Bonus Resolution 4 - Finish 12 Races in a Year - 10 Down

As I alluded to last blog, it ended up being a crazy September for races. I did end up racing in a race every weekend of the month. I should not be surprised though as it seems from looking at various race schedules that September and October are the busiest months of the year. I wanted to update this resolution a week or two earlier so I did not have to write up about three blogs in one entry, so I will do my best to not go too overboard here.
First up we have the Thief River Falls Pioneer 10K I ran in on 9/14. Thief River Falls is about an hour away from where I live, and I decided to go run there because it is near where my mom's boyfriend lives and I thought I would hang out with them for the day while I was out there. This is a yearly 5k/10k event they do in Thief River Falls, and they made it a color run for the first time this year. They had members of their local swim team throwing that glorious colored powder at us at various intervals of the race.

I want to do my best to forget about this race. It started off great, it was the smallest 10K field I have competed in at around 35 entrants, and I started out really strong, and was holding up in 6th place and maintaining pace and looking to have my first ever top 10 finish and sub-50 minute 10K! Well, it was not meant to be. Around the halfway mark, a race volunteer waved me off a side street and directed me down a path that went a few blocks the halfway point where I turned around and headed back where I came from. There were no other racers immediately in front of or behind me as we were pretty spread out in the front of the pack. Where I got back to the point where I turned in from there was a big pack of racers were coming in off the side street and the race volunteer had her back to me as she waived them to where I was coming from. I presumed I had to go back where I came from so that is exactly what I did.

A few minutes later though, I saw the 3rd, 4th and 5th place racers together coming in off a side street who were previously about a good two or three minutes ahead of me. It was then I realized I screwed up and did a wrong turn and was suppose to keep going past the race volunteer an extra few blocks. I found out later one racer (the one in the photo with me to the right actually) tried shouting at me, but he was too far back and I had my headphones on. I found the timekeeper right after the race and told him not to count my time because of my error. I wish the race could have been labeled better, as some points were clearly marked by signs and other only had volunteers pointing where to go, and when you have a big pack of racers going by in both directions, oversights like that are bound to happen.

The next weekend on 9/21 had the official Color Run come to Grand Forks. I believe The Color Run was the initial color race that started the craze and its few imitators just two years ago. I was not going to do it, but a few friends and coworkers were making a team, and since this is a race that is not timed and purely recreational, I figured it would be a terrific way to enjoy a race with some friends and get super doused in color along the way. Over 4,000 people registered for the race, and they cleared out a good couple mile stretch of 42nd St. to make room for everybody. I joined up with Derek, Brooke, Ryan and Justine for the race. We all started together, but the field was so jam packed that we all eventually split off from each other. There was a very hyper DJ MCing the event which helped give the race the most straight up fun atmosphere of all the races I have been a part of. After the race, the DJ was getting everyone to dance and throw their own packets of color at each other in a little concert area around the finish line. We all jammed out there for about a half hour afterwards and made sure that the guy going around in a leafblower hosed as much color off us as possible before we headed back home.

Finally, I closed out September with the Wild Hog Half Marathon on 9/28. For some reason I was not as nervous for this race as the Fargo Half Marathon I trained so hard for in May. I guess in the back of my mind I had a feeling what I was in for this time around. I kept up my practice runs accordingly, and intentionally did not run for four days before the race to bank as much energy as I could for race day. I felt well prepared going into the race and was actually able to get some sleep the night before the race this time too! Unfortunately, I was not counting on it raining throughout the entire race. It was not a downpour by any means, but a nice and steady rain that held up from the beginning until the end. I threw on a light windbreaker to help keep me a little dry, but was probably more paranoid about it slowing me down and preventing me from hitting the two hour goal I set for myself for the race.

For the Fargo half, I started off trailing the ten minute a mile pacer for the first few miles before gradually increasing my speed and finishing with around a 9 minute a mile pace. So for the Wild Hog, I went to follow the pacer who had a 1 hour 50 minute finish time which I believe was around a 8 minute 30 second pace. Shortly into the race though, I saw the pacer for the 1 hour 45 minute mark and recognized him from a few group runs I did with a local running club in town this summer and I remember keeping up with him on those runs before so I thought I would try and keep up with him here. Silly me neglected those group runs in the summer were only five mile runs, and around that mark I started to gradually lose pace and sight of him. I was not getting passed by too many people though and found a new pacer by a guy in a makeshift garbage bag poncho I was able to follow.

I was still gradually losing pace and getting passed by a runner or two every couple of minutes but was keeping up with garbage bag man fine. I brought two energy gels with me I took around the 1/3 and 2/3 marks of the race and was only stopping at every other water aid station so I did not have gobs of it swishing around in my stomach. Around mile 10 though, I saw garbage bag man really slow down and stopped to walk for a breather. I was not anticipating this and it messed with my race psyche. I kept on trucking and found a running couple to trail behind, but after about mile 11 my legs started to feel like lead and my speed really started to decrease. Not too long later the 1 hour 50 minute pacer past me, and I did my best to keep up with her but it was no use as she kept getting further. At this point though I was giving it my all and told myself I was not going to stop at all and was going to run this out no matter how heavy my legs felt. I got passed by quite a few people those last two miles, but I finished strong and was all smiles as I saw my finishing time of 1:53:25. Not too bad considering the atrocious weather, and for running on empty the last two miles. There is another half marathon in Fargo in a couple weeks, right now my legs are still recovering and I do not know if I got that run in me, but if I do, or whenever I run my next half I would like to believe I could conquer that 1 hour 50 minute barrier.

Ok, I lied, that was not brief at all and I was my usual long winded self. If you managed to read this entire blog, thank you for sticking with me! I am now at 10 races in the books for the year, with only needing two more to meet this resolution. I am already signed up for one at the end of the month, and I know of at least a couple more before the end of the year and am just debating which one to sign up for. I will make sure to keep you all posted, so please keep checking back!

5K

UND Autism - 4/20/13 - 26:22 - 23rd out of 74
Uffda Mud Run - 9/7/13 - ??:?? - Finished
Color Run - 9/21/13 - ??:?? - Finished

10k

Hillsboro Run - 6/13/13 - 50:17 - 23rd out of 55
Dewey Memorial - 6/1/13 - 50:21 - 15th out of 56
Firecracker - 7/4/13 - 53:13 - 42nd out of 92
Frozen Feat - 2/16/13 - 53:57 - 50th out of 108
TRF Pioneer - 9/14/13 - Disqualified

Half Marathon

Fargo Rocks - 5/18/13 - 2:02:48 - 2062nd out of 5526
Grand Forks Wild Hog - 9/28/13 - 1:53:25 - 182nd out of 645

Resolution 9 - Clint Eastwood Quest - Bonus Installment

Clint Eastwood. Baseball. That is all you need to know, watch this film now.

I loved baseball movies as a kid. From 1989-94, there was a flood of them in my impressionable years that left many lasting memories. Some of them I still love and re-watch to this day like the Major League trilogy, Field of Dreams, The Scout and The Sandlot. While others probably hit at the right age for me and I refuse repeated viewings of them because I just know in my gut they will not appeal to me the same way they did back then with prime examples being Little Big League, Angels in the Outfield and Rookie of the Year.

In more recent years however I strayed away from baseball flicks, or not many have stuck out to me. This last year saw two films with Moneyball and the film that is the focus of this blog, Trouble With the Curve (Trailer) make an awesome return to baseball movie greatness. For the first time in 20 years, Clint Eastwood got out of the director's chair and back to just being an actor. The director here actually is a longtime assistant director of Clint's who is making his directorial debut, Robert Lorenz.

Clint plays elder baseball scout Gus, whose age is rapidly catching up with him, and is early in the film diagnosed with glaucoma when he realizes his vision is betraying him. His doctor advises him to get it checked out, but Gus has to be on the road to analyze the latest hot prospect so his best friend and fellow associate Pete (John Goodman) convinces his daughter Mickie (Amy Adams) to accompany him for this last trek of the season to make sure he still has his eyes in check. They run into former top prospect Johnny Flannigan (Justin Timberlake) who flamed out early in The Show and is now a scout himself.

Eastwood is sublime at playing old, cranky and stubborn, and that is exactly the persona behind Gus as he keeps brushing aside his Glaucoma issues and ignoring his daughter trying to get the truth out of him on why they grew so apart over the years. Watching Eastwood and Adams overcome the hurdles of their character's relationship was a battle I enjoyed. Their conflict keeps building and building, with Adams especially doing an awesome part in showing how Gus's stubbornness rubbed onto her as she holds her own whenever Mickie and Gus go at it. Justin Timberlake is spot on in his supporting role, full of determination of rising through the scouting ranks and landing an announcing gig, but the inevitable feelings he has for Mickie throws a wrench in his scouting plans.

The only part of the film I thought that could have been done better was there really was no resolution to Gus's glaucoma, as it more or less takes a backseat in the film's final act where the film turns into whether or not their team makes a move on the hot prospect at the upcoming draft. I like how they handle the draft and the fallout from it, but the film gets you feeling for Gus and his failing vision and to see how that issue gets brushed to the side in the final half hour is kind of disappointing. Luckily all of the other issues explored in the movie are dealt with properly and have a gratifying sense of finality.

I really enjoyed Trouble With the Curve for the same reasons I enjoyed Moneyball. While baseball may appear to be the focus of both films, it is not of the actual game itself but more of the behind the scenes office/scouting shenanigans that are used to enhance and develop the characters and had you rooting for them until the end to see if they overcame their conflicts and find that lasting resolve. Moneyball has awesome, strong characters, but obviously with its connections to the book that changed the sport forever it keeps more of a focus on the game. While I will give the nudge to enjoying that movie as a whole more, I cannot deny that Trouble With the Curve does a better job at developing their characters and having me stick with them and care about the individuals more.

Trouble With the Curve is not part of the Clint Eastwood collection of movies I am covering. It is the only Eastwood movie I own that is not part of the 10-film collection I am working on reviewing, but I am going to a Twins game this weekend, the last game of the season as a matter of fact and really wanted to get in the mood for baseball, so here is a free bonus Clint Eastwood film review for you this month! If you want to follow along on the Clint Eastwood collection fun with me, here is a link to the box set I have off Amazon.

Past Eastwood Collection Blogs

Mystic River
The Rookie
Absolute Power
Dirty Harry
Kelly's Heroes
Where Eagles Dare
Gran Torino

Bonus Resolution 4 - Finish 12 Races in a Year - 7 Down

Last Saturday I participated in one of the toughest things I ever did in my life. A mud run. This one in particular, The Uffda Mud Run, was put on by local extreme endurance racing group, ENDracing, the same folks who put on the Winter Ultramarathon earlier this year that mother nature made me back out of. If you have never heard of these, they have been gaining popularity over the last few years with two of the more mainstream national mud runs put on by Tough Mudder and Warrior Dash. They usually are a 5 to 10k race with a couple dozen obstacles mixed in throughout, most of which guaranteeing you become a muddy mess by the end of the race.

I ran this race with my friend Sean. He ran the 10k on the 4th of July with me and I told him I would run a race with him in return, and why he decided to pick a mud run was beyond me and at first I was not even going to do it as I thought I would be nowhere fit enough to endure it. As time passed however and I found out this was essentially a recreational race for the sake of survival instead of competition and I decided I would give it my best shot, and if any of the 23 obstacles the race director kept daunting on the event Facebook page were too tough for me, I would do my best at them and move on to the next one.

I did my best to step up my training for this as I heard some of the early obstacles revealed involved a few wall climbs. I have never got back in the habit of doing pull ups/sit ups/push ups, so for the past month I started doing sets of reps of all three of those a few times a week. Additionally, three of the obstacles involved crossing the Red River, and I cannot even remember the last time I went swimming for it must have been around a decade, so I went out and got a couple of practice swims in over the last couple of weeks.

So the big race day finally happened last Saturday, and I met up with Sean near the starting line and our wave took off at 11am. A lot of the early obstacles were relatively straightforward. A few were mazes consisting of tires, logs, boulders and netting to navigate through. Of course there were a few early mud pits too. They definitely stepped up in difficulty as we moved on though; or as the race director stated, "I like to eat my peas first before we get to the steak."

The set of three walls to climb were a decent hurdle for me. I got over the 4' wall no problem, but for the 6' and 8' wall Sean and I gave each other a boost over. The latter mud pits got increasingly more difficult to traverse through, and were deep enough so it was troublesome to walk through so my only option was to doggie paddle my way through them to get the heck out of there. And this is speculation on my part, but I am pretty sure whoever made a few of the latter mud pits had some fun because they reeked like someone dumped tons of cow pies in them.

I only failed two obstacles. One was called something along the lines of "Fjording the Rough" and it featured the deepest and thickest mud of the whole course. It was about three feet deep, and I took about three or four steps in and found it nearly impossible to move and saw the other runners barely moving at all in front of me. I had a good feeling if I kept on trucking I would definitely lose a shoe and/or get stuck. Even the race director said afterwards he did not anticipate this obstacle to be so dastardly. So after my initial few steps, I turned around and made haste to the rest of the track. The other obstacle I failed started off with a trivia question. I got the question wrong and got an orange token. I then had to go into a 3' tank of ice water and find a corresponding orange colored golf ball. Since I got a trivia question wrong, only 25% of the golf balls at the bottom of the mud colored ice water tank were orange. You can see where this is going. I dove five times and each time came out with a blue ball, and each time shivering more and more of my own balls off. One of the volunteers must have took pity on me and threw me an orange ball, but I was so beyond cold at this point I bobbled it and lost it in the tank. I took that as my cue to get out before I get hypothermia though after about five minutes in the tank at this point. I had no idea the race photographers that were hired were taking my photo at this point, and they got a great shot of me as you can obviously see here.

The three river crossings went pretty well for the most part. The first one went through without a hitch as we pulled ourselves across the river via a rope above us tied to the river banks. The second was a bit of a challenge as four of us all had one arm clung to a inner tube, while we all tried to synchronize our swim with our remaining hand. This proved to be quite a challenge. Thank goodness there was barely a current to the river that day, it was actually cool and calm that morning, nearly perfect weather for the day. Eventually we made it across.

The final crossing, and the final obstacle was crossing the Red River itself. This was the obstacle I kept telling myself I had to beat in the weeks leading up in the race. You had the option of using a lifejacket or taking a ferry across the river, but I was set on swimming across on my own. I am no Michael Phelps by any means, and I was glad on my two practice swims I did I discovered I can at least still somewhat competently swim and felt confident enough in my abilities to do the swim without a life jacket. Of course they had to pick the widest part of the river along the track to swim across. I have no idea what the official measurement was, but I would approximate it to be around 1/6 of a mile. I dove in off a dock constructed just for the race and went in guns blazing. I American Crawled my way across and went in with a mindset thinking of the handful of people I legitimately hated throughout my life and that I am going finish this in spite of them. That got me going pretty good, and the last quarter of the swim I started to finally lose steam and for the last quarter of the river I started to worry as I dragged into a slow doggie paddle for the remainder of the swim, but eventually I made it across. It felt quite powerful emerging from the river. I have no idea how to properly put it into context, but it felt very uplifting and like I was getting past a whole new hurdle in life I have been wanting to overcome for quite sometime now. In other words, it felt great.

A short little climb up a riverbank, and a little sprint to the finish line marked an official finish/survival of the Uffda Mud Run. I received a spiffy looking keychain bottle opener at the finish line and quickly made haste to a water hose set up nearby so Sean and I could spray ourselves down. My shoes were totally trashed at this point and instead of hosing them off I tossed them into a growing pile of other disposed shoes. I was a little sore for the next couple of days, and I got a few expected little cuts and bruises all over me. This run definitely kicked my ass, but it was worth it and I am glad I finished. I can say without a doubt I would not do this race on my own, but if I found another couple of friends to do it with me I would for sure. It was invaluable to have a friend with me here so we could help each other out by assisting with boosts, cheering each other on to keep our spirits up and just flat out enduring the event with each other until the very end.

Latest Race Log

5K

UND Autism 5k - 4/20/13 - 26:22 - 23rd out of 74
Uffda Mud Run - 9/7/13 - ??:?? - Finished

10k

Hillsboro Run - 6/13/13 - 50:17 - 23rd out of 55
Dewey Memorial - 6/1/13 - 50:21 - 15th out of 56
Firecracker - 7/4/13 - 53:13 - 42nd out of 92
Frozen Feat - 2/16/13 - 53:57 - 50th out of 108

Half Marathon

Fargo - 5/18/13 - 2:02:48 - 2062nd out of 5526

Resolution 13 - Defeat Suppression - Complete

Defeated!