Gone South

This week's forecast is for low 80s and sunny at TRY time.

Wait, wrong location! (Never let it be said that my first wife was not a very giving person!) This week's forecast is for mid 40s and cloudy at TRY time. That seems a lot more realistic! (Albeit a bit chilly for almost May.)

Several TRYers are on the final ramp up to the Mountain Goat run this Sunday morning. The extended forecast calls for perfect spring temperatures for an enjoyable race. Low 60s overall, so probably mid 50s at race time. The only thing yelling "May-day!" on Sunday should be your old PR. Choose wisely on your taper (or not) this week and go on out on Sunday and get your GOAT on! I have not fully planned my weekend, but listen for a familiar ring as you run through Onondaga Park near mile 4, just in case.

I'm experiencing issues with sketchy hotel wifi, but I'm pushing through for your sake.

I'd like to take a detour here and push for a special event for one of my "friends". OK, not exactly a friend but a singer that I like to push for once in a while because I think she is so cool and definitely very talented - Caroline Kole. She does primarily country music by trade, but in concert she mixes in some pop and oldies and does a great job with everything she sings. Oh, and she still is a teenager!

So...who would want to see a national recording act that has had a couple videos get played on CMT stations...live and in person for 7 bucks? It's at an old theater made new in Pulaski where they put on fancy weddings and other modern events. Riverside setting, two bars, and a very intimate showroom with GA seating. My first wife and I saw her there last year and were blown away. Front row seats and probably the second best concert experience of my life. (I may never top meeting Faith...so that is number one.) Anyway - if you like country music, live music, or just talented people giving it their all, then I highly recommend coming to see this show. (Let me know if you are interested in being part of a group outing that night.)

The concert is Friday night, July 8th, and is currently $7 to buy tickets. (Goes up to $10 next week through event night.) You do not need to pre-buy, but I do want to get a group together to go out and support my girl.

Here are some telling videos of hers.
Her biggest "hit". Straight modern country pop:


And a very interesting mashup of a Kelly Clarkson song and Frozen:


And lastly, a song I do not like as much (not familiar with the original) but shows how she can get away from country and put on an impressive vocal performance making a song her own:

What Am I Grateful For?

This week:
The forecast is for mid 50s and sun, so it should be a pleasant run. (Although, chance of it being a bit too breezy next to the lake.) The good news is that a regular spring day will mean all the people that came out of the woodwork for the last couple amazeball days will stay home today and the park will be reasonably un-full. The group workout will be discussed in person as people are filing in.

A friendly reminder:
We have the pleasant problem of having a large group, so please be mindful of how much room we take up on the park trail. Especially at the beginning when all of us are together.

What are TRYers up to:
I believe the only race worth mentioning this week is the "Seneca 7". At least a couple TRYers are doing it on Sunday and I believe a few other runners that some of us know will be involved as well. Duerr are you willing to do a small race story for us to contrast it to the Ragnar version of a team race?

SCIENCE!
I had posted this article to the TRY FB page back in December, but it was the off-season so I do not know how many people would have bothered to read it...and we already have a bunch of new people in the group so I wanted to officially post it as part of a weekly update. Here are four simple rituals that neuroscience has "proven" will make you happier.
The summary is that you should ask yourself "what am I grateful for?" (answering the question is unnecessary - just the asking works), label your negative emotions, make "good enough" decisions, and touch people. I know, my mind was blown the first time too!

We will be implementing the TRY mandatory hugging policy (long hugs!) on any week that Meat Loaf shows up.

Escalade is back:
In honor of our favorite blind athlete (well, second favorite for those of us who know Shawn), I wanted to re-post a link that Escalade shared on her timeline this week. It is from popular mechanics and skews towards the techie side of the sport so it should appeal to the engineers in the group and has enough general information about "beep baseball" that others of you could find it interesting as well. It turns out that it skews wildly from the baseball we know, but the hitting mechanism is about the same. The fielding, running, and scoring mechanism all went in a way I did not expect. (I naively thought that blind people somehow managed to play traditional baseball. Which seemed crazy to me. It turns out it is still crazy...just in different ways.)

Well, She Is a Fast 12

The weather forecast is good enough and definitely an improvement from last week, so plan on a spring like feel to this weeks TRY meet-up. As the weather gets nicer in the next few weeks are when we typically get new faces showing up to TRY. Please be friendly and don't always sit back and wait for a leader to do introductions...if you see someone you don't recognize, introduce yourself and help them feel welcome. Thanks!

To make things, ahem, "run" smoother this year, we are dividing up some of the behind-the-scenes work of TRY. As always, we have a "recruiting chair", just need to figure out who we assigned that job to..., and we also have a "communications chair" who will be responsible for most of the blog updates and most of the occasional group coordination. But most importantly we now have a "workout chair" who will be doing the bulk of workout planning and coaching.

This weeks update from the workout chair:
"Excellent job of regrouping after each quarter last week. Keeps it a group run. Quarters spanned 90 to 120 seconds across the group. Expect to do a mix of quarters with a hill or two thrown in at the end. Not the faith variety."

A look back:
The PWP 5K Run/Walk was a success on Sunday. Turnout was down slightly but the fundraising behind the scenes was slightly more efficient so the early word is that right around $10,000 will be donated to the three causes chosen for this year. We, but I don't help with this part, so more correctly "they" do a really cool thing and run an essay contest for middle school students in the district. The winning essay entry is then chosen and the cause they wrote about is the cause that gets a "minor" donation along with the student who wrote the entry getting the recognition on race day morning. (This is the second year doing this and I just think it is a very fun tradition and ties in really well in how well the race fits into the community and school.) FYI - the two main benefactors get the bulk of the funds raised...so probably $4500 to each of those and then $500-$1000 given to the essay winning cause.

I want to extend a big thank you to all of you TRYers for the various levels of support you provided to this race this year! We even had a runner come out this year - Malinda came out and ran the course for the first time. The good news is she did great and was the second female finisher. The bad news is she got her doors blown off by a 12 year old girl. Like, by a minute. (So feel free to come up with some zings to give her when you see her in the next couple weeks. The classic "I've seen better runs in my shorts!" always works, but perhaps for the first time in her life you can say "You got beat by someone young enough to be your daughter!" and she cannot refute that. Or a simple "The Butler DIDN'T do it!" would be classy and succinct.)

Pictured: Two women and their arch-nemesis who you can clearly see is a CHILD -

Alright, enough about PWP for the year! (The good news is I don't have any other races this year to truly push on you guys.)

BUT, that doesn't mean I won't put out random suggestions!

A look ahead:
The Corner Store Run is coming back to Syracuse again this year. I believe I passed along a glowing review about it last year, but I am too lazy to search the archives to find out. The point was that this race had more giveaways than you could shake a Nice-N-Easy breakfast sandwich at! (The "Corner Store" now owns the Nice-N-Easy name. So, I was making a joke.) The race is only $10 (plus $5 if you want chip timing) and promises "Live Music. Food. Free Sponsor Swag. Carnival Games. Face Painting. And MORE!" Just a heads up that the music will most likely all be country music. It is on Saturday, August 6th and is the twice around the OCC loop for the course.

I don't have the will to push it yet this week, but it is overdue time to sign up to run with Team Beef for this years Boilermaker.

Who is around and bored Father's Day weekend? Do you know what sounds fun? Helping with bike security and bike related changeover stuff at the Syracuse 70.3! Maybe one of our triathlon people can explain to me what that would involve?

Trip the light fantastic:
One of our fringe TRYers - Eric has a very unique event coming up this weekend and will be providing a write-up soon on what exactly he has gotten himself into. In the mean time you can read a teaser on what looks like an official website about "Dancing With Our Stars".

Le tits now

Welcome one and all to the 10th season of TRY! (Next year will be the 10th anniversary, but that makes this the 10th year, correct? But I guess the big celebration should wait until next year? I'm more confused than usual.)

For this week, we are looking at the coldest "first week" of TRY that I can remember. Hopefully the park service still had a plow truck available and has the course cleared out. Because only a lunatic would run in snowy and slushy conditions, right? (But more on that later). As "always" the group will meet up at the 0.0 mile marker of OLP at 5:30 with the group run starting at 5:35. Is anyone expecting new friends to join in? (Probably not this week, right?)

Lots of random thoughts this week:

1) I would like to start with an official congratulations to a new wave of TRYers. The spring birthing season is complete with Amy and Ben welcoming Evelynn into the fold on April 2nd. Congratulations on kid #2 guys! That is on the heels of Corey and Jacque welcoming Lydia and Matt and Lisa welcoming Evelyn (I know, dueling Evelyn(n)'s...hawkward!) back in March. I think all three girls are slated for the Liverpool high school graduating class of 2034? Watch out, planet Earth! Hopefully it works out that we'll have a stroller brigade filled with new baby girls once spring finally gets here.

2) A different type of congratulations to all the kerr-aaaa-zzzz runners that completed the "Syracuse Half Marathon" on Sunday. The conditions were so out of whack that the story got picked up by Runner's World today! Story including video here.

For TRYers and friends I believe we had the Duerr's, the Berman's, Eric, Janna, and the Roger-dodger's all out there in weather more suitable for the Iditarod than for a spring jaunt. Facebook reports (and the RW story) all had the same theme - it was the worst running conditions that almost anyone had ever ran in. Which made me wonder a couple things. 1) After the extra pain from the poor footing wears off will this become your most memorable race ever? The time will unlikely be a PR (or stay a PR) but in all likelihood you'll never run in a snowstorm like that again. And since the bad parts tend to fade away in memory leaving only the good...will this become THE go-to story for most people that finish it? 2) Does a race owe it to it's participants and volunteers to cancel for the greater good? I would guess that less than 5% of the racers would have kept an informal plan to run a 13 mile training run outside that morning, so why is that so many showed up and ran the race? Human nature is that if you paid money for something, you don't want to waste it, plus since it was not cancelled and "everyone else showed up to do it" that you have to do it too. So it was a "perfect storm" of monetary and peer pressure that led to an otherwise illogical decision. It's interesting certainly. And not all that dangerous of temperatures and conditions compared to what we get in the heart of winter. But how many people have to end up in PT for knee and ankle tweaks from thousands of slippery foot landings for it to not be worth it? Certainly for anyone that has the rest of their spring running derailed by a minor (or major) injury it was a poor choice. But how many cases of that would have to happen for the race itself to have been a poor choice?

Then again, some people thrive in inclement weather, so how would a race director ever make that call?!

3) The weather forecast is not promising for Thursday, but it is opening day for the Syracuse Chiefs! Game time is 2:05. Let me know if you might join in? Obviously will be weather dependent but I am planning to go. It is a "dollar Thursday" so it's $1 soft drinks, $2 beers, and $1 hot dogs.

4) This Sunday is the PWP 5K Run/Walk. (Website here.) Formally called "Paint Westvale Purple" the acronym has lost it's meaning but is the same group that has put the race together the last 3 years. With a busy weekend and uncertain weather, the turnout is likely to be smaller this year...so I encourage anyone and everyone to come on out. There is a free kids dash and valuable age group prizes - so for you fast people - if you want to get a 5K training run in and want to walk away with a $25 gift card to a local establishment...come on out! (Disclaimer: I am the 6th most important person on the 6 person race committee, so I do have a vested interest in this race. I'll be around helping out so I'll be around all morning.)

5) The Celiac Run/Walk is not happening in Syracuse this year due to a scheduling conflict. So that is one less thing I'll bug people about this year.

6) My sister-in-law is looking to recruit a few volunteers to help out for the Syracuse 70.3 on Father's Day Weekend. I'll write more in another post, but think about if you'd be willing or able to help out on Saturday or Sunday to help.

7) I'll try to come up with some fun stuff for this 10th year of TRY...stay tuned.