Starting off in the right direction

It seems that every year I say that I am going to write more on this blog.  And every year I find myself not writing half as much as I intended to write.  This is my attempt at writing more.  I am not going to give long drawn out what has been happening since the last time I have wrote.  That would be just boring and mundane. 

Instead, I will give an update how things have been going this year.  First, my goal this year is to run 2500 miles.  So far, this has been kicking my butt.  RunningAHEAD.com has a new widget that gives you the ability to have a personal pace bunny to keep track of your goal and how you are doing with respect to that goal.  This has been difficult because the weather has not been as it was last year.  I have managed to get a couple of long runs in on the weekends.  These have given me the ability to stay close to the bunny.  I feel that if I can keep it close through the winter when the spring and summer comes I should be able to get a lead on the bunny. 

Today I ran my first race since the Turkey trot back in November.  It was the Freeze Your Buns Run in St. Peter.  I did not have a time goal.  I knew that I was in reasonable shape and should be able a 6:45-7:00min pace.  I wanted to run the first mile completive and see how it goes from there.  The first mile saw a couple of guys jump out and try and take control of the pace.  The pace was not beyond my abilities so I stayed back, controlling my pace so that I would still save some energy for the little hills in the second mile.  It was around mile one that I caught the leader and hung by him for a few seconds. It was apparent that he was not into holding the pace he was at (he might have gone out too fast) so I took over and tried my best to keep my pace up.  I slowed down from my first mile pace about 25seconds.  This slowdown is expected but I was still nervous that someone would come from behind and get me in the next mile.  I was able to maintain the pace for the third mile and started to push to the finish in the last mile.  Still not knowing where any of the other runners were I was trying to enjoy the moment and still run fast.  In the end, I was able to pull off the win.  My time was 25:31 for four miles, not bad for this time of the year.

The year has just started and things are looking good.  Win or no Win the level of fitness seems to be there and that is what matters.  

No Wicked Sloths

This past week my mother was able to come down to visit my family and I.  She brought with her my running t-shirt quilt.  This quilt has shirts from high school and some from when I began to run again.  It was nice to see the shirts and reflect on how things went during those races.  One of the shirts came from my senior year in high school.  The theme that year was "No Wicked Sloths." It stems from the speech that our coach gave us before the regional meet. If you are not familiar with this parable, it is a common Christian parable that can have many different versions but all have the same message. 

It talks about a king leaving his servants (3) for a time.  One servant was given 5 things, another was given 3 and the last one was given 1 thing.  What the servants were given depends on the version that you might have heard.  We had been told that they were given talents.  The story goes on to say that the servants that received 5 and 3 talents wanted to please their master and did what was needed to double their talents.  While the servants that received 1 talent was so afraid to lose this talent that they did not use it at all.  When the king came back, the servants that doubled their talents pleased the king very much and were rewarded.  When the last servant gave back the king the single talent the king proclaimed the servant to be a “wicked sloth.”  This servant did not use their talents to grow their talents. 

I think that this parable works very well with runners if you have certain talent(s) and do not work at trying to make them or yourself better then you are wasting those talents. 

I see this in many teams, some of the kids come in with so much talent that we as coaches get excited for what lies ahead. However if these athletes are afraid to use their talents they will not expand those talents and see what they are truly capable of.  Then there are those athletes that might not have the talents that the others do but they are not afraid to use their talents they find through using their talents that they become more talented than they ever imagined.  As a coach, these athletes are what make the team what it is.  These are the athletes that others should look up to and try to emulate.  We as coaches and runners also need to look inward and try to figure out if we are being a wicked sloth or are we using and trying to expand our talents.