Motivated to Succeed

11:00 AM - Sunny and temp around 60. I went to the track with Emmy who came up last night for the day :). We got there and my dad was already on the track doing his normal walking routine :) Then my mom showed up afterwards. After our jog we went up to the elementary school where Jonn, Harry, Su and her boyfriend Rocco were playing tennis. A fun morning! No pain in my achilles. Stretched after mile 1, and then after we were done with the run. Cooled down after the run with .5 miles of walking with Mom and Emmy. (Note: for the jog, went running through the nature trails with Emmy after 2 miles on the track. So mile 3 lost signal. Was right around 9:30 pace though.)

• Mile 1 - 9:16
• Mile 2 - 9:07
• Mile 3 - 10:36 (9:30)
• Mile 4 - 9:30
• Mile 5  - 8:27
• last .25 - 2:05 (8:20 pace)

Total Time: 47:55 Total Distance. 5.25 mi Average Pace: 9:07

3:40 PM - Partly cloudy. Temps in the mid 60s. Ran at the Taconic High School track today in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Came to visit Emmy after work early this morning at about 1am and she started her new job last week so she had work today from 4pm to 9pm. After she left for work I decided to head over to her old high school to jog at the track. It was a great run and I felt awesome. Stretched before the run, and then after I finished on the track, before the .4 mile cool down to the car.

Only scary part. About at mile 3, a guy comes screeching into the turnoff by the parking lot in a blue sports car. Gets out and I see he is wearing a "do-rag" and wearing jeans that are too baggy and about 4 sizes too big for him. His what I gathered to be girlfriend was walking across the football field and he started yelling and using really inappropriate language making a huge scene about how she didn't have his permission to be here. It was wrong on so many levels, but I knew me even looking wrongly in his direction could start down a path I did not really care to. Well he ended up throwing a 50-gallon metal garbage can into a portapotty, which then richocheted off it and hit his own car, after which he started slamming both of his hands on the hood of it. It was not a pretty picture, and I felt bad for these three older ladies that had been walking the track. They were really taken aback by it, as I think we all were. The girl ended up going home with him. I just hope she's okay!

Didn't have my Garmin :(. So I ran in a lane I already knew the splits for. Did 22 laps in Lane #6 (11 laps = 3 miles). My splits for the run:

• Miles 1, 2, 3 -  26:18 (8:46 / mi)
• Miles 4,5, 6 - 25:55 (8:33/ mi)
• Cooldown .4 mi - 3:50 (9:35 pace)

*Note: I realized that I went a little faster than I had thought I was going to go going into the run. But between 1. not having my Garmin and 2. the incident with the thrown garbage can and 3. listening to an iPod for the first time in a long time on a jog, I ended up going a little fast. But this perhaps was a good thing. I had ZERO Pain and I stretched nicely after the track run before jogging back to the car. Tomorrow will be a day off. Hopefully I will go for a short hike though with Emmy! Hope everyone is enjoying their holiday (even though I have my own convictions against celebrating someone like Columbus; this holiday is wrong on so many levels)

Total Time: 56:03 Total Distance: 6.4 mi Average Pace: 8:45*

* - I will be taking it easy the rest of the week as well. Today was a very good workout. Now going to tack on easy 9-10 minute paced miles to reach my short term goal of a 20 mile week!

12:00 PM - Partly sunny, though it switched to cloudy skies later in the day. Windy. Temps in the mid to upper 60s. Really nice October day! Before I had to go to school and before Emmy headed off to work we decided to go and climb Monument Mountain again. It was gorgeous up there, and the Berkshires are probably about 80% peak foliage. Brought along my camera but the stupid thing wouldnt work! Maybe next time I should bring my standard SLR and forget going digital! Hopefully we can climb it another time before the end of the season. You get a good workout on the way up because it is so steep, and on the way down it's more gradual, but we hike faster to keep the heart rate up. Total was 3 miles in about an hour and 10 minutes with a break at the top to take in the views. I really love Berkshire County!  No real pain in the achilles today, just some soreness in the quads/hams. Hopefully I can go for a nice 10:00+ pace tomorrow for 3 or so. Happy Tuesday everyone!

7:50 AM - Foggy and temp was 44 degrees. Perfect fall weather if I do say so myself! Got to the track and was doing my warmup mile. Eerie yet cool sight: the fog was billowing out of the trees lining the track and hovering about 7-8 feet above the track. Completely clear below it. (No I checked it wasn't smoke haha). So I finished my warmup mile and right then the high school gym class came down to the track and I guess they were doing their first of two mile runs for the year (overachievers here in NYS I know!). So I got off the track since I didn't want to interfere and grabbed my car keys and decided to go for a jog down one of the backroads from the track. Felt amazing. Wanted to make sure I ran consistent and not too fast. Had to check my watch a few times because my legs were feeling so good. I didn't want to push it too fast with my other runs earlier this week, you know? So I stretched at mile 1 and then again after my run. No soreness really except a little from yesterday's hike. I really should invest in a pair of hiking books instead of wearing trainers up and down mountains! Oh well. Splits were:

• Mile 1 - 9:53
• Mile 2 - 9:34
• Mile 3 - 9:35
• Mile 4 - 9:24
• .17 - 1:35 (9:19)

Total Time: 40:01 Total Distance: 4.17 mi Average Pace: 9:35

I've decided to go with Gordon Bloch's schedule for building up mileage and ultimately training for a marathon. I like her approach which emphasizes total minutes on your feet rather than mileage based or pace-based plans. I think this fits my mentality better. Run for fun. Run for time. The distance will come. The plan I am looking at right now will build me up to 5 hours a week of running (5 days of running though I might modify it to fit my 4 day schedule I am doing now). Then, for the marathon I believe there are 3x 3-hour plus runs. That should be fine. Because even if I average 10 minute miles for those, it would give me at least 18 miles each run. That's at least 3 miles more than I ran before either of my other marathons :). I am excited, yet I know it is a long way off. I need to take it nice and slowly to build up without injury. It's nice to have a goal however. Hope everyone else has a great Wednesday. Now time to go do mouns of homework!

TODAY WASN'T JUST WONDERFUL. WASN'T JUST PERFECT. IT WAS THE BEST DAY OF MY ENTIRE LIFE!!!!!  (Why? Because I asked my BEST FRIEND TO MARRY ME AND SHE SAID "YES"!!!)

10:30 AM - It was rainy at my house this morning when I woke up to drive to Emma's. I actually drove through the storm and came out ahead of it when I got to Pittsfield. Now the plan was to stop at the jeweler's because I got the call Wed. night that a certain thing was ready for me so I went directly there and had planned on meeting Emma's mom for coffee to run things by her. It's difficult to get Mary Rose alone to talk to since Emma lives with her, and I had called her on Tuesday night and left a message that was vague enough so that Emma would have no idea what it was about if she played it in front of her. It was something like "Hey.. uh.. Mary Rose.. it's Benn... I was uh.. calling to ask if maybe tomorrow I can meet with you to run something by you. I have to ask you a question about Emma.. but I want to do it in person because it's important.." Well funny thing is I get to Emma's house at 10:31 because I never got a phone call from Emma's mom and then I walk in and find out that she just hopped in her car without telling anyone and went down the road. So of course I already have a lot on my mind and I'm thinking.. oh crap! She's going to meet me and never told me! So I try to think of an excuse like "oh no! I left my credit card in the machine at the gas station at the bottom of the road" (this is the one by the coffee shop). Then I looked like a bozo because right when I was supposed to go out, Mary Rose came walking in.

So one crisis averted, I planned on going hiking with Emma at our favorite mountain (Monument Mountain) and I had intentionally got ahead of all my homework for the last week or two so that I could plan something like this when I finally got the call from Charland Jewelers. We left the house at 11:30 and made sure to bring our rain gear and when we got to the parking lot we were 1 of 2 cars. It was a really rainy, nasty day and I was a little bummed because earlier this week there had been such perfect weather.. but I knew that this was a better day than the earlier trip. Especially since I knew what was to come.

We started off hiking the trail backwards for a change of pace since this was the third or fourth time in a month we've hiked Monument. Emma was cruising ahead and she seemed concerned since I was lagging behind so much. But I swear I was Frodo carrying the "precious" because all that I could concentrate on was "What am I going to say? How am I going to say it? How can I make sure I don't mess up? Will she say yes?"

After about a half hour of hiking we got to the lookout. By this time we were both soaked through to the bone... but it was okay. I had a towel and camera in my backpack. So we get to the lookout and it was beautiful because though we didn't have the fifty-plus mile view afforded us earlier in the week, we both simultaneously commented on the fact that it was like we were in a painting.. and that if you stepped off the edge of the cliff you'd just step into nothingness.. the world was our canvas. It was here I knew it was the right time.

I put my backpack down and gave Emmy a hug. She hugged me back commenting how nice it was to be up here on a hike with me. It was funny because I looked into her eyes and started saying how I felt. How she meant the world to me. And how she made each day wonderful, even a crappy rainy day like today. I told her that I thanked God each and every day I woke up and she was still with me. That she was my best friend.  It was here that I asked, "And I was wondering, Emmy if you would do me the honor and be my best friend forever." I got down on one knee and was fumbling in my pocket (anything but gracefully because I had the ring box in a cardboard box so it didn't get wet in the rain). She looked down at me and I knew that she had had no idea what was happening. This was what I wanted. To take her completely by surprise. She looked down at me as I opened the box and my heart was racing even faster. I had almost been hyperventilating as I was getting ready to ''pop the question''. I bet I was sweating bullets, and my hands were clammy. I felt like my heart was in my throat it was beating so fast. I looked up at her and she looked down and started crying (I know that these were tears of joy but man did it make me feel bad because I don't like seeing Emmy cry;). Then she stopped and did her signature handwaving at her eyes and wiped a couple of tears away and did a laugh and said "OF COURSE! Yes! YES!" I stood up and hugged her and didn't want to let go. It was the best feeling in the world because that huge weight I had holding me down the whole way up the mountain had been lifted and I felt like I was on (or in) cloud 9!

We hugged and hugged and laughed and cried together and it was great because there was no one else on the mountain. It was just us two and the clouds. It was such an amazing experience :). I don't know how we got down the mountain because we were both probably only thinking about other things.. Me about how I was now the luckiest guy in the world, Emma about how she had to call everyone now because she was officially ENGAGED!

I will write more later. There are other parts of the story to tell. But I just had to do a quick entry about my GREAT NEWS!! Today is absolutely without a doubt the best day of my life!!!

Right after she said yes!

Our first kiss as an ENGAGED COUPLE!!!

Our hands on a rock at the spot where I popped the question. :)

4:00 PM - Sunny, Temp around 50 degrees. Gorgeous! Emmy and I went walking along the Ashwilticook Trail. It was really windy though so we only walked for 40 minutes, but we walked fast to get our cardio up and stay warm :). It was so much fun. And we both still cannot stop smiling! We went out for lunch today with Emmy's sister Liana to an Indian Restaurant. Yum! Boo to work tomorrow :( hehe. Thank you everyone for your kind words!