Weekend Recap: Mother's Day Weekend!

Normally, I try to write something catchy at the top of my blog to lure you in to the rest of it. But sometimes, like today, I look and notice I didn’t do that the night before and I figured I’d take care of that later. Well, later is now, and I have about five minutes to post this and send it out, take out the trash and put my shoes on. Jack has to get to school So nothing catchy today. But if you want to read my blog, you can read out my luxurious hotel in Colorado, catch my review of a new Taco Bell product, view three new media clips and … I think there’s some more stuff in there. Oh, I ran a race, too.

I guess since it’s Monday morning, I’ll give a quick introduction in case you’ve never been here. Actually, I do that every morning, but if you’ve never been here, you wouldn’t know that!

I’m a father of three and a marathon runner. My middle child, 6 1/2-year-old Jack, is severely autistic. To try to make a difference in his honor, I’m attempting to run 60 marathons this year to help raise money and awareness for a charity called Train 4 Autism. So far, so good. 24 down, 36 to go. Actually, I might be running 61. I’ll probably talk more about that on Wednesday.

Speaking of 24 down, that 24th race was Saturday in Palisade, Colorado. I ran the Grand Valley Marathon on Saturday. It was a tough race with altitude, a monster of a hill and some pretty rough wind. I went 3:19, which is a slow time for me, but it wasn’t a PR course or a PR day. Well, unless it was your first race. Somehow, that was good enough for second place overall. Yeah, small field of about 100 in the marathon. If you want, you can read my race recap.

Media Coverage
I’ve had a few things done lately and I’ve been slow posting links. I’ll get caught up, but for now, here are three recent things that were kind of fun.

First, here’s a piece the local ABC station did on me on Saturday. On the left, right above that ugly side profile of me, there’s a link to the video they did. Actually, I just noticed that this will take you to the video.

A few weeks ago, a Charlottesville, Va. station included me in their coverage of their marathon there. I’m on about a minute into this one.

If you want to hear me ramble on and on, I was the subject of a podcast called RunRunLive for about a 30-minute interview. I come on at about 8:45 into it and it goes on for a little while. Tiff liked it. I kind of did too — it almost made me sound like I know what I’m talking about!

I’m going to be interviewed this morning for a sports radio station in Colorado. I’ll post a link to that tomorrow.

This Is How The Other Half Lives
I’ve been sleeping in fleabag motels. Dirty, gross stuff. Places that I refuse to walk around barefoot in, places that didn’t have hot water in the shower, places with old hardware on top of the shelves in the closet. But then again, I’m doing this as low budget as possible, so when you get a rental car and a motel room for less than $70, including taxes, what can you really expect?

Well, I stayed in Grand Junction, Colorado on Friday night, and Travelocity gave me a great combo deal to stay in a Courtyard By Marriott. It’s not like I’ve never stayed in a decent place, but staying in the places I’ve been staying in made this place seem like a Ritz Carlton. I was on cloud nine when I walked in. There was an actual lobby, the check-in folks were dressed nicely and helpful, I was able to get a 2 p.m. checkout, everything inside the room was nice and plush. And this room was the cheapest deal in town since I bought a package on Travelocity!

So, I guess for once, I operated on my tiny budget but got to enjoy what now seems like luxury. I even got to take an ice bath and there was hot water. It was awesome!

Fast Food Critique Of The Week
Normally I’m into burgers, but the only places in Grand Junction I saw where I was at were Wendy’s and Burger King, and I wasn’t in the mood for either of those after the race on Saturday. There was no Cracker Barrel within 50 miles, either, so I just hit up Taco Bell. Normally, I mix it up with bean burritos and chicken burritos. I still maintain that there’s nothing better that 99 cents can buy than one of those chicken burritos.

Anyways, they have something new they call a 7-layer Big Beefy Burrito or something like that. It was only 89 cents, but what a waste. It was something like two tortillas, nacho cheese, sour cream, ground beef and maybe some cheese. Not only is that terrible for you — it didn’t make a dent in filling me up. Bean burritos and chicken burritos aren’t incredibly healthy, but they’re way better and worth the extra dime.

Now you know.

Ice Cream Update
If I had a bottle of beer on the wall for every consecutive day now that I’ve had ice cream or frozen yogurt, I’d have 99 bottles of beer on the wall. 99 bottles of beer!

Saving The Best For Last
My race was on Saturday and I got home before Ben and Ava were even asleep. I planned it that way to make sure I could be home and dedicate the entire day to my family for Mother’s Day yesterday. Tiff deserves nothing less. So, that’s exactly what I did. One Facebook status update to say that I was dedicating my day to my family, and one tweet doing the same thing.

We had a great day. Me and my kids are pretty lucky.

That’s All For Today
Have a great Monday, everybody! I’ll see you back here tomorrow!