Knoxville gets less musical

I've been living in Knoxville for about three years now and one thing that I immediately noticed (and was surprised by) was the music scene. Even in the last three years since I have been here, a few new venues have sprung up thus attracting even more acts to the city to perform. People in and around Knoxville love their music, and being from Detroit, I definitely can appreciate that.

People in Knoxville love their music so much that the Knoxville News Sentinel erected (ha) the statue in the picture Downtown in the mid 80's as a way to pay respect to Knoxville's love of the arts. Next week this statue is coming down and it has surprisingly caused a little bit of a stir around town.

How does this relate to running? Well, in my 3 months living downtown, and running 3-4 times a week, I've ran by this statue every time and never noticed it. It was after someone told me where the statue was that I figured out it was right on my running path. And I never noticed it. So um.....yeah. I guess I won't miss it?

Ain't nothing gonna break my stride

Yeah. I was riding shotgun in that truck last week. Luckily everyone involved walked away from the accident, the other driver got a DUI and both drivers need new cars. Not exactly what I would call a fun experience, but something that definitely reminds you that life is fragile and can end at any time. This is the other car:

Somehow I only managed to bruise my right leg pretty good in the accident. I definitely was sore a for a couple days after the wreck (from being jerked around at the moment of impact), but I was NOT going to let it get in the way of my training for Charlotte in December. The thought of "oh great...just something else to keep me from running..." did cross my mind on Friday when I was moping around and being sore. I forced myself out for a 5 mile run on Saturday, and I survived. It actually helped me break up the soreness (or maybe I am crazy...come to think of it, I know I am crazy...who are we trying to kid?)

That being said, I am 3 weeks into training with no leg soreness from my injury. I think I am taking well to this training schedule which I got from Marathon Rookie. Check it out if you're interested in running at all. It's a good site for sure, especially if you're a rookie to running (hence the name of the site...clever, eh?)

As my promise to you, I will keep this blog active through this training period. I PROMISE.

Thunder Road (half) Marathon - Dec 12, 2009

Well hello again! You should know me well enough by now to know that I update this blog every few months. Don't get jealous, it's not like I am blogging somewhere else....I'm just not blogging at all. Sad, I know. I do enjoy writing and I do enjoy running so my intentions are in the right place. The intention of putting my ass in front of the computer in order to marry the two together to put together the splendor and greatness that is known as this blog just hasn't been there. My bad.

So now that we have the formalities out of the way (oh hey..haven't seen you in awhile....you look great....is this your new boyfriend? Awesome!....) you're probably wondering why there is a logo to a Thunder Road marathon attached to this post. Well, it's because I have signed up to participate in that event. I am going to run in the half - marathon in my first 'real' attempt to test out my injured (but recovering?) groin.

I really don't like the term 'half - marathon' by the way. I understand that the distance is one half of a marathon, but at the same time, it's a 13.1 mile race in itself. It's not something Joey Baggadonuts can roll off the couch and go run in tomorrow morning. It's a big deal, and shouldn't be minimized by calling it half of something else. Maybe if it was called 'The awesome distance' more people would run it and not feel bad? "Hey man, what are you training for?" Reply: "The awesome distance in Charlotte on Dec. 12"....doesn't that sound better?

In running news, I just completed week one of a 10 week training program for this race. The week was successful, meaning I made all my runs and didn't have any pain afterward. I randomly still have a weird ache after a run in the hip / groin / butt area that was originally injured, but that hasn't happened in a couple months....so I might be ok? I don't know...it's weird. You're weird. We're all weird. We'll see what my leg feels like after a ten mile run, which isn't on the schedule for another 4 weeks. If I can make 10, I will make 13.1. I promise.

I have some serious questions about the Ipod and how it shuffles songs

Maybe I am the only one that thinks the shuffle feature on the ipod isn't as random as I'd like it to be. I have 13,000 songs on my ipod and I should RARELY hear 2 songs from the same artist within 10 songs of each other, but it seems to happen all the time.

Anyone else notice this?

Does anyone else wonder this?

So when I am running, or walking, or driving, or hanging out on a bench in the mall, I see 'elderly', or 'old people' with modern technology - like an Iphone, Ipod, Blackberry, etc. and I wonder what motivated them to embrace technology and then furthermore, what songs are on their ipods and if they needed help figuring out how to take music off those vinyl albums and get them on their devices. (I hear the conversion is a bitch)

Surely I can't be the only one that wonders these things. I am also an advocate of driving tests after age 65. Maybe I am just a prick, but I kind of don't think I am alone on this topic.

Since I'm still paying for this URL, I figured I might as well use it.

So, it’s pretty easy to get busy or uncreative. I would say I’ve done a good job at both lately, but I’m going to give this thing a go again. The idea here is to provide good material that others will care about reading, right? Easier said than done. I could go on and on and on about how the grass grows in front of my place or I could document paint drying. I don’t even need to paint anything. But I would do it for you, the people of blogland. The problem is that I don’t think you’d really care about that all too much, and in reality, bad content is worse than no content. Maybe mom did know what she was talking about when she told me that 'if I didn't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all'?

Do people really want to read about my daily runs, and how mundane they are? Well, I don't think they are mundane, but I don't see how they are interesting to anybody else but me. So we'll see. Knoxville is really an interesting place and I have run in some interesting places and have seen some interesting (and probably not legal…) things while running and that’s the kind of thing I’d like to write about. That’s my pledge to you, the people of the blogosphere. It’s like a campaign promise, so I guess that means I don’t need to keep it. Bonus. As the URL suggests, this is and will continue to be a running blog. I think that focus is going to become a looser and looser interpretation of the majority of the content put into this blog, but I figure since the name of the friggen thing is ‘Knoxville Running’ I should probably talk about Knoxville and Running. Not in that order necessarily either.

I do enjoy running, quite a bit to be honest. I feel like lately I’ve met a lot of people through one thing or another and most people that ‘know’ me don’t know everything. Some people only know me as a runner, some people only know me as a Media Professional, and others only know me as an asshole. My goal here is to really get out there that I am a running media professional asshole. If I'm not getting that across effectively, that is what the comments are for. I am going to use this as my soapbox and personal space to speak my mind, so if people read it (and they will, this thing is pretty awesome already) they can know more about me without having to actually talking to me ever (oh, the joys of modern technology). I’m kind of kidding on most of this stuff, but if there is truth in everything that is said, than I must mean some of it. That’s deep (that’s what she said)

I’ve run 3 marathons and plan to run more, hopefully #4 will be this fall. Running has some obvious health benefits, such as stress relief, muscle growth and allowing me the privilege of eating Taco Bell 3 times a day. That last one was a joke. Kinda. As long as my body allows, I will be a runner. You can join me in this running endeavor if you are so inclined, find me on facebook and we’ll make it happen. Running in groups is always better than running alone.

Still trying to figure out exactly why I run marathons. It's a big commitment and it's not easy, but I love the challenge. I think I just figured out why I run marathons. (I’m not going to delete that previous sentence; this blog has an ‘Open Door’ policy.) A couple years ago I got back into running because I do enjoy it and it lets me eat whatever I want (especially Taco Bell multiple times a day. Am I kidding? You’ll never know….) More to come. Maybe. Tomorrow? It’s a date.