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• Features
• Press

Denver Marathon to Join Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon Series

by Dan Cruz

• October 16, 2009
• Comments

Denver will Rock ‘n’ Roll in 2010

Rock ‘n’ Roll Denver Marathon and Half marathon to Debut in Colorado in 2010

The Competitor Group (CGI) has announced that the Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon Series will officially add the Denver Marathon to its schedule of races for next year. The event, which celebrated its fourth running on Sunday, October 18, 2009, will host the Rock ‘n’ Roll Denver Marathon, ½ Marathon and the ING Marathon Relay in the fall of 2010.

“We are very excited that the Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon is coming to Denver,” said Richard Scharf, President of VISIT DENVER, The Convention & Visitors Bureau. “Denver is the perfect city to be hosting the Marathon, with 300 days of sunshine, a great love of sports and outdoor activities, world-class cultural offerings, and natural beauty from the Rocky Mountains backdrop. We look forward to welcoming thousands of runners from around the world next fall.”

The largest marathon in the state of Colorado, the race is known as the premier distance running event in the Rocky Mountain Region. The marathon was founded four years ago by several people including CGI’s Anton Villatoro, who saw an opportunity based on the fact that Denver has one of the largest numbers of runners per capita of any city in the U.S. The event provides participants with a unique running tour of the city and last year was named one of 10 “Marathons You Should Do in 2008” by Runner’s World magazine.

“Denver is an outstanding destination to run a marathon and we are excited to offer runners a flat, scenic course set against the backdrop of the breathtaking Rocky Mountains that give Colorado its gorgeous panoramas,” said Peter Englehart, President and CEO of CGI.

With the addition of the Denver event, there will now be 13 Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathons and Half Marathons in 2010. Each event creates a running block party with live bands performing at every mile, cheerleaders encouraging runners throughout the race, themed water stations, and a post-event concert featuring a headlining act. The events’ festive atmospheres, which combine entertainment and running, all maintain the unique aspects of the regions in which they are held.

“Denver has always been a great city for sporting events and our community consistently shows its support to professional and amateur athletes alike,” said KieAnn Brownell, President of Denver Sports. “We are very pleased to bring this premier event to the Rocky Mountain region.”

The 2010 event will utilize the existing race course that begins in front of the State Capitol, and travels past many of Denver’s major landmarks including the Denver Public Library, Art Museum, Larimer Square, the Pepsi Center, Union Station and Coors Field, as well as City, Cheesman and Washington Parks.  The course has little to no elevation change and is certified by USA Track & Field as a qualifier for the Boston Marathon.

“This is wonderful news for Downtown Denver,” said Tami Door, President & CEO of the Downtown Denver Partnership. “As one of the healthiest cities in the nation, we are proud to support this kind of activity and a population of people who value wellness.”

Summer half marathon in 2010 and fall marathon in 2010, and gather pledges to raise funds for my http://misheel.net/my-mission/?

Everybody seems to slouch these days. It’s so nice to see someone NOT slouch, for once!  It shows personal integrity, respect to your body, and courtesy to the world by presenting yourself at best. Your body expresses, but also instructs you to feel what it is expressing.

You could be hunching your way to depression and lower self-esteem. (Ok, I may be exaggerating to make my point. You caught me.) Women slouching to hide their breasts. Men hunching over on a chair like a defeated prisoner. Tall people bending over like a withering plant. Children hunched like little stress balls, without knowing that they are emulating what they see in our society.

Here are some things you can do:

First, strengthen your abdominal muscles by keeping it mildly taught as often as possible. Tighten it as soon as you catch yourself not have it tight. This brings posture-awareness, and automatically forces your back muscles to respond in kind.

Then, focus on bringing the natural curvature of your spine back, as if you were a Christmas ornament and a string held you up from the top. Keep that posture which will feel unnaturally, deliciously natural for five minutes. See if you can get your body to remember it. Soft couches, certain chairs literally make it impossible for any of your muscles to engage. So, get rid of those, if you are serious about getting out of the habit of slouching.

Swimming works out your shoulders in a way that normal workouts and weight-lifting often doesn’t, with dynamic movement. Another route is yoga or pilates, which stretches and relaxes your muscles while also making you aware of tensions in areas that you tend to bring your stress.

And finally, consider the practical matters. If you’re tall, you are slouching to talk to shorter people. Make a point to sit down, if you will be talking a while. Small sized chairs, desks that limit your legs could be causing your posture to readjust. Become aware of those.

At your computer, if your eyesight is bad, you will be hunching to see the screen. Make it a point to wear your glasses. Or if you are reading, your posture will be thrown off if you constantly bend over your book. Try different positions lying down, rotating from left side to right side depending on whether you are on an odd or even page number.

Happy straightening our backs!

Misheel.

P.S. If you have some good ideas, please share in the comments.

Tags:  Hunching, Quitting Bad Posture, Slouching, Stop Hunching, Stop Slouching

I like.

This is a writing exercise I did.

1. What a polished, classy person, I first thought. He smiled and simpered, was almost charismatic. His whole body moved with his facial expressions. I should have known he was a good actor.

2. Getting more than I expected created a cognitive dissonance. The deep psychology Misi did with me has placed her deeper in my heart than ever before. I love it.

3. A friend with his questions, wondered how a guy is supposed to get a girl. He shared how hard it was to be rejected, and wondered how is a guy supposed to approach a girl? What’s he supposed to do?

4. Someone isn’t calling me as much lately because he is having a lot of fun, I imagine. Actually he calls about once a day, but doesn’t have much time to talk. I feel like an unwatered flower, with my head drooping slightly. I miss talking to him, but I don’t want to bother him as he is hanging out with his family and friends.

5. A local friend called me last week about a dance. I imagined her as a witch last night for some reason, my brain taking a fantasy flight. It was silly because she’s so sweet.

6. Someone has been kinder to me lately, and it built back up my confidence in our arrangement. I don’t feel like a cat stuck in a bathtub as much.

7. Someone's online presence has been kinder and more upbeat to deal with, than his actual physical presence was.

8. Mom, who sent me beautiful gifts, anxiously kept calling me again and again to see if they fit and looked nice. I promised her I would send her pictures of how they look. I told her I was taking good care of myself, which is true. And this made her happy and satisfied.

9. I detected myself feeling impatient this morning, slightly, because I wasn’t on schedule. Still, it had nothing to do with the people who derailed me. It had everything to do with the fact that I let them. It’s 9 am. I haven’t run yet. Anyhow, how come it’s all about me again? LOL Actually, now that I look at what I’ve written, a lot of my observations are more about how each person is relating with me, which is typically an introverted way of looking at the world.

10. Mergen is smart and follows up with everything. His consistent follow up with me is going to be the bane of my success. I love him and I’m so grateful to him for that.

11. DRN is on my mind often, but I do not keep in contact with him anymore. He is the only one unrelated to me in my life I see clearly, who has respectfully tried to show me unconditional love, and put himself in vulnerable positions to do so. The other men in my life had wanted me to do stuff for them, be there for them, or be something to them in whatever socially acceptable forms that I could be, like girlfriend, friend, etc..

 

Tags:  People, Random Observations

Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is sometimes referred to as compassionate communication. Its purpose is to:

1. create human connections that empower compassionate giving and receiving
2. create governmental and corporate structures that support compassionate giving and receiving.

Nonviolent Communication Skills

NVC offers practical, concrete skills for manifesting the purpose of creating connections of compassionate giving and receiving based in a consciousness of interdependence and power with others. These skills include:

1. Differentiating observation from evaluation, being able to carefully observe what is happening free of evaluation, and to specify behaviors and conditions that are affecting us;
2. Differentiating feeling from thinking, being able to identify and express internal feeling states in a way that does not imply judgment, criticism, or blame/punishment;
3. Connecting with the universal human needs/values (e.g. sustenance, trust, understanding) in us that are being met or not met in relation to what is happening and how we are feeling; and
4. Requesting what we would like in a way that clearly and specifically states what we do want (rather than what we don’t want), and that is truly a request and not a demand (i.e. attempting to motivate, however subtly, out of fear, guilt, shame, obligation, etc. rather than out of willingness and compassionate giving).

These skills emphasize personal responsibility for our actions and the choices we make when we respond to others, as well as how to contribute to relationships based in cooperation and collaboration.

With NVC we learn to hear our own deeper needs and those of others, and to identify and clearly articulate what “is alive in us”. When we focus on clarifying what is being observed, felt, needed, and wanted, rather than on diagnosing and judging, we discover the depth of our own compassion. Through its emphasis on deep listening—to ourselves as well as others—NVC fosters respect, attentiveness and empathy, and engenders a mutual desire to give from the heart. The form is simple, yet powerfully transformative.

I'm a big fan of NVC. When in 2004, I ran across a couple of books on NVC, I was convinced that if I practice enough of it, I can become the world's greatest diplomat! he-he

Five fives for inspiring the mind

Use the five fives to inspire you

The overarching theme of this blog, as you know, is head space. In the context of my endeavours as a writer this in particular means the kind of head space that will engender creativity, that feeling of flow that connects you with the wellspring that is your subconscious and your memory, allowing you to draw on it as you develop your characters and their stories. The space in your brain where slumbering synapses flicker alive, stirring up old thoughts or rememberences but connecting them your current context so that they become fresh and novel.

I am lucky that I have a wonderful physical space in which to write, a dormer room that looks out at trees and is the most tranquil room in the house, elevated as it is from the tramp and everyday clatter of the four young children. What is difficult is finding the temporal and the mental space to ‘chill’ and take breath before embarking each day on a current project, novel-in-progress or story. I have begun getting up at 6am to give myself that temporal space but mentally and physically the frantic pace of life, particularly since the schools term began has left me a little flat, unable to breathe life into myself, my characters or stories.

There are many excellent writing exercises out there for helping you overcome writer’s block or generate creative ideas. (I am aware as I write, I don’t mean to imply that writing isn’t about hard slog and writing even when you don’t feel inspired). Last night, overcome with tiredness but feeling cut off from my writing life, I sat in bed with a notebook and ask myself to consider these Five Fives.

FIVE FIVES Writing exercise for clearing the fog/mental fug

1: Write down 5 people who interested you lately

2: Write down 5 unusual dilemmas

3: Describe 5 phenomenon (social, natural, psychological, etc) that fascinate you

4: Detail 5 striking places

5: Document 5 emotional reactions that struck a chord with you or surprised you

Look for the texture

Do the exercises quickly and without censor. The aim of this exercise is just to slow down the mind and to orient it to take note. A good example of this process is in my poem Now where the panic of the everyday is contrasted by slow observances. Your aim in using this exercise over several occasions is to achieve greater and greater subtlety in your observances. When describing a place that interested you, you first might say ‘Paris’ or a ‘local train station’ but as time goes by your observances might become more detailed, such as ‘a pebbledashed wall with a lovely texture’, or ‘The rafters of the station roof where pigeons were tightrope walking’. This exercise may help you pay attention when out and about in daily life. When considering the ‘emotional reaction’ or ‘people’ exercise you may find yourself taking note of people in conversation and their facial expressions or physical characteristics and mannerisms that make them unique.

The five phenomenon that I listed were ‘The Twitter Community, An unexpected flash of light (the bulb of one of the lights in the room later blew), Transparent Fish (from a national geographic magazine), Geysers and Death Valley.’  I realised I could use the symbolism of the transparent fish in a short story I am writing about a woman who feels that she is leaving no lasting imprint on the world. The other locations and experiences might well end up as landscapes or images in other stories.

The 5 dilemmas of course are fabulous ways to generate plot and motivation for your stories, they give you an immediate hook around which a story sometimes begins to coalesce almost by itself.

So, if you are in a mental fug, are weary or stuck, try out these exercises and please comment on whether or not you found them useful and why. In the meantime I will try to follow my own advice and get back to putting layers in my stories.