Tuesday, February 8, 2011

A New Reason to Run




The blog is back! I think it’s time to start back up again now that I’m ready to start talking about progress, not setbacks (plus Charlie Ban has been giving me a hard time for the long layoff). Although I haven’t been running well lately, I’d be lying if I said life wasn’t good. Lily joined our family on September 17th and she’s been bringing us great joy ever since. Parenting an infant is hard work but the littlest things she does make me so happy. Well back to the running – I’ll briefly explain the last few months of training. Besides missing time around the birth, it turns out my breathing issues were a result of bad reflux and my asthma also getting worse. I skipped Chicago, barely got to the line at Club Nats (and the result wasn’t pretty), and just now feel like I’m actually improving.

I’ve had some help getting back on track. First of all, Em is doing everything humanly possible to allow me to get some sleep and keep training hard. Also, I’ve been working with a coach – Jerry Alexander – a fellow Columbia alum! And the team has had some great new additions and the guys are rolling. It has been a big motivator just to get back to be able to run / workout with these guys. Also, my doctors get some credit for diagnosing the reflux and getting my asthma under control.

Recently, despite getting a bad case of food poisoning a couple weeks ago, I feel like I’m back on track. I ran over 80 miles last week and am weighing in close to race weight (the food poisoning had a positive impact on that one). So far this week I ran 11 with some hard strides on Monday and got in a double of an hour each today. The goal is still getting back to the trials and having some fun racing along the way. I’ve got a long way to go so it feels weird to talk trials at this point, but I’m motivated to give my family a reason to be proud of my running again. I’ll be focusing on training hard for a few months before I plan my racing schedule out a little more. Right now family, running, school and job search are keeping me busy but treating me well. I’m hoping to deliver some more good news via this blog in the months to come.

4 comments:

KLIM said...

Godspeed!

I will join you, and help you, every mile that I can.

Charlie Ban said...

The Duse is loose!

Joe Wiggy said...

I love it!!! You looked really good last night! Glad to see you getting back to the beast you are! Very excited to be chasing you around the track and in races to come!

Karl D. said...

Thanks guys! I'm looking forward to putting in some hard work together leading to some good times in the months to come.