Archive for November, 2004
Odd 5K
I just ran a quick 5K during lunch at the gym down the street. I did it kind of fartlek style (varying speeds), and for whatever reason, though I pushed myself frequently up into 7.5 and 8 MPH speeds, I finished slower than one I did earlier in the month.
Earlier time: 27 minutes.
This time: 28:30.
And yet, I was running faster at times. Know the difference? I had to walk to get my heart rate back down once hitting those speeds I couldn’t handle.
My take away: a steady race is better than a race past my abilities.
Feeling “Civilian”
Did you guys see The Incredibles yet? If you use the “it’s a kid movie” thing, I’ll clobber you. To me, the movie was a perfect picture into how I feel about my professional life.
See the guy in the insurance office? Slumped and grey? That’s me.
But boy, I used to be something, and if I believe the message of the show, I can be something again. Right? Movies are real, aren’t they?
So since finishing the marathon, I’m feeling a bit civilian. I’m feeling like all my training has stopped (which is true, in that I’m no longer training for a marathon), and that I’ve only got wishy washy races in front of me at present. It’s just not the same feeling as strapping on the super suit (WHERE is my SUPER SUIT?!?) and going out to fight crime. And yet. (Eli Wiesel gave me “And yet”)
I have so much more to accomplish. I’m working on this 30 pounds. I’m working on getting strong enough to do chin-ups and to move my body around the way a gymnast might. (Shhh. The way a superhero might.) And I’m working towards that. But because the marathon is past, and because there’s no race application with cold, dry ink upon its face, I feel “civilian.”
Does this happen to you? In any of your walks of life?
Those Little Calories
While I’m hard at work trying to carve another 30 pounds off my body, I’m paying close attention to what’s going into the engine, and how I’m choosing to burn it back out. Now, I eat really healthy for the most part. I’m well read on nutrition, eat nearly all my calories for value (high fiber, or good antioxidant level, or great protein count, etc.) Still, I’m finding lots of little places where extra calories were adding up.
Breakfast: when I eat at home, I don’t get a big omelette stuffed with light sausage and feta, I don’t eat both slices of buttered toast, and I don’t finish my daughter’s uneaten 1/2 of a large chocolate chip pancake. Instead, I have either a bowl of wheat bran flakes with more bran, raisins, and 1% milk, or oatmeal and similar. 300 fewer calories, at least.
Morning snack: instead of a bagel with peanut butter, an english muffin with peanut butter gives me the same feeling, with almost 200 fewer calories.
Lunch: I eat a big lunch, in lieu of a big dinner. My reasoning is that I should be burning more of this while I’m upright, instead of adding calories near the end of my day. No net change.
Afternoon snack: I split my snack in two, because I seem hungry once at 3:30PM, and again around 5:10PM (which is usually on my ride home). That way, I don’t eat a full snack at 3:30, and then splurge on another snack 2 hours later, and 1 hour before supper. 100-200 calories.
Supper: no changes here. I eat well and healthy.
Treat: I eat something tiny before bed, around 100 calories. But it’s WHAT I eat that determines whether the monster comes out. No net change.
Monster: Middle of the night, I *love* to eat. I’m trying to shave here, because that’s probably another 200 calories, especially because they’re wasted on rest. If I can save it, that’s 200. If not, I add this to my daily fuel-in, with no value.
Have you found similar little “tricks” inside your eating habits?
Dear Everyone…
Dear Everyone–
It’s truly a remarkable feeling to find dozens and dozens of comments and praise related to my race report. You were all very kind, very invigorating, and each and every one of you gave me a special feeling right here in my nostrils.
Since 2003, I’ve been working on self-improvement, including self-esteem, weight loss, education, and all kinds of internal fixes. The marathon was a kind of crown to those efforts, a tip of the hat. But the best part of it, to me, is that the marathon’s just the last dregs of 2004. Wait’ll you see what’s ahead.
I am blessed by everyone who reads and comments and writes me little private emails, etc. Sometimes, I get bogged down and don’t comment on all the posts I read, but I read your stuff daily. I’m inspired by your efforts.
I’m further blessed by an amazing wife, who is so supportive, it’s silly. I really couldn’t have achieved half of what I’ve done without her. I know. I’ve tried. She’s such a powerhouse. Have I mentioned she’s dumped 75 pounds of weight through her own superhero efforts?
In 2005, I’ve got a few goals. I want to race in about two dozen events, including some ultra-distance races, but also stirring in a mix of “fun” things, too. I plan to write the book I’ve threatened to write for the last few years on my self-improvement efforts. I also intend to be at my all-time goal weight by August of 2005 (but truly aiming for June).
I’ll do all of the above with your support. Superheroes all.
Last thing: I forgot to mention that I took my busted shoelace shoe to EMS, an outdoors company up this way. They said, “Hmm. I don’t know how to repair that, either. Hang on a sec.” Moments later, they came back with the Salomon XA Comp XCR trail running shoe, which is the same as mine, but the step up. “We’ll send back your shoes to Salomon, and give you these for the difference. Is $19.00 okay?” I tried to beg off. “I really just wanted a shoelace.” They shrugged. “Sorry. Best we can do is give you brand new trail running shoes.” Well, okay.
So, if you’ve got some outdoorsy purchases to make, I tell you, Eastern Mountain Sports stands behind everything they do 105%. I’m blown away by the way I’ve been treated since going there. Plug plug.
Pics
There were four worthwhile pictures. (If for whatever reason, you can’t see the pics here, they’re posted here.)
Marathon Write-Up (LOOONG)
I started out strong. I was slapping people’s hands and shouting “Wooo!!!!!”, until people said, “Quit that. What are you doing? I can’t hear the race director.” Then, the guy said “go.” Trust me, if it wasn’t snowing, I wouldn’t have had a clue where to go. Luckily, at the back of the pack, I had plenty of people to follow.
We did this little duck shuffle for the first five or so miles. Basically, even though the path was big enough for most American-made SUVs, all these little runners had only left a single track worth of trail, and people willing to lunge into the snow drifts to carve their own course were few and far between. I didn’t mind. Talk about the ultimate pacing tool. It was this way until the first aid station. Everyone else seemed to linger. I blew by the first one. But let me tell you what I missed at that first station, but never again throughout the race.
You street runners will shortly faint. The aid stations had fully stocked liquor selections. (For those law enforcement types reading, it was just “for display purposes only”. Yeah!) I mean everything! Sambuca, Crown Royal, and lots of Stone Cat. They had a selection of hot homemade soups, grilled cheese and ham sandwiches, pb&j, muffins, chips, m&ms, something I’m forgetting, and oh yeah, water and Gatorade. Yep, I was at a roving tailgate party with the occasional running in between.
So I ran along, and ran, and ran some more. Beautiful, you see, because this is in a forest, and there’s all this snow falling, and dogs are howling here and there in the distance. My friend has run off past me, because he is typically a 3 hour marathonner, and I’m aiming for 5 to 5:30. No problem. I’m enjoying the solitude.
What I did mostly on the trails: told jokes to myself. Made up funny things to say. Laughed at myself. Oh, and ran.
After the mile 9 station (which had the BEST food in the world– I almost turned around to go back for more, because it was so good, and did I mention they were playing Irish jig music?), I had a problem 200 yards out. My shoelace broke. Now, these aren’t normal shoelaces. They’re special nifty one-pull lacing “systems” that come attached rather permanently to my Salomon XA Comp trail running shoes. So what the fred could I do about that? I limped along in a half-run until the 1/2 marathon station, which was, conveniently, also the parking lot where my car awaited.
Now here’s a moment. I’m sitting in the back seat of my wagon with my shoes and socks off, looking at a black toenail, a monster blister, a spot where one toenail is sawing through the flesh of another nearby toe, and I’m thinking, “What the fred can I do about that shoelace?” Duct tape? No. Turns out I had my (old, nearly spent) street running shoes in the back seat under my gym bag. Well, okey doke. I threw on clean socks, laced those up, and off I went.
The first five or more miles after this point SUCKED, because think about it: I’d been training in completely different shoes for 200 miles. I have all these calluses in different places, you know the drill. So man. Oh, and these are “street” shoes and I’m running on a trail, and that means lots of oddly-figured lateral movement. Not one real fall, by the way. I did do an “oh Jesus” slip and grab on a downhill segment, but I just thought, “Hey fun!” and rubbed my hamstring a while.
Somewhere around the first station and the second, I realized that I was running for the food. It was mile 20, and there was no wall. I was just wondering what type of soup they’d have. And honestly, I was thinking a lot about those dense chocolate chip muffins they had at that station. I started making jokes to myself about what I’d say to them when I showed up. “I’ve been thinking about you for the last twelve miles. Sure, I visited other aid stations, but I swear, baby, they didn’t mean a thing to me.” I said the first sentence to the nice people at Mile 9 (now 24 or whatever after the first loop). I spared them the last.
It was *really* cool to hear that there were only 2 or so miles left. I borrowed someone else’s cell phone because my battery died in the cold, and called my wife to let her know I wasn’t far off. By this point, I was managing a decent little shuffle, and I just kept on trucking along.
You know it’s the perfect race when there’s not even a big red time clock around. I ran to the finish, slapped hands with a guy dressed in a big furry cat costume, and saw some other guy check his watch and write down my time. As times went, if I split my result in half, I’d have run a fairly decent Boston twice. It was just under 7 hours. My friend, who did two marathons this year and who did 3-something and 4 hours got a minute under 5 hours on this one. Someone at an aid station said people were mostly adding one hour on to what they’d expected to get. Works for me. At the end, this race wasn’t about time for me. It was about endurance. Running for 7 hours (give or take the shoelace, and stops at aid stations) was the longest physical endurance challenge I’ve ever taken.
At the finish, a guy I’d met once before spent some time talking with me about the race, and then said I should come back for the Fat Ass 50K. That meant a lot to me. It seemed to me like someone saying, “Okay. You seem competent. You’re in.” Something like that.
My evening after and the next day went well. I hydrated and kept moving, advice from my friend who ran with me. We hung out at his house and had soup, talking about the race, politics, religion, and Darwinism, all while listening to Prairie Home Companion and him pulling ticks from one of his dogs.
I got a killer massage from my wife last night. She gave me back my body, because for a while there, I thought someone had rented me out to a karate class for practice. Kat also put up my daily 4:30 AM training trips, which meant she’d have to get up with our 2 year old every morning instead of sleeping in. She has been the strength behind my training all this time.
So, that’s the end of my 2004 racing season. I did around 10 races, all first time distances, and felt really good about how they all went. I look forward to 2005, and am training hard all winter. I hope to arrive at racing season 30 pounds lighter, a bit faster, and ready as all hell for more fun in trail races.
Quickie
I’m out walking around (some advice a friend gave me, because he said that otherwise, I’d seize up), so I went by the library to post a quick one.
First thing, there SO much to tell about this story, most of it funny. Secondly, I cannot believe it took just a minute shy of 7 HOURS to run the daggone thing. There are two ways I see this: one, I was slowed by snow, broken shoelaces, other issues that will be mentioned later, but two, what a feat of endurance separate to speed.
Throw out speed for a moment and realize I ran for seven hours in a row. Oi. (Marshall must shush, because he’s an ultradistance runner, and at this point, he’s saying, “Yeah, and?”) But to you, Marshall, I did a lot of speed walking somewhere between 16 and 20, because I was feeling a lot of things.
First marathon, complete with first black toenail, purple-black blister, and several other bodily injuries that are really neato to look at in that “ewwwwww!” sort of way.
I had such a fargin’ good time! Oh! And before I forget, one of the guys who kind of scoffed at me months ago chatted me up and invited me back to run the Fat Ass 50K in January.
Finally, Stone Cat Ale were the sponsors, complete with free beer, and you who drink such products should consider buying some in their honor. : )
Happy Saturday. Talk to you Monday.
Oh. Jeff? My funny joke was: “I can’t feel my groin. Can you?” : )
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Marathon Day -1
For the record, I think Richard gave me the advice to eat a huge pre-marathon LUNCH instead a huge supper. So, the company caf offerings were: fish sandwich, potato pancake, and gumbo. I had all three, chucking the bread from the fish sandwich. The gumbo was a bad idea. The rest was good.
I’m antsy, but I have to be, right? Every little ache is magnified. I feel like, “What if *that* little sore spot on my foot is going to erupt into something horrible?” I wonder about the back twang. My throat feels a little raw. You know, basically, everything’s okay, but I’m so hyper-aware that EVERYTHING feels wrong. Broken. Bent.
Of course, the Critic is trying to get its words in edgewise. Things like, “You’re a fatso. Why are you going to run a marathon?” And you know what? The critic would be write if this were 2003. But it’s not. I’m 50 pounds lighter (gained some of my almost 60 back during this training) and I’m much stronger than I was last year. In fact, I might not be super fast tomorrow, but I’m going to be ass-kicking strong. And for subsequent events, too. This is the springboard into next year’s season. And this is also the icing on my weight loss cake. Fatso-no-more, or whatever.
My Strategy
(Any “real” racers should block their eyes.)
I plan to run slowly at the start, feel warmed up, and then immediately start wishing the thing was over. I plan to sweat, to feel my ass rattling down every descent. I plan to curse the few fast gazelles that brush past me without even breathing hard. At the first aid station, I plan to beg for a helicoptor airlift back to the start. If they refuse, I might just keep running, to see if there are sled dogs at the next aid station.
My goal is to complete the half marathon before finishing the full marathon. Because if someone thinks I’ve done it in the wrong order, they won’t give me anything for “finishing.” After the half, I really only have one option: keep running in the big-assed circle around the damned woods with all these other crazy losers, because hey, my car’s parked back there.
When I cross the finish line, I’m going to burst into tears. I will dial Oprah Winfrey’s private cell phone and scream out my thanks and praise, mostly because she chose not to run this race, so I won’t have to dodge cameras and microphones, only roots and rocks. I will show my bloody ankle to the camera, thanking Reebok for their magic shoe. I’ll get in touch with Pedro and Manny and little David Ortiz, asking them to save me some room on Dumbo, because I’m a little lame, but baby, “I’m going to Disney World!” Scratch that. I’m going to EURO-Disney. (Bet it’s cheaper, eh?)
If anyone’s there to greet me, say, my two and a half year old, my wife, my mother, I’m going to run past them like I don’t even recognize them. In fact, I’m going to tell them I’ve decided to tough it out and run the 50 mile race. Yes I am! And then I’ll collapse, defecating on myself for good measure.
Okay, “real” runners, you can look again. I’m done sharing my strategy.
