The Long Run Book Review

I just finished up "The Long Run" by Matt Long. This is the story of an endurance athlete and FDNY Firefighter who got hit by a bus. The book chronicles his amazing recovery, the very emotional feelings that he went through, and his triumphant return of running the New York Marathon, and then finishing an Ironman Triathlon. He should have died from all the injuries that he sustained in the accident, but he worked through all of those things and ended up doing something after his accident that most people don't ever do with a completely 100% healthy body. It is a great story and at the same time tragic. The suffering and trials that we face are overwhelming sometimes, but the ability to overcome those is even more astounding than the horrible things that can happen to us. The fact that God has given us a soul that longs to overcome the fallenness of the world is an incredible thing. We are clearly created for another place, a place that even if we aren't concious of it drives us to amazing feats.

Hale Freezes Over 10k & Birthday Celebration This Weekend!

 

I get to run a race as part of my birthday celebration! Audrey and I are heading to Orem, UT on Saturday to take part in our 2nd running of the "Hale Freezes Over" 10k. We ran this race last year, and we had a lot of fun doing it. The race is the first item on the agenda for my birthday day. We are also going to go to a running store and I'm going to get a new pair of trail running shoes. My very first pair actually. I plan on running quite a few trail races this Spring, Summer, and Fall. Even a few ultras hopefully. I've got a few shoes that I'm looking at getting Brooks Cascadia, New Balance MT101, are a couple. It's going to be a fun day, the weather is mostly sunny and a high of 43 degrees! Should make for perfect race weather.

Birthday Run

I ran 9 miles this morning. The morning of my 28th birthday. All before 7 a.m. and all on a treadmill.

My 1st Professional Massage

Thanks to an early birthday present from my wife I received my very first professional massage yesterday. It was perfectly timed too. I subbed at the Middle School in the morning, and I was completely ready to be done dealing with hormonal students. Audrey has received a massage from the woman who did mine, so she gave me the heads up on what to do when I got there.
If you have never had a massage it can be a little bit nerve racking when you first walk into the room because you get down to your unders. But you are under a blanket the entire time and as soon as the massage starts you completely forget about everything else and enter into this parallel universe where you are not yet asleep but you are not awake either.
Since I've been running inside more I noticed that my feet were hurting quite a bit and my hips have had some soreness in them. So those were the 2 areas that I said were the worst. The massage was an hour long and it went by so fast. When I turned over on my back she could instanly tell why my hips had been hurting. My right side was about 1/2 an inch higher than my left. All the muscles were tightening up on that side pulling it higher. So she went to work on loosening those (which was painful by the way) but when she was done my hips were aligned evenly again and I could totally feel it.
Today though my lower back is sore from all the manuevering she had to do. I'm hoping that when I go for my run today I can tell the difference in my stride. For a while I felt like my left foot just wasn't really coming down in the right place.
Anyway, go out and get a massage, say it's for your birthday.

Pinedale Indoor Triathlon Report

Well, it appears that I do know what I'm talking about. The swim portion of the Triathlon was a total bomb! I got beat by a man in his late 60's possibly 70's. But we will get to that humiliating portion of the report later.
Audrey and I left for Pinedale around 10:30 a.m. planning to stop at the health foods store and the Wind River Brewing Company, a great place to get some food and a cool atmosphere. The Triathlon started at 12:00 with different groups beginning at half hour intervals. Our start time wasn't scheduled until 2:30.
The roads were great and we arrived in plenty of time to get everything done before we checked in. The Pinedale Aquatic Center sponsored the Triathlon. They have a very nice facility. In our 2:30 group there were 7 people participating at the same time. The swim portion was first and I knew that I wasn't going to fair very well. We had 15 minutes to swim as many laps as possible. The horn blew and everyone took off, and I tried to keep up for about the 1st half of a lap and quickly realized that wasn't going to work. The rest of the time I spent switching from breast stroke, doggy paddle, backstroke, you name it I tried it. I am not a swimmer. I finished 8 laps in the 15 minutes. One guy finished 32 laps in the same time period. He is a fish.
I was glad that the swim portion was over, now I had to try and make up a little ground on the bike and the run. We had to be transported to another facility to use the bikes (I think they should move the bikes so you do all the events in one area). The bikes were supposed to be calibrated at the same resistance, but they weren't and the odometers were off, not giving an accurate reading of how far everyone went. That was a little bit frustrating. The bike part went decent; not that exciting to sit on a stationary bike and pedal as hard as you can for 20 minutes.
Finally we got to the run. I pretty much knew that there was no way I could make up enough ground that I lost on my swim, so my goal was to run the farthest out of anyone for the whole day. We ran inside on a track that is basically like the one at the Kemmerer Rec. Center. For my description of the Kemmerer Track and it being crowded link back to this blog post. Back to the race: The track is 1/15 of a mile, meaning you have to run 15 laps to equal a mile. We had a 15 minute time limit for this section as well.
I took off at a pretty fast pace and started lapping people after about the first 2 laps and that continued the entire time. There was one other guy there who I thought might be my competition, and he ran in an earlier heat. So I was cruising around by myself. Audrey was doing great as well, staying pretty close behind me. At one point I couldn't see her and thought that something happened, like she hurt her knee or something running on the curved track. When the end gun went off I had run 35 laps total - over 2.25 miles and I accomplished my goal of winning that portion. No one ran as far as I did.
Overall Audrey got 3rd in the 20-29 division - the swim really was the killer part. And I have no idea where I placed. But it was a lot of fun. Gave us a reason to get out of town on a Saturday and it was a great workout. We also got to talk to a few other people about the "Burn Your Lungs Run" on July 30th in Kemmerer.
Here are the official results with explanations as to how the points were given out. They didn't record the bike section of the race becuase the odometers were messed up.
http://www.pinedaleaquatic.com/thepac/Home_files/2011%20TRIATHLON%20RESULTS.pdf

Pinedale Indoor Triathlon

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I'm participating in the Pinedale Indoor Triathlon tomorrow. It should be interesting to see how it goes. There are around 30 people doing the individual portion and a number of others who are doing either the relay or a pair team. Each segment (swimming, biking, running) is split up into time segments. So you go as fast and as hard as you can for that amount of time and when it is all over they add up your total distance to see who wins. 

The part that has me the most concerned is the swim. I'm not a great swimmer, and since it is the first event I really don't want to get exhausted from it for the bike and especially the run. So I plan on taking my time on the swim and not killing myself. Then trying to make up time on the bike & run. We'll see how well my plan holds up against the rest of the competition.

Race Report of Park City 5k Snow Stomp

Official Jadon Ross Report of the Park City 5k Snow Stomp:
I've been in the process of reporting on this race for the past few days and it seems like every time I sit down to finish something else comes up. But not today!
This was the first race for Audrey and I for the 2011 season and we were so ready to go. The night before Audrey ended up talking to some of our friends here in Kemmerer at the Rec. Center, Tim & Sandy (also runners), and said we were running a race the next morning. Well, as it turns out they decided to register and run the race too! Not much is better than running a race and having friends do it with you. So we met up the next morning and headed to Park City, UT, about an hour and a half from Kemmerer. We arrived in plenty of time and got registered and warmed up.
The race had two divisions: snowshoe or running shoe. We chose running shoe since we have never ran in snowshoes. Turned out to be a good idea. I would say there were probably about 100 people participating. The course started out on the Rail Trail, a good packed trail that was pretty easy to run on. It was an out and back with a section that went to single track off in some deep snow. This part of the course was supposed to be the "snowshoe" section, giving the advantage to those who had on snowshoes so they didn't sink knee deep into the snow with every step.
When they marked the course they went over this section with snowshoes so there was one skinny path where if you stayed on top of it you wouldn't crash through. Audrey and I started the race towards the front and after only a couple of minutes we were in 3rd and 4th place with only 2 guys in front of us with snowshoes. We kept a pretty good pace going for the first mile and we passed both guys before the 1.5 mile turnaround. After the turnaround was where the course veered up and into the single track. I went first and Audrey followed. I moved pretty good through the stuff, every once in a while halfway losing my balance and then losing half of my leg in a pile of snow. If you weren't paying attention you could easily misstep and be off the section that was packed down.
Being in first place overall I didn't want to look back through this section of the course, but as it came to an end and spit us back out onto the well groomed Rail Trail I turned around just to see where everyone was. Audrey was still in 2nd and she was a little ways behind me and that's all I cared about. I cruised into the finish with a time of 26:20, first place overall, and Audrey came in behind me in 2nd place with a time of 26:49. Here's a link to the official race results. RESULTS
Not a bad race day for the Ross's. We got medals for our placements. Tim and Sandy also placed in their age divisions; 1st for Tim and 3rd for Sandy. Pretty good for them too considering they ran 11 miles the day before! After we received our awards we headed over to Red Rock Brewing Co. for a celebratory lunch. A perfect ending to a great race!
Below are some pictures from the day in no particular order.

Audrey leading the pack.



Posing before the race start.

Our friends Tim and Sandy who decided last minute to run the race!

Looking back from the starting line.

We ran along the Rail Trail in Park City, UT.

The winning bib number!

Self portrait while running, not always the easiest thing to do.

It was a beautiful day to run: 40 degrees and sunshine.

Audrey receiving her 1st place female award

Audrey got 1st overall female and Sandy placed 3rd in her age division!

Me getting my 1st place medal.

The race was organized by Sports-Am, and their sweet red van.

Tim won 1st place in his age division!

1st place overall!

Telling the race director about how deep the snow was if you got off the track.

Park City, UT