Boston bound

It's been awhile since my last post. As far as what I have been up to, Kelly and I were out in San Francisco a couple weeks ago for her to run the Nike Women's Marathon. I can not say enough about how well she ran. It has been three years since she ran her last marathon (in San Francisco as well) and in this outing she bested her last time by 20 minutes. And true to form she did it while smiling the entire time. Also, not to be forgotten, she raised nearly $4,500 for the fight against blood related cancers (I had one and they are nasty things to fight), thanks to the kind donations of many of you.

One of the many cool things we did in San Francisco was attend the Leukemia and Lymphona Team in Training pre-race dinner. At this celebration we witnessed awesome talks by both John Benoit Samuelson and John "The Penguin" Bingham. Both were tons of fun to watch and in John Bingham's case, hilarious. I found the entire weekend, and especially the dinner, very emotional. Kelly and I ran our first marathon through Team in Training in 2003. We raised over $12,000 and ran the Dublin (Ireland) Marathon, for all those people we know who had fought or were fighting cancer and to celebrate my successful completion of six months of chemo merely six months before. Team in Training is a great organization, and for any of you out there considering running your first marathon or are looking for a way to honor a loved one's or friend's battle with cancer, let me say two things: anyone can run a marathon and TNT is a great way to do it.

As for my running, I have logged nearly as few miles on my running shoes the last few weeks as I have words in this blog. Each year after my last fall marathon I take the time as a rest period. I usually decrease my miles, especially my weekend miles (which time is then spent being lazy with my kids), up my beer intake, and start planning on paper the next year's races.

I have decided a few things over this time.

1. I will run Boston. This will be my third Boston during my almost six years of running marathons. I secured my hotel reservations today and will make a long weekend of the marathon. What a great way to celebrate a 10th wedding anniversary.

2. I will throw my name in the lottery for the Massanutten Mountain Trails 100 Mile Run. This is run in my home state of Virginia. I missed the sign up last year because it filled up in an hour. Now I will try my luck in the lottery. If I do get in, it will mean quite a tough winter of long running since this race is held in May.

3. If my duties are still requested and required, I will head out to California once more to pace my buddy Jamie Anderson for the Western States 100. This time I will do a much more rigorous rain dance to ward off any wild fires that might threaten the race.

4. And I am pretty sure I will run for the third straight time in the Vermont 100.

After that I will rest, unless the Massanutten Mountain Trails 100 Mile run lottery falls through for me. Then I will try and seek out another 100 with the ultimate goal of running two 100 milers next year. I should also mention that my hope is that Kelly will choose to run the Pineland 25K and another fall marathon. I will let you know about that later.

Signing off. And don't forget to vote on Tuesday! You know for who!