Running for Charity, Tutoring, Touring Mansions, and the Love of Spring Weather

The past month has been pretty good to me. I kicked off the month in Houston visiting a ton of friends that I hadn't seen in a year. The weather was wonderful, and the weekend was fantastic until 2 PM Sunday when the Mississippi State Bulldogs lost on a last second tip-in during the finals of the SEC Tournament. But, all was not lost. The next weekend my mom came to visit to watch me run in my first half marathon. Saturday morning we woke up before dawn, grabbed a cab, and headed to Hamilton Park.....why Hamilton Park before dawn you ask? Well, it's only the best view of NYC I've found thus far, and the city happens to be to the east of Hamilton Park. Check out the picture at the top of the page! After that, we headed back to Hoboken and stopped by Carlo's Bake Shop, i.e. the Cake Boss, and my mom bought a delicious apple danish. We spent the afternoon in the city picking up my bib for the race and quickly strolling through the museum of natural history on the upper west side. The highlight of the museum was most definitely the live butterfly sanctuary.



From the museum, we headed back to Times Square for a charity dinner. I signed up to run the half marathon for the charity Inheritance of Hope. IoH is a charity to benefit children who have a terminally ill parent by providing "retreats" for the families to build memories and a support group. During the charity dinner, a terminally ill mother spoke about her family's experience at the retreat. At first she tried to read a prepared speech, but couldn't make it through a sentence. She apologized profusely, and then gave one hell of an impromptu speech. The charity is relatively young, so young that I was able to spend 15 minutes talking to the founder. I raised over $12,000 for the charity which is enough money to invite 3 families to a retreat. I'm not one to brag, but I am genuinely proud to be able to say that. The charity's mission is close to my heart, and I'm thankful to have found the charity.



I woke up at 3 AM on race day with a completely stuffy nose and never fell back to sleep. I drank as much water as possible to chase the onset of the cold away and hydrate myself. A couple hours later I paid for this emergency hydration in the form of a 1 hour subway ride, 15 minute walk, and 30 minute line to use the port-a-potty at the start line. This may have been the most pain I experienced on race day, and that's not an understatement. The race began at 7:40 AM for me on 97th street and Central Park with about 300 professional racers and 11,000 others simply hoping to finish. For the first 3 miles I was on a pretty good pace, and I realistically passed about 2,000 runners. The next 4 miles I maintained a good pace throughout the hills of central park and finished my first 7 miles in a couple minutes over an hour or 9 minutes per mile. From here, it started falling apart mile by mile. After mile 8, I ran through the massive crowds of Times Square which gave me a little boost. But after mile 10, I had nothing but 3 miles of a straight run along the Hudson River left. My knees and hips were pounding with every step, but my feet were even worse. I felt like I had a permanent cramp in my feet after mile 10. Slowly I pressed on and finally finished the half marathon in 2 hours and 8 minutes or a bit under 10 minutes per mile. While I'm not overly proud of the finish time, I am proud to have finished. I think walking 7 miles the day before through Hoboken and the city contributed to the painful knees and feet. I also faced several not insignificant challenges during my training ranging from a severely bruised big toe to 30 degree temps to a quite painful achilles injury to other.....issues.....I will not discuss in this forum. I had a blast running the race and I anticipate more races in the future. I'd like to make vacations out of future races, i.e. a half marathon through the mountains of Colorado or the beaches of Normandy. My next athletic event will be a sprint triathalon (1/3 mile swim, 10 mile bike ride, and 5k run).





I have also been tutoring mostly math and science once a week at a local program called Restore Ministries for the past 3 months or so. Recently, one of the kids I was tutoring passed the GED with the highest math score of everyone, a 95 out of 100. It was really nice to hear that the tutoring produced results.

Finally, the weekend before Easter, I went to Newport, Rhode Island for a day and night. Newport is an island on the Atlantic Ocean where many 19th and 20th centuries wealthy families owned summer "homes", i.e. mansions. I toured a couple mansions, ate some lobster, and enjoyed the rocky New England oceanside.

I'll be back in Brandon, MS April 16-18 if anyone is around and wants to catch up.