Jacob Fannin

Had to do it. Here are the first two installments, there will be five more before Sunday is over. “Smooth Criminal” and “Gone Too Soon” were my first two picks…

Hello! I’m going to be playing this Sunday night at the Harmony Cafe in downtown Appleton. 6-8 PM. The new Harmony Cafe is the old Pilgrim’s Cafe. On the far side of College Avenue closer to Lawrence. Their set-up is pretty neat. You should stop on in! I am actually going to be playing there every Sunday night starting the first week of July… but I’m playing this weekend first so you should have some coffee or tea!

The other very cool thing is that this show is going to be broadcast online! So if you can’t make it down there you can tune in online, as we will have a live webcam at the show. We will be going through a website called Stickam.com, which is a live video/camera site. You can get an account for free and will be able to view the entire show from there. I’ll be posting a link to the site and my live chatroom Sunday night before I start playing.

So be there Sunday night!… one way or the other.

Day 129. Mission completed. I don’t even know Where to start… the experience was nothing short of amazing. We flew out of Milwaukee Friday morning at 8:30. My two younger brothers drove me down and I was there a little early. I sat in the airport and played the “I wonder who here runs marathons” game until a lot of people wearing Team in Training gear started showing up. A connecting flight from Pennsylvania came in around 7:45 or 8… and about 35 Team in Training people got off that plane, so between our two teams we were making some pretty good noise in the terminal.

The flight was nothing special… a touch too long. I found out my laptop has a very short (2 hour) battery life. That didn’t help. We landed in San Diego at about 10:30 their time and were shuttled to our hotel. That day was pretty much our own… but I knew I wanted to get enough sleep because I knew I wasn’t going to be sleeping Saturday night. We did go to the convention center as a team however where we needed to check-in and register for the race. There was an expo where different suppliers were giving out information and free samples of their products. Interesting to see, but I think I got a little sick from trying all of these products that were suppose to be energy boosters. (shrugs) I took a walk around the immediate area of our hotel. There was a mall and some restaurants, nice area. The apartment housing directly behind the hotel was ridiculous.

Saturday morning and afternoon was our sight-seeing time. San Diego has a fantastic trolley system that is cheap and easy and it gets you around the city pretty efficiently. I took the trolley to Old Town and Little Italy… two smaller communities in the city. Loved them both. It helped that it was a Saturday morning so there were Farmer’s Markets in both areas… I could have walked around the city all day. In Old Town, I got into a spanish conversation with two ladies making churros in the street. They spoke english, but I told them I wanted to talk in spanish… and we were both laughing at eachother the entire conversation. They were laughing at me becuase my spoken spanish is broken and not very good. To them, it was like talking to a 4 year old. I was laughing at them because I knew they were laughing at me and I was absolutely ok with it.

I headed back to the hotel to get ready for the TNT pasta party that night and headed over to the convention center at around 5. Walking into the banquet room was awesome. Every coach and mentor from team in training that was there had lined the doorways leading in and were cheering and yelling and making a bunch of noise as we entered. You kind of felt like a hero for a second… it was cool. 2,200 participants plus some friends were there for dinner and we listened to some inspirational speakers and some honored patients. It was a cool night. We had a short team meeting after that to go over details and called it a night.

Race day! To be honest, I wasn’t nervous about running. I was more nervous about making sure I had enough but not too much to eat and drink and whatnot. We were on the bus at a little after 5 am and were shuttled to Balboa Park where the start line was. So many people! It was crazy. The race started at 6:30 am. My brother’s shuttle from his parking lot was delayed a bit, so he was late to the start. He ended up starting his race at about 6:45 or so. More on him in a bit. We started running and I had one of my running coaches starting with me. We ran together for the first two miles and then he fell back to find another TNT runner. The race was fairly smooth until about mile 19. I had started the first 7 or 8 miles way too fast, but I realized it far too late and by mile 19 or 20 when I was suppose to start kicking in the saved energy.. I had nothing to fall back on. I just couldn’t get my legs back for some reason so the finals 6 miles were pretty tough. The finish was pretty cool. You come down this final stretch with a grandstand full of people on one side and people lining a fence on the other… pretty neat.

My older brother Nick ran this marathon with me, and I will absolutely concede that he ran a better race. He didn’t go through Team in Training like I did… so while I was getting instruction and tips for the last 4 months from a coach, he has been doing everything on his own. I was being pampered all weekend in a nice hotel and getting shuttled conveniently to the start line… Nick had to drive over an hour that morning to get there. He must have gotten up before 3 AM! I also had a lot of help on the course. When you run with Team in Training… you wear a distinctive purple singlet or jersey that gives you many allies on the course. I had my named taped on the shirt, so every corner I turned I had TNT supporters yelling my name and cheering for “The Team”. I also had trained coaches from TNT littering the course, so whenever I started to hurt a little, somebody in purple was there almost immediately diagnosing whatever was aching. Now, I’m sure people were being supportive to everyone running, so Nick was probably getting the standard “You’re doing great! Keep it up!” yells… but when he rounded a corner and heard “T-N-T … T-N-T” … it probably didn’t give him the same boost it gave me. I also was lucky enough to have one of my coaches from Wisconsin find me at about mile 23 or so, and he ran with me the rest of the way. It helped a lot. Nick was on his own the whole way. I also kind of felt bad throughout this whole process. The only difference between what I did and what Nick did was that I had some fundraising to do. Nick will admit that I trained more consistently than he did… but I had the schedule and the time to do so. Nick was working about 40% more hours than I was … and he has a family. The only other commitment I had throughout this whole ordeal was the Brewers. But I sometimes felt like people were giving me all of this attention and asking about my training and all this … and didn’t seem to know Nick was going through the same thing (granted having a website and a blog and advertising the fundraising swung that attention my way… but still). Factor all of that garbage into the equation… and I still can’t fathom that he and I both ran for the better part of 4 1/2 hours and we ended up finishing within 150 seconds of eachother. That is silly. First time runners, first ever race, and our splits were identical. I thought that was awesome. I’m not surprised though… anyone who knows Nick knows that he could have probably stepped outside today and ran another marathon in under 5 hours, two days later. For a point of reference on how I’m feeling… it just took me 25 minutes to get the mail. I’m glad he came and ran it as well though. It’s just another hidden society that we are now part of. I can now look at Nick and give him a nod and he knows that I am saying … “Those last 3 miles really hurt”… and he’s the only one of my “core” who knows what it’s like to run for 3 1/2 hours… then come around a corner hoping for water only to find some people offering you salt packets. He and I were also the only two idiots in San Diego that day who ran the full marathon in pants… and not running pants! (Yes, we both probably did it to be difficult… and yes, we both take a strange pride in that).

The race is awesome through 20 miles… and you are loving every second. Then it hurts and you are hating yourself for doing this. Then you finish and respect yourself in a way you never have before. It was awesome.

I’m happy I did this on so many levels. Self-respect being one, the TNT experience was unbelievable, minor things like getting into shape and being disciplined enough to stay on a diet played a part. It was a pretty intense process and I have a new found respect for so many people who do this … whether it is just one time or if it is a lifetime hobby. I’ll be paying attention to the papers whenever marathons are run from now on. It means something to me now.

It’s funny how things can change you in such a short period of time too. I’m now looking into joining the Fox Cities Marathon on Sept. 20th as a TNT alumni. I kind of feel like it’s an additional family that I get to be a part of. Let’s see how many more of my real family I can get to run with me this time

I’m going to archive this blog now. Tuck it away and come back to read it every now and again to remember that once upon a time I was run over by a 26-mile truck and it only took me 4 hours and 38 minutes to get to my feet.

If anyone is even semi-interested in running a marathon, half-marathon, or wants to take a 100-mile “century” bike ride… please look into Team in Training. The fundraising is a challenge, but a fun challenge. You will respect yourself in so many ways if you do it and do it honestly from start to finish. TeaminTraining.org. You won’t regret it.

Thank you Jeremy Coenen for setting up April 1st, thank you Brittney and Annie Metz for letting me play at “The Bar” on the 17th, thank you Appleton Winter Farmer’s Market for letting me panhandle your entrance every weekend for two months… and thank you to all of you who donated to LLS on my behalf. I’m a better person because of this nonesense.

The world will forever be full of more good than bad. Sometimes you have to fight it out of people and sometimes you have to fight it out of yourself… but it will always be there, and it wants to be there. Let it take over!

Peace and Love … forever and ever and ever.

Jake