Marathon Training Update

I haven’t been slack­ing with run­ning despite not writ­ing about it here very much. In fact, I’m off to what I believe to be a much bet­ter start than I was last year. This time last year I was bat­tling ten­donitis in my right ankle, an injury made worse by an inad­ver­tent kick in the shin dur­ing a beach soc­cer game in mid-August. I was hob­bled and had to take a week off after see­ing a doc­tor. A steady diet of pain med­ica­tion and stretch­ing got my back on track and I was chomp­ing at the bit for the Philadel­phia Dis­tance Run. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

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I Love This Time of Year

Where did sum­mer go? I haven’t lived up to most of the res­o­lu­tions I’ve made for myself this year, but I think that I get a reprieve since car­ing for my baby boy Char­lie took prece­dent right around June 18th this year. I’m still tin­ker­ing with this blog, as well as redis­cov­er­ing web ser­vices like Tum­blr, mar­veling at the new Google Read­er fea­tures, won­der­ing if I’ll ever think Friend­Feed is as use­ful as it claims to be, and be aston­ished at how com­plete­ly peo­ple are drawn into Face­book’s world.

But instead of get­ting lost in new and improved web toys, I’m enjoy­ing the time I’ve got­ten to spend with Char­lie and my love­ly wife Helen this sum­mer. We’ve tak­en Char­lie to five Phillies games already! We’re head­ed to North Car­oli­na next week for our annu­al vaca­tion there. I can’t wait!

When we get back it’ll be non­stop Phillies base­ball games, Czer­w’s kiel­basy grilled in our back­yard, Eagles games with friends, long runs as I con­tin­ue train­ing for my sec­ond marathon and every­thing there is to love about Philadel­phia in the fall. What’s not to love?

So don’t fret if I’m spend­ing an inor­di­nate amount of time on my baby­moon. I’m sure I’ll be back to being an Inter­net crank soon enough!

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My Second Marathon

I ran my first marathon last year. It was an amaz­ing expe­ri­ence that got me off the couch and back on the trail for the first time in ages. I nev­er looked back.

Now I’ve start­ed train­ing for my sec­ond marathon. It has­n’t been easy. It’s been far more chal­leng­ing to moti­vate myself. Being in bet­ter shape than I was at this time last year is no guar­an­tee that I’m going to be more effec­tive as my train­ing progresses.

I have 19 weeks to see if I can pull it togeth­er for this year’s Philadel­phia Marathon. It’s going to be a wild ride!

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Remember CDs?

A few weeks ago I wrote about falling in love with my turntable again. It lan­guished in the base­ment after a long ban­ish­ment to the guest bed­room, where it sat unused for months. It was pret­ty crazy for a guy whose job is all about music.

I res­ur­rect­ed it and all was right in the world, or so I thought. But it was­n’t. I want­ed to be sat­is­fied with the warm sounds ema­nat­ing from my Tech­nics 1200, but what becomes of the hun­dreds of CDs I’ve col­lect­ed over the years?

I broke down and dust­ed off my CD play­er, too, and you know what? It sounds great! I’d for­got­ten just how clear and loud CDs are! MP3s may be con­ve­nient, cheap, and plen­ti­ful, but they sound so slop­py on any­thing oth­er than tin­ny earbuds.

You know what I did right after that? Some­thing I don’t think I’ve done since ’99 — I bought a used CD on eBay! 

Crazy, right? Look at it this way: it was cheap­er than iTunes!

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Pardon My Dust

Sor­ry I’ve been away so long, but I’ve been kept very busy late­ly with my new son, Charles. I’m pleased to report that he’s a healthy, hap­py lit­tle boy.

I’m going to be tidy­ing up around here to reflect some of my new ideas about how this blog ought to look and what I’d like to share here. Hope­ful­ly I’ll be able to tweak the site a bit this week­end, adding my Twit­ter, Flickr, and Deli­cious pro­files to the right rail. 

This place could stand to be a lit­tle more social, could­n’t it? Well, look for me to add some fea­tures that let you decide how you want to stay abreast of updates on Kens­ing­ton Blues.

(I’m scrib­bling this post on my iPhone. It’s been my go-to device ever since Char­lie was born. I can’t think of some­thing that’s eas­i­er to pick up and use dur­ing those ear­ly morn­ing feedings!)

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