Osama Bin Laden Hide and Seek Champion 1998-2011

I'm alive! I'm sure you were all deathly worried about me, right? Well, I've been busy- er than usual. Its been a really horrible couple of weeks. Like last week, I pulled three all nighters and am still behind on homework. Its because last weekend was both Sigma Chi initiation and Relay For Life. Initiation was awesome as always, we initiated 9 guys, which is actually a bigger class than the University of Minnesota. Initiation was Friday night into Saturday morning and I stayed up all night for that, even though I didn't have to. All the initiations I've been at, save my own, I've missed something. So, I stayed up all night so I made sure I wouldn't miss anything. That ended at like 11:30 when we stopped cleaning up, so that was all nighter number 2. I got home, at lunch, and tried to convince myself not to take a two hour nap because I knew I wouldn't wake up. At 3 I went over to the Anderson Athletic & Recreation Complex Fieldhouse to start setting up for Relay For Life. We actually got done a little before 6, when teams were slated to set up, so I was able to grab my team's stuff and stake out a decent campsite.

Relay itself went really well, and I had a bunch of fun- after midnight. Before midnight was an absolute ****show. No one really had any idea what they were doing when, stuff didnt get printed out, and everyone had their own idea of how they wanted things ran. Somehow I got everyone on the same page and we were good. The one thing I was really worried about was the Luminaria ceremony. The glow sticks we were using to light the Luminaria bags looked to be going out every five minutes or so. We decided to pass out glow sticks before the ceremony, and have people crack them as they walked around the track. It looked really cool and it worked well. We had an acoustic performance during the luminaria ceremony (and after as well) by Matt Griswold and it was really touching. The ceremony, the speakers, all of that was really well done if I do say so myself.

I ended up losing the concessions stand key for a while, which was really stressful for a while. I figured out that I had locked it in the concessions stand itself, so all I had to do was open the door and get the key. The problem was, there are only two keys to that door- I had one and the Athletic Director had the other, and it was 1:00 in the morning. I called our public safety and they called Saint Paul police to try and get the door open, but nothing worked; they didn't have a key and couldn't pick it. I had left some ice cream out on the counter to thaw and I was cooking pizza rolls on the hot dog rollers (because there was no oven), so after I was resigned to the fact that I wasnt getting the door open until the AD answered his phone, I got pissed that I would have to clean all that ice cream up off the floor.

It was all good though, we just got breakfast to the relayers on time and we had enough food! Some highlights were watching TC and the Wild mascot play beer pong against eachother, watching the chair of the Political Science department do the velcro wall, a 6 hour long volleyball tournament, and running a 4:52 midnight mile in my boxers. Good stuff, and I can't wait until next year.

Also, a quick shout out to Dougie Fresh, emperor of the Brooks Fanatics program, who donated two free shoe certificates toward the event. You're the man!

We ended up raising $29,082 toward the American Cancer Society

Once again its on

Life just doesn't slow down when I want it to- bummer. First, a quick update on my last post- I met with campus life last Thursday , and they said that we could use donated food at Relay and played it off like it was no big deal and that was just standard operating procedure. We also got cleared to get outside monetary donations, albeit a few days after we would have liked. So essentially campus gave us the big FU and then apologized. Of course, it helped that we had our American Cancer Society adviser there to sort of legitimize us and set us apart from a regular St. Thomas club.

I've also began my second Field Experience at Highland Park HS, which in sunny St. Paul. Field experience is this thing St. Thomas has teacher ed candidates do every year which is basically a little student teaching, a little observation. Right now, I'm in Mr. Z's social studies and humanities classes (he teaches three periods of social studies and two of humanities). Yesterday was my first day and I stayed the whole day plus for track practice and basically helped kids with their reading and classwork the whole time. Mr. Z's also the track coach, and he asked me to sign on and help the kids (obviously unpaid). Yesterday I took the distance group on a 7 mile loop at a pretty easy pace, it being the first day and everything; at just a hair under 8:00/mi. Then we did a half hour of lifting and a half hour of core. Good times.

So running. Running's been good to me lately. It finally got warm enough during the nights to night run- I went at 9:30 on Monday night, and it was awesome. Its getting warm enough that I can get away with not wearing tights or gloves either, which is pretty sweet. The only thing I have to worry about are the puddles left by the melting snow freezing over later in the night. Its all good though. Race this weekend, although I'll see if I wake up in time. If not, no big deal, I was planning on bandit- ing it again this year.

This post has nothing to do with running

So, yeah. If you're looking for running knowledge, move along.

I'm the co- president for the Tommies & Katies relay for life. Co- president because our school does Relay with St. Kate's, a local all girls college; I think I mentioned that already. Anyways, we were dealt a big blow on Tuesday (at least I think it was Tuesday). I met with our Campus Life rep, who is a temp filling in for our normal campus life rep who is out on maternity leave. I met with our old campus life rep twice before she left, and she had us convinced we were green lighted for Relay and everything was on the straight and narrow. However, when I met with this new woman on Tuesday, she said that we really needed to get our s*** together.

Campus passe this new purchasing policy stating that all food used at St. Thomas events must be purchased through "preferred" vendors (in quotes because no one actually prefers them). Anyways, this new person says we must purchase all the food used at relay through campus catering, which is another caveat of the purchasing policy. I can, and did, tell them that "unfortunately, that's not happening" in a few more words in a meeting with the director of campus life on Friday. She said she would try hard to lobby for an exception, but I'm 95% sure thats going to come back in the negative, and that's fine, because I don't think that will pertain to our event, and here's why: (1) Its called the purchasing policy for a reason. Relay is a donation- driven event, so purchasing anything doesn't make sense since our (notice how I said our, not my) operation runs on a song and a lark. If we purchase anything, it will most likely be out of my pocket or from donation money, and I'll go so far as to put my educational career on the line before the latter happens. Since we're not purchasing anything, the policy should not apply to us, its that simple

(2) Relay For Life isn't a St. Thomas event. Its an American Cancer Society event. As far as I'm concerned, St. Thomas isn't even responsible for planning it. Since we work in conjunction with St. Kate's, you could just take us out of the equation, and then where would we be? Well, Relay would be an outside event being held at St. Thomas, making it not subject to the purchasing policy. It already is, technically, since its an ACS event, but just for clarity's sake. (3) really? Is St. Thomas catering really going to provide enough food for 500 people for 12 hours, and for free? Lets be honest, they won't, and there are businesses willing to do it.

Another issue is monetary and material (non- food) donations. For some reason, St. Thomas wants us to run the donations we're planning to get by them before we get them. There are plenty of problems with that too, not the least of which is that we're not really in a position to ask for specific things from specific companies. So, I think I'm just going to hand campus a big ass document of every business imaginable and every item imaginable. I don't think I'll actually do that, but I think you see where I'm going with that. The reason they gave me was for tax reasons. Obviously, businesses who donate want their donations to be tax deductible. However, since St. Thomas never sees the donations, I have no idea why they could oppose donations on those grounds.

As usual, when I met with campus life on Friday, they threatened to pull our funding if we didn't follow the policies. The meeting was eerily similar to a meeting I had with the same person about a year ago about the future of Sigma Chi at St. Thomas (as far as threats go). I've been through this song and dance before.

In case you're interested, here's the purchasing policy
And here's the link to our Relay site

I pride myself on being crazy

President's day- or, The Day After Tomorrow even though that was an awful movie. Either way, the snowpocolipse dumped another 20 some inches in St. Paul. The onslaught started on Sunday, after I got done with my long run. I ran at 6am, got back at 7:15 or so, went to bed, woke up at 10 to go to church, and there was already a good 3 inches on the ground. By the time I went back to school for my chapter meeting, the roads were already so bad that it took me an hour to get to school when it usually takes 20 minutes. Monday was a snow day, and the snow kept falling throughout the day. I shoveled our sidewalk when I woke up, which took about three hours, and then again in the afternoon, which took an hour and a half- which gives you an idea of how much snow we had.

Anyways, I ran on Monday. Where you ask? well, nowhere really. Everything was under 20'' of snow, and they had given up trying to plow the roads, so I decided to run right through the middle of the road since that was the most clear. Nobody seemed to like that idea much, so I got a bunch of angry honks from the few cars behind me. And I was all like "what? the roads are awful, and you're not going anywhere fast, so just calm down." For real though, I was going faster than cars could go, and I was relegated to 9:00, 9:30 paces.

Also on Monday I had planned a Relay For Life meeting. I'm the president of St. Thomas' Colleges Against Cancer chapter, and so by default a co- president of our Relay For Life chapter, which is done in concert with St. Kate's, which is a all- girls school close by. Since St. Thomas is hosting Relay For Life this year, I have to take a more authoritative stance on the whole deal.We were supposed to have a RFL meeting on that Monday, except we couldn't since both the St. Thomas and St. Kate's campuses were closed. This was kind of Important because I have some things to do that are waiting on that meeting. So I rescheduled it for tomorrow, which was a challenge, since it took us a month to schedule the first meeting on Monday.

On another note, I'm in the process of updating the list of running sites to the left of this post. I'll also add a list of races that I'm running, so you know which races to stay away from

G day minus 45/ miles apart

I've been really busy lately with finals coming up, so the blog is playing fifth wheel behind school, running, work, and Sigma Chi. So for the one person who reads this besides me, sorry mom. I mean its rough. I've got the coffee pot going constantly. Most days I'll do to bed at one or two in the morning and wake up at five thirty or six. Is that what the real world is like? Anyways, enough complaining. I'm not going to go into detail about my running because if I did so it would take forever. Just know that running doesn't hurt at all anymore and because of that I ran my first 55 mile week in probably three months. But, I want to talk about life. I don't even care if anyone reads it, I just want to get some things off my shoulders. K, so here's 19 years of my life in three paragraphs:

Relay For Life Friday night was fun even though it got moved inside because of the weather. That was okay with me because I had to get up early to go to SLP and they ended the thing at midnight or there abouts. Its too bad though because I think the whole event lost something, especially the Luminaria ceremony. And I got my event budget extended for food from $50 to $100 because I went shopping Thursday night and bought Ground Chuck, spices, buns, etc. and obviously with the event being held inside we couldn't grill so we had like no food. So I had to make another food run to get sandwich stuff Friday before the thing started.We grilled out Saturday afternoon and cleaned the house and it was pretty delicious. We have some awesome chefs in the chapter.

Sweetheart was awesome- it was at the St. Paul Athletic club in the room where our charter was signed 20 years ago and it was super classy. I went with a girl who went to Edina and who I've had a crush on for since as long I can remember. I'm just glad I got a date, I was 0 for 5 in asking girls before her and was getting pretty down on myself. It was a great time and it was really interesting. We had a couple of the charter members of Delta Sigma Chi (they started the fraternity before it was chartered, but before the colonies become official Sigma Chi chapters they have to serve something like a probationary period) as well as most of the first Iota Tau pledge class and the Grand Consul (president of the fraternity at- large) who presented the charter speak. We also crowned a new Sweetheart of Sigma Chi, which was pretty cool.
Unfortunately, Andrea missed when we sang the Sweetheart of Sigma Chi to the new sweetheart so I sang it to her during the car ride home. It was as an awesome time though; I'm already looking forward to next year.

Next week is Sigma Chi Derby Days, which is something akin to the Mifflin Street party in Wisconsin at the bigger schools with less drinking. Its basically six philanthropy events on each night of the week where all the proceeds go to a charity. This year its Huntsman Cancer Institute, so that should be a lot of fun. We're doing meal donations this week for Huntsman where students can donate a meal from their plan and some of the proceeds go to Huntsman while the majority go to the St. Thomas administration. Oh whoops, did I really type that? Really, why is ordering T- Shirts so convoluted? Why do they tell us which vendors we can and can't use? We have to get them cleared by Campus Life, Res Life and Public Safety? Why can't we just be students for once? do you hate fun? One more thing, Why must you skim $6.50 off a $8.50 donation? That's criminal. In the real world, thats called embezzlement and you go to jail for it. I should probably stop, lest I risk getting arrested by the secret police or the Gestapo or something...

G- day minus 116

Finally I get a chance to post. I've got like six posts started, but none finished. I've been really really busy lately, like going from 5 in the morning to 11 at night every day. I've got to meet with my dorm manager sometime, as well as have my resume checked, and both only have nine to five hours. I've got no available time at all then, unless I want to skip class, which I'm really not keen on doing. Plus, I've got to attend a bunch of meetings because I'm the captain of team Iota Tau in Relay for Life. Last post was on the 15th? well, what else has gone on in my life? For one, my Marathon plan started. I'm on week two day one, and so far its just a lot of work, not really difficult. Last week I ran 6 miles "Medium effort", then ten the next day. I'm not really sure what's the difference between "Medium Effort," "Lactate Threshold," and "Tempo." Yes, I know what LT and Tempo are, but I just don't see the difference. Looking at my flotrack profile (which I'm going to put up again under links,) I have way more green days then red days, which is awesome. Its getting warmer, which is great. Most of last week it was a singlet- and- shorts run, which is great because I'm tired of the tights and long sleeve getup. The downside is that the snow and ice is melting fast, so there are great lakes sitting on the trail. Of course, my feet are freezing and wet almost always, and the mesh forefoot upper on my GTS 8's are a weird shade of yellow and they smell like I've left them at an ice rink for a couple weeks. The one good part about running in melting snow is that you get the mud splashed up on the back of my legs and shorts. Call me weird, but I like that stuff, its like battle scars or something.

• God today was terrible, which made today's run even sweeter. I don't think I've ever talked about my job, but I work for St. Thomas' technology department answering phones and doing that stuff. Today everybody was getting viruses by going to the Star Tribune website. I won't go into detail, but from 7a-9a it was pure hell. Everyone was calling in and yelling, like 30 people. It was miserable. Then I went to work again from 1-5, and had to stay late and play 'senior tech' for an hour and a half. I had to attend to four classroom emergencies, and thank God I knew how to fix all of them. Come on boss, you never trained me for answering phones, now you're not going to give me any training for senior tech?
• I'm going to the South Suburban Flyers floor hockey game, their last one of the season against Rochester. I'm excited, I haven't been to a game yet, so I'm excited. Plus, I've got to talk to my former coach regarding possible Sigma Chi philanthropy
• My Green Silence's came today. First impressions are good, although I haven't worn them yet. I'll hold off until the snow melts to wear them, but I think its definitely a shoe to wear sockless. They're also hella light.
• Lastly, please donate to my relay for life profile. Its much appreciated!