Motivated to Succeed

10:25 AM - Woke up this morning and it was pouring outside. Was chilly and foggy to boot. Made coffee and then started some homework after feeding the dogs. Did another part of my unit plan that's due in a couple weeks. There was a break in the rain, so I seized the opportunity and drove to Spa Park. Ended up doing circuits, doing the 5k course, then around the golf course . Did that twice, then did another 5k course for good measure. Felt pretty good. Finished right when the rain started again. Overcast and temp only in high 50s maybe during the run. Felt good considering the run yesterday afternoon and logging over 20+ miles in the last 24 hours. Felt strong. Love my water bottle carrier too :). Going to grab a shower and then do some more homework and hopefully get to talk to Emmy. I can't wait until December once I'm done with school! Will be so much better! Splits were:

• Mile 1: 9:29
• Mile 2: 9:06
• Mile 3: 9:31
• Mile 4: 8:42
• Mile 5: 8:41
• Mile 6: 8:46
• Mile 7: 8:29
• Mile 8: 8:48
• Mile 9: 8:34
• Mile 10: 8:32
• Mile 11: 8:47
• Mile 12: 8:40
• Mile 13: 8:51
• .32: 2:44 (8:37)

Total Time: 1:57:45 Total Distance: 13.32 miles Average Pace: 8:50

7:25 PM - Dark, cold, windy. Clouds moving fast in the sky. Rained all day and then stopped just before I went running. Yesterday was a crazy day and went right from school to class until 8:30 pm. No time for a run. Today, pretty much same story. Got out at 2:30, home at 2:37 and then worked on lessons until 6:30 break for dinner, a bit more and then got in the car and drove to the track. Just got home. My dad was still at the school and said to me when I got home, "You're crazy, Benn! Running in the headlights at the track?!" I go, "What headlights. I was dancing in the moonlight!" Had the Cat Stevens Moonshadow thing playing through my head. Felt pretty good. I warmed up with 1 mile and then stretched a couple minutes and then ran the rest of the run without stopping, doing 1 mile repeats with .25 mile recoverys (generally did the recovery .25s in 2:15-2:30 I think). Repeats were goal 70-80% effort to estimate a 1/2 marathon pace on flat ground (not that I have any flat or fast 1/2s this year :(). Got progressively faster! Woo hoo. Great run! Now off for a shower and more homework before passing out. Woot. Splits were:

• 1.11 mi warmup: 9:36 (8:39/ mile)
• Mile Repeat #1: 7:30, .25 recov. 2:16
• Mile Repeat #2: 7:23, .25 recov. 2:20
• Mile Repeat #3: 7:18, .25 recov. 2:20
• Mile Repeat #4: 6:55, .25 recov. 2:28
• Mile Repeat #5: 6:50
• 1.07 mi cooldown: 8:49 (8:15/ mile)

Total Time: 1:04:21 Total Distance: 8.25 miles Average Pace: 7:47

6:30 PM - Overcast, windy and rainy. There were soccer games and xc practice after school so I used the first couple hours to revamp my lesson for tomorrow. I developed some cool activities about Civil War spies including a cipher disk where students get to decode some messages and encode their own. Then I am going to do a short demo about Civil War medicine with props and try to get kids thinking about infections, bacteria and the likes. Went to the track with Harry. He stayed in the car to do homework but found out later that he lost one of his contacts so he had to wait to come come before doing any of it. Oops. Told him I was only doing a 45:00 run today so I wanted to stick to my promise. Stretched and then eased into the run. Did about 2.25 miles one way and then 3.5 miles the other way. Couldn't figure out why I kept missing the 1 mile lap splits and then I realized I had turned the autolap feature off yesterday. Only took me 5 miles to figure that one out! From what I remember, I did the 3 mile mark in about 24:15, 4 miles in 31:56 and 5 miles in about 39:30 or something. Ended up running just over 45 minutes to hit an even split. Stretched and went home to have dessert with the family. Cool to get in a good run, but now back to doing lesson plans and such. Student teaching is way too exhausting especially for the amount you get paid (which in case anyone is wondering is nothing!).

Total Time: 45:08 Total Distance: 5.75 miles Average Pace: 7:51

7:30 PM - 42 degrees and dark when I started. Went to the track. Today was a very eventful day. My lessons went awesome. I didn't know what to expect, considering I had two activities planned, the first on Civil War Espionage and ciphering (aka coding), and then the second which was on Civil War Medicine (an intro to it). All five periods went really well today, despite the rushed 35 minute schedules! I really like the 8th graders and I am going to miss them when I switch to the next school at the end of the month. One of the highlights I had today was when a kid named Austin came in after lunch to borrow one of the cipher disks to work on his homework. He ended up writing his own coded message for me to decode, and I did decode it. It read, "Mr. Griffin Rocks". I told him thanks! and made him autograph it for me. I put it in my binder to save. It truly meant a lot to me.

My observation went really well. The coordinator from St. Rose, Hazel said all my lessons are really well done, and then she said, "you really make my job easy! You just... get it!" I was grinning ear to ear. After my observation, I grabbed lunch quick (selzter and pb&j on whole wheat with a banana), then helped some stragglers with the work from class since we didn't get to finish it. 8th period brought its own fun. We had the opportunity as a district (K-12) to hop on a "trail" around the school for 25 minutes and walk. It was truly something to see all 1200 students and faculty going outside and walking around the nature trails, track and school. I think we covered about 1.5 miles in all. I could really tell the kids loved it.

Highlights of the walk: Saw the eagle mascot (found out it was one of my 8th graders, KC Hersey who is like 6'3" and was a super good sport). Then saw Obama on the playground waving to us. Then the RiverRats (local hockey team) mascot who is a rat. Also coming up the hill at the end of the walk I see this old guy with a blonde wig and sunglasses on jamming out on a guitar. 100+ kids are gathered around him, and he's jamming out to Beatles Rock Band. The kiddos like groupees yelling, "One more song! One more song!" I get up close and the 8th graders I'm with go, "Hey, Mr. G? Isn't that your DAD?!". HAHAHA! It was truly amazing, and I wasn't too ashamed to say, "Yup! That is my good ol' dad!" He truly has the best job in the world as an elementary principal!

Tonight after doing a bunch of homework and unit plan stuff, I went to the track. I wasn't the only one there though surprisingly! The guy that drives the 18-wheeler showed up right about when I did. We ran in the same direction, me in outside lane 6, he on the inside lane 1. No race. Just jogging. Each time I passed him (about once per mile-mile and a half) we would talk a bit. I laughed when he said, "Phew! At least I'm not the only nut out here running in the dark!" I told him it makes me feel fast running in the dark. He laughed too. Never realized how obnoxious headlights were until they kept shining in our faces as people took second and third looks seeing two night runners running in circles. They must have thought we were lost and maybe seeing the light would save us. Haha. Splits tonight were good for a recovery run:

• Mile 1: 9:02
• Mile 2: 8:59
• Mile 3: 8:55
• Mile 4: 8:38
• Mile 5: 8:23
• Mile 6: 8:55

Total Time: 52:56 Total Distance: 6.00 miles Average Pace: 8:49

1:00 PM - Overcast in the 50s. Looked like rain. Pretty foggy. I drove to Emmy's house and we went hiking after grabbing a snack at her house. Drove to Monument Mountain. It's my favorite, though I'm biased since the proposal last year ;). It does have spectacular views though! We had a great time, hiking up the trail. You could actually see some colors in the foliage already. Peak foliage in the Berkshires won't be for another week or so. It started to rain about 10 minutes from the car. Such a great time. She put up with me talking about steeplechasing and then nearly wiping out and cracking my knee, head, and elbows trying to hurdle fallen trees. I'm such a goon sometimes! It was amazing how fast Emmy is at hiking up and down mountains. I told her, no joke, that she'd be a kick butt trail runner. She is built for it withoutadoubt. Now I just have to try to convince her! Finished in just over an hour even with a short break at the top!