Jimmy V

I was all set to post a November recap, but then ESPN replayed Jimmy Valvano's 1993 ESPY speech.  The text is below, it really doesn't do the speech justice, but the message is still there.  I don't have much to add.  Cancer sucks, but Jimmy V's words, and spirit, live on.
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Thank you, thank you very much. Thank you. That's the lowest I've ever seen Dick Vitale since the owner of the Detroit Pistons called him in and told him he should go into broadcasting.

I can't tell you what an honor it is to even be mentioned in the same breath with Arthur Ashe. This is something I certainly will treasure forever. But, as it was said on the tape, and I also don't have one of those things going with the cue cards, so I'm going to speak longer than anybody else has spoken tonight. That's the way it goes. Time is very precious to me. I don't know how much I have left and I have some things that I would like to say. Hopefully, at the end, I will have said something that will be important to other people too.

But, I can't help it. Now I'm fighting cancer, everybody knows that. People ask me all the time about how you go through your life and how's your day, and nothing is changed for me. As Dick said, I'm a very emotional and passionate man. I can't help it. That's being the son of Rocco and Angelina Valvano. It comes with the territory. We hug, we kiss, we love. When people say to me how do you get through life or each day, it's the same thing. To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. Number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day. That's a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you're going to have something special.

I rode on the plane up today with Mike Krzyzewski, my good friend and wonderful coach. People don't realize he's ten times a better person than he is a coach, and we know he's a great coach. He's meant a lot to me in these last five or six months with my battle. But when I look at Mike, I think, we competed against each other as players. I coached against him for fifteen years, and I always have to think about what's important in life to me are these three things. Where you started, where you are and where you're going to be. Those are the three things that I try to do every day. When I think about getting up and giving a speech, I can't help it. I have to remember the first speech I ever gave.

I was coaching at Rutgers University, that was my first job, oh that's wonderful (reaction to applause), and I was the freshman coach. That's when freshmen played on freshman teams, and I was so fired up about my first job. I see Lou Holtz here. Coach Holtz, who doesn't like the very first job you had? The very first time you stood in the locker room to give a pep talk. That's a special place, the locker room, for a coach to give a talk. So my idol as a coach was Vince Lombardi, and I read this book called "Commitment To Excellence" by Vince Lombardi. And in the book, Lombardi talked about the fist time he spoke before his Green Bay Packers team in the locker room, and they were perennial losers. I'm reading this and Lombardi said he was thinking should it be a long talk, or a short talk? But he wanted it to be emotional, so it would be brief. So here's what I did. Normally you get in the locker room, I don't know, twenty-five minutes, a half hour before the team takes the field, you do your little x and o's, and then you give the great Knute Rockne talk. We all do. Speech number eight-four. You pull them right out, you get ready. You get your squad ready. Well, this is the first one I ever gave and I read this thing. Lombardi, what he said was he didn't go in, he waited. His team wondering, where is he? Where is this great coach? He's not there. Ten minutes he's still not there. Three minutes before they could take the field Lombardi comes in, bangs the door open, and I think you all remember what great presence he had, great presence. He walked in and he walked back and forth, like this, just walked, staring at the players. He said, "All eyes on me." I'm reading this in this book. I'm getting this picture of Lombardi before his first game and he said "Gentlemen, we will be successful this year, if you can focus on three things, and three things only. Your family, your religion and the Green Bay Packers." They knocked the walls down and the rest was history. I said, that's beautiful. I'm going to do that. Your family, your religion and Rutgers basketball. That's it. I had it. Listen, I'm twenty-one years old. The kids I'm coaching are nineteen, and I'm going to be the greatest coach in the world, the next Lombardi. I'm practicing outside of the locker room and the managers tell me you got to go in. Not yet, not yet, family, religion, Rutgers Basketball. All eyes on me. I got it, I got it. Then finally he said, three minutes, I said fine. True story. I go to knock the doors open just like Lombardi. Boom! They don't open. I almost broke my arm. Now I was down, the players were looking. Help the coach out, help him out. Now I did like Lombardi, I walked back and forth, and I was going like that with my arm getting the feeling back in it. Finally I said, "Gentlemen, all eyes on me." These kids wanted to play, they're nineteen. "Let's go," I said. "Gentlemen, we'll be successful this year if you can focus on three things, and three things only. Your family, your religion and the Green Bay Packers," I told them. I did that. I remember that. I remember where I came from.

It's so important to know where you are. I know where I am right now. How do you go from where you are to where you want to be? I think you have to have an enthusiasm for life. You have to have a dream, a goal. You have to be willing to work for it.

I talked about my family, my family's so important. People think I have courage. The courage in my family are my wife Pam, my three daughters, here, Nicole, Jamie, LeeAnn, my mom, who's right here too. That screen is flashing up there thirty seconds like I care about that screen right now, huh? I got tumors all over my body. I'm worried about some guy in the back going thirty seconds? You got a lot, hey va fa a napoli, buddy. You got a lot...

I just got one last thing, I urge all of you, all of you, to enjoy your life, the precious moments you have. To spend each day with some laughter and some thought, to get you're emotions going. To be enthusiastic every day and as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Nothing great could be accomplished without enthusiasm," to keep your dreams alive in spite of problems whatever you have. The ability to be able to work hard for your dreams to come true, to become a reality.

Now I look at where I am now and I know what I want to do. What I would like to be able to do is spend whatever time I have left and to give, and maybe, some hope to others. Arthur Ashe Foundation is a wonderful thing, and AIDS, the amount of money pouring in for AIDS is not enough, but is significant. But if I told you it's ten times the amount that goes in for cancer research. I also told you that five hundred thousand people will die this year of cancer. I also tell you that one in every four will be afflicted with this disease, and yet somehow, we seem to have put it in a little bit of the background. I want to bring it back on the front table. We need your help. I need your help. We need money for research. It may not save my life. It may save my children's lives. It may save someone you love. And ESPN has been so kind to support me in this endeavor and allow me to announce tonight, that with ESPN's support, which means what? Their money and their dollars and they're helping me-we are starting the Jimmy V Foundation for Cancer Research. And it's motto is "Don't give up, don't ever give up." That's what I'm going to try to do every minute that I have left. I will thank God for the day and the moment I have. If you see me, smile and give me a hug. That's important to me too. But try if you can to support, whether it's AIDS or the cancer foundation, so that someone else might survive, might prosper and might actually be cured of this dreaded disease. I can't thank ESPN enough for allowing this to happen. I'm going to work as hard as I can for cancer research and hopefully, maybe, we'll have some cures and some breakthroughs. I'd like to think, I'm going to fight my brains out to be back here again next year for the Arthur Ashe recipient. I want to give it next year!

I know, I gotta go, I gotta go, and I got one last thing and I said it before, and I want to say it again. Cancer can take away all my physical abilities. It cannot touch my mind, it cannot touch my heart and it cannot touch my soul. And those three things are going to carry on forever.

I thank you and God bless you all.

The Derby

The Berbee Derby that is.  With the family abandoning me for Thanksgiving and a 6-mile run on the schedule for the week, it only made sense to run the 10k at the aforementioned Derby.  I've known about this race for a number of years, and always assumed it was a pretty small local event.  Turns out almost 2,000 came out for the 10k, and another 3,500+ for the 5k.  Not so small.

As far as I'm concerned the weather was near perfect for a 10k.  Upper 30's and overcast.  I could have done without the wind, but it wasn't nearly as bad as I had feared prerace.

I've spent more time in the last 5+ hours since I've finished analyzing this race than I likely have for any other "largely meaningless" race.  I still don't know what to make of it.

First off, I don't think I've ever finished a run race feeling like I didn't leave everything I had out there.  Today I did, and I still ran 3-4 minutes faster than I thought reasonably possible given my current fitness.

Given the above, I think I let my Garmin hold me back throughout the entire race. I only looked at it at the mile markers, but it kept telling me I was going faster than what I felt (at least prerace) was sustainable.

The splits:

Mile 1:  8:56 - Was very congested to start, ran at a comfortable pace.  Time was at the fast end of what I thought possible for the entire race.

Mile 2:  8:29 - "You're an idiot"  I said to myself, perhaps a bit too loudly, when I saw this split.  But I was still comfortable, and the wind was still at our back.

Mile 3:  8:27 - By this point it wasn't easy, but I was nowhere near hurting either.

Mile 4: 8:34 - Back into the wind now.  I did my best to find people to draft behind, but all the bigger dudes around me seemed to be slowing down.

Mile 5: 8:32 - Still into the wind, been on the Cap. City Trail now since about the 3-1/2 mile mark.  I don't remember this trail being this hilly.

Mile 6:  8:45 - Couple of substantial hills in this mile.  About half way through we met up with the 5k runners.  Seemingly all 3,500 of them.

The last .2 was all downhill, and with thoughts of coming in under 54 minutes I ran it pretty hard, 7:21 per mile pace.  Finishing at 53:19, 8:35/mile.

875/1891 overall
624/997 male
76/143 age group

So I ran a 10k. Went 3-4 minutes faster than I thought possible.  Broke a 2-1/2 year old 10k PB by exactly 2 minutes*.  Never really hurt throughout the race.  Makes me wonder what I could have done If I had pushed a little more.

I hadn't planned on running the Jingle Bell 10k in Madison in a couple of weeks, but I may have been bit by the racing bug so perhaps I will.  It's not exactly a PR type of course and time of year, but it was the site of my first ever endurance event, the 10k back in 2007.  1 hour and 14 minutes of frozen fun back then, hopefully quite a bit faster this time around.

*  a note on my 10k PR.   I just have not run a lot of them.  Even today's 8:35 effort is only two seconds ahead of my half marathon PR pace.  So big picture not that impressive, but I'm still happy with it.  We're on the right track.

TBR

Going to rehash the Tyranena Beer Run one last time.  I took the time to go back and rehash the numbers and as it turns out, I didn't slow down nearly as much as I thought. 

Mile 1 - 9:50 - Little congested to start, but not terrible.
Mile 2 - 9:33
Mile 3 - 9:30
Mile 4 - 9:38
Mile 5 - 9:26
Mile 6 - 10:05 - Second Aid Station, I skipped it, but stopped and waited for a potty while Kel hydrated.  Didn't get to use the potty.
Mile 7 - 9:36
Mile 8 - 9:45
Mile 9 - 10:16 - Third Aid Station, stopped for water and Gu
Mile 10 and 11 - 9:51/ - Not sure what happened to the watch, but no individual splits for these miles.
Mile 12 - 10:21 - Stopped at one point to walk briefly near the end of the mile.
Mile 13 - 9:47
0.1 - 8:51/mile

So not terrible.  Probably need to focus on nutrition and hydration a bit more than I do at this distance.

Recovery has gone well.  Sunday I was sore, yesterday much better.  Today I was ready to resume running, but it's been raining off and on all day, and I'm not quite that committed to training at this point. 

Next up, New Years Day Dash.  5 miles, hopefully not freeze your nuts off cold like it was last year.  Going to do a little speed work between now and then and continue with the every other day run plan.

Beer Run

Tyranena Beer Run today.  Totally under trained, almost completely unprepared.  Training was going really well....

October started off on the same note as September.  Then I spent a week in Wyoming.  No running.  It's been very much hit and miss since the return.  So be it.  On to today.

Tyranena Beer Run.  13.1 miles.  Low 40's at the start, probably up into the 50's by the end, and windy.  But overall a nice day.

Highlight of the day by far, running with my sister.  Her endurance career and mine have never overlapped, and we've never done anything close to this together.  Was very cool to get this opportunity, and to run the entire race with her.

The two of us prerace.

Not a whole lot to say about the actual race.  The first 5 or 6 miles were fairly hilly, and largely into the wind.  Spent a good mile or so running downwind of a nasty ass farm.  Not fun.  The remainder of the race was fairly flat, and my mental capabilities seemed to have left me about this time as well.  Somewhere in the middle of mile 7, I calculated we had less than 4 miles left. Not sure how I did that.  Wishful thinking perhaps.

Other than some mild tightness in my left leg I made it through the first 9-10 miles without much difficulty.  The last 3 miles sucked.  Plain and simple. 

Coming into the finish with the children.

Finished in 2:08:45.  Pretty happy with it considering.  Anything around 2:10 would have been a huge success.  Still the slowest half I've run (by almost 13 minutes) but I knew it would be going in, and I'm in better shape now, going into Ironman training, than I have been at any point going into any of my previous tri seasons.  So I got that going for me.

Chilling with the children post race.

On to the next segment of the pre-Ironman training warm up.  Going to continue to run.  Looking to race again in the next month or so to keep the motivation up to train.  Wilson has found a home on the trainer.  Going to do some easy spinning 2-4x per week in prep for my winter bike plan.  Also hoping to get out a few more times on Bel.  Lastly, I intend to spend some time in the pool, albeit begrudgingly.

Kelly, thanks again for running with me.  Let's do it again soon.