Training Wheels

In The Interest of Civil Debate With Other Real Americans

2010-02-07T08:36:00.000-08:00

The other night on "The O'Reilly Factor" Bill O'Reilly and Jon Stewart were talking about Sarah Palin. When asked what he thought of the former Vice Presidential nominee, Stewart said that he is turned off by Palin's claim that there is a Real America, full of Real Americans as opposed to a less genuine America populated, apparently, by people who disagree with her.

O'Reilly responded: "You don't think there's a difference between San Francisco and Wasilla, Alaska?"

It was a big, fat meatball served up right over the plate and Stewart bunted, responding "I don't say that where you live is the deciding factor in who you are."

It's a passable answer, considering that Stewart was presumably getting these questions cold and answering off the cuff, but immediately I found myself wishing that Stewart had answered differently. I found myself wishing he had instead said, "Of course San Francisco is different from Wasilla, but that doesn't make either of those places any less 'real'."

That idea of real Americans vs. fake Americans is insulting to the people on both sides and the more we play into that line of thinking the more we feed into the cycle that we've allowed to play out for far too long. America is a big place, with lots of different people who experience life here in vastly different ways for a variety of different reasons. Why should anyone consider my way more or less real (or more importantly, more or less valid) than anyone else's? Too often we treat politics as sport where I root for my team and you root for yours while neither of us acknowledge the fact that both of them have crummy seasons now and then, sometimes simultaneously. Time and time again brand loyalty trumps critical thought on both sides of the aisle as debate devolves into attempt after attempt at proving your opponent wrong, regardless of the merits of your argument. The entire point of engaging in a dialogue is lost when the sole intent is to capture the opponent's flag. There comes a time when we have to start to question the objectives of the cheerleaders for the "us vs. them" movement.

Which brings us to the Tea Party Convention of this past weekend.

Honestly, I get the sense that the vast majority of rank and file Tea Partiers are relatively normal people, like me but with radically different ideas as to what qualifies as "good politics". Just like the vast majority of boots on the ground protestors on the left who I met during the run up to the invasion of Iraq were normal people who felt passionately about that issue. That isn't a perfect analogy, I know, but the point I want to make is that I believe the Tea Party movement was likely started with the very best of intentions. That said, I think the Party as it stands today is a dangerous powder keg of mostly racially motivated white Americans who feel disenfranchised and left behind, but that's not how it had to be. It's just what happened when Glenn Beck co-opted the movement and decided to use it to fertilize his white, male, Christian victimhood narrative. Sadly, that resonated with a lot of people, poisoning the movement as a whole and rendering it, in my opinion, unsalvageable. And I think that's a shame.

While many of those on the left have a tough time staying motivated or focused for much longer than a cup of coffee, the right has always shown an admirable knack for mobilizing their troops and staying on message, whatever that message may be. And despite the fact that I am the farthest thing from a conservative, I think the Tea Party could have been a great political outlet for those on the right who are sick and tired of the two party system. For the good of American politics I wish the left could get it together enough to do something similar to be honest.

The keynote address for the Tea Party Convention was delivered last night by Sarah Palin. Here is part of the speech that made the one of the strongest impressions on me:

"But unlike the elitists who don't want to hear this message...I've travelled across this great country and I've talked to the patriotic men and women who make up the Tea Party movement and they're good and kind and selfless and they are deeply concerned about our country...the best of America can be found in places where patriots are brave enough and free enough to be able to stand up and speak up and where small businesses grow our economy one job at a time."

While not as dangerous or outright disingenuous as much of her earlier rhetoric (death panels, anyone), this is a troubling comment nonetheless. Palin is comfortably within her political wheelhouse when stoking fires of divisiveness, and this current Tea Party incarnation is a perfect vehicle for that. But coloring her supporters as "good, kind and selfless" while at the same time leaving the listener to draw his or her own conclusions about the the make up of the opposition is just so transparent and elementary. Which is why it is so discouraging that it seems to be working so well for so many on the right (especially when the memory of being called unpatriotic for simply stating an opposition to Bush II is so fresh in minds of so many on the left). What Palin peddles is simply the next evolution of Willie Horton style cynicism and it further underscores the sad fact that there are large swaths of America that WANT to be separated from those they consider different, because in many circles "different" has been redefined to mean "inferior", many times by the people standing at the microphones in the front of the room.

Until we can find a way to respect those whom we find ourselves in opposition to politically, we can expect to see the men and women we vote in to office continue to take advantage of these manufactured chasms between us. Think of the people you know in your life - friends, co-workers, family, etc. The vast majority of these people, despite their idiosyncrasies, are decent people who want the best for their family and their country. As easy as it is to forgive a relative his political proclivities because he is someone that you love, it's twice as simple to write off a perfect stranger as a lunatic or a moron when we simultaneously refuse to consider that their beliefs are held just as passionately as ours and for all the right reasons. Despite our disagreements on what is best for our nation or how to achieve it, we're going nowhere as long as we continue to allow ourselves to be labeled by those who seek only to benefit from keeping us separated. Beyond that, it dehumanizes the opposition which just makes it easier to disregard them entirely or more dangerously, hate them all together. And once we've reached that level, productive discourse is all but an impossibility.

I Disagree With The Narrative

2008-09-11T18:28:00.000-07:00

Tonight on Lou Dobbs I heard Lou and his talking heads going on about how terrible a week it has been for the Obama campaign and it made me realize that there are times when I inhabit a different reality than the one presented on TV. I mean, we all do, but in the realm of politics I'm starting to realize that I'm always going to be living in BizarroLand and all the while I'll be listening to windbags either pontificate on or apologize for the mythical liberal bias.

I may go insane at some point because of this.

What Lou and Co. were doubtlessly referring to is the backlash against Obama for the "pig in lipstick" comment that we decided to pay attention to this year instead of commiserating about 9/11 happening 7 years ago. Honestly, it's a push. Anyway, I've made a conscious effort to not get myself all twisted about this manufactured bullshit story, but I will grant myself permission to bitch about it as a part of the BIG PICTURE.

Did anyone actually listen to Obama's original comments, then the phony outrage, then Obama's response to that phony outrage? He basically called the Republicans out on being full of shit and shifting the focus away from the important issues and he did so with typical nonchalance and without a hint of aggression or defensiveness. I mean, I can see how that might be a turn off to some people the same way that pretty much everything Sarah Palin does makes me want to kick her in the face, but honestly, the guy fucking HANDLED it. Well. Anyone that did follow the whole story and still qualifies it as a net loss for Obama...I just...I just...I just live on a different planet than you do. And at the risk of exposing my Eastern liberal elitism, my planet is better. Seriously, it is.

And this is how it starts every time. Liberals as a whole and the Democrats as a party are a jumpy lot. The masses have fallen for the Palin Trap hook, line and sinker and the post convention bounce has been kinder to McCain than anticipated and the left is shitting a collective brick and bemoaning the loss of the election. It's sad to watch. And all the while the guy they elected to run for the presidency has remained totally cool, calm and collected - it's been impressive for anyone that is actually paying attention. However, in the midst of all the hand wringing and wasted energy forwarding nonsense emails about Palin banning books we're once again ALLOWING THEM TO DEFINE WHAT HIS HAPPENING.

Obama didn't lose this week except in the eyes of the media. Why? Because that makes the story better. It's obvious and apparent. Now go tell someone that. Don't let them define this as a loss for Obama - you know, the guy who laid out an educational plan this week and refused to get drawn into the losing game of identity politics. Stop rolling over for this kind of garbage. And when you clarify for someone that, "uh, no, actually he didn't say that at all, what he said was this" DO NOT let them paint you as defensive or desperate. That's another trick of the right - staying cooler under pressure than the left. Just because they say it doesn't make it true, and this year we've got to stop feeling guilty about wanting the true version of events to be publicized rather than the more compelling paranoid version that the right wants the hockey moms to buy into.

Speaking of which - the next time someone starts talking to you about hockey moms or "the Walmart crowd" or small town values stop the conversation right there and have them define for you exactly what they mean by small town values. Then have them explain to you why they believe that the conservatives have that market cornered and help them to understand how wrong they are. If this election is going to be decided on ultimately nebulous and inconsequential Americana buzzwords then we'll need to stake as strong a claim to that kind of bullshit as the Republicans have. I know that to a lot of liberals this seems like a waste of time and an exercise in direct conflict with practicing common sense, but look how good that attitude has paid off for the past 8 years.

Challenge the narrative. Don't roll your eyes and throw your hands up and let the thought of defeat bring you down. Obama only lost this week if we allow ourselves to feel defeated and if you listen to what he has said you can't feel anything but positive that this is the person that will connect with more Americans and will rightfully be elected into the Oval Office. And once you listen and digest, you spread the word. Keep the conservatives on their heels - let them know that we refuse to let this all happen again. This week was about laying out a plan for education - where was McCain?

I'll be the first to admit, at first blanch the Obama campaign has stumbled out of the post-convention gate. They haven't found a resonant message and have wilted in the face of the All Palin All The Time news cycle (and the next time someone mentions how rough the media has been on Sarah, ask them to cite specific examples from anywhere but the liberal blogosphere to back up this myth - press them on it and then ask them to defend her decision to seclude herself from the press as she runs for the second highest office in the land - don't they want to know as much as they can about her as a politician?) but I'm confident that the bloom is going to come off this rose and when it all comes down to it people are going to look at the reality of their economic situation and take it out on the party of Bush on Nov. 4th. But I don't want to count on that. I'm confident that Obama is going to find his stride and that his message will resonate when the dust settles.

But then again, I've also been guilty of underestimating the public's penchant to vote against it's own interests in the past.

I Watch Convention Speeches

2008-09-04T08:10:00.000-07:00

After watching some of the Republican National Convention last night, I guess I just feel the need to vent. I have stopped posting in a politics forum that I used to frequent because it just got too repetitive and annoying, so I walked away for a little while. But now I'm jonesing to talk about some of the stuff that has been on my mind so here I go again...on my own...going down the only road I've ever known...

I tuned in towards the very end of Mitt Romney's speech. As some of you know ("you" of course, being me, the only person reading this) I am a fan of professional wrestling. When a wrestler takes a microphone and starts barking into it for a few minutes they call it cutting a promo. Somewhere during that promo the wrestler will usually employ the use of a catch phrase - something strongly identified with the character they are portraying that is usually plastered on t-shirts and other merchandise. It's all part of the package. As I was watching Romney I just kept thinking that he was trying out a bunch of new catch phrases for his character, or the character of his party. I mean, the guy was delivering the applause lines well, I can't deny that. And when you've got a friendly audience, why waste the opportunity. But I'll be damned if the guy actually, you know, SAID anything beyond the call and response stuff with the audience. To use another term from pro wrestling, what Romney was doing was generating cheap heat with the crowd. Getting them to cheer for standard party line crap. And that's fine. It's probably the best use of Mitt these days and he's good at it. Yay rah rah and all that crap. That's what these conventions are for, so I really didn't have much of a problem with Romney's ultimately toothless cheerleading.

Then came Mike Huckabee. I like Mike Huckabee. I think he'd be a fun guy to attend a cookout with or maybe even talk politics at a bar with. He'd probably be the kind of guy you could disagree with completely and still really genuinely like when the dust settles. He's a good face for the GOP, I think, because despite his religious past, he comes off as nearly moderate in conversation. His beliefs may be quite conservative, but his presentation is ultimately non-threatening. His speech was a big step up from Romney's I think. He seemed to be speaking with an actual interest in improving the direction of the country - as though he truly believes that McCain is the go to guy to make things better, which I'm sure he does. So it was all together more palatable on the whole than was Mitt's. All the way up until that silly story at the end about the teacher and the desks and the veterans. Talk about taking the long way home. I know that the story was ultimately about respecting the military and that it's unthinkable to ever criticize someone taking the time to remind us how every dead Iraqi means another day of freedom for our children, but this was a bit much for me. It plays to the base though, so again, it doesn't really ruffle my feathers or anything. I mean, I AM watching their show.

Throughout the night CNN kept airing the pundit reaction to the festivities, getting comments from both sides of the aisle. It was the usual mix of "Everything is perfect and brilliant and an undeniable home run!" from the right and the smarmy, wishy-washy defensiveness from the left, although to their credit some of the liberal commentators agreed that the GOP was having a very strong outing.

Then came Rudy Guilliani. Now, I may not have the world's greatest memory, but I honestly can't remember a more short sighted and embarrassing performance in a major political address by anyone not named George W. Bush. Again, it was all applause lines with absolutely zero substance. And it wasn't even delivered well (although truthfully, Rudy has never been all that great at the podium to begin with). The fact that his borderline insane ramblings hit home with the conventioneers doesn't bother me. I'm sure a lot of the stuff I was rallying behind last week made conservatives feel the same way - that everyone in attendance at the DNC must be completely and undeniably stupid to cheer such nonsense. Again, that's what the convention is for, I get it. What bugs me is that the people out here in the real world actually think this is a person of prominence in the party and that he should be taken seriously. Last night Rudy Guilliani was awful, and the fact that close to 50% of the country probably thinks he was spot on with his commentary is something I'll probably never understand. That is, until I grow up, have kids and pay a mortgage. At least that is what my conservative relatives and friends have been telling me. For 16 years now anyway. One of these days.

The last speaker of the night was someone named Sarah Palin. You've probably never heard of her. Last week on Real Time with Bill Maher, on the day she was announced as John McCain's running mate, Michel Martin made the point of saying that the Democrats take Sarah Palin lightly at their own risk. Last night, the VP nominee proved that to be the case. She delivered a strong speech that will ultimately boost John McCain's standing with the conservative base. Never mind that the reality of the situation is that they are rallying behind someone CHOOSING LIFE!!!!! right in front of their eyes and not really 100% sold on Palin the wonder-mayor-governor-mom-wife-sorta-hot-but-not-really-ultra-everything-true-conservative-breath-of-fresh-air. They're not. I mean, they say they are, but I ain't buying it yet. Without the pregnant daughter and the dimwitted view of her situation as some kind of blessing rather than a perfect example of the failed policy of abstinence-only education that the governor so strongly supports, the Evangelicals would not be flocking to McCain the way they are now. The right is selling Palin as the great white hope and a better brand of change, but the reality is that she is doing more to move the party back to the Bushies than Karl Rove could hope for - and he should know as he is likely behind her ascendence to the #2 spot. It seems to me that this convention has a goal of rousing the single-issue, religious voters whose numbers gave Bush the final push to actually win an election in 2004. It's actually a smart move, seeing as McCain is making little to no headway with the moderates and independents. And seeing as he does not possess the attributes to fire up those millions, Palin was called in to bring them back home. I don't know if it was all planned to come out this way, but it's working and it might just end up being the dumb mistake that really does change this election.

I'm not saying that I think Obama will lose. I still think he is going to win and win strong. I really do. But I've been fooled before and I'm at the point where nothing surprises me. The Democrats have a history of shrinking from a fight and Palin has shown that she is not afraid to get dirty. I'm very anxious to see how they react to her bravado once we get past the conventions and into the trenches. I just know that Obama has stepped up to every challenge placed in front of him thus far, and while he certainly hasn't hit every pitch out of the park, I think his average has been better than good. He's too smart to get tripped up by the attacks that have been lobbed at him this week. What silenced and stymied John Kerry hasn't slowed Obama down at this point and his campaign has shown an uncanny ability to change the questions once the right supplies the answers. He's not throwing haymakers (despite his performance in Denver last week which should have been underscored with LL Cool J's "I'm Gonna Knock You Out"), but he's quick enough on his feet and good enough with the jab to keep the competition from getting too comfortable with him and I still think he is going to land that knock out blow before all is said and done. In order to do that though, Obama is going to have to make it very clear that the Republicans take him lightly at their own risk. This week has seen the right get EXTREMELY comfortable with their attempts at belittling the senator by labeling him a "community organizer," as though his humble beginnings in the public sphere are something he should be ashamed of. Already Obama’s camp has embraced these attacks and turned them on their ear, reminding Americans via an email sent out this morning that it is community organizers that give individuals a voice in response the failures of government. This message needs to be amplified by Obama as a way to remind every American that pitches in to make their community a better place that the GOP has no time for them – laughs at their efforts to exuberant response from their base.

This is the party that McCain has sold himself out to represent. The party of constant victimhood. The party that will forever blame the big liberal government for all the problems in America despite running the country lock, stock and barrel for 6 of the past 8 years. The party that is happy to poke fun at his elite education - as though actually voting for someone smarter than you is something to shy away from when there is a perfectly good drunken failure to vote for instead. As though a graduate of the most prestigious college in the country is someone we'd rather not have making important decisions. This is the party that is constantly crying foul at the “liberal” media – the same media that McCain once referred to as his base during his former run for the White House – you remember – the one where he made a principled stand against the kind of government George W. Bush would usher in to power. The same media that has been falling all over themselves for a week to gush about McCain’s genius Hail Mary choice of Sarah Palin while simultaneously declaring that her shortcomings as a political figure are decidedly out of bounds for political commentary because they may be intrinsically linked to her private life. This isn’t a liberal media – this is a prostitute media – one that will gladly bend over for anything new and worth a ratings point here or there. If nothing else, the Palin explosion in the past week should make some people understand that.

But no, it won’t. It will just lead to more of the same. If it’s not uber partisan, it’s not worth mentioning anymore, it seems, and as long as the GOP can tell their story about being held down by the evil journalists, even amidst this giant Sarah Palin circle jerk, without rebuttal from the weak-kneed Democrats or even the thoroughly neutered media itself, then they deserve to be the ones defining the issues (which, we should all remember, according to the McCain campaign, don’t really matter anyway).

It’s almost comical at this point. No, you know what, it is comical. During CNN’s severely flawed convention coverage last night (I’ll be honest here, I thought Fox news did a better job with the Dems for the hour I dared watch their coverage last week) they read Harry Reid’s response to Palin’s speech about a half an hour after all was said and done. In the press release Reid made mention that the attacks put forth by the governor were "shrill", among other things. For the next 5 minutes the gaggle of talking heads CNN had assembled all clucked about how Reid and the Democrats had better be careful with that kind of language because it reveals the sexist nature of their reaction to Palin. No one seemed to take issue with this assessment of the situation. Not one person, right of left said that after 4 hours of mocking Barack Obama, of using every sophomoric and sarcastic comment that an army of speechwriters could come up with to undercut and flay the Democratic nominee and attempt to make a joke of his campaign, not one person felt the need to point out that maybe the senate majority leader had a point. Shame on you – evil, liberal-agenda oriented media.

How about the fact that the shotgun wedding groom was flown into St. Paul from Alaska to pretend to love Palin's daughter and hold her hand all night? I mean, I get that we're all in on the joke at this point and that the whole ridiculous charade is "off limits" but are you telling me NOT ONE FUCKING PERSON is going to bother to mention what a sham this all is? What's the point of having Joe Biden on the ticket if he can't say "outrageous" things that expose the hypocrisy of the whole stupid game we're playing here? Are we this fucking numb that we will allow ourselves to be accomplices in this bold faced lie because we're afraid of being called mean and uncaring? I'm dumbstruck by the whole thing. It's simultaneously hysterical and terrifying. No one could get away with writing this movie. It'd never get made. And here we are, watching it all unfold before us, unrivaled in it's transparency, and we're all just nodding and playing along, wishing there was more fake butter on our popcorn.

Tonight John McCain takes the stage. Everyone in the world knows he simply does not have the talent to follow his running mate up. I’m assuming his speech will be boring and unremarkable in every way, which is sort of what I think the GOP is hoping as well. They know they hit their high note last night and now they just want the old guy to spike the ball and call it a convention. Maybe they’ll try to offer and olive branch to the moderates and independents they have given the shaft to this week, but I doubt it, nor should they, really. This convention will be deemed a success because of the work they have done to repair the base of the Republican Party, and more than anything else, the right has two horny teenagers to thank for that. Ultimately this week has been about half of America getting a crush on Sarah Palin and seeing as McCain has not a single policy to sell to the voting public (at least, that’s how it appears considering that this entire convention has been free of any of that kind of boring stuff) he oughta just close his eyes and enjoy the ride. This is, after all, what he signed up for when he decided he wanted to be President more than he wanted to be John McCain.

Eddie Vedder Show - 8/4/08

2008-08-05T11:31:00.000-07:00

Got a chance to see Eddie Vedder play the United Palace Theatre up in Washington Heights last night. Fantastic show that really rocked my socks, especially because I didn't think I'd be able to go until almost the last minute. When tickets went on sale last month through the 10 Club I tried to get them for either of the NYC shows and got shut out. I went to Ticketmaster a few days later and had no luck there either. I had accepted the fact that I'd miss the shows and bummed as I was I figured it was probably for the best, financially speaking.

On Sunday night I got an email from my friend Alan who had sent some video from the Boston show of Eddie playing an acoustic version of "Porch" and telling me that the show was amazing. So that had my itching to see the show. I was thinking about heading up to the theatre after work and trying to scalp a ticket, but on a whim went to Ticketmaster yesterday afternoon and found two tickets with no trouble. Weird.

Got to the show a little late - missed most of Liam Finn who was opening. Seemed like he was in the midst of a pretty cool set though, so I might have to check him out another time. We probably heard the last 2 or 3 songs in full once we got to our seats (about 3 rows from the very back of the orchestra - not bad all things considered) and he was making good use of several looping effects and/or pre-recorded tracks. Definitely a charged performance, to say the least.

Around 8:45 or so Eddie hit the stage, coming up through the crowd. Set was pretty sparse - he was playing surrounded by about 3 or 4 guitars and a couple other instruments, an old tape recorder and some amps. He sat for the whole show and played in front of a series of increasingly in-artistic backdrops. The first one was a city background which was cool, but the two that followed were no great shakes. The final sky backdrop was better, but a little hokey.

He opened with a couple of covers, "Walking The Cow" by Daniel Johnston and Cat Stevens' "Trouble". Not overly familiar with either tune, but I think he's played each a few times as sound checks at PJ shows. First thing I noticed was that his voice sounded very good. Sound system in the building was MUCH better than the Tweeter Center PJ show last month. Of course, they were only really mixing his vox with his guitar last night, so I would imagine that had something to do with it. I had never seen a show at this venue before, but to me it sounded great.

From there he went into some Pearl Jam material. "Around The Bend" sounded great and I realized how long it's been since I listened to that song. I've never been a huge fan of "I Am Mine" but stripping it down to just him and a guitar made it seem fresher and I really enjoyed it. "Dead Man Walking" has never been a favorite of mine either. This performance was fine, but the song just doesn't really do much for me - never really goes anywhere. It is cool, however, to see him go deep into the PJ catalogue and play songs you rarely hear the band play live to fill out his set list.

He briefly played part of "I'm Open" before "Man of the Hour" which was also fine, despite being another song that never really gets out of 1st gear for me. It's funny - writing this now I feel like I'm being very critical of the show, but to be honest, I never really thought "Oh, I don't like this song" or "I wish he was playing different stuff" as the show was progressing. I was just enjoying being there which I think had everything to do with accepting that I was going to miss the show in the first place then being surprised at the ticket availability.

"Sometimes" was a huge surprise for me (I haven't been keeping up with the set lists for his solo shows) and that really knocked me out. He followed that with a few songs from the "Into the Wild" soundtrack, which felt like a bit of a rock-opera to me. "Setting Forth", "No Ceiling", "Guaranteed", "Far Behind" (my personal favorite song from the album), and "Rise Up" were a great representation of the album and I loved the overall flow of that particular mini-set.

After the Into the Wild section, he played "Millworker" which is such a great story in a song. Really clean and crisp throughout the song, but then he veered way off course (in a good way) and went into a Townshend-esque guitar beating session which was just completely emphatic and brutal. Totally out of left field and a take on the song I wouldn't really have expected.

"Soon Forget" game next which reminded me how much I love Binaural. He followed that up with a song called "Goodbye" which I hadn't heard before. Not sure if it was one of his own or a cover, but it was great. Very emotional and one of the real highlights for me - love the new stuff.

Eddie had some fun next, saying he was going to play a sad song and goofing around with "Used To Work In Chicago" which basically ended up being about a verse's worth of set up for a limerick punchline. He followed that up with a brief "Walk Hard" cover which then lead into "Drifting", which did about as much to blow the doors off of the place as one could expect at a solo show with an acoustic guitar. Another rarity that was great to hear live and a song that really captures the very best of his talents, I think. He kept the pedal down for the rest of the main set, closing with singalongs "Hide Your Love Away" and "Porch" both of which were phenominal and tremendously energetic.

He took off for a minute or two, but came back quickly for the encore, which was a nice surprise. Not the encore, just that we didn't have to stand there clapping for 5 minutes before it happened. Second set opened with "Wishlist" which is another favorite that I haven't heard the full band play very much live. Funny bit here as he sort of sang the e-bow solo (I still love the mini-argument Ed and Stone get in over who should play that solo on the "Single Video Theory" DVD).

Highlight of the night came next in what appeared to be a completely impromptu rendition of "Let My Love Open The Door". Just completely thrilling. Before the song he said something along the lines of "I have no idea how this one is gonna go..." Well, it went pretty fucking great. He attempted to get the audience to sing in harmony at the end, which also went surprisingly well, considering they were having trouble even keeping a simple beat with the clapping along all night. Great moment and another cover that allowed Ed to really showcase where his voice is at right now. I honestly think he sounds as good as I've ever heard him live right now.

Liam Finn joined him for "Society" and then Ed played "Masters of War" after someone shouted it out as a request. Speaking of which, there seemed to be a lot of that going on last night. Not surprising, happens all the time with every band. That doesn't make it any less annoying though. Yeah, there are about 100 songs I've love to hear him play too, but why spend time bitching about what you're not hearing when there is such a great show happening right in front of you? Just something I don't get about people. And don't even get me started on the shitheads who just scream out whatever goes through their heads just to be heard. At least the clowns requesting their favorite song have some kind of misguided purpose. The other guys and gals might as well just scream "PAY ATTENTION TO ME!" and get it over with. Just do us a favor and take up your inferiority complex with your parents at Christmastime instead of in the middle of a show the rest of us are trying to enjoy.

Where was I?

Oh yeah, "Masters of War" was fucking intense. Saw this with the full band on the Vote For Change tour in 04, but I think this version was more gripping. I read a review today that mentioned how the whole place was completely silent and I was struck by the same thing. Eerie. Touching. "No More" followed and that felt sort of like the manufactured version of the Dylan tune. Where "Masters of War" shook the whole place, "No More" was more like a paint by numbers thing with a big "YOU PROTEST HERE!" neon sign flashing during the singalong parts. Still moving based on the subject matter alone, but not in the same league as "Masters" and it ended up suffering for it's placement.

Second set closed with "Arc", a tune from Riot Act that I've never been a huge fan of. Completely different experience live though, with Eddie looping his howling voice and adding to the loop until he goes off at the end, improving at the high end of his register. Really a striking performance.

He ended the show with "Hard Sun" for which he was joined by Liam Finn and Eliza (not sure of Eliza's last name, but she plays with Liam). This was a total 180 from the direction the show had taken in the second set with the lights coming up and everyone letting loose and celebrating the music. The three of them played along with a pre-recorded track, which led to at least one minor problem with Eddie repeating a chorus one time too many when the music shifted back to the verse, but he covered it well and it made the whole thing that much more memorable.

Eddie seemed in good spirits all night. He talked a little about his first trip to NYC and how the magnitude of playing the Garden and these solo shows in the same summer was not lost on him. He joked a bit here and there, talked up the venue, gave us a little politics (not much) and generally came off as though he was really enjoying the chance to do something a little different. I remember shows where, despite his enthusiasm for the music, it sometimes looked like touring was the last thing he ever wanted to do and I just feel really fortunate with the way he and the band have progressed because when I see them these days it looks like they are all 100% comfortable, happy and content, which has me hoping for many more great shows to come.

As we were walking out I was just shaking my head at how great a time I had. I'm honestly not even sure exactly what it was that made it such a great show to me - although I think sometimes it's the stuff you can't explain that makes certain concerts stand out. I just know that I had a great time and that it's easily one of the best shows I've ever been to. Not that I didn't expect Eddie to step up and deliver the goods, but even then my expectations were exceeded. Wish I was headed back up there tonight.

I Think...

2008-08-05T11:30:00.000-07:00

...I'm gonna start using this blog to post random shit. Like everyone else on the internet.

Just don't tell anyone.

TRAINING WHEELS SEASON 2: DAY 1 - IT BEGINS AGAIN

2007-05-22T12:52:00.000-07:00

On October 13, 2007 I'll be running my second marathon. This time it will be a little different. I'm doing this one on my own without the benefit of training with Team in Training. Nor will I be doing any fundraising for this event. If Phoenix was a personal test for me to see if I could complete a marathon, this is the next test I am choosing to challenge myself with. Can I train myself to run a marathon? It's another lead up to the main event of personal challenges: Can I run a marathon in under 4 hours? I'm not sure this will be that marathon, but it could be. As of now I'm starting to train for the second of a 5 race plan that ends where it began - Phoenix 2009. On the way I'll make stops in Connecticut, Alaska and Illinois, but now I'm getting ahead of myself.

My official training schedule begins on June 18, but I decided that I should do a little pre-season work to make sure I show up on the 18th ready to run. So this morning I woke up at 6:00 and went for a short 20 minute jog. It sucked. I haven't done a lot of running since January. I've probably been out half a dozen times, most recently as a part of the Revlon Run Walk on the first Saturday of May. Needless to say, I'm out of shape and out of practice. About two months back I had dropped close to 20 pounds and was feeling very good. Since then I have put most, if not all, of the weight back on and am feeling it with every step.

Here's something that sucks about running your second marathon vs. running your first: you no longer have the excuse of not knowing what to expect. When training for Phoenix I never knew exactly what to expect - how my body would react to certain things for instance. I ate like a horse telling myself "I'm running a marathon - I can eat anything I want." Turns out, not so much. I ended up putting on 5 pounds by the time it was all said and done, and my snug fitting running gear on race day made that all too obvious. So while I still expect the machine to demand a ton of fuel this time around, I'm going to have to be WAY more selective in my dietary choices, especially if I want to see that 20 pounds go away again, which I do.

The good thing is that the training schedule I have set up for myself (read: stole from the book "4 Months to a 4 Hour Marathon) seems slightly more intense than the Team in Training schedule for Phoenix. What that is going to mean for the knee I hurt last time remains to be seen, and God only knows if I'll be able to keep up with it, but I'm going to give it an honest try. I'm slightly skeptical about training directly from the book, seeing as everyone is different and reacts differently to certain workouts, but I figure it's worth a shot. In addition, I'm also in the process of reading a book called "Chi Running" that a friend loaned me and it has a lot of tips about form and injury prevention that I'm going to be trying to incorporate. It's tough though - sort of like trying to speak a foriegn language at first. Feels a little unnatural despite the benefits. That's another reason for this pre-training session - to give myself time to build a foundation for some new technique.

I realize that it was sort of a bummer that I never posted a post-marathon blog to tie things up. Well, a bummer for the 2 or 3 of you that read this thing. I'm not really sure what to say about that. Hopefully I'll make the time to do a Phoenix recap, but for a variety of reasons once the run was behind me I just couldn't bring myself to talk about it any more. It's really difficult to explain, but from what a gather a fairly common occurance. I had a bit of a post-marathon let down and even now the thought of revisiting that weekend makes me feel emotionally tired, despite the fact that my memories are almost 100% positive. I'm sorry if some of you guys felt like there was no payoff for sticking with me all those months. Hopefully one of these days I'll get around to telling that part of the story.

For now, I'm looking ahead to the next chapter.

S2D1
DISTANCE: 1.88 Miles
TOTAL DISTANCE: 1.88 Miles

Day One Hundred Fifty-Three: It Is What It Is

2007-01-11T14:13:00.000-08:00

I hate to do it like this, but I honestly don't have a ton of time tonight. Sadly this will be my last post before Sunday and Sunday is the marathon.

I'm not really at a point right now where I can sum any of this up properly, so I'll save that until after I run. Overall this has been an amazing experience and the only regret I have is the time and training I missed due to injury. I'm nervous and tentative heading into the weekend knowing that I've fallen off the training pace, but thanks to the accupuncture and the advice of my coaches my knee is feeling much better. Everyone keeps asking me how it is and all I can say is that it's as good as it's going to get.

I'm close to $5000.00 in fundraising, which is unreal. I don't even really know how to react to that except to say Thank You.

So now I'm all packed and more or less ready to go. The plane takes off tomorrow morning at 6:55 and the race starts on Sunday at 7:40AM, Phoenix time. If you get a chance to think of me and send me some good vibes that would be great.

I wish I had been able to keep up with this blog the way that I wanted to and I wish I wasn't so behind with entries so that I could give the proper type of send off today before the big run. Unfortunately my mind is spinning at a thousand miles per second and I'm trying to get out of my office so I can get some rest and get out to Phoenix in the right frame of mind.

Thank you to everyone who has read these entries and supported me for the past 5 months. Thanks to everyone who has donated to the cause. Thanks to our coaches and to my mentor Dragan, who have helped get me where I never thought I would be. Thanks especially to Jen, who got me involved to begin with and has made this such a fun and rewarding experience.

Next time you guys hear from me, I'll have run a marathon.

Wish me luck.

BD

DAY 148
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 6
TOTAL MILEAGE: 305.37

DAY 152
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 3
TOTAL MILEAGE: 308.37

Day One Hundred Forty-Six: A Zombie's Best Friend

2007-01-09T09:07:00.000-08:00

I am a zombie now. The walking dead. I might not move around as fluidly as I used to, but the only thing that can stop me is a bullet to the brain or someone lopping off my head. So unless there are any zombie hunters out in Phoenix, I'm going to finish this marathon. Zombie style.

That's my new mantra.

Along with my new mantra, I have a new best friend. You might remember him as he used to be one of my greatest adversaries. Funny how in times like this we begin to see our enemies in a new light, because as of last week the treadmill has become a trusted ally. In fact, the treadmill is directly responsible for The Resurrection. Well, the treadmill and the voodoo queen that sticks needles in my leg.

With my knee injury I need to run on flat surfaces. Any kind of hill, up or down, has been bringing with it some ridiculous pain on the outside of my left knee. The only way I can really describe it is that it feels as if there is something in there bouncing around that doesn't belong in there. Either that or someone is jabbing me with a pencil or a nail as I run and moving it around. Ironic that being jabbed with needles appears to be the solution to this problem, no?

You may not know this but Manhattan is actually very hilly terrain. I'm not basing that on any sort of research beyond the 200 some odd miles I've run in the city since August, so you'll forgive me if I ask you take my word on this one. Seriously, there are hills everywhere, especially in the damn park. Even at the Resevoir where the run is relatively flat you run into some slopes, especially now that there is a detour for some maintenance. Trust me, I tried it. About the flattest spot I could find to run was around The Great Lawn which is surrounded with a sidewalk and is about .52 miles around. Unfortunately, it's not the most convenient place to get to. I suppose I could have looked for a track at a local college or high school, but in the interest of time I decided to try out the old treadmill here at the gym where I work. Plus, I'm paying 25 bucks a month to use the damn thing, I might as well get my money's worth.

I have never liked training on a treadmill. It's boring and it makes me feel a little loopy afterwards. Like I'm on rollerskates or something. But sometimes you just do what you gotta do when you find yourself wandering the earth as a member of the undead and you excercise like a Jetson.

The ten miles I ran on the treadmill last week was extremely difficult. For starters, I hadn't run any kind of real distance in a month. Secondly, and I can't mention this enough - running on a treadmill is boring. Nothing changes. Nothing happens. Every once in a while someone new gets on the treadmill next to you, but that's about it. I couldn't wear my headphones because they don't sit right in my ears when I run without strapping them in with a headband, so it was just me and ten miles in the same place. But I did it. And I did it because of the treadmill. That's right. No hills on that sumbitch.

A ha. There's the secret.

After the wild success of Ten Mile Tuesday I decided to stick with what worked and head back to the treadmill for another run on Thursday. We're getting awful close to the run at this point though, and in the interest of tapering I was going to have to live with the ten miles being my last long run and now just concentrate on keeping my body moving (hopefully without much complaining coming from my left knee). I was sore from an accupuncture appointment the day before (shit feels like a charlie horse for two days afterwards) and from the 10 miles on Tuesday, but better to run through that soreness than totally tighten up in Phoenix leading to a major league crash and burn. So I set the speed for a 10:54 mile and started running. And because it was a treadmill nothing happened of any note until I stopped running. But on the bright side, it felt good and my knee had no complaints to register.

Another 5 miles in the books thanks to my new best friend.

But sometimes you've gotta do things on your own and you can't bring your best friends along with you.

Which is exactly what happened last Saturday when I went back to Central Park for my last weekend group run around the 6 mile loop in Central Park...

DAY 146
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 5
TOTAL MILEAGE: 296.37

Day One Hundred Forty-Six: Back From The Dead

2007-01-04T08:09:00.000-08:00

What can I say?

This past month has sucked. I've touched on it all before, but I guess I'll just make sure to catch everyone up by saying that right after Thanksgiving I hurt myself. It's a pretty common injury for new runners who's bodies aren't used to the strain of the kind of training we have been doing. Basically there is a tendon that runs down the outside of your leg from the hip to the ankle and mine became too tight which was causing a lot of pain in my left knee when I ran. I don't know if I'm a big baby or what, but holy crap it really really hurt. I tried to rest it (along with the recommended icing and stretching) and none of that seemed to be working. So finally in late December I started seeing an accupuncturist.

This past Tuesday I ran 10 miles on the treadmill which was the longest I had run since December 2 when I kicked out 12 in the park before I had to stop because of my knee. The great news is that my IT band didn't act up at all and I was able to finish the run. The not so great news is that 10 miles was really really tough on me and I feel like the 5 weeks that I have been hurt has done some serious damage to my training (obviously). This week I had been giving some serious thought to transferring my the funds I have raised to a Spring event and starting the whole process over in February and running the San Diego Marathon instead of Phoenix. Trust me, it's really the last thing I wanted to do - second to last thing actually because the LAST thing I want to do is go to Phoenix and not finish because of an injury. I won't really be able to deal with that.

Last night we had our Send Off meeting where we got together with the rest of the team and got some final instructions about tapering as well as going over our schedule once we get to Phoenix. I spoke with Ramon before the meeting to voice my concerns about my injury and my conditioning. He told me that if I can run 10 miles I can run a marathon and that he thinks I should come to Phoenix. He said that the last 6 miles are going to be hard for everyone and that as long as I am very cautious with my pacing I should have no problem. I don't know how much of that was real and how much of it was motivational coaching, but you know what? Fuck it, I'm going to Phoenix. This is the run that I have been training for and this is the run that I have been begging people to donate for and this is the run that I want to finish. I have absolutely no idea how it's going to go down. I don't know if the route is going to be flat enough to not bother my knee (both up and down slopes really make it sing). I don't know if I'm going to have the wind to finish and even if I have the wind, injury or no I don't know that my body is really ready at this point. I don't know if I'm going to have to walk a few miles and if that is the case how I'll respond to that mentally.

I just don't know. Which is pretty freakin scary. But fuck it, I'm going to Phoenix. I mean, everyone is nervous for their first marathon I suppose, but not having trained for the past 5 weeks just adds too many questions and I'm not so good with questions that I can't answer. I asked Ramon last night if I should try to squeeze in a long run and he said absolutely not. I asked if I should try to run on some hills to see how my knee responds and he said absolutely not. If it didn't go well, what do I do then? Basically he said there is nothing I can do at this point that is going to prepare me any better for the marathon except to taper and take care of myself. So I've got to just let all these questions I have go unanswered until I actually get out there on the course in Phoenix and then I'll find out if I can actually run a marathon or not.

Yeah, I'm terrified.

But fuck it, I'm going to Phoenix.

There's this song that's been in my head the past couple of days called "My Poor Brain" by the Foo Fighters - one line especially. At one point Dave Grohl sings "Sometimes I feel I'm gettin stuck between the handshake and the fuck." That's sort of where I have been the past few weeks which is why it's been really difficult for me to continue with this blog not knowing if I was going to be able to come through and finish this amazing thing that I've started. The most frustrating thing about my situation was that it wasn't due to a lack of will or dedication on my part but simply because my body wasn't working the way I needed it to work. I didn't (and honestly I still don't) know if I'm going to be able to do what I set out to do on that first morning of practice way back in August almost 300 miles and over $4500.00 dollars ago.

But you know what?

Yeah, you know.

See you in Phoenix.

Here's a wrap up of what has passed for training recently:

There were a couple of aborted runs that were honestly less than 2 miles before I had to turn back and walk home. I'll leave those days out because honestly, I don't even really remember when they were and never bothered to track my mileage. I've also done a day or two of cross training every week to try and keep myself somewhat in shape (tell that to the 5 pounds I have put on).

DAY 133
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 6.26
TOTAL MILEAGE: 275.76

DAY 135
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 5.61
TOTAL MILEAGE: 281.37

DAY 144
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 10
TOTAL MILEAGE: 291.37

Updates to follow on my fundraising progress and what accupuncture feels like (I'll give you a hint: it feels like someone sticking needles in you).

Sorry I've been gone so long. Hope you stuck with me.

BD

Day One Hundred Twenty Six - Good News and Bad News

2006-12-15T09:00:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I updated. Call it a mixture of things with the holiday season and work and all that crap. But honestly, the real reason is that my leg is still a mess and I've been pretty depressed about that for the past couple of weeks. I've done some cross training which seems fine, but as soon as I try to run it starts to get really painful. The last time I tried was this past Monday and I couldn't even make it two miles. Sucks. Ass. I've been told to try an acupuncturist, so I'm making that appointment today, as even with lots of rest I can still feel some pain just simmering beneath the surface waiting for me to try and run. Back out tomorrow morning to see what I can do, but I'm honestly not very confident. Officially less than a month to go at this point and I'm not thrilled with the prospect of running this thing with an IT problem. However, if I have to crawl through Phoenix with a bloody stump I WILL finish this run.

So that is the glass half empty portion of this update.

And now for the glass half full part:

Today I reached TNT's fundraising goal of $3800.00! I sent out my final letter yesterday to friends and family and recieved several donations overnight. Then today I sent the letter out to my co-workers and one of them came through with the final $100.00 donation to send me over the edge. Unbelievable, right? You'd think I'd just be floating on air all day right? It's a pretty big accomplishment.

Yeah, you'd think so. But of course, in typical Bill fashion I fouled the whole thing up with a crucial typo in the letter I sent out to my co-workers. I added a zero to my fundraising total which made me look FAR more industrious than I actually am. I quickly sent out a correction email, but I still look like the clown that doesn't proof read which would seem much less important if my job weren't so detail oriented.

Well, it'll keep me humble at any rate. Which is good, because while I have received the necessary amount to fulfill my fundraising requirements I still have a ways to go to reach my personal goal of $4500.00, so I'll just keep on trucking.

Thanks so much to all those who have donated. I'm amazed at your collective generosity.

Now let's just hope my leg doesn't fall off in trying to come through on my part of the deal.

Thanks guys.

BD

Day One Hundred Thirteen - Unlucky Day

2006-12-05T07:08:00.000-08:00

Another Saturday morning, another group run in Central Park. Got there a little before 8:00 and talked to Christine, one of the coaches, about my IT Band issues. She gave me the same advice that Steve gave me last week and told me to take it easy and see how far I could go. We were scheduled to run anywhere between 16 and 20 miles and I was cautiously optimistic that I might be able to crank out the minimum. I ran with Jen and Charlotte for the first 5 miles or so and then C split off to run a New York Road Runners race - it's one of the last qualifying races for next year's NYC Marathon (you have to run 9 races with NYRR to qualify) and happened to be taking place in the park during our Saturday practice. So Jen and I continued on around on a second 6 mile loop.

Right at the start of the run I knew my knee was going to start hurting exactly the way it did last week. I started feeling some pain around the 3rd mile. By the 6th mile I was wincing and having trouble with inclines and declines. It was strange though because when we were on a flat surface I felt great and like I could go all day. But then we'd hit another hill (you really have no idea how hilly Central Park is) and I would feel as though I couldn't go another 10 feet. I started to overcompensate and limp around mile 11 and knew that there was no way I would make 16. I decided to err on the side of caution and called it a day at 12 as Jen continued on.

I was pissed. It's just a frustrating injury when you know that there's not much you can do for it besides rest and I'm supposed to get 2 20 mile runs in over the next 3 weeks or so. I spoke with our head coach Ramon and he told me more of the same regarding the injury, although he said that I was OK time-wise and that I should be feeling better in plenty of time for the marathon, but I'm still anxious about the whole thing. I've been icing my leg and stretching as well, but I can still feel it under there. I didn't want to feel like such a quitter after talking to Ramon so I decided to try for a short 1.7 mile loop just to boost my distance a little bit, but I only made it to the first hill and then had to stop and walk back to the bag watch area. It sucked. Especially when, as I was stretching, runners who had finished 16 or 18 miles already started coming in.

Taking a week off from running. I'm supposed to be cross training, but I skipped yesterday. I have to go today, but I'm nervous about my knee hurting again and pushing my recovery back another 2 days. We're supposed to run a 10k this Sunday for time but I have to work so I'll have to get my long run in on Saturday sometime and I'm pretty nervous about that. Wish me luck.

In great news - I'm only $175.00 away from reaching my fundraising minimum! My step brother Jay and his fiance Jen get a huge thank you today as does my best friend The Rold, who is pretty much the greatest guy I know - and I write this with the full knowledge that he will NEVER read this blog.

All right, that's all for me. I'm gonna feel sorry for myself for a little while and then go to the gym and try not to hurt myself.

Take care.

DAY 113
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 12
TOTAL MILEAGE: 269.5

PS - Congratulations to my friends Dan and Bridget who got engaged Sunday night at the foot of the most romantic statue of Abe Lincoln in all of New York City. Good luck guys.

Day One Hundred Nine - Same IT, Different Day

2006-12-01T08:43:00.000-08:00

Our Wednesday evening practice was switch to Tuesday this week throwing the world into disarray. Thus, the lack of blogging this week. Also, I've been extremely lazy and unmotivated pretty much since Thanksgiving, give or take. This happens between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I kinda don't get why they don't just give us the whole month off to recharge, but whatever.

So, if you remember from Sunday I kinda screwed up my IT band and wasn't feeling so hot about it. I kept icing it off and on through Monday night and on Tuesday headed over to practice. G-Rocks punked out so she could brown nose at her new job, so it was up to me, Drew and Charlotte to keep things going for the team. I guess once you win the Spirit T you can just coast the rest of the way.

Drew and I were both feeling a little apprehensive about the run because we were both nursing sore knees. The gist of this week's practice was pacing. Warm up for 5 - 8 minutes, then run at Marathon Pace for a little over a mile, then turn back and run the second half of practice FASTER than Marathon Pace, just to give us an idea of where we should be with our effort levels. We were timing ourselves to the halfway point and then back, and our time back should have beaten our time out by around 3 minutes. Got it? It doesn't really matter if you don't.

The entire run was 5.5 miles - not really long enough to really push my IT band, but long enough for me to know that it hasn't gone away. Around the 4th mile I started to feel it again and by the end of the run I was hurting. But I was also pushing myself effort wise, so hopefully I can get some more distance out of it if I am keeping things slow on Saturday morning. We shall see. Still nervous with the race coming up, but what can you do? Just keep running and resting it I guess. For the record, ran out in 27:34 and back in just over 24:00, so I guess I did it right.

Drew really did a number on his IT band and is in rough shape right now. Compared to him I've got it easy, so let's all hope he can get enough rest to heal up in the next few weeks. His wind is good for the long run, it's just keeping the wheels moving, you know? I'll join Jen in sending whatever good vibes I've got his way.

Priming up for another 18 tomorrow. You know I'll tell you how it goes.

DAY 109
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 5.5
TOTAL MILEAGE: 257.5

Day One Hundred Seven - Oh ShIT

2006-11-27T13:05:00.000-08:00

It happened yesterday. I joined the club. Or the band, rather. The non-exclusive ranks of Team In Training members with screwed up IT bands grew by one more. Dammit.

Your IT band is a ligament (I believe) that runs down the outside of your leg from your hip to your ankle. So far Jen has struggled with an IT injury as has Drew. Yesterday, halfway through my planned run mine acted up on me and I understood their pain.

The run started off just fine. Woke up a little later than I expected but got out there around 11:00. I was going to do two 6 mile loops in the park as we had an "off" week after our 18 miler last Saturday in Jersey. I started out slowly as I was looking to conserve some energy and complete my second loop faster than my first. Like Saturday I was having some problems really getting into the run and feeling good. A couple of times I found my zen area and lost myself in the day, but mostly I was right there, running, feeling every step and working the whole way. Around the 3 mile mark I noticed my ankle was bothering me, but I practiced a little mind over matter and wouldn't let myself get obsessed with the notion that I was aware of the pain because I was convinced I had 9 miles to go. After that I was able to knock out the next two miles without incedent and only realized that the day wasn't really going my way until I had to promise myself I'd take a break once I crested the Harlem Hill, about half way through the run. I still had a ways to go before the break, but knowing it was there kept me moving...slowly.

I took my break half way up the hill at a water fountain that I realized had been shut off. I had brought a bottle with me, but woulda liked something colder. I slurped down my goo, took a couple gulps of water and headed back out to finish up the run. I knew immediately that things were not good. My knee was very tight and every step hurt quite a bit. It was more than discomfort - it was pain. I finished the hill and hopped off to the side and stretched a bit. I was scared that I had hurt my IT band and thought I would feel it in the stretch we do that isolates the ligament. Nothing. I contemplated "sucking it up" and running the six miles I had left but decided that if I was hurting now I would be hurting a lot worse if I forced things and that would probably mean a longer recovery. With just 6 weeks until Phoenix, I decided to err on the side of caution (and feel like a big baby in doing so). I walked about a half a mile or so and felt OK, only really feeling the strain on my knee when I was going downhill. I stretched and had trouble balancing on my left leg. I headed home, less than thrilled with the day and nervous about an injury this late in the training.

Ice, ice, ice. My knee was achey throughout the day but I iced it three times and elevated it for the most part, staying off it when I could. Watching the Giants lose miserably yesterday did nothing to better my mood. I slept fitfully last night (although that didn't really have much to do with the leg I don't think) and woke up feeling surprisingly better this morning. It's definitely under the surface though and I know that the next time I run it's going to come back. I just don't know how bad it's gonna be.

Taking today off and then we have a rescheduled Team practice tomorrow night instead of Wednesday. I'll talk to some coaches there and hopefully they can give me some advice and I can get this behind me ASAP. Might be a lot of cross training in my future. We'll see.

The Good News: I came back from Thanksgiving break to find that I have crossed the $3400.00 mark in fundraising! Only $375 to go to my minimum and getting dangerously close to being close to my goal of $4500.00. Huge huge huge thanks to Jeff and Tracey Sutch and Toni Lee, who are all amazingly generous friends who I hope I can repay someday. Also thanks to mom for the new training sneakers. Christmas came early and I can now break in my race shoes. Let's just hope I can do so without a limp.

DAY 107
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 6.2
TOTAL MILEAGE: 252

Day One Hundred Six - Punching The Clock

2006-11-27T10:26:00.000-08:00

Headed out for a run on Saturday morning and it never felt more like work. Seriously, I just couldn't get motivated. I was feeling pretty good after my Thanksgiving run at the Manchester Road Race but my calves and ankle tightened up on me late in the day on Friday and I was feeling no relief on Saturday when I woke up. Weird. I felt like I took the downhill too fast and did some damage to myself during the road race, but honestly, I haven't really felt 100% since the 18.2 we did on the trails last week.

Regardless, I got my shit together and headed out to do what I thought would be a 5 or 6 mile run in my mom's neighborhood. It was a little colder than I had expected and I had a difficult time warming up. My legs weren't feeling great and I couldn't find my rhythm to save my life. Common problem I'm told. Anyway, I just wasn't running well to say the least and was having some major difficulty breaking into the zone. It was work every step of the way, which can make a mile seem like 10 miles sometimes. The course started out as an out and back and then I added a loop to the end. I knew as I was heading back in that it was much shorter than I had anticipated. By the time I got back to her place my mother was surprised to see me as I told her I would be gone for an hour or so and got back in about 45 minutes.

Not a great run by any stretch. I went to mapmyrun.com today and got the mileage, which was OK for an off day, but those seem to be piling up lately and with race day fast approaching it's making me a little bit nervous.

DAY 106
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 4.83
TOTAL MILEAGE: 245.8

Day One Hundred Four - Gobble Gobble

2006-11-27T07:21:00.000-08:00

I gotta tell you guys - that 18.2 miles way back on Day 99 WRECKED me. Seriously. I was really hurting for most of the weekend and into the early part of Monday. And then I got lazy. Well, not exactly...OK, yeah, lazy. I did nothing on Monday and told myself I would wake up early on Tuesday to run before work, as I was taking a train home on Tuesday night. That...didn't happen. Man, I really do wish I could run in the morning before work, but I have a mental block or something. Just can't do it. Course, a few months back I couldn't run more than 4 miles comfortably, so I guess it's more that I "won't" do it. Yay rah rah.

Anycrap, got back to CT on Tuesday night, which is always a nice break from the city with plans to run on Wednesday. And then that didn't happen either. I did go to The Sports Authority and to Dick's Sporting Goods and got some fancy new running duds and accessories though, so I was running in spirit.

On Thursday though, the run was unavoidable. Every Thanksgiving in Manchester, Connecticut they run the Manchester Road Race. This year was the 70th running (which, I think, makes it the oldest continuously run road race in the US). I grew up drinking hot chocolate and watching my dad run the race while other members of my family volunteered with the race committee, so it's something that I've been around for a long time. In high school my sister ran one year with my father and several friends of mine made it an annual tradition. I didn't run until my sophomore year of college. That was the last year my father ran and my step brother and I joined him. That was a miserable run. I hadn't run one mile to train and just went out and ran like hell for 47 some-odd minutes. It was cold and sleeting and afterwards my legs tightened up and I couldn't take a flight of stairs for days. It was like the aftermath of my first day of training in August, but worse. Probably one of the dumbest things I have ever done.

Last year I decided I wanted to run the race again. Being older and wiser I actually trained this time, although not well. Fortunately a few family members decided they wanted to run as well. My cousin Peter is a big time competitive runner, so he and his parents were in right off the bat. Oh yeah, Peter was in 6th grade at the time and it was just a given that he was going to finish first. Yeah, the kid is fast. Then my cousin Jessica and my Uncle John joined the fun. We all went and ran in the snow last year and had a great time. We finished in a loose group (well, Peter was way ahead of us) right around the 43 minute mark.

This year everyone was back from last year and we actually added a few new runners. Cousin Jessica how has a better half (a sprinter, actually) and my Auntie Po decided to join in on the fun. I woke up Thursday and it was pouring. The temperature was somewhere around 40 degrees or so. Basically it was miserable. I hopped in the car and headed over to my Uncle Matt's place where we were all meeting. I scarfed down an english muffin and we all piled into Uncle Mart's SUV and headed over to Main Street in Manchester. We parked about half a mile from the Army/Navy hall where we usually meet up (along with half of the other 10,000 or so runners). The rain had let up and we made our way over to the hall and found a good spot to stash our stuff. After 45 minutes or so we made our way out to the starting line. Peter filed in with the 30 - 35 minute group and we pushed our way through the crowd to the back as the national anthem played and the wheelchair participants started the race. At this point it started to absolutely pour and it was a challenge to keep warm while waiting for the start of the race. I expected the crowds to be thinner with the terrible weather, but it was the most crowded I ever remember it (we saw someone with a 10,000 number on their chest which means at least that many runners registered for the race, not to mention bums like me that just show up and run). We couldn't even make it under the ropes into the field of runners until the race began and the pack in front of us thinned out.

When the mass of humanity started moving we all filed forward. We reached the starting line at around 2:45. I started my watch and moved as far to the outside as I could and started running. Or trying to anyway. Running in a pack like that is quite the challenge, especially with spectators on the side of the path and rain soaking the road. I was weaving in and out of traffic, but couldn't really get moving. I hit the one mile mark at 12:00 on the official clock (about 9:15 by my watch) and felt good because I had navigated the thickest crowds and was only off my mile goal by 45 seconds. The entire second mile is one long hill and it was here where the training from the past two and a half months really kicked in. The crowd was still pretty heavy and I found myself zig-zagging back and forth and stuck behind a slow moving group a few times, but mostly I got creative and ran on front lawns or through huge puddles to keep my momentum (at one point I ran past a group of spectators and someone shouted "watch out, he's a splasher").

As I crested the hill I started feeling really good. I was definitely moving at a good clip and knew that the hardest part of the run was behind me. I cruised into the downhill section probably a little too fast, but just kept going as I was feeling really good now. I hit the three mile mark and refused to check the time as I was confident in my pace and didn't want to get in my own head if I was ahead or behind by a significant amount. I was running my race and feeling good. The crowds were amazing throughout, as they always are with this run, and there were several bands and people with signs (and adult beverages) braving the elements to cheer us on. Twice I passed houses with large gatherings of people where radios were blaring the theme from Rocky and I'll tell you something - that shit works.

I hit the four mile mark and let it rip. I was psyched to know how much I had left in the tank and knowing I was going to finish strong had me feeling no pain, no cold, no rain. I could see the finish now and tried to throw it up one more gear, but I was giving it everything I had. The desire to go faster was there, I just didn't have the mechanics. As I approached the shoots I heard footsteps behind me. I was trying to hold off whoever was advancing on me when I got passed...

...by a guy...

...in a banana costume.

So much for my pride.

I crossed the finish line at 38:55, right behind Banana Guy. The upside was that I had finished the race in the time I had set out to run it. 4.74 miles in less than 40 minutes. I met up with Peter at the Army/Navy hall. He had finished in 34 minutes. The rest of our group trickled in over the next few minutes. Everyone finished well and we all shared war stories of the weather and some of the characters out on the course. Naked Guy (actually wearing a thong of some sort) was a favorite of Po's while I prefer the tradition of The Blues Brothers, who run every year. Heading back to the car in through the rain was actually the worst part of the whole affair. With the weather you'd think that one in eight of us would have thought to bring maybe a towel, a change of clothes or even an umbrella.

Soaked and cold we got back to Uncle Matt's with plenty of time to head back home, shower, get ourselves warmed up and head back in time for our Thanksgiving meal. Next year we run again, and we're looking to expand our numbers. Maybe Jen will make the trip to CT to take part in the tradition.

As for you Banana Guy - you may have won this time, but I'll be back.

DAY 104
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 4.74
TOTAL MILEAGE: 240.97

Day Ninety Nine - Here Comes The Pain Again

2006-11-20T08:40:00.000-08:00

My blog is self referential and hip.

See, way back in the beginning of this whole endeavor I titled my very second post "Here Comes The Pain" because I was really sore after our first day of running.

Then just last week I titled a post "Here Comes The Rain Again" after the Eurythmics song, because it seems like it's been raining a lot lately while I've been out running.

So now today, I title the post for Saturday's run "Here Comes The Pain Again" because I'm really sore and sorta funny.

So yeah, Saturday was our "Trails" day. The Team members all carpooled (is that one word) out to Jersey to run on these crazy nature trails out near Rutgers. I met up with Jen and Drew around 6:45 Saturday morning and we took a cab up to Charlotte's place where we mooched a ride off of her because she has a car and stuff. On the ride we discussed bad tattoos with Charlotte winning the prize for best "Worst Tattoo Story." The Grinch, smoking a joint. You could try to top that, but you would fail. Fortunately for everyone, this is not a tattoo that she has on her person, but rather one that she saw.

We got to the meeting spot and started stretching as Ramon explained the course. And it go a little sump like dis: 4 miles out (approx.) there would be a water station. Then another one at the 6 mile mark and the third and final station at the 7.5 mile mark. A mile and a half past that we'd find a fence where we would turn around and come back. 9 miles out, 9 back. Quick math tells us what? 18 miles total. The folks running the Honolulu marathon would continue on for another mile after that, but I didn't pay too much attention to their instructions because they didn't really effect me personally.

Then we started running.

We ran for a long...long time.

I made the mistake of starting near the front of the pack and pacing myself with some of the more experienced runners. We were going at a 9:30 or 10 minute mile, so not breaking any land speed records, but a good clip for the distance we were covering. The first few miles felt pretty rugged and my legs were heavy. I wasn't finding the groove and was pretty much terrified of the distance. Was finally able to lose myself in thoughts other than "take another step, good, now again, with the left foot" at about the 3 mile mark and finally felt like I might be able to cover the miles. Hit the first water station as Ramon was pulling into the parking lot next to it and he hollared something in our general direction, but I have no idea what it was. It felt good to know I had covered 4 miles in less than 40 minutes, but the thought of another 14 was less comforting. A few minutes later I got my goo on and plowed ahead.

Between here and the turnaround point not much happened. I ran. I felt OK. My drawers kept hitching up on me and I had the not too pleasant realization that I probably could have used a little more vaseline between my legs - yeah, I'm taking you there with me today kids. Of course, this realization is particularly unsettling knowing you've got about 11 miles to go on the run. And having taken a shower after rubbing my legs raw once before, I knew exactly what I was looking forward to. And yet I kept running. I know Lance Armstrong beat testicular cancer and all that, but seriously, I think I just redefined the heart of a champion.

About a mile or two before the turnaround there was a somewhat severe decline in the trail and then just as quickly an incline. There was water on both sides of the trail (it was a very pretty run) and there were all these dam type things along the way to even the levels out...or something. Anyway, I realized on the down slope that I had a bit of a problem developing in my legs. My thighs were OK as long as I was moving forward on a flat surface, but when I went downhill I realized that they had sort of tightened up on me. I figured I was pushing myself a little too hard, but at the same time figured that the damage had been done and I might as well keep up the pace.

Yeah, I'm real stupid.

So I got out to the 9 mile marker and the crew I was running with continued on as they were doing 20. I goo'd up again and started back. About 5 minutes into the 2nd half of the run I passed a group who asked me how far they were from the marker. I told them 2 or 3 minutes because I can't count. I then passed Drew and we did that thing where we made fists and bumped our knuckles together. While running. Badasses. Big time.

Here's where I get a little crazy. On the way out, about a mile from the turnaround, a girl had passed me on her way back. I have noticed her over the past few weeks and she is a heck of a runner. So I didn't feel so bad knowing she was whipping my ass time wise. It's not about speed, after all, it's about covering the miles. But, I do get competitive. Besides her, I was the first person coming back from the 18 mile marker. I wasn't concerning myself with "winning" or anything like that, I just wanted to maintain my pace, and seeing the other people 5 and 10 and 15 minutes behind me on my way back, I wanted to make sure that I didn't get passed by too many coming back as it would indicate a real slow down on my part.

Make sense? Probably not, but it is what it is.

I guess it was the 12 mile marker or so when I realized I was in some serious trouble. First of all, for all the talk about how running on the trails would be easier on our legs and joints, I was hurting in a big way from the surface. The tops of my feet were KILLING me because I was using all sorts of muscles to balance, correct myself and overcompensate for pebbles and roots I was stepping on. Second, my ankles were feeling it too...although that could have been the distance, I don't know. Finally, my knees, which have been my nemesys since this started were starting to sing as well. This pain, together with the soreness in my thighs, was telling me that finishing this run was going to be a big problem. Especially with 6 miles left.

At the final water station I stopped to hydrate and suck down one final goo. I talked to Christine (another coach) about how I screwed up my pace and she warned me to be careful of that on race day as I will definitely want to do the second half of the run faster than the first. I don't know where I'm gonna get that discipline, but I gotta find it somewhere soon. At this point another runner showed up at the water station. One of the 20 milers. Great. I was getting smoked by a guy running 2 more miles than I was. Talk about demoralizing. Christine wished me a good 4 miles and I was off.

And that's when it all slammed into me at full force. My groin had tightened up while I was chatting and that was sort of the final straw. I did what I could to create the illusion of running, but mostly I was just moving forward. 20 Mile Guy blew past me a minute later and I watched him get smaller and smaller on the trail ahead of me. I stopped and walked across a rock walkway on the path that stretched about a quarter of a mile or so then did my best to finish running. That last 4 miles were a bear and I would have gladly run the first 14 again instead of them. I had heard that you hit a wall at 16 miles, and while I'm sure that was a huge part of it, the soreness in my groin and the pain in my joints were telling me that I had gone about this run all wrong. I was so relieved to see the finish, but I was also scared to stop moving as I figured I would tighten up even more.

I got back to the parking lot and stretched the best I could. The coaches and mentors had brought food for us (a feast of delicious carbs) and I rocked a bagel and about a liter of gatorade. I waited and talked to some other folks about the run and heard some injury horror stories. I actually loosened up a bit after stretching and was feeling OK...sore, but OK. Jen, Drew and Charlotte all finished together and I found out Drew wrecked his IT band pretty good, so I was feeling even better about my condition. That's a tough injury and I could tell he was hurting. But he sucked it up and finished (20 miles actually!) and I'm sure he'll be OK. Jen and Char were great too and in tremendous spirits.

The ride home was smelly, but for the most part everyone was in good spirits despite Drew's injury and I think more than anything we were all sorta proud of ourselves for finishing the run. It's amazing to think that 3 months ago we had a hard time with 5 miles and now Jen is saying things like "at the end of it I knew I could have gone another 2 miles." That's amazing. Yeah, I screwed up my pace and have a lot or work to do before Phoenix, but all in all, I'm happy with Saturday. We all had our own challenges and we came through relatively strong. And that's something.

When they dropped me off in Manhattan I got out of the car and realized how shitty the next two days were going to be as far as getting around was concerned. I wasn't wrong. It's Monday around noon as I write this and my knees are still a little achey and my thighs are still slightly tight. But I can take stairs again and tonight I'll be back on that Central Park Loop. I'll just take things a little slower.

Thanks for reading this ridiculously long entry.

More later.

DAY 99
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 18.2
TOTAL MILEAGE: 236.23

PS - I finished in 2:58:57. What, you think I'm gonna go way too fast and screw up my legs and not give my time? (Sadly, yes, that is breakneck speed for me).

Day Ninety Six - I AM THE FASTEST MAN ALIVE!!!

2006-11-16T16:22:00.000-08:00

(Who lives in my apartment. The dead guy in the closet was pretty fast though.)

Last night we did the official test that I BS's on my own last week on the treadmill. 1 mile repeats, timed. Basically we warmed up to a start line, ran a mile wicked fast, did a recovery run of about .7 miles and repeated the process two more times. Good turnout from the Team and a nice warm night to run in.

I started off the first mile obscenely fast (by my un-quick standards). I was running with Drew, who is nursing a bum ankle. He told me that I would probably out-pace him, but I wasn't so sure, he looked pretty fast to me. About a quarter mile in I did break away a bit and started moving at a pretty good pace. I was convinced that I would never be able to keep it up and that I was doing some serious damage to my chances at consistency with the next two timed miles, but at some point I just said screw it and ran as hard as I could to see how I could do if I just went all out. I crossed the finish in a wheezing heap and was shocked to see that I had no only accomplished a sub seven minute mile (again, not so fast this one), but that I had actually bested my time from 6 weeks ago by 1:03. That's right kids. 6:34. My best time ever. By far. Last week on the treadmill the best time I had was 7:11, which was sort of BS because the machine MAKES you run that fast. I thought I would be lucky to be in that neighborhood, but 6:34 completely threw me for a loop. On the recovery run I could see the REALLY FAST people just about 100 yards ahead of me. I was shocked.

We got back to the start and everyone was still getting themselves situated. The coach asked us how the first one was and we chit chatted with her. She told us to go whenever we were ready and to time ourselves again, trying to keep the second lap within 10 seconds of the first. I let the super fast folks go first because I get competitive and didn't want to kill myself trying to keep up with them only to collapse at the half mile marker. After giving them a good 15 second head start I took off. I knew right away that I was off the pace I set on my first lap, but things still felt pretty good. I was even gaining ground on some of the advanced runners. I know I shouldn't pay attention to stuff like that (and I fear it will mess me up on race day - not that I'll be comparing myself to the pros or anything, just trying to keep up with the 9 minute milers if that isn't really my pace) but like I said, I'm competitive. And wracked with self doubt, actually, as I didn't want to pass one of them when the time came because I figured he was just pacing himself for his final kick that would leave me in the dust discouraged. Finally I just overtook him and tried to let it go and run MY mile, but I was very aware that I DIDN'T hear footsteps in the last 2/10 of the mile closing in from behind. Fighting half an urge to vomit for the first time since we started training, I looked down at the watch and saw 6:54. 20 seconds added. Damn. But still sub-7. I was cramping up in my side and my legs were feeling VERY heavy. I set a goal for myself to keep it under 7 for the 3rd mile, but I was prepared for a much slower mile with the way I was sucking wind and the knot in my left side.

Back to the start line and once again, I let the advanced crew take off ahead of me. I figured I would just give this one everything I had left, despite the fact that I was sure that wasn't much. I started and immediately felt very slow. I was ultra aware of how far I had to go and how short a distance I had covered for the first quarter mile. I was just trying to let my body take over and fortunately I kept the cramp somewhat at bay with my breathing. My thighs were really starting to sing on me, but I kept at it continually telling myself it was only a mile. I passed the same advanced runner for the second time which gave me a lift and started my kick too soon after misjudging the finish. I kept it up though and crossed with my arms pumping and breathing like a lunatic. I checked my time and it was 6:52, an actual improvement from mile 2.

I was completely wiped out. I walked a lot of the recovery back to where we had met at Bathesda and did my stretching, getting war stories from the rest of the team and telling my own. All in all it was a good night. I know that 6:34 was a ridiculous time that I would have a hard time replicating, but the fact that I kept the second and third mile in the same neighborhood AND under 7 minutes made me very proud. And thankful to the coaches for getting me here.

Unfortunately no fundraiser thank you's today...hopefully one or two tomorrow.

Thanks for reading...

DAY 96
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 5.1
TOTAL MILEAGE: 218.03

PS - Keep Jen in your thoughts as she fights off a nasty shin splint. She's working very hard and deserves to do so relatively pain free.

Day Ninety Five - On The Surface Your Job Sounds Pretty Cool

2006-11-15T10:40:00.000-08:00

I was supposed to cross train yesterday but I didn't. And I don't even really feel that bad about it. I got a call first thing in the morning when I got to work telling me that a shoot had just come up for later in the day and asking if I could help put it together. For those that don't know what I do, I am a production coordinator at HBO in the Creative Services Department. What that basically means is that I work in the department that produces all of the promotional content on HBO and Cinemax for our original series and movies and our special events. We also do a lot of interstitial programming for both networks and things like red carpet premieres and DVD featurettes. My job is to basically hire crews and manage schedules for a wide variety of events. So there's a crash course in what I mean when I say "work."

Most days my job is...pretty OK. It's a lot of time spent on the phone back and forth with crew and vendors as creative ideas change by the second. It's definitely not the most exciting gig in the world, but the fun days make it all worth it. I knew from the first phonecall yesterday that setting up a shoot for last night would be a hassle. Just the general sense of uncertainty about the whole thing led me to believe things would be up in the air all day because no one would want to commit to any one thing, so in the meantime we'd have to be prepared for anything (I turned out to be 100% right, btw). The thing is, I wasn't as annoyed as I normally am with this type of thing because I was actually excited about the shoot. I'm not going to pretend that I'm totally jaded and don't get start struck at all, but the thing is, the way my job is set up, even if we are shooting with celebs, I rarely have any reason to interact with them, so I just sorta stay in the wings doing my thing because the less I have to do with talent, the better I've done my job preparing the shoot. Most times they just walk in, do their thing and walk out and when I "meet" them it's just that. "This is Bill from HBO" and they smile and walk on by to the other 900 people that they are going to be introduced to that day.

I knew yesterday was going to be the same deal, but I wanted to go anyway. The shoot was with Bill Clinton and I was just excited about the prospect of being there. Now, I don't want to get into a whole thing about politics and I'm not going to pretend that Bill Clinton is the end all be all, but as a President I was a fan of his and as he was the first presidential candidate I ever voted for (and the only one I ever voted for that actually won) I was into the idea of meeting the guy.

We got to the shoot and the place was a nightmare. There was an event downstairs in the building that he was speaking at later in the evening. We were scheduled to interview him on the 6th floor but neither elevator in the building (which I'm assuming was the first thing ever built in New York City) After a while they finally fixed the main elevator and we were able to move our gear upstairs...slowly...as not to overload the thing and break it again. We set up our shoot and heard that he was going to be coming late. After an hour or so of sitting around we got the call that he was on his way up. Building security, the NYPD and the secret service had been wandering around on the floor off and on until then. Clinton popped out of the elevator with two SS members. He met his assistant, who had been with us the whole time, and our producer and they went through what we were were shooting (some comments for Comic Relief and another set of comments for The Nobel Peace Prize). They were leading him to the room (which my boss and I had left because it wasn't really necessary that we be in there for the shoot - see how that works - once the thing is set up, I shouldn't need to be on set) and he made it a point to stop and say hello to my boss and I and shake our hands, which was completely uneccessary, but very political. Then he walked into the room and sat down and someone closed the door. Less than 10 minutes later he came out, said thank you to everyone and left.

And that's how I "met" President Clinton last night and that's why I didn't do my cross training.

The End

Day Ninety Four - Here Comes The Rain Again

2006-11-14T07:57:00.000-08:00

You have no idea how much I agonize about these daily blog titles. This one came to me pretty quickly as it started raining as soon as I got home last night and put my running shoes on. When I stepped outside it really started coming down. I was soaked two blocks into my five block walk to the park. But it was warm out and as I am terrified of training in the cold I am trying to take as much advantage of these balmy nights as possible. Yes, balmy.

As I started on the familiar loop I came up with another possible blog title. "The Only Living Boy In New York." Either that or "The Only Running Boy In New York" as it seemed that I had the entire park to myself, which was amazing. It didn't last as I ended up seeing some hardcores out there braving the elements, but to spend almost an hour running in the park and see only about 50 people - well, that's a New York City rarity to say the least. It was relaxing and even my soggy drawers weren't bothering me.

I did the run I wanted to do 3 minutes faster than I wanted to do it, which had me feeling good on the walk back to my apartment. The absolute best part is that in the aftermath my knees didn't flare up the way they have been recently. I think they are starting to get used to the abuse and that my biggest physical problem to date was just a point of my body getting used to the miles.

Minor correction on yesterday's post. This Saturday we are running on some trails in Jersey, not in Central Park. Sounds like a field trip to me, and my mom didn't even have to sign a permission slip.

Have a good Tuesday.

DAY 94
TODAY's MILEAGE: 5
TOTAL MILEAGE: 212.93

Day Ninety Two - Personal Best

2006-11-13T09:47:00.000-08:00

As you all know by now, Saturday is our weekly long run. This week we met at Bathesda Terrace in Central Park and I have to admit I was a little suprised at how sparsely attended the practice was. We found out that our head coach Ramon finished the NYC Marathon in 2:49 and change, which, as he would say, is pretty freaking fast. We also found out that one of our other coaches is pregnant, so congratulations Christine. After those announcements was our mission moment, this week given by one of our honored team mates. I'm horrible with names, but this is the guy that was diagnosed with Non Hodgkins Lymphoma (I believe) 3 years ago and is now training for a marathon (after competing in an Iron Man last year). He mentioned that the 5 year survival rate for his particular cancer is 50% at the 5 year mark. That's pretty sobering. And that's much better than it was just a few years ago. Another reminder of why we get out of bed at 7AM on Saturday to go and run. After all of these preceedings Ramon told us what we were scheduled to run that day. There are 3 different marathons being represented at our training sessions - Honolulu, DisneyWorld and Phoenix. Jen and I are, of course, training for Phoenix, which happens to be the last marathon of the three. So while the other folks have to be ready before we do, we'll be putting in miles in the cold weather longer than they have to. Honolulu, as a matter of fact, is coming up in just a couple weeks (Dec. 9th or so), so those guys are sort of coming into the home stretch. They were instructed to run 17 - 20 miles. How d'you like them apples? For people running Phoenix and Disney we were told to take it easy. Just a 12 mile run...provided that we have been keeping up with the training and that we had previously run 16 miles.

Drat.

My long at this point was 14.7. Just 1.3 measly miles from a nice leisurely jaunt around the park. But no worries. It was a beautiful day, with weather perfect for running, and I had come expecting a good long one anyway, so screw it, I'd run the 16.

I decided on 2 long loops (6 miles a pop) and one middle loop from Bathesda at 72nd Street to the 102nd St. Transverse. My course would be the two long loops in succession with the shorter loop last. To change things up a bit (because that 6 mile loop in the park is starting to get a tad boring) I decided to run in the OPPOSITE DIRECTION then what I am used to. I know. I'm a crazy person. Now, while there are no strict "rules" as to which way one should run in Central Park, I was definitely going against the grain, or at least, the bulk of the grain. As instructed I tried really hard to keep myself restrained for the first 3rd of my run. Ramon mentioned this morning that the goal should be to hold back on the first third, find your groove on the second and on the final third finish stronger than you started. I'm paraphrasing of course, but that's what I took from it anyway. I tend to try to keep the same pace throughout the run which has left me totally gassed at the end on a couple of occassions.

Doing what I could to keep things slow, I ran the first loop in the opposite direction, which was actually a little unsettling after so many times around the other way. I finished at a little over an hour, so somewhere between 10 and 11 minutes a mile. I turned around to run the second loop in the "right" direction and challenged myself to finish in under an hour. I learned a couple things during the second loop. The second six miles is definitely easier if you hold back on the first six. I also learned that I crap out around the 9th mile. Not that I have to stop or anything, but I stop feeling like I am in the zone and just start feeling like I am running. I kept my pace and finished in about 55 minutes, but I was feeling every step.

At this point I stopped for my second Goo and met up with some fellow Team In Training members. We got to talking and all headed off in the same direction and dammit, I forgot to set my stopwatch to start again. I wanted to time the last 4 miles - c'est la vie. I actually slowed down and stayed with them for the first mile and a half or so and it was nice to pace myself with them and actually have someone to talk to for a while. We ran the 102nd St. Transverse West to East and then I said goodbye and got back up to my pace to finish the run. I got back to Bathesda about 2 hours and 45 minutes after starting and talked to one of the coaches and another runner for a few minutes then said my goodbyes and started what I thought would be a very painful trip home. And while my knees did get a little sore, and my shins and feet were feeling the mileage too, I have to say that my body never felt quite as bad as I expected it to, which I took as a good sign.

There you have it. My longest run to date. 16 miles. Although Steve, the coach I was talking to after the run, said we'll be aiming for 18 on the "trails" of Central Park next Saturday, so that record won't last long, apparently. As long a run as that sounds, I'm actually happy to be learning a new course and some new mileage next week. So now we're past the 200 mile mark and headed straight for 300. Stick with me and we'll get there.

Thanks to The Lost Bee Gee, Brian Girard for his generosity in the world of fundraising. That much closer to my goal thanks to you.

Hope you all had a good weekend. More later...

DAY 92
TODAY'S MILEAGE - 16
TOTAL MILEAGE - 207.93

Day Ninety - Just Do The Miles

2006-11-10T13:36:00.000-08:00

Not much to report today. We had an unseasonably warm day yesterday in NYC (today is supposed to be warm too, but I have been chilly every time I've gone outside, although that may have something to do with the overall shitty mood that I can't seem to shake). I got home from work around 6:15 and headed out for a loop in the park. My legs were really feeling it from the night before so I kept things slow. Very...very...slow. EVERYONE was passing me. I picked up the pace a bit on the second half of the loop, but it was more of an easy run done simply to get some miles run. They say as long as you run the miles you're doing OK. Worry about time and things like that later. At least I think they say that. Maybe I made that up to make me feel better about myself. Regardless, I'm still kind of proud that I can go out and do a low energy six miles after a tough week of practice when 2 months ago six miles at ANY pace would have been laughable.

If all goes according to plan I'll kick out my 200th mile tomorrow during our long run. Wish me luck.

Have a great weekend. I'm off to dinner with my friend Robyn and then to see another friend at The Living Room. You should come along. It'll be fun.

Take care.

DAY 90
TODAY'S MILEAGE - 6
TOTAL MILEAGE - 191.93

Day Eighty Nine - Testing Myself

2006-11-09T08:26:00.000-08:00

If you remember last Wednesday, we graduated from the 5 week hill training portion of Team in Training. The week before we started doing hills we ran 3 timed miles as fast as we could. We were told that after the hill training we would most likely improve on these times and that we would be tested again to see what kind of progress we made. Unfortunately I had made dinner plans last night so I was going to miss the group practice. Normally I would have scheduled dinner another night, but Becky and I have been trying to get together with my uncle and his partner for what seems like months to have dinner, so I figured I would just do the test on my own with the handy treadmill version that we get sent via email every week. Well...technically we get an email from Ramon every week, but I have NEVER gotten it (Jen forwards it to me). I have told my mentor several times and he says he's going to make sure I start getting it, but Day 89 and still no weekly emails from Ramon. I think it's sort of a running joke now (I just re-read this - get it? A RUNNING joke? PUN NOW INTENDED). Serves me right for not signing up for the yahoo groups thing initially I suppose.

Aaaaaanyway, I got the forward from Jen which basically broke down the treadmill work out like so: 8 - 10 minute warm up, one mile at a "good pace," 6 minutes recovery, repeat 3 times.

After work I headed to the gym and hopped on the treadmill. I wasn't thrilled to do my time test on the treadmill, as it kind of forces you to keep a pace - which is good in a sense, but sort of makes your results a little more artificial. It was also pouring rain outside, so all things considered I guess I had no major complaints. Plus, I was looking forward to a nice dinner. On my test a month and a half ago I ran three miles in the following times - 7:37, 7:41, 7:47. I think those were the times anyway. You can go look it up if you're really that much of a stickler. After the warm up on the treadmill I set the pace for a 7:14 mile. Then I forgot to switch the display to distance, so I screwed myself up and ended up running the first mile in 7:22 (by my closest approximation anyway). It felt really fast. My recovery went well though and by the third minute I was feeling like I could tackle another mile without much of a problem. I really wanted to make my third mile my best, so the second time I set the treadmill for a 7:41 second mile. This time I screwed up my stopwatch (why I felt the need to time myself on my watch and not just the treadmill clock is a whole other issue of anal retentiveness that I can't even attempt to get into here) and ended up finishing in 7:44. Not my best time, but still pretty decent for a kid born without the gift of quickness. My recovery went well again and soon enough I was staring down the barrell of the third mile. I got ambitious and set the pace for 7:08. I wanted to go sub 7:00, but ended up not having the guts. I finished the mile at 7:11 - my best time ever. It was...not easy. And I'd be lying if I said I wasn't feeling the effort this morning. But it also feels good in a way. Again, I know the treadmill isn't the best way to test your speed - more like an endurance test actually, but I'm still happy that I pushed myself to get the workout done at all considering the rain and my dinner plans.

Oh, and it turns out I missed a heck of a practice last night. You should go read Jen's blog (http://girlyoubetterrun.blogspot.com) and find out all about how she got the spirit tee this week. Yeah, I won't even explain further. Congratulations Jen - sorry I missed out on your big moment. Oh, you can also vote in a poll to see if Jen should get a tattoo on her butt for charity. Seriously. And you thought the voting fun was over on Tuesday night. Go check it out. Also, because of the low turn out (and I know Ramon is going to yell at us on Saturday for wussing out - I DID THE WORK MAN!) and the rain they decided to postpone the test until next week.

You can't win kids. You just can't win.

Time for thank you's. I cracked $3000.00 this week after my second fundraising letter went out. Unreal. Thanks to everyone, especially Charlene and Kathleen from work, my cousin Beth and her husband Michael, Mary and Pete (see you tomorrow night Mary and I want whatever I order to be STRONG), and last but not least, JT - who is more than a man among men, he is a cameraman among men. You guys are the best. Thanks again.

More later...

DAY 89
TODAY'S MILEAGE - 5
TOTAL MILEAGE - 186.93

PS - If you are looking for a good way to kick off your weekend my friend Dennis is playing a solo set at The Living Room (www.livingroomny.com) at 7:00PM and then taking the stage again with his fantastic band The Winter Pills at 10:00PM. I'll be there - hopefully for both shows. Hope to see you there.

Day Eighty Eight - 15 Years Later

2006-11-08T07:58:00.000-08:00

Boring update as far as training goes. 1 hour on the cross trainer last night after work. Got a nice sweat going, felt great. The end.

When I got home last night I flipped on SportsCenter and they were running a story about the 15 year anniversary of Magic Johnson's announcement that he was HIV positive. I watched the segment in disbelief. I was 15 years old when he made that announcement and now I'm 30. It was half a lifetime ago, but in some ways it feels like last week. I remember, I was on the Tolland High football team at the time and we had just come in from a practice. The coach told us that Magic Johnson had AIDS. We were completely shocked. I could see highlights of his press conference on a TV in the coach's office. Unreal.

I grew up a Celtics fan, thus it was a rule that I hate the Lakers, and especially Magic Johnson - how could I not after the baby hook? In all my life I have found few things to rival the pure hatred of a sports rival. And here was the most infamous Laker - the one that beat Bird in the NCAA's and the one with more MVP's than Larry Legend - announcing, basically, that he was dying. That's what we thought then anyway. In a weird way I shoulda been happy, right? But I wasn't. I was devastated. Because even Larry's rival was a hero in some twisted way and to see him taken down from his perch because of his humanity was shattering. It transcended a rivalry. His mortality made Bird and the Celtics that much more human in my eyes.

I don't think I've ever "hated" an athlete the same way again. Not like I used to. And that probably would have happened anyway as I got older and gave less of myself to sports fandom, but it happened then because of Magic. I rooted for Magic the next year at the All Star Game and I rooted for him in the Olympics and I rooted for him when he made his comeback. It no longer mattered that he broke my heart as a Laker because I realized how lucky we were to get to see him play at all.

I'm not saying anything you haven't heard before. And I don't want to pretend that Magic is a victim or that he is any more heroic then anyone else who gets up every day to stare AIDS in the face and go on with their life. In fact, Magic has had every advantage in fighting this disease. I'm just happy that at the end of the day Magic has shown the world that AIDS doesn't have to be a death sentence. Just because that has more to do with his bank account than anything else right now doesn't change the fact that we can survive with AIDS. The treatment is there - now it's just a point of making it available to everyone who needs it. Magic put a vibrant, healthy and most important, straight face on the AIDS epidemic, and he has accepted his position as an advocate for education and change like a champion, and I am thankful for that. Without him it wouldn't be too hard to assume that AIDS would have remained a "fringe" or "gay" issue, which it never truly was in the first place.

I'm raising funds for this marathon in the name of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society to fund research and help find a cure for cancer, but we can't forget that the threat of AIDS still looms, specifically in Sub-Saharan Africa and that money and education are the biggest obstacles in getting the crisis under control. If you are looking for an additional charity to donate some money too this year (and gifts in someone's name make a great holiday offering) I would recommend The Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (http://www.pedaids.org/). An organizational and efficiency rating for the charity can be found here: http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=4310

I guess that's about it for today. Thanks for sticking with me through a relatively major digression. More tomorrow...

Day Eighty Seven - "Are You Quick, Bill?"

2006-11-07T08:25:00.000-08:00

I was never much of an athlete growing up. I played plenty of sports, I just stunk at all of them. The one I was halfway decent at was baseball, which I gave up on at about 12 years old to the dismay of my old man, who was a heck of a baseball player himself. I decided to concentrate on basketball, which was my favorite as a kid and ironically, the sport I was the absolute worst at. I mean, just terrible. Couldn't shoot. Couldn't dribble. Couldn't pass. I mean, yeah, I was the drizzling shits at the plate in baseball but at least I had some defensive skills. In basketball I could really do well was try hard and maybe take a charge now and then. It may sound like I'm just being self depricating here, but trust me, video tape exists of just how rotton I was at sports as a kid. And we're not even touching football yet. Yeah, my brilliant idea as a freshman in high school was to play football...which I had never played before...a sport that I didn't even fully comprehend. Fortunately my school was small and soccer was the sport of choice in the fall, so the football team took every warm body it could get it's hands on. I played for two years and stunk it up every single day. We were the worst team in the smallest league in the state. Sometimes I like to think that, for a time, I was quite possibly the worst high school football player in the nation.

This is going somewhere, trust me.

After the football season of my sophomore year I finally decided that I was done with organized sports and moved full time into the world of theatre and music as a way to fill the after school hours. Most of my friends, however, were still athletes. Ted Sherry was probably the best athlete in the school (and the valedictorian of our class for good measure - he's now a doctor and I wish he was an asshole or something so I could hate him). Ted and I had lunch together during senior year and we used to crack eachother up pretty regularly. I remember one day the head of the athletic department at my high school (who served as a lunch monitor during our break) was at our table talking to Ted about...I dunno...sports I guess. Probably soccer. The topic was quickness. How important quickness is in sport. Ted was quick, an advantage for him on the field. The conversation came to it's natural end and I sat there eating, having nothing whatsoever to contribute. There was a moment of silence when Mr. Link could have said "see you later guys" and Ted and I would have gone about our day. What Mr. Link said instead, for some unknown reason was this. "Are you quick, Bill?" I appreciate that the guy was trying to involve me in the conversation. I really do. But it was pretty much the most awkward question he could have posted which only served to underscore the fact that I was nothing close to resembling an athlete in high school. I just smiled up from my sandwich and told him that no, I was not quick. Mr. Link walked away and Ted and I laughed for pretty much the rest of the period.

This is all a roundabout way for me to tell you that in the Dempsey family, speed is not necessarily one of our gifts. And the reason I am thinking about this today is because, being the competitive idiot that I am, I watched the stupid Today Show Runs A Marathon wrap up yesterday and found out that the chick that ran for The Today Show finished the NYC Marathon in 3 hours 30 minutes on Sunday. I mean, that's a really fast marathon. We're talking 8 minutes and 1 second per mile. For the whole race. That's incredibly fast, by my standards. I mean, I've been saying this whole time that I'd like to finish Phoenix in 4 hours (9 minutes 16 seconds per mile), but in the back of my head I have been telling myself that just finishing will be enough and as long as it's 4:30 or under I'll be happy. But dammit, that Today Show lady had to go and post a REALLY impressive time and now I'm feeling all competitive again.

Please don't take this as a sexist thing. Trust me, I accepted LONG ago that there are a million and one women out there who are stronger, faster and generally superior to me in every physical manner possible. It's a novice marathoner thing. If she can do it that fast, why can't I?

Oh yeah, because I'm not quick.

It also doesn't help that I ran into a friend this past weekend at the wedding that just completed his first marathon in 3:58. Now the pressure is really on.

Which brings us to last night's run. As per usual, Mondays are a day off, but since I did nothing but sit in a car and eat McDonald's on Sunday, I decided to make up with a run last night. But since I was stewing in my competitive juices all day yesterday, by the time I got home (after discovering on the subway that I left my keys at work, turning around, getting my keys and going home again) I was ready to push myself. I decided to run the 6 mile loop in Central Park as fast as I could, just to see how I would do. Not that I expected to be able to duplicate the effort over 26.2 miles, but just to see what I was working with.

I started out up the hill we graduated on last week. I felt really good. Very strong. I was cruising, passing the few runners that were out enjoying one of the last warmish nights of the year. I made it to the Resevoir and still felt fantastic. I was really pushing myself, but still feeling fresh. I passed the 72nd Street Transverse and headed up the West Side hill towards Tavern On The Green, and that's when it hit me. My lungs were burning for the first time in a long time. It was the opposite of what usually happens to me. My body felt great, but I was winded. I started to cramp up and knew right then that I couldn't keep this pace up much longer. I got down to Columbus Circle and stopped my stopwatch.

20:31. That's how long I had been running. I went and checked this morning and the distance I covered was 2.68 miles. In 20 minutes. I don't know if that sounds good or what, but I can tell you that it's the fastest I have ever covered that kind of distance in my entire life. Course, I burned out completely, but still, I kept it up for that long. I would have out run Jason in a scary movie at the very least. Yes, these are the things I think about when running. If you haven't figured out yet that I am an idiot, well, you're hopeless.

I took a 3 or 4 minute break. Walked up to The Time Warner Center and back, stretched a bit, then started my stopwatch again and started on the second half of the run. I hated that I had to stop, but within the first minute I knew how much it helped. The thing is, I got my breath back very quickly and fell into step without any effort at all. More than anything, that is where my training paid off last night. I was still pushing myself for the last 3.32 miles, but definitely keeping things more controlled than on the first half, ensuring that I wouldn't have to stop again. I finished up back in Harlem on a dead sprint - or as close as I could come to one - at 47:31. Exactly 27 minutes on the last 3.32 miles - a little over 8 minutes a mile.

So, factoring out the 4 minute break I finished the 6 mile loop in 47:31, or just under 8 minutes a mile. And I gotta say, as disappointed as I am that I had to stop and take a break, I'm still pretty impressed with myself. Not that I am dumb enough to think I could have kept up that pace for much longer, but it gives me hope for 9:16. It's still going to be tough and I've got a long way to go, but I've got some time and that nasty competitive streak on my side.

Next step is getting the same loop in under 50:00 without stopping. As always, I'll keep you posted.

More donations came in last night as I was running. Much love to Aunt Patty, Uncle Martin and the boys. Congrats on Baltimore, Patty! Can't wait to see you guys at Thanksgiving and hit up The Manchester Road Race again. And thanks to fellow runner Elliot, who has always been abundantly helpful and supportive of everything I have ever talked to him about since the day we met.

DAY 86
TODAY'S MILEAGE - 6
TOTAL MILEAGE - 181.93

PS - If you see a raccoon trying to cross the road while you are running clap your hands real loud. They'll clear out of the way. They'll stare you down the whole time like they're doing you some HUGE favor, but they'll move just the same. And that's a running tip.

Day Eighty Five - Senic Seneca Lake

2006-11-06T14:29:00.000-08:00

Back on the road for another Saturday long run this week. We were in Geneva again, my girlfriend's hometown, for the last stop on the "Everyone Gets Married Tour 2006." Six weddings in 7 months, four since August 18. Insanity. The last time we were in Geneva it was Labor Day and I was struggling to get 6 and a half miles done. This time I was scheduled to run 16 - 18...but I knew that was a long shot with the wedding coming up later in the night.

I started out around 9:30 or so - an hour later than I had anticipated, but no major worries there. It was chilly out, but I knew I'd be sweating before too long so I didn't let the cold bother me. I started off with a mile downhill, which is the way every run should start, I've decided. At the bottom was Seneca Lake. If you remember my last post about running in Geneva (it's OK if you don't, I barely do) I was dropped off down at the lake and told that the path along it was 2.5 miles each way. So this time I added a mile by running there instead of getting a ride. I also had the benefit of not running in a downpour this time, although I will say that the wind coming off of the water made me very thankful that it wasn't quite as cold as it could have been because I can see that being a VERY uncomfortable run were it 10 degrees cooler.

I headed down the path towards the North end of the lake and felt great. I thought I might be pushing it a little bit with my pace and that I'd run out of gas, but then I thought, "better to realize that on a training day than on race day" and decided to keep it up. The last time I ran this course I lost the trail about half a mile before it ended and was really unhappy with myself so this time I kept my eyes peeled (when I wasn't dodging goose shit that is). The same as last time, the thing just ends at this beach. I ran on around a shelter and through what appeared to be a parking lot and found a completely different road, which ended about a quarter mile or so later. I guess that's the trail, but no way is it my fault for losing it last time. I don't want to be a jerk, because it is a beautiful run, but my God the trail is poorly marked. There are some scattered distance markers along the way, but some hooligans have removed the actual numbers from them, so on the rare occassion that you do see one, it's pretty much useless.

The run back to the start of the trail was tougher as I was running into the wind. Might not sound so bad, but it was pretty strong wind. You're just gonna have to take my word for it. About 3/4 of the way back I actually ran into Dan, my girlfriend's roommate's boyfriend, who was in town for the same wedding and off for a run himself. We ran back to his hotel together, I stopped for some water and to say hello to some other friends who were all meeting for breakfast and headed back up the hill towards my girlfriend's house. I passed her street and continued on another loop for an additional couple of miles. Got back in time to help finish raking the front lawn (although the rest of the fam did the lion's share while I was running - which is just good planning) and shower before heading off to the wedding, which was a blast. Congratulations Bo and Melissa - we had a blast and the band was tops. Kids - if you're getting married - go with the live band. It's really really awesome.

I am VERY behind in sending out thanks to people for donating (I'm up to damn near $2600.00 after my second fundraising letter today!!!), so here's the latest list of generous people who rock my socks:

Robbie (I might have mentioned her before, but screw it, she gets a second shout because we've never even met!), Mr. and Mrs. B., Casey, Chen, Erin from work, Katrina from work, Jason @ mobscene, D-Dorian-Dot-Dorothy, Ali from work, Bridget from Training Wheels: The Show, Damien and Wanda (special thanks to Rocco too!), Chris from UMass, SB and Bob, Enid, Necola from work, the aforementioned Dan (spit on it) and Yuki, who kindly offered me her sports bra to help with my nipple chaffing.

The world is full of great people. Lucky me.

DAY 85
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 8.75
TOTAL MILEAGE: 175.93

Day Eighty Two - Graduation Day

2006-11-03T10:33:00.000-08:00

Graduation from Hill Training that is.

It's weird - I feel kind of like I cheated the program here. We did 5 weeks of Wednesday night hill training in Central Park for the marathon. It just so happens that I missed two of those nights because of my schedule. So I was there the first night of training, then last week for the downhill session (obviously the easiest of the bunch) and then again this week for graduation night, although one of the coaches said it was more like "final exams" and she was right. We were tackling the Harlem Hill, which is the longest and scariest in the park. The one I was cursing myself on last weekend. Although to be completely honest, it's really not all THAT scary once you've done it a couple times. I probably would have been cursing myself anywhere at that point last week.

Anyway, we did a warm up run over to the hill (which is actually where I start all my personal runs in the park since the foot of the hill is the closest entrance to the park from my apartment, 5 blocks north) and then we were instructed to use all that we learned over the past 5 weeks (effort levels, arm swinging, stride length - you know, the stuff I missed out on in the middle of these five weeks - excellent) to run up the hill. The hill splits in the middle with a turn and to the halfway point we were to run HARD and after the halfway point we were supposed to down shift, but still be putting some decent effort in. We recovered on the downhill back to the start and then repeated the process, only on the second time up the hill we went at a decent pace for the first half, then pushed hard to the top. Get it?

Oh Christ, now I'm talking like Ramon in my head...some of you won't get that, but Jen will.

The run felt really really good, to be honest. My effort levels felt right where they needed to be and I was taking the hill at a pretty good clip. I started to cramp up a bit, which tends to happen with me when I shift gears a lot during a run, but I was handling it OK and my recovery downhills were getting me through. I did the round trip up the hill and back six times. On th sixth time down I started to get a little worried - I had a few left in me, but I was thinking we'd probably do 3 or 4 more as Ramon had told us it would be a long night. As I passed him on the downhill he said "you guys are done, go back." I was shocked. Honestly, I thought he was screwing around with us. Not that I wasn't thankful, but I just expected to have my ass kicked a lot more.

I got back to the start of the hill and asked some of the other runners if he was serious about us going back and they said he was. It was a mile and a quarter back to where we meet and stretch in the park and since I was feeling like I had held back a little on the hill thinking we'd be out there longer I decided to push it back on the "cool down" run. I was moving at what felt like I would like to run the day of the marathon and I felt great doing it, especially after 6 miles of hills, but again, 1.25 miles is a shit lot different than 26.2, you know?

All in all, a great night. Got to work the next day and calculated the distance and was really impressed with the run and how I was feeling the next day - not bad at all. I also got the chance to try out my new running duds (this hobby is fricking expensive, man) which made me feel like half geek, half actual runner...although I think I need longer shorts as no one should be subjected to seeing my knees on a regular basis.

This weekend we're off to yet another wedding - last one of the year - FINALLY. The couple we stayed with in Baltimore will be there though and I've already got a group that wants to go out running Saturday morning, so while I'll miss the long Team run (good luck guys) I'll be clocking in as close to 10 miles as I can...gotta save some energy for dancing, babies. You know that.

Have a great weekend. Enjoy some fall weather and some football. Thanks for reading...more later...

DAY 81
TODAY'S MILEAGE - 8.5
TOTAL MILEAGE - 167.18

PS - Remember how I said I feel like I cheated the program a bit missing 2 weeks of hill training? Yeah, well, I feel bad about that and all, but not really bad enough to go back and make the work up on my own. Say a prayer that that doesn't come back to bite me in the ass in Phoenix...

Day Eighty One - Lunch Break Cross Training

2006-10-31T14:48:00.000-08:00

Another quick post. Gym was closing early at the office today so I headed down there this afternoon for a cross training session. All of the eliptical machines were taken when I got there which is basically why I don't go to the gym during the day even though everyone else at my office does. I reluctantly decided to spend some time on the bike until one of the machines opened up. I suck at the bike. 5 minutes into it the eliptical next to me opened up. For a split second I thought about staying on the bike just to test myself but I was shutting the thing down before the thought even left my head. I hopped on the cross trainer and did 40 minutes at 50% resistence on a hill course. I tried to keep my heartrate under 130 to sustain a weight loss level, but then again, I don't know if those charts and graphs on the machine are bullshit or not. It was actually harder to keep things in the middle range then it is to go balls out. Worked up a nice sweat by the time it was all said and done. Stretched, showered and back to work.

Simple as that. Another cross training day in the bag. More later...

Day Eighty - A Quickie

2006-10-31T07:07:00.000-08:00

Mondays are supposed to be a day off on our training schedule, but seeing as I took Sunday off and didn't know what the rest of the week was going to look like I decided to go for a short run last night. Met my girlfriend at her office after work and we walked up to Central Park. I had gone to www.mapmyrun.com and worked out a short trail. We headed up the east side of the loop to the Great Lawn, then across the lower section of the lawn to the west side of the loop, back down to Columbus Circle. Easy as pie and not much of a workout, but better than nothing, right?

I just read Jen's blog about how she filled out all her paperwork and chose roommates - no idea what I'm gonna do about that as I really haven't made any friends yet - and got all her flight info for Phoenix. And all of a sudden I feel like there are a million things I need to do all over again.

Short update today for a short run. That's all folks.

DAY 79
TODAY'S MILEAGE - 2.75
TOTAL MILEAGE - 158.68

Day Seventy Eight - Terrible Weather, Terrible Run

2006-10-30T09:26:00.000-08:00

Saturday was our long run, as usual. Somehow in the space of 2 and a half months the words "long run" have changed from 6 miles to 15 miles with 20 on the horizon. Woke up at 7:15 to the sound of pouring rain outside. Sweet. I got outside and headed up to Riverside Park finding the weather pleasantly warmer than I had anticipated. That made the rain a little easier to take. By the time I made it to the park my shoes were already soaked through. Jen showed up shortly thereafter and we got our marching orders. 15 - 16 miles. We all know the distances of the various loops in Central Park and they told us that where we were starting from would give us a half mile to the park and a half mile back. Fair enough. We headed out together, with Charlotte as well, and made our way through the downpour to the park, laughing at how miserable the weather was and reminding ourselves that we'd remember this day come January 14.

We made it to the Park together when the girls decided they needed to stop for a pee break at Tavern on the Green. I wished them a good run and headed South. The rain let up and I was a little bummed out, actually. I mean, I was already wet, why not just keep raining on me? The wind did pick up at this point though, which kept me cool despite the fact that I was wearing the wrong clothes for inclement weather running - time to do some shopping. I had decided on a path - 2 Full Loops (6 miles each) and then one Lower Loop (1.7 miles) plus the one mile round trip to Riverside for a total of 14.7 miles. Half way through the first loop I started thinking that there was no way I was going to be able to finish this run. I was running alone (everyone was kind of doing their own thing and I kept passing Team members running all over the place which kept making me think I was doing something wrong - I may have self esteem issues). I finished the first loop on a high, finally feeling like I was getting into the zone where I can just go and not think about it. I was at the 1 hour and 10 minute mark and I stopped for a goo. A goo is basically a packet of...well...goo that has all sorts of...um...nutrients (?) and stuff to help you with the long distances. If running were a video game they'd be a power up. Make sense? They come in little single serve packets and have the consistency of toothpaste. Best to have water handy when you suck em down. I like the tri-berry ones myself. Anyway, I stopped for a goo and some water then headed back out on the loop.

It was here that I made the crucial decision to do my short lower loop before tackling the final 6 mile loop. I figured it would give me a little change of pace and more of a feeling of completion when I got around the big loop for the second time. I think it was a good choice. I fell back into step after the goo break but then stopped another 15 or so minute later to take a leak. I was almost done with the lower loop and back on the big one, but something happened during my pee break and I never really found a comfort zone again. That last six miles was ROUGH. I felt like I was going backwards. My feet started to hurt. I was certain I had at least two blisters between the mixture of wet socks, shoes and feet - fortunately they never raised. My speed was completely absent. I was just trudging around the park and feeling every footfall on my feet and knees. People were sprinting past me, or so it seemed. I just kept feeling slower and slower. I passed a familiar face from Team and he asked how I was doing and I said fine because I am a liar. Headed up the hill in Harlem I started cursing myself out loud. Fortunately there was no one around to hear me. "Come on you bastard" and other colorful phrases pushed me to the top, but barely. Near the resevoir I passed another Team member who was standing on the side of the road, waiting for soemone I think. He was one of our honored team mates (a cancer survivor - once paralyzed from the waist down, now training for a marathon and oh yeah, he completed an IRON MAN!!! a few months back) and I tried to pull my shit together as much as possible to look respectable as I passed him. We said hi and he asked how I was doing. This time I answered honestly and he said "Nah, you're looking great." That pushed me. It really did. Although I'd be lying if I said it pushed me all the way. About a mile later I was losing it again and I saw a guy running towards me. Probably about my age, although in much better shape than I am. He was running at a good clip and I noticed his hat. It was old and faded but I could easily see the logo on the front. I never realized how many transplanted Red Sox fans like to go running in the city. It made me think of Jen's friend Steve. Steve is the reason we're doing this whole run and I couldn't help but think how much Steve would love to be out running in the rain and wind in Central Park today. It sounds corny as hell, I know, and I'm not going to lie and say it made me feel great and that I found a burst of speed or anything like that. But I finished. And I didn't think about stopping. I bitched about how far it was, but I finished.

Heading back to Riverside Park was a bear. I hit every red light and even though I tried to keep moving while I was stopped by body was launching a major protest. At this point calling what I was doing running would have been the height of generosity. I had to think back to my 7 mile run in West Hartford a few months back to remember a comprable day. I finally got back to where we started, 14.7 miles under my belt and feeling like I'd gone twice that. Soon enough I guess. Long day. Bad run. Two days later and my knees feel OK (I find that they are somewhat sore almost constantly these days) and my feet are still hurting - remind me to tell you how terrified I was that I was going to lose a toenail around mile 10 - but other than that I'm feeling myself and ready to get back on the horse. I know they're not all going to be easy, but here's hoping for a couple just slightly easier than Saturday. Regardless, I think I was right, I'll remember that one for one reason or another when I'm on the road in Phoenix.

Thanks for reading.

DAY 78
TODAY'S MILEAGE - 14.7
TOTAL MILEAGE - 155.93

Day Seventy Six - Marathon Pace

2006-10-27T09:38:00.000-07:00

In the spirit of, oh, I don't know, actually training to run this marathon I decided that it's probably a good idea to get back on my running schedule. So I decided to run 5 miles today, just like I'm told I should. I headed up to the gym after work and hopped on the treadmill. I suppose I could have run outdoors, but it looked pretty chilly...although I guess I should be getting used to that, right? I decided to set the speed of the treadmill to match what I HOPE to be running as my marathon pace of 9:30 per mile. Now - that is a lofty goal, I understand. And I'm not saying I'll settle for anything less. I mean, to get there I'm going to have to do some real work seeing as my Staten Island Half Marathon pace was about 10:00 per mile and this is...well, twice as long. Anyway, gotta have a goal, right, and I figured no time like the present to start working towards achieving that goal. So I set the pace for 5 miles at 9:31 per mile, or 6.3 miles per hour.

It was not an easy run, although I'm willing to place some blame on the treadmill factor and some on the fact that it's been a while since I just flat out ran. The good thing was that it was my muscles that were tired - my legs obviously, and not my wind that made the run difficult. Cardiovascularly I'm at the point where I can just keep going, it's just a point of whether my legs hold me up or collapse underneath me. No danger of collapse last night, but the 50 or so minutes I spent running felt like twice that. But I did it. Kept the pace for 5 miles and then did a 2 minute cool down before stretching and hitting the showers. So while it wasn't a banner night by any stretch, at least I know that I can keep my desired pace for less than a fifth of my total distance...

...wait a minute...that's not very encouraging at all.

Damn.

Friday is a day off and Saturday is 11-15 miles in the park. I think I'll go for somewhere between 13 and 15. Wish me luck.

Thanks for reading. More later...

DAY 76
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 5.18
TOTAL MILEAGE: 141.23

Day Seventy Five - Back From The Flip Side

2006-10-26T07:46:00.000-07:00

Remember me?

So...can we skip all the apologies and explanations and just take my word for it that I would be updating more if I could? I mean, it's not like I just took all the money you guys have been donating to me and blew it on boats, booze and hookers or something, and if someone told you that, well that's just crazy talk.

Seriously, I didn't forget about the marathon. I've just been...preoccupied. If you've read Jen's blog at all you've heard her mention a pilot that she has been working on. It's actually something that I wrote and have been in the process of producing, as well as acting in. Well, this past weekend was the shoot - Saturday through Monday - and it went really well. I'm very happy with the project at this point and frankly shocked that it actually happened. Now I've just got to get to editing and then we'll see where we go from there. Anyway, for the past couple of weeks that is where most of my free time has been spent, rather than running hills with the rest of the Team folks. I know, it sorta sucks, but I made it through and I'm ready to get back on the horse. And it's not like I haven't been running at all either...I've just been way off the training pace. But here's what I did while I've been away:

Day Fifty Seven - So Lame It Doesn't Deserve A Title

One loop around Central Park. Wanted to go for two but half way through the first one I realized I was kidding myself. Not a great run by any stretch of the imagination.

DAY 57
TODAY'S MILEAGE - 6
TOTAL MILEAGE - 117.45

Day Sixty Five - The Staten Island Half Marathon

I was REALLY scared knowing this run was coming up especially because my training was not going so well. Woke up early and met up with G-Rocks. We took a cab to the Ferry and headed groggily towards the Island. When we got there I started to get this feeling that I really did NOT belong here. Everyone looked WAY more prepared and I just felt like this was a disaster waiting to happen. We were really early too, so there was a lot of time to sit around and think about the horrors ahead. We each made about 3 trips to the port-o-johns (over hydrated I guess) before it was time to line up. The race started about 15 minutes late and I realized while waiting around the 10 minute mile sign that I was going to have to pee again...soon. There were a few other TEAM folks there, but we were sort of doing our own thing. Finally the run started and the first mile was rough. We got to the first mile marker/water station and they had some more johns set up, but the line was way too long as I didn't want to lose time waiting to pee. I'm not exactly sure what the running protocol is, but I think dashing off to pee in the bushes is generally frowned upon (although I saw a few guys do it along the way). Honestly, if I was just running for me I would probably do it, but with the TEAM name attached to me I was thinking it was probably a bad idea. Another line at the second set of johns and I realized I was going to have to stop at the next one regardless of the line. It was around mile 4 and the line was longer than ever. I lost about 3 and a half minutes waiting and then peeing. While I waited the leader was already passing us on his way back to the start. Jiminy Christmas, that was insane. We were all cheering for him, and then the few guys behind him by a couple minutes. Man, if you ever want to feel slow run a half marathon course that doubles back on itself with some serious runners. After peeing I felt like a new man. I cruised all the way through to mile 7 or so and then hit a hill that I was able to handle really well. At some point I passed G-Rocks on my way back and was too tired to shout anything, but we had a moment that helped pump me up as we smiled and pointed at eachother. At mile 8 I started to feel like running another 5 miles was a really bad idea, but after that I just kind of let my legs take over. I missed the mile marker at mile 9 and started kind of freaking out, but realized pretty quickly thereafter what happened. 10 through 12 weren't GREAT, but they weren't torture either. Just sort of there. The last mile got rough because the way the course was set up you could see the finish line below you as you passed the 12 mile mark, but then had to run another half mile and then back. When I got to the 13 mile mark I figured I might feel a burst of adrenaline that might carry me through the last 10th of a mile at a quicker pace, but it was not to be. I finished as I started, but the important thing was I finished. And even with my 3 minute plus pee break I averaged under a ten minute mile...barely (my final time was 2:09:47 - which you're just going to have to trust me on because I didn't register and kept my time myself on my stopwatch from when I crossed the actual start to when I finished). Gatorade and a bagel never tasted so good. After stretching (well, in a manner of speaking as I was actually too tired to REALLY stretch) I went back to the finish line to cheer on Jen, who arrived shortly thereafter. Her sister had come out to join the festivities too. It was my longest distance to date and my first official half marathon and I was happy with my time and just the fact that I finished, but I'll be honest - I still can't wrap my head around the fact that I'll be running TWICE that far in a couple of months.

DAY 65
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 13.1
TOTAL MILEAGE: 130.55

Which brings us to last night. That's right...it had been 10 days since I had run - the longest stretch between runs since I started this whole thing. Another night of hill training, although I feel like I pussed out on most of the tough stuff with hills as I have missed 3 of the 5 sessions. I'm hoping that this doesn't set me too far behind the pace, but seeing as our coaches told us how much the hills would help us, and that they've been dead on with everything thus far, I can't help but think I picked the wrong 3 weeks to be busy on Wednesdays. Because of the long hiatus since the half marathon I took it a little easy on myself last night, going at a little bit of a slower pace for the first 3/4 of practice. We were learning how to run downhill, which is actually very taxing on your joints and muscles. Who knew there was a proper way to run downhill? Trained runners, that's who. And now I do too. So we were to push ourselves going down the hill, then recover heading back up. I'm gonna take G-Rocks' estimate on distance - .25 down the hill, .25 back up...wash, rinse, repeat. I ran the first 5 with Jen and then did three on my own at a little bit of a quicker pace (funny, it seemed so much longer when I was on my own with no one to chat with). 8 total which gives me 4 miles, plus a .75 warm up and cool down for a total of 5.5 miles. All in all it felt good, but let's not kid ourselves - I was taking it easy and happened to come back on the downhill night. My right knee is a little sore today, which has been my one minor ache through this whole thing, but I know the hills put a lot of pressure on it, so I'm not too worried about it. More than anything, I'm just glad I went and hope that I can force myself back into the habit. I don't think it'll be impossible, but I'd be lying if I said I was looking forward to hitting 6 miles on the treadmill at some point today.

Oh yeah, and I need some warmer running clothes, STAT.

So yeah, there's your update. They'll be coming at you much more frequently now that my life is a little less consumed with other things. Thanks for hanging in there. Don't count me out yet - I'm in this thing all the way to Phoenix. Hope things are good with you. More soon...

DAY 75
TODAY'S MILEAGE - 5.5
TOTAL MILEAGE - 136.05

Feeling Minnesota

2006-10-05T14:42:00.000-07:00

OK...I know. I'm an unattentive bastard. I really have no excuse other than things being incredibly busy. Well, first of all let's take care of business:

DAY 44
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 5.25
This was a Sunday on a treadmill in a hotel in Tarrytown. This was the day after I missed my first Saturday run, which I hated to do, especially after such a great long run the week before.

DAY 47
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 5.5
This was a Team in Training Wednesday run. We did hills for the first time and I was very happy with the run. Felt great.

DAY 50
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 9.5
This was last Saturday's Team run. Down the West Side of Manhattan from Riverside Park to just north of Ground Zero and back. Great run and a new personal best distance wise.

TOTAL MILEAGE: 111.45

I had wanted to do a big "Century Mark" entry when I hit 100 miles, but I guess it wasn't in the cards as I just haven't had the time to keep up with the entries lately. A lot of what is keeping me busy is work, but there have been several things going on in my personal life too which have made it tough to even get two days of training in a week for the past few weeks much less keep you guys updated on my lack of training. G-Rocks also went to Amsterdam for a few days in the middle of all of this and I think her absense made it a little harder to stay focused. Still, I'm proud that I've been able to crack the 100 mile mark, even if I got an email from Dragan yesterday letting all of us know that if we had been true to the training schedule we'd be at 150 miles by now.

This weekend I'm out of town yet again. Another wedding - the third since mid August with two more on the horizon. It's also my best friend's 30th birthday, so while it's a bit of a drag to be heading out of the city for the 7th time in the last 8 weekends (last weekend we stayed in town so we could prepare for my girlfriend's move downtown on Monday - 4 flights up with all of her possessions on Monday - I counted that as my cross training for the week), I'm excited to have two graet reasons to be with a lot of old friends on Saturday and Sunday. In the meantime, I'm doing what I can to keep on schedule, but I gotta admit - the way work has been going I've reached a point where I am feeling a bit frayed at the edges and while I don't feel great about it, scaling back in the mileage per week has been a necessity. I've got two pretty big shoots to get through before the 12th and then I'm hoping I can get back on track. With the clock ticking down on time remaining before the race, I won't really have much of a choice. Here's hoping things actually calm down at work.

On the fundraising front, I hit $2200.00 today - that's 58% of my goal to you and me. Feeling really good about that. Things naturally drop off in the weeks following the initial push, but I've maintained a steady stream of donations on a weekly basis and I'm gearing up for Round 2 of my insessant email barrage, so get ready slackers. It makes me smile to have so many people to thank. Dan Wynne, Skyler, my sister SB and her husband Bob, Mr. and Mrs. Balsley, Katrina, Erin, and Robbie (a friend of Becky's who I have never even met - how amazing is that?). I know I owe you all thank you notes and I promise you'll get them as soon as I have a second. I hope you know how much I appreciate you guys and your support.

More later...I promise...

I'm Not Dead

2006-09-27T14:48:00.000-07:00

Been a rough week. I haven't really done much since my last post in regards to training, which sucks. Gonna suck a LOT more in a couple hours after our first night of hills. Although as someone told me today, it will make for a fun read tomorrow. So wish me luck and we'll catch up then...

Day Forty - Na Na Na Gonna Have A Good Time

2006-09-21T07:35:00.000-07:00

Last night was our first test. A timed mile. We've known about this test for a couple weeks now, pretty much since Ramon and the other coaches started teaching us about effort levels. Going into the test I was actually sort of excited about it. I mean, we've been doing around 5 miles on our Wednesday sessions, so I was looking forward to running one single, little, baby timed mile as sort of a night off. How rudely I was awakened yesterday when I got the email about what we were actually going to be doing at practice.

The Intermediate runners (moi) were going to run a warm up mile, then turn around and run their first timed mile back to where we started. Then we were going to run a few minutes of recovery, then another timed mile. After that we were to recover again, and run a third timed mile. Shit.

On the way to practice I stopped off and bought something that I've actually needed for a couple of weeks now - a running watch. I checked out the fancy Nike ones, but rather than spend 80 bucks I decided to go with a much less sexy Timex number with a velcro strap. 25 bucks later I'm on my way to being able to time my splits. What a dork.

Dropped off the bag and headed over to the park. After our Mission Moment, which was really touching this week, we headed out on our warm up jog up the east side of the park. As has become the norm I sort of found my own running space somewhere in the middle of the pack. It's weird, I see groups running in front of me and groups running behind me, but for some reason I seem to be given a wide berth. Maybe I do look like Will Farrell streaking, I dunno. Or maybe it's just hard for me to hide the fact that I'm a genuinely unlikeable person. Regardless, it's kind of nice to be out there sort of on my own and doing my own thing at my own pace. It's really the only chance I've had lately to be alone, which is something that I tend to enjoy.

Anyway got up to the starting point and I found myself in the second group of about 30 or so runners. We got up to the line and I was a little worried. I tend to get competitive and mixing myself in with the Advanced and Intermediate folks tends to make me one of the slower runners in the group. I'm not...fast. I just tried to tell myself to ignore the fact that I was going to get smoked by most of the people in my group and to compete against myself. I thought that I might be able to run a mile in about 7:30. We started running and I set what I thought was a decent pace. Not sprinting but also definitely pushing myself. We were supposed to be running at an effort level of about 3.5, which I think I settled into pretty well. I was worried about starting too fast and gassing towards the end, but as I got about half way I felt really strong and actually picked it up. I would say I was definitely in the latter half of my group, but after the first 15 seconds or so I didn't get passed and I was actually catching up to some of the faster runners. Just so you know, we were all sort of running against the natural flow of traffic and there was quite a bit of it last night. At one point I got caught behind a group of slower runners and after checking my blind spot I decided to make a move to pass them. I didn't see the guy running full on towards me until a couple steps before we would have collided and while I was able to duck out of his way the guy behind me almost didn't see him coming because I was in the way. My bad. Gotta brush up on that etiquette, I guess. I pushed it towards the end and crossed the line at 7:41. About 10 seconds slower than I would have liked to have run a mile, but all in all, I was happy with the time.

And now it was time to recover. As I was catching my breath and jogging slowly I started to get a little nervous about mile #2. I was worried that maybe I had, for lack of a better term, shot my load on the first one and that I would suffer for it. I wanted to keep the three miles somewhere in the same vicinity time wise and I didn't know if I could match the pace I had set. I got to the turnaround and headed back to the start line. I passed a couple of mentors on my way who were chatting about strategy for their next mile. When I passed them I got really paranoid that I was doing my recovery lap too quickly. I got to the start and took off again. Within a minute or so one of the mentors just cruised past me. Seriously, it was like I was going backwards. For a second my competitive streak told me to try and keep his pace and I'm glad I didn't listen because I would have been dead meat after about a minute. He just kept getting smaller and smaller way ahead of me and I just had to concentrate on keeping my pace and not giving myself a cramp. Got to the turn at the 3/4 of a mile mark and used it as a place to start my kick - no similar landmark going the other way. I got to the finish and was mildly surprised to see that I had improved on my first mile. My time was 7:37. Not bad.

Started my recovery lap on the west side and realized that one more of these was about all I had left in me - if that. My calves tightened up and I was really felling the strain in my knees. I was watching other runners trying to figure out what they do to make it look so much easier but I couldn't put my finger on it. I just tend to run "heavy" in the sense that my feet and knees take a lot of abuse. I have tried to alter my stride so that the impact is less, but it still feels like I am just slamming my feet down as I go while other people seem to have a much better glide going for them. My lack of speed, I suppose, is only secondary to my lack of grace. I hit the turnaround and headed back, pretty much giving up all hope of a sub 8:00 mile on my third try. Got to the start and just went as hard as I could. Again, not a sprint, but as hard as I estimated I could go for a mile. Hit the quarter mile marker and thought to myself that there is no way I'm gonna finish this one on pace. I saw a couple guys about 100 yards in front of me really start to pull away and felt like I was going in slow motion. I had passed a few people on the second part of my recovery who were headed in the other direction and I was getting scared that I would see them pass me despite my ridiculous head start. As I got towards the final stretch I went into an all out sprint, hoping to save my time from being too far off the first two miles. I crossed and looked down at my watch expecting the worst and saw that it wasn't as bad as it could have been. 7:47. I would have loved for my third mile to be my fastest, or to even have been within a second or two of my first mile, but keeping it under 8:00 made me happy and I wasn't too upset by the whole thing. Something to work on improving...

...speaking of which - we'll be tested again in November. After 6 weeks of hill training. Wish us luck.

Fundrasing thanks today go out to Howard. Much appreciation for bringing me within spitting distance of the 50% mark.

Headed to the gym today to knock out about 5 miles which I'll then come back and tell you all about in great detail. I'm sure you're waiting breathlessly. Until then...

DAY 40
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 5.7
TOTAL MILEAGE: 91.2

Day Thirty Nine - A New Accessory

2006-09-20T07:14:00.000-07:00

Not much to report today. Did my normal cross training day routine at the HBO gym - 45 minutes on the elliptical machine. Felt good, especially after being able to take off Monday as scheduled. I feel like I've been making up miles on my off days (which is a no no), so it's nice to be back on the real schedule. The only real news to report is that I may have found a solution to a problem I have been having with my headphones. And if you head over to http://girlyoubetterrun.blogspot.com you'll find out that G-Rocks has been dealing with a similar issue. Granted, Jen's issue is that her ears are too small while mine are too big, but that's beside the point. It seems that when we sweat the earbuds that our iPod's (Dell Jukebox for me because I'm all alternative and shit...and Dell gave me a line of credit so I can buy things like computers and MP3 players with fake money that I don't have) tend to slip or pop out of our ears. It gets really annoying stuffing them back in over and over again and it's usually more of a pain in the ass than it's worth to try and listen to music while excercising. Well, seeing as I have absolutely no pride and long ago dismissed any thought of actually looking cool while running, I made a decision today. I went down to the running store on the block where I work and bought a headband. A blue one. Two actually. And then I went to the gym and then I put my headphones in and then I put a blue headband on in such a way that it would hold the headphones in place. Like, over my ears.

Yes, over my ears.

I look like a lunatic. A complete psycho. But you know what? Those bastards stayed in the whole time.

Congrats to Jen for luring another unsuspecting victim into her web and welcome to the team Drew. Also congrats to Jen for working her way through her issues with her IT band and for being a fundraising dynamo - she topped $5000.00 this week. Speaking of fundraising - my newest round of thanks goes out to Alicia. It's pretty crazy - Alicia and I have never even met face to face - we have a working relationship that takes place over the phone between New York and LA and she is helping me meet my goal. Amazing. Thank you Alicia and everyone else who has been so generous.

More later...

Day Thirty Seven - So Much For The Afterglow

2006-09-18T08:22:00.000-07:00

Woke up Sunday morning, still in Maryland. My new best friend and training guru Adam was taking the day off but I wanted to get a few miles in. He sketched a course around the neighborhood out for us and Becky and I took off to run 3 or so miles. The first mile was tough. Really tough. We had a long day of drinking, eating and watching football on Saturday (11:30PM never felt so late before) and it took us a while to get into any kind of rhythm. My knees were feeling sore and my calves were tight from the day before. That feeling of accomplishment from Saturday was wearing sort thin...but not totally, so I let myself feel rickety and worn down.

We got the opportunity to learn a little something about ourselves early on in the run when a small child fell off of his bike about 100 yards away from us and we basically did nothing. As heartless as that sounds he didn't appear to be hurt, just scared. He got right back up and walked his bike to the side of the road. Plus his brother was there to help him out. In retospect, I think it would have been better if we just kept running instead of stopping, watching, then continuing with our run, but at least we made sure that he could walk. I think there are people out there that would have instinctively run over to the kid without a second thought. I am not one of those people which leads me to believe that a) there may be something seriously wrong with me or b) while I may not be a completely rotton person, I'm nowhere near ready to be a parent.

Just a note: by the time we ran back down the street the kid was back on his bike (this time wearing a helmet) so maybe we've just got really good instincts and the kid was fine the whole time.

We sort of screwed up on our course (although I maintain that had Adam's drawing been to scale we would have been fine) and didn't go quite as far as we would have liked to. Got back to the house a little less than a half hour later, and while I was technically supposed to go about 4 miles, I was happy to be done and more than willing to let myself slide on distance. I'll assume we were running about a 10 minute mile and that we covered about 2.5 all together. Felt good to get out and do something after the long run on Saturday, but I don't know how the 4 would have felt. It was nice to have company on both of my runs this weekend though and I know both Becky and Adam helped me get where I was going.

After a fantastic lunch (The Sunday Sandwich - I just like the name) we headed back up to NYC. Thanks to Lara and Adam for a great weekend and congrats on your beautiful home. I'm hoping we can make it back down again soon. Also thanks to Dan for driving and to Bridget for letting me have the front seat.

A special thanks to the latest contributors who have generously donated to the cause: Marc, Mike, Skyler, Jen G. and Larry. I'm getting really close to hitting 50% and you guys are a big reason why. Thanks so much.

Today is a day off, which is a good feeling. More later...

DAY 37
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 2.5
TOTAL MILEAGE: 85.5

Day Thirty Six - The Nine

2006-09-18T07:24:00.000-07:00

Woke up in the guest room of our friends' beautiful new home in Pasadena, Maryland on Saturday morning.

**Auntie Anne - I'M SORRY I didn't call, but we were only there for about a couple of days and it took a near act of God for the six of us to find a weekend that worked for everyone and we spent most of the time drunk and I don't have my own car and I love you guys and promise to see you all soon.**

Adam, our host, and I had talked the night before about going for a run in the AM. He's training for the Baltimore Marathon in October and was planning on running 15 or so miles. I felt bad slowing him down, but told him I would be up for 8 or 9. He decided to do 12 and I decided to start nursing my drink if I wanted a prayer of making this happen. Those that know me are aware of the fact that I am...shall we say...a total freaking light weight when it comes to booze. In fact, I think this was the first Friday that I had anything since we started training seeing as I already fear Saturday - but a Saturday with a hangover? No thanks.

Adam and I got up at around 9:00 and started talking about our run. We had both taken it easy the night before and were mildly surprised that one by one the rest of the group got up and told us that they'd join us on our run. Adam's wife is into running as well and just completed a 10 mile race a few weeks back. Bridge and Dan run together pretty much every weekend and Becky has been running solidly for a couple months now. So here we were, the Brady's in sneakers, piling into two cars at 9:45 and headed over to the Baltimore/Annapolis Trail.

The Trail is a really nice, flat, paved walkway that runs about 15 miles from Annapolis to Baltimore. We hopped on at mile 7 and headed...I dunno...North? It doesn't really matter. Adam told us that the trail was usually populated by lots of cyclists, but on Saturday there was a charity walk for MS coming the other direction, which cut down on bike traffic. Two by two our group started turning back (thus the reason for 2 cars) and at about 2 and a half miles it was just Adam and myself. I was feeling surprisingly good and got a little lift when Adam mentioned that we were keeping a 9:30 pace per mile.

Quick note - Adam is a few weeks away from his race and he is light years ahead of me in preparation. Bill, do you have a running watch? No. Bill, do you have gel packs? No. Bill, do you have vaseline for your nipples? Not yet. Bill, do you have cool looking running clothes and badass socks? OK, I added that one. But yeah, I need some stuff. It was actually great running with Adam because he kind of pointed me in the right direction in regards to what works for him training wise and what doesn't. He was also tremendously positive and kept making me feel like I am genuinely on my way. When we hit the 3.5 mile mark he asked how I was doing and I realized that I felt really good. I told him I might turn back at 4 miles and he just nonchalantly said, "No, we'll do 4.5 then turn back." I thought, yeah, why wouldn't we?

We stopped at the halfway mark to get a drink and eat a gel pack (delicious). Before this thing started I had so many ideas in my head about running. I have to breathe THIS way and I CAN'T have a conversation with someone while running and I CAN'T ever stop during a run or I'll never start again. One by one these ideas are being destroyed as I learn more and more about how you teach your body to run long distances. So after our short break we started running back. And we still felt good. We were passing the MS walkers that we had seen before and the run just felt natural. I knew I was getting physically tired, but we just kept up the pace. With one more brief stop for water we realized that we were probably under 9:20 per mile. I was thankful that Adam was there to help set the pace as I wasn't sure that I could have kept it without him.

I got back to the starting point and Adam continued on for a mile and a half in the other direction, then came back. In the meantime I stretched and chatted with a couple of the people doing the MS walk. It was a national thing and they were walking 20 miles on Saturday and another 10 on Sunday for a tremendous cause. Good for them. I also met a couple that was nothing less than bedecked in TEAM gear. They were training for a 100 mile bike race that they were going to be completing on roller blades. These people are nuts. We talked for a few minutes and wished eachother luck and away they rolled. Adam got back, and we headed home.

And that's the story of how I ran 9 miles this past Saturday. I'm trying not to be too proud of myself, but really, I feel great about the whole thing. Not that I just completed the distance, but that I did so in such good spirits and that I felt so good afterwards. My legs definitely tightened up a bit by the time we headed out to the bar to watch Notre Dame get the crap kicked out of them that afternoon, but it was a good kind of tight that told me I had pushed myself further than before and I was happy with that. Now, in the grand scheme of things, 9 miles is still way short of a marathon and there are people out there that can run that distance in their sleep, but it's something that I'd never done before and something that I would have never thought I could do a couple months ago and something I thought that might actually kill me after last Saturday's disaster.

But it didn't. And that makes me excited for next Saturday. Even if Bridget thinks I look like Will Farrell streaking when I run.

DAY 36
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 9
TOTAL MILEAGE: 83

Day Thirty Four - Three Days...IN A ROW!

2006-09-15T08:04:00.000-07:00

Because of my schedule (I'm a social butterfly) I don't think that I've actually done a full week of training since this whole thing started. Just to catch any new readers up (I say that as a joke - I know it's just me and you Jen), here's our schedule:

Saturday - Team Session: Long Run
Sunday - EZ Run (Currently 4-6 Miles)
Monday - OFF
Tuesday - Cross Training
Wednesday - Team Session: Endurance, Form, Etc.
Thursday - EZ Run (Currently 4-6 Miles)
Friday - OFF

For me a training week starts on Saturdays because I believe strongly in living my life arbitrarily.

Anyway, for one reason or another I have had a difficult time getting all five workouts into any given week. I'm averaging about 4 I think. Even this week I took Sunday off after my horrible run on Saturday. It's easy to do when you convince yourself that you're too busy and that you've been working really hard and blah blah blah.

So yesterday was sort of a big day for me. I had gotten my cross training in on Tuesday and attended the Team workout on Wednesday. So yesterday I was left to my own devices and it was raining and I was feeling a little tired but it was a day I knew I should definitely run because it would give me the three in a row thing that I haven't really been able to pull off regularly (if at all). Basically, laziness was the issue and I was giving myself all sorts of excuses to skip the 4 miles or so that I should have been running.

But I didn't. After work I headed to the gym and got on the treadmill. I always feel like Astro from the Jetsons on those things. They're just the weirdest invention to me. I want to run, but I don't want to go anywhere or risk having to interact with other people. And yet I think the cross trainer is the coolest thing ever. I'm weird. Anyway, I get on the thing and I do a half mile to warm up. Then I crank it up to 6.3 miles an hour (9:34 minutes a mile). I stuck with that for another 4 miles, which wasn't what I would call "easy" but it also wasn't a killer or anything either. It was just running. After four miles at that pace I did another quarter mile to cool down and called it a day. I realized while stretching that, while I was sweating like a banshee, my heart rate actually returned to normal quite quickly. I wasn't breathing heavy or anything. I guess that's sort of the expected result of running 60 miles in a month, but it was still a nice little surprise.

Off to Baltimore for the weekend, but we're staying with some AVID runners who have invited me to join in on a 15 mile run on Saturday. While that won't be happening I will try and hang with them for 9. You'll hear all about it should I survive. But that's tomorrow. Today is a day off and I'm going to enjoy it and let my tired legs recover.

Thanks for reading. More later...

DAY 34
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 4.75
TOTAL MILEAGE: 74

PS - Oh yeah - our coaches and some mentors are off to New Hampshire for the weekend to run this crazy 200 mile race through mountains and stuff that they run relay style. My mentor Dragan has three six mile stretches that he'll be running for his team. I don't know if I would have said this a month ago, but that sounds so cool. Good luck to them.

Day Thirty Three - I Can Always Hear You Coming

2006-09-14T10:39:00.000-07:00

Last night was rough, but in sort of a good way. You know what I mean.

We met up at the usual place and got our instructions for the night. We were going to be running a shorter distance but alternating between E4 (OK, maybe it's not balls out sprinting like I figured it was last week, but it's pretty close) and then recovering at E1 (we learned that there is no such thing as going too slow for recovery, so I'll let you figure out what E1 means to you because I'm all about making you think). And we were going to do this until they told us we could stop. Scary stuff. So I'm standing there thinking about how hard last week was and how I set my E3 too high at first and then at the end I couldn't go as fast in E3 and how this week I would adjust it when it hit me...

...you know that moment when you're learning something new and you sort of get it but not really and then BAM, it all makes sense. Like, you might not know everything about it, but you figure out the process and it makes sense and you can't even really believe that you didn't see this before because it seems so clear? I remember the same thing happening when I was learning to play guitar. It was like...so, bar chords...are...OH! It's an E but with the other finger barring the fret. It's just an E chord! That makes so much sense.

So yeah, anyway, about this time last night that happened in regards to effort levels. I'm standing there going "OK, not too fast because you don't want to crap out too soon when Ramon said something that cleared everything up (despite the fact that he's been saying basically the same thing for two weeks now). He said "It's OK if you're not going as fast at the end as you are at the beginning, as long as the effort is there." AH HA! EFFORT DOES NOT EQUAL SPEED. So I didn't set my pace wrong last week. It just got harder to keep up with the effort level after running that long. You're muscles are going to tire, but if you can maintain your breathing and keep up the effort you are doing the proper workout. Which is not to say I didn't make mistakes last week, because clearly I did, but at least I understood the nature of those mistakes a little better.

So with my newfound understanding of the world we took off on a warm up jog up to The Central Park Driveway. Once there we split ourselves into groups and at intervals started running really fast on the quarter mile length. Ramon was standing in the middle (sort of) and when we reached him we would downshift from E4 to E1 to recover until we reached the other end, then turn around and haul ass back to him, then recover to the other side. We did this back and forth for probably 35 minutes or so. Maybe less, who can say? In the end I would guess I did the loop (half a mile total) six times, plus the 3/4 of a mile up and back from our starting point as a warm up/cool down.

Oh yeah - the title of this entry. Towards the end of the 2nd E4 section of my 5th lap I caught up with a guy that I had met the very first night we all met as a team. When we switched to E1 he said to me that he can always hear me coming because it sounds like I'm on E5. Now, part of that I'll blame on the sinus infection I have been fighting for a couple of weeks. Another part I'll blame on me trying to breathe through the ridiculous cramp I had in my left side (I think E4 - E1 running is very conducive to these cramps as I heard other people complaning of them too) and my patented (i.e. stolen from some random girl I ran with like twice in college) Cramp-Away Breathing Technique. The other part I'm just going to have to own as part of my generally terrible breathing habits as I run, seeing as I am a recently retired smoker of 10 years and the fact that I am in generally poor health all around. It's funny because earlier in the run I was thinking "Man, I'm really loud" but I told myself that it was probably amplified in my head and that no one else could hear it. Thanks for kicking me in the insecurity, buddy.

After the run I joined G-Rocks and some other Team members for a quick beer before heading home. We talked with this couple who did a triathalon last year (wow) and is training for their first marathon now. You know why they do the swimming first in a triathalon? So you don't drown, idiot. See that, I'm dumb so you don't have to be. And now you know.

That's it for now. Thanks for reading, more later...

DAY 33
TODAY's MILEAGE - 4.5
TOTAL MILEAGE - 69.25 (SO CLOSE TO 70)

Day Thirty Two - Running Out of Punk Cards

2006-09-13T12:06:00.000-07:00

Not much of an update today. Was supposed to run on Sunday but punked out. Almost made it up on Monday, but that is supposed to be a rest day and the last time I messed around with the schedule like that I almost ended up dead on the side of the road in West Hartford. So I had a nice long time to recover before yesterday's Cross Training session. 45 minutes on the elliptical (man, my first pass on spelling that word wasn't even CLOSE) with a 5 minute cool down. Tried to keep things in the "Weight Loss" zone again this week because that's where they should be, so says my gut. Felt good.

Tonight's group run is going to be a bear. Remember effort levels and how we worked with E2 and E3 last week? Well this week it's shifting from E4 to E1...until they tell us to stop. We'll be up on the 102nd Street Transverse if you want some cheap entertainment for the night. I'll post all about it tomorrow if I live.

Other things going on: Jen has doubled her personal fundraising goal from $5,000.00 to $10,000.00. Unreal. She'll probably hit it too. Good for you, Jen.

Personally, I put out the second email in my multi-tiered fundraising campaign. This time it went to friends and acquaintences from work. I already heard the email referred to as "demanding." The guy was joking but I feel kind of like a dick now, which is, I guess one of the reasons that I am not so great at fundraising. I just keep reminding myself that the next time someone is looking for some support I gotta jump in feet first, because honestly it's not that much to ask. My rule with sending out the email was to send it to folks that I thought I would donate to without question of they asked, so if you're reading this and you thought my email was pushy, just know I sent it to you out of love. All you gotta do is ask and I'll be there.

Huge thanks those who have made a donation: Nancy, Brenda, Sean and Susan - you guys rock and I'm very appreciative of your support.

I guess that's all I've really got for now. As always, more later...

Day Twenty Nine - Something I Learned About My Nipples

2006-09-11T07:03:00.000-07:00

Headed home to Connecticut on Saturday to see my family. After having lunch I took a drive with my dad to measure some distance for a run. We headed out from his house to the West Hartford Resevior. I had wanted to run 8 miles and we figured out the resevoir was 3.6 miles from his place. The drive seemed REALLY long and all of a sudden 7.2 miles seemed like a long enough run for the day. After all, my Team mentor DID tell me not to overdo things on my own, didn't he? We took a slightly different route back to the house and the final mileage ended up at 7.6. He suggested a different turn that could add a tenth or two on the way out to the resevior as well. I got changed and started running.

The first half of the run felt great. It was hot and there were a lot of hills, but I was wisely going at a very controlled pace and I had prepared myself for the terrain during the drive. Plus it felt good heading up all the hills knowing I would be coming down them on the way home. About two miles or so into the run I realized that the t-shirt I was wearing might be a problem as it started...well, for lack of a better term, chaffing my nipples. Something to note for the future, I figured.

The last stretch up to the resevior was all uphill and it was a pretty tough stretch, but I kept my (slow) pace and felt pretty good once I got to the top. Ran another half mile or so to the entrance, then turned around. As soon as I did I felt the sun strongly on my back. It was great as I hadn't worked up quite the sweat I would have liked to at this point and I was hoping that some moisture on the shirt might provide some relief to my teats. I started heading down the hill, letting my momentum do most of the work, conserving as much energy as possible and regaining my breath (FWIW, three in, three out the whole way - worked out really well).

Things leveled out at the bottom of the hill and that was my first inkling that something was wrong. My legs had stiffened a bit on the downhill and I just couldn't seem to loosen up. I was BARELY jogging at this point and the though of picking up the pace seemed ludicrous with over 3 miles to go. I told myself that stopping was not an option and I believed this. I kept moving despite the fact that things started to feel like one of those dreams where you run but can't get anywhere.

Somewhere around the 5 and half mile mark I officially crapped out. It was the first time since I started training that I felt like I had to stop and walk. I probably should have but I guess I would rather hobble along like a moron than stop and walk for a quarter mile. I just kept thinking that I hadn't even gone a quarter of a marathon yet and how screwed I would be if this happened on race day. Granted, I will be better trained by then, but I guess my rationalle was that if I couldn't do 7.5 today, how on earth would I ever do 26.2?

There was a long stretch of about a mile on the same road that I thought would never end. Finally I hit the 6.5 mile mark and knowing I was that close to home...didn't really change anything. I was done. I did walk a few steps as I crossed New Britain Ave., but then started running again as I got to the other side, trying to push myself to a halfway respectable pace. I was able to finish running, but barely. I figure with the few changes to course that I ran approximately 7.75 miles. Took me an hour and 28 minutes, which is about 11 minutes and 35 seconds a mile.

Now, there are a lot of things I could talk about learning from this run. About pacing and about hills and about taking the days off that Team recommends before a long run. All of those things added to the overall "bad" feeling I had for most of the run, but the thing that most stood out to me was the fact that my nipples were at this point KILLING me. I took a look expecting the worst, but honestly, they didn't look all that bad. A little red, I guess, but I couldn't believe that the level of discomfort I was feeling wouldn't be accompanied by something REALLY tough to look at. I honestly probably wouldn't even mention it if it wasn't for the conversation I had yesterday with my Uncle Guy. Guy is a health NUT and has been really into marathons and triathalons for the past few years. We got to talking and he was really pleased that I had decided to run a marathon (he's running Vegas in December so if he comes to Phoenix in January it will probably only be to run the half - what a baby). We got to talking about Team, training and my diet (yeah, really gotta address that and soon - yogurt for breakfast this morning was a good start I think) and he mentioned that his nipples get really sensitive and that he shaves his chest and puts bandaids over them on long runs. This did not seem like a great idea to me, but he also mentioned that Vaseline works too. On your upper thighs as well.

THANK GOD. Thank God I'm not the only one with crazy sensitive runners nipple and thank God there is not one, but two possible solutions to the problem. So, if you see me putting vaseline on my nipples in the near future, don't get any crazy ideas. I'm just going running. Probably.

Want to apologize to those who have donated and haven't received a personal thank you from me. Fired up my laptop on Friday night to take care of that and the peice of shit died on me...for the second time in 6 months. I hate computers. Problem is being solved though. In the meantime, thank you thank you thank you for your generosity. It has been incredible. Thanks to Greg and Melissa (who brought me right up to $1000.00) just a few minutes ago. You guys rule. Thanks again.

More later...

DAY 29
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 7.75
TOTAL MILEAGE: 64.75

Day Twenty Eight - Picking Up The Pace

2006-09-11T06:47:00.000-07:00

As predicted, I didn't run on Thursday. I did get to go to the premier of The Wire though and ran into an old friend, so the day wasn't a total waste. Friday is one of our "off" days, but I decided to go for a short run to make up some mileage after work (actually, I was going to take the day off but G-Rocks sort of guilted me into it, even though she doesn't know she did). So I headed up to the gym after work. I decided to run on the treadmill so I could set a pace and see if I could keep up with it. After a quarter mile warm up I set the pace for 9:05 a mile (the next setting was 8:57, which seemed outrageously ambitious) and started huffing it. The first mile was...not so good. I felt a mild stitch near my right kidney and then another in my left abdomen. My legs were OK, and the speed wasn't really bothering me. If you've been reading I had mentioned altering my breathing and this was my first attempt at three in, three out for an entire run. It seemed to work pretty well. I also remember a piece of advice I was given by a runner in college for how to get rid of a cramp when you feel it coming on. She said that you should take as much breath in as possible and blow it out with as much force as you can. I have no idea whether this is sound advice or not, medically speaking, but since then it has seemed to work pretty well for me. I'm sure I have spent a lot of time sounding like a lunatic breathing in and out with as much energy as I can muster, but people do seem to get out of my way a lot, which is nice. So I breathed my way through the cramps. The second mile felt a little better than the first and the third felt very good actually. I finished the run in just about 31 minutes (the warm up and cool down added to the overall time) and felt a sense of pride that I could knock out 3 miles at the pace I hope to set for the marathon. Now, I'm not delusional enough to think that I can rock that pace for the whole 26.2, but the fact that I've got a couple of them in me is a start.

DAY 28
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 3.26
TOTAL MILEAGE: 57

Day Twenty Six - I've Made A Terrible Error In Judgement

2006-09-07T10:17:00.000-07:00

Apparently I don't know fast I am. Another way to say this is apparently I don't know how slow I am, but I'm a glass half full kind of guy, so we'll go with the former. Last night was a group workout where we learned a little something about effort levels. I'll break it down the way I understand it. There are basically four effort levels. E1 (effort level 1 for those of us not renewing our MENSA memberships any time soon) is basically breathing in a conscious state. I kid. E1 would be like a slow jog - somewhere around 50% of your max effort. E2 moves up to between 60 and 70%. This is the effort level we are supposed to be using on our long runs. You should be able to hold a conversation at E2. E3 brings things up to about 75 - 85%. You're definitely working harder, but you can still maintain this level of exertion for extended periods. Your breathing should be at the same rate as E2, but your breaths should be deeper. E4 is just balls out sprinting like a lunatic. That's not what the Team people told me, but I'm a pretty smart guy and I like figuring things out for myself.

So last night we had instructions to alternate between E2 and E3. (For what it's worth, G-Rocks explains this all much better over at http://girlyoubetterrun.blogspot.com.) The intermediate group was told to be "on" (E3) for 6 light poles and "off" (E2) for 3 light poles. Simple enough.

We started with a warm up jog and then were instructed to count our strides for the first minute. I had no watch so had to mooch off of Charlotte. However, Charlotte has a shorter stride than I do, so I don't know if my count was accurate as I was trying to stay close. I think it was around 160 or so, but there was some discrepancy as to when I was supposed to stop counting, plus I remember getting distracted around 118 and letting my mind wander. I'm not that bright. Our next task was to count our breaths for the second minute. You can count breaths in or out - it all ends up the same. After you get both of these numbers you can do some convoluted math to tell you...something about running, but I kind of forget what the point was. One day I'll get a watch and do it proper and when I get the numbers I'll figure out how far I am from elite. I think you're supposed to take like 160 strides per minute (elite runners take between 180 and 190) and one breath every 3 strides or so.

OK, here's a little inside info on my running style. It's pretty much all based around my breathing. I start out breathing in on a four count, then breathing out on a four count. To keep things simple I count along with my strides. Right - 1, Left - 2, Right - 3, Left - 4. Still with me. I try to keep this up for the first third of the run. This would be my E2, I guess. After a while this starts to get to be too much and I switch things up. I move to a three count in and a three count out, still staying with my strides. This is my comfort zone, as the four count can be a lot of breath to take in. When I get REALLY tired (usually the last 5 minutes or so of the run) I switch to two in and two out, although I am usually able to alternate back to three every minute or so. The way our coach Ramon described things I think what I need to do is alter my breathing so that it's the same for the duration of the run - probably three in and three out. I need to make that work for when my effort level is low and for when it's high (up a hill, or at a faster pace - although it is important to remember that SPEED DOES NOT EQUAL EFFORT). Anyway, that's a peek into my untrained running habits that I'm probably going to have to break if this thing is going to work.

Last night started out great. I was moving along pretty quickly during the "on" portions and recovering nicely during the "off" sections. This lasted probably about 10 to 15 minutes. I think what I need to understand is that my E3 over the distance of a mile or two is going to be much different than it is over the distance of say 5 miles (or 26.2 for that matter). About half way through the run I was struggling...badly. My breathing was a mess and my pace was falling flat. My "off" times were just pathetic with me huffing and puffing trying to get back into form for the next "on" time and I just felt like I was moving backwards. On my fourth trip round the course that had been set for us I was BEGGING for this to be the last one. I had no idea how much time had passed or how far we had gone, I just knew I was done. Throughout the practice I had found myself keeping a steady pace with another runner and towards the end he just started blowing me away because he was able to keep his pace while I was falling apart. I finished strong, only because I KNEW we were done, but if I had to take another pass I probably would have collapsed. Tough workout that will hopefully go a long way in teaching me how to set my pace over longer distances.

Today is supposed to be a 4 - 5 mile EZ run as they call it, but I have a work thing that will probably prevent me from running (although I guess I could have done that instead of blogging just now). I'm gonna make it up tomorrow on the treadmill before work and then Saturday while the rest of the Team folks are running a 4 mile race in Manhattan I'll be up in Connecticut. I'll be with them in spirit though as I attempt 8 miles again.

The really big news today is that I sent out the fundraising letter to the first round of friends and family yesterday and got a very favorable response. A huge amount of thanks go out to my mom, Aunt Po, Jessie, D-Bo, Nye, Randy S., Lissette and Robyn who have all been very generous. See that? All you have to do is donate and you get what the kids call a shout out right here in my fantastic blog for all to read. Maybe I'll even come up with a bitchin nickname for you.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading. More later...

DAY 26
TODAY's MILEAGE - 5.6 (according to G-Rocks anyway)
TOTAL MILEAGE - 53.74

Day Twenty Five: A Day Without Subtitles

2006-09-05T19:29:00.000-07:00

Not even a month in and I can't think of something clever to title this post. I can't even think of something lame like I usually do. So we'll all make do without. Fortunately for everyone, I don't really have much to say tonight, so hopefully soon enough we can all forget about this ugly incident.

Cross training today - only my second cross training session since this whole thing began although I think it was supposed to be my fourth. Guess Tuesday has proven to be a bad day thus far. Anyway, headed down to the gym where I work around 5:00. I knew it wasn't going to be a very heavy day as I had to be back in my office no later than 6:30 as I had to get ready for a meeting at 7. I debated using the bike to work out but decided to go with what I knew and stick to the cross trainer. I decided to take it slow with a 30 minute workout and a 5 minute cool down. I know I should be doing more at this point, but again, I didn't really have a ton of time.

I also tried something new with the workout today. Usually on the cross trainer I set the resistance to 10 or so (it goes to 20) and go like hell on a hilly course for as long as I am on the machine (usually 45 minutes or so). Today I set the resistance at 8 and kept things a little less intense. I kept my heartrate lower and stayed under the "weight loss" umbrella rather than moving into "cardio training" territory. The good thing was that I felt like I could have gone on forever at that pace (it's really amazing how quickly your body builds up stamina when you push yourself) and I broke a good sweat at the 10 minute mark, which is par for the course on the machine. The bad thing was that I didn't really feel as though I was pushing myself the way I probably should be. Course, the cross training days are supposed to be days where our bodies heal themselves from all the running, so maybe that's not such a bad thing after all. And I gotta say that using different muscles was a HUGE relief as my legs felt great the whole time.

Well, I guess I ended up saying a little more than I originally planned. I've got about 90% of my email addresses together and I know I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but the fundraising letter goes out tomorrow. Hope you're all doing well.

Thanks for reading. More later...

Days Twenty Two & Twenty Four: A Change of Scenery

2006-09-05T08:59:00.000-07:00

Headed upstate for the long weekend with my girlfriend to visit with her family. I missed the Team run on Saturday, but through emails and the September schedule I saw that we were scheduled to run between 7 and 9 miles. Ooof. I decided on 8. However, I only really had approximate distances so I'm doing a bit of guesswork with exact numbers in this entry.

Woke up Saturday morning to Ernesto's not so subtle pressence. It was pouring. For some reason I was kind of stoked to run in the rain. Seemed like fun. I opened the back door to let my girlfriend's dog Jake out back to do his business and felt th chill in the air for the first time. Running outside all of a sudden seemed like a very stupid idea. But the alternative was the treadmill and 8 miles in the same place seemed really discouraging to me so I decided to go with the original plan. I was dropped off down at Seneca Lake, which has a very nice running path along the shore. 2.5 miles from one end to the other. I figured back and forth would give me 5 and then a mile back to the house is 6. Didn't know quite how I was going to get to 8 from there, but I was comfortable with the idea of making it up as I went along.

I started down the path and was drenched within a few minutes. The only problem with this was the t-shirt clinging to my belly (which incidentally has grown since I have been running - guess my "I can eat anything seeing as I'm in training for a marathon" strategy may have to be addressed). I spent a few minutes pulling the wet garment away from my skin, but then figured I had a long ways to go and didn't want to get sidetracked with a new hobby, so I just let it cling. There were half mile markers for the first mile and a half of the path and then I either missed them or they went missing. Somewhere around 2 miles I lost the trail. No, I don't really know how. It just sort of ended at this beach area and split into like 4 different foot paths, none of which looked like the one I had been running on. Pissed off as I knew this couldn't be the official end of the path, I turned around and ran back to the start. From there I ran the mile back up the hill towards home, but when I got to my girlfriend's parents's street I kept going. Further up the hill. I kept considering turning around and heading back, but I felt really good and sort of wanted to see how far I could go. I finally took a right after 7 or 8 minutes, then ran down that road until it ended. I took another right, figuring that if I ran in a big square I would end up back on the right street sooner or later. It worked and I ended up back home after an hour and 15 minutes of running. The really crazy thing is that I was smiling for the last 15 minutes realizing how good I felt. I must have looked like a complete moron, running in the rain, soaked to the bone, grinning like an idiot and actually talking to myself about how good this felt.

I think I got about 4 miles in on the lake path, plus the mile back up the hill, and an additional mile and a half around the neighborhood for a grand total of 6 and a half miles. Far short of my 8 mile goal, but still my longest run to date.

On Sunday I was scheduled to run somewhere between 4 and 5 miles, but we slept late and had a busy day planned, so I pushed the run to Monday, which was supposed to be an off day.

Woke up on Monday and had too much for breakfast. I probably should have just had a piece of fruit and then gone to get the run out of the way, but I ended up sitting down with the whole family for breakfast, which is actually a very nice habit that my girlfriend's family has and one that I could see myself getting used to. A half an hour or so later I took off with a stomach way too full of toast and cereal (and a couple of strips of bacon). I ran up the hill where I had ended my run on Saturday. Took a bit of a longer loop and ran back down by the house. Took about 15 - 20 minutes and I figured I had been about a mile and a half. The run was very hard and I just couldn't get into the spirit or find any kind of groove. The thought of repeating the loop 2 more times was an unpleasant one and I decided to run back down to the lake. Once there I did about a quarter mile on the path, then doubled back, then up the hill and back home. A mile and a half in the neighborhood, a mile down the hill, half a mile on the path and a mile back home for a total of the 4 hardest miles I have run since this thing started.

Granted, my totals are not 100% accurate, but I assure you that I am erring on the side of caution and definitely not giving myself credit for miles not covered.

Sort of a mixed bag of training this weekend. I'm glad I kicked out the 10.5, but wish I had done the 12. It was also nice to run in a new place and through the weather, but something felt off about the whole thing. Could have been the simple fact that I couldn't stop stuffing my face all weekend and the mirror set up in the bathroom forced me to confront the fact that...well...I look like someone who is definitely NOT training for a long distance run. Definitely gotta put some attention into my diet and use some of the dedication I have put into training into eating better. Would be nice for this whole endeavor to result in some better physical health and a better feeling about my general appearance.

Want to say a huge thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Roxie, who became the second name on my list of donators right after their daugther. Fundraising letter goes out today and then the fun begins. Looking forward to hearing from lots of folks soon.

Thanks for reading, more later...

DAY 22
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 6.5
TOTAL MILEAGE: 44:14

DAY 24
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 4
TOTAL MILEAGE: 48.14

Day Twenty One - Back On The Wagon

2006-09-01T08:59:00.000-07:00

Hey, remember me? It's Bill. I used to update this blog. Then I didn't for a while. Know why? Because I have been a very terrible marathon trainer this week and have fallen quite a bit off the pace. In fact, way back there when I posted on Day Sixteen was the last time I actually ran.

Until this morning that is. I got up early today and kicked out 3 miles. I wanted to grow a set and go for 4, but didn't want to screw myself for the weekend. Cause we're taking it to the next level tomorrow and going for 8 miles, followed up by 4 on Sunday, so I didn't want to overdo it (despite the fact that I have been underdoing it all week). But I feel slightly OK because today was technically a day off so I'm pretending that the little girly run I took this morning sort of makes up for the 3 days I missed this week.

Anyway, this morning was...eh, OK. My knees were bothering me pretty much the whole time, which has me a bit concerned. I'm hoping that it had something to do with the surface I was running on. I took the same path down Central Park West that we ran on Sunday, which was the other day I had the knee issues, so maybe I shouldn't run there anymore. I'm guessing tomorrow will tell some tales regarding my knees. My left thigh seems to be tightening up a little bit now, but that seemed to work itself out towards the end of the run, so I'm not too worried there. The good news is that the run didn't tire me out at all and I was able to maintain my breathing the whole way without getting winded at all, and at this point after a layoff for a few days I'll take any kind of positive I can latch onto.

Want to send a special thanks to Jen/G-Rocks/Roxie for being the first to donate to the cause. I told you she was awesome. Only $3775.00 to go ($4475.00 if I want to avoid the shame of running with a Red Sox logo somewhere on my body). Letter goes out on Tuesday and then the run really begins. Congrats to Jen as well for her fundraising efforts which have been incredible. She's almost already to her requirements (last I checked she was at $3666.00) and will undoubtedly make her personal goal of 5 grand and then some. Great work, and definitely inspiring.

How hard do you think it would be to collect 1 dollar from 3800 different people? That's my fallback plan if my friends and family stiff me.

Off to beautiful ("and I don't mean that in an Eddie Haskel sort of way"*) Geneva, New York for the long weekend. Gonna miss the Team session on Saturday, but I'm gonna rock that 8 miles on my own. Wish me luck.

Thanks for reading. More later.

DAY 21
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 3
TOTAL MILEAGE: 37.64

*Bonus points for anyone who can tell me the name of the character who I stole the Eddie Haskel quote above from...without using IMDB. We're on the honor system here, so just know that if you lie, I'll kill you.

Days Fifteen & Sixteen - Soggy Shoes

2006-08-27T17:53:00.000-07:00

Just a quick update tonight.

Saturday woke up to the sound of rain. Lots of it. Headed up to Central Park for the weekend Team session. Coach Ramon's email on Friday informed (warned?) us that many of us would be running longer than we ever had before, so the fact that I was soaked the bone by the time I got to the 72nd St. Transverse was icing on the cake after a particularly long week. We found out that Ramon ran his 31st marathon the day before and seeing him there with us at 8:30 AM was inspiring to say the least. The rain cleared up as soon as everyone got there and it was actually nice to run in cooler weather. I've actually never minded a warm rain, so I guess I'm being a bit dramatic about the whole thing anyway. The intermediate group did the six mile loop (I was glad that I did it last week, as this time I was able to pace myself by landmark and knew exactly how much I had left and when to expect a hill). The run went well and for the first time in a couple of weeks I felt as though I could keep going by the time the workout ended. My knees hurt a bit for the rest of the day, but overall, it was a great run.

My girlfriend stayed over last night and this morning we woke up and decided to go running together. It was raining again, but it wasn't heavy. We ran a mile and a half down Central Park West and then back. It was a good, quick run and felt much shorter than half of what I did the day before. It's strange that in just over two weeks 3 - 4 miles has become an easy day, but it appears that is what has happened.

Just one short antecdote today. This afternoon my girlfriend and I went to get her some news sneakers. We went to the same place where I bought my running shoes a couple weeks back. As she was trying on a few different styles a couple of guys came in and one of them asked for help finding some running shoes. After the salesperson tried to give some advice the guy's friend said, "Um...he's actually just looking for something that looks good that he can walk around in mostly and sometimes run in. It's not like he's going to be running a marathon in these or something." And then I realized - I've become one of them. One of those people that trains to do something crazy like run a marathon. It felt kind of cool.

Thanks for reading. More later...

DAY 15
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 6
TOTAL MILEAGE: 31.64

DAY 16
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 3
TOTAL MILEAGE: 34.64

Day Twelve - A Piece of Pie

2006-08-24T09:25:00.000-07:00

Pie as in 3.14. As in I ran 3.14 miles yesterday. Get it? A piece of PIE? Instead of cake? GET IT?

Yeah, I've got a headcold and it's having an effect...obviously. In fact, I was debating attending last night's training session because I figured maybe my body was in need of some rest. But then I found some motivation in the whole cause that Team in Training supports and decided I would go and do what I could. I decided to do the "Beginner" training instead of the "Intermediate/Advanced" which turned out to be two times around The Resevoir. Towards the end of the second lap I was feeling like I should push it and go once more around, but that faded quickly and I think it was for the best that I took it relatively easy. Despite my clogged up nose I felt quite good after the run and was glad that I went. Today, however, I'm pretty run down and I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do the 3 - 4 miles that I'm scheduled to run. This week is feeling like a bit of a wash as I missed Sunday and Tuesday already and while part of me feels guilty about that, the other part understands that with my work schedule, a wedding and 2 funerals in a 7 day span and now this cold - well, something had to give.

Some good news - I finished the first draft of my fundraising letter and set up my fundraising website, so I'm feeling good about that. As far as personal good news - my cousin Luke and his wife Karin gave birth to their 4th son yesterday (although I'm told Karin did most of the heavy lifting there). Matthew was born happy and healthy and that's about the best news I've had in a couple of weeks. One more and they've got a basketball team. Congrats to them and I can't wait to see the newest edition to the family.

I think that's about it for today.

Oh wait - one last thing - Jen confirmed that my run on Sunday was indeed 6 miles, so the asterisk is gone. Thanks Jen.

Now that really is it.

Thanks for reading. More later...

DAY 12
TODAY's MILEAGE: 3.14
TOTAL MILEAGE: 25.64

Day Nine - 0 to 6 in Nine Days

2006-08-21T07:57:00.000-07:00

I know, I know, it's been a while since my last update. It was a long weekend. Wrote a song about it, like to hear it here it go.

Left work on Friday around 1:30. My dry cleaning wasn't ready when I tried to pick it up in the AM and since I basically have no big boy clothes I had to go and buy a shirt for the wedding that night. I bought two - one cost $150.00 and the other cost $50.00. Guess which one I'm returning? After shopping I headed down to Penn Station where I met up with my girlfriend and hopped on (in, actually) the train to Secaucus Junction. Met our friend there and he chauffered us up to...the town where the wedding was. Why I can never remember details like this is beyond me. It was a very nice town though. We checked into our hotel room and got ourselves ready for the wedding. Down in the lobby we met up with the rest of our friends and all drove over to the church together. The ceremony was nice and went off without a hitch except for the groom saying "I take you, as my husband" to the bride. Oh how we laughed. After church we hopped back into the cars and made our way back to the hotel for happy hour.

I'd just like to take a moment here to commend and thank the bride and groom for holding the reception in the same building where our beds were located. I don't think a finer idea has ever been had and I think it should be a rule with all weddings.

Happy hour was fantastic if only for the Swedish meatballs. But there was so much more. Soon enough however we moved into the main hall (with the rest of the 300 or so guests - this was quite the shin dig) and the party got started for reals. Magic Moments was providing the entertainment complete with a video tribute to the couple of honor, light up roses for the first dance and some other fantastic lighting effects throughout the evening. I'd like to say that the theme from The Natural was an especially nice touch just before the bride and groom were introduced.

Then we basically drank a lot and danced. Fortunately, I know my limits (super lightweight) and decided about an hour before the festivities ended to switch from Jack and Diet Coke to Diet Coke straight up and then right to water. Even the half a beer I muscled down at the hotel bar after the reception couldn't bring me back from the land of the sober at that point, which I was mighty thankful for on Saturday morning when I woke up surprisingly clear headed.

Oh, I forgot to mention. My girlfriend and I were sitting out front of the hotel at one point (her getting some fresh air, me, stinking it up with a cigar) and a shuttle bus full of guests at a different wedding pulls up. Suddenly I am surrounded by women screaming in surprise and delight. Apprently a friend of my girlfriend's from her hometown was at another wedding taking place in this very hotel on the same night and just happened to see us sitting on the bench as they got off of their bus. She was there with her husband (we actually attended their wedding upstate last year) and her parents. It was quite the scene. Small world, people. Small world.

On Saturday we went to brunch which was fantastic. Thanks to whoever invented that French Toast casserole thingy. That was scrumptious. After that we all checked out and headed back to NYC. Some friends from out of town who hadn't rocked enough ass at the wedding were staying at my girlfriend's place so about 10 of us wound up back there around noon waiting for the Yankees/Sox game (the absolute best part of this story is that the out of town friends were from Boston). So we watched the game and I realized that with each passing run the Yankees put up on the Sox that my plan of making up the group run I had missed that morning was basically the idea of a crazy person.

After the game everyone decided to go out to our local watering hole and continue the festivities there. Except for my girlfriend and I because we were basically half unconscious at this point. She was fighting a nasty cold all weekend and I'm basically very lame. Everyone wound up back at the apartment that night for a pizza party. We went to bed before Chico and Sarah from Italy showed up just to ensure that no one would forget that we are indeed the most uncool couple of the bunch.

Sunday morning, after saying goodbye to the Bostonians, I made my way back up to Harlem and went for a run (and you thought I wasn't going to talk about training for a whole entry). I've always heard that the main loop around all of Central Park is 6 miles, but outside of actually researching this piece of information I have absolutely no way to confirm that. So for now we'll call it 6 miles and I'll put an asterisk there until I can verify it (i.e. - someone who knows me can tell me whether or not this is the case). Knowing that the Team folks ran somewhere between 5 and 6 miles on Friday I decided to run the loop. I had never done so before and figured it would be pretty difficult. In fact, the longest I have ever run before is six miles (although I'm taking someone else's word on this as I never measured the distance). So as I started I kept reminding myself to keep my competitive nature in check and just worry about finishing and not all of the people that were bound to pass me.

After running the loop I can tell you this - if it's not 6 miles it should be. Or more. Because it feels like what I imagine running 6 miles should feel like.

And I can't even imagine what 26.2 must feel like.

By my calculations (checking the clock on my microwave when I left and when I came back in, minus estimated time to walk to the park, stretch after the run, then walk home) it took me about an hour to complete the 6* miles. That's 10 minutes a mile kids. Still a minute over the pace I want to set in the actual marathon in January. I know it's early in the training, but I can't imagine how it's going to happen.

The rest of Sunday had it's ups and downs. A bunch of us headed out to Jersey City to see our friends' new apartment. The place is very cool - a renovated warehouse with a very raw and industrial feel. High ceilings, big windows, the works. Had a nice time out there and the night was looking great until on the way home I realized I had left my keys in Jersey City. Yeah. So we hopped out of our friend's car forgoing the ride up to Harlem, got back on the Path, headed BACK to JC, retrieved the keys and then took the Path BACK to Manhattan. A short hour and half after realizing my mistake we were home safe and sound in Harlem.

Idiot.

Today is a day off from training according to the Team schedule, but I had planned to make up the 4 miles I missed yesterday when I was making the 6* I missed the day before. Unfortunately I'm going to have to miss a day however, as I am headed for a train to Connecticut as a good friend of mine lost his father over the weekend and the services are tonight and tomorrow. I've known Matt and his family for as long as I can remember and his dad was always so welcoming and generous to all of us. There were times in high school where all of our parents must have felt like they had half a dozen sons with the amount of time we spent just hanging out at eachother's homes. After high school Matt was in a serious car accident and his father kept us all connected despite the miles we had travelled with his daily, then weekly email updates as Matt recovered. Mr. C. was a good man and I know that he was a VERY good father and he'll definitely be missed. I'll always remember seeing Matt and his parents at Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve and knowing that no matter how long it had been since I saw them last that they'd have a smile and a hug for me.

It's been a tumultuous week or so and I'm feeling a bit frayed, but then I just keep thinking about the friend I have who lost his son and now the one who just lost his father and I realize how good I have things. But whenever things want to get a whole lot more boring and uneventful, I'm ready.

Thanks for reading. More later...

DAY 9
TODAY's MILEAGE: 6*
TOTAL MILEAGE: 22.5*

CONTRAVERSY~!

2006-08-17T21:38:00.000-07:00

BILL: MILEAGE
JEN: MILAGE

Who's dumber?

Day Six - Going Nowhere

2006-08-17T19:26:00.000-07:00

Not really much to report tonight, just wanted to post an update after today's run.

Wanted to go to the gym on my lunch hour and run on the treadmill, but work has been a bear this week. We usually have six people in my department - the director of production, three line producers and two coordinators. There are a couple other folks too - the director of production's personal assistant is a great guy and our accountant is a huge help too, but strictly production speaking, we'll go with six. Anyway, for a whole laundry list of reasons (ranging from the birth of a child to the death of another) we have several staff members out of the office this week. Four actually (well, five including the personal assistant who is down with some sort of face...thing going on) which leaves two of us, and somehow things are just really busy right now. Really busy. It's like The Perfect Storm in there right now and keeping the emotion that this week has brought with it to the side, it's tough enough to keep all the plates spinning.

Which is just a really long and drawn out way for me to tell you all that I couldn't get out of work today to go for a run. So I waited until after sending the last email of the day and everyone had gone home and headed down to the second floor. There were a few people in the gym, but there was one treadmill open. Now, generally speaking I don't like running on treadmills. It's not so much the running part that bothers me, it's the aftermath. I feel like I used to feel after roller skating. You take the skates off but something inside your body still feels like you're rolling forward...or falling down, which was my forte the few times I strapped on a pair of skates. I also got my thumb run over once, but that is a whole other story. Although now that I think about it, that's pretty much the whole story right there. And you thought this was going to be a boring entry.

So I ran on the treadmill. Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you that I forgot my iPod. Actually, I'll be honest, it's not really an iPod - it's a Dell Jukebox. For the sake of argument we'll call it an iPod the same way we call all tissues Kleenex, deal? But between you and I, it's a Dell Jukebox. Regardless, it was a run without music, which, generally speaking, I don't really dig. Although Ramon mentioned yesterday that there were no iPod's allowed during group runs (I'll go ahead and assume he means Dell Jukebox's too), so I suppose it's good for me to get used to running without.

After 3.29 miles (and you'll see why I chose that number when I add up my totals at the bottom of the post - aka I'm anal) I stretched, took a shower and then headed home. Run was OK, although I felt pretty sluggish. I was running at a pace of a mile every 10 minutes with no incline and I was trying to picture myself running 26.2 miles at a pace of a mile every 9 minutes (the pace if you want to finish a marathon in 4 hours) and it was making me depressed because I can't imagine that every being a reality.

Otherwise, it was weird (as it always is) to end the run and realize that I hadn't actually gone anywhere. Not that running around a man-made body of water 3 times is something out of Forrest Gump, but you know what I'm saying. Plus, treadmills always make me think of The Jetsons. Although I'm sure I'll be thanking God for them on the first 15 degree day in December (or even November...ugh).

Tomorrow is a day off from running and it will be a day off from updating this blog as well. I'm off to a wedding tomorrow night and on Saturday will try to run through what is sure to be hangover of some sort. Have a great Friday and I'll be back later this weekend.

Thanks for reading. More later...

DAY 6
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 3.29
TOTAL MILEAGE: 16.5

Day Five - The First OFFICIAL Workout

2006-08-17T08:59:00.000-07:00

Apparently last Saturday was just a casual run. That's according to our head coach Ramon. So I guess I was just casually putting all of my weight on the banister and praying that my legs would not collapse from under me on Monday. Good to know.

Jen's rundraising update: she's over a thousand bucks. I'm happy for her and hate her a little bit all at the same time. Seriously though, way to go Jen. Anything over 5 grand goes right to me, right? I mean, that was the deal we made when I decided to run, wasn't it?

OK, so yesterday I didn't think I was going to make it to the Team session but I ended up making it back into the city earlier than anticipated. I got back to my apartment at about 6:00, quickly changed and walked down to Madison and 92nd where we checked in and then headed to Central Park for the actual work out. Wednesday sessions will be focused mainly on form, technique and sort of whipping our asses into shape. Saturdays will be for longer runs and building endurance. Last night we got a tutorial on upper body form while running. The most positive thing I took from all of this is that I already have decent form - who knew? Well...as far as my arms are concerned that is. I do have to remember to keep my back a little more straight and my shoulders back. Oh and my wrists need to be loose - gotta work on that. But everything else - everything between my shoulders and my wrists - that's spot on. Hooray for me.

We (the intermediate/advanced group) did 3 laps around The Resevoir (1.57 miles per lap) while everyone's hero Jen and the rest of her group did two laps. So you probably want to go and send her more money now or something. The trick was that we had to alternate between running normally and running with really exaggerated arm movements. So basically there were about 100 people running around The Resevoir last night like complete lunatics in the midst of some kind of spasm. I got a pretty nifty cramp in my side on the second lap and for a second thought I was done for but then remembered that I'm all man and just decided to run through it. When that didn't work I started doing some crazy lamaze breathing, which I might have been doing wrong because I got really lightheaded and sort of blacked out. The rest of the run is a blur. I'll be honest, it was a nice way to end the day.

By the time I dragged my ass around for the third time everyone was already stretching. I was just glad they were still there. After the stretching Jen and I walked back to the meeting point with Ramon and she was so boring that he ran away from us at the first opportunity. Way to go Jen.

Oh yeah, I keep meaning to tell you guys - my Mentor's name is Dragan. Fucking Dragan. That's pretty rad, you've gotta admit. Mentor's have teams made up of like 10 - 12 people and they basically answer questions for us and train with us for the specific run that we are signed up for. I think our whole team should shave our heads and get dragons tattooed on the back, but that idea hasn't caught on yet. Pansies.

All right, that's about it for day 5 (even though I'm technically posting this on day 6). After the run last night my calves got really tight and I was a little worried about how I'd feel this morning when I woke up, but to tell the truth, I actually feel pretty good.

Right up until I think about how much money I have to raise for this to actually happen.

Thanks for reading. More later...

DAY 5
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 4.7
TOTAL MILEAGE: 13.21

Day Four - A Little Overwhelmed

2006-08-15T15:37:00.000-07:00

I just went to Jen's blog and noticed that she has raised over 600 bucks already. I don't even have my letter written yet or my fundraising website set up. Ugh. This is what happens. I get overwhelmed with shit like that and find other things to do with myself. Not that I'm blowing it off or anything, it's just that I tried to set up my website earlier this week and found out I couldn't do so without reading some of the valuable information that Team gave us and then I put it off because it seems like a much bigger task than it really is.

I dunno, I'm just a little out of sorts right now for several reasons, most of which I've already gone into over the past couple of days.

I had some nice conversations with some good friends today though who are being very supportive of this venture and of other things. which helped put my head at ease a bit.

Tomorrow there is a scheduled group workout which I am going to miss because I'm headed up to the memorial service. I'm sorta numb about the whole thing and know that the actual service will make something crack and am both looking forward to the release and dreading it at the same time.

On Friday night I put on a suit for an unprecedented second time in one week as I head out of town for a wedding. This will cause me to miss Saturday's group run as well, but I plan to definitely make that one up on my own later in the day Saturday. I'll just have G-Rocks let me know how far to go and let er rip.

Part of me feels bad about missing some early training, but part of me understands that the reasons are completely valid and that this early on it won't do too much damage. I just like to start out strong and am worried about developing bad habits. Although I'm actually really looking forward to Friday night, especially after this week. It will be nice to have something to celebrate with some friends and a night in a hotel is always fun for me. My girlfriend and I have both had hectic schedules the past week or so, so a night out all dressed up will be fun for us. Let's just hope I don't drop a gravy soaked utensil all over myself like last time.

Today was a cross training day and I took my lunch break to hit the gym at work. Did a relatively light session on the trainer, 30 minutes (25 + a 5 minute cool down) with the resistance set at 10. Felt good to get my muscles warmed up again and to sweat a little bit.

New goal: have my website set up and my fundraising letter sent out by Sunday night. Wish me luck.

Thanks for reading. More later...

DAY 4
TIME CROSS TRAINING: 30 minutes
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 0
TOTAL MILEAGE: 8.5

Day Three - And We're Off

2006-08-14T19:47:00.000-07:00

As in a day off. From running. Which is good. Because I'm sore.

Very, very sore.

Here's something I learned: when you're 30 your body tends to recover a little bit slower from things like running 5 miles after leading a completely sedentary lifestyle for the better part of a year.

Of course, it's all relative. I'm sure that at 30 your body recovers faster from brainless exertion than it does at age 40, but I've never been 40, so I don't know for sure. I just know that it's taking longer than it did when I was 20 and decided that I was in much better shape than I really was when I decided to start exercising.

All of this is just a fancy way for me to say that I shouldn't have run the 5 miles on Saturday. I know you're probably getting sick of hearing me complain about that, but be patient because Wednesday is just around the corner and that is our next hardcore training session. I'll be sure to be full of all new complaints after that.

Basically today's entry is just taking up some space because I told myself that I would make daily contributions to this blog when I had the time and the opportunity to do so. And seeing as the most interesting thing I have done tonight is pull a tiny little piece of glass out of my foot after stepping on it while cooking dinner, I figured I had both.

Tomorrow I hit the gym for some cross training, as recommended by the Team In Training people and while I may be a bit too trusting, I'm gonna take their word for it.

Oh yeah, this is what I wanted to tell you (I knew I should have posted earlier). When I decided to run a marathon I bought some books, because really, how better to train than by reading? Seriously though, I figured I could pick up a thing or two and didn't really have a full understanding of how hands on Team would be. Anyway, I got two books, one was really small and looked like it could be read on a short flight while the other resembled a text book of some sort. I'll let you guess which one I read. According to this book it is very important not to overtrain for a marathon. You need to take days off on schedule and even if you are feeling particularly great on a rest day you MUST give your body that time to recover from your last run.

No worries there.

I know that Training Wheels is about the marathon and the training process, but I feel as though I should follow up on yesterday's entry. I don't really know anything else about the death of my colleague's son. A few people took part of the day to make a trip up to his house so I'm sure they'll have details on what happened and a memorial service tomorrow. It's just all kinds of horrible and no one has any words to help make sense of it all. Everyone at the office today was very somber and the sadness hung heavy in the hallways. I found out tonight through total and complete coincidence that the boyfriend of my girlfriend's roommate (take a second to figure that one out) was actually one of the boy's teachers last year.

The world is a strange place. I guess we just all try to help eachother through when things get especially unfair and hope that someone will be there to do the same for us when it's our turn.

Thanks for reading. More later...

DAY 3
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 0
TOTAL MILEAGE: 8.5

Day Two - Here Comes The Pain?

2006-08-13T18:18:00.000-07:00

Getting out of bed this morning was...difficult. My thigh muscles feel as though they have been tied in knots, my shins are sore and my feet ache. The first few steps to the bathroom were not graceful. I started wondering how I was going to possibly run today. Strangely I never considered blowing it off, I just tried to comprehend HOW I would make it happen.

My plan was to run a mile and a half downtown and then a mile and a half back up to my apartment. Easy enough, right? For non New Yorkers, 20 city blocks here (short blocks, mind you) translates roughly into a mile, so it's easy to keep track of your distance when running on the streets.

Being an egomaniac I decided to take a peak at the blog before I left and notice that G-Rocks had left me a comment saying that she wanted to run together today. A few short text messages later and we decided to meet at the South end of Central Park.

Aside from the soreness, of which there was plenty, the run was fairly uneventful. Two times around the lower loop. We did the first lap together and then split up for the second but finished at roughly the same time. After we stretched (we came the conclusion that if it hurts and makes you look like an idiot, you're probably stretching properly) we sat down and talked for a bit over Gatorade (me), water and coffee (both her). We talked for about and hour about nothing inparticular. It was my favorite part of this so far. I don't see G-Rocks face to face all that often and while I'm sure we'll be sick of the sight of eachother by January, right now I feel very lucky to be sharing this with her.

I hobbled home around 11:00AM (the stairs leading down the subway are a cruel joke) and when I got back to my apartment I noticed a new message on my cell. It was one of the producers from work asking me to give him a ring today. I almost didn't phone back. It's Sunday, couldn't whatever it was wait until tomorrow? Clearly it wasn't THAT important if he hadn't told me what the call was about in the message. I ended up calling back. He told me that one of our colleagues lost his son to a tragic drowning accident yesterday.

I am in shock. Total and complete shock. I felt and feel terrible for my co-worker's loss. He's someone that I would consider a friend and trying to comprehend what he is going through is impossible. I just shake my head when I think about it, knowing how much he loves his kids and how they are the center of his life. There is never anything to say in situations like this - or if there is, I can never find the words.

As cliche as it sounds, something like this brings things into sharp focus. I've made phone calls today just to hear peoples' voices. The pile of work waiting for me on my desk tomorrow doesn't seem as terrible. Most of all, my sore legs don't seem quite as much of a tragedy as they did a few hours ago.

I hate that it takes things like this to shake me out of the self centered rutts I tend to work myself into. I hate that this feeling of appreciation for life will dull with time and I will allow myself to be caught up with the little things all over again. More than all of that though, I just feel sad that my friend is in so much pain tonight.

Part of joining Team In Training was always going to be learning an appreciation for the fact that while all of this running may be difficult, it's something that I CAN do while others can only wish they could. That thought was resting in the back of my mind, shaken to life whenever one of the Honor Teammates (runners in remission or currently fighting cancer) would speak to us as a group, but otherwise dormant. This has brought that to the forefront.

I thought I was in pain when I woke up this morning. Now I realize that my legs are just sore.

Thanks for reading. More later...

DAY 2
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 3.4
TOTAL MILEAGE: 8.5

G-Rocks' Blog: http://girlyoubetterrun.blogspot.com
Team In Training's Site: www.teamintraining.com

Day One - And Away We Go...

2006-08-12T17:44:00.000-07:00

Here's the short version:

A couple weeks back my friend Jen (you may know her as G-Rocks) asked me if I'd be interested in running a marathon with her. I told her I was busy that day but to ask me again the next. I said that because I'm pretty funny. No one really knows that Iv'e always wanted to run a marathon because I didn't want to get laughed at so I never told anyone. But I have. The only problem is that I don't run so well.

I just realized that this isn't really the short version. You'll live.

As much as I have always said that I want to run a marathon someday, I always figured that someday was far far away and I wouldn't actually have to actually make that happen for myself any time soon. But Jen's question got me thinking. I went on vacation the next day (I don't remember if it was really the next day, but that's a detail you shouldn't really be worried about right now) and gave myself the week to think about it. I talked to my mom who said that I should probably not undertake this right now. Not so much because she doesn't believe in me - she's my mom, I think she still believes I could be president if I wanted it bad enough - but rather because of something I haven't told you yet.

You're DYING to know what that is, aren't you?

Now I think I've built this up too much. The thing is, Jen is training for the marathon with a group called "Team In Training." I totally suck at the internet, but if you are interested in just what Team In Training (they call themselves TNT, but clearly the more logical acronym is TIT and I plan to suggest it to them, not because they are a boob-like organization, but because I love the English language), I'll take a wild guess and say that you can learn more about them at www.teamintraining.com. I'll verify that tomorrow when I post again.

SIDE NOTE: I HAVE been to the TNT website, I just don't remember the address right now. Again, a detail you shouldn't really care about right now.

Anyway, Team In Training, I have learned over the past couple weeks, is an amazing organization. Basically they let slobs like me sign up to run marathons, help us train, and then fly us to exotic locations and put us up in hotels and then cheer us on as we actually run a marathon. I think there is probably some kind of pasta party involved too, but that's sort of a guess. Also they do a lot of clapping. That's not a complaint. I'm down with the clapping.

And what does Team In Training ask for in return?

Money.

But it's cool. They don't want my money. They want yours. It's just that they're kinda busy with the running and the exotic locations and the slobs so they want me to ask you for it instead of doing it themselves. Flying people to different locations and feeding them pasta costs money, that's where you come in. But this is where things get kinda cool. Because for every dollar you donate, they only use like 25% on exotic locations and pasta. The other 75% goes to cancer research. Not just researching a cure, but researching treatments. It's totally noble and selfless and alternately makes me feel like a good person for trying to chip in and a total scumbag for not selling my TV and moving to Sri Lanka to...build something...

...with my soft and ladylike hands.

I should say that I've never been to Sri Lanka and I don't mean to assume they need stuff built. Sorry if that's offensive.

So yeah, that's the catch here. I've gotta do some fundraising (kind of a lot of it - not like selling a box of 30 candybars for a buck a piece in little league...more like selling 130 boxes...which I've never done before) before I can go run the marathon. So if you're reading this, odds are you've been (or will be) asked for money. And you will be again. If you give once, that's all you gotta do, but you'll still get the reminder emails because I'm way too lazy to change the distribution list. I'll make you a deal though - if you donate to me I will thank you personally in an email that I send to everyone, which you can then forward to your mom and she'll be proud of you - and maybe she'll donate some money too.

So don't be a jerk because I'm gonna train really really hard for this thing and a measly $3800.00 shouldn't keep me from realizing my dream. Well...it's sort of a dream. More like something I am daring myself to do. But hey if it takes daring yourself to do something cool like run a marathon and raise four grand for cancer research, that can't be all bad, right?

Oh yeah...my friend Jen has a really fancy blog that is tracking her progress. I should also say that she is running for a friend of hers that passed away last year after a battle with cancer, which is what inspired her to get involved. But then again, if you know Jen, she's always been involved in pretty much anything good you can imagine. Now she's just got a more personal connection and as endlessly impressed as I have always been with her, she now gets yet another standing ovation from me for lighting the fire here.

Anyway, Jen's blog is much prettier than mine complete with pictures and links that she has researched. She's also much smarter than I am, more informative, as well as easier on the eyes, so maybe you should just go and read her entries if you like her so much. There's pictures of me too. I'll definitely link to her tomorrow when I can remember the address. It's here on blogspot and it's called "girlyoubetterrun" so that might be a good starting point.

Finally, we started our training today so here's the update:

Day 1
Met the "Winter Season" runners and coaches in Central Park at 8:30 this morning. They split us into walkers, beginners and intermediate/advanced runners. Being an idiot I decided to run with the intermediate/advanced team. Why not? I mean, last time I ran I did a 5K with no problems. Never mind that it was last Thanksgiving after training for months. Yeah, like I said, I'm an idiot.

So my group was told to take three laps around the lower loop in Central Park which is 1.7 miles around. Quick math will tell you that equals 5.1 miles. So, I did it. And it sucked. It felt really really bad. There was a lot of pain, a lot of self doubt and definitely more than one moment when I knew for sure that I will never run a marathon. But I countered that saying that this is only day one and that I've got until January 14 to turn things around. However, while we were stretching after the run (I have no idea how long it took me, but I think it was a while, and for whatever it's worth I was definitely bringing up the rear) I thought several times that if these people train me well enough to finish a real honest to goodness marathon then they are miracle workers.

So there you go. The first five miles under my belt and about 12 hours later I feel OK about it. Despite the fact that I can't really make it down the one flight of stairs from my apartment to the street I am planning on running 3 more tomorrow. I even bought some real running sneakers today. Hopefully I'm on my way to someplace good. I'll keep you posted.

Thanks for reading. More later...

DAY 1
TODAY'S MILEAGE: 5.1
TOTAL MILEAGE: 5.1