Saying Goodbye To October

Sunday, October 30, 2016 · Mike Davis

Good morning!

Grab your coffee and pull up a chair. We are just about to flip the calendar as well as flip the light switch off a little sooner. I cannot say I am a fan of daylight savings, more specifically; setting our clocks back to reduce daylight at the end of the day in favor of more at the start. I am sure there was a logical rationalization for do this and it might have to do with farming but, I am not sure. The only value I see now is for those kids that are out there waiting on busses or walking to school. I suppose for those reasons it makes sense. I guess the fact that they have shortened the period of the “fall back” time makes it somewhat better.

Thankfully our “No Finish Line Running” coaches all take the safety of our runners extremely serious and are sticklers about wearing reflective gear and even headlamps. In fact, yours truly was the slowest to remembering his reflective gear as daylight had become shorter over the past month. Coach DJ has been great about putting out email reminders and that helps the likes of me for sure. Here in North Carolina have a little more daylight than my team in New Hampshire does but it goes from daylight to darkness fast and better to be prepared.

Today I will miss one my favorite race, the “White Mountain Milers Half Marathon”, as I came back to North Carolina so that I could focus on more important matters. Nevertheless, NFLR has a large group up there this morning to run the half and the relay. Last night most of them continued a tradition we started of getting together at “Joseph’s Spaghetti Shed” for team dinner and they even FaceTime’d with me! It was a little sad not to be there with them but, even more sad that the special desert was “pumpkin bread pudding”! Because Kathy is still unable to run and had other commitments here it would not have been the same for me but, I am glad “NFLR” has made this part of our annual plan. I hope they all have a great time today running!

If you are looking to keep running throughout the winter “NFLR” will be the for you! Without skipping a beat, we will continue to get together Wednesday evenings at 6pm from the “7th Settlement Brewery” in Dover and at 8:30am on Saturday mornings at the “Penny University Coffee House” on Dover Point Road. The plans for this group are still being worked but the idea is to focus on keeping people out there running throughout the winter. More to come over the next week…

I will continue with “Coffee and Chat with the Coach” but, we are also going to start having others chat with you all as well. No doubt after a few years now, many of you would like to hear some different thoughts and now that we have a large group of gifted and diversified coaches. I am also working on adding podcast as well so that will certainly be interesting. The new website is quite pretty but more importantly it offers us greater ability to provide material for runners and that is what we intend to do.

Last coffee and chat I talked about be proactive when it comes to injury prevention. Well, foam rolling is about as proactive as one can be. Many runners tell me they have a foam roller but are not great at using it. Use it! In fact, use it every day whether you run or not. I am quite guilty of under using it but, I pay the price when I do not. My calf started bothering me a few weeks ago and I firmly believe it was because I did not put any attention to foam rolling it. Dumb!

Time to get ready for church! Have a great Sunday and an even better week!

God Bless!

Mike