Tattoo You – thanks to a long lost friend

I’m primarily writing this today to show off my new tattoo!  But I will have some insight into cadence training as well.  But first, the tattoo!

Many years ago (like 18) I was lured into running by my desire to impress a beautiful woman while I was on a work trip to Hawaii.  I was mesmerized by this incredibly cute & smart woman with whom I was working on installing and testing software.  We were both flirtatious as hell and one day she asked me if I wanted to go for a run with her.  In those days I was a smoker, not a runner, but I would be damned if I was going to let that get in the way of going for a run with this angel.

We were staying at the Turtle Bay Hilton on the North Shore so there was plenty of open space where we could run.  So early Saturday morning I put on my cargo shorts and cotton tank top, laced up my Merrell mid-height hiking boots, and off we went.  I can’t tell you now which was worse; running through the sand in hiking boots, or thinking that my burning soot covered lungs were going to collapse – all I know is that it was, to this day, one of my most memorable runs because of who I was with and the relationship that started that day and lasted a fleeting yet glorious 3-years.

I quit smoking cold-turkey that day and started my running quest.  The following year I ran the Marine Corps Marathon.  Though we’ll most likely never meet again I owe my love of running and my being cigarette free for 18 years now to her and, even though she’ll probably never read this….thank you!

I returned to Hawaii again in 1998, the year I was training for the MCM, and while wandering around the shops at the Aloha Tower Marketplace I stumbled on a print of a Hawaiian petroglyph entitled “Running Man”.  I’ve kept it on my wall ever since and thought that one day it would make a cool tattoo – and it does!

So last night I finally got the tattoo.

I look forward to adding 5 half hashmarks and 4 full hashmarks at the end of this year.

Now to the useful portion of this entry – Cadence Training:

The other day I bought a small, portable metronome that I could use to try improving my cadence and boy was I impressed!  If you’re struggling with trying to create music playlists that have songs with 90BPM that you can use to optimize your cadence training let me tell you – this is FAR, FAR better.

Take a look at my Garmin Connect training entry from that day and you can clearly see the benefits of using a metronome.  I was on the treadmill which made it very easy to control the training and optimize the use of the metronome to achieve the cadence I was looking for.

Bottom line – if you want to incorporate some cadence training to improve your efficiency then buy one of these.