May 22nd-What a day!

Today turned out to be a phenomenal day, and it's so great when you can pull off one of these days on a day when things could be rough. Today is the 3 year anniversary of Big Neil's passing.

For starters, my brother Brendan got a yellow lab puppy, he picked it up today. The breeder called him today and said "he's ready." The breeder had no idea what today was, but they played a nice role didn't they. And what better way to celebrate my dad's anniversary of his death, with life. So Brendan went and got his new puppy and now they had to name it. My mom of course pushed the Irish names (A for effort mom) but in the end, there was really just one name for this special little dude, Ace. My dad's nickname. I love when Neil reminds me how my dad got that nickname, I mean the guy had about ten nicknames. So for about a year, my dad and I worked together everyday doing windows, just the two of us pretty much. And I told him how if we were going to work together everyday, we needed to come up with a nickname for him. Calling him "dad" was too boring. I eventually came up with Ace; it was short, easy and it worked. And he was an Ace in the hole, always was. So cheers to Brendan on the puppy and the awesome name.

And the other good thing that happened today was Bonnie and I went out and smashed our 12 miler! We simply krushed it. Oh, and guess what else happened? My man Kurt came and surprised us for a celebratory run. So John and I had our old partner in crime to run with today, bueno. My run went well at the beginning, pretty standard, just not bad and not great. But as the run went on, I felt better and better. I remember John saying to me at like mile 9, "you got that extra step today Sean, I see it." And I did, I could feel the "pop" today, I was running inspired.

At around mile 10.5 or so, I realized that I still have a ton in the tank, so I cut loose. I took off and I caught up to some other TNT friends and ran with them for a bit, but then I kept going. And two of the people I passed were Kate and Tyler, two of the fastest people we train with. I was now flying for the last mile, and one of the best things about this training is I am learning what I can do with this body I was dealt with. I know how hard I can push it, and when I need to pull back with it. I have had such a great training, no injuries and no bad runs. You cannot ask for more than that. So as I am hauling, I kept looking back at Kate and Tyler to see how far I was distancing myself. And on one of these times I turned around, I see Kurt, flying! I yell "you better not let me beat you" and then I ran even faster. Well that's all he needed to hear and see. A minute later he is right next to me and I was practically sprinting. We finished the run together, and still somehow conversing with one another. John tells me after I finish that I was running sub 8 mile at the end, which is just a cool way of saying we were running less than an 8 minute mile, schwing!

It was another great run, and it was a blast running with Kurt. And again, everyone else had a killer run too. Bon crushed her run, and my man John came in right behind Kurt and I, so he was hauling at the end as well. And Bonnie is going to be a joining the Team in Training staff (Congrats Bonnie!). So today she started her run at 7am (we all started ours at 8am) because she had another TNT event to go in the a.m. She did say she would try to come back and see me finish my run. So as I pull into the finish of my run, there's Bonnie waiting there in this crazy wig I own, and she is wearing my official shirt I wore in the Alaska marathon. The shirt is so sweet, it has a huge picture of my dad's firefighter picture on the back, and it has all the names of the people we ran for that year. It was an awesome surprise. It was an amazing finish and a wonderful tribute from Bonnie to Ace. So yeah, what a day right? And of course the Celtics won one for the big guy as well, why not. And lastly, for everyone that has donated to our cause, thank you so much. Let's face it, no one likes to ask their friends and family for donations, and this week was crunch time for us, and so many of you were unbelievable with helping us at our most critical hour. And if anyone still wants to donate it's not too late. But thank you to each and every one of you that donated to our cause in a real crappy economy. And for the people that were unable to contribute, thank you so much for your support. Thanks for the great emails and phone calls of encouragement, and of course the awesome blog comments. Thanks to everyone for doing what they did, as Bonnie & I try to make a difference against Cancer. We are nothing without all of you, I promise. Gracias, and as always, thanks for reading.

http://pages.teamintraining.org/or/rnr10/ssullivugm



Sean

Who does # 2 work for???

The task at hand on Saturday morning was daunting, or at least it seemed to be. Go out children, go out and run 20 miles, that's what they told us to do. So what did I do? I went out and took a big dump all over those 20 miles, that's right. And then I said deal with it! Ok sorry, that was disgusting, I appologize, all I was trying to say is I had a great run, and so did Bonnie. That was gross and there will be no more talk of poo, I promise, well, at least not my poo. But everybody does poo you know.

Ok, now that we have that all cleared up, let's talk about the run. Saturday again provided picture perfect temperatures and you couldn't ask for better weather to take on a 20 miler. It was about 65-68 degrees, gorgeous. Bonnie & I hadn't run at all in the last 2 weeks by the way, we've been kind of busy. We did get an 80 minute run in on Thursday though, and it was a nightmare run by the way, but we got it out of our systems. We needed to get the junk out so to speak, and in Bonnie's case on Saturday, literally. Poor Bonnie has been nicknamed "inoppurtune pooer". The last few times we have had long runs, Bonnie's stomach starts going haywire right before we run, or just as we are pulling out of the driveway type of stuff, poor kid. We will be ready ro run and Bon just gives me that look, and it's the "inopportune poo look", and I know it well. Neil, it was the same you look you used to give me outside Ernie's Lunch on the way to school as kids, I know this look. So anyways, poor Bonnie had to make 4 different trips to the latrine along the way, which sucks. I am joking about this bc that is what we runners do, in our "running world", we really yuk it up big time about the inopportune poos...

All joking aside, we both had phenomenal runs, we couldn't have been happier. As were coming into our mile 17 aid station, we were feeling unbelievable, and miles 10-17 were pretty hilly. So Bon had some stomach issues, and my only issue was my legs were really sore, the sorest they have been all season. But the only reason I was so sore is bc I hadn't run in almost 2 full weeks, so that was no concern. At around mile 17 we were realizing how great our breathing was, we weren't winded, at all. So as we came off the big hill of Terwilliger, we are so pumped! It was great bc we kept getting each other pumped up about how great our runs were going, good ol' husband & wife teamwork ya know.

So mile 18 or so we are coming up to some train tracks and this long freight train is about to come through. And the last thing you want to do when you are that close to finishing a run is to stop, you will tighten up within seconds. So we are approaching the tracks and we hear "ding ding ding ding". We are now both sprinting, which is no fun at mile 18. We beat the train by about 10 seconds and otherwise, we would have been stuck there for over 5 minutes, unacceptable. I remember thinking if it were me, solo, and I got stuck, I'd consider walking over it, it's not really going that fast.

We ended our run sprinting, of course, like we always do. And John's GPS said we ran 20.8, can't argue with that. So our marathon is in San Diego in 3 weeks, we hope to see anyone and everyone while we are there. Details on that to follow, and thanks for reading.

http://pages.teamintraining.org/or/rnr10/ssullivugm

Sean