Did you hear about the midnight ramblers?

What would you call 4 grown men who meet up at night with headlamps at the edge of the woods? Trail runners of course, 4 of us ran the upcoming cold feet 10k last night we were led by course designer Matt Lebow. It was a terrific run traveling up and down the hills, through the mud an overall amazing night.

 Yes i did retweek my right ankle but i'm done dwelling on negatives. My foot will be fine for saturday even if I have to wrap it. I am going to run this race as aggressively as possible. I have a goal and I will achieve it.

 Inconveniences are either overcome or an excuse to stop fighting for what you want.

making the hard decisions

 When I look at my life I can honestly say that i am 99% happy with the way things are going. There is one little aspect that i'd like to change and that is my primary focus professionally for 2012. It's the most annoying part, networking, marketing bouncing all over the place but that is part of the deal.

 I have been a bit jumpy lately as well, I keep looking at the future and how i want to proceed and i see a few different paths but which one is the one for me is whats got me a bit stuck at the moment. Here's what I know, i want to be around people that like adventure. I want to be involved in this world its what drives me. There are a lot of people in the health, fitness, wellness industry that I find to be dismal, stagnant and without any sort of vision. These people are simply minor obstacles to my pathway to success. BTW. if you are reading this then you are not one of thee people.

 There's a 10k coming up this weekend, this one right above this sentence. I have a couple of goals for this race. I want to redeem my mediocre performance from last year and more importantly since there is now an official Clydesdale division I want to place. The second half of 2011 right into 2012 has been the best i've ever run so why not go for a medal.

new shoes!!!! to sick to run.......................

 Today the fabulous FedEx man dropped of a pair of Brooks Pure Grit. Alas my swollen head is preventing me from getting outside and trying them. You see someone was gracious enough

to give us all a cold for valentines day.

I had such high hopes for these.

Headed to the Himalayas

 The only reason I got these shoes is because I wanted to. Hah, actually i want to try a pair of trail runners that are less  restrictive than my beloved Cascadias. I tried the new  balance mt 101s last year and they literally fell apart while I was running the Tough Mudder see above shoe. I am convinced that the Brooks will hold up a lot better. The Pure Connects have held up brilliantly on the road including the recent Goofy.

Starvin? Go to Marvins

 I'm ten yrs. old or will be in a few months, either way the entire family is packed into the station wagon headed to WDW. I know that we are deep in Georgia and we pull over to get gas. My dad accidentally pumped diesel into a standard engine and that led a quite a long day at Starvin Marvins.

 I have no idea how much gas got in there but it caused a huge problem. We were stuck at the pump until the triple A guy showed up and in rural Georgia he was moving at quite a stereotypically slow pace.

 We were there for hours but i didn't care and do you know why? good old Marvin had a bunch of wrasslin magazines! My previous post I mentioned how much I loved old wrasslin well being in Georgia I found myself at the heart of southern territory wrestling. There was an endless amount of magazines to look at but one in particular has stuck with me till this day. A wrestler, I have no idea who was leaning on the ropes staring right in the camera, his faced bloodied and over one of his eyes was a blood soaked patch. The headline stated how this wrestler was looking for revenge about losing his eye!!!

 I read every square inch of those magazines. This is where I probably first learned about Harley Race, Dusty Rhodes, the Freebirds, Von Erichs, etc..

 Outside a few of the locals who in my mind now all wore ripped overalls and no shoes decided to help. One of them, probably a future astrophysicist stuck a hose in the gas tank and proceeded to siphon the gas out. It didn't work and now this hillbilly was dancing around the car in agony spitting out gas.

 At some point the diesel was removed and we were on our way. The other highlight of that trip was taking the monorail past a still being built Epcot center. The giant ball "Space ship Earth" was still being completed. It would be like taking a shuttle craft past an incomplete Death Star. 

My dinner with Andre, did you know i met Andre the Giant?

 Here's something you might not know about me I like wrasslin'. Pro wrestling from the mid 90's and back especially the southern promotions. Yes, its ridiculous nonsense but I don't care there's a odd romantic vibe to the old territory system. Wrestlers would travel from territory to territory every few months to keep their characters fresh and at times work different territories at the same time. You could be the hero in Georgia and spit on in Florida. Before cable television you had a lot more leeway as far as what you wanted your character to be.

 When I was little I would watch WWWF which became WWF which is now WWE. I have no idea what modern wrestling is like or who the current stars are except for some very creative independent promotions like Chikara Pro. Anyway one day when I was around 5yrs. old I was changing the channels and came across two men standing in a wrestling ring, one man was in say blue trunks and the other guy was in equally drab monochrome attire green lets say. In my mind they were two pasty looking white guys who were sort of in shape, slightly toned but still doughy anyway that didn't matter the bell rang and they attacked I was instantly hooked. I became fascinated by this sport because for every pasty scrub was a larger than life character. The Moon dogs Rex and Spot, The Wild Samoans led by Captain Lou Albano this larger than life guy who had rubber bands stuck to his cheek. It seemed like in the 70's the trend was the wrestlers to bleach their hair blond. I have no idea why but to me that's the image of a wrestler from the 70's.

 Of all of these monsters, heroes, bad guys there was one guy who was my absolute favorite. Andre the Giant. I couldn't believe that someone could be so big. His afro was 4ft. in diameter and when he was young he was very agile. He would take on 3 guys at once! at some point all 3 would end up in the corner and Andre would smoosh them with a huge butt bump. Great stuff for a kid. I always wondered why he wasn't champion, he could easily beat any one and would reign until he retired. Little did I know at the time that Andre traveled all around the world raking in tons of money for him and the local promoter.

 So I had to be about 9 or 10 and my dad took me and my friend to the Allentown Fair Grounds to see Andre the freaking Giant!! I was so excited. Andre was going to face the creepy Killer Kahn, an evil mongoloian that would do this awful screech in the ring that gave me the heebie jeebies. I hated Kahn and couldn't wait to see Andre pin him. There we are outside in the grandstand seats i'm in heaven, i got my Andre 8x10 and the wrestlers are right in front of me, live and in the flesh. It sounded so loud when the wrestlers would get slammed onto the ring and the live crowd reaction gave me goosebumps.

 I remember this group of "ladies" behind me screaming in ecstasy when Pedro Morales came out. I saw a real young Curt Henning get tossed around like a rag doll by some bad guy. King Kong Mosca, one of Andre's rivals was up next. That's when I saw him, Andre the Giant, standing next to a fence resting his arm on top of the fence because he's a giant after all and I was awestruck. I asked my dad if I could get his autograph with his permission  my friend and I ran down the grandstand across the walkway and right up to the fence where he was standing. I looked up and there he was, his head was freaking enormous. It was a wooden fence that had a car barrier in front of it we climbed up it and I was inches from Andre, he never looked our way he was intently studying his hated rival so i understood completely. With my picture in hand I was ready to ask for his autograph......but no i never did I was so star struck that my idol was right next to me that I couldn't speak, I stared for what seemed like an eternity but it was probably a few seconds. I looked at my friend and we hopped back down and ran back up to our seats. Andre destroyed Killer Kahn that night like I knew he would. I went home a very happy kid, I didn't really care that I never got the autograph. Standing right next to him on that fence was more than I could ever hope for.