Being thankful....

Ok, so it is not Thanksgiving, but I'd like to list the people and things I am most thankful for in 2006...

• Hava - my best friend, lover, and wife...enough said.
• Our families - thank you for all of your support and help with everything, especially the wedding. You made our wedding very special and we'll never forget it.
• Thon - by my late 20's, I thought I had found already found all of my close friends. I didn't think I had room for anyone else, let alone be lucky enough to find one. Thon proved me wrong. I am thankful to him for coming into my life and for being a confidante, running partner, and last but not least, a friend that I can fully trust and rely on. He is also welcome to show up at our house unexpectedly any time he wants, as long as he brings an alcoholic beverage to share.
• Richard - I can virtually ditto what I said about Thon, and in addition Richard and his wife Stephanie are such a wonderful couple to all of us. Even with Richard being sick, they met up with us at Mi Madre's every Saturday after our long run..and also came to Dallas to support us when we ran our marathon. They are truly selfless people, and I am thankful for having them in my life. Richard will be running for the first time in many months on January 1st...I can't wait until he can join us again on our runs!
• Carrie - she and I go back a few years, and I am thankful for her unwavering friendship and support..along with her ability to put her mind in the gutter as much, or more, than I do. I can always rely on her to laugh at my raunchy jokes even if no one else does. Carrie, aren't you glad we decided to join Gazelle's together? I can't imagine if we didn't!! Oh, and thanks for being my Running Wife, even if you put out for Shawn instead of your Running Hubby. I don't blame you though, he is a great catch.
• Amy - she makes our runs more entertaining than they would be without her. She is spunky, sweet, and an incredible runner! We don't do a too much together outside of running, but she still manages to add to my life, and I am thankful to her for that.
• Gilbert - my coach...he is one of the most decent and nicest people that I know. Even when I am not running with Gazelles, I am always proud and thankful to be able to call myself one. Thanks Gilbert, for everything!
• All of the Gazelles (even the ones I don't know) - Alex, Frank, Erine, Venus, etc. etc. etc....thanks for keeping the Gazelle spirit alive and for making the organization such an elite one to be part of. It makes me look good.
• Ranger, Shayna, Siskel, Coe, and Peeper - The pets that live in our zoo (some call it a house too). They add so much to our lives, I can't imagine not having them to welcome us every time we come home. I also can't imagine not having to clean wads of pet fur from our floor every week, it just wouldn't be the same.
• Our house - we love our house, we feel truly blessed to live in it. It is going to be great to start our family in it. Just not yet.

I wish a very happy, healthy, and safe New Year to all of my family and friends!

Putting the OTH in my BROTH

When I first started this blog way back when (ok, two months ago), I decided to call it "Mike's BROTH", or Mike's Blog of Running and Other Things Happening. I recently realized that all of the blogs I have written have all been about Running, and not Other Things Happening. So today I have decided to put the OTH in my BROTH.

First off, if there is any blog that I would love to emulate, it would be Carrie's Tritobefunny blog. I really enjoy reading her blog not only for the running recaps (which I co-star in on occasion), but also because she truly knows how to put the OTH in her BROTH. She has published some really great insight in her blogs, and has a very eloquentl style of writing it. She has a pretty large readership level based on the amount of comments left, so I'm obviously not the only one who sees this. Now, I will say that even if she does have better writing skills than me, I do have some skills that chicks love..like nunchuck skills and bowhunting skills.

With that said, I would like to give a recap of the 2006 year. This has been an amazing year, with many ups and few downs. In January, was just getting acquainted with my newly diagnosed stress fracture resulting from overtraining after the Chicago Marathon. It was pretty depressing not being able to run, but what made everything all better was the fact that I had an amazing girlfriend (my Havalah) who supported me and helped me stay positive. We had started dating in September 2005, so we were a relatively "new" couple. However, after a wonderful trip to Vegas in December, we both new that we had found our soul mates.

I decided in early January that Hava was the one I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. We had only been dating for 4 months, but this was a situation where you have two mature adults who found the right person and were in the right time of their lives to make this kind of decision without it being forced or too quick. We were meant for each other..and that is just plain fact.
I asked Hava to marry me in late January (she said yes, of course), and on the same exact day we signed a contract to have a house built in Southwest Austin. It was really exciting for us! After doing a lot of great research, Hava found a great place for us to have our wedding and we set a date for September 10th, which happened to be the day before the 1 year anniversary of our first date! Needless to say, both sets of family were ecstatic. Both Hava and I had been engaged in the past to non-Jew's, so the fact that we ended up marrying Jewish was a God-send for our parents.

Over the next 7 months, we sold my house (one of the "downs" of the year, but I won't go into that), I moved in with Hava temporarily, and finally we moved into our new house in early August! And then we had our wedding on September 10th. The wedding was a wonderful experience and we felt so lucky to have our close friends and family join us for it. We then took 2 weeks off, the second of which we spent in Costa Rica, which was a great adventure.

Life has been great since then, and I was even able to get a 5-minute PR in Dallas after such a busy year (sorry, I couldn't help talking a little about running!).

No insight in this blog, but a "brief" recap of the great year that I have had. :-)

Dallas White Rock

So I slacked off the past couple of weeks on the blog, but taper weeks aren't all that exciting anyway.

The marathon FINALLY arrived on Sunday. Hava and made the trip up to Dallas on Saturday in a caravan with Thon, Venus, Amy and her husband Perry, Carrie and her fiance Shawn, and Richard and his wife Stephanie.

We headed to the expo right when we got there and got our packets, etc. I bought a new gel belt to hold the plethora of nutrition I needed for the race. They say not to try anything new before a big race, but I felt pretty safe with the belt. Hava also bought some stuff, and we even got some free Clif Shot block flavors, Margerita and Pina Colada!! I thought they tasted pretty good (from the free samples), and they had extra caffeine and sodium in them.

I was feeling pretty good about the race. My legs felt good, I was in good spirits, and my running buds (Thon, Venus, and Amy) were all feeling positive that we were going to all have a good race. The goal was 3:30. I felt this was reachable, but only if everything was perfect. Otherwise, I knew I'd be happy with a PR, which would be anything faster than a 3:44 marathon.

We had a nice (but slightly cold) dinner at MoMo's on Saturday night. We only could get the patio tables, but they were somewhat heated by gas heaters. Richard was nice enough to let me use his jacket even though all he had was a short sleeved shirt. What a guy!

Race morning was cold, but also slightly humid. This wasn't the greatest sign for me, because even when it is pretty cold, the humidity seems to effect my ability to regulate my temperature. Thon was completely in the zone since we drove up, but as we were walking to the race he loosened up a little bit and cracked a smile or two. We did our last minute prep in the port-o-pottie's, and it was about time to start!! Richard, Stephanie, and my lovely Hava had plans to see us in 5-6 different areas and cheer us on.

We started with the 3:30 pace group. I felt really good, but I told myself I would fall back as soon as I felt like I should slow down. Well, that didn't take too long. After 3 miles, I decided that if I was going to make it, I would have to take the pace to an 8:15-8:30 average. So I slowly lost sight of Amy, Venus, Carrie, and Thon. It didn't bother me, because I wanted to run my own race.

The miles went pretty quickly at first, I definitely felt the humidity, but I got water at every water stop and continued to eat nutrition every 3-4 miles. Our cheering squad was excellent and reliable, they were there to cheer me about every 4 miles. It was so great to see Hava's smiling face...it kept me strong. Around mile 13 I ended up passing up Venus. She looked like she was struggling (which it turns out she was, I'll explain later). I said a quick hello, and kept going. By mile 15, a few little doubts starting creeping into my mind. I was slowing down a bit, reading 8:30-8:40 minute miles on my watch. I wasn't feeling horrible, but also not feeling strong. I told myself to stay strong and not stop, and most importantly not be a big wimp. The biggest mental game that kept me going was continuously telling myself that all of the months of training led up to this race, and it would all be for naught if I didn't actually use the strength from this training to make it throught the race. I kept on trucking....

Mile 20-21 was interesting because it was a series of small inclines and hills. I was worried they would sap my strength, but they actually did the opposite. It was very refreshing to use the different muscles necessary to climb inclines vs. the ones I was using on the flat White Rock Lake area. In fact, I felt a surge of strength and was able to pass a good amount of people. This was a first for me..to find energy reserves in the second half of a marathon. Once the course flattened out, I started to mentally map out the rest of the race. I couldn't believe I had only 5 miles to go..but knew from experience that they would be a LONG 5 miles.

What made things crappy was the half-marathon joined back into the race around mile 21. They started an hour after the marathon, so the people that were running when I met up with them were the slower ones, and in fact many of them were walking. What made this an issue is that many of these people had no freaking clue about race courtesy and were walking on the left hand side of the street instead of keeping the left side for the faster runners. I was already on the verge of having calf cramps, so having to avoid these people only made things worse. One wrong move and I would have been on the ground. Luckily, I only had a few near collisions and made it through unscathed. I also almost ran into an EMS vehicle that a police officer decided to let through. It didn't have its emergency lights on, so I got slightly annoyed. However, a man right in front of me got much more than slightly annoyed and screamed "No, no, no!!!" at the officer, and whaddya know the officers stopped the EMS vehicle and let us pass. I was relieved not to have to stop, but pretty surprised.

Around mile 24, the 3:40 pace group caught up to me. I was starting to feel pretty crappy by this point. However, I decided that I was going to stick with the 3:40 pace group as much as I could. I knew a Personal Record was on the line if I slowed down much more. So I stuck with them, and dug really deep to keep moving. This was my 5th marathon, and the first time I was truly mentally strong enough to push myself beyond what my body thought it could do. It is hard to describe with words though, but it was a big mental barrier that I was able to overcome.
At mile 25, which actually was mis-marked, I somehow got the strength to speed up. I passed the 3:40 pacers and never looked back. I was determined to stay strong for the remainder of the race and finish with a sub 3:40 race time.

The last 1+ miles were ridiculously long. I kept on expecting the finish line to show up in the horizon, but it just never seemed to appear. FINALLY, I got to the 26 mile marker. I was feeling like crap, but the thought of it finally being over kept me going strong. I suddenly came upon Thon right then. It was surprising because I thought he would have finished by then, but I said "Thon, let's finish strong". That was enough for him to pick up the pace with me. He cracked a joke with about 1/10th of a mile to go with "You wanna hold hands?". I just laughed and smiled, and was really happy I was finishing the journey with such a good friend. We crossed the finish line, and gave each other a big hug before we got our medals and finisher's shirts.

Final time, 3:39:26....a 5-minute PR for me. Along with just being ecstatic with finishing, I felt like I ran a great race overall. It was the first marathon that I was truly able to stay in the zone and stay mentally strong. Everyone feels like shit at some point in a marathon, but being able to keep moving even when you do is what separates a well-run marathon from a not so well-run marathon.

As for everyone else:

Amy: ran a 3:28 and looked like she did an easy 5k
Carrie: 3:29 (PR by 6 minutes!!!!) and ready to go for a 3:20
Thon: 3:39..an official PR (had an unofficial PR of 3:37 at Freescale). He bonked towards the end, but I am still really proud of him for having such a great time. If I had bonked, I would not have gotten even close to a 3:39. It was an honor finishing the race with him, and I won't ever forget it.
Venus: 3:45:42- she qualified for the second time for Boston by 17 seconds. It turns out she had foot problems and was running in pain for about 20 miles of the race...yet she still was able to qualify. She is a BAD ASS in my book. Very impressive.
Shawn: Shawn ran a 1:59 half-marathon, congrats!!

Stephanie, Richard, Hava, Perry, my mom, dad, sister, and Kyle: Thank you so much for your support on the run..it meant a great deal to me! I love all of you!!

What's next?? I dunno, but I'm relaxing for a little bit before I even think about it!