Rebounding

Perhaps I've always been a cold weather guy. A younger Viper played ice hockey for six years. Without hyperbole, I can boast of walking a mile to school uphill in the snow. Indeed, both ways sometimes. I've only been snow skiing a handful of times, but I've never felt as if any other activity was as innate. I simply feel more drawn to the outdoors during autumn and winter than I do in the summer. And as the air grows chill, I feel more eager to head out for a run.

For the first time in I don't know when, I ran five days in a week. I kept myself to three days per week training for the Akron Marathon and four days a week for the half marathon in Cleveland. It suited me well, but after a four-week layoff in October I've been determined to get my body back in gear.

Granted, I'm not exactly racking up the miles, sticking to my three-mile neighborhood loop. However, the consistency has put me back on the rails. Which is a good thing with a race in 10 days.

That's right, I'm racing Thanksgiving morning in the Home Run for the Homeless, a four mile race for which I will most likely be hungover. Everybody knows that the Thanksgiving eve is a prime night for drinking. But there's nothing better than a short race to clear the boozy cobwebs and stir the appetite for the feast that will follow.

In addition to the race fee going toward feeding the homeless, the race organizers are collecting shoes for donation and I can finally get rid of my good for nothing Asics. I'd been considering donating them to a running charity, but I'm too damned lazy to actually find one. And in this case, the shoes go to someone in my community, which I prefer. I also prefer when charity is convenient.

The race will be a nice reminder of what running hard is like and will hopefully springboard me back toward higher mileage for racing in early 2008. In theory it should take about six more weeks to work back up to my marathon training level, which would put me in decent shape for my I'm-a-dumb-idiot plan to race in an ultra marathon in the middle of winter. On a trail no less. A lot of that decision will be based on what Dick Goddard decides the weather will be like. But right now I'm stupid enough to think that this race is perfectly reasonable.

Blog Against Cancer
Running is my therapy. I run off a variety of personal issues I'm not nearly bold enough to write about here. In that vein, Bolder in Boulder writes that the tri-athlete he has become was borne of losing his wife to breast cancer. He shares his story and calls us bloggers to action in the fight against cancer. [Thanks to Vanilla for the heads up.]

Bolder has established Bloggers Against Cancer as a site to share cancer experiences, donate money and brainstorm about how we can better fight this disease. Cancer killed an estimated half million people in the United States in 2006, according to the American Cancer Society, but stats mean nothing to somebody who has experienced cancer first hand. I hope you'll take a minute and read these posts.