Sunday, November 13, 2011

Trevor goes to a skate park, tumbling ensues....

When the sun woke me up today I didn't know if I could bring myself to run or bike today at all. Quite frankly, I felt like crap and had no motivation to run. I've been doing so much over the last 10 months that I've decided I need to mix things up a bit. I didn't know what it was, but I just wanted to do something else. Gears of War on the XBox? Not today. Ice Road Truckers on TV? .... Maybe I'll clean my room? HA!

As my roommate, Sarge, and I lumbered around the house, he said he was heading out to the skate park just few minutes down the road here in Arlington. Having never been to one, my curiosity perked up. I poked my head outside and saw weather was beautiful and at that point I wanted nothing more than to just be outside. Sarge extended an invitation to come along, and against better judgement I agreed. My first thoughts were, I'm going to get hurt, not be able to train, brake something, not be able to race. Ef. What am I doing? Yep, I'm going to die. Twice.

After finding the biggest shoes I could find, and the most skater-like clothes and we were there in fifteen minutes. I had even pulled out an old flat brim hat so I could look as rad as all other kool kids at the park, which I ended up not even wearing. From the trunk Sarge pulled a number of boards and he put on his most comfy of old skate shoes, and I watched him rolled down toward the park on his long board.

Little did I know, it was here I began my education of a whole new community of people. I've grown accustomed over to the years to the running, climbing, and similar athletic lifestyles, but this was a completely new culture to me. My only real knowledge of skating is from outdated experiences from the early 90's when skateboarding and in-line skating appealed to me and I lived briefly as one. We wore baggy jeans and listened to 90's punk and alternative. Sarge warned me that things were a little different these days. Jeans became tighter, music got worse, styles changed. But on a whole, the passion for skating remained fairly intact. As long as I didn't see any big JNCO jeans or too many wallet chains I figured I'd be okay.

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

I finally Got My Rear in Gear: A brief history and race report!

For the third year in a row I got in on a 5K foot race local to Alexandria Virginia. I'll digress a moment to tell you about the charity because it's something that has relevance to me as a man, and has affected people I know. The race is Get Your Rear in Gear which raises money for the Colon Cancer Coalition and encourages education and screening for colon cancer.

I started racing this in 2009 by trying to form a team as a way to hang out with some of my non-hasher friends (back when I was trail running for beer) in a very non-competitive way, but alas, very few responded. Thus, I opened this up to my kennel and the idea was received well. The team I formed was called the Kilt Lifters (after my own hash name) and we all wore kilts and carried cardboard shields, swords, and axes.

2009 Kilt Lifters

What's your favourite charity race?

The very first year we were 17 strong and created quite the presence at the course on such a brisk morning in November of 2009. Our team became well known for our antics and our enthusiasm, especially since one of our members, Meg, was a survivor of the disease.

In 2010 we were significantly smaller in numbers but managed to raise a decent sum for the cause, but again with a great presence at the race.

About 6 months ago I looked back on my times and placing and realised I was always just shy of an age group podium.. finishing 4th and 5th in in age group years before, but always fell in the range of 20-50th overall. I now had my new mission.

In mid-summer I also started training under my coach, Jared Campbell, to help me really refine my running. [I'll talk about how he drastically helped my distance running in my end of season report]. After he pulled me through a number of end-of-season triathlons he had me shift to a different style of running, mostly concentrating on the short course (5K) to build on my speed and final kick. This was very different than from any style of workout I've ever done before.

Focusing more on the race here's what happened.