5 Month Recap
Category: Sports

Hey whats going on everyone

So I haven't written in a while, and I miss it, because I truly do enjoy writing and conveying my thoughts on paper. There has been so much going on, I've been so busy, sometimes I feel like I have my hands tied behind my back and I'm trying to juggle. I always mean to write especially when I go out for a run, a ride, or a work out (which hasn't been too recently actually) because when I'm out there by myself, just my will against the task at hand I just love to think, I love to meditate on what is going on in my life, what my hopes and dreams are, and what the next thing I need to do is. With that in mind, I'll update you all since my last entry.

So 4 months have come and gone since my last entry, thank you to all who said a little prayer, it worked. I went to mass at 6:30 in the morning, I think the Thursday before the marathon and I listened to mass, my family said a rosary for me (yes, like the Mexicans we are) and I went on to run the San Francisco Marathon in 4 Hours, 31 minutes, and 27 seconds…my best time ever, by 1 Hour and 24 minutes…a drastic improvement, without any ankle trouble.

August 8^th I made Meghan my girlfriend and we've been together since—loving every minute.

September 29^th came around and it was time for my boss and work friend Spencer and his wife Kim show who was boss in the Lake Tahoe Marathon. It was so incredibly cold, it actually snowed the night before the run, and there was ice and snow on the road we were running on. For any of you who know Tahoe City and South Lake Tahoe, the course was 26.2 mile one way run, starting in Tahoe City, and running south on HWY 89 to South Lake Tahoe—definitely one of the most difficult stretches of road to run, but also one of the most scenic.

I had resolved to stay with Spencer and Kim. My reason was: I got them into this, and I'm going to get them out. For 6 long months they trained, they sweat and they ached, and in the end the result was a 5:09:00 marathon. This is super impressive when you take into consideration the fact that we were NOT at sea level and the air was definitely much thinner. We went up to Tahoe once, three weeks before the race to do a 23 mile run, just to see what it was going to be like, but that was all the altitude training we did. I finished a minute behind them because my left calf began to cramp. I crossed the finish line limping. In 5:10:00…still 45 minutes faster than my Tahoe time last year.

October blew by, and my IronMan Training began. I will be participating in the full VineMan IronMan on August 2^nd 2008, until then I will train, train and train…that is to say, swim a lot, bike a lot, and run a lot. Swimming is definitely one of my weak points as I have no background in this sport. I learned how to swim during the summer…back in June and July (which is why my ankle was hurting just before the SF Marathon) and have since taken a total immersion swim program which improved my stroke count in a 25 yard pool from 25 to 17. Hahaha, just the other day actually on Sunday December 2^nd I received my wet suit. I was supposed to go out for out first group open water swim at aquatic park in the San Francisco Bay, but I was too nervous, so I decided instead to go for a dip in an outdoor, unheated pool. It was unexplainably cold. I mean, the wet suit did its job, and it kept me surprisingly warm however, my hands and feet were exposed as was my face, so when I tried to put my face underwater, I couldn't breathe, I had to come up right away, gasping for air because it was so cold. I did however learn that I just need to learn to relax. If I can do this, I'll be golden.

Well that's my update for now, I felt like I had a lot more to say, but I'll try to keep this as updated as possible now, at least once a week. Until then stay healthy everybody, and make a donation to help stop blood caner and help me cross the finish line in August.

www.active.com/donate/tntsvmb/ceja

2:51 AM - 3 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

I'm Injured
Current mood: awake
Category: Sports

Whats going on everyone?

OMG! So on Saturday July 21^st I went out for my regular maintenance run. It was an easy 10 miler but here's what happened. I think I may have injured my right ankle. It's not so much the ankle, its where the shin and the ankle meet. For two days it was really tender and I was having trouble getting around at work, but now it's a little better. However, the week before I did an 8 mile and I got the same type of pain but I felt better during the week. The thing that is making me nervous is that I have less than 7 days until the San Francisco Marathon and I'm hurt. I really hope this pain doesn't come back because really, we've trained too hard to be held back during the last week of training. Everyone say a little prayer for me, I'm gonna need it. Thanks a lot, I'll keep you all posted.

3:18 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

23 Mile Run
Current mood: accomplished
Category: Sports

Hey!

Well I hope I got most of your attention with my previous two posts, for those of you interested I have a new one, and here it is.

So Saturday afternoon (7/7/07) Alex and I went on our 23 mile run. He had originally wanted to run in The City but when I told him on Friday before the run to go out and drive the course so we knew where we were running, he changed his mind and decided to run Sawyer Camp Trail … twice. I personally didn't mind. Honestly, I didn't really want to run in The City. I never really care where we run as long as it is marked and accurate, but I want to save the San Francisco run for the marathon, that way it'll feel a lot more special. 

In short, Sawyer camp trail is 12 miles round trip. On the southern end it starts at Crystal Springs Road and Skyline Blvd. In the north it starts in Millbrae off of Hillcrest on I-280. We always start on the San Mateo side and run towards Millbrae. The trail begins relatively flat, with only a slight un-noticeable incline. At about mile 4.5 the trail straightens out a little and you can see some rolling hills. The big one however doesn't come until about mile 5.25 (or in our case 17.25 as well) where for about ¾ of a mile you're just going up. However if you think about it, that's the end of one way, so for 6 miles when you turn around you're basically going downhill.

Starting Thursday July 5, I had begun to mentally prepare myself. While my body was ready to go the distance, that wasn't necessarily the case for my brain. It wasn't anything too intense; I just had to keep reminding myself that I had to run 23 miles in 2 days. My water consumption increased, and my focus on the upcoming task grew stronger. Mental preparation is something that's a little hard to describe, but I'm sure any athlete, performer, or competitor knows just what I'm talking about.

On Friday July 6, I went to work, had an awesome shift then proceeded to do my normal Friday night long run routine. I went to the Harbor in Belmont to say Hi to my bartended friend Stephanie, and have a good luck beer. After that I went home and I went to bed. I probably got about 6.5 or 7 hours of sleep that night.

My Saturday morning routines are pretty much set in stone; I get out of bed, head over to the kitchen, get some water boiling for my oatmeal, come back to my room, get dressed (I usually have my outfit picked out the night before) apply body glide (anti-chaffing cream) put on my shoes and make sure they feel right, then head back to the kitchen and add the oatmeal to the water. This is usually all done in about 5 minutes. While I let my oatmeal cool, I prepare my "quick fuel" endurance drink and put it in the fridge. I eat my oatmeal with brown sugar only, and sometimes I'll have a yogurt. I'll usually listen to some classical music while I have my breakfast.

I had decided Friday night that I wanted to get up a little earlier and go looking for a set of lenses for my sunglasses. I own 6 pairs, but all the lenses are for extremely sunny conditions, and a lot of this trail is shaded. Running in shaded conditions with dark glasses puts a lot of strain on my eyes, and I didn't feel like going through that, but I ended up having to anyway because none of the stores I checked carried the product I was looking for. Now with my normal routine out of the way all I could do was sit and wait for Alex to be ready and call me.

I ended up pacing around the house for what seemed to be an hour or so while he finally got up and got ready. In the meantime I made a CD from my "ironman" play list. I created this play list of about 18 songs for one specific purpose: get me through the last 6 or 8 miles of the San Francisco Marathon. The songs on this play list are the ones that I have found to most effectively get my blood going and get me to the finish line without having to think about the kind of pain I'm in etc. At the end of this blog I'll post my songs. Anyway, Alex came over and we were on our mission for the 23 mile run. We got to the trail at about 12:45pm. It was overcast, a little windy, and we both felt some baby rain drops.

We started the run and I felt great. I was trying my hardest not to think too much about the fact that we were going to have tom come back turn around and run it one more time, otherwise that could have been disastrous. Instead I tried to focus more on the mile at hand and think about how far we had come, instead of how much further we had to go. The first 12 miles were great. We started off a little fast but knew we had to pace ourselves and had a nice little rhythm going by the time we got warmed up. We got to mile 13 and 14 we were still going strong. We were on pace, and I was not thinking "oh God, we have to do this one more time" I was excited I was energized I was ready to finish. But then something happened. We got to about mile 16.75 (4.75 heading north) and we were just about to start climbing uphill again when my watch rang for the walk break. (We're using the Jeff Galloway training program for marathons which involves taking a series of one minute walk breaks on regular intervals, anywhere between every 4 and 8 minutes. On our long runs, we do a 6:1 ratio. Where for every six minutes of running we're walking for 1 minute) but Alex decided he was in the zone and wanted to keep running. I didn't care, I kept running too. I kinda wanted to get up thru mile 17 and the hill that belongs to it (mile 5 one way) just to get that extra little work out, but keep in mind, we still had 6 more miles to go.

As I crossed the San Andreas Dam there was a guy walking in the opposite direction. He had a Serra Padres sweatshirt on. As I ran by him, I said "Class of 03" he responded "Go Padres." That gave me some juice.

So we ran thru that walk break, not a big deal, if we take the next one we can probably recover pretty easy, but then 6 minutes later and about a quarter of the way thru mile 17 (5.25 one way) at the foot of the big hill, its time to walk again, but Alex just raises his arm and makes a "follow me" motion. He's now a good distance ahead of me. I'm loosing him around a few turns, but I'm not picking up my pace, I'm not slowing down either. We probably skipped one more break somewhere, and then finally when we can see the 18 mile marker (6 one way, and the end of the trail heading north) he says we'll walk at the marker, I yell back in agreement, but then something happened. I got to mile 18 and I felt great, so instead, when I got to the marker and passed him (he was still ahead of me) I said, we'll walk at the next walk break. It was too late for him, he had overexerted himself trying to get up those hills, and he had to walk immediately, so I took off. When I started approaching the descent I got so excited, the walk break hadn't rung yet, so I just flew, I let gravity do its job and I cruised downhill. Then I saw the Serra Dad on his way up, I pumped my arm in a closed fist and smiled; he smiled back. once again, I was given the energy to continue without walking. Halfway down my watch rang, but I ignored it, I had too much momentum, I couldn't stop, nor did I want to. I was almost in an unforced sprint; I just wanted to keep running. I got to mile 19 (mile 1 heading south) and my walk break rang, but I didn't take it, this was another steep downhill mile, I kept my pace and kept running. Mile 20 (mile 2 heading south) soon followed. Alex was now nowhere to be found. My left brain had begun to talk to me. My mind was now trying to be rational. It was telling me I should stop because I wouldn't be able to finish, but I didn't want to for fear of how difficult it might be to get going again. I took a one minute walk break at mile 20 when my watch rang. When it beeped again to alert me to get going, it wasn't as tough as I thought it was going to be, I ran through mile 21, and took the next walk break. Still no sign of Alex. About 2 or 3 minutes into my running portion, I hear "you fucker, do you know how hard it was to catch you?" I laughed out loud and replied "Atta Baby!!" we wouldn't be separated again for the last 2 miles, but, they were painful and long. We had to take the remaining walk breaks on cue; we still finished on pace.

We finished our 23 mile run in 3:53:59. We're on pace to finish the San Francisco Marathon in 4:25:00. I'm really excited, I can't wait. I want to get out there and kick some ass! Can you imagine improving your time in anything by almost an hour and a half?

1. Push It – Salt-N-Pepa
2. Pump It – Black Eyed Peas
3. Meant To Live – Switchfoot
4. Got to Do It – Andrew W.K.
5. I Miss You – blink-182
6. Someone That You're With – Nickelback
7. Real Gone – Sheryl Crow
8. Encore – 50 Cent/Dr. Dre/Eminem
9. Cold Hard B**** – Jet
10. Maneater – Nelly Furtado
11. Girls Own Love – Andrew W.K
12. Suds in the Bucket – Sara Evans
13. Yes I Do – Rascal Flatts
14. Take It Off – Andrew W.K.
15. Flagpole Sitta – Harvey Danger
16. I Get Wet – Andrew W.K.
17. Tubthumping – Chumbawamba
18. You're The Best – Joe Esposito
19. Carmina Burana: O Fortuna – Boston Symphony Orchestra & Seiji Ozawa
20. He's a Pirate – Klaus Badelt

10:06 PM - 2 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

I am an endurance Athlete Pt. I
Current mood: Motivated
Category: Motivated Goals, Plans, Hopes

Hey every body.

Before I really get started I'm gonna give some of you a little background on me and my lifestyle, what I do and why I do it and lastly, why I am taking the time to post these blogs which may or may not be read.  I promise to be completely honest and convey my feelings as accurately as possible.

Fitness and sports have always been a way of life for me.  I love challenges and I enjoy the outdoors. I'd rather be out doing some sort of physical activity than sitting at home on the computer or on the couch watching TV or playing video games.

I haven't always been an endurance athlete. I've actually only been doing endurance events for 2 years. Throughout high school I weight trained on and off, and I was on the Volleyball team my sophomore, junior, and senior year. It wasn't until June 2005 that I began to train for the Honolulu Marathon which would take place later that year in December. I embarked on this mission with the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, a charitable organization which funds research so that there may some day be a cure for AIDS. The training program was six months long. Towards early October life happened. I lost motivation. I ran into a few personal problems and I just stopped training. Four months of endurance went down the drain. By November it finally hit me that I had one month until the marathon and my furthest distance was only 16 miles; 10.2 miles short of the full distance. I had to get back out there. I hadn't run for just about a month, and I was begging to get extremely worried.

When the Honolulu Marathon finally came 16 miles was still my farthest distance. So basically my body didn't know what anything after that felt. At 13.1 miles my split was just about two and a half hours, which should have made my finish time about five hours if not faster; (runners usually tend to pick it up in the second half of a race) my finish time was 5:50:43. My second half was almost an hour slower than my first half. I was extremely disappointed. I vowed to go back and finish in less than 5 hours.

Around mid to late April 2006 I began to talk to my best friend Alex about running another marathon. I told him that if he wanted to join me I could train him. I still had all of my material from the Honolulu Marathon a few months earlier and so he began to run with me. We decided we were going to run the Lake Tahoe Marathon. I love Tahoe, it is like my second home, and when I saw the flyer in my Honolulu packet I immediately knew I was running that marathon.

(This Blog is begging to get very long, and I don't want to lose peoples interest. Click on: "I am an endurance athlete Pt. II" for the rest of my story.

9:25 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

I am an endurance Athlete Pt. II
Current mood: Motivated
Category: Motivated Goals, Plans, Hopes

Well here's what happened. As our coach I'm totally to blame for this one. I hadn't done a whole lot of reading, I didn't put a real structured schedule together and we didn't really start training until about mid May. That's a 6 month training program crammed into four and a half months, with one beginner runner, and one inexperienced runner. We weren't too strict about our running, he had school I was injured with an ankle problem that hadn't gone away since before Honolulu and we weren't doing the mileage we needed to be doing. The longest run before Tahoe was 16 miles. Sound familiar? Not only that but we didn't' take into account the hills, or the elevation...let me rephrase that, we knew there was an elevation change but our 21 year old male egos told us that it wasn't going to affect us, we were unstoppable, and we were going to do just fine. We finished Tahoe in 5:55:17. For me that was 5 minutes slower than Honolulu, but considering the more difficult conditions it wasn't bad at all. I was a little disappointed with my performance. I vowed to go back and finish in less than 5 hours.

While in Tahoe my ankle injury only got worse. I finally decided to see my doctor when I got home in October and she basically said you need to stay off of it. That was the last thing I wanted to hear. I wanted to go to Honolulu in a few months and hit my goal.  I disregarded my doctor's advice for a week, but then my ankle got really bad. I said forget it, I'll just have to set a new goal. Looking thru my Tahoe Marathon packet I saw a flyer for the San Francisco Marathon. Bingo. I had found my new goal. I began a 4 month resting period, and in mid February Alex and I began training for the San Francisco Marathon which would take place on July 29, 2007. By now, we had both learned form our mistakes and we were ready to do it right. I put together for us a 6 month training program based on the Jeff Galloway marathon running strategy. I went out and I bought a running book, and we adhered very strictly to our schedule. The race is just about 3 weeks away now; we feel great and most exciting of all were projecting a sub four and a half hour finish.

For those of you dying to know about my grudge match against Tahoe and Honolulu they're both planned for this year. I have been training my General Manager and his wife to run the Tahoe Marathon with Alex and myself on September 29^th and this week I began to train my dad and my brother to run Honolulu with me December 9^th. It would seem as if I have the rest of my year planned out right? Well I do, but I also have most of my next year planned out. The number one reason for these blogs is to ask your support. You might be asking support for what, it seems like you're pretty much set. Well, with everything that I've talked about so far I am pretty much set, but as of yesterday evening I am officially on the Iron Team.

Starting in October I will begin training with Team in Training for the 2008 Canada Iron Man. What this consists of is a 2.4 mile swim, a 112 mile bike ride and a 26.2 mile run, all in the same day. I am expecting this to take somewhere between 12 and 14 hours. Here's the thing though in order to do this I have agreed to raise $8,000 for the leukemia and Lymphoma Society. As many of you probably know, I can't afford to do this on my own, I am asking for all your help so I can raise this money. I have somewhere around 120 friends. Just think if you all donated 10 dollars, I'd have $1,200 taken care of. If you all donated 20 dollars I'd have double the amount $2,400.

9:30 AM - 2 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment