Just a quick update that my Animal Games app is now available on Android Market, as well as Blackberry App World. You can download it from here. As always, please feel free to contact me with any comments!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Today seems like as good of a day as any to talk about my next race – the Bank of America Shamrock Shuffle. This race really kicks off the running season in Chicago, since it’s usually the first race of the year.

This year I was hoping to beat my time from last year of 33:24 – my first time under 34:00. Unfortunately, since the Marathon in October, my training has been lacking. And now that I’ve been running for a few weeks, my knee has been acting up so I’ve had to take it slow. I haven’t done more than 4.5 miles since December, and haven’t done any speed work. At this point, I’ll be lucky to run under 35:00 this year.

The other decision I need to make is whether or not to run a 10K the weekend before the Shamrock Shuffle. I would really like to run it, but don’t want to overdo it and hurt my knee before the Shamrock Shuffle. I have until the 31st to decide if I want to run it, so I think I’ll just wait and see how everything is going in a week or so, and maybe just do it as a training run.

I hope to start posting on here more frequently now that I’m back into running, so until then.

Mother Nature must not like me, because I seem to bring unseasonable weather to big races. It started with the grueling heat and humidity at the 2007 Chicago Marathon, then we saw freezing temperatures and snow in Florida for the Walt Disney World Half Marathon, and yesterday was another hot Chicago Marathon. The initial weather forecast a week and a half ago looked like ideal weather, with highs in the mid-60s. But as the race got closer, the high temperature crept up and while it was comfortable at the start, the high for the day was 87F, with lots of sun in the second half of the course.

I set out to run a 3:20 marathon, and possibly faster if the conditions were good. I felt great for the first half of the race, and actually needed to hold myself back from going faster, and I was on pace to be under 3:20. Once I got to the 14 mile mark, I realized I needed to slow down if I wanted to finish in the heat, so I slowed down for the next couple of miles and still felt ok. After about 17 or 18 miles, the heat was starting to get to me, so I started slowing down and even walking during the water/Gatorade areas. My legs started to cramp up a bit around mile 20, so I walked through each of the last 5 or 6 water areas to rest a bit and be sure to hydrate enough.

The spectators and volunteers out on the course were amazing, with plenty of people playing their own music to motivate us along, and an abundance of help at each water area. The last mile was a bit of a blur, but I do remember the sign for 800m to go where I tried to kick it in a little bit, but my calf started cramping, so I had to stay on my regular pace. When I came close to the finish line and saw I could finish under 3:35, I gave it everything I had and crossed with an official time of 3:34:35. While it wasn’t the 3:20 I was hoping for, it was still almost 28 minutes better than my previous marathon, so I can’t complain.

The other positive to this whole experience was my fundraising for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. I have been able to raise $900 so far, which is almost twice as much as my initial fundraising goal! If you haven’t donated yet, and would like to, there is still time. You can visit my personal fundraising page at http://www.mystjudeheroes.org/mconway80.

Thanks to everyone who supported me, especially Megan who put up with the long miles on the weekends, and was there to cheer me on throughout the course Sunday morning.

The Chicago Marathon is less than eight weeks away, and training is going pretty well. I’ve run 18 miles for my longest run so far, and plan to run 20 miles this weekend. I also ran in the Chicago Rock ‘N’ Roll Half Marathon on August 1st, and the race went well. I have the Oak Brook Half Marathon in a few weeks, and from there it’ll be only five weeks until the Marathon.

More importantly, however, is my fundraising for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. St. Jude does amazing work, and never turns away children in need because they can’t pay their bills. Please help me support their efforts by visiting my fundraising page and helping out however you can. Thanks!

My training for the Chicago Marathon will begin in earnest this weekend, with a 13 mile run. The FIRST plan has the long run mileage ramp up pretty quickly, with next week being 15 miles, then 17, and then the first of four 20 mile runs. I’m excited and nervous to be putting in so much mileage, since it is so different than most other training plans I’ve seen. When I was training for the Chicago Marathon in 2007, I only had one 20 mile run scheduled, and I didn’t even get to do it all at once because I had issues with my hydration belt. I plan to be ready this time, though. I’m also nervous that my calf/knee issues could crop up again with such heavy mileage, but I’m ready to pull back a bit if needed.

The other concern is the Half Marathons I have planned this summer/fall as well – one is August 1st, the other is September 6th. I would like to put in a bit of a taper for the August race, but may just use the September race as a long run. I’m not sure I can get the proper training in for the marathon if I have two full tapers just a couple of weeks apart.

I’m trying something new here with automatically updating my Twitter and Facebook status when I post a new blog entry. Some people may find it irritating, so I may disable it, or just not use it for every post. If you have strong feelings either way, feel free to let me know.

Many of you know I’ve been a runner most of my life, and have become even more into running in recent years. I’ve run every distance from the 800m in high school up to the 2007 Chicago Marathon, and even a Half Ironman Triathlon. When this year’s Chicago Marathon reached capacity, I saw it as an opportunity to turn my running into something that would benefit others. When looking for a suitable charity to run with, I wanted something that had meaning to me, and as a new parent, a children’s hospital seemed like the perfect fit.

So I have decided to participate in the Chicago Marathon as a St. Jude Hero. My fundraising efforts will directly support the work of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital to find cures and save the lives of children fighting cancer and other deadly diseases, and I am asking for your help! Click here to go to my donation page, or ccontinue reading below for more on why St. Jude’s is a worthy cause.

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, founded by the late entertainer Danny Thomas, is one of the world’s premier pediatric cancer research centers. Children from all 50 states and from around the world have come through the doors of St. Jude for treatment, and thousands more around the world have benefited from the research conducted at St. Jude – research that is shared freely with the global medical community. St. Jude is the only pediatric cancer research center where families never pay for treatments that are not covered by insurance. No child is denied treatment because of a family’s inability to pay.

St. Jude is unlike any other pediatric cancer treatment and research facility. Discoveries made by St. Jude have completely changed how the world treats children with cancer and other catastrophic diseases. With research and patient care under one roof, St. Jude is where some of today’s most gifted researchers are able to do science more quickly.

Danny Thomas believed that “no child should die in the dawn of life.” Please make a donation to support my efforts for St. Jude and join the fight against childhood cancer. You can read some stories of a few brave St. Jude patients, and find out where your donation goes.

Thanks for helping me reach my goal for the kids of St. Jude!

I’ve updated my racing schedule with some past results and some new races I’ve got either planned, or that I’m already signed up for. You can access it by clicking the “Racing” link at the top of the page.

I’m still considering running the Chicago Marathon for charity. If and when i make that decision, I’ll be sure to update here.

I finished week two of the pushup challenge, and will start week three tonight. I’ve decided to take my time with this and do week three at level 2 once through, then level 3 the next week. Last time I ran through this, I did it ll in 6 weeks, and may not have always hit my minimums for the final set. So this time, I planning in going slowly through it to make sure I can get to 100 by the end, even if it takes me 8 or 9 weeks instead of 6.

I went for an easy run tonight to test out my knee (so far, so good) followed by week two, day one of the hundred pushups challenge. I maxed out at 15, which was the minimum. I might have been able to push for a few more, but wanted to get going on some other things.

I decided to put off running until tomorrow, to give my knee that extra little bit of rest. But I still wanted to do something, so I decided to do Insanity’s Cardio Abs DVD. It’s a quick 20 minutes, but it’s a solid core/ab workout. I know I’ll be feeling it tomorrow.