Weekend Preview: Kansas City and Denver

I feel like I just got back from Chicago. And I did. But it’s time for another weekend on the road for Operation Jack. This weekend is going to be my best weekend of the year. It was almost going to be my worst weekend of the year, though.

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 try to do something to take advantage of my ability to recover from marathons and make the world a better place for people like my son. So, I’m attempting to run 61 full marathons this year to raise money and awareness for a charity called Train 4 Autism.

So far, I’m through 48 of the 61 marathons, plus I’ve run a couple of ultramarathons. This weekend, I’m heading to Kansas City and Denver for marathons 49 and 50 of 2010.

Why This Is Going To Be The Best Weekend Of The Year
My wife Tiffany and my oldest son Benjamin are coming along with me! I am SO excited about this! Ever since I created the schedule back in May of 2009, I had been looking at this weekend as one that Benjamin would come along for. As you know if you’ve been here before, I went to school at Kansas State University and lived in the Kansas City area after I graduated. My home and family are in California, but my heart is in Kansas.

Benjamin has never been outside of California, Arizona and Nevada. One time, he thought he was somewhere else, but he wasn’t. When he was 5, we took a family trip to visit friends in Tucson. Once we crossed out of California, we stopped and ate at an IHOP, and he asked me, “Daddy, are we still on Earth or are we in Arizona?” Sure enough, we were in Arizona.

This weekend though, he gets to go to my favorite state in the Union, Kansas! Since we’re flying Delta through Minneapolis to Kansas City, Mo., before driving 20 minutes to the Sunflower State, I’ve prepped him that he’s going to be in four states in one day! California, Minnesota, Missouri and Kansas! Talk about a super-sized serving of awesome!

He’s excited about getting on a plane, we’re going to the Kansas State-Kansas football game Thursday night, visiting Kansas State University on Friday, heading back to the Kansas City area later in the day, then I have the marathon on Saturday, we fly to Denver a little later in the day and I have another marathon on Sunday.

Along the way, we’ll be seeing quite a few friends and having a lot of fun. It’s the first and only time Benjamin and Tiffany will be joining me on an Operation Jack weekend this year, and it’s going to be a fun one. Plus, I’m excited for them to see what I’ve been doing all year. I’m like a kid at open house in grade school where the parents come in and you get to show off your desk. This is what my year has been, and I’m so proud to show them. I have to think it’s going to be a weekend we’re all going to remember 40 years from now and it’s going to be awesome.

But, …

Why This Was Almost The Worst Weekend Of The Year
Jack is on a very complex routine from his DAN doctor. He has 27 different supplements he’s on and Tiff has been doing an amazing job keeping him on his schedule. It’s a lot of work but we’ve seen a lot of progress, so it’s a critical element of what we do with him daily. When I say “we” I mean “Tiff,” because she’s the one who does this. I do small things to help here and there, but since she’s with him so much, she leads the charge. This created a problem on Tuesday and Wednesday. In going through this new effort over the past few months, she has formed an incredibly tight bond with Jack. Don’t be mistaken — she was extremely close with him before, as any mother with a special-needs child would be. But this has taken it to a whole new level.

So, she’s extremely nervous about anybody taking responsibility for the routine. It’s going to be her mom, whom she probably trusts with this even more than me. But it’s not easy. And I’m sure her mom is on edge about this a little bit. It’s a huge undertaking. Plus, with that super-tight bond, she’s going to miss him like she’d miss oxygen.

On Tuesday night, she decided she just couldn’t bring herself to go on the trip. I was pretty upset about that with how it impacted me. I was so excited about her and Benjamin coming along, and if she didn’t go, Ben wouldn’t go. I normally get homesick when I’m gone. It’s worse on longer trips. And it would have been absolutely miserable going four days knowing that every step of the way, they should have been there with me. I love going to Kansas, but it would have been a terribly depressing weekend for me.

I didn’t tell her any of that, though. I didn’t give her an opinion. I didn’t want to try to sway her one way or the other. I wanted her to make the decision she felt most comfortable with. If she didn’t want to go, that was her decision and I’d live with that. I would never pressure her into leaving Jack for four days if she couldn’t handle it.

I told her that I supported whatever choice she made, and she got a little mad at me when I didn’t have an opinion, because she had to try to guess what I was thinking. I had no gut feeling as to which way she’d decide, so I let it go.

I texted her Wednesday morning at 9:34 with the following message:
Let me know a) if you want to go to Chipotle and b) if you make a final decision on KS.

Chipotle was obviously the most important issue on my mind, because who doesn’t want to have a pretty girl as a lunch date? But I also needed to know if I needed to make some alternate arrangements. She’s normally pretty good at getting back to my texts, but I didn’t hear from her for an hour. At 10:45, I bugged her again.

Hellloooooooooo?

I think I might have had a key on my phone stuck or something. 45 seconds later, I got a response.

Oops! No lunch too busy getting ready for trip. 🙂

And so, as I write this on the plane from seat 15A, she’s in 16E, next to Benjamin in 16F. Yeah, this is gonna be the best weekend ever!

Still Have To Take Care Of Business, Though
I do have a couple of marathons to run this weekend. Operation Jack is the purpose of the trip. I have Kansas City on Saturday and Denver on Sunday. I always take things one race at a time, and in this case, I’m really focusing on Kansas City.

I ran this course in 2008 and turned in a 3:04:59, my fifth-fastest of 76 lifetime marathons, and one of the better efforts I’ve ever turned in. Six days earlier, I ran a 3:06 in Long Beach and struggled with a tight hamstring. My hamstring wasn’t any better for Kansas City, which is a tougher course with a few good hills. I was short on sleep because my airline lost my luggage and I had to wait for my bag, so I only had about four hours.

I was running Wichita the next day, and while I’ve gotten pretty good at running doubles, that was only the second time I had done that. Mentally, it takes a lot to really wreck yourself when you know you’re facing a 200-mile drive and a marathon the next day. But I gave it all I had and kicked hard at the end to come in sub-3:05, getting there by one second. I was pretty happy with that one, although pretty spent. Somehow, I was able to turn in a 3:09 the next day.

Well, I have incentive to run pretty hard on Saturday. Like, money! A friend of mine from college, Dan Merker, is running his first full marathon in that race. He’s expecting to run somewhere around 3:55 – 4:00 and he’s donating 10 cents for every second I beat him by. The difference between a 3:09 and a 3:29 is going to be $120. I have another Operation Jack supporter named Jeff Goodman who is running Long Beach on Sunday and pledging $2 for every minute I beat him by.

So, I don’t know what I have in me right now, but I’m going to find out, because I’m going to empty the tank as well as I can. I always go all out, but I’m going to do everything I can to locate gears I haven’t found since the spring. I’m feeling good, although who knows how I’ll be at mile 16?

Oh, and of course, Sunday. 26.2 miles at elevation. I’ll look at the course profile on Saturday night. I’ve heard it’s fairly flat. Whatever it is, I’ll give it my best and post a report.

And That’s Pretty Much It
Have a great weekend, y’all! I’ll get a race report from Kansas City posted at some point on Saturday.