About

Hey!  I started running in the Spring of 2006 to get in better shape to improve my golf game.  Shortly after that I decided to run a 5k.  That hurt!  Never again as I went down the final stretch!  By the time I got to the car…”I can go faster.”    Right after that I turned 40 and somebody mentioned how cool it would be to do a marathon when I’m 40.  Okay.  What a disaster that was.  I had major ITBS, maxed out on 25 miles/week of training.  Yeah, a week!  And, stupidly hobbled the 2nd half of the race.  But, I finished!  It took a while to recover, but I kept adding miles…  That 1st 28 minute 5k was now 21 two years later and I had just gotten to the point where my body could handle more miles since I had been able to, pretty much, keep at bay the injuries.  You name it, I had it.  More miles and I’m still getting faster…

Then in 2008 the intent was to spend the Summer working on speed.  But, the NoVA humidity was killing me.  Okay, let’s just base build.  Hmm…I can go really far if I go slow.  Let’s do a 50k!  So, I signed up for The North Face DC version, trained a bunch on the course, and was ready!  Hurricane!  No race, but I found a marathon to do the next day.  Meanwhile I had signed up for JFK 50 miler!  Part of that training was to run a 5ok and Blues Cruise in PA was it.  Wow that was a fun and well done race!  To date, after a whole bunch of these races, it was the only out/back course I’ve ever negative split. 

I did JFK the next month in about 9.5 hrs and the rest, as they say, is history.  I made 2 big mistakes.  One was hooking up with the VHTRC gang.  Their idea of fun is to find the nastiest trail around and put a race on it.    Second, was hooking up with the Lynchburg crowd at Holiday Lake.  Hmm…what is this Beast Series…you know the rest of the story…

Oh, and  that golf game?  I no longer have a golf membership.  Too busy running! 

I started this blog to document some of the bigger races…like when I actually had time not training after Grindstone…   There are a whole bunch of us on Facebook sharing lots of race and training tidbits.  Look me up.  – Rob Dolan

FYI – The banner pic above is a view from the Grindstone 100 course in August.