Operation Jack

Fighting autism, one mile at a time.

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…]

My Silly Wife

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Ahhh, my silly wife. She’s so funny about some things. Well, especially my running. Like, when I wanted to run a 50-miler, she thought it was crazy, and it was too much, but then I did it. I was slower than I expected to be and out of cell phone range that day, so she freaked out when she didn’t hear from as soon as she thought she would. When I finally got a hold of her, she was pretty upset. I think she’d already written my eulogy. She gave me an earful for a good 30 minutes. But right after that, you know what she told everybody?

“Guess what my husband did! He ran 50 miles!”

Ahhh, women. As Norm Peterson said on Cheers, “you can’t live with ’em, … pass the beer nuts.”

Well, she did it again this weekend. I won’t lie. This Boston training cycle was a bit tough. I’m not the type of guy who misses family time to work out, but I’m pretty dedicated and focused when I’m attacking a training cycle. She didn’t hesitate to let me know that she wasn’t going to miss this training cycle. I’m up early in the morning, sometimes I fall asleep early at night, I’m pretty focused on my nutrition, I talk about the race a lot … enough’s enough. And then it was done. But not in her mind.

Easter is a holiday we spend with our family. It’s a reason to celebrate and give thanks. And I guess in her eyes, nothing says dessert on Easter like this:

Yeah, that's my Boston time on a Boston cream pie.

[Read more…]

What Is Operation Jack?

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This might sound odd, but on Tuesday morning, I finally figured out what Operation Jack is. Some of you might think I’m crazy for saying that, because I successfully completed my mission of running 61 full marathons in 2010 to raise money and awareness for Train 4 Autism. But it’s true — until Tuesday morning, I didn’t know what Operation Jack is. [Read more…]

Race Report: 2011 Boston Marathon

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Wow, my race report for Boston. I don’t even know where to start. I guess I’ll probably start somewhere around last September, when I really started to think about this race. Even though at that point I had about 20 marathons on my schedule before I could get to this one, in the back of my mind, the 2011 Boston Marathon was the race I was focusing on. [Read more…]