'ddldays is the ID of the asp:dropdownlist in my application.
'first we clear the current selection, this prevents an error where the application thinks you are trying to select two things at the same time.
ddlDays.ClearSelection()
'now set the selected value by the text of the item
ddlDays.Items.FindByText("90").Selected = True


I know, it isn’t rocket science but if I don’t post it here, I will pull out my hair next time I need it!


Dim tb as TextBox = TryCast(asprepeaterID.Item.FindControl("headerTextBoxID"), TextBox)


I was running in my VFFs along a path near the James River here in Richmond, VA and stepped on a large, sharp rock right in the middle of my right foot.  I felt immediate pain but thought it just because I stepped on the rock the wrong way.  As it turns out, I had broken my 5th metatarsal (the bone that goes back into your foot from your little toe).  I was in a boot for 4 weeks and not allowed to run for 2 weeks after that.  It was aweful to be stopped like that, my ortho was not on my friends list at that point but I listened to her.

When I started training for the Marine Corps Marathon the first time (when I got the ok from the ortho) I thought I should start wearing shoes with more padding to prevent another break.  Since switching to those padded shoes I have had more injuries and discomfort than I want to go into here.  I have stuck with those shoes since then and over the last couple of weeks have been eyeing my VFFs that are sitting in my closet waiting patiently to be reunited with my feet.

Ok, enough with the history lesson.  My plan is to run with the VFFs when it is dark out and barefoot when it isn’t.  The reasoning here is that I am pretty confident that the only rocks I will encounter are very small (pea gravel from driveways) and I will be able to see broken glass, etc when it is daylight.  At night the VFFs will keep me from cutting my feet on that glass…make sense?

I’ll provide updates here and pass along anything I learn the hard way.

0430 comes pretty early, even if you are anxiously awaiting your first marathon. For every long run I did during training for this event, I had a routine that I followed without fail. I did not follow the routine for the morning of the marathon. It didn’t hurt me by any stretch, it just felt different. Lesson1: stick with your regular routine.

The weather was C O L D. I did purchase a pair of 3/4 length running tights at the expo the day before the race. I am so glad I did. They made all the difference in the world. Most of my running shorts are pretty loose fitting and having that extra layer proved to be invaluable. Lesson 2: make sure you are dressed for the weather.

We stood around for the better part of 2.5 hours before heading over the starting corrals. That is something I will not do again. My legs felt really tired after standing that long and the muscles were shivering. I could just have easily sat down on a throw away towel or trash bag. Lesson 3: sit down if you can before the race, don’t stand for extended periods.

The race was long, I know what you are thinking “no kidding, it is 26.2 miles, dummy.” Seriously though, it felt long, the last 7 miles felt just as long as the first 19.2. I wasn’t prepared for that at all. I think the longest long run should be in the neighborhood of 23-25 miles to adequately prepare for a marathon both mentally and physically. Lesson 4:
run long in training.

Miles 1-6 – the start

There is great crowd support at the beginning of the race and then you are treated to some nice scenery as you travel through the Roslyn part of the run. The first hill you get to is leading up to the Key Bridge that takes you into DC about mile 4. It is early enough in the race that I had plenty of energy and felt strong here.

Miles 7-20 – the meat:

After the bridge into Georgetown (or NW DC, I think) there is a short out & back loop that treats you get to see the stairs from the movie “The Exorcist.” You know, where the priest rolls down them? Sorry, off track a bit. About mile 6.5 or so starts the only big hill on the course. It seems to never end and even has a switchback in it that makes it seem steeper and longer than it probably is. Just before mile 9 was a construction site that had 2 porta potties…these seemed to be pretty popular with most of the runners. I didn’t use them since they were behind a fence but thought it notable to point out that you might find it useful and/or necessary to use what is available in a time of need.  Lesson 5: take any opportunity to get relief.

Coming out of Georgetown you run past the Kennedy Center on Rock Creek Parkway and head to Haynes Point and the halfway point of the run. This goes around the East Potomac Golf Course and is a peninsula that is surrounded by the Potomac River.  It seems pretty lonely as you venture south towards the southern end of Haynes Point but there was a huge crowd right at the halfway point that was very motivating.

As you head back north towards the long loop around the National Mall and the monuments the crowd support grows.  This is where I saw my favorite signs; there were many variations of “Worst Parade Ever” which I found to be hysterical and laughed at every one of them for some reason.

At mile 16 my sister and I parted company.  We had been doing a Galloway style run-walk up to this point.  The problem was that my knees started to hurt whenever we would walk and hers hurt when we would run.  Rather than both of us suffer in pain we agreed to meet up at the finish.  We wished each other well and went on.  Even with the crowds of cheering people chanting my name (I had “CHUCK” on a bib pinned to the front of my shirt for extra motivation), I still felt alone.  I almost went back for her and stuck it out with the pain…almost.  Lesson 6: if you want to feel like a champ, pin your name to your shirt, it helps!

I think the hardest part for me was leading up to the bridge at mile 20.  You see, if you don’t make it to the 14^th street bridge by a certain time, you are removed from the course and forced to take a bus across the bridge since they open it back to traffic.  For people of my speed, this is a major concern.  Fortunately, I made it with plenty of time to spare, well, I really don’t know how much time, it just sounds better when put that way.

Miles 21 – 26 – the second half (at least if felt like it):

Once I got on the bridge I had the most unusual feeling I have ever experienced.  My legs stopped working.  There was no real pain, they just stopped.  I, literally, could not take another step.  I told myself that if I could just make it to where the paramedic was standing, I would have her take me to the end, I was done.  The problem was that I could not make it over to her.  She was only about 50 feet away from me and it seemed like several light-years.  After several seconds that lasted years, I was able to take one step, then two; then I could walk – not run.  I decided to go to the far end of the bridge and see how I felt then.

I met up with a man, a Patriots fan, with whom I talked about sitting down with a cold beverage after the marathon.  The thought of a comfortable couch and a cold beer seemed to be all the motivation I needed to pick up the pace again and before I knew it, I was running again.  After crossing the bridge and hitting mile 22 and 23 in Crystal City I had a surge of confidence and by the time I went back past the Pentagon, I had the emotional realization that I was going to finish this thing!  I started thinking about all of the setbacks that we, as a family, had experienced over the past couple of years while I tried
to train for this moment and I could feel the tears rolling down my face.

At mile 25 I set one final goal: I would run, no, sprint the last .2 miles.  I jogged slowly for the first half of mile 25 and walked from 25.5 to 26 to make sure I had plenty of energy for this last burst effort.

The last two tenths:

Going from a very painful and slow walking pace to an all-out sprint is not an easy task when you have no fuel left in your body.  I remember crossing mile 26 and thinking that I had to run so I began the painful transition from walk to jog.  There is a slight downhill at this point on the course which helped me to convince myself that gravity was helping me to build up momentum.  By the time I reached
the base of the hill leading to the finish and the last 200 yards I was in a dead sprint on numb jelly legs.  My mantra was playing over and over in my head, thundering so loud that I could not hear the screams from my body “MOVE FORWARD, DON’T QUIT!”

The crowd at the finish was huge. Isn’t it interesting that I know they were yelling and cheering for each runner yet, looking back, I don’t remember any sound at all…just dead silence.  All I see in my mind is a clear, yet blurry vision of people on either side of the road and the strip across the pavement where my chip would register that I had finished.

I should point out that when I hooked up my Garmin to my computer and looked at the speed with which I ran that last .2 miles, it wasn’t that fast.  In fact, it was little more than a
quick jogging pace.

No matter, I know that I left it all out there and I am now one of a select few that can call themselves a Marathoner.  That is something that I will have for the rest of my life.

• ExamDiff - compares two files and highlights the differences between them
• WinMerge - much like ExamDiff but also makes merging files pretty easy
• FileZilla - FTP client and server, if you don’t know what FTP is…you don’t need this
• TweetDeck - a nice desktop app to access your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Buzz or Myspace status updates and news feeds.  Pretty handy.
• NotePad++ – like your regular NotePad on steroids, great for programmers

I will add to this list as I remember stuff I have used and/or see new stuff that I like and think might be useful.

I took the long way to get there.

My training started in October of 2009 when one of my older sisters came to me and said that she and my younger sister (I have 4 sisters all together, no wonder…) were planning on running the Marine Corps Marathon in October 2010, just over a year away. As a primer we would run the Monument Ave 10k in Richmond near my house in April 2010.

Our “real” training would not start until July 2010.

Needless to say, I got injured (ITBS) in August and even with trips to the physical therapist (2-3 per week) over the following month, stretching and strength training, I could not run more than about 6 miles without severe pain. If you haven’t had ITBS before, you cannot “run through” the pain. Needless to say, I wasn’t able to run that year. I did manage to meet my 2 sisters at mile 22 with my father and run the last 4 miles with them.

Fast forward to January of 2011, I had taken 2 months off from running all together and had only done some strength training and foam rolling. I thought it was time to get back out on the road and this time I felt a whole lot stronger.  I ran two races in the spring, the ASK 5k which supports the cinic where my 6 year old gets his chemo treatments and the Monument Ave 10k.  It was my second year for both races and I felt strong in both.

Starting in May, I really began to push my mileage.  I was going to be using a training plan called The Non-Runners Marathon Training Guide but wanted to log more miles in my training than were actually called for in the plan.  Both of my sisters had used this plan to train for their first marathons and had good things to say.  My only issue was that the people with whom I spoke said that you needed to run at least 1 run of 20+ miles in your plan.  My goal became to run at least 1 mile further in the mid-week runs and 2-3 miles further on the long runs.

I think this approach would have been successful. The hiccup came when I ordered new shoes about 6 weeks before the marathon. I had been having some unusual pain in my hip after runs. It would only last for about 20-30 minutes but it was a sharp pain that really felt like the inside of my right hip joint, near the groin area. I was fine for the entire run but within 5 minutes of finishing this sharp pain would come on. If I was sitting and went to move, well, let’s just say that I couldn’t. I went to the ortho and, of course, they could not find anything. He said it could be a pinched nerve or something along those lines, he was happy to set me up with an MRI but I passed.

Back to the training, I decided that part of the problem might be my shoes so I purchased a new pair. Like an idiot, I switched shoes in the middle of my training for a few runs. For future reference, do NOT switch shoes if you have been wearing the same ones for months without breaking them in slowly. I immediately got knee pain that stuck with me throughout the rest of my training.

The plan called for a 7 runs of 14 miles and longer, the last 10 week’s long runs were 14, 14, 14, 16, 16, 18, 18, 12, 8, marathon. However, because of my hip issues and knee pain my final 10 weeks went: 15, 16, 14, 16, 12, 18, 0, 12, 8, marathon. I was scared to death when the day of the marathon came. As with most, if not all, first timers, I was questioning my training. More so because I had selected a minimalist plan and had not been able to do the long runs that it had called for.

The race report will be coming soon. 

First and foremost love is my family and chief among my family is my wife, we’ve been married since 1997 and great friends since 1983.  We met in the 7th grade and were friends from the start; we actually didn’t start dating until 1996.  I think it just took her that long to look past all my imperfections and realize that I wasn’t going to give up.  We have 4 kids, 2 boys and 2 girls that bring much joy, humor and frustration to our lives.
Of course we wouldn’t trade them for the world.

My second love are my outdoor hobbies, I know, I shouldn’t list a group of things as my 2^nd love…get over it, it’s my blog.  I love to run, I love to hike, I love to hunt and fish.  I also love to cook.  I’m not particularly good at any of them but they help me to pass the time in a most enjoyable way.

My third love, well, not a love so much as I really like and hate it at the same time, is my job.  I am a programmer.  As with my fitness, I know just enough to be dangerous and regardless of how long I have been doing it, there is always something more to learn.
I am self-taught which means that I have a knack for it but without the standard education that my peers have had, I ask some pretty stupid questions. Oh, that’s right, there are no stupid questions, only stupid people…in that case I suppose I fall into that category.

I am a lifelong learner, a student of life, well you get the idea.  I love to learn, no matter who is teaching.  I have a wealth of useless knowledge and enjoy the study of where modern day expressions and the origins of them.