Remember, it's not supposed to be easy.

Wow, Lance Armstrong just kicked my ass.

Because I failed to reach my running goal last month, I decided to kick it into gear a little more this month. Yesterday I got a new Nike+ running workout from iTunes. It's similar to the one I have with Serina Williams, but in this workout, my coach is Lance Armstrong. It's another interval workout, just longer. I have a warm up, then four 4-minute speed sets, with four 4-minute recovery sets, then finally a cool down. (Take a look the box over there on the right and you can get a good idea of how the run looks in chart format. Speed up, slow down, speed up slow down... etc.)

During the Serina workout, she'll chime in with some encouragement like "If I saw you right now, would I be impressed?" or "I want your running to turn some heads." Which is great, but the difference with this new workout is that Lance chimes in with tips on running. For example, during one of the slow sets he says "stay relaxed by un-clinching your fists and relaxing your shoulders. This will help you prepare for the next fast set." And during one of the fast sets he said "Try to get off your heals and use the balls of your feet to push you forward." But Lance still jumps in with the encouragement as well. "Remember, it's not supposed to be easy." and "Remember, pain is temporary, giving up lasts a lifetime."

Now how can you not be inspired to run with those words plus Weezer, Beck, Wolfmother and others playing in your ears?

Four runs complete this month, five more to reach my goal.

Now for some photo talk...

I got a bit of inspiration the other day when I looked at a recent set of contest winners. There are some really amazing shots in there. But what got to me the most was the sports stuff. The majority of the winning images were not your standard sports action stuff you see in the sports section. They were unique angles, different points of view, interesting lighting techniques and so on...

It got me to thinking. I cover so much sports its crazy. I know all the local teams, I know their star players, I know the lighting conditions for every field or gym in Terrebonne Parish, it's safe to say that I'm really comfortable shooting local sports down here. And I took a quick look back at some of my sports images, and they're really all the same, and they're nothing like the winning images from that contest.

I need to break out of my comfort zone when it comes to shooting sports. Take basketball for example. In each gym for the past two years, I've set up my lights in the same place and stood in the same location for each and every game. How boring is that? At first I was kind of proud that I could walk into any gym in Houma and light it. But now, it kind of bothers me that I stuck myself in that rut.

So tonight I took my first step out of my zone. I stood at the other corner of the gym for the second and third quarters. I still set my light up in the same place, I just walked across the baseline to the other corner to see what would happen.

This first shot is what I've been getting for the last two seasons. Pretty straight forward. Just a standard action shot. nothing too fancy.



This is what happens when I walked across the baseline to the other corner. Little different look. The light is still coming from the same direction, I'm just in a different position.



This first step out of my zone was pretty small. It's just a few steps across a gym floor. What I need to start doing is seeing basketball different. So combine the moving of myself and the the moving of my lights with the moving of my mind away from how I've been seeing basketball the past two years. I basically just need to challenge myself at these games and not just bring back the same ole photo each time.

Of course, this mind set carries over to all my assignments, not just basketball. But Sports is a good example because I shoot 2-4 sporting events a week.

Oh, and I'll leave you with this... I photographed a guy named Poo Poo tonight. Think about that for a while, then watch this and you'll see who I met. He's a local celebrity.

Take That Staph Infection!

I showed that Staph who's boss alright... Well, actually the antibiotics did most of the work.

I was finally able to go run tonight. I told myself to take it easy and just go for a nice jog. I set my iPod to run for 2.2 miles. I started off nice and easy but then I start to think "hey, I'm only running about 2 miles, I can push it a little bit." Next thing you know, I'm going all out. But I finally settled into a nice pace. And the best part was my stupid Staph infection didn't bother me a bit. It's still on my stomach, it just doesn't hurt any more.

But I've made a new Nike Goal for February... it's the same as January. Figured I better accomplish one goal before moving onto another one. And I liked Nabil's suggestion to wear ankle weights. I looked for some tonight at a sporting good store but didn't have any luck. So I'm going to take Seth's suggestion and "quit being such a ********." So what I might do is get a couple more Nike+ workouts from iTunes and use those more often. Lance Armstrong just came out with a new running workout using a bunch of Alternative Music like Beck, Weezer, Wolfmother...etc. I think I'll give that a shot. That way I'm not just running around, I'll actually be doing a productive workout.

I had today off, and I actually put my time to good use. Instead of waking up at the crack of noon, I was up by 9 and spent the entire day cleaning my room. It had gotten pretty out of hand. I couldn't open my small closet door and there was only a narrow path from my door, to my bed, to my big closet. The rest was filled with stuff. So most of that stuff is ether in the trash or moved somewhere out of the way.

No photo this time... you can just imagine my empty laundry baskets because it's all done, or my desktop that only has what needs to be on it and not a bunch of extra stuff, or my freshly vacuumed carpet. I even dusted. Can't remember the last time I did that.

What a Ride

Happy Mardi Gras!

Well, I rode in another parade. Misty and I were in the Krewe of Kajuns Parade today. It was amazing. Houma has two parades on Fat Tuesday. The Krewe of Houmas goes first and the Krewe of Kajuns is right after. We were the first float on the second parade.

Holy Cow it was fun.

We didn't really buy any more stuff to throw. We just caught enough stuff during all the other parades to give us enough to throw.

anyway, here are some pictures.

Misty and I before the start of the parade.... yep, we're dorks.



We start by the Mall in Houma, and make our way downtown. At the start, when we turn the corner onto the parade route, this is what you see. And it's pretty much like this the entire route.



Okay.. Okay... So it didn't quite look like this parade... but I bet I threw more things at people than Eli did.

Anyway, with all the people along the route... this is all you saw for about 4 hours. (Just imagine the yelling and screaming.... Sometimes I'd just wave my arms and scream back at them. That usually shut them up for a little bit)



And when you pass buy a building with windows, you get to see how you look. In this photo... find the foam taco hat, and you'll find me.



And that's all I took really. I spent too much time throwing and juggling and spinning those hand helicopter things into the crowd. (which was Awesome because we had a strong wind today. I'd spin them towards some kid, and it would end up 50 yards away. It was great)

Oh, and I plan to finally get back into running tomorrow. The good ole Staph Infection has gone down enough for me to be able to start working out again. So I'll celebrate Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent with a nice jog.

I need an official ruling

I need some help with an official ruling on my running goal for this month. But first, a few photos from the Hercules parade.

The parade was supposed to roll Friday night, but due to cold and rain, it was rescheduled for Sunday afternoon. Alright, no biggie. At the time, it sucked. Spending all day riding around in a bus, getting excited about the ride... only to have it cancelled right when we got to the floats.

But It worked out well. The weather was great on Sunday and the parade was split between day and night. I don't think there were as many people along the route because we rode behind another parade, but there were still quite a few people to throw stuff too.

Here's a shot of me teasing some folks along the route. 

And a couple shots of the crowd about half way through the parade. A few times, I'd grab a three sacks of beads and juggle for the crowd. I'd lean way out over the crowd, juggle for a few minutes, then toss the bags to the people. I got a couple nice cheers. It was fun. 

and finally a shot of Mike (Duke Mike) close to downtown. We stopped here for quite a while, so I walked around the float for a while.



All in all, it was a great weekend. I was able to get Misty and Taylor their special gifts and still be able to throw all my bouncy balls and glow sticks. So until next... WEEK!!! Yea, Misty and I are riding in another parade on Fat Tuesday. I'm not going to buy any more things to throw. We're just catching enough stuff from all the other parades to throw. Misty is a genius and made a giant bulls eye with a trash can below it to catch stuff. It works great.

Alright, now, I need an official ruling.

If you don't know already, using Nike+ I've set a resolution for 2008. And I set a goal each month to help me reach that resolution. You can check it out here and leave me notes of encouragement. (Thanks to those who have left comments already)

My resolution says this "If I don't run at least twice a week in 2008, I'll wear KU stuff when they play KSU in football or Basketball" (You can keep track of the goal by looking at the box on the ride side of the page.. might have to scroll up a bit from this point)

So what that means, if I don't accomplish any of my monthly goals, I'll be putting on the Red and Blue and chanting "Rock Chalk."

Now then, my goal for January is to run 9 times. Right now, i've run 7 times. I just need two more runs to keep from wearing KU stuff.

BUT... yesterday my stomach decided to produce a Staph Infection. If you take a dollar bill and put it on your belly button, that's about the size of the area of the swelling. The last two days, I've worn shoes that don't need to be tied because I can't bend at my waist enough to get to my shoe laces. And if I can't bend enough to tie my shoes, running is pretty much out of the question.

I'm going to the doctor Wednesday morning to get some drugs to help take this thing away, but the drugs usually take a few days to get rid of it. So you can see my bind. I've got Tonight, Wednesday and Thursday to run two times. But I can't run.

Would anybody have a problem if we skip ahead to next month and just kind of forget about January? Because I don't think I'll be able to run twice before the end of the month.

And to make up for skipping out on my first goal of the year, I'll take suggestions on what my February goal should be.

It can be one of three things. A distance, more often or faster.

For example, this month's goal went like this... "To achieve my resolution, My January goal is 9 runs."

or it could be "To achieve my resolution, My February goal is (blank) miles"

or "To achieve my resolution, My February goal is (blank) runs under the time of (blank minutes blank seconds)

FYI... My average mile pace is about 10 minutes per mile.

So there you go. I probably could (and should have) run nine times by now, but... I just didn't.

But for now, There's hamburger helper waiting for me. So I'm ending this here.

Lets Ride

Mardi Gras!!!

My float is loaded and I'm ready to ride.

The Krewe of Hercules rolls at 6 p.m. Friday night. If you're at the parade, I'm on float #27 (the one with the giant walt disney head) on the Mall Side in the back. )

If you're not in Houma... No worries. houmatoday.com has a webcam set up looking over downtown. The parade should be getting downtown around 10 p.m. So if you've got nothing else to do on a friday night, check out the webcam. I'll throw you something.

Here's a quick list of things I'm throwing this year

-Bouncy Balls (about two thousand of the little guys)
-Foam Footballs
-Glow Bracelets
-Light Up puffer balls
-Beads, lots of them (duh)
-special gift for Misty and Taylor (not telling what it is)
-Nintendo Hats donated by Mike Sr.
-cups with the names of everybody on our float
-plastic swords
-frisbees
-and a bunch of other novelty type toys that I can't remember right now.

I spent the afternoon loading all my stuff onto the float. My buddy Jonathan Cohen and I have the entire back section of the float. So we've got plenty of room. I got one of those window garden bucket things and screwed that into the side of the float to hold stuff (beads, balls... whatever)

So here's a shot of me being a dork on top of all my stuff. You can only see the footballs, the rest of the stuff in under there somewhere.

Happy Mardi Gras!

nevermind

well... I spent a good portion of tonight and this morning typing up a post about the past few weeks.

My trip home to Kansas, Christmas, the snow, KSU basketball

The sugar bowl

New Years eve

the BCS National Championship game

Getting back into running and this new goal I set for myself... that you guys get to help with...

And when I went to preview my post before publishing it... POOF! it all disappeared.

I had 17 photos, I talked about each one.

It's now two in the morning and I really don't feel like typing it all up again. At least I haven't broken anything in my room yet.

Sorry about that... hopefully soon I'll get the motivation to post all that stuff again.

And what sucks is that I can't figure out how it happend... this post has already saved it self three times and I've only been typing for three minutes. The big post kept saving it self but for whatever reason, the last time it saved, it reverted it back to the first time it saved. Awesome uh?

oh well.

I'm going to wind down with some TV, I'm a little to fired up right now to fall asleep.

Holding... on the Offense... 10 Yard penalty... repeat second down

Oops... been a while since I posted anything. My bad. I've had a lot of ideas, I usually think of cool or funny things to blog while I'm running. I've good cool topics too... like the week I was involved in about 6 games that went into overtime. Or the series of photos Misty took of me at the Christmas celebration thing at City Park in New Orleans last weekend. (I will probably get to that... it's pretty funny)

But I've got a little bit of time this morning so I thought I'd share some photos from yesterday's Saints game against the Arizona Cardinals.

The coolest part of the game was watching Martin Gramatica play. I watched him play in college, in fact, I watched him kick the longest field goal in NCAA and Pro history with out a tee (65 Yards). But the Saints signed him this week and he made four extra points and a field goal on Sunday. Stud.

After the game, I went up to him, shook his hand and told him I watched him in college and wished him luck with the Saints. He kind of looked at me funny and said "Thanks." So I pointed at my KSU hat and he said "Ohhhhh...Thanks, Thanks a lot." That's about it.



I got a nice shot during the first half of Arizona wide receiver Larry Fitsgerald diving for the endzone... but the play was called back for holding. It's still a cool shot, but it's a non-play and doesn't really count. At least he didn't make the touchdown and at least Arizona didn't go on to win. So it's not an important picture for the game, it's just a cool picture.



Early in the Second half, Gumbo (The Mascot) came next to me during a play and acted like he was taking pictures. After the play, I gave him my camera and asked if wanted to give it a try. He played around for a little bit and gave me the camera back. I told him we should switch jobs for the rest of the game. He leaned in and said "You don't want this job son."



Here are a couple more shots from the game.... Pre-Game intros... The defensive starters are announced and run out of this inflatable tunnel thing. I set up shop behind the tunnel and got some cool shots. And the other pic is of a nice pass break up in the first half.





That's all for now. I'll do a better job about posting stuff. Well, I say that but who knows if I will or not.

Big Uneasy

I've been a subscriber of Sports Illustrated since 1998. And every week I make it a point to look through the magazine.

Each week I have a little ceremony so to say to flip through the magazine and look at every photo. I might read a thing or two, but the first thing I do is look at each photo. Then, I go back and read the stories.

My thoughts on the photos have really progressed since I first started to subscribe. At first they were just out of reach. After a while, I learned to appreciate the images because I learned what it takes to make those pictures.

A while later, after shooting many of the events that Sports Illustrated photographers were also at, I would think "Man, I got a picture of the same play, but I didn't get a picture like THAT of the play."

And recently, I've felt that I can at least hang in there with the best sports shooters. Don't get me wrong, I'm no where near the level of a Sports Illustrated shooter... But think of it like this...The Royals get base hits and home runs against the Yankees and Red Sox each year. They might not win the game or have a better record at the end of the season, but they do have some success against the best of the best.

My "New Sports Illustrated" routine didn't change when I got the latest issue on Friday (one day late btw). I came home from shooting a basketball game and stood in my room flipping through the pages looking at each photo. This issue is the College Basketball Preview issue, so it's a little larger than normal. When I turned to page 128, two pages from the end, for some reason I went right to the photo credits before looking at the photos.

Matt Stamey/US PRESSWIRE

I had to do a double take... I had a photo published in Sports Illustrated. I talked a little about this photo in my last post... Reggie getting knocked out at the one yard line against St. Louis.



A side story about this photo... I actually liked the frame before this shot a lot better. Reggie was reaching out a little more towards the endzone and it had the moment of the impact that knocked him out. But it was a little soft (out of focus). So I transmitted this image instead.

I've been freelancing for US PRESSWIRE for the past few years. They're a photo wire service for sports images. An A.P. for sports photos if you will. When I shoot a game, I send them a bunch of my best photos from the game. From there, an editor posts the majority of those photos on their website (www.uspresswire.com) for clients to purchase. (Clients include USA Today, Sports Illustrated, ESPN... etc)

So, Friday night I went out to find more copies. I hit up five places... nothing. But I had a funny encounter at the Walgreens. While searching the the S.I. on the magazine rack, I saw a Runners World and thought I'd check one of those out since I've been running. So I went to the counter with my Runners World and a thing of Tic-Tac's. The lady scanned the magazine, then the Tic-Tac's, looked at me and said "Wow, you must be really bored tonight." What's that mean? So I asked her "what?" to see if I heard her correctly. "You must be really bored tonight uh?"

How in the world does a Runners World magazine and some white Tic-Tac's translate into me being bored on a Friday night? Oh well.

And, as of Sunday afternoon, Books-a-Million has no more copies of Sports Illustrated.

Get to Know Jake Owen

Who is Jake Owen? I'll get to that.

But lets start with a little KSU basketball. Freshman Michael Beasley is amazing. In his first game Friday night, broke the record for most rebounds for a freshman... in the first 19 minutes. Also he's the first KSU player to have at least 30 points and 20 rebounds in a game since Bob Boozer in 1957. Wow. See you in March!

On Saturday, I did something I haven't done since the 1998 St. Patricks day celebration in Manhattan. I ran in a 5k Road Race in downtown Houma. It was a blast. My goal was to finish under 30 minutes. No problem. Here's the chart for the race, and a picture of me a few steps after the finish line. (Misty left her cousins wedding early to be there... Thanks Misty!)





Not quite at the pace I ran in High School... but I don't care. It was fun.

On Sunday, Misty and shot the Saints game... against St. Louis. The winless Rams bead the Saints 37-29. Oops. Here are some shots.

Couple of Rams players celebrate a touchdown.



Rams running back Steven Jackson... he's good.



Reggie gets knocked out at the one yard line.



Misty and I left the superdome and headed to Biloxi for a concert. Misty won tickets to Little Big Town and Sugarland from a radio station contest. (A picture of Misty and a dog she was taking care of was online with a bunch of other photos, and her picture got enough votes to win her tickets to the show.)

The seats were on the floor, 10 rows back. Not to shabby. I don't really know ether of the groups, I've heard a couple of songs, but I don't know them well enough to sing along.

Here's where Jake Owen comes in. Jake Owen was the opening act for Sugarland and Little Big Town. Jake Owen is the guy that gets on stage and sings a few songs before the main acts come on. Well, for one of his songs, Jake Owen decided to come to the corner of the statge (in front of us) and play his guitar solo. After the solo, Jake Owen tossed his guitar pick into the crowd. I saw it comming right at us, but it was dark and with all the crazy lights I lost it. But I know it was heading right towards us. Misty said that she felt it hit her. So we were looking all over for this thing.... a long with everybody around us. Misty was got on the floor, I started checking on the seats. I even pulled out my cell phone to use as a light. Then, the lady sitting next to me said I should check my pockets. And sure enough, the darn thing landed in my sweatshirt pocket. Now Misty has a Jake Owen guitar pick.

So get to know Jake Owen, he's going to become famous and that guitar pick is going to be worth millions.

Don't eat the Cheese

During the press conference after the Saints game today, Reggie Bush said that Coach Payton has been telling the team "Don't eat the cheese."

Someone asked what that means... and all I heard (well, all I listened to really) was when he listed off a bunch of cheeses, including Gouda. And when I heard that I started silently cheering to Misty because Reggie Bush talked about Gouda cheese. Yea, I know he was talking about not eating it, but he still said "Gouda Cheese"

But yea, the Saints beat the Jacksonville Jaguars 41-24 today. It was a great way to finish off a crappy weekend of football for me.

Friday:
The high school game I covered on Friday sucked, it was really boring.

Saturday:
Kansas Sate lost to a one-win Iowa State.
Wake Forest lost (I picked them to win in the Jimmy C contest)
and LSU won. (Yea, sorry any LSU fans out there, but I've kind of become anti-LSU recently, I think I'll dive into that in another post)

Sunday:
I got some good shots at the Saints game, and they won.
I also won my Fantasy game against Ben... but he just so happened to have three players on bye weeks on his active roster. (wink wink)

But other than the crappy sports on Friday and Saturday... the weekend was great.

here are a few from the Saints game today.

Intros before the game...



A tackle in the first half...



Reggie doing his best karate kick...



And Tom Benson, the Saints' owner, celebrating after the win.