Operation Jack

Fighting autism, one mile at a time.

Three Things Thursday: Clowning Around

by 4 Comments

Well here we go, Three Things Thursday.

1. My work is filled with a bunch of clowns like me. We like to play pranks on each other and while some of them are pretty geeky and you wouldn’t understand (like putting an exit in a bash profile when somebody leaves their computer unlocked — ha!), some of them are funny enough that non-geeks would find them funny. Take yesterday, for example. We have a guy who was just out for the past 2 1/2 weeks and today is his first day back. He spent a lot of his time off camping, so we wanted to gradually ease him back into the workplace.

The orange bucket with the toilet paper roll is a nice touch.

Side on the folks I work with … we have a small white board on the fridge and we make a list of things we want for snacks and they bring them in. It usually starts with a couple of legitimate requests and then it diverges badly. Here’s what’s up there now:

I wrote one thing on here. Not saying which one.

2. Yesterday was the first day of school out here. Summer vacation is over … or, as I like to say, Tiff’s fall break begins! I have a middle schooler now. Makes me feel old. I remember my first day of middle school like it was yesterday, although really, it was less than halfway through Reagan’s second term. But whatever. I have a kid in middle school. I feel super crazy old.

3. I wrote a lot last week about struggles we were having with Jack, our 8-year-old son who is severely autistic. Well, he’s doing better with his sleep, making it through the night. We’ve had him in ABA therapy all summer, which has helped quite a bit and we’re really starting to see breakthroughs. That doesn’t have anything to do with him sleeping through the night, but still, it’s good news. We’ve also been fighting pretty hard behind the scenes to get him in the right school and it looks like we have that taken care of. We’ll know more in the next week. It’s a lot of ups and downs with him, but we just keep pushing forward. This week has been a pretty good one.

That’s all I have for today. Do you like to pull pranks? What are the people you work with like? Are you old like I am? Have a great weekend!

Operation Jack Marathon: Special Offer!

by 13 Comments

I said yesterday that there was going to be a one-day offer with Operation Jack Marathon registrations today, which is the case. But I have to give a quick little bit of history about the race first. Registration is only $45 for the half marathon and $55 for the marathon right now, plus I have somebody who wants to kick in donations on behalf of everybody registering today only. Details about that are at the bottom. If you’re interested, you should read this post first.

Back in 2010, when I ran 61 marathons to raise money and awareness for Train Autism in honor of my severely autistic son Jack, I had a serious problem late in the year. My last race, scheduled for December 26, fell through. There were some issues with the person who was going to put the race on for me and in early October of that year, I realized I had to put on a marathon myself.

Never mind the fact that I was working full time, taking care of my family and still traveling to run a marathon (or even two marathons) every weekend. I now had to put on a marathon, otherwise this whole “at least one marathon a week” thing would go by the wayside. It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to run 60 in 51 weeks and none of my donors would have wanted their money back, but I just had to put a race on. When you spend a year running yourself into the ground the way I did, nothing fazes you, and the only thing you’re interested in doing is taking the hard way out. Operation Jack Marathon, bring it on.

I made a mental list of things that needed to be done. Medals. Shirts. Food. Oh, volunteers. Those would help. And it would be good to have some runners. And probably a registration website. Oh, and I know — bibs! Safety pins! Oh but wait, I have a race coming up on Saturday and I need to book airline travel for three weeks out and also find a place to sleep on Friday night. And I have a blog to write. And 20 emails to reply to. And I have to pick up my son from soccer practice after work. That marathon planning thing wasn’t going to be easy. But like everything else with that crazy year, I took a leap of faith and went after it.

Oh yeah, and there was one other issue that was definitely going to be a challenge roughly 10 weeks out. I needed to find a location and get a permit and insurance and all that kind of fun stuff. I knew it would have to be on an open course, because getting roads blocked off was just not going to happen on my budget and with my timeframe. I looked at various spots near the beach in Orange County, but they crossed into too many different municipalities and there was no way I’d be able to overcome all the red tape and secure permits in time.

I looked into a spot in a city called Cerritos, where a friend of mine had run a 100K on a course that was 5K in each direction (she ran 10 laps of that!). That spot actually dealt with the county, and I was close to securing a permit. All I needed to make the race count was to advertise it for a month, have five starters and have three finishers. I was pretty sure I could get five people out there. Heck, I filled 20 percent of the quota myself! It would have been an incredibly boring, one-time thing, but technically, it would have counted.

Just before I was about to lock down that site, though, a friend of mine, Jake Rome, begged me to consider a spot near his home in Manhattan Beach. Run it along the beach and then along some creek that was nearby, he told me. He said it would be a great event, he’d work with the local community and bring runners. Jake had been a pretty strong Operation Jack supporter all year, and really, at that point, I didn’t care. I had so many other things to worry about. So, I said sure, we’d switch.

What. A. Blessing.

Jake and I before the start of the 2011 Operation Jack Marathon.

[Read more…]

My Best Fat Picture Ever!

by 6 Comments

OK, quick blog today — I have two quick announcements, although first, Tiff found this picture. I’ve mentioned here before that I lost a fair amount of weight after I started running. I maxed out at 261 pounds and I’m down at about 194 now. I love looking at my fat pictures and seeing how far I’ve come. But this one takes the cake. And the chips. And the cookies. And the cheeseburgers.

Not Photoshopped!

For comparison’s sake, here I am on the left on Saturday with my oldest son, Benjamin, and my brother Josh.

Not Photoshopped!

If I can do it, you can, too!

OK, now here are a couple of race announcements:

1. If you haven’t already checked out my friend Jonathan Gunderson’s race in San Francisco on September 8, CLICK HERE! It’s an inexpensive race that benefits a great cause. If you’re going to be in the Bay Area on September 8 and you’re not running a race, GET OUT THERE! It’s a short race, so you really don’t need to be a runner! Get out there or at least spread to word to others who might be able to get out there. HINT: There are share links at the bottom of this page to post via Facebook and Twitter!

2. If you’re thinking about running the Operation Jack Marathon this year or participating as a satellite runner, I’m going to announce something special tomorrow that’s only going to be valid … tomorrow. So check back to see what that is!

Have a great Tuesday!

The Toughest Guy I've Ever Met

by 1 Comment

I’ve been pretty blessed throughout this Operation Jack journey. I’ve met a lot of great, interesting people. I’ve met a lot of people who inspire me and really, I frequently think about how amazing it’s been to go down this path.

Well, the toughest person I’ve ever met in my life is a guy named Jared Hamman. Jared is a professional UFC fighter and is somebody I really admire. He’s extremely tough, and I’ll get to that in a minute, but he has amazing character. He found me on Twitter and we started talking and we’ve chatted periodically for the past 18 months or so. He’s a very strong Christian and living a life that would be pleasing to God is hugely important to him. He’s one of a small group of people who really inspire me. Just like everybody else in this world, I’m an imperfect person and sometimes, when I know I’m thinking about going down the wrong path, I think of people like Jared, or some other friends of mine with great character, and I think, “What would these friends of me think of me right now?” He’s one of those kinds of people, someone I’m grateful to have crossed paths with.

I met him in January out in California. He was making an appearance at a church about 30 minutes from where I lived, so I went out to the service. The pastor was interviewing him, talking about when he played college football, his days fighting in the 205-pound class and then in the 185-pound class. It was interesting hearing him talk about his life as a fighter and the pastor asked a simple question: What’s your goal? [Read more…]

I Hate Autism, Part 257

by 9 Comments

2:57 is a time I liked a lot when I ran the Boston Marathon in 2011. It was a new personal best for me, the first time I was able to cover 26.2 miles in less than three hours. 2:57 is a time I really hated yesterday, though. It’s the time I woke up yesterday morning to hear my son Jack having a meltdown, hitting his head into the wall in his bedroom.

If you’ve never been here before, click here to see why I even have this site. It’s because even though I don’t have autism, like Jack, I will fight autism for the rest of my life. I will fight it because Jack has it. Severely. He’s about five weeks from turning 9 and he doesn’t really talk and he’s still in diapers. Some people like to throw out the cliché he might have autism but autism doesn’t have him. That’s not true, though. Autism has him. It controls him and owns him and defines his every day. But I’ll get back to that in a minute.

He woke up at 2:57 a.m. Maybe actually earlier than that, but that’s when I first heard him. I was going to be getting up to run at 4:30 a.m., so when he wakes up in the middle of the night like that, my wife Tiffany goes and takes care of him. Usually, that just means laying down with him until he calms down and goes back to sleep. It takes an average of 30-60 minutes. For most parents, that kind of stuff stops somewhere around 6-12 weeks after your baby is born. Jack turned 464 weeks on Tuesday and we’re still getting up several times a week.

This child was not born with autism.

[Read more…]