Mike Wilson Webmaster & Statistician Valparaiso

2006

Why not do some different things this year? Can I get out of my running "rut"?

The answer is an emphatic YES! It′s January 30, 2006 and yesterday I did my first stair climb. I took the big "step" and climbed the (former) Amoco Building - now the Aon Building as part of the Step Up For Kids event.

On the Friday night before the MidWinter Cruise 5K, I checked the Step Up For Kids web site and found that I could still enter. I was immediately "inspired" to see if I could do it so I signed up.

I have to say that I haven′t felt that kind of "high" from an athletic event in a long time. After looking at last year′s results, I thought I might be able to complete the 1643 steps (80 floors) in about 25 minutes (3 stories per minute or 60 steps per minute) based on a little training on a Stairmaster and a stepper. It may have been the fact that I had worked in the building for 18 years, but I felt inspired.

I finished in 18:18 and I felt great at the finish. I can hardly wait to do another one. As soon as I got home, I signed up for the Hustle Up The Hancock waiting list. There′s probably not must chance of making it. Now I′m looking for the opening of registration for the Go Vertical Sears Tower Climb.

2006 promises to be an interesting year!

Pinch Me! I can′t really believe it′s happened. I started this year with a goal of vigorously competing on the CARA Circuit with, I hoped, an outside chance to make it to the top three and thus qualify for an award. Along the way, I hoped I would actually be able to get an award at one of the circuit races. Never in my wildest dreams did I think it would come at the Chicago Distance Classic Half Marathon. With a target registration of 10,000, I felt I had a better chance in one of the smaller races (say 600-800). I have to admit that I have really been on cloud nine for a couple of days - I′ve been telling all my friends and family. And, at least momentarily, I will be in first place in the CARA Circuit Standings Male 65-69 at least going into the Park Forest Scenic 10.

The Chicago Distance Classic has a special place in my race history - it′s the first race I ever ran back in 1978 when it was a 20K. I learned a lot that day (went out way too fast! I did manage to finish in about 91 minutes). Since I had met John Bingham (The Penquin), the race director, a couple of years ago, I searched him out and he was gracious enough to sign my third place award. I′ll have a special place for this award in my trophy display case.

2005

This year has seen the web site undergo major revisions a couple of times.

All pages are generated (via Visual Basic and JavaScript routines) based on information stored in Excel spreadsheets. Over the year, I have moved more of the data to spreadsheets to enable more flexibility in changing the appearance of the many web pages. I have tried to simplify the directory structure to be based on information type and then by year. This will eventually make the archiving of information by year more efficient. All of the Visual Basic routines I have written to produce the various web pages have been revised to reflect this directory structure. As the links to the older years are phased out, the programming will begin to simplify.

Late in the year (during my 4 weeks of rest and recovery from a long, hard and fun year of running), I decided to convert all of the new web pages to xhtml, and to validate each page with the W3C (an international web language standards organization) validation software. This was completed just before Christmas.

A major addition this year was the various calendar features. The central calendar on the home page highlights the events of the current month while the Event Calendar (under Events on the home page) provides a two year calendar of all scheduled club events (Gold Cup Races, Sponsored Races and various meetings or other events). The generation of the Sponsor column on all pages is now dynamically generated via JavaScript and hence will be current throughout the year with all sponsors.

I also added a page of links to Other Race Calendars - I′m always looking for a new race or a race to fill an idle weekend. Also new under Member Info is a page called "Incredible Feat!". I′m always amazed at the incredible things our members do so I added this page to tell a few of these stories.

New this year are "Junior Striders" and "Beginner Runner Programs" under Events. Sue Brown, Misty Chandos and Sommer Watts have been instrumental in bringing many new members (including many under age 19) into our growing running club.

I truly enjoy designing and maintaining our website. I probably average 10-15 hours a week either updating infomation and changing something to see if I can add some value to the web site. I processed results from over 285 races this year to display the accomplishments of our members. In 2002, only two "Other Races" were displayed - in 2005, 261 were displayed (plus the Gold Cup Races).

I also had a tremendous year running in 2005. I competed in 64 races (I′m 64 years old), I ran all the Gold Cup races (second year in a row for a Jim Cox award) and I passed the 300 race mark in career races. I finished in the award level for 47 of the 64 races. More than 35% of these race were run for the first time. I also placed 3rd in the 60-64 Gold Cup standings.

I also competed in the Chicago Area Runners Association (CARA) circuit and placed 6th in the 60-64 age group. Next year, I will be in the 65-69 age group and hope to win my first CARA circuit award. I again qualified for the 2005 CARA Participation and the CARA Long Distance awards.

In addition to attending 10 of the 12 board meetings in 2005, I was also a member of the Gold Cup Committee.

2004

2004 was been a fabulous year of running for me. I set a number of goals for this year and by the end of the year, I will have accomplished all but one. In the course of this running, I have met a lot of new friends. I truly feel privileged to be able to say I am a Strider. And, two of my adult children started running this year so I now have even more encouragement to run.

2004 Goals:

• Run a marathon - I decided to try running a late spring marathon in order to decide if I could survive the Chicago Marathon. I was able to complete both with Boston qualifing times in each - a first in my 27th year of running.
• Complete all Gold Cup races - I received my Jim Cox award after the Fall Frolic with the six other members of the Magnificent Seven.
• Run at least two races in every calendar month - The Sleighbell is done - I made it. In the course of doing this, I have run 47 races. Now, that′s not even close to Jerry Ezell but for somebody who ran no races in 2000 as I recovered from prostate cancer, I have come a long way.
• Repeat as First Place in 60-64 Gold Cup standings - I didn′t make this one because this young whipper snapper named Jack Potter (he is all of 11 weeks younger than me) joined CRS and the Gold Cup competition and you know what? He is a lot faster than me. I only managed to beat him in our first head-to-head race. I was able to achieve 1000 points but only because Jack was injured for a couple of races. (Do you think falling off the roof is a legitimate reason for not running?)
• Qualify for CARA Awards - I have been a Chicago Area Runners Association member for many years but this is the first year I actually tried to qualify. I was successful in qualifying for a CARA Participation Award (104K in Cara races) and the CARA Long Distance Award (5 races in the Long Distance Series including a marathon or longer).

This year has seen major changes to our web site. My intent is to make our information useful, timely and interesting so that the web site is a resource for our members. In addition to keeping the Gold Cup Results and Standings current, I have scanned the results of over 150 Other Races to display the accomplishments of our members outside the Gold Cup series.

I have also added more than 35 photo galleries of our members enjoying being runners. The daily birthday update gives us all a chance to send a greeting to our fellow runners on their special day. The Member PR page and the Boston Qualifiers page provide additional information on member accomplishments.

The newly revised Home Page provides improved focus for club activities (highlighted notes in each area as well as notes of general interest) and club members/activities in the slide show.

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Updated: 2/9/2007

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