Praying and Running

The other day I got all caught up in setting running goals for myself for the rest of the year. After the goals were set, I found myself starting to worry about how I was going to reach them. Wondering if there would be time to sufficiently prepare for them all. My goals were to run a 5k in under 20 minutes, to run a half marathon in 1:25 minutes and qualify for and run in the Boston marathon in 2014. At first, I thought that setting and meeting these goals would make me a more serious runner. In fact, I thought that to be the "serious" runner I want to be that I needed these goals. However, while I was running the other morning I realized that first of all, I was thinking about how to shift my training to meet my 5k goal. Then I began thinking about the right approach to a 1:25 half while training to qualify for Boston in a full marathon a month later. That is when I realized that the ancillary goals were starting to consume my focus and quite possibly interfere with the b

Initially I bought this book because I have really enjoyed the author, Greg Strosaker’s, blog and following his training on DM( dailymile ), a workout journal and social networking site for athletes. Honestly, I wasn’t sure what to expect but I didn’t think that I would be getting a book that I would put down and look forward to picking back up, but that is exactly what I got. In other words, knowing the book was a compilation of training entries from dailymile and blog posts I was expecting an enjoyable read but nothing that would really grab and hold my attention. I soon found out that the book would be one that I was eager to get back to. In the prolog you get an overview of the injury that would bring Greg’s previous season to an early end and the treatment he went through to get back to running. This really sets up the book nicely and puts you in Greg’s corner wishing him the best as he begins running again after a season ending injury. Once through the prolog you are taken al

If there is one characteristic of worship during Easter that I would point to as something that I truly enjoy and look forward to more and more it is the frequency with which we pronounce "Alleluia". The word certainly is not restricted in use to only the Easter season but during this season we use it a lot. In addition, this word is familiar to nearly every single person regardless of their faith. In fact, the word seems so common place that its significance sometime seems lost. But when you stop and take a minute to look at this word, which the Church seems so intent on saying during the main celebration of the Christian faith, its significance is striking. As this article in the Catholic Encyclopedia points out, the word Alleluia comes to us from several places in scripture, most notably in the Psalms and in Revelations and is the worship-word of Creation. The word means "All hail to Him Who is!" I like to keep this significance in mind  at Mass when we pr

A year of anticipation. A year of preparation. 12 weeks of intense, focused training. 3 weeks of competitive banter with a dailymile running friend. All of this led to a 1:32:39 13.1 mile PR effort at the One America 500 Festival Mini Marathon on 5/5/2012. I ran my first half marathon here a year ago and I was hooked on racing. I knew when I crossed the finish line in 2011 that I would be running more races. I knew that I would be back for the 2012 running of this race. What I didn't know is how much faster and how much more competitive I would be. In other words, I have been looking forward to this race for a year. It has been a primary focus of my life for the last 12 weeks as I went from my regular running to an intense focus on preparing for this race. The mini is the largest half marathon in the country. 35,000 people run the half marathon and another 5000 run the accompanying  5k for a total of 40,000 participants. Factor in these people's family and other spectators