Category Archives: Running

Ecumenical Exercise

I don’t like change too much. I am a creature of habit. For 17 years I belonged to the Health Zone exercise facility in Tulsa. They had two locations. One in South Tulsa and another smaller one downtown. So if I missed a workout in the morning then I had a bailout time at noon. It was great.

Well, all good things have to end right. The Health Zone shuttered their downtown facility. I wanted to have two facilities. One in South Tulsa and another downtown. And I didn’t want to pay much more money than what I was paying before. You see, I am not only a creature of habit, I also love a bargain. I love running downtown at noon but I like the amenities of the much larger south Tulsa facility. People kept telling me, “its over, you need to choose, get over it!”

They were wrong, I didn’t have to choose, I got what I wanted. I found the Youth and Family Center (“YFC”) of the First Methodist Church in downtown Tulsa. It is a facility about a half mile from my office with wonderful facilities. And the day before I walked in it turns out my employer cut a deal with them. The Health Zone cut me a deal also. So now I get two facilities for only $6 a month more for what I was paying before.

And its better! For my weekly kitchen pass run after work I go to the YFC and change and then run from there down to the river less than a mile away. I don’t have to change in the car after work hoping that I don’t get arrested for indecent exposure. Afterward I shower at the YFC instead of stinking up the car and the house.

So, I can exercise with the Catholics in the morning or run with Methodists later in the day. Its an ecumenical trend!

You guys who told me that I can’t have everything I want, go jump in the lake. What do you know?

Sunday Morning Double Run

Sunday mornings I go run with some guys from our Sunday School Class. Actually I haven’t made it too often. Last Sunday morning I showed up at 6 am and nobody was there so I fired up my ipod and brought my camera and off I went by myself.

The Jenks bridge.

This is exciting. It is one of my employer’s pipeline installations. This is called a “Pig Launcher.” A pig is a bullet shaped foam plug that is pushed through a pipeline to get eliminate the liquids that build up and cause excessive pressure drop.

You thought pig launchers are fun, look at this. These are “City Gates” where the gas is delivered to the local utility. Notice the twin dark blue cylinders off to the left center of the photograph. Those are what odorize the gas for residential service. Pipeline quality natural gas is odorless.

Almost back to the car, view across the river to the buildings that once housed Oral Roberts University Medical School and City of Faith Hospital. Oral was told by a 900 foot Jesus to build the medical school and hospital. Oral must have misunderstood. Both the Medical School and the Hospital folded a long time ago.

I got back to the car, time to go to Starbucks right? Wrong! I couldn’t find my keys. They must have fallen out of my fanny pack while taking a photograph.

So guess what, I ran the route again! Instead of 4 miles, I got in 8 miles. I didn’t find my keys, somebody else did. They stopped me and gave them to me when I was almost done with my second lap. Bless them.

Sorry, I wasn’t in the mood to take photographs on my second lap. I was just glad to see those keys. I am absolutely positive that it was my 666BOI license plate that led to the return of my keys.

Thanks Folks

Saturday, the Autism Center of Tulsa held their third Annual 5K and Fun Run. It is their major fund raiser of the year and also an opportunity for the Autism community of Tulsa to get together and have a party. So you have the kids, their parents, siblings, grandparents, friends, and therapists show up. Each kid forms a team. Here is SuperPizzaBoy with his team sign.

At 8:00 am the 5K was held. It had about 500 or so runners. I ran it and it about killed me. Two hours later the fun run was held. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were not 2000 people were in it. The line stretched back from the starting line a long ways.
Action Shot of SPB, Sweetie, and one of SPB’s Speech Therapists during the run.


At the finish with Mom.

SPB and family friend Jacob sprinting at the end.

The end, with the old man.

Me, Sweetie and SPB would like to express our thanks to those who helped support SPB in this effort.

SPB’s grandmother Nana.

My Sister, SPB’s Aunt Ellen and her husband Irvin. She is probably going to sue me for publishing this picture from a recent trip to see her daughter in Australia. Ellen is one of the nicest people I know and an animal lover from way back and a great Aunt to SPB. She is married to Irvin, a former Army helicopter pilot and a great Brother in Law. Ellen is better looking than he is though and I don’t have a recent picture of him.


My cousin Merri Ann in Idaho. She is a real sweetheart and has a great family.

The girls of Today in Idabel Oklahoma. They are also sweethearts. I don’t care what anybody says. They provided a pledge to the Autism Society of Tulsa and some encouraging words to SPB.
Note I showed SPB all the kind comments that people made, he really like them. Others with encouraging words are:
Kathy of the Oklahoma Booklady.
Anyway, Thanks everybody, I’ll probably be hitting up everybody again next year!

Checking out the new Trail

Felt like crap all day with allergies or a cold or something. Stuck in a basement for a training session. The training was OK, I just hate being someplace without windows, especially on such a nice day, especially when I don’t feel good.

Sweetie gave me a kitchen pass so I went running on the newly renovated river trail section from 31st street to I44. It is great. Thanks George Kaiser of Kaiser-Francis Oil Company and the George Kaiser Family Foundation. They wrote a check for the whole thing, about $12.4 million. Incredible generosity.

It has separate paths, for much of the way, for runners and bikers. I always dreaded a head on collision with a bike while running at night. This should cut the chances of collsions.

Quik Trip Corporation paid for a new play park at 41st street. It is incredible. I’m such an old fart that this is the third play park built at this location since I moved here. The one they tore down is the new one. This newer one is wonderful. It has splash pads. I love splash pads. I love Quik Trip. Tulsa kicks some major butt on convenience stores. Quik Trip rocks. When SuperPizzaBoy and I go geocaching we get hungry, so we have geocaching lunches at QT. Hot dogs, chocoloate chip cookies, freezes. Don’t knock it. Above all don’t tell Sweetie!!! Shhhh! Can you keep a secret?

Shadows are getting long. Time to go home. Usually I have a couple of malted beverages and a bath. I felt so crappy I had a couple glasses of spicy V8. I enjoyed the running though. I went abut 5 miles and it is like a dream on a day like this.

Running and Daydreaming at Night

I got a kitchen pass to go run after work tonight. Thanks Sweetie. I didn’t have my running stuff at work so I didn’t run on the river. I came home changed and ran on the Creek Turnpike trail.

I was all excited. A geocache needed found also. If I run and cache then I have to blog it. So it was running, caching, and blogging tonight. I also take my ipod. Full blast: Metallica, Bride, Blink 182. All that music will rot your brain. I wouldn’t listen to it if I were you.

About two miles from where I started, this is the cache site. Its not on the sign or around the sign, in the ground, or anywhere else.


Its in the power pole. What’s up with that? How do I get it out? Its snug. I need a tool. I don’t have any tools. Why should I need a tool to get a cache? Oh well, I don’t have any cheese to go with my whine. What can I use?

Aha, there is a tool! Its not a snake, its a stick.


Extract the cache. Look at the log. You can’t see it. The dork that took the picture over exposed it. That’s why.
The cacher before me was “CCATBQFM”
It means
Captain Crash and the Beauty Queen from Mars.

Everybody knows that.

What a perfect evening Sweetie. Thanks.

Ready, Set, Run 2009

The Autism Center of Tulsa (“ACT”), formerly the Tulsa Autism Foundation, is having their annual 5K Race and Fun Run on May 9, 2009 at Hunter Park in Tulsa. It will be a certified 5K race and a very fun Fun Run. A good time will be had by all. The Yogi Family will be out in force including SuperPizzaBoy, who as some of you know has Asperger’s Syndrome, a type of Autism.

To quote from the ACT web site:

“The Autism Center of Tulsa was founded in 2005 with the mission of meeting the needs of individuals and families affected by autism and related neurological disorders to improve quality of life. The Autism Center of Tulsa provides programming that supports its mission in a variety of ways, including community awareness and outreach, early screening and intervention, safety, parent and professional information and training as well as family support and on-site resources.”

The Yogi family has benefited from the various ACT programs such as the Family Fun Nights, educational seminars for parents. They also have a resource center. They provide lots of support but they do not advocate any particular treatment approaches thinking that is best left to the parents and doctors of the children involved.

If your family has somebody diagnosed with Autism or if you know somebody else affected by the disorder please check out the web site and call them. They are very helpful.

As part of this race the Yogi family formed a team, “Logan’s SuperPizzaPeople,” to help out with the fund raising. To help SuperPizzaBoy get motivated to raise money we’ve thrown him in jail and we are not letting him out until he comes up with a $1000. I know that some people may think that is a little harsh but SPB doesn’t really mind except we we are not letting him play video games.

You might check out the link. There is picture of him in jail. If you don’t feel led to give, he would appreciate any supportive comments that you may have. If you do feel led to give I would appreciate it very much, not only for the money which will go to good uses but also to reduce the noise level in the house. We messed up and put his cell way too close to the house and he is yelling really loud. I can hardly hear myself think!

Mayor Taylor’s Fitness Challenge

I’ve got a new obsession. No, No, its not the Mayor!! You are sick! Its Reading Challenges. I’m talking about challenges to read and list books. I love lists and keeping track of stuff. I am absolutely OCD about it, and I love analyzing the lists also. That is one reason I love geocaching. Not only do I get to go find stuff out in the woods, the web site keeps track of my finds and there is software to analyze the finds. You know how you determine if a geocacher is lying to you? Its easy, if he or she say “I don’t really care about the numbers …. blah blah blah”, then they are lying to you, big time! and should have their, uh sorry…. Anyway, back to Reading Challenges. I’ve already signed up for three. I’m going to hold it there for the time being, at least through tonight.

Now, I’m looking for other type challenges. I love to run and keeping track of mileage and workouts and stuff is a classic runners obsession. I used to keep track of my miles but quit for some reason. Now I’ve found a running challenge. It is by our very own Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor. You can sign up here. It is called the Mayor’s Fitness Challenge. Its free! Except I would use a web based email account not your real one to sign up with to avoid election emails.

Its based on running but you can credit for walking, aerobics, and other stuff. I didn’t see one for TV watching but maybe that is coming.

So today at noon I trudged over to my gym downtown and put in three miles on a treadmill. Its painful but my friends with Metallica were pulling for me especially at the last where they played “Broken, Beat, and Scarred”, “Judas Kiss,” and “Cyanide” just for me. Now I’ve signed up with Mayor Taylor’s challenge and it tells me that so far that:

928 people have signed up for the challenge, and they have run, or done eqivalent exercise, a total of

64,515 miles or an average of

69.52 miles each. Of which Mayor Taylor has done

53.45 miles and I have personally contributed

3.00 miles to that total.
So, she owes me. If I hadn’t signed up then she would have only 64,512 miles on her challenge. Where would she be then? She owes me big time. I’m going to call her and tell her so.

Tree, Running, Cars, Coffee

Sunday morning, I ran the 1/4 Marathon race of the Route 66 Marathon. Its only about 6.5 miles and change so its not that big a deal.

I took my camera along. I experimented a little with pictures of the Tulsa Run and I wasn’t really happy with the results. I took a few pictures of the race today and I wasn’t happy those either. So much of the race is the feeling the sun on your face, the cold wind, the river, streets, other runners. Pictures are just a part of it and they are disappointing. Plus taking the pictures messes up the whole dream sequence that running is for me.

But I found a tree that makes a great picture! I think it may be a maple of some kind. Whatever kind it is I loved looking at it.

Oh yeah, the race. I ran about 10 minute miles. Which is wonderful for me. It about killed me. The half marathon and the quarter marathon started at the same time. I finished about 300 yards ahead of the winner of the half marathon. Shows you how slow I am.
I finished the race, grabbed a bagel, and downed two beers, (Yogi policy is not to run in races that don’t have free beer to the runners.), and started back to my car. On the way I passed the race car show. Great collection of Corvettes, Camaros, Dusters, etc. What got my attention were the two below.
The first one is a BMW Isetta. At first I thought it was one of those three wheeled Italian jobs like in the movie Cars. Its not. I chatted with the owner (he is the guy right behind the car). He loves it. He lives in Mounds and sometimes drives in the Tulsa with it. It does 52 mph. He said that it is very hard to park. Big steering radius.
The next car is a Studebaker. I forget which model. I think it is cool.


Car pictures are a lot more interesting than race pictures. At least to me they are.
Then I went home. It strikes me sometimes that the best things in life either begin or end with Starbucks. Venti Thanksgiving blend with room!

31st Tulsa Run

I ran my 15th consecutive Tulsa Run 15K Saturday morning. I love running it. It is the perfect race, Its a doable length, it is in the Fall and you get free candy bars and beer.

Running it is kind of like a dream. I don’t go internal, I go external. I’m aware of the wind, the sun on my face, the scenery, the other runners. It seems like I start, and then its over, I’ve lose all track of time, and don’t remember much.

I like to get their early. My office is right near the starting line. So I get there early and read my book. Where its warm. When I got there, the sun was just coming up.


About 15 minutes before start time, I go down to the starting line. Where it is cold.

Then the gun is shot and off we go! I took my camera and was I going to document the run. I only took a few photos and then quit taking the camera out. It was messing with being external and just taking everything in for the moment.


One thing I missed was the Troops from Fort Sill. They are in Iraq this year. They had a parallel Tulsa Run there in Iraq today that they ran. 15 K.

The thing I heard this year that I hadn’t notice before was the sound of thousands of feet hitting the pavement.

I finished in a shade under 1 hour 40 minutes. The best time I had in years. I was lagging at 14K and thinking about taking a break. A friend of church, (I’ll call him “Sinatra Doc” because he is a surgeon who likes to listen to that kind of music during operations. ) came up on me and helped keep me going. Ironically he had to stop and walk because he was cramping very badly. Being the good friend that I am I left him behind and ran on in. I didn’t see him again. I heard his wife’s name called at the finish line ahead of me.

I grabbed my two snickers bars, a beer, and headed home. I was hurtin.

South Tulsa Running Route #1

Last Wednesday I got a kitchen pass from Sweetie to go running after work. I generally run on Wednesday but this summer we changed it up and we had a lot of fun biking after work. School has started though and it is getting dark so no more biking. Plus the Tulsa Run is in a month.

The Tulsa Run 15K is the run I look forward to all year. I have run 14 of them. This year will be my 15th in a row. A couple times I’ve run the race, skipped the complimentery beer, ran home, changed and raced to the airport to catch a flight. Once to go to a friends 50th birthday party in Houston and the second time to go to my parents 50th Wedding Anniversary celebration in Scottsdale.

Anyway, back to the task at hand. The race is 9.3 miles long. The longest I’ve run lately is 5. So I have to start increasing the mileage at least once a week.

I was going to run on the Arkansas River trail after work. I went to the parking lot where I change and notice I didn’t have the right shoes. 10 years ago I would have just gone ahead with the wrong shoes. I have put about 10,000 miles (no lie) on my feet since then. So now, I go home and get the right shoes.

I didn’t want to drive all the way back to the river so I ran my favorite route in South Tulsa but went a mile further than usual. Its the route I run in the morning. It is pitch dark at 5:15 in the morning so it was kind of neat running it when I could see it!

Tulsa has got some great trails. Most people think all they have is the Arkansas River trails. Not so, there are other trails that are relatively new. I try and tell people about them, and most don’t believe me. I think only about one person in a 100 knows abut them.

Below is where I start, at a community college. See how nice the trail is?

Below is a half mile further south.

This is under an overpass. In the dark, this is pitch dark. For some reason the story about the trolls and the tolls comes to mind here. I’m leery of bike riders shooting through taking the corner wide.
I love this bridge across the creek. Before they put it in I had to hop across rocks in the creek. SuperPizzaBoy and I have a geocache near here. Not many people bother to look for it. Too bad for them. Its on several people’s favorites list.
SPB and I have seen several good size snakes near here. Were they poisonous? You go see and then we’ll both know.

I love fountains and water features.
Another water feature.

Underneath one of the overpasses a geocaching friend has a cache. I had looked for it but it is kind of hard in the dark of the early morning especially in snake country. Plus it is under the overpass. The GPS doesn’t work! That means I have to look!

I found it tonight! Here is a picture.

The cacher’s name is Jeff. His geocaching name is “Captain Crash and the Beauty Queen from Heaven.” Jeff is Captain Crash and his wife is the Beauty Queen. They sign their caches and logs “CCATBQFH.”

Before he got married Jeff was JPENN. He and SuperPizzaBoy are friends. SPB calls Jeff his “Arch Nemesis” and is plotting his revenge.

It is a long story involving a “Fear Factor Cache” that had snakes, tarantula’s, hissing cockroaches (I’m not kidding) that Jeff talked SPB into opening. SPB screamed and ran a quarter mile down a road (again I’m not kidding, SPB had an audience and he played it for all it was worth). So they bonded.

Jeff is president of TAG, the Tulsa Area Geocachers. They meet once a month. They love SPB. With soccer and scouts we don’t make many meetings but SPB gets a warm welcome when we show up, “Hey, its Pizza Boy!”

They get him.

They have no idea how that makes me feel.

TAG is having their Fall Fest in a few weeks at Western Hills State Park. We’ll be there.

To finish up, I come across the tracks shown below. They are pretty sizeable. Is there a Den Mom or somebody out there that knows what made the tracks? They don’t match anything in SPB’s Cub Scout Book.