Saturday, February 26, 2011

Where is My Well-Being at This Point?

Since the end of January, I have been focused a lot on trying to catch up on a variety of things in the workplace. That has kept me from writing a lot about well-being. In some ways it is a bit ironic

The main task at work on which I had gotten behind and to which I had to give attention was a study regarding multiple domains of well-being for older adults. The first two parts of being caught up on that project are now ready to go out the door. Still lots to do, but I am feeling more comfortable letting other things back into my life.

Second, I have been focused on my own well-being quite a bit in the past month. I have not been writing a blog entry about every run that I do (or more generally every workout that I do) but I have been thinking about each run. This year, I have a long-term goal that is seen as a realistic but hard goal to meet, i.e., reaching the Boston Marathon qualifying time in the Baltimore Marathon in October. The coach of the Maryland Half Marathon training group is a guy the same age as me who has noted my goal and keeps asking me thing that are closely related to my goal. It is a pretty cool experience. He gave one piece of advice before my trip to Australia that was good advice but that I did not follow in the most productive way. The advice was to do a long slow run on the last morning in Baltimore. Three miles into the run, my left foot found a pot hole and I twisted my ankle. As I write this entry on a Qantas Airbus 380 on the way to Sydney, the left ankle is tight but has a full range of motion. From that, I’m concluding that it is neither broken nor sprained but that I do need to take my time getting back into the swing of things. It is ironic that I hurt myself when I do things trying to improve my well-being. I’m sure that as long as I’m smart about not stressing the ankle too much I’ll be back in good form in the near future.

Third, I have finished and am now selling (and slowly promoting) The Radical Transformaiton of Runner 1313. It is a very neat experience. So far, I’ve sold two Kindle copies and five paperback copies. I’ve also had to order two proofs and I ordered 10 extra copies to hand out to people. It will be interesting to see what happens with this. I’d like to make at least a couple hundred dollars from these efforts to put toward my fundraising goal for this year.

Fourth, in terms of the rundraising goal, I have managed to get up to $330/$1500 for the University fo Maryland Greenebaum Cancer Center and up to $25/$1000 for the American Cancer Society. I have a long way to go for each, but I figure both are very reachable.

Fifth, in terms of how cancer is playing a role in my life, I am consistently moving into more cancer research. Not giving up on studying nursing issues or eye health issues, but going where there is a big problem and a lot of money to study it. In addition, as people find out that I am raising mony for two cancer charities this year, they share their stories with me. Or they share stories of people they know. For example, one friend from all the way back at Highland Park has a distant cousin who is blogging about her experience with treatment for metastatic melanoma. That is bringing very close to home what I wrote about in The Radical Transformation.

It is amazing how so many bits and pieces of my quest for my own well-being and my family’s well-being interact with one another.

Finally, a short “Smaltimore” story. For the first long slow distance run for the Maryland Half Marathon, I ran with someone not from last year’s marathon training group. It was very nice running with someone who was not going to go too fast. She is a good runner, but running in the upper 8’s and even 9’s was not outside the realm of possibility. She kept encouraging me to go ahead if I wanted, but I enjoyed the conversation, and I didn’t want to leave someone else behind. So, we had nearly an hour to talk and we talked about kids, where we worked, what else we ran, etc. The interesting thing was that we did not exchange names. However, I have since learned her name and not only does she work for the same institution that I do (at the university level) but she was the first author on several papers cited by an advisee of mine in his dissertation.

The other recent long-slow distance run that I did, I ran with a guy named Eric. He did fine but did reach a point where he had to slow to a walk when we were out at Loch Raven. I did go ahead of him as there were plenty of people running back and forth along the path and he’d soon find others to run with if he chose. That was also an interesting day as it demonstrates just how close at least a subset of the running community that works for, trains with, or otherwise interacts with Charm City Run is and has been. When I went to pick up stuff for my efforts for Marlene’s Misison at Charm City Run, I was fitted for my shoes very professionally, I had a brief conversation with another employee who is in the marathon training group and who recognized me as someone she’d run past a couple times earlier in the day, and the feeling at the store was just right. I figure if the people who are fitting you are people you are likely to run with at some point in time, they will be very likely to do the right thing for you.

Well, that’s a long enough entry for today.

kdfrick@aol.com
Twitter: Runner_1313
Skype: kevin.frick
Marlene’s Mission Donations: http://www.ummsfoundation.org/kevinfrick
American Cancer Society Donations: http://determnation.acsevents.org/goto/kevinfrick
Book: https://www.createspace.com/3537771 (also available direct from Amazon)