You’re “Person of the Year”!
BTW – I’m linking not directly to the magazine, but to someone else, as I’m guessing that Time was somewhat trying to drive traffic to their site. It’s interesting, too, that the Chrysler pre-page ad, which couldn’t have been cheap, starts off with something like “Well, you didn’t win “Person of the Year”, but you can still ….”
Jim Harrison said, “I like grit, I like love and death, I’m tired of irony. … A lot of good fiction is sentimental. … The novelist who refuses sentiment refuses the full spectrum of human behavior, and then he just dries up. … I would rather give full vent to all human loves and disappointments, and take a chance on being corny, than die a smartass.”
The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media
Unfortunately, I’m well on the road to dying a smartass.
technorati tags:keillor
Blogged with Flock
So, ladies and gents (I can say that, as I’m pretty sure there’s still 4 readers out there in Internet Land). I’ve worked myself into quite the pickle. Between this, that, and the other, I’ve gotten out of shape, relatively speaking.
Out of shape in the way that I cannot just head out and run and run and run as I could earlier this year. The 2 weeks with the Colombians pretty much sealed that deal, though there’s no way I would have traded that ride for a sub-3 hour marathon.
OK, maybe I’d trade it for a sub-3 hour marathon. I might even trade one of the kids for sub-3, if you catch them on a bad day. Let’s say a sub-4 hour marathon…
Anyway, I’m in the position where, in my line of work, we say that there’s a “Get Well Plan” needed. (The irony being that “Get Well Plan” is usually the precedent to the “Realignment” in which goals are completely dropped. But not here, baby). And here’s my plan:
GOAL: I want to be able to put in 20 mile weeks starting 1 January.
ANALYSIS: If I really, really wanted to suffer, I could likely do that starting tomorrow. But I don’t want to suffer – I want to build solid base and continue my current love affair with running.
PLAN: I dug out my trusty copy of “The Runner’s Training Diary”, and flipped to the 10 mile per week to 20 mile per week buildup program for intermediate runners/beginning competitors. Then, worked backwards for the roughly 8 weeks remaining between now and New Year’s. So, this week is a modest 13 miles, increasing through the end of the year. Think it’s achievable.
GOAL: Another Marathon Next Fall
ANALYSIS: Time heals all wounds, I suppose.
PLAN: NYC, Hartford or Mystic Places. In that order. This time with gusto.
After the New Year, I’m going to hold the 20 mile per week average for between 6 and 10 weeks, depending on which marathon I target. Likely for about 6 weeks, to hit 30 miles/week in time to hold it for about 10 weeks until I start training for Hartford. Then, I’ll follow the NYC Road Runner’s 16 week Marathon Plan building from a 20 mile/week base.
Why switch to a 20 mile per week base for the buildup? Two reasons: First, I want to have energy to devote to speed, and cutting mileage should help me with that. Second, I want to pretty aggressively cross train, and cutting 10 miles/week should free up 2 hours per week to devote to the bike. I’m planning on picking up swimming again in the 6 weeks between the New Year and the buildup to 30 miles/week, and continuing the calestenics I’ve been doing lately.
GOAL: Austin or Oklahoma (OOOOOOOOKlahoma, where the wind comes sweeping ‘cross the plains) City Marathon in early 2008.
ANALYSIS/PLAN: Plenty of time to recover and do an abbreviated marathon buildup. If I handle the first half of 2007 properly, I should be in shape to knock this out.
So, that’s pretty much it. Frankly, I’m psyched. I’ve worked through the mental issues, I’m reasonably fit, only about 3 lbs heavier than I was going into 2006, and think I can make this work with work and family.
So – Obviously, things are afoot at Casa Jank. How can you tell? Well, there’s been only a marginal amount of running, even less posting, and absolutely no pictures of the glorious fall we’ve been having.
For which I am greatly sorry, RBF. Greatly sorry.
However, the content here going to get somewhat worse before it gets better.
Opportunity is knocking in several ways, none of which I am inclined to discuss in a public forum. One of which is requiring that I drop pretty much completely offline next week for a couple of weeks (But it’s freakin’ cool…). I also got asked the “Where do you want to be in 5 years” question by someone I totally admire and respect, and have a chance to actually think about it for a while, and hopefully provide a good answer.
Plus, there’s Cub Scouts, actually spending time with my lovely wife, etc, so on and so forth…
It is looking like things will smooth out a bit in November; I am continuing to run, and I think I’m mentally at a place where I can run either Mystic Places or NYC next fall, for which I am (A) Stunned and (B) Psyched. I think that approaching “Marathon!” with my eyes open and a much more balanced relationship with running is going to be a completely triumphant story in the way my 2005 campaign was a complete program of Hubris, Comuppance, and BitOffMoreThanHeCanChew.
November will still be National Novel Writing Month, and I still plan on knocking that out over at sandbox.jankowskis.net – tenatively titled “Eskers Point” (the site, not the book). The first couple of days’ work won’t be up until the first Saturday in the month due to other committments (Which, as mentioned above, are absolutely freakin’ cool, and about which I will write later).
Amigos, as always, I cannot emphasize enough how much the RBF has given me aid and comfort over the last couple of years. I am a much better person than I was when I started down this road. There’s a revolution going on all across the world, and, while runners talking about running and helping each other through the tough parts and celebrating small victories might not seem like much – well, I honestly think it’s HUGE. Not to be passed aside. A foundation upon which to build a better tomorrow.
So, lace ’em up, pound ’em out, and throw someone else a thumbs-up, just ’cause.
You guys rock, to steal from someone, somewhere…
So, ever been shopping at Amazon and needed just a couple of bucks to hit that magic $25 mark to get free shipping? So, instead of ponying up the $5 for shipping, you added $15 of stuff that you really didn’t want?
Well, FillerItem is what you need – type in the amount you need to add to the cart, and it’ll give you a page of suggestions of how to fill the gap. Rocks.
I was picking up Pastis’ latest and a little something else, and needed like $3 to hit the mark. Dropped it into FillerPage, and it suggested a ton of stuff. I almost went with “Antigone”, ’till I realized I could plug that into Google Books or Project Gutenberg and download it – figure that after 3,000 years, even the Disney Estate would let it fall into the Public Domain.
The guys from PezCycling News sum up FAQs for being one’s own coach.:
For those of you who have been following this “Be Your Own Coach†series for the last few months, there is still a lot we need to talk about concerning writing your own training schedule and designing your training year to fit your goals and your abilities. But with the racing season winding down in most parts of the country, and riders thinking about taking a break from the bike rather than designing a training schedule, I thought I’d skip ahead to what was originally intended to be the last part of the series. What follows below are some of the most commonly asked questions I’ve gotten over the last 6 years as a full time cycling coach.
How many times to I have to insist that you bookmark their site, or subscribe to their RSS feed?
So this whole Floyd Landis thing has me all wrapped around a philosophical axel, so to speak. I’ve been working on this post for about 2 weeks, and can’t get it right. It starts off OK, but then degenerates. I’m leaving it here with my notes instead of just tossing it. Enjoy.
(ED – Hey, Bill, what’s with all this stuff about professional cycling)
(Me – I promise I’ll bring this back around to running. But isn’t cycling fitness, too?
(ED – Maybe, but WATCHING cycling isn’t.)
(Me – What if you’re watching it in December on the stationary trainer or the dreadmill? Huh? What then?)
(ED – Just make your point and move on)
(Me – Oh, I need to have a point? Wait one…)
Anyway, it’s got me wrapped around a philosophical axle that basically says to me “Why do I care? Why should I care? And, more to the point, what benefit do I get actually caring?”
‘Cause here’s the deal, see? The level of athletic prowess on display at the professional level nowadays is phenomenal, insane, out of this freakin’ world! Sure, they may be all hopped up on goofballs, but to paraphrase a quote from someone else’s blog (who stole it from the Simpsons), “Whaddya wanna see? A moral debate about the implications of doping, or would you rather see me hit some dingers*?”
“Dingers, Dingers!” we all shout.
And therein lies the rub. We do want to see the dingers. We want to see the legendary ascent of the Joux Plane, the 5 hour breakaway on a broken shoulder, and all that stuff that we wouldn’t do in our wildest dreams.
We want to see it.
And then blog about it, and then head down to the local pub for a plate of wings and a half dozen pints and some other folks who saw the same unforgettable event so we can yammer on about it while we watch the replay on 24 hour sports TV, sponsored by the DVD.
There’s a whole industry set up so that we can watch the unbelievable, then discuss, then market, and then replay. We fight to be the first to blog the next big thing, try to score tickets to the big game without realizing that we’re being counterproductive to the higher idea of “sport” as something that’s good for us all.
The sports entertainment industry doesn’t want us to actually play sports. It’s tough for us to generate ratings when we’re out on the road/track/court/field.
(Here’s where it degenerates into notes and incoherence)
– kids used to play at the sandlot, replaying big plays physically (“I’m Evel Kinievel”). Replay provided on demand now
– Smaller pool of talent competing for bigger bucks. Bigger incentive to cheat. No incentive in either atheletes or owners to catch cheats.
– For media, catching a cheat is good business. SO is covering the rehabilitation of a cheat: Don’t have to learn any new background, recycle the same talking heads
upshot:
– Moderation
– Go race locally
– Get your kids involved
– Actually, spend some time with your kids dis-involved. Let them play without coaches, leagues, etc. Kick them out in the yard.
– Coach someone.
– Get coached.
Examples of “big stories” in the RBF – individuals every day, exactly as compelling as pros. Your encouragement here can make a real difference, as opposed to adding to the noise.
* For the baseball deprived, a “dinger” is slang for a Home Run, a ball hit so hard it leaves the field of play, allowing the batter to run completely around the bases and score a run.
From another site everyone should read, even if they don’t think they’re geeks: Round 2: Dial Tone:
You can regard the history of the computer industry as pushing “dial tone” further and further up the stack. As Crichton noted, the rotary dial telephone was the first computer that allowed direct interaction between humans and computers. The personal computer pushed customer self service up the stack to programming, data processing, and eventually applications such as word processing and spreadsheets.
New applications often start out requiring operators, but eventually move towards dial-tone. For example, you can look at blogging as the “dial tone” equivalent of creating a web site. For ordinary folks (not most of my readers, but non-technical folks), creating a web site was something that required an operator. You went to a web design shop or an ISP and had them do it for you. The blogging revolution, the wiki revolution, the MySpace revolution, the CyWorld revolution, are really about providing a kind of self-service dial-tone for creating a web presence and community.
You can apply this to running, too. Fitness used to be something the rich did, as they were the only ones with leisure time. Then, it was the folks with athletic talent and access to limited facilities and training.
With the internet, we’ve all got access to the motivation and techniques of the greats. Want to run a marathon? Google it, pick a training plan, and plug into a support group.
DIY fitness. Nothing better.
Pencil in the date now: 21 August, 2006 – the beginning of the running world as you want it to be.
A while back, a couple of guys had a thought: Hey, there’s a bunch of folks running and writing about it out on the web.
Anyhoo, they’ve got a concept – start a spot with running advice and lifestyle info targeted at real runners – folks with real jobs, real commitments, and mundane, every-day challenges (like “How do I get out of bed in the morning to go run” as opposed to epochal challenges such as “I’ve just been diagnosed with cancer. How do I train to win the Tour de France”). Continue to build on the “wisdom of the crowd” but to consolidate and distill a little bit of that information into an easy to find, easy to use spot.
They’ve invited me and a grunch of other “old salts” of the RBF to write for the Complete Running Network. Frankly, I’m excited about it. I love reading my monthly Runner’s World, Outside, and other professional magazines, but in a way, I kind of feel like they’re geared towards folks with a much more single-minded drive than I have. The writing I’m planning on doing for Mark et al is going to be focused more on the transition from slacker to runner.
The rest of the regular cast should include:
Speaking for myself, I’m the first to admit that all I bring to the table is commitment and a love of sweat and shortness of breath. But smaller ideas with less passion have turned into bigger things!