Today was one of those days that it was a serious mental battle as to whether or not I would get up and run. Between not getting as much sleep as I normally do and catching sight of the temperature approaching freezing, I was not too keen on going out for what I had planned to be a 5 or 6 mile day. The impending precipitation in the forecast was another mitigating factor affecting my decision making process. I finally did get out of bed and was still grumbling around decid

I've been looking forward to today for pretty much two weeks now. Today is the day I got back to running after giving my hamstring some time to heal up and it went about as well as I could have hoped. I got a nice 3 miler in this morning as the sun was coming up and was almost entirely pain free, which is more than I can say for any other run that I've done in over a month, so it certainly feels good to start getting back into some run training. To try and avoid further iss

The beginning of the year used to be a somber time to me. For whatever reason, it would be a more reflective and sometimes regretful period. As this year begins to come to a close though, I am getting really amped up for 2015. This New Year, I have some very concrete and ambitious fitness goals, but I also feel that they are realistic and will be fulfilling. I was doing a little research earlier today and I found that Atlanta has a half marathon and 5k on Thanksgiving. I

Recovery time is something that I never really understood before I started kicking up my weekly mileage for running. I wasn't running enough to make it much of an issue and I also just didn't know any good techniques to help prevent and treat injuries. My lack of knowledge on these extremely important facets of training and my decision to up my mileage has put me on a crash course to learning about just how important rest days are and ways to maximize that rest and recovery

One of the things that I have long prided myself on is that if I decide I want to do something, I can often make it happen - within reason, of course. That mentality is really how I got into running with The Bear run on Grandfather Mountain and more recently my three running goals. Over Thanksgiving, I was talking with my brothers and mentioned in passing that I had thought about trying to train myself to dunk a basketball on a 10 foot basket. One of them immediately said

It has been a quite a busy, but enjoyable week and I hope your holidays were as fruitful as mine! As I've mentioned before, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because it centers around three Fs for me: family, feasting, and football. I handily accomplished all three this past week seeing all of my immediate family and some of my extended family, watching more football in a three or four day span than I thought was possible, and eating my weight in sweet potato casserole -

I'm unfortunately still having issues with my hamstring. I got a run in on Saturday and felt pretty good, but I tried to get one in on Sunday and I didn't make it a half mile before I could feel something was wrong and knew that I didn't need to be adding to the strain. I mentioned in a previous post that I'm doing a 5k with some family and my girlfriend on Thanksgiving morning and I'm pretty stoked for that race. It will be my first "official" 5k race so I think it'll be

I'm having to take a few days off from running to try and get my legs back in order for training. From the looks of the weather, though, I'm not missing a whole lot. Don't get me wrong, I love a good run in the rain, but it does take a bit more drive to get out the door when it's starting to get cool out and it's raining. The cold weather is a time that I have let my running lapse in the past and it has always set me back significantly. This year, my goal is to not change