Hi everyone, yeah, I still have a blog! As of this writing I’m about to cross into NY from North West PA. Sorry about the lack of blogging. Most of my blogging time has turned into working on med school secondary apps which, frankly, are more important than this blog! Since the last post we’ve run through SD, into IA, over the Mississippi into IL, hung out around Chicago, ran thru IN to get to MI, ran back through IN to get to OH, and then tracked around Lake Erie in PA. By the end of the day, we’ll all be in Orchard Park, NY, near Buffalo. I’m not going to go through every day in this post but I’ll talk about some brief highlights.

Iowa City:

Aside from DEFINITELY being the coolest part of Iowa, I got to see Peter, Hannah’s AWESOME boyfriend, who took me to a famous diner that presidential hopefuls often patronize during the Iowa Caucuses. We got breakfast on a rest day and, wow, it was incredible to eat such a huge breakfast. Made me miss Jersey diners for sure. Always great to see Peter as well.

Chicago:

We felt like the road from Rockford into Chicago wasn’t safe to run on (too narrow, a lot of traffic), so after running 2 of our 4 legs we decided to shuttle to Chicago and finish miles along Lake Michigan. I only had to run 4 more miles in Chicago but, in spite of the heat, I was feeling really good and the setting was beautiful, so I ran 11 miles for a 15 mile day. The next day was a service day in Chicago for Imerman Angels, who do some really great work, and that evening I did a light workout to see where my fitness was at: 2x1k @ 3:20, 90″ rest, 3x1k @ 3:20, 60″ rest. It went very well given the poor track I was on. Feeling pretty confident in my fitness for the fall. Looking at you Paul Short! Oh, AND Anna took me to Wrigley for the first time ever and we saw a freakin’ walk off BOMB from Kyle Schwarber. 10/10 for Wrigley. Beautiful ballpark.

Kalamazoo:

DEREK F’ING JETER’S HOMETOWN. PERIOD.

Lakeside-Marblehead, OH:

A teammate, Emily, and her family have a lakehouse near this host and they hosted an awesome party for us with incredible food and many, many drinks. It was cool to meet Emily’s family and play with her beautiful dogs. I think it was good for everyone (our DDs excepted) to kick back with a few drinks, even if a lot of us felt it at 4:30 wakeup, hahaha.

Cleveland, OH:

So much good stuff to write about Cleveland, I guess I’ll start with my seeing my good friend, former teammate, and protégé Sam Miller. Sam will be a junior at Loyola in the Fall and he’s going to captain LUXC to a fantastic season. Write that down, that on July 24th I predicted a huge year for Loyola Men’s XC! Anyway, Sam lives in Bath, near Akron. His family has run this really cool non-profit named Victory Gallop that provides equine (read: horses) therapy for kids with disabilities. They also trained a miniature horse as the first “therapy pony” in the US that is certified and cleared to visit kids in hospitals. How cool is that? Anyway, it was so great to see Sam and his family. They have been incredibly supportive of my 4K journey and I’m very grateful for Sam’s friendship.

We did service at Rainbow Babies hospital, which has a cool AYA Cancer center. Really holistic stuff, a lot of art therapy and emotional/psychological support. I’ve seen a lot of cancer centers, both on this trip and at other times, and I’ve never seen anything like Rainbow Babies. They’re doing some really cool stuff, and the proof was in the pudding when we spoke to patients.

Now the most important part of our stay in Believeland… Project:Return, part II. There’s a longer post forthcoming on this subject. The short version, for those who may not remember, is that my teammate Ryan is a cancer survivor. He ran track in HS and ran his mile PR of 5:30 the day before his diagnosis. Since finishing treatment 4 or so years ago, he hasn’t broken 6:00. In the first few days of 4K this came up and I was like, dude, we are GETTING YOU to 5:29 by the time we make it to Boston, and so on rest days or easy days we’ve added some mile-oriented track workouts into the mix. Our first time trial was back in Austin, NV, so check that blog post out. Anyway, we stayed at Case Western Reserve University, where I almost went for college. One of the things that enticed me to Case was their beautiful track; I would have loved competing on it collegiately. Anyway, I knew that we had GREAT facilities, so I told Ryan that our rest day in Cleveland would be an ideal day to take a real shot at running a fast mile. Ryan places so much trust in me, it’s really humbling, because I don’t really know what I’m doing that well! So far I’ve pushed the right buttons with him, but I think I’ve gotten lucky so far. Anyway, Ryan was game for the second attempt. The plan was to pace the first half around 5:40 pace and see what happened. I was expecting 5:40-5:45 from Ryan. Gotta pat myself on the back, I paced very well and we were at about 2:49 through 800m. Everyone was out cheering their hearts out for Ryan while some football team was practicing. The football team was pretty flabbergasted. It was funny. Shoutout to the football coach keeping lane 1 clear for us! Going into the third lap I told Ryan we were gonna wind it up and make that lap hurt, and that he had to trust in me and himself that he’d have enough left for the 4th lap. Credit to him, he jumped in with both feet and stuck right on me and I think that lap was like an 84. The last lap was great too, and he finished in 5:37!!! He blew me away and blew himself away. All of this in trainers! UPDATE: we have acquired some cheap spikes from a thrift store for the next attempt.

Working with Ryan has been so rewarding to me. I remember how desparately I wanted to run fast after being hospitalized for Crohn’s in high school. My CD, my own body attacking itself, took running away from me. I wanted nothing more than to take back control of my body from that fucking disease. I had coaches and teammates who were so supportive, who worked with me and helped me get back to where I was before. Not to say that Ryan didn’t have a support system, but from what he’s told me it doesn’t sound like he had people to run with when he initially attempted to break 6:00 again. When he told me his story, I wanted nothing more than to give Ryan the same support I received from my high school teammates (by the way, shout out to Babich, Mark, Sean, Jack, Max, Ariel, and Coaches Donodeo, Febles, Kennedy, and Bonagura for their support back in the day!). Separate post coming for Project:Return, but our next attempt will be August 1st at Portsmouth, NH High School, with a tentative GUEST APPEARANCE from Loyola TF star MOLLY SMITH!

Somewhere Between Cleveland and Erie, PA:

John-Hanson found this amazing park on Lake Erie that was 40 minutes from our host, so we went there when we finished our miles. Got charcoal and BBQ stuff donated and grilled out. Then J-H and I went on a 2.5 hour long ODYSSEY of a walk/swim/shimmy to reach a lighthouse. When we finally came back, the locals in the park had told the other 4Kers that someone had died doing what we did just this past Saturday. Sorry Mom! We came back in one piece fine, though. The water wasn’t exactly calm, but it wasn’t that bad. I could see how it would have been more dangerous if the water were rougher. Whatever. All’s well that ends well! We have about an hour of gopro footage to show for it!