Counting 4 Kids

You can download Animal Games for the BlackBerry PlayBook, as well as select BlackBerry smartphones from BlackBerry App World.

The second app is a trivia game with animal facts. It’s called “Animal Trivia.” As you can see, I’m not too clever with names, but at least you know what you’re getting. I’m working on some updates for this one, and considering a new feature as well.

If you have any questions about any of my apps, please use my support email address – app_support@irishguys.org.

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.

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.

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!

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.

I started this past Saturday with my long run. The FIRST plan calls for three runs per week, plus at least two days of cross-training, which isn’t too different from what I have been doing lately just because of schedule constraints. This plan, however, calls for much faster paced runs than what i had been doing, and my long run pace needed to be adjusted accordingly. Normally I would run around 8:00/mile pace for long runs and my easy runs, but FIRST calls for running long runs at Half Marathon Pace + 20 seconds, closer to 7:20/mile than 8:00. I was worried I would feel too tired by the end of the 9 miles to keep that pace, but I was surprisingly energetic by the end.

Then last night I had my first “Key Workout #1″ which was 5 x 1000m @ 5:58/mile pace. The tough part about this for me will be keeping track of my pace on the treadmill. I’ve found that my Nike+ iPod system isn’t terribly accurate on a treadmill, especially at faster speeds. Most of my intervals which were at a much faster pace, didn’t show as much faster as they should have. So I guess I’m not really sure how closely I hit the pace, but at the very least I know I got a good workout in, and it was better than the 5 or 6 easy miles I would have done otherwise.

I’ll probably spin tonight on our new spin bike (that’s another post altogether), and tomorrow night is my first FIRST tempo run. I’ll try to update here as often as I remember to, in case anyone is interested in how the program works.

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!