RUNNING WITH AL

"Never quit. It is the easiest cop-out in the world. Set a goal and don't quit until you attain it. When you do attain it, set another goal, and don't quit until you reach it. Never quit." -- Bear Bryant

Hi guys - did you miss me last week? Hopefully, some of you might have noticed that I didn't write. I actually sat down at the computer and went into some kind of brain-funk-freeze and couldn't get my fingers to tap out anything. I thought "C'mom AL, just let it flow". Well, what flowed was a trip to the TV, and once the Yankees had finished clobbering the Red Sox (again), I was in a real big-time-why-is-the-world-rotating-backwards mood and RWA was doomed for the week. I've been sort of rattling around in my mind exactly hop I want to handle RWA now that I'm not specifically directing it towards the Leukemia TNT runners. Just a quick review for some of you that may not have heard...I'm taking at least one season off from coaching TNT after 15 years. Not necessarily my decision, but I understand their concern that my ankle health may not allow me to fulfill all my coaching duties. I really appreciate all the emails and thoughts sent my way expressing their concern about TNT deciding to go in this direction, but my passion is still there for TNT to succeed in garnering enough participants to raise some serious funds to give to scientists who know what they're doing and get rid of this awful disease. If you're interested in walking or running a half or full marathon or doing a triathlon (sprint, Olympic distance, or half Ironman), there's one more informational meeting (WITH FREE PIZZA!!!) at Dave's in Homewood this Tuesday at 6PM - no obligation, except to enjoy the pizza!
OK, so back to RWA - I've been writing this almost every week since 1999, originally as a means to tell my TNT group what we were doing (like I knew what we were doing) the following week in training. It gradually morphed into a pretty straight forward training/motivation/informational email that became somehow an important part of my coaching to mostly new runners, but hopefully also, once in while, to veterans of our running clan. I just asked new folks to sign up for the email, and either through continued interest, or more likely it was just easier to keep on the mailing list than go through the process of removing your name, there are now 384 RWA recipients each week! Now,to me, that's amazing. I love to run, I love to coach, and surprisingly to my High School English teachers I'm sure, I love to write. I've been trying to rattle my brain of what to do now. Do these folks really still want to get RWA? Do I really have anything to tell them? Sure, it's well worth the price of subscription (free), and you can't say it's not worth the paper it's written on because...well, that's pretty obvious. But, after doing well over 100 marathons and ultras for (oh dear) more than 30 years, I still feel I do have something to offer if somebody WANTS to listen. So, here's the plan. I'm going to continue to write RWA pretty much every week (though I may miss a couple with some more of those brain-funk-freezes), but I'm going to change it from an email format to a blog format. This will give everybody that wants to keep reading RWA a chance to do it, and those that want to move on without RWA can now be free and not have to just hit delete each week For the next couple of weeks, I'll continue to write this as an email and then "cut & paste" it into my blog which you can subscribe to at runningwithal.blogspot.com and then I'll phase it just to the blog. I'm trying to enter the 21st century, and you don't realize what a leap this is for me. I joined Facebook as an experiment, and it suddenly became like email on crack!!! I can't handle it when somebody I hardly know is telling me Aunt Tillie is going to Mississippi to gamble! Although I don't know Aunt Tillie, I wish her well, but I really don't care. So, the great Facebook experiment seems to be coming to a crashing halt. Please, let me know what you think about this idea. I intend for the blog to be pretty much training topics, but with my experiences of what worked and didn't seem to do too good over the past 3 decades.
I'm not an Alabama fan (I know I keep THAT secret well), but the above quote from The Bear seems to sum up what I'm doing. I don't want to stop connecting with you all. My goal is to help, share, coach, whatever you want to call it. So, from near-earth orbit, that's about it for this week, and as always, I'll see you on the roads - AL
"One child lost is too many...one child saved can change the world"