My name is Ben. I am husband to the most amazing woman, co-founder of the band Sidewalk Prophets, and a student of life. Running has literally changed my life this past year. (I lost 125 lb.) I have learned a lot about discipline and the lessons learned have poured over in to every area of my life. With this blog I hope to share a bit of entertainment, and inspiration as well as keep a journal of the places I run. If you're feeling helpless, hopeless, and lost... I am here to tell you that I have been there and I think I may be able to share some insight that may help you. Thanks for reading.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Covert Operations…Life Behind a Beard.
I’ll be the first to admit that my facial hair has become a bit out of control. It’s been 7 months or so since I stopped grooming my face and in those passing months I have learned a lot of interesting things.
First of all there are the obvious complications that come with beard-growing. Food in the whiskers, people not recognizing you, airport security questioning your motives for traveling etc… These are all things I got to experience first hand over the past half year.
So those are some things you would expect to happen when you grow a giant beard. Here are a few things I wasn’t very prepared for in this endeavor. People assuming that I am a gruff guy because I look mangy (this typically led to no one sitting by me on Southwest flights), random people complimenting my beard (it happened in amusement parks, walking down the street, the bank- everywhere), my favorite of all of the unexpected things that happened after I grew a beard was what I like to call the “Beard-wearer Guild of Respect”… Any man who has a real beard takes great pride in being one of just a select few that is able to pull off the beard. Whenever you are bearded and in public and another bearded man spots you- there is an unspoken, divine connection that takes place in which your eyes meet and a nod is exchanged- this exchange is simply affirmation that you are the two coolest people in the vicinity.
If you know me at all- you know that I am a goal setter. I don’t like to make commitments and not achieve them. This beard was the result of a commitment to run 26.2 miles. On Nov 20, 2011 in Philadelphia I honored my commitment to run the marathon with a giant beard. It wasn’t easy but as I am continually learning- life is not easy. Life requires effort- I started saying that a couple years ago when I really began to learn about discipline.
Life requires effort..every day from the moment you get out of bed choices flood your life. Some of us let these choices dominate us in to comfort and others break through to find the reward of fighting against comfort. My hope is to be an encouragement to those living comfortably and also to those who are fooled in to thinking they are NOT living comfortably.
My hope is to be used as a spark that might ignite the fire in others who are desperately seeking to change their lives. Start looking at your choices one at a time from the moment you wake up. Ask yourself what is right- then do what is right. I’m not saying be perfect - I am saying to fight when you fall and to progress instead of wilt. Be encouraged!
More thoughts to come…as soon as I shave this beard!
Heart and Desire Overpowers Body.
Heart and desire overpowers body. As I was running this morning I was thinking about the power that comes from a positive attitude and a vision. Honestly i’ve been struggling with how high I should set my goals. How far should I push the envelope of what I feel like my abilities are? I’ve been debating on whether or not to train to qualify to run in the Boston Marathon. The struggle for me isn’t whether or not I can run a marathon because I know I can. The real quest is can I push myself hard enough to to qualify for the worlds biggest race? Every year roughly 20,000 people run the Boston Marathon. It is one of the most highly publicized and well known races in the world. Unlike many other marathons, you can’t just sign up and run it. First, you have to qualify. In order to qualify you need to run in a sanctioned marathon (26.2 miles) and finished under a time (based on your age) of 3:10:59. That is a pace roughly around 7:17 per mile. I’ve never really run at full throttle before but I do know that the quickest I have run 3 miles in was right 7:07. Sustaining that kind of speed for 26+ miles seems like a daunting task.
All of these thoughts have led me to think about heart and what a vital role it plays in achieving our goals and our dreams. Some of my favorite movies like Rudy, Rocky, or just about any other quality sports movie have a main character that comes to a point where their body seems to lack the ability or can no longer carry them but their desire and heart is so strong that it makes up for what the body is lacking. That is how I hope to keep my mindset. I want to set goals and chase them with reckless abandon. And when my body can no longer carry me then my heart and desire will pick up more than enough slack to take me to the finish line.
Training for the Boston Marathon… we’ll see :)
I Have a Unibrow…so what?
That’s right. For those of you wondering what a unibrow is here is wikipedia’s definition.
A unibrow (or monobrow) is a “confluence of eyebrows”; i.e., the presence of abundant hair between the eyebrows, so that they seem to converge to form one long eyebrow.
My unibrow is pretty sparse but it’s there nonetheless. The older I get the more I realize that a unibrow should be revered. I suppose the real question in all this is: would you rather have 2 small eyebrows or 1 GIANT eyebrow?
Here are some famous unibrows…feel free to add to my gallery.
Also, check out this www.unibrowclub.com they are an authority on the subject.
