Alumni Track Gathering

This past weekend there was a gathering unlike any other in Umaine Track history. With the creative thinking of some of the Alumni, a new Alumni group has finally been started. The goal of the group is to keep relations with new and old alumni and in the process have get-togethers and raise money to benefit the team. Pretty sweet idea. I will soon post a picture of the first gathering, which was a bowlathon. I will also say that I had the high score of the day, 193. Now if I had my boy Ryan's ball which is back in NY, the score could have been quite a bit higher. There were probably about 25 people that showed up, which on short notice, is a great success. Afterwards, we all went out and partied throughout Portland.


We started at The Great Lost Bear, and apparently this place is ranked as one of the top 10 bars in the country. They did not have pitchers of beer, but they did have TOWERS of beer which stood around 3-4 feet high. Pretty sweet. Towards the end of the first bar experience, Lansing and Guerette decided that they were gonna drive back to Worcester, MA, and we were none too happy. So a deal was struck where I would drink the last 1 liter and something of a TOWER right out of the spigget without stopping. I kicked the towers ass, but did not take into consideration of how I would feel 2 minutes after finishing that much beer. Long story short, I sucked it up and soldiered on.

Other than that, it is business as normal here in Maine. Its snowing now, and I have a feeling that the snow is not going anywhere anytime soon. It does look cool though I do have to say, hopefully the temperature stays above 0 degrees this Winter though....not looking foward to that.

Sun Dec. 7 - 1 hour 45 min. Around Orono/Old Town....snowing all day....easy run
Sat Dec 6 - 3 mile warmup, 1 mile tempo, 800 in 2:10, hard 400 and 4xhills, 3 mile cooldown. (5:20, 2:10, 55) It was a pretty easy workout.
Fri Dec 5 - 1 hour 8 min around town, strides and drills
Thurs Dec 4 - 6 miles then 21 minutes of Diagonals then 2 miles back to the apt.
Wed Dec 3 - 3 miles in the AM, 7 miles in PM
Tues Dec 2 - 3 mile warmup, 4 x 800, 4 x 400, 3 mile cooldown
(2:15,2:18,2:17,2:17)(62,64,64,63)

BACK IN MAINE

I decided that leaving NY on Monday morning would be best at around 5:15 am. I was thinking to myself, yeah there will be no one on the roads, I will flyyyyy up to Maine. I also forgot that I live in NY and there are always a ton of people on the roads. I also hit a ton of traffic in Mass. The drive, which consisted of 2 pieces of Chapati (Kenyan Bread) and 3 pretty big cups of tea, took about 7 hours with 3 stops (to get rid of the tea). I also stopped at Whole Foods in Portland, ME and grabbed some good veggies and 2 Growlers of Beer that had the type of beer written on the cap in permanent marker....so thats how I know its gonna be good. Once I got back up here I took a sweet 3 hour nap, and woke up to the final fight scene of Karate Kid II. The one bad thing about the nap was that I woke up when it was dark out and had to run in the dark, which is what I was trying to avoid the whole time. Then ate dinner with Brenna and Steph and watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall....which by the way was friggin hysterical.

In the previous couple of days I worked a ton at the Bronxville Running Company and did my training. Nothing crazy really happened. I think that I started getting a handle on my gambling issues, and started cutting out all the sweets. I am trying to make a good start to the indoor training.

I ran a race the Saturday after Thanksgiving in Bronxville. It was the Katie Welling Memorial race and I won the 2.5 mile race, which was pretty hilly in the beginning, in 12:17. I really couldn't get into a groove the first mile but after that I was all set. I did get a sweet Silver Plate for winning.


Also while I was home, I was playing manager for the Kenyans. They would ask me to book their plane tickets to their meets on my credit card, which gives me bonus miles, and they pay me in cash. No big deal right? Well, when there is a mistake and you book the flight one week early and you don't know if it was your mistake or theirs, thats where it gets fun. I had to pick one of the guys up at 5:45am and he was like ummmmmm the race is next week. I went home and had to make sure that i cancelled the flight and rebooked for the next week. This was very stressful because I had to change the flight before the actual fight took off. Then I had to pay a $150 fee to change the flight. Let's just say I had a rough morning. I guess everything worked out in the end.

Mon. Dec 01 - 8 miles easy, after traveling to Orono and napping.
Sun. Nov 30 - 13 miles with Joseph, Elijah and Beau. Relaxed first half and balls out second half
Sat. Nov 29 - 3 mile warmup, Bronxville's Katie Welling Memorial Run 2.5 miles, 3 mile cooldown (12:17, 1st place)
Fri. Nov 28 - 1 hour around Bronxville and on the BXR path
Thurs Nov 27 - 3 mile warmup, 15x1 min on 1 min off at Vanny, 3 mile cooldown....The second half felt like balls and I had to convince myself to keep working.
Wed. Nov 26 - 6 miles easy
Tues. Nov 25 - Off - not feeling too good
Mon. Nov 24 - Off - not feeling too good
Sun. Nov 23 - 11 miles with Abiyot, Stephen, Stanley and Elijah. I was dying after 45 min, and don't know if it was because I hadn't eaten anything or just because I wasn't feeling too good. We were going at a nice comfortable pace for a while too, and when they picked it up, I felt terrible so I ran by myself for the last 30 minutes and actually had to walk once or twice. I think alot of it was because I didn't eat in the morning.
Sat. Nov 22 - 3 mile warmup, 4x1200-1300, 3 mile cooldown. I ran this with Elijah and Stephen. We ran a pretty consistent workout at the Rockies and the intervals were somewhere between 1200 and 1300 meters. I led the first 3 and then Stephen pushed a little bit on the 4th which wasn't really anything that I worried about. Afterwards I did 4 x 150 meter hill strides.