American Odyssey Relay

Ever ran from Gettysburg to Washington DC? No? Well, I'm about to.

...Let me clarify, I'm about to run on a relay team that will cover the entire distance, there's no way I could do that much mileage by myself! I got recruited by a friend to join a relay team that will run from Gettysburg all the way down to D.C. It's called the American Odyssey Relay and it's taking place from April 27th to the 28th. The race will span roughly 200 miles, and our team will be responsible for covering all of them. Fortunately, someone else is the team captain, so they'll be in charge of the logistics, of who will run when, how many legs someone will do, etc. The race in non-stop though, so we'll be running right through the night as well [you can see parts of that in the video below.]

I've never done anything like this before so I'm very excited to give it a whirl and see how things go. I'm also curious how many miles I'll end up doing total, even if they're only in 5-6 mile stints at a time. My guess is that I'll cover another marathon distance, if not more. Fortunately I'll have a couple hours of rest in between each run....at least I hope I will!

Anyways, I will be sure to take as many pictures as possible and report back in another month with how the race goes! In the meantime, check out this great video below from last year's event. Enjoy!

[American Odyssey Relay, 2011]

My First Marathon

Oh look, I have a blog....that I totally ignored for the last 2 months. My bad :) Actually quite a lot has happened since I last wrote, but there's really one one story that deservs an update. Back in October I wrote a blog post about signing up for my frist marathon. Well my friends, that marathon happened. and here's what I've got to say about it.....

Sometime when I was a kid, I decided to add completing a full iron-man race to my list of life goals. I think it was just watching the pure emotion pour out of people as they crossed the finish line that got me, and I just knew from that point on it was something I had to do before I die.

I’m a swimmer, I swam competitively my whole life, I bike a lot too, but running (distance running), well running is by far my weakest of the three sports. I’m not the kind of person to do something just to finish it either, I get competitive with myself and make goals to go after, it’s not enough for me just to finish, I have to race the clock. I knew that if I had any hopes of not only completing an iron man, but in a respectable time, I’d have to really focus on my running. So last fall I signed up for my first running race of any kind, a marathon.

For lack of any better option or knowledge at the time, I decided to follow one of Hal Higdon’s free online marathon training plans. It was 18 weeks long, and would take me farther that I’ve ever ran before. I was nervous about the weekend distance runs, but had no other option other than to tackle them head on and learn from my experience.

You’ll be amazed at how fast your mind switches on you as to what is considered a distance run vs. a short, easy one. When I first got going I remember thinking to myself “okay, 9 miles, you can do this, you can do this!” – then about a month later after I had gone into the 15-16 mile range, I thought to myself, “only 9 (or 11) miles today? That’s easy!”

I battled a couple injuries, did research on them, talked other runners with more experience than myself, and got myself through it. About 3.5 weeks ago, I peaked with a 20.6 mile run, which was tough as hell. The last 4 miles of that run were incredibly painful (though I had no idea at the time what pain would actually feel like on race day) and it made me a little nervous about not being able to even come close to my goal of a 3:45.xx marathon. I kept with the plan though, and eventually tapered down and rested my legs accordingly.

Race day came and I was surprisingly calm. I kept expecting butterflies to fill my stomach in the days leading up to the race but they never came, which I was really thankful for. Also, the weather ended up being perfect last week and on race day, which helped a lot. Before I knew it, I was in my corral and the gun went off. The first few miles were a little tricky to find my pace because of all the people around, but I just focused on controlling my excitement and trying not to go out too too fast. The one thing I didn’t really enjoy was running alongside ½ marathoners at the same time. They were speeding up, slowing down, speeding up, stopping, etc. and then a lot blew by me at mile 12 as they were heading to their finish. I never really got used to it, but after I made my turn to start my second half of the race, it was a totally different race. There was very little crowd support for the full marathoners, and it became totally mental. I’m glad I trained without any music because not having headphones in let me settle into a rhythm amidst the (mostly) empty course.

Once I hit mile 21, I was encouraged, because I ran 21 miles much faster than I had ran my 20 mile training run, and I was still feeling alright. Mile 23 was a different story. I really started to struggle to keep my pace at this point, and while I never hit or found “the wall” I did begin to feel the pain. Miles 24-26 were probably the most pain I can remember feeling in a long, long time. I would keep closing my eyes so I wouldn’t see the road stretching out in front of me, and I’m pretty sure I went to some pretty dark places in my mind. But I didn’t stop. I knew I had to keep moving forward if I had any hopes of nearing my goal.

I kept hoping there would be a mental burst of energy that would kick in towards the end, but unfortunately that never happened. The last .75 miles were tough, but I was able to pick my pace back up closer to my race average. Eventually I turned the last corner and could physically see the finish line about 100 yards straight in front of me, and dug as deep as I could to try and finish strong. I’m pretty sure my form was way off and I looked like a total goober, but I finished. I came in at 3:46.17…..18 seconds off my goal. But you know what? I’ll take it! I came far closer than I thought I would, and despite 2 slow miles towards the end, I ran a pretty good and consistent race that went almost 100% according to plan.

Of course now I have my sights set on higher goals (will be shooting for roughly 3:35.xx next time around), which I think is absolutely obtainable with my new knowledge and experience of what it will feel like in those closing miles. I also now know that I need to focus a little more on running hills during my training. All in all the entire process was a fantastic experience and one I can’t wait to repeat, over and over again.

Iron man, here I come.

(Official timing chip)

(Click 'view details' for the mile by mile stats)

Ironman, I'm Registered

Yep, you heard me! Today I registered and am officially signed up for my first ironman triathlon event. It's part of the Ironman race series and is being held at the National Harbor in nearby Maryland. This will be a half ironman race consisting of a 1.2 mile swim, a 56 mile bike ride, and a 13.1 mile run, totaling 70.3 miles. [If you ever see a 70.3 bumper sticker, that's what that means.] I'm very excited about this event since I'm already in very good shape for those distances, and will only get stronger as the spring and summer approach. 

I've only ever done one triathlon before, but that was a very short sprint tri, so this will be my first one of any significant distance. Additionally, I wasn't in any sort of biking or running shape when I did that sprint tri and still fared pretty well, so I expect to really be able to put down a very solid effort for this upcoming one. I say upcoming, but it's still almost 8 months away. Nevertheless, I'm very excited to get this under my belt and help me get one step closer to my end goal of finishing a full ironman one day.....which WILL happen! For more event details click THIS LINK. Here's some great pictures of people reaching the finish line at various triathlon's, you know, in case you need the motivation. Enjoy!

Full Marathon, It's A Go

A full marathon has been on my list of races to complete for quite some time now, and I've never gotten around to researching it some more until lately. I have 3 race goals for next year, 1) a full marathon, 2) complete a half iron-man, and 3) complete the Shenandoah Mountain 100 [100 mile mountain bike race], of course these are all stepping stones to my real race goal of completing a full iron-man the following summer. For those unaware, an Iron Man is a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride, and 26.2 mile run. Yea.

It's very true that it if you have you eye on an event or race, the best thing you can do is to just sign up for it, because otherwise you'll keep putting off the training and then flake out and never sign up. By signing up first you force yourself to develop some sort of training schedule or regimen, so that you can put it a solid effort on race day. Welp, I'm officially signed up for my first marathon. It's going to be on Saturday March 17th, 2012, here in DC, and it's called the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon USA. I've heard of the Rock 'n' Roll marathon series before, but this is the first time it's coming to DC. I'm very excited and curious at the same time. Excited because I know I'll have to keep my butt in excellent shape all throughout the winter and excited to cross this one off the list, but nervous because I still don't know how it's going to feel when you're searching for strength as you pass mile marker 20, and realize you still have 6 more to go. But there's only one way to find out!

I've found a decent training schedule that lasts 18 weeks leading up to race day. That means that my training schedule starts in just over 2 weeks from now. The details of the schedule can be found here, and there's a screenshot of the mileage and corresponding week pictured below. I'm not going to be starting my training from scratch though, since I've remained fairly active and in shape this whole summer and fall. In fact yesterday I strapped on my trail shoes and got in two nice laps around Burke Lake totaling 9 miles, and a pace much faster than I anticipated on being able to run, encouraging! One day and run at a time though, and hopefully come March 18th, I'll have some excellent news to report!

Rough outline of training schedule. [Click to enlarge]

Yesterday's 9 mile trail run.

Summit Point Go-Karting

On Saturday night, a bunch of my motorcycle buddies and I headed out to Summit Point Raceway in WV for a little 'racing under the lights' action at the go-kart track out there. I love karting so any time I get to race a new track, I really enjoy it. Most of my kart experience is on indoor slick tracks, so it was fun to get outside again onto an asphalt track, even it was almost semi-slick. Temperatures were probably in the low 50's that night as well, so the track itself was a little cool. Even so, I did very well and learned the racing line of the track pretty quickly. You'll see in the video below, it doesn't take me much time to dispose of the racers in front of me!

We ran three races that night, and on my last lap of the last race, I threw down my best lap of the night, a 48.344, dropping about 1.5 seconds from my previous best lap. The last full lap in the video below is my fastest one for the evening, and got me a top 5 time for the week, not too shabby for never racing there before! Anyway, enough chatter, on with the video!

[Summit Point Kart Racing]

P.S. - Sorry about the lack of posts lately! :)

General Lee vs. The Bandit

Two of the most iconic muscle cars [and arguably characaters] or all time square off in a little back roads racin' rally. If you don't know where these two cars come from, then I have to admit that I feel slightly sorry for you. There are really only two words that come to mind when watching this most awesome of videos: AMERICA, and YEEEEEHAWWWW! Watch it now, thank me later. Enjoy, and best of luck weathering out the tropical storm/hurricane this weekend!

[General Lee v. The Bandit]

Run For Your Lives!

First things first, watch this video. Now.

[Run For Your Lives]

Chilling huh? Who remembers this post from a year and a half back? Welp, move over Warrior Dash, I think I've found an even more awesome race! I'm already registered for this event being held up in Baltimore. It's called Run For Your Lives and it's on October 22nd. I believe I'm going to try and rig up a chest mount for my GoPro for this race too so everyone can experience what's it's like. Anyways, I'm really looking forward to it, and if you feel like signing up as well, let me know!!

Oh, and just for fun, here's an awesome article from the Art of Manliness about building a Zombie Apocalypse shotgun and survival kit. Enjoy!

Fitness Weekend

This weekend started out on Friday night with a 5k race held in Crystal City. It was the second of the 5 scheduled races that are part of the the Pacers 'Crystal Run 5k Fridays'. My friend Danielle works the races helping promote Muscle Milk, but decided to run this Friday as well. So myself and Danielle's roommate also signed up to run. It was pretty chilly Friday evening with temperatures only in the mid 40's and an on and off again rain. Fortunately after getting our bib numbers, we were able to wait inside the lobby of a business building until just before lining up for the race. Right after the gun went off, I immediately lost Danielle and Katy in the sea of black, white, and a red running attire, so I just ran the race by myself. All was good until about the 2.5 mile mark and the rain really started coming down again. By this time though, my body was well heated up from the running, so the rain actually felt pretty nice, at the finish we were all soaking wet from both sweat and the rain. It was quite the experience.


I finished in just under 25 minutes, not too shabby I guess considering I've never done anything like this before. Haven't decided yet either if I'll participate in any of the remaining 3 races. But here's a screen shot of my time, and a photo of me crossing the finish line....with a perplexed look on my face.

I had plans do get a mountain bike ride in at Fountainhead park on Saturday morning, but that was foiled by the rain that decided to fall on Friday night. I was still made it out to Fountainhead though to cheer on my friend Andy [whose blog is now linked over there on the right] who ran in the Bull Run 50 miler. It's a 50 mile trail running race, yea running! Andy ran 50 miles on some of our area's trails, almost a double marathon, insane. He finished in 8 hours and 49 minutes, and this was the longest he had ever ran in a race. A group of us gathered at Fountainhead to cheer him on at a checkpoint that was both at mile 28 and at 38, then his brother and I drove over to Hemlock park to see Andy cross the finish line. I have a hard time comprehending running a marathon, much less a double! Here's a picture of the group at Fountainhead, and some pictures I grabbed of Andy at the finish line.

Support Group

Pete, Greg, [a different] Andy, Kayla, myself, and [runner] Andy's kids, Luke, and Noah

Race director greeting Andy at the finish line

50 miles in 8 hours 49 minutes

Yesterday I was able to get in another long road bike ride in preparation for my 100 mile ride coming up in June. This week I rode 60 miles, up 10 from last week's 50 mile ride. At the end of last week's ride, I was really hurting, the last 5 miles were pretty hard. This week though, I felt great throughout the whole ride, and really started trucking it the last 5 miles and finished pretty strong, instead of limping it in dead tired. This was very encouraging for me, because it feels like my body in finally starting to get used to being in the saddle for extended amounts of time.

This week I rode from Vienna, along the W&OD and Curtis Trails into DC, then picked up the Mt Vernon trail, and rode all the way down to Mt Vernon, then turned around rode all the way back. On my return trip I stopped at Gravelly Point briefly and took the video below of a plane landing at Reagan National Airport. I had always heard of Gravelly Point but had never been there, so it was kinda cool to see it firsthand. Overall it was a pretty fun ride, with lots of change in scenery. Also, the route into DC is the same route that I'd take to ride into work, and now that I know how to do that, I'll probably start commuting to work via bike in another month or so once the weather is a tad more stable and the sunlight comes out a little earlier. Anyway, here's the workout summary from this week's ride, and a video from when I stopped at Gravelly Point. Enjoy!

Vienna - Mt. Vernon Ride

[click View Details to expand]

[Gravelly Point Plane Landing]

More Go-Karting!

I don't claim to be Ricky Bobby, or anything but, "I like racing and going fast." That's probably one of the most obvious statements I've ever made, but with good reason....cause I do. Yesterday afternoon I headed out to my local track for some more go karting action, because I simply cannot get enough. My buddy and I did 3 super kart races, and the video below is from race #3 [although you never see my buddy, he was behind me and having an even harder time with the sliding than I was.]

The track however was very odd yesterday. It was really hot outside and they had their big bay doors open at the track, which usually translates to a stickier track surface, but not yesterday. Yesterday it was the slickest I can remember in a long time, and we were even in the super karts, which supposedly have stickier tires. As you'll see in the video, when I slide there is very little squealing coming from the tires, just no grip and sliding sideways. Given that, I was extremely happy with my lap times. It wont be long before I need to start traveling and looking for other places to go race and test/further improve my driving skills. One thing I know for sure is that you can never stop learning, and someone else will always be faster. Boogity Boogity Boogity, let's go racin'!

Go Karting at VIR With Tony Stewart

There seems to be a perpetual sense of adventure following me and my life around, and for that I suppose I both lucky and thankful. It's also one of the reasons why I decided to start writing about all the fun stuff I'm fortunate enough to experience.

Take for instance this past weekend. On Saturday I headed down to VIR in Danville, VA [right on the NC/VA border] to participate in an endurance go kart race. Our race got delayed a little bit because of a private party going on just prior to our group. When we finally get called in and over to the team/drivers meeting, the track marshall informs us that we had 12 teams scheduled to compete in the event, but hoped we didn't mind that they were going to run a 13th team....and that team was going to be Tony Stewart and his NASCAR crew. In case you don't know who Tony Stewart is, click this link for more detailed info, but in short, he's a world class driver and current pilot of the #14 Office Depot car in the NASCAR Sprint Cup series. ......He's good.

Since no one on our team really knew how the event was gonna play out, I did the first driving stint for our team. Unfortunately Tony Stewart didn't hop into a kart and get onto the track until after I was done driving so we were never on the track at the same time, but I was able to get some good helmet camera footage with the GoPro and was able to take some pictures of the other folks on my team battling with Tony on the track.

It was a really cool event, and ended up making for an even better story. Below are some of the pictures from the day, and the video I put together of me driving. I feel the need, the need for speed! Enjoy.

My roommate Chris trying to hold off Tony on the straight

Ha, next time by [Tony's team did have the fastest kart though, not totally fair]
Tony passing my friend Mike
Paparazzi picture time at the end
And here's the video:

[Endurance Karting at VIR]

Muscle Cars Forever

Boy this winter is just dragging on isn't it?! How about something to warm your hearts.....and your tires! QUE THE FACE MELTING, RUBBER BURNING AWESOMENESS!!!

[muscle cars forever]

American Graffiti

Man sometimes I really feel like I grew up in the wrong era full of political correctness and EPA standards. Anyone else? No? Well enjoy anyway! Drive Ins, Hot Rods, and Rock 'n Roll? Sign me up.

[youtube]

Allsports GP Karting

I went out to Allsports GP last night for a little bit of karting action. My buddy and I are both qualified for the super karts, so we chose to do 3 of the super kart races. The track was cold, and it took a little while for our karts to warm up [I'm guessing we were the first people of the day to run any of the super karts] but once the tires and engines got up to temp, I was able to put down some pretty quick laps for the track surface being as cold as it was. I hit a best of 22.5, with my averages being in the 22.7 range I want to say. I'm confident enough in my abilities to say I'm pretty sure I can get into the 21's but I think it may require a slightly warmer track temperature. [For those that don't know, Allsports is a slick track, meaning you have to maintain mostly controlled slides throughout the turns. Warmer track will equal less sliding.] Anyway, we had a good time as always, and I came out on top.....almost as always. Here's a video of someone racing there, same track, but our karts would be going a little faster, that and it was just the two of us out there racing mano-a-mano. I need to get a better helmet cam so I can take better quality videos of this type of stuff too.

Snow-Cross Dual Slalom!

Take 4 mountain bikers, put them in start gates at the top of a mountain and send them off at the same time trying to get to the bottom first while flying over jumps, banking berms, and knocking each other over....oh yea, and it's on snow. Yep, this sounds like a good idea. Count me in!

The event is being held up at Blue Mountain in PA this Saturday, and I'm heading up to give this a whirl and hope I don't kill myself. The race entry is only $20, but that also includes an all day lift ticket to go snowboarding after your eliminated from the racing [I'll probably get eliminated early, so if nothing else I get a nicely discounted lift ticket for being a crazy person attempting to ride a bike down the snowy mountain] - Sounds like a pretty good deal to me! Here's a quick video of the past years events/preview of what this years should look like.

Blue Mountain 4X Biker Cross from Spinteck Limited on Vimeo.

Should be a fun time! I'll bring my camera along and hope to get some good pictures, and maybe find someone to take some shots of me crossing the finish line totally wiping out. Stay tuned!

Motorsport in Slo-Mo

I just found these videos of some amazing racing footage in slow motion. From grassroots and vintage racing, to the super high tech machines we know today, it's all motor-sport, and it's all beautiful.....just a little more so when it's in super slow motion. Enjoy.

American Swimming > European Swimming

Silly silly Europeans. You would have thought that after the Olympics last year when France's Alain Bernard stuck his foot in his mouth that that would've been a lesson to the rest of the world. Do not, under any circumstances trash talk before a race against Team USA.

The big story at this past weeks World Swimming Championships in Rome was the much awaited rematch in the 100m Butterfly between Michael Phelps and Milorad Cavic. For those that don't recall, Phelps beat Cavic last year in Beijing by the smallest possible margin of .01 seconds to take gold in the 100 fly. Cavic to this day still thinks he won, depsite the timing systems and high def photos saying otherwise. But enough about that, back to the story at hand.

Cavic was still so distraught about losing last year that he started trash talking about this years race a few days prior to the showdown. He taunted Phelps saying that Phelps could race in whichever swimsuit he wanted, but would be naive in sticking with his Speedo LZR. Cavic even offered to buy Phelps one of the new suits (which are still questionable about legality) to race in, to make it a fair race. Phelps wanted nothing to do with Cavic, and was wise in doing so. He lets his swimming do the talking, and I love it. So what happened this year?

Phelps in his 'slower' and 'inferior' swim suit beat Cavic again, for the second time, again, for the second year in a row.....again. Leading up to the race I was hoping Phelps was going to have an extra Speedo LZR suit in his gear bin, and would've handed it to Cavic after the race as if to say "its not about the suit, I'm just better", but he didn't.......although that would've been awesome. Instead he hopped up on Cavic's lane line after the race and proudly showed off his team USA Speedo. They briefly shook hands and Cavic tried to say something, but Phelps wanted nothing of it (as you can see in the video below) and enjoyed the moment of another world record broken, and another pesky euro squashed. HOW'S THAT SLICE OF HUMBLE PIE TASTE CAVIC?!?!? Check out the awesomeness below:

Vintage Motorcycle Racing

This is the first of the many, many video & music posts I know I'll be sharing with everyone. I listen to a lot of music and sometimes come across some great videos that simply need to be shared. This video was made by a member of DCSBN and it's one that I could watch over and over. Great footage, and the song chosen for the video couldn't be more perfect. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do!