Well... it's cold.

I just can't resist a good Sean Bean post.

It's officially cold in Tennessee. Actually it's cold, rainy and all together nasty at the moment. Honestly, that doesn't bother me quite a much as it does most of the folks in the area, mainly because I do most of my riding inside on the trainer year round, so it's not such a shock of misery every time mother nature decides to dump on us. Running requires a little more planning in the early mornings (breaking out the gloves and jackets) but is actually kind of refreshing after a few months of running through sticky morning humidity. Of course swimming is unaffected other than getting strange looks from my neighbors when I make a mad dash to my car from the house in a t-shirt and shorts as I head to the pool.

IMAZ was Sunday, and that pretty well wraps up everyone's tri season. (if it wasn't already) This is the time of year I both look forward to and dread... running season. This year (after...knock on wood... having a streak of no run related injuries) I've started adding speed work back into my routine, and I'm hoping that I'll be able to break my streak of 19:1x 5k times by (or on) New Years. With all the Turkey Trots, Santa Hustles and whatnot there are going to be quite a few chances between now and then. I've had some track workouts that I'd consider "positive" in predicting an 18:5x, but nothing that makes it a foregone conclusion, especially given my tendency to go out too hard.

Speaking of Santa... yes I'm going to whine that the Christmas music is already playing. I get it, being first to roll out the deals / songs / whatever is worth something, but jeez, I walk in the mall on my Birthday and am already assaulted by Jingle Bells.

I know, right?

Finally in a break from my random bandwidth wasting post, I'd ask a moment of something less lighthearted.

The plans are in the works to do the Sufferfest Knighthood challenge  sometime in January. For those who aren't in the know (and are too lazy to click the link) that's 10 Sufferfest video's in a row (10' breaks between) usually done by the insane for a charity. Normally I'm not much on faceless charity, but a close friend of mine son (who is under a year old) will be having open heart surgery in December, and I'd like to try to set this up to raise money for them. I unfortunately have about 0% knowledge in this field, so if you've done any "personal" fundraising I would love to hear some input.

In my mind it would be a direct "donation" to his paypal, that way there's no middle man touching the money.

Other plans I'm going to try to iron out between now and then include
- live stream (twitch maybe?) of the 10 hour session
- Frequent updates/communication on FB/Twitter/Here/etc.

I'd also love to hear other opinions/suggestions on this.

Thank you all for reading, as always. I'll have more information on the challenge as things become a little more clear to me.

- Christopher Morelock