Feats of Strength. Fab Five. Five Guys. Guy Fieri. Minute To Win It. Buzzer Beater. Bryce Drew. Valpo. IUPUI. Hoosiers. Greatest Movie Ever. Greatest Documentary Ever. Fab Five.

Pull-Ups on a Subway.

Slownah and I once had a Feats of Strength competition. It was supposed to be first one to 5 wins. We counted races, games, anything of the sort. It was before we high jumped in our living room senior year. He beat me in basketball. He beat me at Pomona in the pouring rain. Then I rocked him in some 8s. We never made it to 5, but I'm still up 3-2. We're supposed to race a 100. Right now, I could definitely beat him in a pull-up war. I dominated Erison in the Subway Pull Up War 22-20. I dominated him just like a certain group of Freshman in Ann Arbor dominated college basketball in the early 90s. I loved the Fab Five. Want a delicious burger? 110 and B'Way just opened up a Five Guys. Guy Fieri is a tool. Fricken "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives" is an alright show, but he always has sunglasses behind his head. And now "Minute To Win It" is everywhere. But a minute to win it can be sweet when a Buzzer Beater is involved. Bryce Drew hit one of the greatest Buzzer Beaters ever. He went to Valpo. Valpo has a sweet name, but IUPUI (pronounced eewy peewy) has a sweeter one. IUPUI is in Indiana, that's where Hoosiers takes place. Hoosiers is the Greatest Movie Ever (behind "The Naked Gun" of course). The Greatest Documentary Ever? THE FAB FIVE
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Follow that stream of conscious? Me neither really. The tourney starts tomorrow. Look for a basketball related post to go up Thursday morning.

We're starting to get ready for outdoors, which means we have been working out outside again. This weather needs to step its game up. A 4-mile tempo on a Wednesday morning isn't usually that bad of a thing...but when it's 38 and rainy...show's over. See ya later.

Quick Hiatus

Back in Michigan after a long day of travel. Don’t have my bags, but thanks to Coach Henner quietly yelling at Bumbi and I for not bringing our spikes carry on, I have some flats to race in tomorrow for Shay! It’s nice to be back, and I’m a little jet-lagged, but going to be ready to roll tomorrow.

The race in Dublin was alright, it’s hard to complain about a sub-4 mile, but was disappointed with the race. Still trying to get a big one, but sometimes you have to wait a long time for them. (Bumbi and I did spend some time listening to Rage Against the Machine after the race to get over it.)

For those of you have enjoyed the daily posts during July, I’m going to take a little break. I’m going to be up north and not check internet all weekend. I’ll post a recap of the entire trip sometime next week once I get back. Happy summer.

Let’s Go!

Let's Go!

So I ended up not racing this weekend. My calf was sore after Thursday's strides and the trainers told me I had a micro-tear on it, which led to some bruising and soreness. We decided that since it was only mid-January, there was really no point to test the thing and make me miss more than I needed to. So instead we decided to just go for easy runs and get in some elliptical running on the weekend. I'll be heading back up to Penn State in two weeks to get after an 800 again. Being at a meet all day is a boring thing when you're not running, and I definitely found some reasons to get moving and racing again (Penn State had a runner go 2:19 in the 1k, he'll hopefully be in the 800 in a couple of weeks as well).

This week we'll do things a little differently in that I'll go over my training for the week first (since I thankfully didn't miss that much by not racing) and then I'll explain what "Let's Go!" actually means since I have used it a few times on this site. The week was a good one of training even though I had to take a few lighter days. Tuesday we did some 5k type work. This is the kind of stuff that makes me cringe. It's in between the tempo pace and the fast pace, so it hurts like a B. We did 4x (400, 800, 400) and each set had the pace of the 400 move down starting at 69 and moving down to 65. This is the kind of stuff where not one interval gets you, but they all start adding up and you definitely question if you'll be able to finish it up. Thankfully for us, we hit the times pretty perfectly and would only go a little too quick on the 400s.

Then on Thursday we did the old double workout trick. This isn't the most fun trick in the book, but it is one that I had seen before. I had to wake up and go run a 20 minute tempo on the treadmill in the morning. Then, we came back to the track in the afternoon and did 8x150 meters at a pretty quick pace. Neither of these workouts really gets you, but then when you're sitting at home that night you realize that you are pretty tired indeed. I like the two workout days though, they make you feel blue collar. Then, we had to take a few easy days to let the calf heal, and its definitely feeling better. In total I hit 65 miles for the week with some cross training mixed in there as well. And after the meet i'm feeling ready to go. Which reminds me: "Let's Go!"

My Uncle sent out an email wondering where "Let's Go" came from. Its origins I do not know, but I do know that my cousins Joe and Dan got me hooked on it. I have a small theory that everything in life that I think is cool comes from basketball (much more on that in future posts), and "Let's Go" came from exactly that. I originally started saying it when my cousin Joe and I were about to street race in downtown Boston after USA Indoors last year and he kept on talking trash to me saying, "let's go." The word quickly became a staple in my lexicon. After winning an early season 1500 at ASU (see video page) I was quite excited and kept on shouting "Let's Go!" to my teammates. One of them said to me, "Dude, the race is over, there's nowhere to go anymore." Fair enough.

However, This is a thank you to my cousins for letting me take some of their basketball coolness and bring it to the short shorts and tight tights world of nerdy track and field. And as always: Let's Go!