I'm going to be published!

Apparently, not all of my writing is senseless crap (believe it or not). Several months ago, on a whim, I emailed a few of my race reports to Rich Benyo, the editor at Marathon and Beyond, knowing full well that they weren't publishable in their current states. He responded several weeks later telling me as much, but asking if I had any other stories I could submit. I didn't. Until Missoula, that is. After I BQed there, I sat down and over the course of 30-45 minutes, pounded out a brief history of my running life and my quest for Boston. I read through it once to make sure there weren't any glaring grammtical errors or accidental naughty words and emailed it to Rich. Several more weeks passed with no word, leading me to believe that nothing would come of it. Then, out of the blue, I received an email from Rich last week asking for my mailing address so he could send a contract! Holy crap! I'm sending the signed contract back to him today. Not sure yet when it will be published, but I'll keep y'all posted. Now, in addition to reading my stupid rambling for free, you can pay $6.95 for an issue of Marathon and Beyond to do it!! What a deal, huh?

I won't bother with too many details of my running last week, since it was virtually identical to the week before (82.2 miles versus the previous week's 82). The weather is still awesome in the mornings, making it oh so much easier to get those big miles in.

I will take some time here to blatantly brag about my son, Caiden. He is 4 years old and Belle Fourche has a youth soccer league for kids under 6, so we signed him up. Caiden has played a very watered down version of soccer with me in our front yard (watered down is all I know, not being much of a soccer fan and never playing it myself), but he had never actually played "real" soccer. Well, after 3 practices and 2 games, it has become apparent that he is a force to be reckoned with on the soccer field. He was a little unsure and cautious in his first game, but something clicked in game 2 and he became a ball hawk, scoring 2 goals and chasing down the other team's best player several times to stop him from scoring. I'm also proud to report that Caid is definitely the fastest player on the team. Yesterday at practice, after about 10 minutes of scrimmaging a couple of the other kids were obviously tired and asking when they could be done. Caiden was still rarin to go....he would have scrimmaged for hours. As the team huddled up after practice, Caid's coach looked at him and said "You could go all night, couldn't you?". He has a blast at practice and at games...he plays with a huge grin on his face the entire time and when there are breaks in the action, he's jumping in place and clapping his hands, just totally overflowing with excitement and ready for the game to get going again. Glad to see that he inherited the ole competitive spirit!! The day when I stop "letting" him win at stuff may be closer than I thought it would be....