What Christmas Means To Me....

When I was child, Christmas meant opening gifts and getting stuff you wished for.  It was all about dreaming big and going through the pennies catalog circling the gifts you dreamt about. You didn't have to worry about giving gifts to others because it was all about you.  Today, I see Christmas In a different lens.  I actually love buying gifts for others.  I love spending time with friends and family and trying to surprise them with gifts or just being with them.  Being able to have one/one conversations with relatives/friends that you have not seen in many months is priceless.  Being able to see your 90 year old grandpa smile and wish you merry Christmas is priceless.  Being able to watch your little nieces open their gifts from you and come over hug you and say thank you uncle Dave, priceless.  I couldn't be more blest with the family/friends that I have.  I'm not bragging or trying to make anyone feel that my life is perfect because it's not but I'm blessed with my family/ friends and I'm willing to recognize it.  I have 4 sisters, 5 nieces and nephews, 3 living grandparents, two amazing parents, (Pam and John) and who knows how many friends? Yup, I'm the only boy but that's okay because, I prefer that.

 I also wanted to mention my friends, I couldn't say better things about them.  There really is no perfect word for them.  I do recognize that my friends make me whole and I hope I make them whole in a little way as well. You know how you put a puzzle together.  I see all my friends as a puzzle piece and each is place around me and me them in the perfect spot, hope that makes sense? They are what make this huge play ground called earth amazing to explore.  Okay, I will give it a shot for the perfect word to call them...."thankfully blessed".   I know it doesn't sound quite right, but it's really difficult to find that perfect word.  Well, 2013 Christmas is leaving us and the best parts of life are in front of use.  Smile, make someone smile and Merry Christmas.  Do one thing for me if you are reading this recognize what YOU are blessed with.

Starting my season soon

My new running season is about to start.  I will start running again this coming week.  I will be running just enough to get the rust out of my legs.  I will run when able and time permits this week because of the holidays.  The following week after that I will start my mileage build up and I'm super excited for that.  I'm excited to get back into the zone of running and hammer out some miles.  I have a pretty positive outlook for this coming 2014 year.  I don't have my season races picked out just yet but they will be ironed out soon.  I want to join the USATF this year and see if I can pound out some serious miles and fast miles.  I will update you with a race schedule when I iron it out.  Roll the miles.

How my artwork reflects on me

I've been interested in artwork as far back as I can remember in my 33 years of existence.  I remember playing in my dad's workshop finding random things and making artwork or maybe they were toys back then but today I see them as artwork.  I took classes in high school to fill that artistic void of mine.  I took stain glass, ceramics, pottery, photo shop, painting, sculpturing.  I just love creating random abstract pieces and still do.  In college I took pottery for a couple years and a class on sculpturing.  Those classes sharpened my interest for today's artistic view.  Today, I'm really into creating abstract paintings.  I love picking the random colors and visualizing the flow of the paints.  To most people it looks like a piece of crap or nothing.  To me I see beauty and meaning inside each piece.  Each piece I make holds a story and a chapter in my life.  When I look at the pieces I've created they remind me of the different past chapters some make me smile some make think.  In some of my pieces I've written a story or word in the back ground then I cover it with another color.  The cool thing about that is the word or sentence is always there but not to the naked eye.  All my pieces I make come from recycled material.  The paints, the frame all from the trash.  It's someone else's trash and it's my treasure.  It then gets created into a beautiful piece to enjoy.  I'm really big on using the colors black and white at the moment.  For some reason the black color just pops out and I really like the way it lays.  I have this idea for a new painting and it came to me this last week.  It's going to be 9" wide by 6' long and it will be staggered two identical pieces. The painting will be my legs running but you won't be able to pick the design out clearly unless you read this or really know me as person.  Like I said before every piece I have created has something like that hidden inside it.  I have some pieces that are darker then others and I keep them around because they remind me the positive direction I'm going today.

When I run I get a runners high and it's amazing. If you have ever or never experienced the runners high I would recommend going out for a jog after a long days work and I bet you feel better after then when you started. It's not the only reason I run though.  I run because of the competitiveness in me and it's my social outlet.  I get a very similar feeling wig artwork.  I get this runners painters high.  It's pretty cool to have another outlet other then running.  Grab a paint brush and paint.  Grab a pair of running shoes and run.

Stay classy!

Recycling The Body

It's been a long time sense I've written.  My running has come to a end for the season.  I'm on what I call, recycling my body.  This is probably the best thing for me but I absolutely don't like it.  I would rather run 200 miles then rest my body if that's paints a picture for you.  The thought behind recycling the body is it gives your body time to heal and rebuild mentally.  When you run many miles over the 12 months the body can only handle so much pounding of the body and I truly believe novice to elite should recycle the body.

This last season was very strange for me.  I had a really slow going this spring.  I ran many many work outs and I thought in my head I was fit but I really wasn't.  The paperwork showed I should have been kicking some butt but when I came to race day I wasn't ready.  I switched gears mid-summer and started running longer miles and that really started seeing results.  I noticed I was running more smoothly and efficiently.  I ramped my miles up and over a 100 miles a week and things really started to click, it's an amazing feeling.  Unless your a avid running you might not know what I just was talking about "click".   The click feeling is what we all runners want to experience just once in the running season.  Once a runner has reached this click feeling the window is small and you must utilize the fitness on a race.  Start picking races and running because the window is about 4-6 weeks maybe?  I mean that window is super short and then your body starts to wind down again.  For me once the body shuts down again it's hard to come back to the peak fitness.  That's when you should consider recycling the body.

Some of the big races I did this year were grandmas marathon, wild duluth 50k, living history farms, gobble gallop.  I pr'd in all of them.  I ran a 2:54 for the marathon, that was 10 min pr.  I ran 4:36 for wild duluth, that was a 18 min pr.  Living history was my first time racing so that was of course a pr.  Gobble gallop I ran 16:38 and that was a 6 sec pr.  All in all I'm very blessed I was able to race this well with out injuries.

Let's keep,the miles rolling.  Stay classy!