It's on like Donkey Kong

My final blog before the run this Sunday and I'm oddly a little emotional about it. It feels like I've been at summer camp and this is my final correspondence with my best friend from home.

Dearest Dimitri,
     It has been the fastest three weeks of my life, so much has happened I will never forget this experience, the good, the bad, and even the sad.  I wish my parents had enough money to keep me here for the entire 8 weeks. Sadly I am the only one going home Sunday, but not before we stomp Camp Mohawk in the Olympiad. Spaz won the stacking contest, Fink beat the Stomach in eating hot dogs, and Tripper instilled in us that "it just doesn't matter." Now it's up to me in the 10k run. Whatever happens being here at Camp North Star has taught me so much.  I'm going to miss writing you, although it would have been nice if you wrote me back, did I tell you I was in the Bigfoot cabin?                                                                               Yours - the original Rudy

I think there's a film in there somewhere, maybe a Chariots of Fire meets Zoolander meets 300.  I should get in touch with Ivan Reitman's people. Whether it's a, "I love it you're green lit or get out of my office I already made this film it was called Meatballs dipsh*t", it has been a great experience writing this blog. At it's inception it was simply something I started because I knew I couldn't repeatedly solicit or facebook people for donations in the same rote manner. So I thought if I offered up some effort with some pedestrian writing ability I would seem less the Santa that stands outside the Home Depot during Christmas and more the young boy in a baseball uniform offering crunchy milk chocolate bars for a dollar. Not sure if I achieved that distinction but I've had a lot a fun writing and from a fund raising perspective I consider the blog a homerun. I have raised a near $3700 for the race, money which will certainly help someone somewhere advance the cause for the obliteration of cancer. Thank you to all who have supported by reading, emailing, calling, and most of all by donating your hard earned money. I am forever grateful and I am encouraged to continue raising money for charities close to my heart. It is important for me to say that no dollar would have been possible if not for Hunter and his family. They have truly inspired us through action and Hunter's legacy will live on in those lives he has touched. We celebrate him and the many children fighting for their young lives.

T minus 5 days

So it turns out sadly I won't be able to run in my hunter green shoes, apparently they're not made for running. Ridiculous I know, but I ran in them for two days over 8.8 miles and they left the bottom of both my calves throbbing to the point I couldn't walk. I had a bag of frozen white corn bandaged to one and a bag of frozen carrots wrapped to the other. Now I'm running in my newly purchased pair of New Balances 760s and I have to say they're pretty F in comfortable. This past week was filthy rich with blogging material, I feel like I could have written an entire book on how NOT to train for a 10k but I'm gonna keep it short. I've put in close to 20 miles of running this week, I got to run with several members of the evil news team, and on Sunday I ran a continuous 5.6 miles. Now I'm in my taper down phase, which is code for I'm done training. I'm gonna just focus on what to wear, what to eat, and which super expensive sock I'm gonna buy for the race. As I say to my daughter before soccer games, "It's on like Donkey Kong" see everyone on the flip side of 10k.

  

We run on Sunday 

Please click on the link below and support our run.

http://pcrf-kids.org.kintera.org/faf/donorReg/donorPledge.asp?ievent=329465&lis=1&kntae329465=94C6BC013E8D47C1AC923632E6F9944F&supId=283487581

My shoes are green and my doctor is gay

I wish I could blog about something father related but quite frankly I didn't do much of it this past week. For fourteen days Chayse tasted freedom and free will on a scale equaled only by going to college.  She watched close to 70 hrs of television, had McDonalds twelve times, and in the process set back my dreams of her making the 2024 Olympics. Now she'll probably have to settle for being an alternate on the 2028 squad and forever talk about how she almost made it but my dad got sick back when I was four. Apparently my upper respiratory infection turned into bronchitis and the bronchitis could've turned into pneumonia if I didn't shut everything down, well that's what my gay doctor said and by gay this time I actually mean gay.  You see I never go to doctors when I'm sick, I only visit emergency rooms when necessary, but when I searched the internet with my symptoms of neck pain, fever, cough and Meningitis turned up, I immediately started calling some friends for a doctor hook up and one Sandeep Kapoor in Studio City came highly recommended, so off I went to see the good doctor. I've been away from New York for quite sometime now so my gay-dar might need some recalibration but so it goes in the fog of war. I had good info with the original recon in the waiting room but then he threw me a curve ball with talk of his two boys with photos to boot of them in their baseball uniforms. Overall it was too pleasant of a trip to the doctors, I laughed more than someone sick should have, I knew way too much about his personal life, and I got a tip for where to buy some good skinny jeans in the neighborhood. These were good people and I had a good time. I haven't had a doctor to call my own since my pediatrician. Damnit I like this guy, I'm gonna stick with him. I'll just have to hope I don't get colon cancer because there's no way he's putting his fingers in my butt.  Needless to say it's not a procedure I'm particularly looking forward to and it doesn't run in my family so I'm guessing it's a safe sacrifice.  All's well and ends well, I'm finally feeling good, my hamstring is almost 100%, and it turns out the doctor's kids were from a surrogate, so no distraught humiliated wife to speak of.


T minus 14 days

I've managed to get two days of running in the past few days. I've been taking it easy because I don't want the bronchitis to flare up, but I have to get out there and put some miles in, the race is two weeks away and I've only managed a total of 8 pathetic miles over three weeks.  If this was a 2k race I would be golden. As for my post bronchitis running there's nothing special to report other than I was able to complete the lap and I was able to improve upon it a little the second run. Not to worry things will undoubtedly get more interesting this week as I push to do two laps at 4.4 miles. I may even join the evil news team for a training run if they'll have me. Speaking of which since my initial mention of Wes Mantooth aka my wife Trish and her news team the chatter has subsided, people are focused and anxious to get the run on. I for one am excited to receive our orange Team Hunter t-shirts, apparently hunter green was taken go figure. However I coincidentally own a hunter green pair of Saucony running shoes I bought years ago. I've barely worn them but will be proudly sporting them on May 2nd for my main man Hunter.

I guess you can understand why they've been hardly used, not sure what tempted me to buy them, they look like something an albino produce farmer would wear, but I'm glad I'll have them for this moment.

Speaking of my hero Iron Hunter his memorial was last weekend and it was an amazing gathering of people that he and his parents have touched. There were many tears, many cheers, and even an indomitable sense of hope. You see Lenore is very pregnant with their second son. I think they were going to name him Ryder, but I can't recall exactly. I hope the best for this family, they deserve so much for all that they have given. One thing I know is that there will not be a shortage of love in that household. God bless them, and I never say that.

We run May 2nd

Raising awareness for Pediatric Cancer. It's now personal. Join Team Hunter for a 10K run or please donate and help us help them. http://pcrf-kids.org.kintera.org/faf/donorReg/donorPledge.asp?ievent=329465&lis=1&kntae329465=94C6BC013E8D47C1AC923632E6F9944F&supId=283487581

The Russians are bombing?

I'm on day 7 of being sick. Seven days, are you serious? Before children (BC) I would never have gotten sick for more than 24 hours, granted it would be like the second coming of the grim reaper but just as fast as it would come it would be gone.  But after children (AC), I'd be sick once every couple of months easy and it would last minimum a week. I understood the why, not cleaning my hands properly, kids are walking germ bags, drinking and smoking are bad for you yada yada, but I never understood why the sickness would last so long until now. It's an energy thing. You see, when you're single and you get sick, you hole up for a couple of days, rent season X of show Y, you catch up on the phone with some friends you haven't spoken to in a while, but then you recover,  you open the windows, and life is fresh again. It's cathartic. Nothing is happening around you to stress you out, you don't speak if you don't want to and no one is speaking to you. But when you have a self-centered, blood related four year old in your space, the energy that is supposed to be directed towards your health, is now being used just to repeat yourself, over and over. It's like each word that you verbalize extends the length of your illness by 30 minutes, and when you have to preface yourself each time with "Sweety, please don't make me repeat myself, daddy isn't feeling well, will you please {command} " it adds up quick and before you know it, you're at a week. Not to mention sometimes they don't even have to do anything and they affect your recovery. Sunday afternoon, I'm home in bed sick, having again successfully avoided my wife's annual Easter brunch, the earth begins to shake. I'm thinking, I'm sorry G-d I swear I'll go to the stupid brunch next year, then I think, get under an archway, then I think, wait is that right, the only training for this I've ever had was in Jersey where there were no earthquakes and all they ever had us do was crawl under our desks in case the Russians were to bomb us. Then I think, I have a kid what's her name? Chayse! I leap out of bed call her forcefully three times (that's an hour and a half more recovery needed times 6 because I had to use an alarmed voice).  I find her on the computer watching some baking show on you tube, pick her up and rush the both of us outside. That entire sequence with her cost me two extra days of sickness for sure.  If I was without child I wouldn't have uttered a word and I would have casually walked out of my house and been healthy the next day, guaranteed. Life AC and life BC.


Break in Training

There hasn't been any training since last I wrote because of my self diagnosed acute upper respiratory infection. The evil news team must be chomping/champing at the bit. I'm behind, I know it, but like most things in life everything happens for a reason. Being sick this week has taken my mind of beating the KCAL news team and helped given me perspective. This run is about the children, about beating cancer, about celebration, and not about my ego. As it so happens Hunter's memorial service in Los Angeles is this Saturday. I have to admit I'm nervous. There's been a fair share of death in my life, the last being my friends from college, Scotty, GG, LP, and Freddy. They passed away on September 11th.  Scotty was a runner, and by runner I mean he ran the NY marathon, the real deal. I remember supporting him that day and if you've never been to a marathon go, it's so much fun to support and cheer for all the runners, and then once they pass, you drink a beer and cut over to the next place where you'll get to see them pass you, and so on. Losing them was an incredibly difficult time and certainly they left us way too soon just like young Hunter. His parents, Zen and Lenore, are driving down so that we all may celebrate and honor Hunter's life. I like most of the others will be honoring them as well. These two beautiful people, they have shown everyone that is a parent and anyone that will be a parent, what it means to love, to fully support and sacrifice wholly of themselves for another. I'm nervous to see them because in truth I look up to them and hope if ever the time calls, I'll be there as they have been.

Scotty Weingard

We run May 2nd

Raising awareness for Pediatric Cancer. It's now personal. Join Team Hunter for a 10K run or please donate and help us help them. http://pcrf-kids.org.kintera.org/faf/donorReg/donorPledge.asp?ievent=329465&lis=1&kntae329465=94C6BC013E8D47C1AC923632E6F9944F&supId=283487581