3rd overall in running

Last night was ninja yog night.  I got a request for about 90 minutes of hilly yogging with no major fast efforts, so above is what I came up with and e-mailed out.  A few short moments later I got an e-mail back from the Shoulder Toucher saying, and I quote, "I just got lost looking at it.  3 circles..."  Hm.  There's the starting point with the black dot, look for the mile markers in increasing order, and to me, it seems like one should be able to decrypt the route.  On the yog last night I told the Shoulder Toucher how I would love to look at that route through his eyes and process it the way he does.  Seriously.  I would love that. 

Last week I was thinking about the typical, excessively long race reports and the common personality traits of endurance athletes that leads to the urge to write them.  This week my thoughts  drifted to my appreciation of those who love the sport but are of a fundamentally different breed.  Shoulder Toucher for instance.  For some reason he signed up for his first Ironman race a few years ago.  Upon his return, people (who write volumes about their own races and voraciously dissect the experiences of others) wanted to know how it went.  "Uh, the swim was ok, I got to mile 40 on the bike, and, uh, it was terrible dude."  These days, after an OTCY, I know his recap will consist of entirely of 1) the identification of one of his ever expanding pool of informal rivals who was in the OTCY, 2) the admission of defeat to that rival or 3) "I crushed him!".  Sparse.  Exciting.  Perfect. 

Then there's Geronimo.  The man lives for ultrayogging.  Everyone who knows him is consistently amazed by the race schedule he lines up and then glides through with ease.  Well, last weekend he took a 2nd crack at Barkleys and was defeated again.  Darn.  I was discussing with the Suffer Seeker his likely recap of the experience.  Last year he injured his knee on the first loop and had to DNF.  All I could pull out of him for a description of the legendarily difficult terrain was "Not so bad."  Would he do it again?  With a sly grin on his face, "I must."  I've had the chance to pace him to the finish of a few 100s, and the thing that stands out is how completely unencumbered he is by the mental and physical challenges of the event.  Facing and conquering those challenges is what is so intoxicating to many ultrayoggers (I think), but Geronimo seems oblivious to that.  The guy is truly in his sanctuary out there.  Could you make the race longer please, because he really only starts to find his groove around mile 92.  A couple years ago he had signed up for the Brazil 135, but at the very last minute his visa was rejected and he was SOL.  Undeterred, he contacted the race director at Arrowhead, who found a spot for him in that race the very next weekend.  So.  Training for 135 miles of sloppy muddy hills in the Brazilian summer, but instead showing up at the coldest spot in the nation (having never trained in cold) for 135 miles along snow mobile trails pulling a sled full of gear that he didn't know how to use.  A race with a 60-70% DNF rate.  There's a frickin' novel waiting to be written about such an experience!  Well, we got his race report the following Wednesday, an e-mail titled "3rd overall in running" that contained a link to the results in the body.  Yup. 

In case you were wondering how a real man does it



Now that's sexy. 

4000 word race reports

Every so often, I think about these volumes of literature that endurance athletes routinely churn out after every race.  I ask myself, which contributes more to the existence of these recaps, the personalities of the people drawn to these events, or the very nature of the endurance race experience?  I never fully decide on an answer.  My first inclination is that it's the personalities of the participants.  No doubt, lots of similar personality traits amongst distance yoggers and tri fags.  Yet, I've been passionate about competing in sports since I was old enough to throw a ball, and only yogging has ever given me the urge to write a detailed account of a competitive experience.  Of course, when I try to identify specifically what about the experience makes me want to write it down, I can't quite capture it.  If I think about a tennis match, it's every bit as interesting or more than an OTCY.  The physical challenges, periods of surging and crashing confidence, momentum swings, fighting to retain and then losing focus, gamesmanship, confrontations over shitty lines calls...it would make for great stuff.  I retain vivid memories of matches from 15-20 years ago, but never have the urge to write them down.  Similarly, imagine a QB writing a blog about his in game experience that went into the detail that you'd see in a typical marathon report.  It has tremendous potential.  Yet, I don't know of the existence of any such thing.  Even when athletes put out their memoirs, the nitty gritty details about the actual in game competitive experiences are typically minimal.  Only endurance athletes seem to relish that stuff.  Whatever, it all makes for a good shallow lunch yog pondering. 

Well, with such thoughts swirling in my head, and with the Carlsbad OTCY approaching, I was reminded of my very first race recap.  Carlsbad OTCY 2006.  I signed up.  I yogged.  My on-again off-again x-girlfriend at the time sent a random social e-mail (I didn't yet do much texting) that amongst other things inquired as to how the OTCY went.  I seized the opportunity to write my very first race report, which I was dying to do anyway.  I dug up the e-mail:

my 5k was good.  it was definitely the best 5k i've run so far, much more so than last year when i felt terrible before the race and was dead after mile 1.  This time I was actually determined to not overdo it on the first mile and I think that was critical.  Everyone just goes tearing out of the gates and I had to make a conscious effort to just let them pass and fall back into a comfortable stride. 

About a quarter of a mile into it I realized my shoelace had come undone and I had to stop and retie it.  I was pissed!  Then I got behind all these slow people and had to waste a bunch of energy dodging around.  But I think my 1 mile interval workouts really helped because then I at least had an idea of where to exert myself and really stuck with it.  I passed the first mile marker at around 6:08 and felt pretty good about where I was at that point. 

By this time though I started to pass all these people who had blown themselves away with their first mile and were already dying, which sucks because it helps to use people around me as pacers.  There was one other guy who looked like he was pacing himself well and I ran with him for the next 3/4 of a mile or so as we started pushing past a lot of people.  The 2nd mile seemed to be a lot of incline, but I still felt good and was passing a lot of people and was pretty pleased when I hit the 2nd mile marker at 12:22. 

I lost the guy I was pacing with and pushed ahead for the last mile.  I just focused on my pace, passed some more people, and really probably could have pushed a little harder but since I didn't have a good idea in my head of where the finish was I didn't want to give that extra burst too soon. I had a lot left for the sprint at the end and crossed the finish line at 19:02 i think.  If I'm lucky maybe my chip time will be 18:59 or something.  That would be nice. 

I feel like it was my best managed 5k so far, but kind of like my philadelphia distance run where i went out in 7:12 miles and came back on the 2nd half in 6:47s, since I had so much left at the end I know I could have pushed more out of myself.  I mean nobody passed me for the last two miles of the race!  I guess I'll have to just keep racing and keep trying and see if I can figure it out eventually.  That whole idea about joining a club probably isn't half bad either. 

Well, the next time I saw her, she told me in no uncertain terms that my decision to write in so much detail about the race was FUCKING. WEIRD.  When she asked about the race, she expected no more than 3 words in response.  And to think, her claims of having run a 20 flat 5k in high school (later discovered to be an exaggeration) were the onus for my initial dabblings with yogging back in Philadelphia.  I guess the personalities that gravitate towards high school XC can be very different from those who pursue endurance events as adults.  I think she ended up marrying a guy who does not yog.  Probably a solid decision there. 

As a word document

The theme of my early morning today was prep work.  Up at 5:50 with the goal of cleaning last night's dirty dishes, prepping and making the french press coffee, bagging my snacks and lunch for the day, cutting the fruits and vegetables and loading them in the blender for my latest smoothie concoction, prepping baby girl's bottle, showering, shaving my balls, being ready to cuddle, change and feed baby girl when she woke, blending the smoothie, out the door and to work on time for once.  Doesn't seem like much but for me that's quite a challenge.  Anyways, right around 6:07 when I was midway through the massive pile of dirty pots, this scene I haven't watched in years popped into my head, right at the exact moment where he says "As a word document."  The rythm of the conversation up to that point, the tone, the look on his face...I just put those 5 seconds on a continuous loop and it kept getting funnier every time.  That's just the best.  6am, dark out side, in the kitchen in my boxers doing dishes and giggling uncontrollably.  Socializing with other humans is so overrated. 

Forgot to manscape and got to work 6 minutes late.  Nobody's perfect. 

This is how I do it

There's an activity called yogging.  I used to do it regularly.  Not so much anymore.  I'm not sure exactly how little, because I don't track these things, but it's minimal.   Also, in a feeble attempt to be a considerate boyfriend, I recently co-participated in a 10 day cleanse that involved a very restrictive diet.  This resulted in 13.5lbs of weight loss in the first 7 days, bottoming out at 162.5lbs and staying there for the remainder of the cleanse.  I didn't really want to lose weight, and was aware that if I actually knew the proportions of Fat vs Water vs Muscle loss that made up those 13.5lbs I would probably be horrified at what I was doing to myself.  I felt completely sapped of energy, and my few attempts at yogging felt like I was starting at around mile 33 from the second I stepped out the door.  Yet it was still enthralling to see the numbers dip day after day, thinking of the last time I was at that weight (16yrs old), and realizing that I was exactly 40lbs lighter than the first time I stepped on that same scale when I first moved to California 7+ years ago.  I knew there would be some disappointment in watching the numbers rise after the cleanse was over, and I'd think about what the scale would say each time I considered eating something that tasted good.  I didn't like the mindset that was developing, so the weekend after it ended, I ate a bunch of burgers and pizza, drank beer, and resolved to stop looking at the scale cold turkey.  Fuck it.  But before fully committing to my ascension back to my starting weight, only with more fat and less muscle, I signed up for Carlsbad.  Which brings me to my upcoming OTCYs. 

There are 2 OTCYs on my schedule.  First, the Carlsbad 5000 OTCY on April 1.  I decided to completely ignore the lack of speed work or volume in my training, my increasingly poor performances in my last 5 OTCYs, the fact that I generally feel like ass most of the time, and instead postulate that my newfound temporary 162.5lb frame will be able to fly in spite of it all.  Following Cbad, on the last weekend of June I have the STCC (Squaw-to-California-Club) 101.  This OTCY requires co-participation and completion of the less prestigious Western State Endurance Yog, followed by a 1 mile yog to the legendary Auburn dive bar California Club and consumption of at least one beer prior to last call.  Additionally, in STCC 101 official timing results, one hour will be deducted for each shot of tequila slurped out of the bellybutton of the Drew Barrymore look-alike bartender.  Barrymore's agreement to participate is unconfirmed but expected. 

So I got to thinking about these OTCYs.  I'm obviously completely unprepared and they won't go well.  Furthermore, this is exactly my routine.  I looked through my athlinks results the other day from the beginning.  Counting the OTCYs that are missing, I'm over 100 for my lifetime.  I'll give myself a pass on the first 20 or so.  I got my money's worth.  Yogging was new, I knew nothing about training, the learning curve was steep, the possibilities were wide open every time out, and it was exciting just to be able to yog several miles in a row at a pace that would have been an above average mile time in 5th grade gym class.  But around 2007 I decided that I'd try to learn something about training and actually make a point of improving.  Looking through each of the results, with the exception of perhaps 5 races in 5 years, it's all the same.  Mediocre results that were inevitable due to poor preparation.  So what keeps me coming back?  I can't help myself.  At some point, no matter how brief, I get an image of success and satisfaction with my performance into my head (realistic success relative to my ability level, I don't think I'm going to win or anything), and before I know it, I've clicked the mouse a few times and I'm signed up for another one.  I've never actually felt this theoretical sense of accomplishment after any OTCY, even the very few where I've actually prepared and performed well compared to my expectations, but I continue to believe it will happen some day.  This summer at Headlands 50 there was an awesomely low key finish line.  They had marked out a line in chalk in the mostly empty Rodeo Beach parking lot, and as I shuffled across the finish, the race organizer guy acknowledged me out of the corner of his eye without turning his head away from his laptop screen and said in a complete monotone "nice job."  I trudged over to a picnic table to enjoy some soup and conversation with the Suffer Seeker and the American Hero, and about 15 minutes later a young kid came across the line.  He was treated to the same uneventful finish line experience that I got, yet immediately upon crossing the line, he raised both clenched fists over his head and let loose with two of the most invigorated primal screams I've ever heard.  The specatcle was kind of comical, but at the same time I'm deeply envious of what that young men felt that day.  I continue waiting for it.  And on the other side of it, I have a very special place in my heart for all the spectacular blowup failures that I've piled up over the years.  My 2:55 2nd half of the Marine Corps Marathon, my multiple 2hr + run splits in 70.3s, my loopy death march in sideways freezing rain on Pikes Peak.   I wouldn't trade those experiences for anything.  So when you think about it, aside from the waste of my time and money, and the insanity of repeating this process over and over, there's really no down side.   

Random Optimism

A funny thing happened last week as I was in a steady groove of being a total miserable SOB.  I decided to give that tennis league another shot.  Some guy sent out an e-mail looking for a match and I responded.  I'm not really sure why I did that.  I wasn't looking forward to it.  I haven't missed not playing.  In fact, I expected to play horrible, lose, and feel disgusting about the whole process.  If anything, I probably just figured I should practice forcing myself to do stuff I'm not excited about.  That stuff makes up the meat of life anyway right? 

So there I was on the court and everything is going to plan.  I'm stumbling around like a drunk and am quickly down 3-0 to my opponent, a 40ish Asian junkballer guy.  This guy was much, much better than the clown I accidentally played last time.  In fact, in many ways he was downright crafty.  Yet, as I was going through the motions, it was impossible not to think about my feeble serve and all the easy shots I was missing and compare it to the way the 17 year old version of myself would have dispatched this guy.  And that's when it happened.  These thoughts had the opposite effect of what I'd expect.  They didn't make me want to throw a tantrum, walk off the court and never play again, or just wallow in self pity.  I'd calmly play a horrible point, shank a sitter overheard, remember about how I never, ever would have missed that back in the day, and think to myself, "I'll get back to that."  It wasn't an intentional thing.  It's just the way I felt.  I became emotionally detached from the pathetic version of me that was playing out there and found optimism and confidence that I'd eventually recreate a version of myself that would make this game fun again.  Of course, as those feelings built, I was able to have fun in the moment.  I wish it could have made me a better player on that day, but nothing could save that.  It probably did make me a little bit more scrappy out there.  I was pretty amped up afterwards and had trouble sleeping that night, not because I was excited about coming back to win a long match, but because I felt total confidence that I'll be good at this game again at some point, and that will be fun.  Random optimism.  I did nothing to create it and nothing to deserve it.  It just came out and grabbed me.  Fun feeling. 

Oh, and my body was physically wrecked afterwards.  Forearms, Rotator cuff, deltoids, traps, obliques, hip flexors, calves, my NECK...all just hilariously sore.  It made me smirk to think about the exact inverse being true 14 years ago, when I could play twice as long and feel no soreness the next day, but randomly signing up for my first athlinks result, a 10k OTCY which I completed in 49 and change, left me sore for a week. 

This blog is like life!

It started randomly with no real purpose, I never work at it so it never amounts to shit, and when it's gone no one will ever remember it.

A couple years ago I paced my friend Geronimo at Western States.  It was awesome.  He was completely unphased by the physical challenge of the race.  Total confidence.  Total calm.  We went from outside the top 100 at Bath Rd to cracking the top 50 at the finish line, comfortably shuffling past all kinds of physical and mental carnage along the way.  Geronimo has a blog that he very rarely contributes to, but in one of his last posts he equated ultrayogging to life, and made a number of apt analogies.  Geronimo's outstanding performance with such a ho hum attitude has been something of a running joke between Suffer Seeker and I, as SS last year and this year I take our own stabs at Western States.  "Yeah, don't worry about training for a 100 miler, it's just like life, sometimes easy, sometimes hard, sometimes supported, sometimes on your own, longer the better, bla bla bla..." 

Anyways, surfing through the blogosphere a couple weeks ago I found another post from a very accomplished ultrayogger where she equated trail races to life, also with several apt analogies.  It suddenly hit me  that although these analogies always seems insightful, life is probably the most non-descript word out there.  It encompasses everything.  In fact, there's not a single object, concept, event or whatever that cannot be accurately compared to life.  It's a fun game!  Pull anything out of your ass, come up with the 3 ways in which it's like life.  This post started with example 1A.  Now I need to come up with some rules and make a drinking game out of it.  I should probably copyright it though before some shithead comes along and makes millions off it.