Redemption

So, rather than continue to sit around and feel sorry for myself, I did, in fact, run yesterday afternoon.

And, y’know what? It felt good

Not wanting to be, y’know, too ambitious after a week off, I set the Nike+iPod for 40 minutes, decided to run down River Road instead of the base perimeter, and set off.

The day was warm, but not painfully so. The birds sang, the breeze blew, and the sun beat down on my ears. ANd suddenly all that other crap didn’t matter. I was running.

  • Floyd? Floyd can take a flying leap if he can’t remember that this is what it’s all about
  • Lack of races this year? That was choice, buddy, and it seems to be working out
  • Anything else in the world? Hey, I’m running here. Look for someone else to bug

4.6 miles in 40 minutes. Not fast, not slow, not far, not short. Just right.

Excuses

Monday – Didn’t run, ’cause it was an “off” day on the schedule. Plus, I broke my iPod working on the house, and was waiting for a new one (If you’ve got $130 to spare, go to the Apple Store online scroll down the page, and click on the big red tag on the right hand side where they sell refurbished stuff – 1 GB Nano is $109, 2 GB Nano is $129, 4 GB Nano is $169) so I could keep using the cool chip.

Tuesday – Didn’t run – Not on the schedule, plus it was HOT

Wednesday – Didn’t wake up early enough to run before the wife left for Hartford. Spent the day playing with the kids – Beach in the morning (Watch Hill, if you’re keeping track. Man, was that nice – 65 degree water keeps a nice, cool breeze over the sand. We walked out to the ruins of the WWI fort at the entrance to Fischer’s Island Sound and back); fishing in the evening, 3 hour nap in between. Missy had book club Wednesday night – Whole day with the boys! Can’t be beat. They were angels the whole day, too, which shocked me…

Thursday – Picked up some sort of stomach bug. Just feeling all gassy. POwer went out about 7 PM as a cold front rolled through. Absolutely worse things than spending an evening hanging out on the deck with the wife in the cool, wet evening with all of the bugs knocked out of the air.

Friday – No power yet. Went to buy ice before work instead of running. Still feeling ill in the tummy.

Today – Drilling. Power came on late last night. May run this afternoon, but don’t want to push it – the tummy is still kind of sensitive, and I haven’t eaten anything yet.

 So, there it is – a week down the tubes. New Haven is going to stink.

I’m not exactly down about training – I actually have been really, really enjoying the run this year. But, on the flip side, I haven’t been nearly as ambitious as I was last year, and it kind of shows.

BUt, July was almost 75 miles for the month, which was better than I would have thought without actually checking the logs.

THis is when I tell myself that it’s all coming together according to plan – get just a little bit rolled into my lifestyle while stepping up performance at work. Next step is to get the eating under control – weight’s been pretty static at 168 all year, this winter I intend to drop poundage. Next summer is when I start thinking great things about fitness – faster, longer, farther.

But I’m green reading about other’s big races, and marathon season is going to really, really rase the green monster of envy’s head. Not that I don’t want great things for the RBF. I just miss the whole aspect of “Look at me! Look at me!”

Writing a Resume

Floyd’s backup was positive – in the eyes of the WADA, UCI, etc, he’s a doper. I’m numb by this point – how could he be so dumb? At this point, I’d still like to believe him, but…

My comment the other day wasn’t necessarily to condone doping – I think it’s a terrible cheat against Sport (“Sport” being the whole idea that it’s good, in general, to, on a level playing field, go beat the snot out of each other for a while, then trundle off afterwards, shake hands, and all go have a tasty beverage and maybe something off of the grill)

But, sadly, I think I’m in the minority. Not in the minority of folks who read this measly blog, but in the minority of people worldwide.

Which is why I’m in favor of opening up leagues for dopers. If there are folks (and trust me, boys and girls, there are) who want to see “athletes” hopped up on goofballs doing big things, and there are folks who are willing to put their health at risk, so be it.

I just won’t watch.

But it’d be nice to be able to put them off in their own category, so the rest of us can watch actual human achievement.

Deep thoughts on Doping

From the Guardian:

If sports fans really want to see achievement that they can relate to, perhaps athletes should be restricted to diets of pizza and beer, and be required to have 40-hour-a-week desk jobs. In the first half of the 20th Century, Tour de France cyclists used to puff cigarettes on the go. How’s that for a physical triumph!

If the greatest possible feat of athleticism is what spectators seek, then that is what they will get (and often are getting). And if that means 250-pound genetically enhanced behemoths dunking on 15-foot basketball rims, then never fear, the science is on the way.

I’ll admit, there’s a certain part of me that does want to see freaks of nature. Kind of like the part of me who loved comic books and superheros. But that’s also the part who ought not be trusted with kids or car keys.

So where do we go? I’m curious to hear what y’all think.

Haze Grey and Underway

Jon (from MA, not MI, and not a blogger)(yet) and I are working out a pretty good running relationship in addition to a good working relationship. Each morning, one of us calls and says “11:30?” The other says “OK.”

Then, about 11, one or the other will call to back out. “OK, fine,” the one who’s going to run, will say.

Then, on the way down to change, we’ll run into each other, and say “Hey, looks like I’ll make it after all”.

And then we run.

3 miles yesterday (3.3, actually). 5 miles today. Always good.

The weather has been what I would consider perfect running weather for 3-7 milers – about 80, humid, and breezy. Wow. Just warm enough to really angry up the blood and get the sweat pump running at full throttle, but not hot enough to be hot. A little bit of haze over the bay, giving the illusion that Rhode Island is bigger than a reasonably sized back yard.

Man, it’s good to be a runner.

Today ended up as a bit of a fiasco, though. In my excitement to get out into the sun, I left my socks at the desk. Decided to give the new shoes a go without socks. Even though it is humid. Even though it is hot. Even though we were going to stretch out the run to 5+ miles.

I got blisters.

Not awful ones, and when I get home and lance them, I won’t even notice them when I make the long run for the week on Sunday. But, bad enough that I had to send Jon on down the road at mile 4, and limp back.

Not that I minded another 10 minutes in the sun.

——-

F. Landis (you decide what the F means, I’m kind of up in the air right now, but leaning towards “Floyd” instead of an adjective) was on NPR this morning. If he is a doper, he’s a darn good liar. I’m sympathetic at this point – the line about “Someone found a bottle of Jack” tugs at me as how I probably would have reacted to blowing up on Stage 16 for most of my life. I can see how the emotion of blowing up would play havock with my body chemistry, plus the strain of two and a half weeks of riding my butt off.

Freakin’ Frenchies.

F***

F***

“The Phonak Cycling Team was notified yesterday by (world cycling body) the UCI of an unusual level of testosterone/epitestosterone ratio in the test made on Floyd Landis after stage 17 of the Tour de France,” Phonak said in a team statement.

Freakin frogs, trying to destroy cycling. If Floyd’s a doper, then he should be strung up by his nether bits, no question.

But there’s a part of me that wonders if the elevated testosterone might have just been a natural physiological reaction – fight or flight, whatever.

(Insert French Joke Here – I’m too livid to make one up)

What is it? Is there too much money tied up in sport? Have we invested too much in the big stage?

Actually, that’s probably part of the problem. We expect others to provide excitement, instead of doing it ourselves. The solution is to get off our butts and enjoy the summer. Enough moping for me.
Are you part of the solution? Who are you racing? Who is being thrilled vicariously through what you’re doing?

Once more, with gusto

Another post that may or may not have been abandoned at some point…

———-

The boy (6 yrs) is taking soccer camp this week. More accurately, the boy is going to soccer camp this week. But, he’s also going through a phase where all he wants to do is act a bleeding fool all the freakin’ time. His mom is on the verge of trading him in, and the coach at soccer camp is on the verge of leaving him at backfield, which, for 6 year old soccer is the equivalent of being the kid off in left field picking daisies. (I remember it vividly)

Anyway, after bath, I decided we’d try something a bit different tonight. It was cooling off, about 70, so I decided that it’s time that Jake learns to run.

Yeah, you read that right – “Learns to run”.

‘Cause I’ve come to realize that distance running isn’t a skill that comes naturally to most people. It really isn’t. We’re set up, physiologically, to sprint. The whole “Fight or Flight” response, and that instinct is what’s honed in us for most of our lives, especially in a world of fast twitch video games, sound bites, and deep philosophical discussions summed up in a 30 second ad on television.

So I said “Hey, let’s practice running down to the end of the block and back” – a trip of all of about half a mile. “Sure”, says the boy.

The out went like this – Jake would sprint as fast as he could for as long as he could without breathing, then stop and watch as I jogged by. Then he’d sprint again, laughing hysterically.

At the turn he was really starting to drag, so I summoned up the good parts of the OCS Battalion runs, and we started making up and singing jodies all the way back to the house. Next thing we know, we were passing the driveway – more than a quarter mile without me saying “C’mon, Jake…” I was happy, he was happy, the bees buzzed, the birds sang, and the last rays of twilight beat down on our ears.

Which is when it hit me – people do need to be taught how to run. As silly as that sounds, there is some level of skill involved – regulating pace, regulating breathing, etc. For a lot of us, being stubborn and working through pain is enough to learn those skills. But for others (and looking back, I’m in this category), rhythm, pace, and breathing don’t come naturally at all.

Which is another thing that might come in handy with the whole portable music player thing – running with tunes can be akin to having someone call cadence in your ear. Doesn’t do much for the breathing, unless you try to sing along.

Race Planning

Woah –

So, it suddenly hit me: New Haven is five weeks away, and Josh Billings is seven weeks away. And I’ve been kind of half-***ing training for most of the summer. Not that it hasn’t been productive – my motivation is way, way up, past where it’s been, well, pretty much ever.

But, I’ve been just kind of coasting along. Time to buckledown and kick some of my own rump.

GTBMS

Back on the Road

Went running at lunch with one of the guys on my team. Great time – he’s been a slacker for most of July, I’m in recovery mode.

WX was perfect – 80, humid, breezy – nice ozone haze on the bay rendered the boats beating down towards the Newport Bridge like something straight out of Impressionist France, and with neither of us having anything to prove, the run was the most relaxing thing I’ve done – well, since the RBF meetup on Thursday.

Nike+iPod continues to delight – even without the earbuds, it’s small, light, unobtrusive, and easy to read. I prefer it to my Forerunner by leaps and bounds, and think I like it more than the HRM – nice to look at pace rather than HR, which jumps around during the first part of the run since I’m too cheap to spring for electrolyte jelly. I’m even really starting to like the shoes – the more i wear them, the more they feel like a great pair of socks. There really isn’t much to the shoes as far as structure goes – I think I can feel the road better in the Nikes than in my Asics. The black ones are ugly as sin, though. But they’re light. We’ll see how they last through New Haven at least.

And I’m even looking forward to painting the house.

Didn’t run today

Felt pretty much fully recovered, but the doc had recommended I lay off for about a week after the family-planning related surgery on Friday. (If you want gory details, I’ll provide off-line. The short version is that I got more narcotics than Missy did for our first kid despite the fact that the ultimate discomfort from the procedure was less than any number of cleats to the nuts in intermural soccer (futbol). Which isn’t to say that I didn’t lay on the couch all weekend enjoying said prescriptions and the leisure of having a weekend to lay on the couch while the sky was cloudy, the humidity near saturation, and the AC both cool and a source of white noise.)

I really, really wanted to run. Really, really, really.

But I didn’t.

I will tomorrow. No doubt in my mind at all.

I registered for New Haven today. Yippie! Now, to see if I can still go 12+ miles – the longest I’ve gone in a month was the 6.8 with David almost two weeks ago. I’ll try that again this weekend.

And, when I found the details about the Josh Billings Tri, the wife said “Sure”. So, that’s two races in the space of two weeks, starting in 6 weeks. I’m pumped. I also get to paint the house over that time. The roof – contracted out, ’cause I’ve got no clue how to roof. Scraping, painting, and scraping again – I’ve been in the Navy, I can do that!

Life is good, good, good.