Sweet Victory

Whenever I travel for work, I usually do a cursory glance at the Internet to see if there might be a race I can fit in. It's not that I have a big desire to do them on these trips that are always slight on sleep and heavy on work and food, but it seems a shame if I would miss one. Though I've been fortunate enough to travel to Europe many times in the past few years, I'd never been able to find a race when I was there that was close enough to my hotel to do. In addition, flying over on a Saturday nights means I land in the UK with about 3 hours of sleep, so I'm already a bit exhausted when I get there. This time around, though, I got lucky. A 10k that had originally been scheduled for February 5 had been rescheduled (due to snow) at 11am the day I arrived in London. Of course, that didn't mean I was ready to race it well. Saturday had been a 20 mile run. Saturday night had been an overnight flight, where my best guess is I got 2.5 - 3 hours of sleep. We arrived ...

I had the pleasure to speak at the Diabetic Parent Support Group at the Childrens' Hospital of Pennsylvania last weekend. If I didn't know it was only their third meeting, ever, I wouldn't have guessed. The event was well attended and while there were new faces in the room, it was obvious that many of the people had met each other before. For me, it was a chance to speak about some of the basics of managing diabetes and exercise and to share a bit about Team Type 1. I'd say the group was fairly typical in that regard; most in the audience knew a little about us, but few knew about all of the teams and what some of our amazing athletes have accomplished. That in and of itself is valuable, I think, because it sends a message that diabetes isn't a limiting factor in your life. At events like this, I'm always struck by the awesomeness of the people; how connected, engaged and interesting they are. But truth be told, it is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Who...

Of all the reasons I don't enjoy Winter (and truth be told, there are many), one of the trickiest is trying to plan key workouts around finicky weather. Take last weekend, for instance. Please. The plan called for me to do the Squirrely Tail Twail Wun, a half marathon trail race on Sunday. To prepare for this race, I'd foregone my regular Thursday tempo run. While not a big deal, it's also not easy decision. We're about 9 weeks from the Boston Marathon, which means there are approximately 25 key workouts left. A decision to skip one shouldn't be taken lightly, and I didn't. And then Saturday turned out to be mini snow squall after mini snow squall, and there I was deciding whether or not I was going to do this race on Sunday. On the plus side was the fact that Sunday's forecast was for 30mph wind gusts and morning temps around 15-20 degrees; in other words crappy for running a workout. Far better to be distracted by a race. But there were two big m...

Thanks to surprisingly good January weather, the month wrapped up really well workout-wise. To sum: * Missed workouts - 0. I've found that work, weather and health issues usually knock me out at least 1-2 days per month, but January was flawless. I had 4 planned rest days and took 4. One workout had to get moved due to weather, but that was it. * Total mileage was 204. That's my third highest total of the past 12 months. Perhaps more important, it's a very nice volume for me so far before the Boston Marathon. It bodes well for a good build. * Re-introduction of speedwork. The best surprise of all was 4 successful tempo runs, culminating with an 8 miler that included 7 miles @ 6:52 pace. I also did 4 hill workouts that will now turn into interval workouts. * Diabetes-wise, things were pretty good, though not as well as I'd like. According to my numbers, I spent 3% of the time higher than 170 and .6% of the time lower than 60. Both of those figures are a bit h...