It's been a while since I have written and updated my happenings. I know that my purpose for starting this blog was to chronicle my quest to never stop being an athlete and to write about my new activities I have taken up in order to prevent that crappy thought of old age set in. Unfortunately I really haven't had a lot of events going on lately. I did complete my first trail race and have finished up this season's Guerrilla Bootcamp. I am also set up for shoulder surgery (again) this coming Friday so that will put a few things on the back burner. Booooooo. Oh well, I guess that'll allow me to rest up and get ready for some new trail runs for next year. That's right, I plan on doing quite a few more.
My Trail Race -- At the end of September I ran in a 5 mile trail race here in Louisville. I say I have never run an official trail race before but I have done several mud runs. While not exactly the same because the terrain is a bit different, I figured since I did the mud runs with varying distances of 5k to 5 miles, I figured mentally I'd be up for the challange and physically I'd just have to build a bit of stamina and hope my shoes wouldn't fall apart. This particular race is part of the Trail Race Series in Louisville sponsored by The Trail Store. They capped the number of entrants at ~100 so I knew that this would be something quite different than what I'm used to because most of my other races have any where from 500 (per wave with a mud run) and 19,000 (Bix 7). For this race only 30 people registered. While running the race I quickly discovered there were 3 groups of runners: those that run trails like I drink water (fast), those that were there simply to have fun and not really worry about how they finished (slow) and then myself. I had to have been the only person within 100 meters in front or behind me. That doesn't happen in other races. But it was great though because the scenery of the trail and the terrain are very mind engaging and you don't need a whole lot of people around to provide encouragement. About half way through the race the weather began to turn and it started to rain. Not expecting this. Slick terrain with old crappy shoes does not provide good traction. But I made the full 5 miles in just under 48 minutes. I learned 2 lessons on this day. 1: Trail shoes are very important. 2: Trails have big hills with slippery terrain that is very hard to prepare for. All in all it was a lot of fun and I plan on participating in a lot more trail runs next year. I even went out and bought a new pair of Brooks Cascadia 6 trail shoes. Love 'em!
Guerrilla Bootcamp -- I absolutely loved providing an outlet to teach some bootcamp over the summer. This was technically my first foray into the land of bootcamps and while I didn't grow a huge audience, I have a few loyal followers that came every week that allowed me to teach, train, and torture. We went to Cherokee and Seneca parks, Shelbyville Community Park, Yum! Center, The Great Lawn, Waggener High School, and Fern Creek High School. I loved it and will probably do it again. This experience has inspired me to start a training group for the Louisville Triple Crown. This consists of a 5k, 10k, and 10 miler. There is an unofficial fourth race to the Triple Crown that includes the Louisville Mini Marathon, or full if you choose to go that route. I'm thinking I might start a group for this in January. This will get me ready to run the Oz Marathon in Kansas with my wife and my niece, Dani, who lives in Wichita. So be on the lookout for updates on that running club. I hope to see you there.
Finally, I am having another shoulder surgery this week and I will be out of commission for a while. That should give me plenty of time to blog and brainstorm how I want to attack new events for the upcoming year. The surgery is nothing too major, just a little rotator cuff cleaning on my supraspinatus and possibly biceps. After its done I will be officially the bionic man with 3 shoulder surgeries. I was scheduled to do the Tap N Run 4k the day after my surgery but my wife won't let me (boooooooo). This is a "race" in which there are 4 beer stops throughout the way and you have to chug some beer and move on with the race. Oh well, that would've been a great experience and I really wanted to do it but my boss says no. She knows best. I tried to convince her to let me walk the race. Heck I paid for the beer already I might as well drink it! I guess when you couple that with the incredible pain meds I'll be on that is probably a recipe for danger.
Thanks for reading with me today and I will get to updating this more often in the future.
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