ow.

When I started running back in January it was purely a metaphorical exercise. Now, however, there is a purpose to it other than self-flagellation for self-flagellation's sake. I am running to prove something or some things to myself and to those who know me. But although I'm not really sure what all these things are, one thing was proven today: running hurts.

I know I said I was going to just wing it and not pay any attention to any formal advice and all but I've since determined that this line of thinking was just plain idiotic. I've become a devotee of MarathonRookie.com and I'm trying to follow their training schedule, more or less. The Houston Marathon organization sends out an email update periodically and this last one had a link to a bunch of great information on training regimens, injury avoidance, hydration, nutrition, even advice on one's mental state during the race. It is becoming abundantly clear to me that, unless I want to be a crippled, bitter, failure come race day, I need to start listening to those in the know.

Speaking of crippled, today's run was 14 miles, which is a really, really long distance, by the way. The pain started about mile 8, first in my thighs, then settling into the center of my butt muscles which really don't have a lot of extra room for things like great, jagged blocks of pain. It was relentless and disheartening and as I winced across my imaginary finish line, I thought, "gee, only 12.2 more miles to go". Continuing on for that distance was a laughable notion. Luckily, I have 13 more weeks to whip myself into shape. Self-flagellation, indeed.

Interesting Smell o' the Day: the jetties out at Marina del Rey are a dead ringer for a men's room that hasn't been cleaned in a few months.



Runs for the week:
Tuesday - 4.5 miles, 35:48 (including the 4th st. steps)
Wednesday - 6.2 miles, 51:42
Friday - 4.5 miles, 35:59 (including the 4th st. steps)
Sunday - 14 miles, 2:04:08

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headwinds blow!

And suck! Seriously! Today was Half Marathon day - 13.1 miles of nonstop jogging. My plan was to do just under three laps of my 4.5 mile loop, half of which heads northwest on the bike path across Santa Monica beach. It was a beautiful day, with clear views from Point Dume to Catalina Island to Palos Verdes. This extreme clarity was due, unfortunately, to the Santa Ana winds blowing at a steady 15-20mph clip directly into my face. I felt like I was pulling a fully-loaded dogsled but without the benefit of a whip cracking to keep me motivated. The wind was relentless; drowning out my iPod with its roar, whipping the stinging sand into my legs, and quickly filling me with loathing for all the smiling people jogging and biking in the other direction. "Sure", I thought. "Laugh it up. Life's great when the wind's at your back, isn't it you assholes." Perhaps I was a bit harsh, but that's what this demon wind will do to you.

My route choice meant that not only did I have to endure the wind three times, but I also had to climb the 4th street stairs twice. The first climb was pretty easy. The second, after running for 9 miles, not so much. I got to the top sounding like I was doing a caricature of someone out of breath.

At about 11 miles my legs really started to hurt and later, as my desired completion time of 1:58:00 came and went, I threw yet another obscenity-laden curse out at the wind. I staggered over the finish line at 2:05:26 which wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I think that without the stairs and the wind I would have easily kept to a 9 minute pace. But that wasn't the real revelation today. What this run made me realize is just how incredibly hard a marathon is. There's a reason the first definition of the word marathon is "any long and arduous undertaking". I only did half of one. I now have a new respect for the race and for everyone who's run one.

Interesting Sight o' the Day: Sand being blown over the beach like so much snow across the tundra.

Runs for the week:

Thursday - 5.34 miles, 47:38 (including the 4th st. steps)
Saturday - 13.1 miles, 2:05:26

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because it's there

Mt. Baldy, crown jewel of the San Gabriels! How long it has eluded my attempts to reach its naked and alluring pate!

Well, not that I've ever tried; I was just going for a catchy opening. In lieu of a long run last Saturday I joined my client, John, and three of his friends, Edmund, Billy, and Susan, on a hike from a parking lot at about +6,000' to the top of Baldy at +10,064'. Edmund, or 'Sir Edmund' as I preferred to think of him there on the mountain, is 60 and a seasoned outdoorsman. He led the way and didn't dawdle, setting a pace that impressed and exhausted. He and John, who is 58, have shared many an adventure, most involving skiing and narrowly escaping with their lives, apparently. I quickly came to realize that these two guys are perfect examples of what I want to be like in 15 years. Not so much with the near-death skiing, but more to the whole 'live life to the fullest and mostly outside' aspect.

We got to the cloud-encased summit after about 3 1/2 hours, took a few pictures of ourselves in the light rain blowing by horizontally in the 30mph, 40 degree wind, and got the hell out of there. Lunch was had on the side of the mountain. The sun had come out and we had an amazing view out over what looked like a cloud ocean. It was a very fine day.

Interesting Sight o' the Day: the wreckage of two WWII-era jets not far from our lunch site. Just sitting there like they'd crashed a month ago instead of 61 years ago.

Runs for the week:
Monday - 3 miles
Tuesday - 1 mile
Saturday - 10.2 miles round-trip with a vertical gain of over 4,000'
Sunday - 4.5 miles (including the 4th street steps)



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double digits

On Sunday, September 28, 2008 I ran 10 miles in 1:28:29. I didn't stop to rest and I didn't drop dead. This was a milestone that said to me, with a cockney accent, "You stand a chance of actually completing a marathon, m'boy!" My goal was to finish in an hour and a half and as I hit the 8 mile mark at 1:12:30 I felt the fear of failing become the wind beneath my wings and thus began the ass-hauling. The last chunk of this particular route is on the Venice Boardwalk from Washington Boulevard to Rose Avenue. I could've stayed on the bike path for clear sailing (like a pussy!) but I chose the more visually interesting and obstacle-strewn boardwalk, weaving around the corpulent tourists and local junkies, anticipating the pedestrian drift when necessary, and making good time: an 8 minute pace for the last two miles. I was happy, satisfied, and in a minimal amount of pain when I got home. As an added bonus, I got to play hockey that night.

The Interesting Sight 'o the Day was the small pool of blood on the sidewalk along Washington followed a few dozen yards later by what looked like a canvas Whole Foods bag used to staunch the bleeding. An eco-bleeder! This and the copious alcohol-themed trash in the vicinity made for interesting scenarios to ponder.

My runs for the week for those who want to keep score:
Tuesday - 3 miles
Thursday - 6.73 miles in 58:30
Sunday - 10 miles in 1:28:29

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running

As part of my ongoing budget-conscious mid-life crisis, I've decided to run a marathon. Like millions of guys my age before me, I can see the beckoning silhouette of the Grim Reaper standing at the horizon, waving a hearty 'hello!'. I find this motivating.

I just spent two weeks with my parents in Colorado celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. Any time two people are able to do anything together for 50 years straight it gives me pause. How do they do it without murder/suicide coming into play? I do not know. My folks have managed pretty well having settled on a pleasant 'two wheels at each end of an axel rolling amicably along' relationship model. Each year they flee the Texas heat, humidity, mosquitoes, and hurricanes and head to Colorado for a few months. This knocks a few years off and really amps up the happiness for them. They stay in shape mentally, working all the crossword puzzles, sudokus, jumbles, and any other brain challenges they can get their hands on with alarming ease. The Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle is done in ink, no questions asked, no problem. Physically, they're in amazing shape. They hike their asses off for hours, venturing above 10 or 11,000 feet on a regular basis. They eat right and are total closet hippies, what with the homemade bread, yogurt, and beer making. My dad is 73, mom is 71 and they impress the hell out of me.

I don't know if it was the fact that I was there for two whole weeks, half of it by myself, or if it was the 50 year anniversary thing but I found myself submerged in melancholia a good part of my trip. Being around my dad was like being transported via time machine 28 years into the future to hang out with myself as an old man (although dad hardly cusses at all and I think I'll probably have a more "the older I get, the more vulgar I get" attitude). Don't get me wrong, it's not like my dad is faltering. On the contrary, the guy gets up and runs 4 miles a day, 6 days a week at a mile and a half above sea level and at temperatures in the 20s. It's just that he's, you know, old-ish, and I can easily see myself in him. I went on his runs with him, having previously announced my marathon intentions and seeing this as a good time to start "training". I tried my best to keep up but with my heart threatening to explode out of my chest like the beast in Alien, it wasn't so easy.

My dad ran his first marathon when he was 44. It was the Houston marathon, the same one I'll be doing at 45. He ran it in just under 4 hours which is what I'm going to try to do, too. That's a 9 minute/mile pace. Five years later, when he was 50 years old, he qualified for the Boston Marathon by running one in 3 hours and 19 minutes. That's just over 7 1/2 minutes per mile! At 50! A 50 year old running badass! That's what I want to be! I ran 4 miles at that pace a few nights ago and practically needed an ambulance at the end. I have a long, long way to go, man.

So here I am, 5 weeks into it and let me tell you, it's hard. So far, my "training program" has consisted of running three times a week with a long run on the weekend. Sure, there are tons of resources out there; finely honed regimens full of exact distances and times and nutrition advice geared to help you achieve your marathon goal. There are running clubs and training dvds and wristwatch sized gps devices, etc., etc. But I've decided I'm going to Lone Wolf it. I'll take whatever advice Pop wants to give me, strap on my iPod and Ironman watch, and hit the road. I'm doing this for him, for me, and for myself 28 years down the road.

And I'm going to try and write about it. Whatever musings pop into my head during my hours slogging around town will get recorded, for what it's worth. So, the two or three of you who give a shit, stay tuned!

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behold: the Comics Curmudgeon

I have an addiction to Great Grains - Raisins, Dates, and Pecans Cereal, the most appropriately named cereal in the history of cereals. In addition to enjoying a bowl of this delicious, hearty goodness daily for the last 14 years my morning routine also includes reading the Los Angeles Times cover to cover. When I say reading I mean opening each page, hunting for the meager articles among all the ads, and skimming the headlines to see if anything is worth a glance. A while back, some businessman with the last name of Scrushy was on trial for something or another. Those headlines always made me snicker because it sounded like a baby's favorite toy was being brought to justice. Occasionally, some real thought-provoking articles practically leap off the page at me. Once, two articles on the same day demanded a full read-through; rare indeed.

The first, located on the Very Front Page was about some girl that had become a major celebrity in the edgy world of alternative scrapbooking but had inadvertently broken a minor rule when entering a scrapbooking competition and had been subsequently ostracized by her scrappy fans, apparently not a tolerant lot. Fascinating! The second article was on the front page of the Business section and was a lengthy, in-depth piece on some old fart who rents a bike every year at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Yep. He rents a bike because traffic is bad and venues are far apart and this saves him a lot of time and money plus he gets some darn good exercise to boot. That's what it was about. The whole article. There was a picture of him on his bike. It was written in a gee-whiz! style as if he had invented a teleportation device to beam him around town in flashes of shimmery light. The article explained that "over the years" this guy has learned all the good bike parking spots. They didn't question the fact that this simple knowlege acquisition TOOK HIM YEARS! It's articles like these that keep me turning the pages of that once-proud rag to see just how often it can suck.

However, I love the comics. The good, the badly drawn, the couple that are actually funny, the ones that have been around since Hitler invaded Poland, the idiotic ones, even the ones I can't even glance at because they're so damn annoying (Cathy). Every morning I read the comics and have my own running dialog going in my head, laughing internally at Get Fuzzy, Lio, and Bizarro, marveling at the fact that Marmaduke is still published, wincing at the crushing stupidity of Family Circus, wondering how much money the no-talent hack that draws Sally Forth makes, getting misty-eyed as my heartstrings are pulled by For Better or For Worse, etc. I even cut out and saved the one and only Peanuts strip that has ever made me laugh out loud in the 112 years that strip has been around.

I thought I was alone with my comics appreciation, but then I stumbled across a blog that confirmed the fact that If You Can Imagine It, It Already Exists on the Internet. I don't know how I found the Comics Curmudgeon but I did and even though I was a little late to the party I'm still glad I got there. This guy is hilarious with a smart wit that is dry and sharp. I read him every day and laugh my ass off as he skewers the easy targets like Dennis the Menace, Family Circus and Marmaduke as well as crappy veteran strips like Beetle Bailey, BC, and Snuffy Smith. He's particularly fond of the soap opera strips that I never used to even notice. Apartment 3-G, Judge Parker, Mark Trail, Mary Worth - these all get lots of well-deserved attention and man, is it funny. Thank you, Comics Curmudgeon! I couldn't have said it better myself.



Dolly, ever the kiss-up, has apparently decided that the ants will inevitably emerge victorious in their long war against the human race. She imagines that when she's prodded by the warriors' mandibles into the vast breeding chamber, she'll be able to say to the queen, "Your majesty! I have always been a friend to the ants! I made sure that the choicest morsels that fell to the ground remained there! I favored the ants over my own brood-mates!" But the sinister colony insects don't understand human qualities like "loyalty" or "forgiveness," Dolly. You'll be sucked dry of your nutritive value and used to feed the larvae, just like everyone else.

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false memory

My days as a massive slob are long gone. Now, my desire for order outweighs my natural, lazy, procrasturbatory tendencies and I wage war against that never-tiring foe, Entropy, on a regular basis. Although with my trusty sidekick Nubia coming to work her ass off every two weeks, it's really not much of a fight. She does all the heavy lifting and I write a check. It wasn't always this way and I was reminded of this by a story Scott told me at the office a few days ago.
Audrey had woken him up with a request for a glass of water, something I thought only happened in sitcoms and movies from the '40s. As they flicked on the light in the kitchen they were surprised by a roach on the floor. Surprised as in they had never seen a roach in their house before. Ever. If this had been my house when I was growing up the sight of a roach would have startled me – ok, terrified me to the brink of loss of bladder control – but I certainly wouldn't have been surprised. The Texas Gulf Coast is home to some giant-ass roaches, two to three inches long and fast as lightning. They normally live in the oak trees but appeared to be equally comfortable living inside our house. One of my earliest memories is of my mother screaming, "BIG ROACH!!" and bolting through whatever room I was in, not bothering to scoop up her infant son to protect him from the lumbering brown beast that was hot on her tail. Thus the fear was transferred from mother to child and I, too, years hence, could be heard screaming BIG ROACH!! from time to time as one of these monsters would pop out when I least expected it, or, worst of all and probably because they could smell the abject fear in me, fly straight at my face from some high perch. Anyway, Scott steps on the roach and Audrey says, "that's gross!" and Scott says, "You think that's gross? Let me tell you a story…"

"I had gone over to Stu's house [this was probably around 1989. –ed.] and was in his kitchen. He lived in an old house with an unusually large, white enamel sink which, at this time, was chock full of dirty dishes piled high. For whatever reason I turned on the water in the kitchen faucet and when I did I heard a tiny stampede of clicking feet and saw hundreds of roaches appear, running up the sides of the sink in a big brown wave."

Audrey's reply to this was, "I could have lived my entire life without hearing that story." which wasn't bad for a 10 year old.

My response was a furrowed brow and some head scratching. I just didn't remember that happening. This normally wouldn't mean anything since my memory is like a tattered spider web with a few old desiccated bits sticking in it, but since this involved roaches I was absolutely sure it hadn't happened. That's the kind of event that carves out its own special roach-filled cavity in your brain. We soon figured out that Scott had melded two of my stories from long ago into this one entertaining but false memory.
Story One
The details of his description were accurate: old house, big white sink, huge pile of disgusting dishes dating back who knows how long. Except he wasn't there – I was there alone preparing to move out. The entire house was empty and the very last thing I had to do was wash all those goddamn dishes. Man, I hated washing dishes. I approached the sink and turned on the water. I stared out the window for a minute, waiting for the water to get hot. When I looked back down I was confused and sort of disoriented – the sides of the sink appeared to be throbbing and slowly moving upward. I think my brainstem was recoiling in horror and trying to keep my higher cognitive functions from realizing what I was seeing. Maggots. Hundreds of them. Seeking refuge from the hot water, pulsing and undulating their way up the sides of the sink…
Story Two
I was in college and had gone home for the weekend. For whatever reason I was struck with a bout of nostalgia regarding an old barbecue pit that my dad used to make his award-winning brisket in. He hadn't used it in years and my idea was to clean it up and relive the brisket glory days. The barbecue pit was way over in a corner of the yard that had become overgrown with vines and was stuck, the vines having had years to establish a stronghold around the base and wheels. I tried pulling vines away for a while, then got frustrated, deciding on brute strength to rip the pit free. I grabbed it by the handle and yanked hard and of course the wheels didn't move but the whole thing started tipping over toward me. I stood in front of it, watching it fall, watching it hit the ground, watching the lid pop open… And then watching as hundreds, thousands, millions of these huge roaches spilled toward me, covering the ground in their clicking shiny browness, looking all the world like a big bag of spilled enormous coffee beans. I screamed like a 4 year old girl and didn't stop running until I was across the street a good 200 feet away.

Scott has promised to set the record straight with Audrey. "It was hundreds of maggots in the sink, not roaches, honey. The roaches were hiding in the barbecue pit." I'm sure she'll appreciate the clarity and a second story that she could have lived her entire life without hearing.



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