Turkey Day Weekend!

I hope everyone had a great Turkey Day!  We went to a couple of different places after I worked from 7-2.  The first place we went to was a friend of Megan's here in Monterey.  We had a very 'California' dinner with sushi, veggie kabobs, avacado salad, veggie soup, and then some apps.  It was all very good but a much different Thanksgiving dinner than I'm used to.  Thankfully we got to my friend Heather's place later that evening and had our turkey, stuffing, scalloped potatoes, cornbread, mashed potatoes, brocolli casserole, and a bunch of other amazing foods as well!!!  I even made an apple pie and a chocolate pie...delicious!

Overall it was a pretty darn good holiday.  I got to talk to the fam at night and we even wore our turkey hats that my sister sent us...thanks Betz, they were a huge hit!  On to the Christmas season!

Post-Race

I'm so happy when my body lets me know that I'm alive...through the throbbing and shooting pain up my calves!!!  But luckily it is only my calves that are tight/sore today, everything else feels great.  I don't have any quad issues, hamstring issues, shoulder issues, my body feels amazing outside of the lower legs, which I pretty much expected anyway.  I'm ready to rock out another race soon though so I need these limbs to heal up quickly so I can get back out there and ride the high mileage I've been putting on them.  As for future races there's a possibility of a 10k in a couple of weeks and then a slew of races in January to choose from.  If I'm feeling back in form I'll probably run the 10k just to see how I do since I don't know if I've ever run one.  And then in January or February it's time for another half-marathon and whatever else I jump into!  I love that I'm hyped up about it again, such a great feeling.

And with the Pats destruction of the Chiefs tonight (we don't need to talk about the 1st quarter) it is a great evening!

Life is good...

Big Sur International Half Marathon

Over and done with, finally!  With all of the worrying about the weather it turned out to be an outstanding day for a race, even getting hot at one point but mainly sunny and cool.  I ran my fastest race I've ever ran for this distance setting a PR of 1:30:13!  This beat my previous PR of 1:35:06.  I won't say I felt great the entire race, my calves were tight for the majority of it, but I definitely pushed myself throughout all 13 and if I coulda hit the small hills a little harder I could have broke 90 minutes.  I had a enough push left at the end though to pass a bunch of people and finish strong.  This was a great way to re-motivate myself because I honestly was not sure I could keep up this pace for all 13 and now that I know I'm capable of it I'm ready to go out there and beat it.  I'm very glad that the hard work paid off.  I'm ready to take a short break, let my legs heal up a bit and then get out and get going again!

Race Weekend

Race weekend is finally upon us!  Only a couple more days (44 hours I think) until the gun goes off.   The weather is not looking promising at this point, rainy and cold but that won't stop the race from happening.  It hopefully won't be as cold as my first marathon with rain, sleet, and 40 degree weather; it should at least be in the 50s but the sun doesn't even rise until 10 minutes before the start.  I'm still thinking positively that the rain will hold off until after we are done so cross your fingers for all of us!

Today I went for my last run before the race, a nice easy 3.2 and tomorrow I'll rest all day and try not to think about Sunday.  The expo for the race is from 12-6 this afternoon so I'll go pick up my packet, shirt, and any other goodies they have for us.

It's gonna be an exciting weekend!

Relax!

My post yesterday caused some concern and it was not meant to.  A friend of mine and I were discussing this topic as she is also from the east coast and has frustrations with some of the west coast peeps we are around from time to time.  I did not get in to any fights, arguments, or strong discussions with anyone and was just voicing an opinion of mine.

Please don't worry, I'm a big boy!

East Side!!!  Go Pats!

East vs West

The granola, tree-hugging, over-sensitive, pot-smoking, peace be with you, let us all be friends attitudes of these west coast sissies is starting to get really annoying.  I'm tired of being told I'm mean, rude, don't care enough and too sarcastic.  Maybe all you Californians should toughen up a little bit, grow a set, do some hard work sometime, and get your damn job done instead of complaining all the time.  I'm from the East Coast where things move a lot faster, we work a lot harder, look for conflict because we find it entertaining, our pizza is better, we are die hard sports fans and we don't eat avocados with EVERYTHING!

Suck it up buttercup!

http://www.greenbook.org/marketing-research.cfm/east-coast-versus-west-coast-stereotypes

http://www.holytaco.com/drunken-argument-friday-east-coast-vs-west-coast/

Sweet Victory

Nothing beats a Patriots win over the J-E-T-S SUCK SUCK SUCK!  Not the prettiest game at first but the defense came to play today with Andre Carter's 4.5 sacks (Patriot's record) and Ninkovich's 2 INT along with offensive help by the monster Gronkowski.  Things looked pretty good in the second half as Brady turned it around and they kept the Jets defense on the field and tired.  Another record set today was by Belichick/Brady with 117 wins, making them the winningest coach/QB tandem in history.

Next up: Kansas City Chiefs at home on MNF

Go Pats!

Patriots vs Jets

Tonight the Patriots enter the Meadowlands, aka MetLife Park in New Jersey to take on the New York Jets for the 2nd time this season.  This should be a pretty good game with the Patriots having one of the best offenses against the Jets' strong defense.  The Pats have been struggling as of late on both sides of the ball but need to step it up tonight in order to take sole possession of the AFC East.

Go Pats!

Costume Winners

There was one bonus of dressing up like Ken and Barbie for Halloween and that was that we won an online costume contest on Facebook.  Prize??  We won two tickets to the Best of Blue festival this afternoon from 1-4 at the Del Monte Hangar at the Monterey Airport.  This is an event with 50 wineries from the area along with several food trucks handing out samples along with selling full meals.

It was pretty fun, the food was great and we even saw the KION News weather girl, Tamara Berg..no I didn't get my picture taken with her :(

Thanks to Megan for entering us, I can't believe we won!

Rain Go Away

Had a Relay for Life meeting last night to talk about our 2012 goals for teams, money, number of survivors, committee members, etc.  It went pretty well and even though there weren't a great number of us, those of us that were there are all psyched and ready to get this show on the road.  Our next meeting is our Kickoff meeting the first week of December which is where we invite all of the past captains, participants, sponsors, and survivors to join us for a get-together and introduce ourselves.

This morning I woke up to the sound of rain which isn't going anywhere for a few days.  This means I probably won't get out for a run but might hit up the gym and use the treadmill instead.  It's also Veteran's Day today so a big thank you to all of our service men and women, our vets that have fought long and hard since WW1 and hope we take this day (as we should everyday) to remember those that have made the ultimate sacrifice to protect our freedom.

God Bless America!!

Dive Crazy

Got to go diving in the Monterey Bay Habitats exhibit today.  Bret and I did the 7-Gill feed and then a brief maintenance dive afterwards.  We were in the water for 69 minutes and the water was probably around 57 degrees.  In case I haven't talked about the 7-Gill feeding dives before it is when two divers go in and pole-feed the 7-Gill sharks, hand feed the dogfish, leopard sharks, bat rays, and giant sea bass and broadcast food around the exhibit for the rockfish.  This dive takes around 40 or so minutes now that we have to try and feed the bat rays.  After the feeding dive was done we cleaned a couple of areas in the exhibit and 69 minutes later we were frozen and running low on air so we had to call it a day.

The rest of the afternoon was a bit hectic as I only got about 20 mins to mow down some food and then had to meet with my boss for an hour to catch up on a few things.  After that I got to feed the smaller molas we have in holding and that was pretty much the end of my work day.  There was a going away 'party' for a woman who had been working in husbandry for many, many years and is now unfortunately battling cancer.  She'll still be around in a volunteer guide capacity helping out the public and such and told me that if I didn't say hi to her on those Thursdays that she'd kick me!

I had to get in a run straight from work and left around 5:20 in the direction of the running club that was leaving for their run at 5:30.  I eventually caught them as they were running towards me and we headed off for a pretty quick run, 6 miles for me in total.  Only 11 more days till race day and I'm feeling pretty good about it.  I'll probably get a couple easy runs in and a longer one Saturday.

One more day left to the work week!

Good Coach Lombardi Quotes:

• "Mental toughness is essential to success."

• "The difference between a successful person and others in not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather in a lack of will."

• "I firmly believe that any man's finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is the moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle-victorious."

Too Perfect

Found this excerpt from Wingshooters (page 81) on my desk this morning:

"But when I did connect, when the ball hit the center of the barrel of the bat and flew out into the field, I felt a sense of joy and freedom as powerful and true as anything I've ever experienced.  If you have never felt the resistance and connection of a bat hitting a baseball; if you have not heard the crack of the bat split an autumn afternoon; if you have not watched the ball sail through the open air and settle into the fresh-cut grass, you have missed one of life's purest feelings of achievement.  Hitting a ball is like catching a piece of the sky and sending it back up to itself.  It's like creating your own crack of thunder.  And stopping a ball -- especially a grounder you have to reach for, or a line drive that should have flown past  your glove -- is like catching a bolt of lightning."

How perfect is that paragraph huh?  If you have never played the game of baseball and don't understand or cannot relate to these words then trust me when I say this description is spot on, perfect.  I miss playing baseball and I miss playing as a kid in the fall with the crisp autumn air and stopping that line drive at third base or hitting the ball on the sweet spot.  I played ball from when I was about 6 years old until I was 18, then a few years in college, and one season when I was living in Florida at age 26.  I might not have been the greatest ballplayer but I never loved playing a sport as much as I did baseball.  I never understood a game better than I do baseball.  I cherish the history of the game and how it has evolved from the late 1800s up till the present day and get upset when these overpaid athletes cry, whine, complain, and gripe about not getting paid enough or not getting enough time in the field because I would give anything to play even for just one day in the major leagues.  I wish ballplayers of today had the heart and soul of the old timers that would pitch double headers, play in the rain, play for the love of the game and not the paycheck that was handed to them. 

Nowadays you can't get a pitcher to go a complete game and you can't get a guy off the D.L. unless his agent tells him it's ok to do so.  Back then they played because they all thought they were the best and they wanted to go out and prove it to everyone else.  They woulda played for peanuts if they had to; only to go out there on the last day of the season, take on a double header with an average of .399 (would have been rounded up) and not care about the stats but instead go out, risk it and go 6-8 and finish out the season with a .406 average.  You tell me which player today would play the last game of the season if he was hitting .400??  Nobody...only Ted Williams.

Some people say baseball's not a true sport because they're all too busy eating fried chicken, drinking beer and playing video games in the dugout.  To them I say try and hit a fastball, attempt a curveball, catch a line drive or even just a pop-up, steal a base, strategize about how to get runners home, pitch nine innings, try walking off the field after making an error or the most amazing play ever...then tell me you aren't playing a sport.

Some good Ted Williams quotes:

"A man has to have goals - for a day, for a lifetime - and that was mine, to have people say, 'There goes Ted Williams, the greatest hitter who ever lived."

"Baseball gives every American boy a chance to excel, not just to be as good as someone else but to be better than someone else. This is the nature of man and the name of the game."

"If I was being paid thirty-thousand dollars a year, the very least I could do was hit .400."

Case of the Mondays

Busy day at work today with a bunch of people out all week on a collecting trip in Catalina.  I got to dip my toes in jellies again but still had a lot of seahorse stuff to get done before my coworkers get back tomorrow from Chicago.  One positive from the day was that we now have Zebrasnout Seahorse babies!!  Only ten of them but still pretty good news considering this is a species that I have never seen reproduce before.

Had my last speed workout today before the race which is on the 20th.  Next week I'll just be doing a bunch of easier runs along with a lot of icing and maybe some rest.  This week I'll finish off my normal runs with an easy run tomorrow, a tempo run Wednesday, easy Friday and a shorter long run Saturday.

I hope everyone's week is starting off well!

Daily Updates

So I've been keeping this blog for over a year now and only been writing when I have gone on some awesome experience, ran a race, traveled somewhere and whatnot.  Recently though I've been so busy with work and training that I haven't really been getting out and about on any big adventures, somewhat limiting my inspiration for writing to you all.  To change that I will be writing something every day to keep you up to date on at least one thing I've done during the day.  This may be just a picture, a quote/joke, a frustration, feeling, a real quick work update, etc. but it'll at least be something.  And also don't forget that I can be followed on Twitter as well (@imcpayne).

Today's quick note:
11/6/11

Got to dive in the Monterey Bay Habitat this afternoon to do the 7-Gill feed with my friend Erin, who is the gallery owner of the exhibit.  We were in the water for 47 minutes and the sharks ate really well, all of the rockfish were active and we even got the bat rays to feed!  It was a long, cold dive but it went really well.  After the dive I got myself a coffee and a sandwich and continued on with my day.  This evening Megan made a very delicious dinner and then we went and soaked our legs in the hot tub.  We came back and had some Ben and Jerrys, watched some tv and now I'm off to bed.  Thankfully I was unable to watch the Pats upsetting loss this afternoon...2 in a row going into the Jets huh??  Awesome!

Quote of Day:
"It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are."
- E.E. Cummings