Monday in Poughkeepsie, New York

No, I'm not here to run a race. Although Chris Bittinger, Gerardo Mora, Sean Wade, Tom King and one other Houston-area masters runner was in Syracuse on Sunday to compete in the USATF 5K Masters National Championship. No surprise as Sean won!

I've just started another project: just in time for winter in the Northeast!

I'm going to probably start to blog again just to put down some things in writing.

The bottom line is that I'm struggling. Sure. Money is good. I have work. I have an incredible daugthter and I, for the most part, have wonderful friends. But there's a piece in my life that is missing. And if you know me, you know what I'm talking about.

I'm beginning to wonder if I have reached the burnout stage that I did after covering Texas private and parochial high school athletics from 1994 to 2001. I walked away from that in the middle of high school football season (and just after 9-11 too.) Yes, heresy in Texas!

From a media perspective, as it relates to running, I've hit the apex of my game - so to speak. Sure, I haven't penned anything for Runner's World, Running Times or Marathon & Beyond, but that has never been an aspiration of mine.

I feel like I'm very well respected and when you reach that position, there is an incredible internal pressure to feel like you have to live up to so many people.

And when you get to that spot, you have to work even harder to maintain that perception that people have of you. I think that it brings burnout.

Yes, it appears that I'm going 90 miles an hour, but there is also a side of me that people don't always see. If I'm not being somewhat busy, I become lazy and unproductive while fear and procastination takes over.

It is an ugly cycle. And while I'm certainly not special, by any means, I do everything that I do without anyone very close and personal to offer more than just words of encouragement.

Again, I know that I'm very well respected by most. I'm thankful for that. Really I am. And while that is flattering, you can become guilty of reading your own press clippings and succumb to that. Now I don't think that is where I'm really at, but it is just that I'm tired of swinging at everything all by myself.

I don't want the praise or words of encouragement to beat my own chest by, but somebody just to say - and recognize - that they're proud of me simply for who I am and love me for being that way.

It's hard to give yourself a hug and tell yourself that you love yourself ... LOL! I don't even want to try for fear that somebody with a camera will show up and put in on You Tube! :)

If you have happened to decide to check the blog and are the praying type, please keep me in your prayers. I don't want to know if you did or not. That's not important to me.

The bottom life is that I just need some peace in my life.

Heels and Hills and Him Half Marathon Race Report

Sunday's Heels and Hills and Him Half Marathon in Irving isn't the first race that I've ever participated in that I wasn't ready for and it is likely that it won't be the last either.

This was a race that was supposed to have been run on the first Sunday in May; however, the storm that destroyed the Dallas Cowboys training facility also cancelled the event. In most cases, that would have been money lost. But race directors Libby Jones and Paula Robertson allowed runners to move that entry to a fall half marathon that they had on the calendar.

This half marathon, my 62nd finish at this distance, was also not the first one that I hadn't handicapped myself just a little bit.

On Friday, I drove from Spring to Arkadelphia, Arkansas for the Matters of the hEEEart 5K on the campus of Ouachita Baptist University. It was an afternoon event.

After the race, I traveled to Shreveport, Louisiana - with dinner at IHOP in Texarkana in between - for Saturday's Captain Shreve Gator Run 5K #9.

Then, I drove from Shreveport to Houston for the HARRA Cross Country Relay - no, I didn't run, but might have if asked - and then drove north again to Irving.

So you might be able to say that I was a little tired. :)

The race was to start at 7:30 a.m., I believe. I was on-site and parked in the parking garage at Williams Square in Irving no later than 6:30 a.m. It was already humid and the temperatures were expected to rise into the mid-80s.

I immediately went to where packet pickup was (the other garage at the other end) and I got thrown my first curve of the morning. The event was using one of the new "flat card" IPICO timing chips. They are flat and have holes - four of them - in the card. Every race that I've ever been to where they have been used, you have taken small orange twist ties - like you put around the garbage bag - and tied the card to your shoelaces.

They didn't have any. You were expected to thread your shoelace through the timing card!

Now OK. You've just finished 13.1 miles on a warm day and the last thing that you want to be trying to do is to bend down, undo your shoelaces, pull the card off and give it to a volunteer. So I took the median approach: I had enough room on the shoelaces that I didn't have to untie it. I took the extra length above the tie, used that to thread through them and knotted it to the shoelaces. But I just thought that it all was an unnecessary exercise.

We're using the same timing chip for the Bill Crews Remission Run 5K. Therefore, it is something that I have on my race director's checklist now.

The two other things, logistically, that I saw that concerned me is that 1.) the line to the port-a-potties could have been redirected to keep the starting line queuing process from being a little convoluted and 2.) with the masses of people, there needed to be a couple of more speakers so that everyone could hear. Those are minor things, but they were big enough that I picked up on them.

The P.A. guy was good except that he could have had a list of names with bib numbers on laminated cards and called out people's names - and a live singer for the National Anthem would have been better than a recording (but I'm a little biased with that opinion).

I knew with the temperatures being up that I couldn't even attempt to click off low 10-minute miles, let alone if I had them in me or not.

The first two miles went fairly easy as I posted time of 10:48.86 and 11:12.52. I saw The Woodlands' Judith Blevins as she began to return from the 1.55-mile turnaround of the 5K. She looked like she was running effortlessly. Me? I knew that this was going to be a long morning.

I was good for the next three miles -- 11:54.46, 12:11.27 and 11:59.43. Then just before the turnaround, things started to get a little bit tougher for me.

Miles 6, 7 and 8 were about the same -- 12:46.50, 12:55.93 and 12:51.93. And at this point, I was probably running about 75% of those miles. If it had been a little cooler, I think these miles would have been a little bit faster.

Miles 9 and 10 were 12:31.32 and 12:48.40.

The last three miles - 14:06.26, 13:58.71 and 14:26.34 - took me over the 2:40 mark -- a place that I really don't like to be at any more. Especially since I rattled off a 2:14 in January and a 2:18 in late March. That seems so far away!

The last tenth of a mile was in 1:05.55 and I finished with a "chip time" of 2:45:37. Ugh! (The official results had a time of 2:45:33. I think I'll go with that!)

The race was run primarily on the Trinity Trails in Irving. Parts of them were shaded and others weren't. There could have been one more water stop so that they could have been spaced at about a one and a half mile interval, but I understand from an RD standpoint why they were placed where they were.

The medals were nice (not that they really mean that much to me, but they are important to some people). There were plenty of post-race fluids, but a little short on any thing other than a banana. Again, it isn't a big deal to me as I've seen everything imaginable in the races that I've run and participated in.

I think that they ought to give all women a half hour head start in this predominantly female event (466 women finished versus 128 men). It was just odd seeing men finish first as they passed us coming in while I was still heading out.

The event gave me a little bit of an idea where I stand. And that's a little off the mark where I normally am, but I know that I have time between here and January. Just have to get the work done.

Harvest Moon & Margarita Run 5K Race Report

When is a 5K not really a 5K? Your first answer might be if the course was long or short. The real answer is when it is advertised as one thing, but turns out to be another.

The first paragraph may lead you to believe that I'm going to be hyper-critical. I'm not. However, you'll see how plausible it is to allow first impressions to damper one's entire thought process.

Earlier this week, as a Houston Masters Sports Association member, I received a copy of the October 2009 newsletter and it made reference to a new running store - Fit 2 Run - in Galveston and an event - the Harvest Moon and Margarita Run 5K - that they were hosting.

I googled the store, got the yet-to-be-completed web site and found that they were also on Facebook. There was a registration form on the web site and they were touting the event on the store's Facebook page. I decided, once I cleared some things out of the way from work, to head to Galveston on Thursday afternoon - in the midst of afternoon traffic.

After navigating some heavy rains in the League City area along Interstate 45, I made it to Galveston just shortly before 6 p.m. and found Salsa's Restaraunt along the Seawall at 45th Street.

I already saw Leno Rios warming up around the parking lot that was part of Academy.

I hadn't replaced my watch this week after it came to a halt at the Heels and Hills and Him Half Marathon in Irving on Sunday. It would be my third watch that I had purchased since the first one just prior to the 2005 hp Houston Marathon.

Once I had that secured, I made my way over to the restaraunt and registered.

After circling the parking lot three or four times with Leno, I learned that he works in Galveston very close to their store on 23rd Street, had met the owners recently and helped give them some advice.

The event didn't quite get started on time, and it really wasn't even handled like a real race. I was a little disappointed, but the atmosphere and the spirit was great. And the turnout was a big, big surprise - and very good. Just before we crossed the street to run along the Seawall, the organizer, Kim Bachmeier, had everybody turn to somebody close to them and introduce themselves. I was close to a young woman who was wearing a BARC Pub Crawl singlet and she introduced herself as "Serina" and I replied, "Oh, McEntire".

Needless to say, she was a little freaked.

I quickly chimed in and told her that I recognized her name from all of the Bay Area Running Club HARRA reports that Veronica Hoge had provided me over the years. (She's also included in the Clear Lake Fitness Club reports too!)

We were to run to 25th Street and come back. I got off to a pretty good start and while there wasn't a ton of people in front of me, I started to wonder to myself that I must have gone out a little too fast.

I'm still struggling with getting back to my normal 29-minute 5K and 2:18-2:20 half marathon times, and tonight would be no different than what I've been suffering through since the first of June.

I'm trying to run about a 9:20 pace (which is in the low 29s for a 5K), but my endurance and all certainly isn't there yet. So it is a lot of starts and stops.

I made it down in 16:19:08, quickly doubled it in my mind and was praying that perhaps the organizer didn't get the turnaround in the right spot.

The temperatures were in the mid-80s, but they didn't seem to bother me going south. However, I quickly found out why on the return trip north: We were running into the wind! Just what I needed to slow me down even more than what I was.

So I had to make the best of it for the long drive down. I had two ladies pass me about half of the way heading south to 25th Street. Then just before we made the turnaround, another two women did as well. Even though I'm slow, the second one didn't sit real well with me. (And approaching was Serina and the young woman that she was pacing - in her first 5K I later learned.)

As we made our way north back to the restaraunt, I eventually caught and passed both pairs of women. Small victories. The one little defeat was the time on the return trip - 17:33.40 - and a total time of 33:52. Ugh!

When we got back, we turned in a reflective wrist band - kind of like the stick that we used for TIR - for two drink tickets and off everyone went into Salsa's.

The restaraunt really did a great job and everyone basically had a plate of Mexican food with their drinks.

Kim gave out a number of nice door prizes and a good time really seemed to be had by all. I spent a little bit more time getting to know Serina and visited some more with Leno. During the trip down, I got to meet Terlingua's Dale Lee for the first time. I had known of Dale for a long time and knew him to see him, but had never introduced myself to him. Nice guy.

In the restaraunt, I also saw Ralph Miller of Tiki Island. Miller is in his mid-70s and still does lots of triathlons.

Certainly the store won't be able to do more of these at a $25 price without making it a real race - even running it on the sidewalk of the Seawall. However, I could very, very easily see them doing a $5 event monthly of different distances much like Run The Woodlands 5K is done twice a month. That is something that I see would be a very real possibility for the store that seems to be revitalizing running in Galveston.

And it turned out to be the seventh straight day that I had run three miles or more: definitely a record!