Training for Chicago Marathon is On Like Donkey Kong!

Sorry for the sparse level of updates lately.  I’ve been very busy.  In short, here’s what’s been up:

1) After seeing how quickly my summer has filled up with some awesome life experience items + my motivation to ride my bike hours at a time has remained tragically low, I’ve come to the conclusion I’m not going to get any half or full Ironman distance races in this year.  I’m trying to use the time to balance out my body’s weaknesses and strengths.  Looking back at last year, I forgot about the 30+ trips to the physical therapist for various deep lower back (core) & upper ass (core) problems I had.  I don’t want to suffer through those again.   So, I’m slowly easing into CrossFit workouts, while trying to correct some of my more glaring running form issues.  I’ve always “sucked” from a form standpoint as a runner.  I remember Coach Walcholz and Labinski both making fun of my Stevie Wonder-like gait, and it’s only gotten worse.  Luckily my wonderful wife has done wonders for herself through Chi Running.  She’s liked what it’s done for her issues so much she’s taking the classes to teach others, and using me as her guinea pig.  So far, so good for me.  I’ll have more on the CrossFit stuff later.

2) I found out I am eligible to activate my Italian citizenship.  I started doing genealogical research after my grandma died, and found a cousin that got his Italian citizenship four years after starting the journey.  Expect to hear much more about this going forward as it is a large paper chase with some interesting history wrapped in.  There will be some good drama too I’m sure.

3) I’m doing the Chicago Marathon with Tracy for our anniversary.  She’s likely to try to make a run at qualifying for Boston.  I just want to get through it uninjured.  It’s easy enough for me – I just need to drop 25-40 lbs.  And seriously, that’s easy enough on paper as well.   I have to this point just lacked the willpower to do it. 

So here is my testimonial to the world – I’m going to be under 200lbs by the time I toe the line in Chicago on 10/10/10 with the Open Heart Magic charity team.  I’ll be chronicling my journey on these pages, so stay tuned.

I’ve also got some web design hobby stuff going on that might be interesting.  And at work, we managed to be the Category Kings in both of our funds (Small Cap Growth and Mid Cap Growth) through March 1st.  Not easy to be the top fund for very long, and we’ll see if we can keep it up for the year.  I don’t usually talk about work on here because it bores most of you and I’m afraid I’ll say something that compliance wouldn’t like, but I wanted to give the Portfolio Managers (Patrick and Ken) congrats for all their hard work.   They have the hard job – listening as I pitch the latest goofball tech or clean energy idea dejour.