Operation Jack

Fighting autism, one mile at a time.

Weekend Preview: San Diego

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Normally, I write my blog and I add the top paragraph when I’m done. I think of something clever to get you to read the rest of the blog. But today, I’m not feeling very creative and I’m in a hurry.

Just in case you’ve never been here before, I’m a father of three and a marathon runner. My middle child, 6 1/2-year-old Jack, is severely autistic and to make a really long story short, I’m trying to run 60 marathons this year to raise money and awareness for a charity called Train 4 Autism. The long story is here.

Speaking of Jack, keep happy thoughts for us today. We’re heading up to a highly recommended DAN doctor in Los Angeles. If you don’t know what a DAN doctor is, be grateful!

E-Mail Notices
A lot of you get email notices when I post new blogs. I’m not going to send those out any more because they take up too much of my time in the morning. But you all know I post them Monday through Thursday and I have an RSS subscription.

Weekly Contest
Every week, I have a weekly contest where you guys make an easy donation to a great cause by guessing how fast I’m going to run my race. If you think I’m going to run a 3:12, you donate $3.12. It’s super easy, less than the price of a happy meal, and did I mention that it’s going to a great cause?

Last week, I changed the contest up a little bit because I had a pancake-eating contest with a fellow former big-boy named Lonnie Butler. So y’all picked who you thought would win and it was me. I took everybody who picked me, came up with a very random process and legitimately chose Jennifer Whitter of St. Louis as the winner.

This week, it’s going to be the pick-Sam’s-time contest again. I’ll get to that in a bit.

Great Weekend, Coming Right Up!
San Diego is about a 90-minute drive from my house. I have to stay down there Saturday night, but it’s going to be a nice, easy weekend for me. I’ll be able to relax at home with the family on Friday night, sleep in and then hang out with the family on Saturday. I won’t need to head down until after lunch. I’ll have plenty of time that I won’t be rushed, I’ll be able to visit with people I want to meet in San Diego, and still have enough time to relax in my hotel Saturday night.

Sunday, after running the race, getting cleaned up and then having In-N-Out with some friends, I should be home by 1 p.m. Does it get any better than that? I’m not saying I deserve a break for a weekend, but that’s what I feel like I’m getting.

Ice Cream Update
I had butter pecan with s’mores flavored Magic Shell last night. Kind of an odd combo, but it was good. Really good. I highly recommend that magic shell. I’m at 123 days on my current streak now, in case you’re keeping track.

San Diego Race Preview
Well, this is my fifth time running the San Diego Rock ‘N Roll Marathon. They’ve changed the last few miles of the course, but I don’t think it’s going to have much of an impact on how I approach the course.

The first oh, 15 or 16 miles (maybe even more) are going to be the same and I’m really not concerned enough about the changes to study the course profile before I get my packet at the expo. I saw it a few months ago and nothing stood out. For the most part, this course starts off on a gradual uphill, has a blazing fast gradual downhill at somewhere around 4 or 5, then goes into a gradual uphill at around 6-7. There’s a long, fairly difficult climb from miles 8-10 or so up the 163, and a big part of that challenge is the camber of the road. You’re running on a slant, which is tough.

After that climb, though, there’s a big, sweeping downhill where you get some time back and catch your breath, and then you roll in on an unremarkable second half.

As much as I dislike Rock ‘N Roll events, this was my first marathon, so I’ll always go back and feel at home. In 2006, I ran a 4:06 in my first full. The next year, I went 3:21, which was a 17-minute PR at the time. In 2008, I went 3:07 five or six weeks after running a 3:03 at Boston, but I didn’t feel like I really had it that day. Last year, it was humid and I chose to run at sub-3 pace even though it was 10K effort for me. Seven miles of that did me in and I bonked pretty hard, finishing in 3:31.

I have a tiny bit of a confidence problem with my 3:57 in the Minnesota sun last weekend, but I know that was a 1-in-60 kind of day. I’m feeling fairly fast right now, though, and I’m still planning on chasing a sub-3:10. I’d love to set a course PR, which would be a 3:07:11. I think that’s fairly realistic. If I was setting an over/under for Sunday, it would be 3:09.

OK, so you hear that? Now enter the contest!

That’s All For Today!
Have a great weekend, everybody. I’ll see you back here Sunday with a San Diego race recap.

Weekend Recap On … Wednesday?

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If a blog falls in the woods and doesn’t get updated, does anybody notice? Yeah, it’s Wednesday and I’m just now posting my weekend recap. I was planning to post it yesterday instead of on Memorial Day, but when you see what I did on Monday, you’ll understand why I’m a day late.

First things first, I’m a father of three and a marathon runner. My middle child, 6 1/2-year-old Jack, is severely autistic. Long story short, I’m trying to run 60 marathons this year to raise money and awareness for a charity called Train 4 Autism. So far, so good. 27 down, 33 to go.

Well, except for this past weekend, when I ran what I consider to be my worst marathon ever. I’ve run slower twice in my 55 lifetime marathons. But this one was absolutely the worst. Read my recap here and see if you can sense how miserable the experience was.

Anyways, on with the weekend …

But First, A Jack Update
Jack continues to slowly progress. Last Thursday, Tiff took him to get his hair cut. We go to a place for kids, and normally sits in a fire engine chair designed to constrain children who are about 2. But he was willing to sit in the big-kid chair, which was awesome. And even awesomer than that (I know, not a word, but it’s my blog), he was willing to wear a smock. He’d never done that.

He’s doing little things spontaneously every here and there. On about Monday or so, Benjamin walked into a room that he was in and Jack waved and said “hi” to him. Things like that seem small, but they’re an indicator that he’s starting to come around. Last night when I put him to bed, he was going through a numbers book and saying the numbers. He was looking to me to hold up the number of fingers of the word he was saying. I did that for about 15 minutes. It’s a simple little numbers game for him, but we need to keep reinforcing that when he speaks, he gets the desired action he’s looking for. Someday it will all click.

Tomorrow, we have an appointment with a DAN doctor up in Los Angeles. It’s a doctor that comes very highly recommended from people who would know. We’ve been waiting months to get in, so we’re excited about this. DAN doctors focus on biomedical treatment for children with autism. We’re not discontinuing anything else we’re doing, but we’re going to add this to the equation. We had bad luck with a different DAN doctor in the past, so we’re happy to have a new one. We’re pretty convinced he needs this help.

Oh, and one last thing. Last year, the summer school program our school district offered was terrible for Jack. The staff was terrible and we pulled him after one day. I won’t get into a long explanation, but it was bad news. Well this year, the staff is going to be the same staff he’s had all year, so we’re excited that we’ll be able to put him in there. They’ve done a great job with him, plus he regresses a little in the summer without his school routine. We just found this out yesterday and we’re pretty excited about it.

OK, now on with the weekend. For reals.

Date Night!
I celebrated 11 years of marriage with my beautiful wife Tiffany on May 23 (the Sunday before last), but since we had a chaotic day, we took a rain check on babysitting and brought in Baja Fresh for dinner. But we cashed in our rain check last Friday night and used a gift card at PF Chang’s. It was a nice start to the weekend — nothing beats eating dinner without interruptions … for free! About 51 more weeks and we’ll get to do that again.

I’m Starting To Realize That All I Talk About Is Food
So the next thing I’m going to talk about is lunch on Saturday. It was with my ex-stepmom (or maybe I call her my second mom?) and her family. She was married to my dad from my fourth grade through eighth grade years. Her and my dad weren’t meant to be together, but they’re both great people and I’ll always love her and respect her for doing a great job raising me and my brother like her own during those critical years.

She lives in the Minneapolis area now, so when I get a chance to see her, I do. Rochester, Minn. is about 80 miles south of MSP airport, so I made sure to meet up with her. She has two children of her own, who are now 13 and almost 17. I got to eat with them and her husband and I had a great time. They’re wonderful kids, a reflection of the job she’s done. I’m going back up to Minneapolis in a couple of weeks to run Grandma’s in Duluth. Hopefully I have time to swing by on my way back to the airport.

More Hanging Out With Good People
I hung out with a real nice guy named Lonnie Butler on Saturday night in Rochester. We shared a hotel room to keep our costs down. Like me, he has an autistic son named Jack. Like me, he’s a former big-boy turned marathoner (he’s down to 210 from 300, I’m at 203 from 261). And like me, he had a rough go on Sunday.

But it was really nice to meet him. We’d chatted a fair amount over email and it was cool to finally meat him. I also got to meet his wife and his Jack, but I’ll get to that in a bit.

More Food Talk …
I had dinner Saturday night at a place I’d never heard of called Jimmy John’s. Apparently, it’s a sandwich shop chain in the Midwest and Lonnie gave it high marks. The thing about guys like me and Lonnie — we know good food when we eat it. I think I lived up to the California stereotype by ordering a turkey sandwich with avocado spread. But it was really good. He was right.

One Little Letter
I originally planned to run the Mad City Marathon in Madison, Wisc., on Sunday, but when I talked to Lonnie, and found out Rochester was his first marathon, I switched to run that one instead. The race I ran is called the Med City Marathon, so I went from Mad City to Med City. I had no idea why it was called Med City. Where do you get “Med City” from Rochester, Minn.?

When I stepped out the front door of my hotel, I found out:


I was totally excited to see THE Mayo Clinic! That’s big-time! And I kid you not, I took two steps out of the front of my hotel to take this picture.

More Food Talk …
After the race on Sunday, Lonnie and I went to Denny’s for all-you-can-eat pancakes. We’d been talking about this ever since I had 11 pancakes at IHOP after I ran the Country Music Marathon in Nashville on April 24. But those pancakes were a little smaller than the ones we ate on Sunday.


This is how big they were at Denny’s on Sunday. They were pretty good-sized, in my book.

We each ordered and knocked back the first three fairly quickly. With the all-you-can-eat deal, they bring you two at a time on the subsequent plates. I finished my second plate quicker than Lonnie, but was starting to feel fairly full. I could tell Lonnie was probably feeling the same way. I ordered my third plate fairly quickly. I made my move to put the hammer down.

Pancakes No. 6 and 7 came out and I worked on those while Lonnie was finishing up his fifth. I really hoped he stopped there, because I felt pretty full. With a two-pancake lead, though, I knew I could wear him down if I could just stick it out.

When our waitress asked him if he wanted a third plate, he declined and I was relieved. I didn’t want to go to nine. We were done eating by about 1:30 p.m. Central time, and I was so full, I didn’t eat at all on the plane and when I got home at 7:30 p.m. Pacific time (eight hours later), all I had was a small serving of chicken and sausage to get some protein in my system. I was still full. Oh, I had some ice cream, too. Couldn’t skip that.

So after all the anticipation, I was able to pull out a victory. I went out fast, held on to my lead and came away with the W. It was a good win over a tough competitor!

We had a contest last week and I’ll announce the winner tomorrow. Too tired as I write this to take care of that. Which leads me to …

My Memorial Day Holiday
Just because it’s a holiday doesn’t mean the calendar doesn’t turn. My work revolves around a monthly cycle and yesterday was the 1st. So Monday I was busy. I’m always guilty of being overly ambitious on how quickly I can get things done. Maybe I’m just overly optimistic?

Anyways, I had a pretty crazy week last week and I knew I had a full day of code writing ahead of me on Monday. I got started at somewhere around 9 or 9:30 in the morning, and aside from taking maybe an hour or so for lunch and then dinner, I didn’t finish until about 3:45 in the morning … yesterday? I guess it was Tuesday at that point?

I woke up naturally at about 7:45, got Benjamin ready for school, worked at my kitchen table until about 1:30, took a nap for an hour, then I think I got back on the computer for an hour or two, but I don’t really remember. It was kind of a blur. But I took another nap from 3:30-5:30, and then a few hours passed by and I think Tuesday was over? I’ll sort it all out at some point.

But that’s why I didn’t have a blog yesterday. I didn’t really feel like writing it at 4 a.m.!

That’s All For Today
I think that was enough. My ice cream streak is at 122 now. Is tomorrow really Thursday already? Wow. Time for a nap.

Race Report: Med City Marathon

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In Sunday’s Med City Marathon in Rochester, Minn., I did exactly what I promised my wife I’d do. No, I didn’t promise her I’d run my worst marathon ever. I promised her I’d be careful and take care of myself, the same guarantee I give her before every race. This was my 55th lifetime marathon, and they’re still not easy on my body. When the temperature gets up into the mid-80s it can get pretty tough. That’s what happened today, and I did everything but crawl to finish the race.

I knew going in the temperatures were going to be warm. It was in the mid-60s at the start and the forecast called for it to get up towards the high 70s by the time I finished. I’m not sure on the humidity numbers, but I know that came into play, too. The elevation profile on the course looked like something I would run well. Some early rollers, a nice downhill, and then nothing major for the last 15 or so miles. I figured that with good weather, I could challenge for 3:05, so with the warmer temps, I thought I’d be in for a 3:10 to a 3:20.

We took off and I did OK early. It was one of those situations where any little bit my body would give me on the course I gladly took, because I knew it was going to get tough later. But by five miles in, I knew I was going to have a tough day. At that point, both of my feet were numb and I have no idea why. That lasted a good five or six miles.

I did my best to keep my heart rate no higher than 170, but it would spike pretty quickly to about 177 going up hills and I’d struggle to get it down. I knew I couldn’t do that too much, otherwise I’d hit a wall and that’s not something I wanted to do in the heat.

My right leg and hip weren’t hurting (as has been the case recently) in the first half, but I was just slow as I tried to keep my heart rate down. I was told it was 82 degrees two hours in, so I’m guessing it was in the mid-70s for most of the first half.

I hit 13.1 in about 1:41, which is by far the slowest I’ve done lately. I gave up on my 3:15 and 3:20 goals well before that point, and started thinking about staying sub-3:30. I could go 1:49 in the second half to pull that off and I wasn’t worried.

But by mile 15, my hip started to sting a little bit. I had to alter my stride and I was doing an odd combination of a hop and a limp with every step with my right leg. The words I kept thinking over and over again were “death march,” because 3:30 was looking like it was way gone and I started to set my sights on a 3:40. But even at that point, I knew it would be tough.

I was really feeling the effects of the heat. It was absolutely miserable to be out there. It was the worst physical experience I had ever had in a marathon. In 54 previous lifetime marathons, I had never stopped to walk even once, except when I ran with my wife in Long Beach last year and an injury forced her to back off considerably.

But that came to an end about 17.5 miles in, when I took the first of six walk breaks. I always promise my wife I’ll take care of myself during a race. I’m getting used to marathons, and I know what to expect, but even so, they’re hard on the body. I was thinking about her and the kids and I knew I needed to back down and take care of myself.

My 3:40 was long gone and I was shuffling at about 10:30/mile. Considering I ran Fargo last week at a 7:14 pace, that’s incredibly slow for me. At about mile 21, I started doing the math in my head and realized I needed about an 11-minute pace to finish sub-4. I’m chasing sub-3 right now, and I really think I’m getting close. But here I was, doubting I could average 11-minute miles to finish sub-4.

I drank a ton of fluids late and poured a lot of water over my head to try to keep myself cool, but nothing worked. I’d walk, then do my hop-limp shuffle, then walk again. I was able to pick up the pace to sub-9 over the last few miles and it looked like I was going to make sub-4. I really, really didn’t want to miss that.

I was so beat, though, that I even walked after mile 25. I had nothing. But I picked it up and ran the last 0.7 or so and finished, I think, in 3:57:14. Aside from the run with my wife, it was the slowest marathon I’ve run since a 4:06 in my first.

It was 87 degrees at the end and I struggled to catch my breath. It was hot and I felt like I wanted to throw up, but after about 45 minutes, I started to feel a little bit better. I was trying to see how a friend of mine, Lonnie Butler, was doing. It was his first marathon, and he couldn’t have picked a more miserable day.

Me and Lonnie have a lot in common. We’re both former big boys (he topped out at 300 pounds, me at 261) and we both have autistic sons named Jack! He was aiming for somewhere between 4:30 and 5:00, and I was hoping somehow, even though I had a disaster of a day, that he didn’t.

His was even worse, though. When he was in high school, he tore the meniscus in his knee during a basketball game. At mile 11, he heard it crunch and he’s pretty sure he tore his knee up again. He shut it down at 13.1, which was where the finish line was. Lonnie went to the med tent and called it a day. I hope he’s wrong about the knee and he just has some kind of strain. I’ll find out in the next few days, I’m sure.

So, for both of us, it was just a really tough day. Fortunately for me, I can run next weekend. I have no troubles putting this one behind me and I’ll go out and attack that course and aim for a sub-3:10. With 60 races on the schedule, I’m bound to have one (or two or three) like this. So it’s done, time to move on.

27 down, 33 to go!


That was NOT fun.

Me and the Butlers after lunch.

Weekend Preview: It's All About The Pancakes

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I got back from Fargo last Saturday, blinked twice, and all of a sudden it’s Thursday. These weeks fly by and it’s already time for another weekend preview. I’m not going to spend a lot of time analyzing how fast I’m going to run, though. It’s all about how much I’m going to eat.

Just in case this is your first time here, I’m a father of three and a marathon runner. My middle child, 6 1/2-year-old Jack, is severely autistic. Last year, after lots of brainstorming, I talked with my wife and we decided I’d attempt to run 60 marathons 2010 to try to raise money and awareness for a charity called Train 4 Autism.

So far, so good. I’ve run 26 full marathons since New Year’s Day. Only 34 to go. Maybe. I’ll get to that in a minute.

Jack Update
I haven’t talked a lot about Jack lately. It’s so weird for me to talk about what he’s going through, because due to his struggles, I feel like that’s something I just want to keep private. But if I wanted privacy, I shouldn’t have signed up for this. Plus, I know you guys are excited to hear about his progress and there’s nothing wrong with sharing.

We just got word late last week that he’s showing a lot of improvements with his behaviors. I mean, we knew this, but quantifiable data backs this up. So that’s good, right? Well, it’s a double-edged sword. There’s a very good chance that we’re going to see a reduction in services as a result of this. Our state is in a budget crisis and they look for ways to cut costs any time they can.

His behaviors are actually pretty mild — it’s his speech that’s the biggest problem. Once that comes through, we’re going to notice huge improvements. The behavioral therapy is really helping to bring out speech, so while it’s possibly justifiable to reduce services in that area, the reality is it’s probably going to impact his speech development.

Our therapists are going to help us with this fight, but it’s very possibly going to be a fight. So we’ll see what happens. Ahh, the joys of being a special-needs parent. In California.

Weekly Contest
Every week, I have a contest where you try to guess my time. If you think I’m going to run a 3:10, you make a donation of $3.10 as your entry. The person who comes the closest without underbidding wins their choice of an Operation Jack t-shirt, tech shirt or sweatshirt.

Last week’s winner was Melissa Gillespie, an Operation Jack supporter from Washington State. This week, we’re going to have a variation on the contest and it’s going to involve a pancake-eating contest. I’ll explain that a little further down in this blog.

A Contest I Can Enter!
If there was ever a contest that was made for me, it’s THIS ONE! I am SO entering this. I need to figure out a way to make this help Operation Jack. I’ll think of an idea, but I need a little time. I just found out about this yesterday.


How could I not do this?

I’m In Numbers Heaven!
When I hit 5.2 miles on Sunday, I’ll be at 26.2 marathons for the year! Yeah! I’m such a geek — this is the kind of stuff I live for. Pretty sad, huh?

Thank You, Wendy!
One of my wife’s best friends, Wendy Goetschel, surprised the heck out of me with a really nice wall post she made on Facebook, so I wanted to use my space to publicly thank her! This is what she wrote:
Friends – I AM ASKING FOR YOUR HELP! My close friend has a son, who is severly autistic. What I see Jack and the rest of the family go through breaks my heart. To raise money and awareness for Autism, her husband is running a marathan EVERY WEEK for a year (that’s 60 marathons), across the united states, the name of their non-profit is “Operation Jack”. If each friend could just donate $5.00 – it would make a HUGE difference. This family and cause is so dear to me. WHO is IN? Here’s the link:
Her friends listened! Thank you for your help, Wendy!


Thank you, Wendy!

Feel Free To Say Hi!
I’ve known for a while that it’s a pain in the butt to leave a comment here. I built this site last summer and at the time, I didn’t know a thing about blogs. I’ve learned as I’ve gone along, and one thing I’ve learned is that my setup is extremely user unfriendly. I required user registration when I built this to prevent spam — comments don’t post until an account is verified. I get tons of spam that doesn’t make it to the site, but if there’s one thing I know I’ve prevented, it was getting people to leave comments. Who wants to register just to post? I wouldn’t!

I was working on integrating WordPress, but I wanted to do that inside of the system I built, and that was going to take a lot more time and energy than I have nowadays. So, I put in a captcha (you can see it at the bottom if you don’t know what that is), which only requires you to enter in the squiggly words in the picture. I uploaded it Tuesday night, and I didn’t get a single piece of spam on Wednesday. I’m not at all surprised.

So anyways, it should be a little more user-friendly here now. If you’ve been here but never left a comment, say hi and let me know you were here! No registration required!

This Week’s Contest
As I mentioned, I have a weekly contest. This week, though, it’s going to be a pancake-eating contest and you guys need to pick a winner. It’s going to be Sunday after the race in Rochester. I’m going head-to-head with an Operation Jack supporter named Lonnie Butler. Like me, Lonnie has a son named Jack who struggles with autism. Also, like me, he’s running the marathon in Rochester on Sunday. I’m looking forward to meeting Lonnie, his wife, and his Jack on Saturday night, and then seeing him finish his FIRST MARATHON on Sunday!

But after the race, it’s gonna be on like Donkey Kong. Lonnie’s a recovering big boy like me. I maxed out at 261 pounds and I’m in the 203 neighborhood nowadays. He dropped from 300+ to about 210. Some of my proudest food moments including eating 100 fried shrimp at Sizzler when I was 14, eating 11 pancakes at IHOP after the Country Music Marathon in April, out-eating three large men at my last job when we went for 4x4s at In-N-Out and then ice cream, and a barbecue at my fraternity house back in the day when beer induced me into eating eight hamburgers (some with buns, some without).

Lonnie has a pretty impressive resume too, though. Lonnie once had a meal where he ate a two-pound porterhouse steak, a banked potato, sourdough bread and salad with pop. He typically ate four to six servings of the all-you-can-eat pasta at Olive Garden, can easily put away a large or extra large pizza and once drank six cans of Mountain Dew in less than three minutes.

I’ve got my work cut out for me, but I want to win. So, here’s the contest. Pick who you think is going to win. If you think it’s going to be Lonnie, click here or on the “Donate Now!” link at the top of any of the pages on this site and donate $3. If you think it’s going to be me, same deal, but I’m $4. I’ll randomly draw somebody who bets on the right person and the winner will receive their choice of Operation Jack apparel.

So, that’s the contest for this week. We’re going to tweet from the restaurant. I’m @operationjack and Lonnie is at @LonnieRuns. Now c’mon, enter the contest! It’s for a great cause!

60 or 61?
As of now, I’m planning on running 60 marathons this year. But I’m willing to make that 61 and run Memphis on December 4 if Lance Haney hits his fundraising goal. We’re going to work it this summer and try to get that thermometer moving. 60? 61?

Where Should I Go?
Speaking of Lance, last week he told me that the Atlanta Marathon scheduled for Thanksgiving Day has been cancelled. So now, I have a hole in my schedule. I’m looking at three possible races: Seattle on Saturday the 27th or Waveland, Miss. or Cocoa, Fla. on Sunday the 28th.

I guess this is a cheesy fundraising attempt, but what the heck … raising money for Train 4 Autism is the name of my game this year. If anybody wants to pick my schedule, first person to make a $100 donation can tell me where to go. Or something like that.

Race Preview
The course actually looks fairly quick for the way I run. I usually get a lot out of the early miles without wrecking my heart rate. It starts with a big downhill and then a gradual uphill from 1 to 3. After that, it’s a gradual downhill net with some rollers and what looks to be a screaming-fast, yet manageable, downhill from 7.5 until about 8.8 or so. From there, a very, very slight gradual uphill in the middle third of the race and then a gradual as I kick to the finish.

On paper, the course looks fast. The temps could be warm, but they might not be too bad. I’d call this a quick course for the way I run. If I was betting, I’d peg myself at 3:10 for this one, but it wouldn’t surprise me to be several minutes quicker. If I’m feeling good, I like my chances for a quick run in this one.

That’s All For Today
Please, please, please enter the contest! And leave me a comment to let me know you were here! I’ll get a race report up at some point on Sunday. Have a great Memorial Day Weekend, everybody!

Ten Random Things For Tuesday

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It’s Tuesday, which means it’s time for my weekly 10 random things blog. I wrote the blog and then I wrote this first paragraph. And in looking at what I have in here, I realized … I sure do like to talk about food. Oh well — I’m not going to change who I am.

Just a quick intro in case this is your first time here, I’m a father of three and marathon runner. My middle child, 6 1/2-year-old Jack, is severely autistic and to try to make a difference in his honor, I’m attempting to run 60 marathons this year to raise money and awareness for a charity called Train 4 Autism. So far, so good. I’m through 26 marathons and I’ve raised quite a bit of awareness. So who wants to help with that money part?

Anyways, I’m doing the best I can and this blog is where I ramble frequently so y’all can go on this journey with me. And with that, I’ll get on to my randomness.

1. OK, so I’ve talked about how I was unathletic when I was a kid, and I had a flashback to something that happened at summer camp one year. It was a sports camp on the beach and we had teams based on the hall we were staying in. There was a relay race at the end of the camp session. Everybody had different roles in the relay based on their strengths. One person would have to swim several laps in the pool, another would have to shoot a certain amount of free throws in the gym and some and somebody else would have to surf a wave in at the beach.

My role? I had to eat two peanut butter sandwiches, drink a glass of milk and whistle. They made those things thick with that peanut butter. It was tough. And I’m not kidding at all. That was my role in the relay.

2. Here’s my secret recipe of the day. Make pizza with ranch dressing instead of marinara. It has to be good ranch dressing, though, like Hidden Valley. Not the gross Kraft stuff in the plastic bottle.

3. I snapped this picture at 8 p.m. on Friday night. It didn’t get dark until about 9:30 p.m. or so!


This might not be extremely unusual brightness for 8 p.m. depending on where you live. If this is typical, you clearly don’t live anywhere near me.

4. When I hit mile 5.2 in the Med City Marathon in Rochester, Minn., this Sunday, I’ll be through 26.2 marathons this year. I’m a numbers junkie and I get excited about stuff like that.

5. For my contest this week, it’s not going to be a “guess Sam’s time” deal. I’m going to have a post-race pancake eating contest with a man named Lonnie Butler, who’s running his first-ever marathon in that race. I can eat, but Lonnie is also a one-time big boy. He’s at about 210 pounds, down from more than 300 at one point.

6. I accidentally walked into the girls locker room on my first day of high school. Somebody gave me directions from the gym to the office and I apparently walked into the wrong door. I scooted out of there before anybody noticed.

7. I’m weird about spending pennies. Weird as in, I don’t spend them. I have a big five-gallon water bottle full of them in the garage, and there are pennies all over the place in my house.

8. My great invention is three-legged pantyhose. That way, if you get a run in one leg, you just go switch to the spare leg. But apparently, it’s not as easy as wrapping the spare leg around your waist. I think it’s a brilliant idea, but I’ve never met a woman who agrees with me.

9. Tiffany loves this song. So when I hear it, I smile. I’m putting it in here today and I think I’ll keep this page open at work today and play it over and over.

10. If you’ve never had frozen peanut M&Ms, do yourself a favor and buy yourself a yellow bag. Leave them in the freezer for a couple of hours and then after you eat them, don’t forget to thank me.

That’s all for today. I’ll see you back here tomorrow!