, including yesterday’s 2.38-mile debacle of a turnaround. Throw in a 14.1-miler and an 18-miler and that makes about 34.5 miles in the past nine days. I was going to run this morning, but I didn’t.

If not for Operation Jack, I could absolutely give up running for an extended period of time right now. I don’t have it in me and the only thing keeping me from totally walking away from it for a while is Operation Jack. So, I guess you could say I’m in somewhat of a funk. Ahh, the joys …

T-Shirts Are Available, If You So Desire
Well, I have t-shirts now. They finally came in. Kind of awkward to go from everything else I’ve been talking about straight into pitching shirts, but does anybody want one? We have the t-shirts and the dri-fit shirts. I have the rates on this page if you want one. Please want one! They came out pretty nicely and I’ll write more about these later.

That’s All For Today
I might as well call it quits for this one. Sorry about the fussing. That’s just something I do every here and there. Have a great Monday. I hope to write something new soon.