My Top Five Favorite Running/Triathlon Links

Here are my top five favorite running links.  Some, I visit several times a week (or even daily, in the case of Bonktown), and they've all made planning run and triathlon training easier or more fun.

5. Cool Running Pace Calculator-   - I need every little victory I can get, and seeing that I dropped a 6 mile run pace from 9:21 to 9:15 per mile is a big plus.

4. G-Map Pedometer - brought to you by your friends at Google.  I use this to map out all my new runs ahead of time.  You can also use the elevation feature to see where the hills are- if you're training for a race with big hills at miles 3 and 8, you can set up your training run to do the same.  You can also share your routes with friends, or people you're inviting to run with you so they can stake it out ahead of time. Here is the Belmont-Vandy route I ran when I lived in that area. (By the way, all the Vanderbilt people reading this are really upset that I called it the "Belmont-Vandy" route instead of the "Vandy-Belmont" route, and almost made them spit out their chardonnay in disgust at being mentioned after Belmont.)

3. Daily Mile (with Electric Miles App)- .   #5 and #4 have more to do with planning and results. This has more to do with accountability.  Daniel C. White suggested this to me as a way to keep not just friends in the loop, but people who read my blog as well (you can see it over on the right).  It just looks bad if I haven't put anything on for a day or two.  There's also a nice little app (you can find it under Electric Miles in the App Store) that you can put on your phone to more easily download your info, and it just pops up on your blog.  If you decide to friend me on Daily Mile, you'll get to see my picture of when I had an awesome Geraldo mustache!

2. Athlinks-  Once you sign up, it automatically adds in your races (you can usually find the race and add it if it misses).  I love to back and see the 39 of the 40 or so races I've done over the past 8 years, compare all my times, split them up into years or events, and see the improvement.  You can also pull up and compare how you're doing against your 'rivals' (people who you may not even know who run 3 or more of the same races you've run) and your friends as well- kind of a facebook for runners.

1. Bonktown- This site has helped me save a TON of money.  I still strongly encourage folks to make their big purchases from their local bike/running/tri shops- but for certain things or taking risks on new products, Bonktown is great.  Every 20 or 30 minutes, a crazy 50%-90% off deal comes up (you can set it so the bottom right hand of your browser shows what is currently offered). I'd heard how bib shorts are all the rage, but they're three times as expensive as regular bike shorts- UNLESS you get them on Bonktown.com.  I ended up getting a matching Castellini jersey ($99) and bib shorts ($129) for $110 total- not any more than I'd pay for regular bike shorts and a jersey, and they've been great- now I only want to wear bib short. I also get my Accel Hydro ($16 instead of $40) and some various odds and ends there like arm warmers, tri tops, or sunglasses.  Great site.

Secret Tip – How to Pull in Freestyle

Secret Tip – How to Pull in Freestyle

Kick Comics- Habitat for Humanity

Click to Enlarge

 Inspiration for this comic:
Back in my single days, I had a free Saturday and called up Habitat for Humanity to see if they needed any volunteers for a build.  I went where they sent me, and I was surprised to find out that I was only one of four or five guys there, vs. probably 100 women.  While working, I kept getting asked if my wife was there working, too.  "Uh, no.  I'm not married," and then I'd get an odd look.  Turns out Habitat had accidentally sent me to a Junior Leauge "women's-only" build.

What's Your Best Spider or Snake Story?

Corn Spider- actual size

When you end up running 5 or 6 miles with your neighbor several times a year, you have to come up with new things to talk about (after the burping and farting jokes are exhausted, which has only taken us 4 years).

Today we somehow ended up talking about our best spider stories, after we ran under a tree with a beast the size of your hand, hanging in a massive web.  Until the age of seven, I lived on a farm where the cornfield came right up to our yard.  I loved to run through the tall cornstalks (every tall, especially to a 5-year-old) and pretend like I was lost in a maze.  One day I was running at full speed, and nearly ran through a big corn spider's web, which is face high to a little kid. I stopped with the massive black and gold spider a couple inches from my nose, the turned and ran home as fast as I could.

My neighbor Daniel was a city kid who never actually ran through corn fields, so he has no cool spider stories.  Maybe he saw a spider in an airport sometime or something.

The spider discussion led naturally to snakes, and luckily Daniel had a story of finding a copperhead coiled in their garden hose one time, which his dad dispatched by cutting it to pieces with a shovel.  My best snake story (other than seeing a large blue-colored snake sunning itself just under a bridge near our old farm house) came at Davey Ross's 8th birthday party sleepover.  That night I remember being completely freaked out by the giant wolf at the end of The Never Ending Story, and I had to watch both Apple Dumpling Gang I and II in order to come down.  The next morning, we decided to run around outside because Davey's family 'lived on some land', as they liked to say, with a nearby creek.  Not too far from his garage we saw a small water moccasin winding across his driveway.  He ran into the garage, put one of his big, padded, winter mittens with just the thumb, and picked up the water moccasin.  We gathered around in a circle to look. Unfortunately, he'd picked it up in the middle, rather than right under its head.  While Davey was frozen in horror, the snake started whipping its head down, biting and pulling out pieces of the mitten.  Davey came to, threw the snake as far as he could, and then we all sprinted back into the house.  Luckily, Nintendo had recently been invented, so we were able to finish out the morning in a calmer, safer fashion, by battling trolls and Koopa Troopers and what not.

So what is your best spider or snake story?  Comment below!

(If my mom doesn't leave the story of her family's unofficial pet in the comments section, I'm going to be upset!)

What You Need To Get Me For My Birthday

I know how you're feeling right now.  Terrible.  You forgot to get me a present for my birthday and its killing you.  You have this urge to make up for being such an awful friend.  But how?

You have two choices of what to get me.

 Specialized S-Works Venge DA
The Tour de France bike of phenom Mark Cavendish and Team HTC-Highroad. 11r carbon frame plus Pro Tour-proven Shimano Dura-Ace components. Ultralight Roval Rapide SL 45 wheelset with carbon/alloy hybrid rims for low aerodynamic drag with the reliability of an alloy brake track, Specialized S-Works FACT carbon crankset with OSBB, removable carbon spider, and ceramic bearings, plus legendary Shimano Dura-Ace 10-speed shifters ultralight, smooth performance.

Just $9,200 (plus tax, but who's counting?)

OR

Donate $10* to help me BRING BACK THE CHICKEN

My good friend Rob co-founded this awesome non-profit in Santiago, Dominican Republic. In a nutshell, this past year, Servants Heart Ministry's donations were down, so they had a tough decision- do they A) still serve chicken, rice, and beans for their meals, but stop feeding as many kids or B) feed as many kids, but cut out the chicken. Rob told me the story of the time he had to be the person at the end of the food line, and had the difficult job of telling a grandmother that they didn't have enough food for her grandchild- basically, that they had to turn her away and the child would have to go hungry.  So the decision was made- the kids would lose the chicken, but at least the same number of kids would have something until donations came back up.

So, I've set a goal of raising $2,675 (the cost of chicken for one month for the kids in the program), so all the kids can have chicken (and the much needed protein it provides) for December- sort of a Christmas present.  So, you get this for me as a birthday present, and it doubles as a Christmas present for the kids.  How awesome is that?!?!

*You can also donate either A) how old you think I look, or B) how old you think I act.
http://www.firstgiving.com/brianlord

What A View!

Photo: Daniel C. White

What a great picture by Daniel White!  Yes, this is a real picture, taken by Daniel while our group stopped for a break on top of a massive hill/small mountain at 6:30AM on a ride through the Tennessee countryside.  Gotta love being a cyclist sometimes!

Does Loss Make You Who You Are?

I am a C.S. Lewis addict.  When I was little, my mom would gather all four of us kids together every night and read a chapter in the Old Testament, a chapter in the New Testament, and a chapter from a Christian kids book, quite often from C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia.

I loved those books, and I believe they play a part in who I am today.  I love reading, learning about far away places, and I even wrote (but never tried to publish) a Narnia-style kids book.  In writing my own book, I wanted to get to know the person who inspired the book a bit more, and so I read a C.S. Lewis biography called "The Narnian". Little Clive (C.S. stands for 'Clive Staples') was a sickly child, many of his earliest memories were of his mother coming in and taking care of him.  However, one time he and his mother became sick at the same time, and even though he called for her, she was too sick to come.  He remembered vividly her passing away.  In The Magician's Nephew, which is a fable based on the Creation story.  [Spoiler alert] In it, a young boy named Digory finds a set of magic rings, and, along with his friend Polly, find themselves in the world of Narnia as it's being born.  Digory goes into a Garden of Eden-type place, and because of his obedience in the face of temptation, he is able to take an apple back to his dying mother in his own world and save her life.  What C.S. Lewis couldn't do in real life, he was able to do through his writing, hopefully giving himself some closure.  It was the very last Narnia book he wrote.

The idea for The Chronicles of Narnia originally came during the Nazi air raids, when children were taken to the countryside for safekeeping (it is believed that the reason Hitler never allowed Oxford to be bombed is that he planned to make it the capital after he conquered England), while their fathers fought in the war and their mothers worked in the war effort.   C.S. Lewis, an Oxford professor, took in three children during the raid (In The Lion, Witch, and The Wardrobe, an old professor takes the four children into his household during the air raids).  From that sprung the series that's entertained, enchanted, and educated children the world over for 60 years.  But you can't forget it was originally written for children who had lost their childhood through six years of war and its aftermath, many of whom lost parents and loved ones, by someone who had lost his own childhood.

Without that loss, would C.S. Lewis have been who he was, and written what he did?  Would my life be different without having what C.S. Lewis wrote be such a part of my childhood? (OK, adulthood, too.  I still reread them).

I write this morning as I remember my own loss, that of my son-to-be Jonathan exactly one year ago today.  I feel loss that for the second August in a row, my dad won't be coming down to visit for my birthday.   Will I become less of a man, or more of a man, because of these things?  Will those losses enable me to do that will inspire my children or friends, or even strangers, tomorrow, or 60 years from now?

I certainly hope so.  There's always this temptation to allow loss and tragedy to give you an excuse to go into your shell.  There is a place for mourning- massive mourning right after, and smaller but still intense mourning on occasion, like today.  There's probably a loss of your own that popped into your head while you were reading this. But overall I think that loss can make you better.  C.S. Lewis decided to turn his loss into my gain, and I'm very thankful he did.