Pact

Two weeks ago (in the height of my academic craziness) I went down to DC to participate in our conference race. I had a pretty crappy race, but not crappy enough to knock me out of the top 7 on my team. Which means that I’m going to regionals at Lehigh (yay!) this upcoming Saturday.

It also means that I have a chinstrap. As in a strip of hair that runs from one ear, along the ridge of my jaw, to the other ear.

How are those two ideas connected? Well, as the team sat on the bus, dubiously eyeing the course meant to hold our conference meet, we entered a pact. Each man that made it to Regionals (that is, the top 7 on the team) wouldn’t be able to shave until then. It was one of those dumb things teams do for good luck, like growing matching Mohawks or not washing their uniforms or somesuch.

I was a little leery of the idea, since my own beard is so sparse when I let it grow out (which is never). More importantly, I also have to look relatively clean for teaching. My observers don’t tolerate scruffiness.

A decent compromise was found in the aforementioned chin strap. It’s a bit scraggly, and it’ll have to go after Regionals is done. For the first time since I began growing it, though, I think I’m going to miss it.

P.S. Not for the first time, I wish I had a digital camera so that you guys could truly appreciate what I’m describing. Ah, well.

Run TFK

When I returned from my recent vacation (ugh), I found a couple worthwhile comments that WordPress had spammed. One of them stood out to me as particularly interesting:

Subject: Supporting The Kids

Hello fellow runner. We hope this email finds you healthy and pain free.

My business partner and I are running our first marathon, ING NYC Marathon, with Team for
Kids. We’re incredibly psyched…and we’re pretty confident we’ll finish
(fingers crossed).

We checked out your blog and thought you might be interested in sharing the running shirts we designed to raise funds for Team for Kids with your readers. All proceeds go to Team for Kids. The more love we can share with the kids the better.

http://luckyny.com/play/team-for-kids-t-shirts/

Thanks for checking them out and happy running!

Ryan

Ryan O’Hara Theisen
Lucky Viral Branded Content
Co-Founder + Film Director
917-658-9234
http://www.luckyny.com

Team for Kids is an organization that fights childhood obesity by trying to get kids active. They primarily serve kids from low-income areas, where obesity rates are actually a huge problem (little money + poor understanding of nutrition = McDonald’s cash cow).

I regret to say, though, that all orders have to be placed by Nov. 5th– tomorrow. Sorry for the lack of heads up. If you do have the time though, I recommend you peruse their wares. They do have some nice looking shirts, and represent a great cause.

I’m Beeeee-ack!

Okay, hopefully you came here in response to an update on your RSS feed– which is to say, you haven’t given up on me yet. I’ve finished with the most hectic part of my semester (knock on wood), which means that regular updates should resume.

Anyway, the chaos pervading my academic life has crept into my running season. It’s not that my training suffered from school– it’s that my training was complicated by a number of factors. A LOT has happened that I would have loved to express through this medium.

In summary:

I somehow tore the sheath that encases my front calf muscle, which landed me in a boot for a week while they tested me for a stress fracture. I only found out two weeks ago that my running season was not, in fact, over. Since then I’ve been running my balls off (the injury isn’t as bad as it sounds) and going through rehab with the trainers here at school.

Next weekend is regionals, my very last race as a cross country athlete. Ever.