27 miles later Vlad is Back!

Yes, I'm back. Not really running, more like limping and crawling. Last year I ran my first half-marathon at Disney World and it was such a thrill for me that I only remember telling my girlfriend that I could have easilly done the full 26.2 miles. I don't do anyting small. It is one of the reasons I started running in the first place, I would always manage to out-eat my break-even at a chinese buffet. Take all you want, eat all you take! So yesterday was the big day and I ran the marathon. It was perhaps the best 18 miles I traveled on this earth. Miles 19-22 were a little rough. On mile 23 I actually contemplated taking a nap and I am not sure how exactly I made it to mile 25 but I did take a picture. From there on I can only imagine I felt like my friend Jen who is habitually drunk (FUBAR-style) at Epcot. No wonder she never wants to go anywhere, it definitely seemed much further than ever before and I've been to Epcot 100's of times. Suffice to say, I finished the full 26.2 miles plus about two miles during the start, looking for the parking lot, starting corall, etc. Now the big question is usually, why? Why do something so suicidal. Here is my somewhat honest answer and there are a few parts to it. Mainly, stupidity which is reinforced by being male. Next in the line is ego.. I'm extremely good at what I do and marathons are very much a humbling experience. If you're not an athlete and you've never been physically beaten by someone twice your age you might want to give competitive sports a shot. It gives you a really good perspective on where you stand despite your successes in other areas of your life. At least it does that for me… but man, never again. I'll just stick to my wuss half marathons and feeling great after ~ 13 miles. On the other hand, I've been virtually crippled for the past day or so.. and here comes the new Vladville. I am still working on little bits and pieces but it has some of the stuff I've really wanted on here for a while. I think the best description of the blog comes from Guy Kawasaki: "blogger, n: someone with nothing to say writing to someone who has nothing to do."; This blog has had a purpose since day one when I set out to mobilize IT folks in Florida and drag them to all the places they could get better at thier job. That eventually grew into the world-wide reach with over 57 countries leaving comments and sending email. I think this new design makes it easier to find what you're looking for without drilling through a bunch of junk and believe me… 3 million article downloads and hundreds of thousands of SBS Show listeners hit the piggy bank pretty hard – so I figured I'd do to Google what they wanted to do with me: Make that money for me . Hope you enjoy the new Vladville!