Thoughts of Shane Kenny

I know that I still owe everyone a post detailing my 26.2 miles through NYC on November 7th, but I wanted to get this information out now for anyone that was interested.

Yes, I am still alive, I am still running, and I am still on track to run the NYC Marathon on Nov 7th. Life has been a little on then hectic side for the last month or two though so writing blog posts has taken even more of a “back burner” than it normally does. Here is a quick update:

Football: Chad wanted to play tackle football this fall. After a good talk about commitment, not being allowed to quit, the loss of some of his free time, and that it will hurt he was still determined. He started off a bit slow the first week of practice but has quickly improved and is playing very well for his first year. He has a great set of coaches that expect a lot from the boys but also understand that this is the first year for most of them. Looks like Chad will be playing defense mostly and was very excited to get his first sack last Saturday. I am enjoying this with him although the 10+ hours per week of practice and games is a huge commitment.

Work: As always things have been very busy at work. Seems like just when it looks like we might get a breather some new opportunity presents itself. We have a lot of exciting things in the works that I can’t talk about yet… But will as soon as I can.

Church: still enjoying Freedom Church very much. It is exciting to be part of something that is growing and wants to reach the community around it. After spending so many years at places that were so inwardly focused the change has been welcomed. I’m still working in the Video Production area and helping out in any other ways that I can.

My flight back to Atlanta from ??? is about to land so I need to shut the iPad down. More later!

For the second year I joined 54,999 fellow runners, walkers, and crawlers on July 4th for the annual Peachtree Road Race.  This 10k boasts to be the largest in the world and with 55,000 entrants and 51,000 finishers, they may be right.  My time last year was 54:31 and I was planning to go for a 10k PR this year by finishing under 54:27.

After talking it over with Dale we decided that I would be better served to use this race as “practice” for running in a controlled manner based on my heart rate.  This is what I will have to do in the NYC Marathon later this year, and I need to get used to doing this in “race conditions”.

I did OK running in a controlled manner… for most of the race.  I finished with an average heart rate of 154, just slightly over the 140s that Dale wanted me to target.  It really is my fault.  I felt so good after Cardiac Hill (big hill, half way) that I started to speed up.  Then, when I got to mile 5 I still felt good so I sped up even more.  I completed mile 5 to 6 in 8:27, and I finish the last .2 of a mile in under a 7:00 pace.  The only point in the race were I felt some fatigue was when I ran across the bridge over I-85.  I think it was the longest section of time I spent in the sun which probably caused this feeling.  I also completed the whole race without stopping at any water stops.  I kept telling myself I would stop at the next one but I felt so good that I didn’t want to waste the time since they were all pretty busy.

Overall it was a great race and I still felt pretty fresh when I finished it.  I felt like I could have run 10 miles without any problems.  Maybe this heart rate training idea that I was doubting a few weeks ago is actually starting to work.  I am already looking forward to next year’s Peachtree and getting my 3rd t-shirt.

I can summarize this post for you very simply… This airline should simply rename themselves No-Spirit Airlines! I should have seen this coming when the week before my trip the pilots went on strike. Fortunately, they worked out their labor dispute (read: the pilots wanted more money) 3 days before my flight.

My wife and I arrived at the airport about 1.5 hours before our flight. Usually enough time to check our bag, clear security, get some breakfast, and get on the flight. Not today. I am convinced that the check-in agents were pissed that they did not get pay raise and were taking it out on the customers in line. I am not exaggerating when I say it took these 3 agents over 45 minutes to work through the 20 people in front of me in line. It was obvious from their body language that they just did not care and would get the people through the line when they were good and ready. When were finally done checking in we had about 40 minutes to get to the gate and the agent said, “Go directly to the plane and you might make it!”

After clearing security and getting to the gate we sat down on the plane about 10 minutes before they closed the doors. However, this did not stop the gate agent from telling us how late we were and that “I was about to close the door.” Glad that we made it and we took our seats and settled into the hour flight to Fort Lauderdale.

A quick side note about the actual planes. We took a total of 4 flights on our trip. Every single plane had squeaky armrests. Every time someone raised or lowered an armrest it would wake up everyone on the plane that had dozed off. To top it off, I hadn’t realized that it was possible to put the seats closer together than most airlines already had… It is. I felt Like a giant in their seats. I am barely 5 foot 10 and my knees actually touched the seat in front of me.

The pre-flight safety demonstration was almost comical to watch. One flight attendant read the instructions over the loud speaker while the other flight attendants followed along trying as hard as they could to not have any facial expressions or emotion during the process. This carried over to the service as well. I nicknamed one of the attendants “ROZ” (from Monsters Inc) because of her monotone reading of the safety instructions and overall treatment of the guests on the flight. The others around me were just calling her “Helga”.

In summary. I told my wife that I will never fly Spirit Airlines again. I would rather pay more than deal with lousy service and employees that just don’t care. While cost does matter, I will gladly pay a few more dollars for better service on the way to my destination.

P.S. I am writing this while on a Delta flight while enjoying some complimentary peanuts and drink that I was given by a friendly flight attendant. Not to mention the access to in-flight Internet access.

Now that I am running based on heart rate zones I needed a new running watch.  Enter the Garmin 405cx.  This is essentially the same watch as my older Garmin 405 except that it comes with the heart rate monitoring built in.  Now, beside being able to track times, distances, laps, pace, etc I now can tell you what my instant heart rate is as well as my average heart rate for a run.

It has been interesting getting used to running based on my heart rate rather than just killing myself on every run.  When I am done with a run I can sync the watch with my computer and analyze my run.  I can even share the data with Dale so he can see how I am progressing on his training plan.