The Rowe Family Blog

The other day I was very sad.  My foot has been bothering me a lot since the race on Sunday.  I have plantar fasciitis in my left foot.  So far it’s not been that bad — I could easily run with it.  Recently I started to worry that it might affect my training and, more importantly, possibly keep me from running Marine Corps. or keep me from running my best.

Like many runners I’m a slave to my training plan.  I know it’s stupid but I feel compelled to do at least what the training plan calls for.  I don’t modify it very much.  So, being a stupid runner, I ran 11 miles on a painful foot.  Read the rest of this entry »

Sadly all vacations must end. Our return home was …better than the trip out… but still not fun in any way.

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On Sunday September 14th 2008 Mary finished her first half marathon!  She’s run the distance before, actually she’s run farther than that before just never in a race.  The 2008 Rochester Marathon was on a warm and humid day.  It was a tough day for all of the runners.  …And there were a lot of runners that we knew. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2008 Rochester Half Marathon started with an “Are you ready?  OK.  Go.” We started.  John and I, of course, did our traditional “see you in another life brotha; Strength and honor” send offs.  I fumbled a bit with my new watch and didn’t get it started until a few seconds after I crossed the starting line.  That left me questioning my actual time for the whole race.  When we got to the first mile I was a bit surprised when my watch read 8:00.  I was targeting a 7:30 pace and thought we were running much faster than 8 minutes per mile.  It turns out that we probably did run the first mile faster.  The mile markers on the course, for the most part, were not accurate.

Mark ran with me even though I was singing out loud.  Read the rest of this entry »

After leaving Treasure Island/Clearwater we headed back to home base — Orlando!  Home of Mickey Mouse as well as Donna.  Some of you may not have heard of Mickey Mouse but I’m sure you’ve heard of Donna.

Enough time has passed since we were there and the time that I’m writing this that I’m sure I’ve forgotten a lot.  I certainly don’t remember the chronological order of events anymore.

I’m pretty sure this happened the second night of the vacation  and not towards the end but I’m going to post about it now.  It was our first night in a hotel; the Port Orleans Riversie Resort.  Cassie went down with very little fuss (as is typical with her).  In the wee hours of the morning she woke up screaming.  We looked over and she was vomiting over the side of the portable crib. Read the rest of this entry »

I often see strange things while running though I’m rarely in any sort of danger.  One run stands out in my mind as being packed full of notable events.  I was running along the Erie Canal Trail as I often do.  Unfortunately I was alone for this run, abandoned by friends and coworkers.  They missed out on an eventful run and also don’t believe all of my stories.

The run started out normal until I saw a what I initially thought was a large snake swimming in the canal directly towards me.  Read the rest of this entry »

On our way back to Orlando from Treasure Island we decided to take a slight detour to see Clearwater Beach.  Donna has been there many times but we hadn’t so we wanted to see what it was all about.  We had considered staying in Clearwater instead of Treasure Island.  You could say we were researching future vacationing possibilities. Read the rest of this entry »

The most important type of run while training for a marathon is, not surprisingly, the long run.  The goal is to get out and run for very long distance so that your body can adapt to the distances and running for such a long period of time.  Nearly all marathon training plans will have you run a long run once per week.  The training plan I’m following for the 2008 Marine Corps. Marathon calls for four 20 mile runs.  Those are the longest runs in the plan.  I prefer to get some runs in before the race at 22-24 miles in length.  When the plan calls for a 20 mile run I plan to do a minimum of 20 and hope that I feel good enough at the end of the run that I can add a couple of miles.  This weekend was one of those runs!

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After spending a couple of days in Miami we packed up and headed North to Treasure Island.  Treasure Island is the actual name of a town.  It’s not a theme park or resort.  It’s weird, I know.  It’s just a few miles South of Clearwater Beach.

On the recommendation of a friend we stayed at the Bilmar resort.  Read the rest of this entry »

The second part of our vacation was to spend a couple nights in Miami with Donna.  Read the rest of this entry »