The First Annual Philly Beer Mile

I had a crazy plan while I was reading an issue of Runner’s World on the beach in late summer. There was a feature on a group of runners who had organized a beer run, which involved drinking four beers over the course of a mile. While I was reading it, the wheels started turning. This sounded like something I could plan with my friends. I chatted to Matt about it and we got to work on brainstorming. After looking into it, I learned there are secret beer mile events all over the country. There’s even a website featuring rules to host your own Beer Mile.

Race Recap: Dogfish Dash

The Dogfish Dash has been on our calendar since April, when my friend Brian suggested getting a group of friends together for a weekend in Rehoboth Beach for the race weekend. I’m a big fan of Dogfish Head Beer, and my parents have a place near Rehoboth, so it’s my go-to beach destination for summer weekends. And who can say no to a race that involves a post-race beer party at a brewery?

Running for a Cause

More than ever, I’ve packed my race calendar with lots of events this fall. But one I had to squeeze into my  calendar is the Multiple Myeloma Race for Research. This will be my fourth year running in the Philly MMRF event. The Race for Research Series has raised over $17 million world-wide, with over 90% of proceeds going directly to research and patient programming. Multiple Myeloma is a highly fatal form of cancer than infects your plasma. My uncle passed away from this disease a few years ago, and I am honored to run this race in his memory. I hope you’ll consider supporting the cause by donating here.

While there are lots of shorter races coming up this season, the big one is less than 5 weeks away!

Homemade Pasta: Take 2

A few weeks ago, the lovely Julia Child would have celebrated her 100th birthday. In honor of the occasion, I decided to make a big dinner for Matt and myself, something I don’t do nearly as much as I’d like. The obvious choice would be to go French themed, and use Mastering the Art of French Cooking for the recipes. But to be honest, I feel like I have the french thing down. I’ve made a bunch of the recipes from that book, and even de-boned a duck! Julia was all about challenging yourself. So in that spirit, I chose to make homemade pasta. I tried this once before and had a rough time. The dough was too dry and the finished product was gummy and thick.

McGuire Mud Run Race Recap: The Beast of the East

Now that my bruises and scrapes are (mostly) healed, it’s finally time to sit down and do my recap of the 2012 McGuire Mud Run. This annual 10k was held at the Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst on September 8. Matt has run it for the past five years, and when he asked me to join his team for this year’s race, I didn’t hesitate. I figured I’d be in solid racing shape since it would be marathon training season, and it would be fun to do a mud race. I knew there were some obstacles, but I had no idea what I was in for.

In late summer, we started to get emails regarding the obstacles. There were 23 to be exact. This is about the time where I started to second guess my decision. I was joining an all-male team and would be scaling walls and climbing hills and crawling under and over various obstacles in the mud. I was pretty concerned I’d slow everyone down, and knew I would be extremely discouraged if I let that happen. So as I usually do with races I’m not really excited about, I avoided thinking of it until race weekend. I packed up old sneakers, cruddy running clothes, a change of clothes for after, and my waterproof camera, and we headed out to the base. The race was surprisingly well-organized. The bus ride over from the parking lot was pretty quick, and bib pick-up was a breeze. There were changing tents with an area for you to leave your post-race clean clothes. We had selected a wave time when we signed up, but since we were there early, we just hopped in with the next group starting. It didn’t feel overly crowded in the starting corral, which was a nice change of pace for most races I do. The website for the event said approximately 2,500 runners participated this year.