2nd Marathon for the Marathon Icons.

The marathon Icons have been up a month now, and I 3 weeks ago I ran my first Marathon for the Team In Training, raising money for the The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society,
Tomorrow I run the Flying Pig marathon in Cincinnati, for Team in Training. this will be #2 of the 3 marathons that I will be doing. However my main fundraising tool is the Marathon Icons.

Thanks to everyone who has purchased the Icons, or donated. Wish me luck.

If you want to help me out, you can pick up the Marathon Icons Here. http://mormegil.wincustomize.com/skins.aspx?skinid=1767&libid=2

Or make a donation of any size here.
http://pages.teamintraining.org/mi/anchor09/BoyerHatcher

Paul Boyer (Mormegil) and Stardock have joined forces with the Team in Training to help save lives!

Since I began running 3 years ago I have been looking for a way to bring my two passions together; Icons and Running. This year I joined the “Team In Training” to help raise money for The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. I am running 5 marathons this year, including the Alaska Mayors Marathon, along with my wife, as a member of the “Team In Training.” We set a fundraising goal of $10,000 dollars between the two of us. This gave me my chance to finally bring my two addictions together. I’ve done this by creating the “Marathon” Icon suite.

In the Marathon Icon suite I tried to capture the scope of running a marathon by creating a uniquely colored IconPackage for each mile of the Marathon -  26 IconPacks for 26.2 miles. The result is an amazing variety and over 1200 icons that will complement any desktop. To top this all off I included three additional IconPacks, themed for the “Team in Training” so you can show your support to the world, making a total of 29 IconPackages. This, to my knowledge, the largest Icon suite ever.

Stardock has been generous enough to join in my efforts, and will donate all the profits from this pack as well, so 100% of the profits from this suite will go directly to the The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society to help save lives. 

I hope you will join me in supporting this cause. As someone who has lost family to Leukemia, it is near and dear to my heart. On June 20th of 2009, my wife and I will be running across the finish line in Alaska, in memory of my Uncle, and in support of my brother-in-law. In the end it will be those of you who support me by purchasing the “Marathon” suite that will have made it possible.

For additional information about our story, or to donate directly to the cause, go here:

For additional information about The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, go here:

If you don’t already have IconPackager, you can download try it out, get it here.

To help save lives, and get the full 29 pack suite, go here.

Las Vegas Marathon 2008 (King for a Day)

Las Marathon, 2008.

Finish Time: 3:45:41, new PR.
Place: Overall 593/3525, Division 85, Sex 485.
Marathon #5, State #4 of 50.

Is been almost 6 week since I ran down the Vegas Strip, dressed as Elvis.  When I was looking for a winter marathon, Vegas was one of the first I came across. While I was perusing the races web site, I found that they were looking to brake the world record of the most Elvi to run a marathon. Well I figured if I was going to do Vegas I should do it 100%.

The weekend was a whirlwind, and went something like this…

Saturday:
Flight from Detroit, had to wake up to early…
Walked from airport, 3 miles, sweaty…
Checked in to Excalibur, to expensive…
Walked to Del Taco, 1200 calories of bliss…
Walked to Expo, got packet, and stared at…
Karaoke Pasta dinner, 200 Elvi, 2000 people…
Drank half gallon of Gatorade… 
Slept pretty well, woke up at 4:30am…



Sunday:
Dressed as Elvis, walked to race, ate muffin…
Got in starting coral with 200 other Elvi…
Miles 1-5 the strip, still dark, fireworks…
Miles 6-10 sunrise, run thru, wedding chapel…
Miles 11-18, up hill, boring, but steady pace…
Miles 19-24, down hill, 4th place Elvis…
Miles 25-26, called Kristin for the last mile…
Finish, Kristin across the finish on my iPhone…
Got picture with show girl, posted on Facebook…
Walked slowly to hotel, Long shower…
Del Taco again… bliss.
Walked to the Palms, saw movie, forgettable…
Cab to airport, wait 4 hours for flight…
Back in Detroit at 5AM, Very Tired…
 
I wish I had the words to express the surreal adventure that was this race, It was a great way to my 2008 running season, with a new PR, and people yelling “Go Elvis” for 26.1 miles.

Detroit Marathon, 2008, Best Run ever.

Detroit Marathon, 2008:
Finish Time: 3:46:49.
Overall Place: 999 – 3551

I am righting this over a month after the actual race, mostly because I just don't know what to say. It was my best race to date in just about every way. I wanted to write something clever, and give a detail brake down of the entire race, since I have done my best to complain about how all the others went.

But the strange thing is, now that I have had a near perfect marathon, I just don't have the words. So with that said, I will do my best to sum up.

For the first time, I officially signed up with a pace group, since I had run the Milwaukee Marathon two weeks earlier at 3:49:50, I decided to sign up for the 3:50 group.  This turned out great, with the help of the pace group, and the leader Pacer David. I was able to stay with in 30-45 seconds of the pace up to mile 24. At mile 24 after talking to the pace leader, I was able to leave the group behind, doing mile 24 at 8:00 and mile 26, at 7:10.

The last mile is were words failed me. I was so pumped up that I was smiling like a mad man, I quite literally bounced down final stretch, almost disqualifying myself by jumping right over the finish line.

Ironically, As I right this I am one week away from running the Las Vegas Marathon, dressed as Elvis, but it will always be Detroit 2008 were I first finished a marathon feeling like a King.

2008 Detroit Marathon, Seems like I've been here before.

 

One year ago, I was writing almost the same blog as I am writing tonight.

Tomorrows morning I will be running my Second Detroit Freepress Marathon. This will not only be my second Detroit Marathon, it is my Second Marathon, this month. Two weeks ago I ran the Milwaukee Lakefront marathon, with a finish time of 3:49:56.  Tomorrow I will be running with a pace group for the first time, and shooting for another 3:50 marathon.  The only thing crazy about this race is the fac that I am trying doing it so soon after the last one.

My goal for this race is simple, run consistently. Two weeks ago in Wisconsin, I ran the first 24 miles at 8:30, and bonked in the last 2 miles. Losing almost 4 minutes in last mile. This I want to average 8:47 the entire race, and finish at almost the same time.

Tonight with 10 hours to go, I am feeling pretty confident, I am in much better shape then I was last year. I will however admit that I have already decided that I wont be trying to do any more back to back marathons for quite awhile.

My only goal is to get some sleep, and digest my pre-race spaghetti dinner.

The Third Marathons the Charm.

Milwaukee Lakefront Marathon 2008.
Finish Time: 3:49:56, Pace 26.2 @ 8:46.

It took me a few days to decide just what to say about my experience at the 2008 Lakefront Marathon. What I would normally be my primary focus was my Time, which was a full 5 minutes ahead of my original goal of 3:55. This was great, and I am quite pleased. It feels food to be under 4 hours at last.

Perhaps more surprising was that setting a new Marathon P.R. was one of the least memorable aspects of this race. It was a triumphant 26 miles, full of lessons learned, with just a dash of disaster. 

The most important lessons learned was that having a Pace Partner can make a Marathon a much more enjoyable experience. At a staring line of the Lakefront Marathon, I was lucky enough to meat up with two fellow runners, Michael and Gabe, both with more or less the same goal time as myself. After showing them my Garman Forerunner, and how the Virtual Running partner worked, Michael suggested that we run together. I was not to sure about this but did not object.

About a mile in, I realized that I had truly acquired a partner for the rest of the run. Michael and I clicked, and buy mile two we had exchanged running history's, and were planning out the next 24 miles. Around mile 4 we lost Gabe, but it was for the best because he was breathing pretty hard. I never did find out how he were he finished, but I am sure he did pretty well. I don't blame him, since we by than Michael and I had settled in at the a healthy 8:30 average pace, about 20 seconds faster per mile than the goal I was originally planning to run, this was the pace that we stayed locked to until about mile 23.

Somewhere around mile 23, I learned my the second Important lesson of the race. Don't skip aid stations, and GU, in the last few miles, just because your "Almost there". I learned this the hard way, when about half way though mile 25 I hit the wall like I have never hit it before. Michael tired to talk me thru it, but I just could not do it. I ended up walking for about 1/8th of a the last mile, costing me almost 4 minutes off my time. I finished with a respectable 3:49:56, Michael finished at 3:46:16. Even though we were in lockstep until the last mile.

Having  survived the run, and beating my goal time, 5 minutes cant complain. As a mater of fact I have to say this was with out a drought my best marathon yet. 

Most Ironic Running Blog Ever...

As you may have noticed there was a 7 month gap in this blog. This was caused by my web host changing from Cpanel, to vDeck.  Braking my FTP server. I finally gave up and moved the hosting over to blogspot.  Luckily I was able to migrate everything over.

The Ironic thing is that in the missing 6 months I broke thru a "Wall". I went from "building back mile", and being content with 17 miles a week, to setting Personal Records in every race I ran, and averaging 50 to 60 mile weeks.

The finally of this exceptional summer arrives this Sunday, with the Milwaukee Lakefront Marathon. Back in June when I decided to train for this, my only hope was to finish it in under 4 hours. My EZ pace has gone form 10:00 to 8:58, and my tempo runs have gone from 8:30 to 7:25. To top it all off, my final Long run of this training cycle was a full marathon, at 3:54.

In Less than 48 hours, I will be running the streets of Milwaukee, I'm still not quite sure what my official goal time is, somewhere between my original 3:55, and 3:45. Even if I finish at 3:55 this will still be my best Marathon yet.

As a start in getting this blog back up and running, I will be bloging this weekends adventure. So check back to find out the gruesome details.