Well, it’s Monday. Normally, that means it’s time for a weekend recap. I don’t have a ton of stuff for a weekend recap, because it was fairly uneventful and there was no flying involved, but I do have a few random things to share, including me and Jack finally making into Runner’s World!

Real quick, if you’ve never been here before, click here to see why I’m trying to run 61 marathons this year to raise money and awareness for Train 4 Autism.

This weekend, I ran marathon No. 53 of the year, the Eye Q Two Cities Marathon in Fresno and Clovis, Calif. Read my recap here.

The Trip Before My Trip
On Friday morning, I took Jack to school. He was a little late, so I had to walk him back to his classroom, which is in portables behind the main building. When I got there, I realized I had left his sippy cup in my car. I never do that. Never. Well, except on Friday.

He had been off most of his supplements for about three days, because we needed him to be three days removed before obtaining a stool sample for a test. So, I called Tiff at home and asked her if there was anything in his sippy cup (normally, his water is spiked). Indeed, there was. So, I ran back to the car to get it. It wasn’t an all-out sprint, but it was a decent effort, probably a 7:15 or so pace.

With my 200 pounds of body weight, I have a fair amount of velocity when I run. I rounded the corner of the main building and the sun was right in my eyes. I couldn’t see a thing. While I squinted to try to see, a brick planter jumped right out in front of me. I smacked into it in full stride, kicking with my right foot, then smacking into it with my right shin and flying over it like Superman. I swear I traveled more than 10 feet in mid air.

I twisted a bit to my let, stuck out my hands and most of the impact on the ground was absorbed by my left wrist and elbow. I got some sweet road rash on the edge of my wrist and a nice, deep cut on my left elbow. I couldn’t see what happened to my right leg, but it hurt. I could see I tore my jeans, though.

I spent about 10 seconds on the ground when a woman and her special-needs son walked up. He was distraught after seeing me fall and she wanted to make sure I was OK. I picked myself up and was a little bit dizzy. I was seeing stars all over the place, so I sat back down on that mean, mean planter. I got up about 30 seconds later, then went to my car to get Jack’s cup. On the way back to the classroom, I went to the nurse’s office.

I hadn’t been to an elementary school nurse’s office in about 25 years!

I cleaned up my elbow, bandaged my elbow and went on with my day. I felt pretty sore and banged up and was walking with a limp. At least I had nearly two full days until my marathon, right?

I posted the following as my Facebook status that morning:

Sam Felsenfeld just came from the nurse’s office at Jack’s school. Jack is fine. Sam needs to observe the “no running on the blacktop” rule.

I went to the gym on Friday night to run five easy miles on the treadmill. I was concerned that I’d have troubles running and I wanted to discover problems with my motion BEFORE race day. I was fine, life goes on. It’s funny, though. 53 marathons this year, and my three worst injuries that have impacted my running over the past 18 months have been non-running injuries. I suffered a severely sprained ankle walking through a parking lot, my right big toe still hurts from dropping a desk on it on February 5, and now this.

Oh well, life goes on!

Get The December Runner’s World!
Finally, here it is! Not the biggest piece in the world, but it’s going to be seen by a lot of people. It’s on page 28, early in the magazine. And it’s the best picture ever of me and Jack!

This Looked So, So Wrong
On Saturday night, I went out to dinner with a friend of mine from college named Janet. I knew her from the college paper I met Tiff at, so she’s know us for 16 years, although I’ve known her for close to 18, because I met her before Tiff joined the staff. She lives near Fresno, so while I was in town, we caught up.

It was just me and her going to dinner at California Pizza Kitchen, but it was no big deal. In fact, I talked to Tiff while I was out and Janet said hi to her in the background.

Well, we’re sitting there at dinner and the waitress was about to take our orders, and my cell phone rang. So I stopped mid-sentence and told her, “Hang on — it might be wife.”

No sooner did the words come out of my mouth than I realized how wrong that looked. I did some quick explaining to the waitress that I wasn’t on a date, that my wife knew and there was nothing bad going on. It felt so weird to have to explain it!

It was my brother, which was a bummer. I couldn’t tell him, “Hey babe, I’m at dinner with Janet!”

How Not To Refuel
Yesterday was November 7, the day I broke my neck in 1991. For a few different reasons, I have a standard lunch at McDonald’s every year on that date. It’s a six-piece Chicken McNuggets meal plus a hot fudge sundae. I was with my brother yesterday, and he wanted two double hamburgers, so I went in and bought those for him. Except I bought him McDoubles, which are basically double hamburgers with one slice of cheese. He doesn’t like cheese on a burger, so he didn’t eat them. Plus, McDonald’s lets you upsize to a 10-piece meal for an extra 50 cents.

So here’s what I had for lunch:

– 10 piece Chicken McNuggets with barbecue sauce
– Large fries
– Two McDoubles
– Hot fudge sundae
– Large Diet Coke (I’m counting my calories, you know?)

When we got home, my daughter’s birthday party was starting. I continued to plow.

– Enchiladas
– Chips with seven-layer dip
– Large piece of Costco cake
– Homemade vanilla ice cream
– Salad (because I want to be healthy, you know?)

I skipped dinner. But guess what I’m having for dinner tonight?

That’s All For Today
I wrote that last night, and what I really meant was, “That’s all for tonight.” I was tired. Have a great Monday, everybody! I’ll see you back here tomorrow!

If you’ve never been exhausted, and you want to get exhausted, I have a great solution for you. Just do what I did this weekend!

Real quick, just in case you’ve never been here before, I’m a father of three and a marathon runner. My middle child, 7-year-old Jack, is severely autistic. I decided I wanted to do something to try to make a difference in his honor, so I’m attempting to run 61 full marathons this year to raise money and and awareness for a great charity I’m a part of called Train 4 Autism.

So far, so good. I ran marathon No. 52 of the year yesterday (Marine Corps Marathon, recap here). It was a great one! And I’m in single-digits now — only nine to go!

Anyways, back to my weekend. I’m going to start it on Friday night, because, well, who doesn’t start their weekend on Friday night?

Friday Night
I was the last one out of the office at about 5:30, then I got home, had dinner with the kids and Jack and Ava went to bed fairly early. They were both pretty tired.

I ran out to get a sports drink I needed for my race on Sunday, but the GNC near my home didn’t carry it and I wasn’t going to drive an extra 15 minutes to get to the Vitamin Shoppe where I normally go.

I hung out for a little while with my oldest son, Benjamin, and my wife, Tiffany. We played Uno in a game that went on for a little while. Ben beat us both, but in the competition that really mattered, me and Tiff played it out for second and I beat her.

I packed for my trip, then stayed up and got comfortable with a bowl of ice cream watching Millionaire Matchmaker on DVR with Tiff. I’ll admit it, I like that show. What’s really great about that show is that we both like it and watch it together. She likes reality shows (I can’t stand them) and all I watch is sports and the news, so when we have a show we can watch together, that’s awesome.

I successfully fought off the fall-asleep-on-the-couch gremlins and I made it through the show. Friday night ended at 10:30.

Saturday
Saturday started at 3:40 a.m. I got up, got ready, had breakfast and left for the airport an hour later. LAX is a 54-mile drive. I wasn’t all that tired, though. I parked strategically at a lot I don’t always use. But it mattered — you’ll see why on Sunday.

I got on my flight to Washington D.C. on Virgin America. Sweet plane — it was nice and they have satellite TV. I dozed some, did some work on the computer with college football on in the background, dozed some more, ate some snacks and landed at Dulles.

I got my car and went straight to the expo. There was a lot of traffic and chaos there because of the Jon Stewart rally. Amazingly, I found free parking on the street right across from the expo! I met up with several people there, got my stuff, caught up with Operation Jack supporter Ally Phillips to make carpool plans for Sunday morning, then left.

I stayed with relatives in the D.C. area, and I had a dinner to go to. I wanted to be able to stop by and visit for at least an hour before I turned around and left. All the mapquesting I’d done said it would take about 20-30 minutes to get there. I got in the car at about 4:45 and needed to go 6.2 miles. I got there at 5:40. That’s a 55-minute 10K — I can run faster than that!

The traffic was exhausting and I could only stay for about 10 minutes and I left to go to an annual dinner put on by the Organization for Autism Research. That was 8.5 miles away and my GPS said it would take 30 minutes. 20 minutes for a dinner like that would be a reasonable amount to be fashionably late to. It took me 40 minutes to get to the area, but there were all sorts of parking problems and it took me another 20 minutes.

I finally got into the dinner an hour late, but I wasn’t the only one with parking problems. Everything was fine, and it was a really nice event. It ended at about 8:30 and I mingled until about 8:45 and got to my car about 10 minutes later. I had to go 8.5 miles back and I didn’t get there until 10 p.m. It was the perfect storm of marathoners, the rally and Halloween that made that city a zoo. It was the worst traffic I’d ever been in. I covered four of those miles in about 20 minutes. Those 4.5 that took a good 45 minutes drove me crazy.

There was some good people-watching in D.C. — the crazies were certainly out for Halloween. It was exhausting. I walked in the house and I was dead-tired. I stayed up visiting until 11:30, because it was my only chance and I don’t get a chance to see them often. Finally, I got upstairs, got everything ready for Sunday, did something real quick for work that needed to be done at midnight, texted my boss to let her know it was done and called it a day.

Saturday started at 3:40 a.m. in California, I lost three hours in the air and it ended a little after midnight in D.C. I had gotten about 17 hours of sleep the previous three nights and was looking at a max of five. I had no idea how I would function on Sunday.

Sunday
I set the alarm for 5:15 a.m., which is 2:15 a.m. body time. I somehow woke naturally at 5:14 and avoided the alarm, which is nice. I’m like a Pavlovian dog with the alarm clock on my phone. When I hear it, I know it’s time to wake up and run a marathon. I like running marathons, but they’re hard work and sometimes that sound puts dread into me. I was glad to avoid it.

I got ready, tiptoed out of the house, then went to pick up Ally and her husband, Justin. We had VIP parking at Fort Myer, which was nice. It took us a little while to figure out where to park, but we got there and walked down to the race. I didn’t realize it at the time, because it was dark, but we parked about 30 yards from graves at Arlington National Cemetery.

Here’s a picture I took when I got back to my car:

Back to before the race, we walked down, Ally got me a wristband for the VIP tent, I went to the O.A.R. tent for a few minutes and then it was time to go to the race. So I went and ran the race. Afterwards, it took me about 45 minutes to walk and get my stuff, get a little bit of food, take my picture, then leave to walk to my car. My car was about a 20-minute walk and when I got in, I headed straight for the airport.

With the traffic mess, I knew better than to try to cross back over into D.C. to go to my relatives’ house to shower, then head back to Dulles. If I missed my flight, I’d miss trick-or-treating. I got to my car at 12:30 and my flight at Dulles, which was 30 miles away, was at 2:44. That’s a big airport — you can’t walk in and get on a plane in 30 minutes.

My plan to clean up was to find a public restroom somewhere and do the best I could with a package of baby wipes I had. But I googled a gym and found one near the airport. I was going to call them and ask if I could show up and take a shower, but I figured it would be easier to show up and ask them nicely in person.

I got there, asked the woman nicely, told her I ran the marathon but needed to catch a flight to get home to go trick-or-treating with my kids. She asked me if I was a member, and I told her I wasn’t — I live in California! I told her I would appreciate it, but since I had a middle seat coming back, the two people sitting next to me would really appreciate it!

She gave me a green light, and it was pretty nice to take a shower instead of cleaning myself with baby wipes in a restroom stall! I talked to my wife on the phone before I got to the gym and told a baby-wipe cleansing would at least make for a good blog, but I wasn’t wanting that.

After putting gas in the rental car, I got to the airport, got through security and was one of the last people to board the plane. I made it by less than 10 minutes and didn’t have time to grab anything to eat.

When I was boarding, they told me they were out of space in the overheads for roller bags and would have to check it. I was so bummed, because it was going to the baggage claim, which would cut 20-30 minutes out of my trick-or-treating time with my kids. There’s nothing I could do, but I saw a spot when I went down the aisle, so I ran back off the plane before my bag got sent down and asked the gate attendant if I could put in the space I found.

She said yes! I’ll give credit where credit is due — this was United! Y’all know how much I hate United. Well FINALLY they came through for me!

So I was on the plane, on my way back to Los Angeles, excited that I made it through my tight timeline to catch my plane back. I was a zombie, too. I fell asleep for about 30 minutes then woke up and wrote my race report.

I have something like 3,000 songs on my iPod and when I fly, I put it on random shuffle. I have a really wide variety on there so it’s a good mix to pass the time. I kid you not, this was the second song I heard:

I dozed for about two hours after that and woke up and started cranking out this blog.

We landed at 5:20 and the race was on — I had to get out of the airport, get to my car, and drive 54 miles to get home so we could get to our church, which had a “Blocktober” safe trick-or-treating function.

I had a text that there was a problem with the website at work, so I got on the phone with Tiff and taught her how to move files around. Problem fixed. Yay for technology, I guess. I flew down the highway and got home in time to hit a few houses on the street with the kids before heading over to the Blocktober with the family, my parents and my in-laws. Everybody had a great time, especially the kids.

We got back, I took care of another work problem, tucked the kids into bed, unpacked, got some stuff done on the computer, and all of a sudden it was 10:30, more than 20 hours after I woke up. I successfully fought the fall-asleep-on-the-couch gremlins to watch a murder mystery on TV with Tiff, but she wasn’t strong enough to stay awake! Ha — I win!

And now it’s Monday morning, time for work. It’s like I never left.

Normally I go with a weekend recap on Mondays, but I’m going to go with annoying travel experiences from the weekend. I have a few of those from this trip. I don’t get people.

Real quick, just in case you’ve never been here before, I’m a father of three and a marathon runner. My middle child, 7-year-old Jack, is severely autistic. As part of my way of dealing with his struggles, I’m using my ability to recover well from marathons to try to make a difference in the autism community. I’m attempting to run 61 full marathons this year to raise money and awareness for a great charity I’m a part of called Train 4 Autism.

So far, I’m through 51 and a couple of ultramarathons. 10 to go! On Saturday, I was the official pacer for the 3:40 group (recap here) in the Mankato Marathon in Mankato, Minn.

Things I’m Fine Without Hearing
From the pilot, on the way to Minnesota Friday:
“Sorry about the turbulence. We were cruising along on a nice, smooth ride at 39,000 feet, but we were told to move down to 37,000 feet due to a likely traffic conflict up ahead.”

No apologies necessary. Turbulence is always better than a “traffic conflict” at 39,000 feet.

Not Happy With Dollar Car Rental Right Now
Early in the year, I used several different car rental companies. Hertz is overpriced. Alamo really puts the hard sell on insurance and upgrades. I finally settled in on Dollar and I’ve probably used them 20 or 25 times this year. I really haven’t had any problems with them. In St. Louis, there was an issue with my reservation, but I book through Southwest and I think it was either my fault or Southwest’s fault. Not sure, not worried. Everything ended up OK.

But they annoyed me last week in Kansas City. I rented a full-size car since I had Tiffany and Benjamin with me, but they didn’t have one when I got there. So, they gave me a standard size instead. Not the end of the world, but I had to talk the guy into reducing my rate to the standard fare. He was resistant at first, then eventually gave me a flat discount of $10 for the two days, which was probably about $5 short, but I could tell I wasn’t getting anywhere, and I’m not going to try to contact corporate to recover that.

This weekend in Minneapolis, I got to the counter and there were two clerks, each helping somebody. I was the first person in line. As soon as one of the people were done, the clerk just walked off. I don’t know if she went on break or what, and I know she’s entitled to do that. But it was pretty obvious that the customer still being helped was an idiot and was going to be a while. I think the first clue was that he was wearing a Merona collared shirt inside out with the collar up. The arguing over everything was a second clue. The stupid jokes about the incompetence about rental car companies followed by turning around to face me to try to get laughter cemented my opinion.

He dragged the process on and on and on. Another man came up next to me and looked like he wanted to form a separate line and go ahead of me. When I finally got my chance to go up, the guy started pulling up my reservation. That man who was standing next to me decided to come up about 30 seconds after me. The clerk asked me if it was OK if he helped the other man, because he had a return and it was going to be quick. What am I going to do, say no?

Well, the guy starts complaining about the tires and the ride. The clerk apologizes and says he’ll let the manager know. So the guy complains again. And the clerk apologizes again. Rinse, spin, repeat for about five more minutes. I’m about to turn to the guy and tell him that he had some nerve cutting in like that when he knew he was going to go on. I didn’t feel like getting into a fight in the airport, though, so I kept my mouth shut.

A woman FINALLY comes back from break and takes the other station. She looks off to the line and shouts, “I can help who’s next!” I look at the clerk helping me to let him know, “Hey, give her my driver’s license!” But he’s too paralyzed with shock over the guy complaining about the tires. So I continue to wait as that woman helped another customer.

But finally it’s my turn. The guy tries to upsell me to a full-size and I’m having none of it. I had a standard car and the only one they had was in the shop. So, they had to upgrade me to the car the guy was trying to sell me. He tells me, “We’re going to upgrade you to a full-size as our way of apologizing for the time you had to wait.” Seriously? You just tried to sell me that car five minutes ago — don’t insult my intelligence and lie to me!

30 minutes after getting in line behind NOBODY, I finally had my keys and I go out to my car, which was in space E6, and something funny happened: There was no car in E6! So, I’m walking around clicking the keychain to try to unlock doors and finally I fun it in E2. Awesome.

But wait, there’s more!

I got the car at 4:10 p.m. on Friday. From the counter, you have to walk about five minutes to get to the car. I spent about three minutes actually looking for the car. I got in the car about about 4:18, turned on my GPS and got rolling. I drove out of the rental car garage at about 4:20. When I returned the car, I probably pulled into the garage at about 4:18 on Saturday. I parked, got my stuff and walked to the counter to return the car. It was 4:25. In the other terminal at MSP, if my memory serves correct, they start the clock when you exit the garage. I’ve been through that garage twice this year.

I would have been under the 24-hour window. But because this terminal makes you check in and out at the counter, I didn’t make it. Also, most car rental companies have a 29-minute grace period on that 24-hour period. Apparently, Dollar doesn’t . They charged me $5 for that extra hour. That $5 kicked in an extra $6 in taxes. So even though I really only had the car for 24 hours, because Terminal 2 at MSP is outdated I got to pay an extra $11.

I’ll survive, but I’m definitely not thrilled. Dollar, you failed this weekend.

Inconsiderate People Everywhere
I don’t get people. Why does everybody think rules don’t apply to them? Three rulebreakers annoyed the heck out of me while I was traveling, aside from the guy who couldn’t wait his turn at Dollar

1. LINE CUTTER
On Southwest Airlines, you board in the order than you checked in, more or less, and there’s no assigned seating. You pick a seat when you get on. The numbering goes A1-A60, then B1-B60, then C1-C60 or however many there are in the C group. So, A1 boards first, A60 boards right before B1, etc. You line up and people are supposed to act civilized. They have signs at the gate for every five positions. So A31-35 lines up behind a sign, A36-A40 lines up behind the next sign, etc.

I had A34 for my first flight. A woman stood up in front of me and did the “I’m gonna play on my phone and not look up trick and hide my boarding pass” until we got up to the agent. She pulled out her pass and it was A38. Not the biggest deal in the world, but it just annoyed me. I can tell who’s traveling for the first time and who knows what they’re doing. She knew what she was doing, she knew she was cheating, and that annoyed me. I got my seat, but still — it’s the principle.

2. SAFETY GUIDELINES DON’T APPLY TO THIS GUY
When you’re below 10,000 feet and heading in to land, you have to have all your electronic devices turned off. They say that devices can interfere with the plane’s communications equipment. I don’t know how serious of a threat it really is, but if that’s what they tell us, that’s what I’m going to do. It’s not worth it to chance it over the last 10 minutes of a flight.

Well, when we were landing in Los Angeles, some 20-something guy across the aisle from me had his iPhone on and he was hiding it and sneaking peaks at his email. We were about two minutes from landing. He’d look around, make sure nobody was looking, then sneak more looks. I don’t know what this guy thought was so important that he’d risk interfering with the plane’s communications equipment while we were landing, but that really annoyed me. I didn’t say anything. I’m not the type to run my mouth. Maybe I should?

3. THIS GUY KNEW BETTER THAN THE FLIGHT ATTENDANTS
On the same flight with the guy with the iPhone, we had to wait about 10 minutes to get to our gate because there was a plane still there. While we’re sitting on the tarmac, a guy gets up to get some bags out of the overhead compartment. The flight attendant comes on and announces over the PA that we’re still a taxiing plane and he needs to remain seated.

The guy apparently doesn’t care and he reaches for one of his bags and hands it to one of his travel companions. The flight attendant repeats the announcement and he casually grabs a second bag and then sits down without closing the compartment. So the flight attendant comes on again and tells him to shut the overhead compartment and he gets up and does that.

I don’t know why this guy thought he was above the rules, but again, I was annoyed.

Am I right to get annoyed by these people? Am I too easily annoyed?

OK, That’s All For Today
Have a great Monday, y’all! I’ll have something for ya tomorrow!

Wow, what a weekend. Marathons 49 and 50 of 2011 in the book and I had a great time with Tiffany and Benjamin in Kansas and Colorado. We took a ton of pictures, so I’ll try to keep the writing to a minimum and the photos to a maximum.

Real quick, just in case this is your first time here, I’m a father of three and a marathon runner. My middle child, 7-year-old Jack, is severely autistic, but improving well. I’m attempting to run 61 marathons in 2011 to raise money and awareness for a charity I’m a part of called Train 4 Autism. So far, I’m through 50 marathons, which is good — I’d hate to have to run 61 between now and December 31!

On Saturday, I ran the Kansas City Marathon (recap here).
Yesterday, I ran the Denver Rock ‘N Roll Marathon (recap here).

For the first time this year, my wife and oldest son Benjamin tagged along and we had a blast! The weekend started when I woke up at 3 a.m. Thursday morning to head to the airport after getting four hours of sleep. Here’s how it went from there …

First things first — FOOTBALL!
I graduated from Kansas State University. Thursday night, my alma mater played in-state rival Kansas and we won 59-7! And yes, we went to the game and had a great time! Too bad it was in Lawrence on the KU campus.

First of many friends I caught up with
A good friend and pledge brother of mine from college, Mike Ryan, was in town for a wedding, so we caught up for breakfast. Shoot, he was a groomsman in my wedding, too. I’m not sure he had seen Tiffany since our wedding and I hadn’t seen him since his wedding in 2006. He had never seen any of our kids. So, we had a great time, plus we ate at Cracker Barrel. Does it get any better than that?

Visiting My Old Fraternity House
I’m a Phi Delt, for those of you who went through the Greek system. Before my last semester, we sold our house to Delta Chi because it was falling apart and they really wanted it. They sold it a year ago to a sorority. I went by to go on a tour, if possible, but it’s abandoned now. And it’s condemned. It’s getting torn down. It was so sad! But it was cool to see it one last time. Sniff, sniff.

Visiting My New Fraternity House
So at least my chapter has a new house. It was pretty nice and I took a tour courtesy of Beau Dewbre, an active with the Kansas Gamma chapter. Benjamin got a big kick out of the house and he wants to go live there someday. I like that!

Ben: Go To College!
Benjamin is only 9, and he’s only in the fourth grade, but it’s never too early to encourage college, right? I took him for a little bit of a drive through the campus at KSU. Then we went into the newsroom I spent a million hours in. Then we went to the Student Union, where they have a bowling alley in the basement. He’s sold. He can’t wait to go to college! That’s what I like to hear!

Strolling Down Memory Lane
Well actually, a street called LeGore. Tiff lived in Manhattan for a semester. I lived in the Phi Delt house, she lived at 1433 LeGore. We were kids back then. So we had to go back and take a picture.

Next Good Friend I caught up with
I met up with a buddy of mine, Scott Fritchen, who was one of my best friends in college. We’ve kept in touch over the years, so we met up with him for lunch. He works for a K-State sports publication called Powercat Illustrated and they have a TV studio in their office. Ben got a big kick out of that. And of course, I didn’t take a picture. But I did take a picture with Scott.

OK, Moving Along, …
We went back to Kansas City, picked up my stuff and stayed at a friend’s house in the Kansas City area. On the Kansas side, of course! The Kansas City area covers Kansas and Missouri and I’m definitely partial to the Kansas side.

I got about six hours of sleep and then I got up and ran the Kansas City Marathon on Saturday morning (recap here). After the race, we had to scoot pretty quickly to make it to the airport. We did a quick stop-off at 12425 W. 120th Street #1023 in Overland Park. Yeah, that was the first apartment we lived in after we got married. Ahhh, memory lane again!

We drove through Taco Bell, rushed to the airport and got in to Denver. After getting our next rental car, we headed straight from the airport to Pei Wei in Boulder to meet up with some runner friends. We had a nice time there.

We got to where we were going by 9 p.m., staying with friends of ours in the Denver area. I got to bed a little before 11 and had to wake up at 4:30 a.m. on …

Sunday!
I woke up naturally and realized I forgot to check in for our Southwest flight Sunday night! Tiff wondered why I was typing furiously on the keyboard at 4:30 and it was because I didn’t want us to get stuck in the middle seats in separate rows on the way home. We got A57, A58 and A59, so we were fine.

Anyhow, I ran the Rock ‘N Roll Marathon on Saturday morning (recap here).

After the race, I went back to my friends’ house, got cleaned up and we went out to lunch. It’s funny — last weekend when I was in Chicago, I didn’t get any pizza. I got McDonald’s at the airport. But in Denver, we went to a place called Old Chicago. Go figure. I had a stromboli, whatever that is. And fries.

Tiff and Benjamin went shopping or something like that and I chilled on the couch with my friend, watching the Jets-Broncos game. We said farewell, then took off and headed for dinner. We were going to hit Sonic, but we saw Cracker Barrel again!

I decided to go with dinner for dinner instead of breakfast for dinner. There was a chicken BLT sandwich that looked really good, so I ordered that. A funny thing happened, though. They just brought out a BLT. I NEEDED that chicken, so they told me to snack on the BLT while they brought out my sandwich. So I did. They must have known I had run two marathons over the weekend and I was starving!

So I actually got two dinners out of the deal, plus I finished some of Benjamin’s french toast and I split some carrot cake with Tiffany. That took care of me. I had five cups of coffee, hoping that would keep me awake on the flight, but I couldn’t hack it.

Benjamin had the line of the night when we went through security. Tiff put a jar of peanut butter in his backpack, and apparently that’s a no-no. So they asked him if that was his bag, and he said, “It’s OK, I didn’t pack any guns or knives.” They took the peanut butter and he asked if he was in trouble. The TSA agent joked that they might put him on a list. So he said, “Well my name is Benjamin and my last name is spelled F-e-l-s-e-n-f-e-l-d.” Me and Tiff were cracking up!

Anyways, I got about 90 minutes of shut-eye on the flight and we finally landed a little after 11 p.m. After getting Tiff’s bag, getting the car and driving home, we finally walked through the door at 1 a.m. I think I got to sleep by about 1:15.

Too bad I was up five hours later attacking my Monday, huh?

I went to In-N-Out for lunch on Monday and while I was there, Tiff updated her Facebook status and it made me smile.

Had to take a two hr nap to recover from my trip to Kansas, Colorado and I DIDN’T run two marathons this weekend. Sam, I seriously am in even more “awe” over how you do this. Crazy.

I’ll admit it, this was an exhausting weekend. But so far, through nearly 36 years of walking this planet, I think this might have been my best weekend ever.

It seems like it’s been forever since I’ve really written a weekend recap on Monday. I’ve had one sort of excuse or another, but today, I actually have a weekend recap! This weekend was defined by decisions I made, and it turned out pretty well, except for when I lost fair and square to my 4-year-old daughter at Uno.

Real quick, just in case you’ve never been here before, I’m a father of three and a marathon runner. My middle child, 7-year-old Jack, is severely autistic. I’m attempting to run 61 marathons this year to raise money and awareness for an autism-related charity I’m a part of called Train 4 Autism. So far, I’m through 43. And I hurt! I named the endeavor after my little guy, calling it Operation Jack.

First Decision: Where To Run
I had originally scheduled Yonkers, N.Y. for this weekend, but three weeks ago I switched it to Boulder, Colo. because I thought it would be a more effective trip for Operation Jack. I booked my airfare to Denver, and sure enough, Boulder was postponed last Monday due to a fire. So four days before the weekend, I needed to find a race.

Fortunately, I found a race 225 miles southwest of Denver that started in a town called Crested Butte and finished in another town called Gunnison. It was a pretty challenging race, but I gave it my all, like always. If you want, you can read my recap here.

Next Decision: When To Leave
Mentally, I had written off the weekend when I had Yonkers on the schedule. To get to New York, I would have had to leave early Saturday morning and I would have gotten back late Saturday night. So when I booked Boulder, I mindlessly scheduled an early-morning flight to Denver. I say mindlessly, because I didn’t even think about checking my oldest son Benjamin’s soccer schedule.

When I did, I saw that his game was at 9 a.m., about the same time I was scheduled to land in Denver. I looked into changing the flight and the net cost (lower rental car cost) was going to be about $60. Worth $60 for a 9-year-old’s soccer game? I don’t like wasting money, but there’s only one other game I’ll be seeing this season. So yeah, it was worth $60.

Benjamin will be the first to tell you he’s not very good at soccer. And when I go out and watch him play, he’s just about the worst player on the field. It’s been two years since he scored a goal. But he has a ton of fun playing, and I like to coach him on things like sportsmanship and effort. It’s also a pure joy to sit out there at the field in my chair while it’s overcast, chatting with the parents, watching the kids have fun.

Skip to the third quarter. It’s 0-0 and one of the better players on Ben’s team had a scoring opportunity, but the opposing goalie came out a bit to cut off the angle and made a save on a shot. The ball bounced back out towards Benjamin, who was about 25 yards out. He saw the goalie was too far out, so he boomed it high and far. One bounce, and IN! He scored a goal! He was on top of the world and all of his teammates mobbed him. I was so excited!

The game ended in a 1-1 tie, so as I reminded Ben about 20 times, he made the difference between a tie and a loss! I always tell Ben that even though he might not be the best player, he’s a part of the team and he needs to work hard and contribute. Every little bit helps and you never know when something you do is going to make a difference.

He’s not going to be a professional athlete, but I know he’s going to be a good person. He’s honest to a fault. After the game, he asked me if I saw all his teammates get excited after his goal, and I told him I did. He asked me why they got so excited and I told him it was because that gave them a 1-0 lead.

With an ear-to-ear smile, he told me, “I think it’s because they didn’t expect it from me because I’m so bad!” Ah, Benjamin. He can do his little things to misbehave, but he’s a good kid and I love that little guy!

And yeah, that was worth $60.

Next Decision: To Turn Back Or Not To Turn Back?
I was on my way to Chipotle for lunch on Friday, about to turn in the parking lot, when my wife Tiffany called me up hysterical. Apparently, Jack slipped and fell and hit his chin on a chair and it was bleeding. She wanted me to come home immediately to help, so I turned the car around, but I was a good 20-25 minutes away.

When I was about 10 minutes away from getting home, she told me the bleeding had stopped and she was thinking he’d be OK. She was indecisive about whether or not I should head all the way home at that point. I made the decision to go check it out. Good call.

He had a decent gash and I wanted to take him to the doctor as a precaution. We went and they immediately said he’d need stitches. He’s difficult to treat at a doctor’s office, because he doesn’t communicate or understand what’s going on. The doctor wanted to send him to the emergency room so he could be put under to have the stitches put in. No way did we allow that, although if it had just been Tiff at the doctor’s office, she would have had no choice.

After spending 20 minutes numbing up his chin, we had to put him in a papoose, which is something that restricts him from moving his arms and legs. Tiff held him steady and I held his face in place. He didn’t like that and resisted quite a bit because he didn’t know what was happening. It was pretty tough to see him so upset. The stitches went in and he got some McDonald’s fries as a treat afterwards.

But I think it was more traumatic for me. I was in a haze the rest of the day. That was absolutely miserable. But I’m glad I was there.

Next Decision: How Long To Hold On To The Draw Four Card?
On Friday night, I played Uno with Ben and Ava. I had two draw four cards, but I chose to hold on to them for too long. I was wanting to hang on to them and use them as I was getting close to going out. I passed up on good opportunities to use them earlier in the game, and Ava quietly whittled down her hand.

I dropped one on her after she called Uno, but after a reversal, I had to use one on Benjamin. Soon enough, I was powerless with my hand, she called Uno again, and when it came to be my turn, there was nothing I could do. She outplayed me and Ben and won the game.

Yeah, I got beat at Uno, fair and square, by my 4-year-old daughter, because I did a poor job playing my draw four cards.

Bad decision.

Will He Or Won’t He?
Last night a big guy named Bert sitting next to me on the plane said he was going to come to the site, read the blog and leave a comment. He stored operationjack.org in his iPad and we talked for a little while, so I think there’s a fighting good chance. We’ll see!

Wow, This Ran Longer Than I Thought It Would
I like that, though … I have a ton of leftover material for tomorrow. Should make that blog easy to write. Y’all enjoy your Monday and celebrate the fact that my Kansas State Wildcats are 3-0!