Tag: running

Running Toe

Posted on by kenwheaton in Uncategorized

After a fine Italian dinner and a Salty Pimp from Big Gay Ice Cream, I returned home last night, sterilized a safety pin and jabbed it under the middle toe of my left foot, unleashing a little flood of toe juice. Blood and water. Nothing to barf over.

It seems I’ve a bit of a case of runner’s toe. Unlike most other runners who write about it, I’m not going to post a photo of my gnarly feet. The fact is, the two toes so afflicted don’t look that bad. Other runners’ toenails turn dark black and fall off. My turned a light shade of purple.
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From the running files

Posted on by kenwheaton in Uncategorized

Eight 400M “sprints” xup the North Hill. Oh, the things I saw on this one.

For the poets: Pink petals piled into drifts, pollen powdered over the cars, allergy sufferers saying, ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME WITH THIS SHIT ALREADY?!?

For the weirdos: A man taking his dog for a walk. Said man was also on a unicycle and juggling while doing this. Multitasking.

Managed to do 8 400s with very slow recoveries down the hill. Right hamstring started tightening up at the end, but screw it. It’s not the boss of me (yet).

I just copied and pasted this from Garmin Connect. First column is actual speed. Last column is pace per mile (was too lazy to delete). Obviously need to work on recovery time here. Wind was blowing pretty hard by the end.

1 1:45.6 0.25 7:03
2 3:34.1 0.25 14:17
3 1:54.7 0.25 7:39
4 3:54.9 0.25 15:39
5 1:49.6 0.25 7:19
6 4:16.8 0.25 17:08
7 1:52.9 0.25 7:32
8 4:51.9 0.25 19:28
9 1:53.1 0.25 7:32
10 4:32.5 0.25 18:10
11 1:53.1 0.25 7:32
12 5:14.7 0.25 20:59
13 2:00.1 0.25 8:01
14 4:17.3 0.25 17:09
15 1:52.6 0.25 7:31
16 4:46.5 0.25 19:27

Tip-Toeing Toward the Barefoot Church

Posted on by kenwheaton in Uncategorized

Yesterday, while running out of Prospect Park, I spied a man running into it, half a leash length behind his yellow lab. The man had no shoes on.

I am not saying to you that he was wearing Vibrams Fivefingers or Adidas adiPure or even Merrel Trail Gloves. I’m saying that the top of the man’s pasty white feet were glowing in the early morning light while his soles padded across the pavement.

I wasn’t immediately repulsed by this.
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2:02:02

Posted on by kenwheaton in Uncategorized

This past Saturday I ran the Hamptons Half Marathon for the second year in a row with TNT. This year I raised more money, which was sweet. But this year I ran the damn thing 12 minutes slower than last year, which was not sweet.

Going into the weekend, the forecast according to Accuweather went like this: Shitty with an increasing chance of shitty at the start of race. It wasn’t just that it was going to rain, it was that it was going to be warm for a race — 70 degrees or so — and likely humid.

Well, we lucked out on the rain.
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Wanted: Your Money; Why? To Fight Cancer

Posted on by kenwheaton in Uncategorized

I’ve signed up for my second year of running the Lymphoma & Leukemia Society’s Team in Training. Why? To raise money to cure cancer. To hang out with the friends I made last year. Because if I don’t sign up for these things, I start to grow as wide as I am tall. When I do sign up for these things I can eat ice cream and cake.

But before I blather on about me some more, a thing or two about LLS. Since it’s inception in 1949, it’s raised over $750 million to fight blood cancers. That’s a — what’s the scientific term? That’s an assload of money. What do they do with this money? Here’s a quick peak. And it’s made a difference. The easiest way to see this is to join TNT and notice the number of survivors actually training with groups. One gentleman who’ll be training with Brooklyn this summer spoke to us yesterday. He was diagnosed at the end of 2009. LESS THAN TWO YEARS AGO. He was headed for a painful future of bone-marrow transplants when his doctors told him about a study in its fourth year that had discovered that people with his specific type of cancer responded to chemo just as well as they did bone-marrow transplants. This past March he ran a half marathon. Now he’s training for New York.

DONATE HERE.

Guess who funded the study? Go on. Guess. LLS. And people like you who helped me raise money last year.

Another stat they dropped on us. A kid diagnosed with blood cancer in the 1960s had a 4% chance of survival. A kid today has a 90% chance. But before we go patting ourselves on the back, I’ll tell you what the coordinator told us. As amazing as that is, imagine putting 10 parents in a room and telling one set of them that their child is going to die.

So that’s why we do this.

DONATE HERE.

Up next? Will I run the Hampton Half Marathon or the Hampton Full Marathon?

Running Away from Cancer

Posted on by kenwheaton in Uncategorized

Cancer scares the shit out of me.

I’ve joked before that I’m already beyond my midlife crisis stage because my life expectancy is, at best, 65. I grew up with the general impression that cancer, especially on my dad’s side, stalked the family, attacking this one or that one and, depending on its mood, killing amazingly fast or siphoning away life over the course of painful years. It didn’t matter if they were drunks or smokers or didn’t take care of themselves. In fact, in a few of the cases that stand out for me, the victims led clean lives. My grandmother’s sister didn’t drink, didn’t smoke and ate food so bland it was considered a joke in an place like South Louisiana. Her oldest son contracted some form of cancer and was dead before 50.
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