After a lengthy hiatus... a DVD is born

It's hard for me to believe that I've let 2 months go by without posting, but it has been a very busy summer since my daughter's graduation and my son's end to his freshman year. Both kids have been on a week long mission trip with our church where they helped to repair homes and build wheelchair ramps for people in need, and as soon as they returned from that, they both left with 30 other high school youth and adult leaders for an 11 day trip up to Wyoming and back. Normally, my wife and/or I would have gone on these trips, but being self-employed entrepreneurs with some large contracts coming in for one of our businesses has kept us tied down at that. My daughter has gotten a job as a Day Camp Counselor at the local YMCA for young children, which is a perfect position for her since her goal is to get her teaching degree. My son has started swimming regularly with me and wants to attempt a short distance triathlon some time in the fall. I am very blessed to have such great kids!

As for Faithful Soles, I have been hard at work on the production of a DVD entitled "From Start to Finish and Then Some", which has a release date of September 4, 2007, and is now available to pre-order on the main Faithful Soles web site. I have been giving motivational speeches to running clubs for many years now, as well as various speeches on training and racing tips, have written and been interviewed for articles in newspapers and magazines, and have made television appearances on running topics. After constantly being told, "You should have this information available for people to watch... I would love to be able to hear you tell that story again... I have a relative or friend who just started running or is training for a particular race and wish they could have heard that topic...", and so forth, I finally decided to do something about it. It took quite a while to decide the outline (major topics, sub-topics, etc.), format and storyboard. Once the outline was finished, I interviewed walkers and runners (male, female, all different age groups) at a beginner and intermediate level to ask them what they were most interested in knowing about, and found out that my outline had literally touched on every single topic they came up with. I also interviewed a number of advanced and elite runners who told me that although they knew the information in the DVD from experience, they still found it to contain great refresher topics and even some things they had not thought of before. I also asked various people who had heard me speak over the years if they had a favorite inspirational or humorous story that I told, and I got an overwhelming response to at least a half-dozen of them, which are all going to be on the DVD. Finally, once the DVD is released, I am planning to begin a speaking tour in major cities to running clubs and race events. My life-long dream has always been to do this as my full-time work because I am so passionate about it, and I am excited that I have the opportunity to go for it.

As for my training, I have been running about 30-40 miles a week, and swimming about 5-8 miles a week. I finally broke 30:00 for a mile in the swim (29:34 to be exact), and am comfortably swimming 2 miles without stopping at least once a week in about 1:03:00 - 1:05:00. Due to a big project that has come in for one of my businesses that will last several months, I made the decision to postpone an Ironman attempt until late 2008 or early 2009 simply because I know that I will not have the time it takes to devote to the training. I still plan to do at least 2-3 marathons and some shorter distance triathlons in the next year just to keep myself focused and maintain a solid base once I am ready to go full throttle on the Ironman training.

Thanks to all of you who continue to visit the main Faithful Soles web site. I hope that I can continue to inspire you as much as you do me.

Congratulations to my daughter, the graduating senior!

(left to right) My son, me, my daughter and my wife after graduation

Friday night, May 25, 2007 marked the end of a long and amazing journey for my daughter as she graduated from high school. The road for her was not as easy at is for many. You see, she was born with learning disabilities associated with auditory processing and speech / language issues. If you had a regular conversation with her, you might not ever pick up on it, but if you got into deeper or more abstract subject matter, it would become increasingly apparent. Imagine going to school amongst a peer group every day where your communication skills were about 70% of age level, and that's what she faced every day. When she was 4, many of the so-called "experts" to told us she would never make it in a regular school, much less graduate on time (if ever). We refused to believe that. Through years of prayer and hard work, and meeting after meeting with her teachers and counselors to make sure she was on task, she not only ended up graduating in regular mainstream classes with her senior class (even making the honor roll with all A's and B's one semester), but she lettered for 3 years on her high school drill team, a difficult task to even make the team. I tell people all the time my daughter is a hero to me. No words will ever be able to adequately express how proud we are of her.

Getting accustomed to the tri routine (well, at least 2 out of 3)

Last week I managed to swim 10,400m (6.4 miles) and run 5 times for a total of about 30 miles (about 6 miles per run, shortest run was 3.0 miles, a couple of 7.5 milers, with an average pace per mile for the whole 30 miles of about 7:40). More importantly, on Saturday I swam 3200 (2 miles) in 1:09:40 (a 2 mile swim PR) and then ran 7.5 miles in 57:30 (7:40 pace), and felt great. Prior to this last week, I was still trying to get into the swing of running again after my layoff, and I think I'm now over that hurdle.

I have not done any cycling at all now in about 4 weeks, again just due to family and business commitments. When my daughter graduates from high school this Friday much of the family stuff will be behind me and I can move forward with the cycling. It's still at least a year until my first Ironman (probably Coure d'Alene in June of 2008), so I feel very confident that I have enough time to get the 3 disciplines in working order.

Note to Beginners: Follow-Up to Yesterday's Post

I ran my 7.5 mile route this morning in 57:12 (about a 7:38 overall pace per mile, last mile in 7:35) and felt fantastic from start to finish. Had I forced the issue on my run yesterday, I guarantee you the run this morning would not have been a good one. Learn to take your lumps (and here's the hard part) and be happy about it.

Whenever you feel alone and frustrated in your training, take heart, ALL of us feel that way at one time or another. You simply have to improvise, adapt and overcome. I will never forget when I ran my first Boston Marathon in 2000 and walked into the Niketown store in downtown Boston. In a glass case was a running journal and some of the hand-written entries in it read something like, "Today my legs felt like lead weights were in them", or "Today I went out to do a fast run and just had a miserable experience", or "Today was really a great day and makes all the training worth it.", etc. I'm sure these sound similar to days you have had along your journey. By the way, this was Joan Benoit Samuelson's journal prior to winning the gold medal at the 1984 Olympics. See, you're not alone.

Note to Beginners: Learn to recognize when less is more

At 47 years old, I've been running off and on for more than 35 years, and been what I would consider a serious marathoner for the last 10 years. Last month, I resumed running after a 2 month self-imposed layoff from an injury, and since starting back running, it has been sporadic at best these last 30 days mainly due to family and business commitments. Yesterday I finally got a break and went out and ran a fairly solid 5+ mile run. This morning, I got up and swam 1600m around 6:30, came home, and since we are having nice weather in Houston today, decided to run a 7.5 mile route I have at lunch. I was really looking forward to it because our low humidity days are few and far between (65% right now, and yes for those of you in dry areas, that is LOW for us). As excited as I was to get out, I could tell in the first 100 yards or so that my body just didn't have it today. As I approached my first half-mile point, it wasn't getting any better. That is when I came to a literal and figurative cross-roads. There is an intersection where if I go right, I do my 7.5 mile route. If I go left, I do 3.0 miles. 10-20 years ago, I would have been stupid and stubborn and done the 7.5 miles, no matter what. Today, I turned left and did the 3.0 mile run and that was pretty much all I had in me. One of my personal sayings is "Train to run another day." People get so caught up with "well, I had planned to run x number of miles today, and if I don't, it will throw my schedule off." I have learned it is important to be consistent, and at the same time, flexible. Therefore, learn to be consistently flexible. I may very well head out the door tomorrow to do 7.5 miles again and feel incredible, but I also might have a repeat performance of today. If you are a beginner, accept that there will be great, good, fair and poor days, and you'll do fine.

Glad to have the "weak" behind me

We are a very healthy family, and rarely ever get sick. The last time I had a fever that I can recall was about 6 years ago. Friday before last, my son calls from school shortly after arriving saying he was not feeling well, so I went and picked him up. He had a sore throat and fever (he had not missed a single day of school in more than 2 years). Over the next 7 days, in order, my wife caught it, then I caught it, then my daughter caught it (she has not missed a day of school in more than 3 years and ended up missing only 2 classes one morning last week).

I had it Wednesday and Thursday of last week, right after having had great swims on Monday and Tuesday and a couple of good runs to boot. Friday I felt 100% again and had a great swim, and Saturday swam my second ever 3200m in about 1:10. Both Friday and Saturday's swims concluded with decent runs of about 5 miles each.

Saturday night my wife and I went to a dear friend's wedding, Debbie Goldberg, who is the Head Coordinator for Houston Fit, the largest USAFit group in the United States (Houston Fit had about 1,500 people enroll last year for the half-marathon and marathon training programs). My guess is there were close to 500 people in attendance at the wedding, and looking around at the runners whom I personally knew in the crowd, I would estimate they have run collectively over 1,000 marathons. Debbie has probably been directly or indirectly responsible for over 10,000 people completing a half-marathon or marathon in her lifetime, and it was truly an honor to be there at such an important moment in her life. I pray that her and her husband Bruce will live a long and happy life together.

Life, Work and Training

With my daughter graduating from high school in less than 3 weeks and all that goes along with that, I have been very busy with things for her at school over the last few months. Since the Spring Show for the drill team, there was her Senior Prom 2 weeks ago (an entire weekend event basically), an end-of-year banquet last Thursday for the drill team that my wife and I also attended (I was in charge of the slide show), then last Friday I got a team of Dad's to take down the catwalk from the stage after Spring Show to put it into storage, and this past weekend on Saturday my wife coordinated band escorts and I acted as a security Dad at the high school's 3rd annual Battle of the Bands. Thankfully my son is a good sport about all of this and had his running, swimming and video games to keep him occupied. We have promised him a family outing to see Spider-Man 3 this next weekend, which is a very cool thing for him.

As for work, I do web design for all sorts of businesses, everything from basic one page informational type sites to full blown database integration and forms for users where the client can capture information they need, send invoices, receive payments, etc. I can always use more customers, so please contact me if you need any web design done.

Oh yeah, and training... Because of the hectic schedule I've mostly been swimming early in the morning (swam 10,800m last week), running very sporadically (maybe 5 runs in the last 2 weeks of about 5 miles each), lifting weights 3-4 times a week, and have not had time to cycle at all. Once my daughter graduates on May 26, I'll have more time for all of this, and the sacrifices I have had to make on my training for her sake are well worth it to see her be happy and proud of her accomplishments.