Running Aimlessly Around the Countryside

November 26 brought another Thanksgiving, when we pause from our daily lives, focus on all the things we are thankful for, over indulge at the dinner table, then spend the rest of the day napping, watching football and planning for potential shopping craziness the next day. Hopefully, if things work out, you were able to spend the day with those people closest to you. As a runner, there is one more thing that fights to be included in the schedule; a Thanksgiving day race. In Indianapolis the race is the Drumstick Dash. Proceeds from the race go to the Wheeler Mission, a local social services organization, which provides critically needed goods and services to the homeless, poor, and needy of central Indiana. In six years, the race has grown from a few hundred runners to around 9,000 this year! My family has included the race in our tradition for the past two years. We take the race as an opportunity to forget about results and run together. The race is an odd distance at 4.5 miles, bu...

So now that I completed the half at what was at the beginning of the year my goal race, I have started to have them. What are they?  They are the dreaded anti-motivations. All of a sudden the lunch routine has become dreary and I'm not motivated to run mid-day. I do have a race on my schedule on Thanksgiving, so that's not it. I've tentatively picked some spring races, so that's not it. And I have wanted to run after work. So that's what I have done a few times  recently. Running after work is okay, but it also presents some problems. I haven't been getting away from work as early recently and it's been getting darker much, much earlier. I hadn't realized how early it was getting dark until last week. I was really looking forward to doing a long trail run, but was trying to fit that in, plus run with the kids so they keep a few miles on their legs for the Drumstick Dash. It didn't take long for me to come up with a simple solution; run long on Frid...

I went to a road race on Saturday and a party broke out. At least that's what it felt like. How many November Indiana days can you enjoy clear, sunny, skies and temps starting around 50 and headed to the upper 60s? The race organizers for the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon and Half-Marathon were definitely blessed by the running gods. This had originally been my 'A' marathon for the year, but after nagging injuries over the summer that plan was scrapped, leaving to kids events, which got scrapped, which led to me saying, what the heck, I'll just run the half. Watching the forecast leading up to Saturday, I struggled  a little bit deciding just what to wear. Only running the half, I wouldn't be on the course that long, but still didn't want to spend a significant amount of time trying to warm-up. As it was I opted for my normal race kit with no extra cool-weather gear, which turned out to be just the right decision. Based on my estimated time, I was placed in...

I made my plans for the year, changed them after some nagging injuries, changed them again when I started building back up, changed them again when the kids said they wanted to run an event, then changed them again when the kids switched their focus to swimming. I think the spinning wheel of change has come to a stop. Yesterday I plopped down the money to run the Indianapolis Monumental Half-Marathon , so there is no turning back. Since the event is this coming Saturday, that shouldn't be an issue. I've gone through a number of other changes in my running lately, so I'm not sure what to expect from the race. For starters, while I was dealing with the injuries, the run-net community was full of discussion around Christopher McDougall's book "Born to Run" and barefoot running in general. With all of the excitement, and looking for anything that would get me back on the roads, I came very close to heading out the door sans shoes, but could never quite do it. I...