First Father & Son 5k

This morning I'm get to run along with my oldest son, Jacob as he attempts his first 5k. I feel nervous and excited. For his first race we decided together on the Explore Your Limits 5k at Virginia's Explore Park. I ran the 10k a few years back and I really enjoyed it then. The course is beautiful and its put on by Mountain Junkies LLC, who always put on a great race.
I'm super excited to run with Jake and to get to watch him as he gets to experience trail running and being a part of the running community for the first time. Im nervous, cause I want him to have a great first race. I want him to fall in love with it like I have. I also want him to love it organically,  on his own and not because he ever feels pressure from me.
Regardless of the outcome, I get to spend a morning on the trail with my son. I cant wait!
Keep Running,
Will W

I Think I Just Fartlek'd...

Ok, I'll come right out and say it. I developed a severe fartlek problem. Just to "clear the air", I'm not referring to any problem spurring from eating to many hard boiled eggs. A fartlek is simply a sweedish word that means speed play. Basically, it's when you mix any continuous training activity with interval training. If you have ever been out running and decided that you'd pick up the pace until you got to that next stop light or hit that next river crossing then you've been guilty of fartleking too, just like me.

My fartlek problem started last month when I decided to download and use Strava to record my runs during 2014. I've become addicted to the segment explorer. It's a feature of the app where you can look for popular segments around you and see how fast other people around you have ran them. Once you see a few you can go out and see how you stack up against everyone else. Needless to say this feature exploits a deeply competitive part of my personality. Every time I leave the house for an easy run I resolve that I will not race Joe Smith, even though he bested my time yesterday on the segment right down the street from my house. Every time I end up flying down the street back towards the house in a futile attempt to one up Joe. Hopefully, my new habit wont kill me but only make me faster. So, if you're thinking of downloading Strava, be warned that it could lead to a sever fartlek problem.

Run On,

Will W

Race Review Walt Disney World Marathon 2014

I'll start out by giving away the big spoiler...I had a great time at this race. So many things made it awesome. It was great to have my wife, Kara, there to support me and cheer for me. My Sister and brother-in-law also ran the race so it was so much fun preparing with them and then traveling to the start together. Also, my Dad lives in Clermont, FL so any excuse to get down to Florida to visit with him and my step-mom is always a great idea.

Now to the race. Disney puts on a crazy good race, and why shouldn't they? They're a well oiled logistical machine. Every single part of the race could't have ran smoother and every single worker and race volunteer was overly helpful and they all seemed incredibly excited. It was fun to see all the characters along the side of route. My favorite distraction was seeing the many high school marching bands that lined the course at certain spots, they were fun to see and were always very encouraging. 

There were not many bad points. It would have been nice to have more food along the course. There were several spots were cliff shots were offered and one stop were they gave out candy but other than that the only food offered was bananas which I'd personally rather have at the finish than during the race. Then of course the common complaint that so much of the course was spent in between parks or on back service roads. We ran past the water treatment plant at one point. I know that there isn't much that can be done about the route but it would have been nice to be in the parks more.

I finished the race in 4 hours and 9 minutes. It wasn't what I was going for and it was a less than stellar performance. I went out to fast and paid for it in the end. It was a marathon PR for me and Hopefully I'll get a chance to set another one before summer gets here.

Run Long,

Will

Running Disney In 5 Days!

I can't believe that it has come up so quickly! 5 more days till the marathon. This wont be the first time that I've covered the distance and I wish I could convince the butterflies in my stomach of that fact. In truth, while I have ran 26.2 miles on several different occasions and terrains before, this will be be my first "mainstream" marathon. Or I guess a marathon that is attended by more than a few hundred people. I'm anxious and excited. I've been placed in corral B and hopefully if everything goes right on race day I'll finish somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 1/2 hours. Fingers crossed. Either way, come next week I'll have a full race report and hopefully some good pictures. Also come back on Saturday, I'll be posting my normal pre-race report. Hope your running is going great so far this year.
Run On,
Will W

New Years Resolutions...

It seems like only last week we were looking forward to Thanksgiving and here we are a few days away from New Years. What the crap happened? Sitting back and thinking over this past year it has been a series of poor performances, missed workouts and frustratingly slow runs. I'm not all doom and gloom, there have been a lot of runs that were thoroughly enjoyed. Also, while any given run may be frustrating in a training sense, my time spent on the trail has not been wasted and has kept me sane to a great extent. With that being said I have seen my average run paces fall back and I've gained some weight around the midsection as I've taken time to enjoy my first year of marriage and a new supervisor job at UPS. Hopefully the New Year will contain a very fulfilled year full of miles on the trail. Below are mt New Years resolutions. Here's to a successful year friends.

1. Run 1000 miles in 2014
2. Reset my PR in every major race distance. 1m, 5k, 5m, 10k, 13.1, 26.2, and 50m
3. Qualify for, enter and finish Grindstone 100m
4. Lose the undisclosed poundage around my midsection
5. Set personal FKTs for AT through SNP and AT from US 311 to US 220

Run on!
Will W