Introduction/Prologue to this... "project" I guess you could say

Friday, April 6, 2007

(Good Friday :)



Well I don’t really know how to start out with this, but I’m just gonna let it flow. I mean, how much can we really plan for our lives, the courses of which are not all in our control?? I mean one day I’m plopped in front of the television with a Nintendo Entertainment System controller tight in my sweaty grasp, probably not even willing to do a fraction of action I’m making the characters on screen perform with the simple push of A or B, then it seems like the next I’m staring intently at a computer monitor with the internet browser set on the calendar sections of Racepacket.Com or MarylandRunning.Com, mentally scheduling a calendar for all of these running races all over Maryland (and surrounding areas) that I want to do. Tension knots in my stomach and my breathing increases as if I’m in the 5-Kilometer (3.1 miles approximately) race I want to do in North Laurel/Howard County, when I find out it’s at the same time and date as the Oxford Day 10K (approx. 6.23 mile) race in Talbot County that I should probably hit if I want to achieve my goal.
Yes Noah dropped the “g-bomb”: GOAL!!!!
One of the biggest transitions I feel has occurred in my life is that I actually have them now, or at least care to take steps to achieve them, haha! A microcosm that demonstrates how God has helped this occur in my life can be seen as I’ve come from being a bitter, quiet couch-potato-like guy who could not find much outside of his videogame collection or bookshelf that he was good at, to an avid runner/endurance athlete. Not to sound pretentious, I’m usually only decent or good at best, but I’m usually not the one who usually ends up winning races or setting records, but I’ve been blessed so far to have gotten into decent enough shape to have reasonable hopes for winning age-group awards in many races I have done outside of grade school, high school and college meets. I started out with running as a sprinter for the Howard County Junior Striders back around the spring of 1997 who usually held their practices at Oakland Mills High School at the track in Columbia, Maryland. That fall I also did cross country to stay in shape for the sprinting events with spring track. During the late fall/winter period in between my folks would have me run about three miles worth (about 12 laps) on Hammond High School’s track in Columbia. It was fairly monotonous and even if my pace was closer to that of a jog, everytime I did it felt like a pretty big endeavor for me and I guess I did not really enjoy it, but I did it ‘cause my parents really thought it would be good for spring track and I guess it was better than nothing. During those runs my best time then That spring in 1998, we got some new coaches and started having practices over at the Mt. Hebron High School track in Ellicott City, MD and sometimes over at Glenelg High School in Glenelg, MD. In ’98 I started paying a little bit more attention towards my running and as a result I improved a decent amount at least... Maybe a little bit too much ‘cause I think I let it get to my head. I started running the 200-meter and 400-meter dashes a lot more at the meets and as a result I started being one of the top finishers in the heats (not to mention one of the top sprinters at the practices too). However, I felt like I got knocked off of my high horse towards the end of that ’98 track season when we went up against tougher competition at the end-of-the-season meets, where I found myself getting last place (or very close to it) and runnin’ PR’s to keep up. At the time, my time in the 400-meter dash was about 1:03 and to this day my 200-meter PR stands at about 26 seconds (I’m not sure about the millisecond specs on those times). After that last track meet, I ran a two-miler the next day (a rather hilly one) in Columbia through the Howard County Striders and I ended up running 13:11, a strong personal best time for me at the time, and I was just out of middle school. That summer, I ran pretty much three miles almost everyday to stay in shape for high school cross country. For the first part of the summer I ran on the track then for the second part I would run two laps around my neighborhood (about 1.5 miles each), and for me that was a rather gutsy move ‘cause I had to watch out for cars and deal with hills, haha!
I started high school at Hammond High School in 1998 and ran cross country all four years. I was pleasantly surprised to see that my consistent running over the summer paid off, because I found myself on the slower end of the varsity/faster end of the junior varsity teams my freshman year. After freshman year I consistently stayed on varsity throughout high school. I took so much time off of my three-mile times I ran over the summer (I had run 20:57 one summer day on the track for about three miles, breaking 21 and 22 minutes for the first time I could remember J). Most of the races were even 5-kilometers, which I soon found were slightly more than just three miles. After my freshman year cross country experience, I felt like I was excelling more with longer distances and I liked my teammates, so it was not too much trouble to convince me to stay with the distance events, which is what I did. As a matter of fact, I decided to focus on the 3200 meter race (about two miles), the longest race distance they usually had at the indoor track meets that they held at the Fifth Regiment Armory in Baltimore, MD. I came a long way in my 3200 meter race, bringing my time down to just under twelve minutes a coupla times, and by then I felt pretty tired of the whole indoor track thing. However, I stuck with it, despite how late the meets ran and how sometimes I just did not run as well as I wanted. But it was those strong races, the ones where I would PR (or at least break thirteen minutes in the 3200) that made me think there was hope and worth in trying hard at practices and the meets. Plus if I wanted to live up to the pressure I was beginning to feel being closer to the top runners on the team and if I did not want to get too embarrassed at the mets, I figured I’d better train hard and consistently. As high school went on, I started to actually enjoy some of the longer races more and there was a sorta friendly familiarity with the exhaustion it sometimes took to improve and run solid performances! I was blessed with solid performances and improvements with a coupla rougher spots here and there all the way into college. While I was running at the interscholastic and intercollegiate levels, I would always get into road races/recreational races, especially during the off seasons. As a result, they got me used to competition more and I am sure they helped me to improve while having a little bit of fun as well.
During college at Salisbury University, I spent a good portion of my time running on the cross country and track & field teams. I had some good times there, met a lotta people, and in cross country I certainly improved, surpassing my high school 5K times in my 5K splits in an 8-kilometer (just about a five mile distance) race. Most of my improvement took place freshmen and sophomore years and in my junior year, I felt overuse injuries hold me back, and as a result I ended up redshirting track in my junior year and cross country my senior year. Then, in the spring semester of my senior year, I took up track gain and was well enough to train and race, with some of my old injuries comin’ back to haunt me every now and then. In my senior year with running track, I pretty much ran the 1500 meter race, and my times were decent, but not quite where they used to be and at that point I was one of the slower members of the team. As a result I did not get to compete at as many of the meets, but I still wanted to race and push myself. Before and throughout that season of track & field I scrounged around on the internet for local running races on the Maryland Eastern Shore (and some even on the Delaware Eastern Shore). I would also find myself in the Maggs Athletic Complex, the gym on Salisbury’s campus, looking at the ads for local road races and events that they often posted. Towards the end of the season, when there were a lot of championship meets where the coach could bring only a limited number of competitors too, I was pretty much finished running the intercollegiate stuff that season and decided to try out some more road races for fun and opportunities to hopefully improve.
Like I said I had run my share of road races back home in Howard County since my time on the Howard County Junior Striders to college years, but now they were pretty much the only kinds of races I could run since I was about to graduate from college and I had no immediate intentions of training for the Olympics, a marathon, a triathalon, or any of that really hard-core athletic stuff, so needless to say I got into running races on the Maryland Eastern Shore for the rest of my time at Salisbury University. From Saturday April 22, 2006 when I first ran the Oxford Day 10K in Talbot County to Friday, June 2nd, 2006 when I ran the 1600 and 3200 at an open track & field meet at Oakland Mills High School in Columbia to benefit the Howard County Junior Striders, there was not a week that went by where I did not do at least one race, and from April-to-May, they were all on the Maryland Eastern Shore. Needless to say, I found out of a lotta running events that go on on the Eastern Shore that I would probably not have known about or cared about had I not spent a lotta time out there or went looking for them (and some of them took some digging I felt, haha). I got well into the whole road racing and recreational running thing right towards the end of college, I did not even bother to really take that much time off after my track season ended for a while. I mean, I graduated from Salisbury University on Thursday, May 25th, 2006, but then a coupla days later on Saturday, I found myself back on the Eastern Shore in Kent County, MD for the Chestertown Tea Party Distance Classic 5K. I guess another reason why I made it a point to make a lot of these Maryland Eastern Shore races was not just because I wanted something to do, but I figured that since I was movin’ back to Howard County, I may never have the chance to run them again.
I think I was mistaken.
Now, my one year anniversary of graduating college is coming up and I still am as into running and racing as I was during college. As a matter of fact, I’m sure my enjoyment of it grew throughout college, even through some of the rough parts. Since graduation, I can say I’ve run on average at least one race-a-week when I’ve been in training consistently. For a good portion of them, I’ve been turning out times that were stronger than what I had in high school, and some even during college.
Last December, Sunday, December 3rd, 2006 to be exact, I ran the Metric Marathon in the Columbia area of Maryland, which is a famous 26.2 kilometer (about 16.3-mile) race that the Howard County Striders put on in downtown Columbia by the Columbia Lakefront. This has been my longest run to date. I went in with modest expectations to just finish, preferably in under two hours. Instead, I ended up starting out with some aches and pains but then feeling better around mile six and picking up the pace to run a negative split and finish in just under an hour and fifty minutes, and taking second in my 20-24 age category. I was mighty happy with that... and mighty exhausted too. A couple of weeks after, I decided it was best to begin about a month’s worth of time off from running. Between the fall of 2005 and the fall of 2006, I had done plenty of races and a lotta training in between, and some solid time off I felt would be very helpful to say the least!
The year 2007 came and on Monday, January 15th, I started running again. I ran a nice light run that was probably no more than a little over two miles with my friend, Karen, on some well-paved trails in Sligo Creek Park in Montgomery County. I think we ran it in a little over twenty-three minutes, I can’t recall, but we went up into the campus of Columbia Union College, turned around, and retraced our steps. After that, I felt so good I went to the track at Hammond High School in Columbia (where I graduated from, go Golden Bears!!) and ran three laps fairly easy before I went home. I think I had done about 1200 meters right around 5:09, not bad for my first day back! That weekend, on Sunday, January 21st, I ran a Howard Country Striders weekly series 5-kilometer race that started and ended in front of Atholton High School, just for fun, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that finished it in a little under twenty minutes, especially since I felt like I was taking it a little easy. Definitely not bad for me considering I had not been back at running for any longer than a week and I had intended it to be an easy-paced run.
Over the next couple of months I started building back my endurance base and using a road race here and there as good solid training. I felt myself getting back into strong shape rather quickly, being able to run a lot of my track distance runs in a sub six-minute and forty-second pace-per-mile, which meant I was breaking twenty minutes for my three-mile splits, and on Saturday, January 20th, when it was like in the low fifties (very warm in my opinion for January), I ran 14:10 on this course I run on a lot that is about 2.4 miles and to this day that’s been my personal record on this course. I went on this run without the intention of running that well and beating my old best time on that course from 2006, 14:23. I would not be surprised if I had just managed to keep it under a six-minute-per-mile pace on that run. I was definitely encouraged that I was getting back into a level of fitness (at least for relatively shorter distances) that I was doing really well at when I was training for the Metric Marathon.
Between January and March, I ended up running races in Carroll, Howard, and Wicomico Counties, and even one in Wyoming, Delaware (Kent County, Delaware), some I ran for fun, a couple I used to push myself, and some I used as tempo runs. I ended up doing pretty well, usually improving my times and paces over the months and throughout each race, never suspecting what I was beginning.
Then, on Saturday, March 24th, 2007, I ran the Race to Impact 10K in Queen Anne’s County. Yep, that’s right, I somehow was able to find a running event in Queen Anne’s County, and if any of you reading this know about the road races on the Eastern Shore, you’ll probably realize that there are hardly any that go on in that county. When I saw it over the internet on Marylandrunning.Com and that it was going to benefit a church mission (the Shore Christian Fellowship Church in Queenstown, Maryland) to Peru. I definitely try to support many ministries, and I do enjoy running (and the race venue was going to be on the Cross Island Trail throughout Kent Island, which is just an awesome, mostly flat shaded bike path that runs parallel to Route 50 west in Queen Anne’s County). So needless to say it was definitely worth the forty-to-fifty minute drive to Kent Narrows/Chester, Maryland where the race was. I ended up running really well, finishing in 38:51 (and my PR at the time was around 38:36), so I was not that far off at all! I think that was probably my second or third-best 10K time, and I was really glad that both of my 5K splits were under twenty minutes and I had a strong kick at the end. About a week-and-a-half beforehand I had some nasty stomach flu/food poisoning, and I thought it would set me back, but a few days after I was sick, I was feeling much better and did a training run where I ended up running my best time on this 6.25 mile (approximately) course I used to run on a lot near my house that goes out around Lake Elkhorn in Columbia, which was about 39:37, and I figured if I could do that on a somewhat hilly course, then it would probably not be too unreasonable to expect somewhere between 38:50ish and 39:30ish on a flat 10K course for myself and the shape I was in, so I was glad I hit that goal nicely at the Race to Impact.
That night, after the Race to Impact, I was sitting on my bed thinking about how cool the race was and I was glad that since they were going to have a race in Queen Anne’s County, that they had it on the Cross Island Trail. Then it occurred to me probably a lot more clearly than it had before that to be able to run a race in every county in Maryland, Queen Anne’s County would probably be one of the hardest ones to find a race in.
And that’s when I plugged myself into that equation.
What if I were to attempt to run a race or running event in every county in Maryland?

Hey, already having races in Carroll, Howard, Queen Anne’s and Wicomico finished in 2007, I was already set up with having four counties out of Maryland’s twenty-three counties in. It was great that already two of the nine counties on the Maryland Eastern Shore were done in that respect, because at least from my experience, races on the Maryland Eastern Shore are often harder to find than in the other regions of Maryland, and I guess it’s because I don’t see them advertised as much or sometimes the results are not printed online. Since I went to Salisbury University on the Maryland Eastern Shore and had gotten into the local road racing scene over there towards the endof my undergrad years, I feel I have the advantage of knowing what goeson as far as Eastern Shore running events are concerned. So I figureda good solid way to go about this was to make sure I figure out whichraces/events on the Eastern Shore counties I wanted to do and then tryto plan events from other counties around them. I knew I woulddefinitely have to be tenacious in finding and sticking to plans forsuch counties as Somerset, Kent, Talbot, Dorchester, and Cecil Countieson the Maryland Eastern Shore, because I knew in those areas it seemedthat races and running events were hard to come by. And Cecil county,man, I really did not know of any running events any more that went onin that county. After taking all of this in, my sense ofaccomplishment and happiness from the Race to Impact slowly began togive way to a burden of being challenged by a goal that seemed toughand a bit imposing, yet I knew was possible to achieve with theknowledge, means, and resources I have. Now all that remains is theexecution of it.

After all this went through my head I prayed about it a good time ortwo but did not readily commit to it just yet. I wanted to startlooking on the internet for something in Cecil County to make sure thatat least there was one event coming up that I could do to get a CecilCounty event in, but it took me a while. I started praying about itand keepin' my eyes peeled on the internet, and a day or so later I wasblessed to find the Fair Hill Natural Resources Management Area (NMRA)Fool's Frolic 22K in the Natural Resources Management Area of Elkton, MD.

Yea, Elkton and Fair Hill are definitely in Cecil County Maryland,WhoooOHHOO! YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!

Now I knew that this goal was definitely possible to achieve, I justhad to make the races. Of course that sounds a lot easier to say thanto actually do.

My folks (who I still live with) will probably not bepleased that I'm spending a lot of my free time on the road to theseraces all over Maryland, and with rising gas prices, it won't surpriseme if what I pay for gas will sometimes surpass the event entry fees. So, I have resolved to simply not tell them about this goal until closeto the end, that way if they try to stop me, I can pull the “I'm almostdone, don't stop me now or else all this work towards this goal willprobably not come to much” card. I really want my folks to be a partof this, but I don't want any more adversity than I have to deal withalready, so I'll probably let them know towards the end, so that way itdoes not come as a shock to them if I'm blessed enough to accomplishthis goal and if there is a lot of celebratory “noise” following it. They know I do a lot of road races and such, but I try not to be toospecific with them as to where, that way they won't put up too much ofa resistance. I hate not telling them fully what's going on, but I donot want to make this any harder than it has to be and I don't want anydrama in my family over this. This is my goal, my car, my health, mytime, my money, and all my other means that I'm employing to get thisdone, no one else's. That way if I fail in this, I'm the only onewhose really invested a whole lot in this. If I succeed, then it wasall worth it and I'm hoping that many of my family, friends, and otherscan get a great deal out of this and share in the good times. In advance to everyone supporting me or even showing an interest, I thankyou so much! God is the only one who has been with me a 100% of thetime and I know that no matter what happens I am safe with Him and themore I pray about this goal, the more doors and opportunities I have torun events in different counties open up. He has helped me with manygoals and endeavors before and I know that His ways are better thanmine, so that whatever happens with this, whether it's success,failure, or something else altogether, I trust that with God I am ingood hands and that there will be good things that happen as a resultof this.

With the gas prices and amount of money I spend on races andevents, well I'm fortunate that I work two jobs, one as a substituteteacher in the Howard County Public School system and the other as aservice clerk at a Safeway in Howard County (I mainly have been workin'the bakery department). Between both of these jobs, I'm confident Iwill have enough extra money to help pay for gas, food, raceregistration, and whatever other little things I may need (not tomention changin' my running shoes up every few months, haha). However,I have to really strategize and plan well and deliberately with some ofthese races and events, as many of them take place on weekends. I workweekends at Safeway and I'm sure that may conflict with my races if Ido not request off, so I really have to make sure I stay organized andon top of requesting off for events, and making sure I get those eventsin. Sometimes at my job at Safeway, my schedule goes all over theplace and it's definitely helped to teach me flexibility and patience alot more, and this is one of the reasons that I think it best to movequickly through the counties versus spreading this out over a year,because I do not want to leave much to chance and have to scramblearound from mid-to-late December of 2007 trying to wrap this goal up. I'm even willing to run more than one race/event a week (which I amcertainly used too) or even more than one a day (I've done that beforetoo and have run quite well for myself considering). Also, I'll haveto make sure I stay healthy, keep myself in reasonable shape so I canat least run decently and hopefully even win some age-group awards andsuch at some of the races (or even have some PR's – personal records –too). Plus, it will be important to take care of the gold Saturn thatI drive and of my body too!

Some advantages that I have hear, aside from the money ofworking two jobs, is that I am already in decent enough shape. Aftercoming close to a 10K PR at the Race to Impact, I'm confident that my“recovering training” after Columbia's Metric Marathon is really goingwell and hopefully soon I'll be able to improve my times and get insome quality races. I like to do road races, as you've probablyguessed, and I like to travel, so really most of this is nothing that Iwould not want to be doing in my free time in the first place. Also, Ifeel I can still spend time with my friends and family too. My social life is fun, but not that consuming either, and the same with my family, so I don’t see much conflict between the running events and doing other things with my friends and family. I’m single as well, and I have no idea when the next time is I will have the fortune of becoming romantically involved with someone, so I better get goin’ on this while I’m not seein’ anyone. It would be hard to focus on this and invest so much in it and give a woman I care about the attention, time and anything else she deserves from me; I want someone like that to have the best parts of me, and not give those qualities over to a personal goal like the one I’m strivin’ for now. Though, who knows, maybe I’ll find some romance (among other things) on this “journey” as well. I may have challenged myself to this goal, but I haven’t written the story of how it all will play out… Yea, and finally, another solid advantage I feel I have is that since I’m living in Howard County, it is pretty close to the central area of Maryland, so when I have to go to the southernmost, northernmost, easternmost, and western-most counties, it should not take any longer than about three hours to get there. This would be a lot harder if I had to commute from Garrett or Allegany Counties out in western MD all the way to like Wicomico, Somerset, or Worcester Counties on the MD Eastern Shore.

So yea, I’m single, I’m not any more than three hours from any Maryland county (on a good traffic day), I’m interested, I’m up for the challenge :)

Now back to the Cecil County event. I e-mailed Phil Nissen, the event director of the Fair Hill NRMA Fool’s Frolic 22K to find out more info about it and I found out it was free (but I would have to pay for parking at the Fair Hill NMRA where the event starts and ends). I also if it was possible if they had a shorter distance to run there (as a fair amount of 5K races usually have like one-mile fun runs or walks for those who are not quite up for the main event), and he said there was about a five-mile course throughout the wooded area where the event was taking place. I wanted to opt for a shorter, alternative route if they had one, because 22K was too close from the 26.2K Columbia Metric Marathon I had recovered from not too long ago, and I did not want to set myself up for injury or a lot of time off from running such a long distance, especially with so much ahead of me.

So I showed up at the Fair Hill NRMA and ended up running the trail race. The people there were really friendly and social, and everyone quickly spread out on the trails. It was not so much a race as an organized trail run. It was free and I don’t think there were any award,s and any timing was done on our own (good thing I had my stopwatch goin’). Some runners even ventured to run the 22K twice, pretty wild! I turned off onto the shorter route with another gentleman who wanted to do the same (and he knew where he was goin’ better than I), so we both sorta followed the trail markers back to the parking lot where the run started and finished. I crossed into the parking lot in about one hour, twenty-one minutes, and fifty five seconds. Since I usually go pretty slow on trail runs and since I was talking to others for a good portion of the run, I am sure I ended up running somewhere between five and six miles at least.

Though, what was really important was that I got in an organized running event in Cecil County, MD, a county that less than a week ago I was unsure if they even had any races or running events anymore. After I finished with the other gentleman, we talked for a little bit, but I kept quiet about how I was now strongly thinking of going after the goal of running at least one organized running event in every county of Maryland. Later on that night, I made a thoughtful and prayerful commitment to try out this challenge and see if I could get in at least one running event in each of the twenty three counties of Maryland, plus one in Baltimore City, making that a total of twenty four “target areas” to try and reach. Already I had gotten something in Wicomico County and Queen Anne’s Counties, counties on the Maryland Eastern Shore, a region that I would definitely have to work on if I wanted this whole goal to work out.

So here I am typing out the introduction to how it occurred to me to challenge myself to this goal, and now I want to dedicate these blogs to reporting on my endeavors. However, I have been busy, so the intended journal entries for each county and event(s) within them have yet to be posted (I still have many races and events to journal, so it may be a while). Hopefully I’ll have some pictures of the events and the surrounding areas up soon.

I am not doing this to raise money or push towards any political end/campaign anything like that. Any money that may come my way as a result of this endeavor, I intend to give to various charities (especially ones focusing on Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, something I was involved with for a brief while about a year-and-a-half ago). In my journals, I’ll try not to go off on tangents about any political/religious/spiritual views that I have, but if I do, hey these are my blogs and journal anyway! Hopefully no one gets offended, especially if I happen to criticize/compliment something about a certain race or event. I am just trying to honestly convey my experiences with them.

Many times when I report something on my blogs, I will try to have a table/display of all the “target areas” I have hit in this goal, in addition to more recent ones (they will be in italics) as well as the dates, locations, and how I performed there. My journals will have a lot of that, in addition to races/events that I have or have not done going on in the same county as the one that has the event I am journaling about, so that as a result of my research and experiences, other interested participants can see what’s up in a certain area/county of Maryland as far as running events go. For example, in Kent County, MD I may end up running the Rock Hall Flat Five on the Fourth of July and journal about my experiences in that five-mile race, and also mention Galena Dogwood Festival’s “Run for our Riverkeeper 5K” and the Chestertown Tea Party Distance Classic 10-mile and 5K in the same county, regardless of whether or not I have run the Run from our Riverkeeper or the Chestertown Tea Party Distance Classic races in the past or this year, I just want to use that as a chance to mention it to others who may be interested. Please note, I do not consider myself an authority on all the running events that go on in Maryland, a lot of what I find out comes from research (mainly the internet) or people that I meet at races and other such events. I am going to try and give a lot of information, contacts, and websites to help manifest awareness to an interested audience that these events go on.

One other thing, the reason I am going to be using the term “running events” a majority of the time versus “races”, is because I am not limiting the events I find in every county to just simple road races or trail races. They can be (but are certainly not limited too) road races, trail races, cross country races, Relay for Life events, open track & field meets, triathlons, prediction runs, low-key fun runs, shorter races that are “companion” races to a larger, more mainstream event (for example, I may end up running a “one mile fun run/walk” as a companion race to a fairly big 5K that is going on if they offer that option at the event)).

All right, I’m sorry for the lengthy introduction. I do not know if such an endeavor has ever been undertaken, but I am very confident that it is doable. And whether or not I am successful, I would like to at least keep journals and records of my progress and share them with any one whose interested. On that note, I thank you all very much for your support, prayers, enthusiasm, attention, and any help given to me on this. Maybe you are a close friend or family member, or maybe we’ve never met. Either way, I am grateful for your attention to this and if you decide to follow my progress or become interested in participating in some of the events that I mention, that would be awesome and I would like to meet you if we have never met!

I hope you all have as great a time with this as I have so far. There are some things to look forward too as well as some challenges, but it’s all part of a wonderful package. God bless you all and thank you for your reading :)

Sincerely,

Noah Wood