Off To Chicago Marathon, You Stalkers!

Hey guys, it’s almost time. After over 700 miles of training, countless hours of yoga & weightlifting, it’s time to #OwnChicago!

This week saw just a few more training runs. They looked something like this:

The only explanation I can give for this is we have taper madness.

It was nice to have shorter runs this taper week leading up to the race.

Yellow + Blue = Green. No, I didn’t plan this, I dress in the dark, it was coincidence.

I still can’t believe it’s here. It’s been so many months of running many many miles at ungawdly hours. I mean, just look at this daily alarm setting:

I died a little each night when I turned this alarm setting on.

I’m happy to report though, that we ran EVERY SINGLE TRAINING RUN. We didn’t skip a single one. No, they weren’t all pretty, but at least we were out there.

I still can’t believe the final run came and ended…

Done before the sun, but it’s all good, we glow anyhow.

Now it’s here. Time to run 26.2 miles. Going to let me sink that in for a while.

In the mean time, feel free to stalk me:

I’ll be Instagramming hard in Chicago: @piratebobcat

I’ll bet Tweeting too: @piratebobcat

You can track me TWO ways during the race (My bib number is 2411):

1. Download the Chicago Marathon App
2. Get updates with MY RUNNER TRACKING

That is all. See you on the other side.

-Scott

How to Get Free Schtuff

If you follow my blog, or my instagram, or my tweeter, then you know that I’ve been getting some sweet birthday meals this week.

Taco Taco (Bought by a friend)

And here’s the best part – they’ve been FREE!  Here’s how you do it:

1.) Have a friend or family member take you out for your birthday.  Repeat with others (don’t take advantage though – and never ask them to buy you food, duh, rude much)  Easy enough.

2.) Go to your fave places’ websites and register for their e-newsletter or whatever.  Come birthday month, they e-mail you all kinds of coupons and vouchers.  Print them and claim rewards!

Free Free Mahi Mahi (voucher voucher)

You can also tweet the company and see what they say.  I was in the middle of a titter-conversation with Torchy’s Tacos and when it came out that it was my birthday, they sent me this:

I don’t know what they’re sending me, but I know I didn’t buy it.

I can’t wait to see what I get in the mail this week!  (more on that later)

Anyways, so far I’ve gotten some tacos and some wings.  Upcoming is some ‘za and more tacos and BBQ.  It’s on.

This goes for non-food too, but I didn’t write about that because hey, I’m hungry.

Anyone else use this ploy?  Any good free meals lately?  Any other ideas to get some?

-Scott

Dopey Challenge Training Done & A Look Back!

I can’t believe the training is finally finished!  I basically started back in the late spring.  Then in the dead of summer the real training began.  I followed the Hal Higdon plan as closely as I could.  Except for a couple weeks when my knee was achy and so I had to swim instead of run.  And a few days when we were under a coat of ice and I had to run on the treadmill instead of outdoors.  I hope that means I’m ready!

Hundreds and hundreds of miles done!  I added up the entire past year and I ran somewhere between 1050 – 1100.  Pretty good!

But as I prepare to get Dopey, I realized I never did a race recap of last year’s Disney Marathon.  Oops, my bad.  To be honest, I didn’t have too much drive to write it because I didn’t have a great performance.

Me and my sis running this past year’s Disney Marathon. 4 miles and and doing OK.

While the race experience was wonderful, the weather was not.  It was so fargin hot and humid, that it was a real struggle to keep moving.  In fact, I didn’t even look at the race photos until last night…

Somewhere near mile 18, not doing OK.  Check the Sweat! I was drenched!

I’ve bought my share of Disney race photos before, but I didn’t have any good ones this time around.  Although this one gave me a chuckle…

I don’t know who that guy is, but it looks like we planned to wear green university shirts. His was a little generic.  haha!

I eventually did finish, but my time was waaay off my goal.  I was pretty bummed, and was mad at the weather, and even tweeted about it.  But then a cool thing happened.  Sean Astin – famous actor dude, lover of running, and sometimes Hobbit responded to my tweet.

Puts it in perspective.

Yes, it was hot, but we still had a great time.  Can’t do anything about it, so just enjoy the experience.

Medals dang near big as yo head!

Anyway, I hope to get better actual race photos this  year, in fact I already scouted out the photographers’ locations Here, Here & Here.  Hahaha!

Next up is travel and Expo!  So close!  If you’re running at Disney this week, best of luck!  If you see me, please say, “Hi.”  You can recognize me because I look like the guy in the photos above.^^^^^^^^^^

To everyone else, what do you do to get a good race photo?  How would you handle running in that heat?  Tell me something good!

Chilly Weather, Chili Food, & Twitter Advice

So they weather dude on the moving picture box says we have a cold front about to come through.  I personally am enjoying the current shorts weather, but that may change.  And in prep for this change, I went ahead and made some chili.  But here’s the kicker – I made it with Pumpkin.

You won’t be chilly after eating this chili. (I apologize for that last joke, especially to the people of Chile)

I know everyone has their own chili recipe, as do I.  But I also like to be different.  So as I was collecting ingredients at the grocery, I saw a can of pumpkin.  Yes, that’ll do.  So I made my normal chili, then added the can of pumpkin.  It turned out good!  And of course, it went well with a pumpkin ale!  Anyway, the cold weather and the chili fuel should be good for my upcoming workouts!!!

So there’s that.  Now here’s this.  Twitter Advice:  If you want to get a lot of action on your twitter account, just do this:  Get a Verified account holder to retweet your tweet and to talk about it on the highest rated radio show in town.  That’s what I did.

This morning I had a lot of action on my twitter.  You see, a local TV/Radio comedy dude (Gordon Keith) gave a bus tour that follows the Lee Harvey Oswald trail that he took after he left the Texas Schoolbook Depository after Prez Kennedy was shot 50 years ago tomorrow. 

This guy is obsessed with LHO.  And he posted a photo on his Twitter of the tour bus.  Wellll, the seat next to him in the photo was unoccupied.  I couldn’t help it, I quickly Photoshopped in LHO’s ghost sitting next to him.  Then I tweeted it to him.  He retweated it and talked about the photo on the radio.  As soon as that happened, my account started blowing up (relative to me).  Here’s the photo….

Hauntingly creepy.

So there you go, that’s all you have to do is get a celebrity to retweet you and talk about it on the radio if you want some Twitter action.  You’re welcome.

What about you?  Ever seen a ghost?  Any weird chili adaptations?  Any Twitter advice?

Disney Dopey Challenge Medals Revealed

Over the weekend Disneyland in California held a weekend of races.  5k, 10k, and 1/2 marathon.  If you do the 10k and 1/2, they call it the Dumbo Double Dare, and get a special Dumbo medal.  I wasn’t there.  But I did follow what was going on via Twitter.  And there was one thing that really surprised me – at the race Expo, then medals for the Disney World Dopey Challenge (among other races) were on full display!  @RunDisney tweeted this teasing pic:

Blingy.

If you don’t know, the Dopey Challenge is what I’m training for.  It’s 4 straight days of racing – 5k, 10k, 13.1, 26.2.  48.6 miles total.  You get a medal for each race, plus the Dopey medal, plus the Goofy Challenge medal (that’s doing the half and full marathons back to back).  So at the end of the four days, you’ll be clangin 6 medals around your neck.

Anyway, another run blogger posted close up photos on Twitter.  They show every medal except the 5k one for some reason.  Here’s the Dopey:

My Precious.

I snagged that photo as teaser, to see the rest of them, visit their blog HERE.

I was surprised that they let the medals be revealed this way.  Each year they redesign all the race medals, and so it’s always a mystery of what they’ll look like.  Last year they did a whole big production about it.  It lasted for weeks and involved hints, clues, videos, etc.  But I just want to see them, so I’m cool with it coming out this way!

Last year I ran the marathon, and if you missed it, here’s what the medal looked like (complete with two spinning components):

Medals dang near big as yo head!

So if you’re running the Dopey, you now have new motivation.  And if you’re like a lot of us, you probably look like this:

Dopey in the sky with diamonds.

Peace out internet!

-Scott

 

Running with Celebs

So I’m still working on organizing all my pics and vids from the Disney Marathon, so I haven’t blogged about it yet.  But looking at some other reviews of the race made me realize that we were in the presence of some celebs.  I’m not talking running celebs and elites, cause I’ve run races with plenty of them (Frank Shorter, Jeff Galloway, Bart Yasso, etc), but actual Hollywood types.  I live in the Dallas area, and don’t get to run with as many as if I lived in NYC or LALA Land, but I’ve raced with a few….and have beat them all!!!  Haha.

First was the Rock n Roll Dallas Half Marathon a few years ago.  Troy Aikman was also in it.  My sis and I beat him by 15 seconds or so.  Yup, we’re faster than a world class athlete, lol.  Then my sister followed that race up by beating him again by a few seconds a few weeks later in another half at Cowboys Stadium.  Here’s a photo of them next to each other after finishing:

Based on running times alone, I’m athletic enough to quarterback the Cowboys.

But Disney had pulled out all the stops and starts for the 20th anniversary of their marathon, and some running celebs wanted to be part of it.  A bunch were running the half, but Sean Astin and Drew Carey were signed up for the Goofy Challenge (Half on Saturday, Full on Sunday).  Unfortunately Sean had to pull out due to a gig.  And Drew had to pull out due to an injury.  Though being the cool guy he is, he still showed up to cheer on the runners and party with them afterwards.  Here’s a pic from when I met him a few years ago (before losing weight and taking up running).

No, my plastic novelty glasses aren’t prescription.

As for Sean, he showed his support through twitter.  He even responded to one of my tweets when I told him the hot conditions wreaked havoc with my per mile pace.  He helped put it back into perspective:

Getting Twitter celeb support, I’m officially a twit.

It’s a shame he wasn’t able to run, but we runners appreciate his support.  I was a little bummed because I have met the real Rudy and was hoping to get a pic with the fake Rudy.

He really was five foot nuthin, and a hundred and nuthin.

Also of note, Joey Fatone ran the Goofy Challenge.  Now he’s not a runner – this was his first half and full, but he did it!  He ran in place of his injured wife and followed the Jeff Galloway walk/run method.  So needless to say, we beat him in the full – another feather in our caps…haha!  (Now if only I had use for these feathers)

It’s the guy from that boy band – I think it’s named – My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

Anywaddle, I’m always glad to see celebs out there promoting running and being healthy.  I really appreciate their support of the sport, and it’s great to see how they like to run just as much as some of us!

That’s all for now because I have to go and pick up all those names I just dropped.

Peace!