A Little Background

I started running track when I was 11. I stuck with the sprints and jumps in 6th and 7th grade and never knew that cross country existed until 8th grade when they announced tryouts during the morning announcements. "Tryouts" was a bit of a misnomer because if you showed up you were on the team. I went to the first practice with one of my buddies and we ran 2 miles the first practice, which was probably 1.75 miles further than I had ever run before. We only had 5 meets and I can't really recall any of my times. Our first meet was a small duel with a school the next town over and we ran a co-ed race. My friend and a guy from the other school shot to the front and I settled into third and watched my pal duel it out with the other guy. Much to my dismay a girl from the other school parked herself right off my shoulder and ran with me the whole race. I finished the race with a hard sprint, my lungs burning and my quads screaming and ended up beating her by about 3 seconds. My friend would have never let me live it down if she beat me. Little did he and I know that 16 years later I would be constantly trying to run down, or keep ahead of, Katie McAfee.

We ended having a co-op with the other school and competed together the rest of the season. My two teammates and I ended up being the 1st, 2nd and 3rd guys to not make it to the IESA State Cross Country meet that year. Unfortunately, that would end up being a constant thing with us throughout high school.

I grew up in Brimfield, IL which is a little town about 20 miles west of Peoria. The "Welcome to Brimfield" sign said the population was 910 people but the sign was lying. I attended Brimfield H.S. through my freshman year and moved to Farmington H.S. the first semester of my soph year and then to Elmwood, the school Brimfield co-oped with, the second semester.

My high school cross country career was not very impressive. I had season bests of 17:53 as a frosh, 18:20 as a soph (My training over the summer was deficient), 16:32 as a junior and 16:26 as a senior. I had trouble staying healthy during cross season and I wasn't good about taking it easy on my easy days. I liked to go hard all the time and I've learned the hard way that you can't do that all the time.

I was fairly decent in track and finished high school with personal bests of 56.5 for the 400, 2:06 in the 800, 4:40 in the 1600 and 10:34 in the 3200. I was all conference a few times and ran the 1600 at state as a junior(where I finished last in my heat but beat two other guys in the other heats) and a senior (where I ran my 4:40 and got 17th in the prelims). I also ran in the 4x800 relay with my teammates my senior year, which was the only time we all made it to state in anything together.

After high school I joined the Air National Guard instead of accepting offers to run for Greenville, Eureka and Western because none of those schools had a Radiography program and I wasn't sure I wanted to be a student athlete. I still ran and raced pretty steadily and was still running mid to low 17:00's for 5k and sub-40:00 for 10k.

Going into my second year of x-ray school I turned 21 but was still capable of running 18:30 for 5k and 1:03:16 in the Steamboat 15k. Looking back I am appalled at these times because I was running about 15 miles a week and my carbo-loading and hydration habits consisted of drinking mass amounts of Miller Lite.

I quit running in 2001 after proposing to my wife because I had been having some chronic knee pain that wouldn't go away and the trainer I went to at SIUC told me to quit and take up other activities. My "other activities" consisted of studying and not working out. I ended up expanding to about 198 lbs 6 months before my wedding, which was about 28 pounds heavier than I was when I met my wife a year and a half earlier. I took up boxing and dropped to 180 in time for the big day. Unfortunately I wasn't very good at boxing, as evidenced by the broken nose and two black eyes I had when I interviewed for a job up here in September of 2003. I got the job and my wife and I moved up here from St. Louis and bought a house in Chatham.

After moving away from my boxing group and buying a house I went back up to 190 because I hadn't been working out like I had been in St. Louis. I signed up for tae kwon do and was able to drop 5 of those pounds but just couldn't seem to drop the rest. I decided to run the two miles to TKD one day and when I didn't die I decided to run the 4th of July 5k in Jacksonville. I ran faster than I thought I was going to and won my age group. I then decided to run the Race for Brazil and after that the Lincoln Memorial Half Marathon. I signed on with the Half Wits and after completing the half set my sites on the Quad Cities Marathon.

I ran the QC Marathon in September of 2005 and haven't convinced myself that I am deranged enough to try another one quite yet. I went out too fast and hit the wall at mile 16. I ended up walking most of the way from their to the 20 mile mark and then walked/jogged the last 10k. I finished in 4:00:08, the first person to not break the 4-hour mark.

I used to think that there was no way that I would ever run my first marathon in a pedestrian 9:10 per mile pace and I used to sneer at people who did run that slow. After having done it and suffering through it I am in no way an elitist. Getting out there and finishing any distance in any amount of time is an accomlishment that no one should denigrate or sneer at. Breaking 4:40 in the mile was my Holy Grail as a senior in high school. Breaking 5:30 is my Grail now. Three years ago it was breaking 8:00 and then 7:00 and then 6:00.

I've lost my train of thought now and I can't remember exactly what I was going to say anymore. If anyone from Katie's blog or the HalfWits' blog reads this I hope you leave some comments.

Keep running and have fun. I'm going to go kiss my son goodnight.