Things you can do when not training for a marathon: Eat Cheesesteaks

Mmmmm look at that delicious cheessesteak. Tony Luke's? Dalessandro's? Pat's or Geno's? No, no, no, and no. That is from Wogies in the West Village, a bar serving philly style sandwiches and $3 yuengling drafts, ordered, of course, by asking for "a lager". It's a philly bar through and through, with the owner and the bartenders all hailing from the best city in the U.S. of A.

Last night I ducked out of work a half hour early to get there before the game started so i could grab a good seat. best. move. ever. I got the last seat at the bar, and within 15 minutes you couldn't move. The place was packed to the rafters and every single person was a die hard phils fan stuck in nyc. i made friends with a dude originally from cherry hill, one from delaware, and another guy who just moved up here yesterday. For 4 hours it felt like i was back home, all the high fives and jumping up and down with random strangers reminded me of that beautiful night of October 29, 2008. I probably had 3 heart attacks last night, and at one point i think i blacked out. Playoff baseball is back!

Now its time to take care of those Dodgers for the second year in a row. Maybe matt stairs can recreate some of his magic and top it off afterward with another quote about "getting his ass hammered". We can only hope.

the real story about bridget's toe.

this is actually what happened. sorry to out you bridget! but its time you stopped living in filth.

cheerleaders wanted!!

one more thing.......while running the PDR yesterday, I got pretty sad about the fact that I didn't have any friends/family to look for along the sidelines. Everyone I knew there was running the race!

So- Calling all friends/family! All I want for my birthday/christmas is lots of people to come and make silly posters/signs for me at the Philly Marathon, on November 22nd! I'm DEFINITELY going to need it then!

and, of course, I still want Dave to be at mile 23ish with a beer for me. the way I see it, my friends can all tailgate the race in manayunk and cheer for me when i get there? haha. and, the more ridiculous the signs are, the better. but warning, i'll probably cry. I almost did yesterday a few times (not sure why, but I was feeling all sorts of waves of emotions during the race).

thats it, come out and cheer me on, thanks, i love you all :)

-b

What not to do when running a marathon...

if bridget ends up looking like this she will not be getting a hug at the finish line. you have to draw the line somewhere.

Cheerleader?

Well after a few more attempts at running i've had the same results. Basically my knee shuts down after 2 miles. This past weekend I was visiting my dad and went to Strathmere beach by myself. I decided to try to run to Ocean City and back, what I believed to be 1-1.5 miles each way, not that i actually looked at a map. Well it was more like 2.25 miles there. It was about 90+ degrees, humid, and i was running with no water. I got about 2 miles when my knee started hurting again, but had to keep going because i needed get off the highway and reach water. I found an ice cream truck and had myself a delicious deer park. Then i called the old man to come pick me up in ocean city and take me back to strathmere because my knee wasn't taking me anywhere... lame. so things are no better on this front. i've tried a few other times between the last blog post and now, all with the same results. Its not looking very promising for the marathon, especially since i'm supposed to really start training this monday. we'll see. if it doesn't work out i fully intend to cheer bridget on from the sidelines and hope that i can get the knee situation figured out and train for a spring marathon. Tomorrow i'll give another shot at running, but am not very optimistic, considering my knee is sore just sitting here watching tv. what am i a 50 year old man? jamie moyer is still pitching in the bigs at like 93 years old and i can't even run more than 2 miles without my knee falling apart. something isn't right. anyway if i can't do it i'm going to be bridget's biggest cheerleader and make sure she gets across the finish line. in the mean time i'm going to have to find something else to fill my time. i think i'll start brewing some beer.

Achy breaky knee

An update is long overdue on my part. The past week has just been a little frustrating and so giving a recap wasn't exactly at the top of my to-do list. Last week, after a nice and easy 4 mile run, my knee began to hurt. I ran that morning and after sitting at work all day it started to feel stiff, and walking -- especially up and down stairs -- became an unpleasant task. I tried stretching it out and icing it down when I got home, which helped momentarily but not fully. The next morning I woke up early and got ready to run 5 miles. My knee felt a little uncomfortable, but nothing terrible; I figured it would go away once I got warmed up and started moving. After a mile it started to hurt. After another quarter mile even more. I though to myself, "Just push through it, the pain will go away". No such luck. Just shy of two miles i was reduced to a limp, running through the park hardly able to bend my leg. I'm sure I was a site to behold, trying to swing my left leg in front of me rather than run like a normal human . OK there was a problem. Discouraged I walked back home, stretched it out, iced it, etc.

That day I didn't exactly walk, but gimped around. Well that can't be good. Now I decided to give running a rest for a couple days and let it recover. I took a trip to Rite-Aid and dropped $50 on knee and pain products. I bought myself an ACE knee brace, a hot/cold wrap, and a bottle of 1,000 aspirin. The next day the ol' knee was slightly improved, and by Sunday it felt alright again. Still a little sore, but I wasn't limping so I gave it another shot. Again, after one mile, it began to hurt again, but this time I decided not to push it, cut my losses and walked home. For the past week I kept did no running, but tried to figure out why my knee was so f'd up.

There are two main things that I think have been causing it:

1. I may need different shoes. After looking at my running soles and checking out my foot I realized that I have a high arch, more than normal. This causes my stride to land on the outside of the foot and then my foot/ankle kind of turns inward after impact. That can't be good on the knees. I'm gonna get myself to a good running store, see if my self diagnosis is correct, and if so what they recommend.
2. I tried to do too many miles too quickly that first week of training. I went from running about 12 miles a week to trying to do 25. As my friend Mike pointed out, its best to stick to the 10% rule -- increasing weekly mileage by only 10% each week. i.e. increasing it by 100% was probably not a good idea. I think for the next two weeks I'll concentrate on short runs, about 3-4 miles, four times per week. I'll see how that feels and then start increasing my mileage. This means I may fall behind my mileage pace to get up to marathon length, but I'd rather keep my knees healthy and at worst I have to settle for doing the half-marathon. Not the end of the world.

UPDATE: Well after giving a go at this 3-miles at a time plan, I've had not so promising results. The knee felt a little uncomfortable from the start but no serious pain. I made it about 2 miles and then the pain set in. I went another quarter mile felt some sharp pains and then stopped, stretched, and took a slightly painful walk home. Great. Well tomorrow I'll take a trip to the running store, see if new shoes will help and then give it another shot. Right now this is just very frustrating more than anything. If it was just muscle pain that would be one thing, that's something that I can just run through. But this knee problem makes it difficult to simply bend my knee and the shooting pain is a totally different sensation than plain soreness. Its also worth noting that this isn't exactly a new development; the same thing happened last summer when I tried to running regularly and picking up my mileage.

I'm open to advice from anyone who has experienced similar problems or who has a little more knowledge in this area. Stay tuned, hopefully I can get through a full run this weekend. Time's a wasting!

Training schedule and some beer info

Today was day 3 of my training schedule. Did a nice 4 miles this morning in Inwood Hill Park.* It's refreshing to get up extra early and do some running through the park. Great way to start the day.

*More of the park in my backyard will be coming in a later post. Just an awesome place to run. Also, I stole this little embedded footnote from Joe Posnanski, which is aptly named a Posterisk. Check his blog, it's some of the best sports writing ever.

Since I'm at the very beginning of things I figured it would be a good idea to post my training schedule to get an idea of what kind of running we're talking about here. It's worth noting that before I began this training I'd never ran more than 7 miles in one shot, and that was fairly recently. So from here on out every Sunday will be a new personal best in distance. Kind of exciting, no? That weekly mile total on the right hand side is a little intimidating. Let's hope the knees hold up!
















Alright, enough with that. Let's talk about beer. I love it. You love it (or at least you should). It's great. It's one of the things I have to cut back on, which is a good thing but I needed to figure out if I should ditch it all together. Well a google search of "carbs in beer useful for marathon training" gave me the answer I needed. Basically a beer here and there isn't bad for you, just don't drink too much before race day (don't wanna poo yourself). This website sums it up the best:

"And why not hoist a well-earned brew? Beer, like red wine, does provide some health benefits. The malt and hops used to make dark beers contain flavonoids, the same heart-healthy compounds in vegetables and wine that counter cell damage, thus reducing your risk of heart disease and cancer. Beer also contains B vitamins and chromium, which aid in converting carbohydrates to energy."

Well then, keep drinking beer.

Speaking of beer. Tonight my good friend Catinca is hosting a Flying Dog event at Blind Tiger in NYC. She just got the job as Flying Dog sales rep for all 5 boroughs of NYC (!) and I believe this is her first promo. It's gonna rock I'm sure. I will be there to sample a brand new brew they're unveiling. And of course I can't pass up my favorite of theirs, the Gonzo Imperial Porter (pictured left). Lofty brew. As their motto says, via the great H.S. Thompson, "Good people drink good beer." Word.

The Starting Line

Stay tuned for the (mis)adventures of Dave and Bridget as they train for the Philly marathon. We'll keep you updated with our training routines, maps of our runs, and pictures along the way. It's sure to be entertaining and most likely full of poor training habits such as eating junk food, drinking too much and too often, and missing workouts because we were too lazy. It should be a doozy.