Stuff to listen to

Just listened to this audiobook while pounding out the miles. Really explains a lot.

Psychopath Free

Sign UP's for June 4, 2016 7am Ran it with Janet Fatass 50k click below!

Ran it with Janet Fatass 50k Sign Up

Proceeds and donations to benefit local food banks and homeless shelters in Northern Virginia. We would appreciate donations to help alleviate the cost of running this fundraiser but mostly to assist local food banks and shelters.  Your miles and contributions are most welcome. Donations to be handled old fashioned way for now (bring a check to the event) until we get an online automated contributions set up for donor's convenience. We will also collect donations such as household goods, gift certificates and clothing at the time of the event.

Happy New Year!

Resolutions :

1. Run,  Lift. Lots.
2. Superhero Dancing. See below.
3. Remove from my life Shitty Shady (Sh²) Nebulous Narcissistic (N²) Lying Loser (L²) Sicko Sociopaths (S²) pretending to help you at races and daily life but they just want to get in your pants along with everyone else's and are hindering your progress to becoming a better runner and person in general even when you are trying to help them with their own jacked up life but they stab you in the back and lie to your face and ruin your health and keep you injured physically and mentally for the entire year because they lack conscience, remorse,  or any moral compass.  Try NOT to hate everybody just because the best running buddy ever turned out to be an unethical untrustworthy undependable lying sack of shit. Try to forget that all that bonding on long runs where we talked about philosophy, music, politics, books, training, love, art, war was not actually a mind meld accelerated by endorphins but was a bunch of bullshit intended to misrepresent themself for someone who actually gave a fuck about you. Yea fuck those guys.  Too bad this Douchebag Dwarf (D²) was awesome crew but fuck you. 

4. Drink less wine. Eat less donuts. No seriously.

5. Stop procrastinating. So much. But I'll think about that later.

6. More Cross Training. 

7. Be my own superhero race and life support. Be less whiny, eat pain like candy.  

8. Get the fuck outta here more often. Meet better interesting quality people and not just runners.

9. No fake friendships. NO bullshit running. No junk people. No junk miles.

10. Have a kick ass Ran it with Janet 50k. Do a little good in the world. Raise some money.

Philly Bound

Tough solo pavement run.  Feet are beat up

Greatest Running Movies of all time

http://running.competitor.com/2014/11/lists/25-greatest-running-movies-ever_118584

Army Ten Miler 2015 Done

I went from running 7:11 miles to 8:35 miles for this race.  It still felt very hard.  Goal: Get back speed.

Hilarious Kangaroo Jump Running

http://imgur.com/gallery/f91kjzl

How to Lose Weight in 4 Easy Steps by Aaron Bleyaert

How to Lose Weight in 4 Easy Steps 

What a great read

HOW TO LOSE WEIGHT IN 4 EASY STEPS

I’ve spent the past year losing 80 lbs and getting in shape. A lot of people have been asking me how I did it; specifics like what diet I was on, how many times a week I worked out, etc etc. So I thought I’d just answer everyone’s questions by giving you guys step by step instructions on how you can achieve everything I have… IN JUST 4 EASY STEPS! Ready? Here we go!!!

1.) NO BEER
This is a big one, and one that you’ve probably heard before. Every time you drink a beer, it’s like eating seven slices of bread. That’s a lot of bread!

2.) PORTION CONTROL
This is especially true when you go out to eat at restaurants. A good trick to do is when your meal comes, cut it in half and right away ask for a takeout container, so that you can save the rest for later — and even better, if you start your meal out right by ordering lean meats and veggies, you’ll slim down in no time!

3.) HAVE YOUR HEART BROKEN
And not just broken; shattered. Into itsy bitsy tiny little pieces, by a girl who never loved you and never will. Join the gym at your work. Start going to the gym regularly, and even though you don’t know that much about exercise and you’re way too weak to do pretty much anything but lift 5 lb weights and use the elliptical machines with the old people, do it until your sweat makes a puddle on the floor. Then go home and go to bed early and the next day do it again. And then again. And then again.

Listen to stories of your ex-girlfriend fucking around with gross and terrible people, stories from your friends who think they are doing you a favor. Go to the gym and make more puddles of sweat. Buy books. Learn about different muscle groups and how they work together. Start eating healthy. Learn about nutrition. Plan out your week of meals. Try to forget her.

After work one night, go up up up all the way to the top floor of the parking garage and walk all the way to the back. Look out at the twinkling lights of the skyscrapers of downtown Los Angeles and think about how every single one of those office lights represents a person. Try to imagine how they feel. What they’re doing right then; if they miss someone special, if they wonder if someone special misses them. Then realize that most of those lights are probably shining into offices with no one in them except for a custodian or two. Realize you are alone, that you are staring at no one. Turn your collar up against the cold and drive home to a meal of a single chicken breast and steamed vegetables. Go to sleep. Go back to work. Go to the gym. Sweat.

Buy a scale. Pick a goal weight. Imagine the goal weight as a shining beacon on a hill. You are at the bottom, in the dark. Talk to her at work. Notice the awkward way she walks in high heels and her goofy smile when she looks over at you. Feel something clench inside your chest. Think about the gym and what muscle groups you are going to work that night.

Get on the treadmill. Push yourself to level 3, then level 4. Then 6. Run so fast you feel like you are going to die. Hit level 10. Pray for death. Think of how bad she makes you feel. Find the strength to keep going.

Late one night, make the mistake of looking at her Facebook and Instagram posts. Feel lower than you ever thought possible. Unfriend her and try to forget what you’ve seen. She is doing things with other people that you asked her to do with you. She is having a great time without you, and you are wasting your life listening to Taylor Swift on repeat and making sweat puddles on a gym floor.

Watch as your life shrinks down to four things: 1.) work, 2.) the gym, 3.) the food you eat, 4.) sleep. She wears the necklace you bought her and tells you that she got it “from someone who’s really special”. That night you discover that Slayer’s “Angel of Death” might be the perfect song to do squats to.

Start to make friends at the gym. Vince and you spot each other on Wednesdays; Chase and you spot each other on Fridays. You used to look down on bro nods and fist bumps — but since that’s how gym rats communicate, that’s become the language you speak most often. Work, Gym, Food, Sleep. Over and over. More sweat puddles. More fist bumps. You run hundreds of miles and lift thousands of pounds.

You start to see new people working out here and there and you realize you have done something you once thought impossible: You have become one of the regulars. Once in a while, you are the last one leaving the gym. You make a point to get to the gym earlier, but your workouts start to stretch from one hour to ninety minutes to two hours. You are now routinely the last person at the gym. You run. You lift. You make more puddles.

Your body changes slowly, then all at once — you are suddenly thin and muscular. You hit your goal weight, pick a new one, then hit it again. You go out and buy new clothes. You receive wave after wave of compliments. Your ex tells you that she’s seeing someone else. Your chest clenches. You feel exhausted.

That night you go to the gym. You listen to all her favorite songs. You run farther and lift more than you thought your body was capable of. It is a good workout. It leaves you numb. You go home and eat a single chicken breast and steamed vegetables. You go to sleep. You dream of a bottomless black puddle.

You’ve stopped drinking alcohol months ago, so now when you hang out at bars or parties you don’t talk to anyone new. But with your new body and new clothes, gorgeous women hit on you constantly. One time, a woman literally comes up to you and says she thinks you’d be good in bed and hands you a napkin with her number on it. As she is talking to you, her hand resting on your chest inside your shirt, all you can think of is how badly you need to beat your best time sprinting across the park across from your house the next day. That night when you get home you research the best shoes for trail running and click “buy”. The shoes are a hundred dollars. The phone number goes in the trash.

There is a girl you see a lot at the gym, who always does these weird leg exercises you’ve never seen before. She’s beautiful. You make it a point to not look at her — because you are overly worried about looking creepy like that guy in the blue shirt who never wears underwear and always hangs around the lat pulldown machine — but you notice this girl is always at the gym when you are, and seems to always choose the bench next to you. You turn up the Slayer and concentrate on making your puddles bigger.

Your ex parades her new boyfriend around, flatly ignoring you the entire time. He is taller than you, more ripped than you, better looking than you, and — according to the Greek chorus of your mutual friends — he comes from money. As you watch her introduce him to everyone but you, you remember how her blue eyes lit up underneath the ferris wheel on her birthday when you gave her those bracelets she’s wearing. In your pocket, your hand makes itself into a fist.

That night, you deadlift your body weight. You sneak a photo of yourself in the mirror and email it to yourself with the subject heading “You Are A Warrior”. The next day you are disgusted with yourself and delete it.

You make puddle after puddle after puddle and eat single chicken breasts and work and sleep and the weather gets warm and then gets cold and you know all of Taylor Swift’s songs by heart and the only things that exist in the entire universe are you and The Gym and then something different happens: a night comes where you are not the last person in the gym.

It is you and the girl who does the weird leg exercises. You end up walking out at the same time.

Her name is Melissa and she works in the building next to you. She’s worked there for two years. She asks you out to dinner on Friday, promising it’ll be healthy. The leg exercises are Pivoting Curtsy Lunges.

You start seeing Melissa a lot, both inside the gym and out. You tell no one. You add a couple cheat days to your week — for when you two get dinner and share dessert — and you start getting a lot less sleep. You phase out Slayer in favor of Springsteen. Vince and Chase note that you’ve stopped looking like you’re praying for death when you run. Your ex texts you late at night to ask you out to coffee, but you don’t write her back. You can’t remember the last time you fantasized about puddles.

One night you’re walking Melissa to her car in the parking garage and she is parked up up up all the way on the top floor. She says she wants to show you something and she takes your hand and leads you all the way to the back. You both stand there in the dark looking out over the twinkling lights of the skyscrapers of downtown Los Angeles.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” She says. “All those lights.”

You tell her that yes, it’s beautiful, but it makes you sad. All those pretty lights mean nothing; they’re just shining into cold lonely offices with nobody in them. Melissa squeezes your hand and says yes, each light is an empty office — but they’re only empty because the people have all gone home for the day. All those twinkling lights aren’t sad; each one is a person who’s at home, happy with the one they love. And how romantic is that?

You look at her in the lights and she smiles. Something in your chest expands.

Late one Sunday afternoon you are writing out your rent check and realize it’s been exactly a year since you started working out. You think of all those miles you’ve run and those pounds you’ve lifted and chicken you’ve eaten and puddles you’ve made. It doesn’t seem that bad. You realize that it’s not about hitting a goal weight, or lifting a weight. It’s about being able to wait. Waiting, being patient, and trusting that life will slowly inch along and things will eventually get better. After all, change takes time.

But time is all it takes.

4.) NO FRUIT JUICE
Too much sugar!!!

Mini Milestone

First 21 Pain Free Pleasant Miles in Months

After the year of injuries I had, this is huge. I even made a friend. The miles were slow trail miles and it was hot ad humid. This horse had one crazy blue eye. Maybe it was blind in that eye. I dunno. I didn't have any food but he came running up to me and stayed with me until I left. It was a therapeutic contemplative solo run. I thought of all that I lost. I had mid life crisis moments. It was cathartic. I imagined that this pony/horse felt my feelings. Do animals know? Can they sense people's moods? I felt like he did. 

Next week, I will attempt 18 fast road miles in preparation for Philly. 

Sweaty Desert Legs

Good times running in the desert this week.  110 degrees makes for some sweaty legs.  Can't possibly drink enough water.  The lack of humidity is amazing. 

Track

I dread track work.  But I also love it. 
In the beginning, track is fun. Nice.  You love track.  You think you'll always have faith that track will always give you that high.  But then you race,  and you compete with others and you are disappointed.   Your workouts yielded results for others but not for you. Track did not love you back. You find that track betrayed you. And it takes a while,  to come back to track because you know track will bring you pain. But you still hope.  No matter how much older you are,  how much time has passed, you cannot give up your passion for the adrenaline rush,  the agony,  the ecstacy,  the speed, the heartache and the trail of  blood and tears left behind as you go faster and deeper into the abyss of this addiction.  That's track. You can hear the tragedy and triumph in your lungs as you give this love all you got.   Bring it.

Scott Jurek eats Vegan Korean Food!

Love this guy more than ever

http://blog.scottjurek.com/post/126758778194/back-to-my-saturday-morning-rituals-run-farmers

New Birthday Shoes

Hot crowded day so I took these bad boys out on trail for an easy 12.

Three Months

Milestone.  It's been three months that I started my journey back to recovery.  Every injury is very frustrating.

But this last one.  This last one lingers and is particularly painful. However,  I can run again. May was difficult,  my body was traumatized but I forced myself to run because it was my relief.  My escape.

As with every injury,  this one will leave a mark. A deep scar that always hurts that becomes my new normal. Sometimes,  it flares up unexpectedly and I grimace with pain. However,   I am thankful that I can find joy in running even during my most difficult times. With each run,  I cleanse my soul and often find answers to my most perplexing questions.  Long may you run.