Pleasure Dawdle: Long Island Half 2010

Posted on May 2, 2010 by threlkeld

I ran this race as a low key training run for reasons previously stated. I ended up with 13.25 miles in just over 2:05, or roughly 9:30 pace. Average effort was around 80%.

Well, it was hot and humid today, just as predicted. I’d resigned myself to not racing it, although a few minutes before the race, when it was only in the mid-60s I toyed with the idea of doing an all out effort. Then I decided against it; it’s not like you can race the first 10K, then change your mind. Once you’ve exerted yourself in conditions like these you’re in it for the haul, meaning the damage is done and running slower after a fast first half will be a lot harder than if you’d jogged the whole way, which is essentially what I did for most of the “race” today.

If you enjoy running on barren, completely exposed major roadways, then this is the race for you. But if you decide to take it on in 2011, be sure to get there early! We were trapped in a sluggish, single lane of cars crawling toward parking for at least 15 minutes after getting into the park entrance. Jonathan finally gave up and bolted from the car at 7:20.  Unlike me, his plan today was to race and neither of us had a clue about where the start was. It turns out the race start was a five minute stroll from where I parked. He took the long way around. We wouldn’t see each other again for another three hours.

Somehow we managed the separation and, in our own ways, both had a grand old time. Jonathan came in (he thinks) 13th overall, having managed an unofficial 1:20:03. He was, of course, unhappy with this, whereas I was astonished, considering the conditions and the fact that he hasn’t actually been training for a half (or even a full). His paces were very even. I think it was among his most successful races, but he doesn’t share this opinion.

In terms of his performance in a relative sense, one of the many quirks of this race is that obtaining “results” consists of lining up to use a machine into which you enter your bib number, which then burps out a printed receipt of your time and pace. But you have no idea how anyone else did. We assume he won the M50-59 AG, but won’t know until the award shows up (or doesn’t) in the mail eventually. Edited: Well, he won M50-54, but was beaten by a 58 year old!

There was apparently some drama at the start line. Jonathan was lined up  near the front, and right before the start the race director surveyed those in front and pointed to a man who obviously didn’t belong there (very overweight) and demanded that he move back, which he did. Then he approached a woman who in his estimation also didn’t belong there (although Jonathan said he didn’t think one could necessarily have made that assumption by looking at her). The RD demanded she move back as well, but she resisted. So he ripped her tag off and disqualified her on the spot.

Jonathan said the calling out of some vs. others seemed random and inconsistent to him, as there were other people on the line who didn’t belong up there. I suppose it’s the RD’s prerogative to decide, perhaps for safety reasons, who can and can’t be in the first row. But ejecting someone seems excessive. My guess? The LI race director is just another power mad jerk.

I was way back in the middle of the pack at the start. At 8AM we started walking toward the start mats and the women behind me were exclaiming how we had “perfect weather.” That’s when I hit “Play” on my MP3 player.

This is the first race I’ve run with music and let me tell you, I understand why people do it. Jogging for 13+ miles can be really boring. I knew this already, which is why I have an MP3 player in the first place, although I’ve heretofore been a purist when it comes to mixing music with racing. But I figured if I was going to play contented midpacker for a day, I may as well go whole hog and do it with headphones jammed into my ears. For today, I chose my “Sunday Run” mix (see below). It’s what I listen to on Sundays. Easy decision.

The first few miles ticked by without incident. I distracted myself with judgmental assessments of the wide range of tattoos that surrounded me. There were lots of “tramp stamps” to be seen, but I was most impressed with one woman’s “Farm / Ancient Rome” visual pastiche along her upper back, the centerpiece of which was two pigs with (and I can’t explain this, so don’t make me try) a large Doric column emerging from their spines. The other highlight was the woman with two tattoos on her calves: a Star of David (left) and Christ on a Cross (right). Mixed marriage?

The colorful visual treats so held my attention that I was taken by surprise by the sudden appearance of the 5 mile mark, only noticing it because that was when the sun emerged from the clouds, necessitating that I move to the shady side of the street, where I ran with a few 10K race stragglers. At mile 8 we turned into a headwind and for once wind was a refreshing, cooling force rather than an obstructive, energy sapping one.

I picked up the pace then, figuring on upping effort for the remainder of the race. Even in that weather, running the last 3-4 miles at higher effort wasn’t going to kill me. Anything I can do at this point to acclimatize myself for the coming summer months is going to help. At 9:30, or around mile 9.5, the sun came out for good and it was beating down on us. I was running at around 80% at that point and started to pick things up, primarily to get this over with.

I started passing people, although other people were also picking things up, so I had lots of company. One thing I noticed was that most of the (much younger) people around me weren’t running all that hard. Meaning they weren’t really racing. I used to notice this when the pace I ran today was my race pace way back when and it used to drive me crazy. It still happens in some NYRR races, where I’m about to eject an internal organ, I’m working so hard, but I’ll sometimes be running with guys who are chatting about where they had dinner last night. But nothing like this in terms of sheer numbers. My point is that I suspect a lot of “average” runners could run much faster if they tried. I don’t know why they don’t. Maybe because it’s very uncomfortable? Yeah. I’ll bet that’s it.

At mile 11.6 I saw my first heat-related casualty, a guy who looked to be in his mid-20s, slightly overweight, flat on his back. He was surrounded by cops who hadn’t bothered to try to get him into the shade and were otherwise making no visible effort to get him cooler. I listened for sirens, but heard none. Then at 11.75 miles I spotted Guy in His 20s #2. This time the cops were raising his feet (he was passed out cold), but, again, no ambulance.

The final straw was a man I saw at the 13 mile mark, clearly in big trouble. He was falling, then getting up, then falling again. The spectators seemed to find this funny, like he was some sort of trained bear. I found it alarming, but lucked upon a volunteer about a hundred feet along, around a curve. We had the following exchange, which would have been comical had it not been so frustrating:

Me: “There’s a runner down at the 13 mile mark. You should call for medical help.”

Him: “Where?”

Me: “The 13 mile mark.”

Him: “Way back there?”

Me: “No, a hundred or so feet back, just around the curve.”

Him: “Oh. I thought you meant mile 13 of the marathon.”

Me: [Confused look] “They’re the same finish.”

Him: [Dashes off]

The LI event uses some sort of newfangled tracking system — an RFID strip is attached to the back of your bib rather than to your shoe. A little ways before the finish I spotted a trash can in which to dispose of the transmitter that would indelibly record my finishing time were it to pass over the finish mat. Still, I was surprised to hear my name called as I neared the finish — and pronounced correctly yet again (the planets must be in alignment) — so that was weird. I’m hoping they were just looking up bib numbers as we came in, as I don’t want my cruddy finish time recorded. Because I’m obsessive that way.

Edited: Dammit. They managed to record my time somehow. I have no idea how that happened. Mystery solved: there are two strips on the back of each bib.

I’m a little tired now, but no more so than I’d be after any hot midlength run. For once I did the smart thing. For once.

Some news stories (and a blog report) from various races today. It wasn’t pretty out there today:

Sunday Run
Someday – Shawn Colvin
6 Underground – Sneaker Pimps
Blink – Yuji Oniki
Can We Still Be Friends? – Todd Rundgren
All I Really Want To Do – The Byrds
Modern Girl – Sleater-Kinney
Learning To Fly – Pink Floyd
September Gurls – Big Star
Bound By The Beauty – Jane Siberry
Fireflies (Live Version) – Fleetwood Mac
Rikki Don’t Lose That Number – Steely Dan
Why Do You Let Me Stay Here? – She and Him
Walk With You – Ringo Starr
Singing In My Sleep – Semisonic
Knocked Up – Kings Of Leon
Big Nuthin’ – Maggie & Terre Roche
The Ballad Of Peter Pumpkinhead – XTC
Time Stand Still – Rush
Home by the Sea – Genesis
Livin’ Thing – Electric Light Orchestra
Beach – Mew
Where The Streets Have No Name – U2
Apocalypso – Mew
Don’t Let Go The Coat – The Who
Figure Of Eight – Paul McCartney
Looking For Water – Carl Craig
Switch On [Featuring Ryan Tedder] – Paul Oakenfold
Fruit Machine – The Ting Tings
Paranoid Android – Radiohead
Airbag – Radiohead
Inni mer syngur vitleysingur – Sigur Ros
The Shock Of The Lightning – Oasis
Finer Feelings – Spoon
Read My Mind – The Killers
Nailed – Bob Mould
It’s All In My Mind – Teenage Fanclub
Souls Travel – Bettie Serveert
Miracle Medicine – Jason Falkner

Listen on Rhapsody

Filed under: music, racing, training | 7 Comments »

Against my better judgment…

Posted on May 1, 2010 by threlkeld

We picked up our bibs on the off chance that tomorrow we get up and it’s perfect weather. But even if that’s not the case, we’re going to the Long Island race site tomorrow morning. If it’s hotter than the ninth circle of Hell, I’ll probably skip the race altogether (I’m bringing a book in the event that my better half decides to run it).

If it’s not quite that hot, I’ll do it as training run. I figure I was going to do a run tomorrow up here anyway. At least on a course I’ll have ample supplies of water and Gatorade.

My plan is to run at 75% max. Given the conditions, that may very well mean a 10:00 mile or worse. Who knows.

But there’s no chance of my racing this thing. It’s sort of liberating not to care. But I’m still disappointed.

I’m convinced now that the only safe month in which to schedule a goal race, at least on the east coast, is November. But I’m sure I’ll be proven wrong this fall.

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Long Island half forecast: NBL trending toward DNS

Posted on April 30, 2010 by threlkeld

With NBL meaning “not bloody likely” and DNS defined as “did not start.”

Well, now I’m very glad that I didn’t spend the entire winter training to race the New Jersey Marathon. We’re due for a freak heatwave this weekend. Not only was I smart (or just doubtful) enough to defer my entry until 2011, but we also decided to do a race — a half — closer to home to avoid the expense of a hotel room. So instead we’re scheduled to run the Long Island Half, which is about 45 minutes from our house by car.

The worst of the heat is going to be tomorrow, with a predicted high of 84 and high dew points to go with it. But Sunday’s not much better, with predicted conditions at race start as 69F and a dew point of 64, with thunderstorms predicted at noon, along with a high of around 80. I race badly in heat/humidity even when I’ve had weeks to acclimate. While I’m resigned to the likelihood that I will be doing some of these shorter efforts (1500-5000m, possibly a 10K) in warmer conditions than I’d like, that’s not the same as trying to race a half marathon in the stuff.

No, I’ve had enough horrible hot weather races to have learned my lesson. While I don’t enjoy throwing away a race registration fee, I enjoy losing control of my bowels, running with a massive headache, and crawling in at 11 minutes off my half PR (only to then run like garbage for weeks afterwards) even less.

As FB runner friend Cristina pointed out — while posting about her own decision to scratch her half in DC this weekend — conditions like these aren’t that far off what felled runners in the 2007 Army 10 Miler and Chicago Marathon races, both of which should have been sponsored by E-Z Bake Ovens that year.

We’ve got until 6PM tomorrow to pick up our race packets. I figure by then it should be obvious if the weather muppets are on the money this time around or not. I’ll probably do a longer run on Sunday anyway. But not a fast one.

Sometimes I regret not having created a “weather complaints” category, as I’m sure it would have been the biggest keyword in my category tag cloud by now.

Filed under: racing | 11 Comments »

Running hard after running hard is hard

Posted on April 29, 2010 by threlkeld

I had the rare horrible workout on Tuesday, a revisiting of the rite of passage “on/off” tempo run: 12 miles with the last 8 switching between 7:15 and 8:30 pace.

Eek. It was awful. I felt iffy going in but I’ve learned that how I feel often has no bearing on how well I run or race. So I gave it my all. Which wasn’t very much. After 3.5 very slow miles I gradually picked up the pace  to the low 8:00s to get ready to run faster. Then when the watch vibrated (yes, I have a vibrating watch; no giggling) at 4 miles I launched into my first “fast” mile. I struggled to run this in 7:56. A mere 41 seconds per mile off pace.

With a rapidly blackening mood, I took it down to 8:30 for a mile, as assigned. Even that was difficult to maintain, though, and I ended up with an 8:45. Things continued in this vein for the next few miles, although the faster ones got a bit better, more like 7:35. But I was working too hard and I knew it. The fourth fast mile was 7:20 at 93%. It was so awful that I abondoned mile 12 and called it a day at 11.1.

Jesus fucking Christ. That was a bad feeling heading into a race on Sunday in which that’s 5 seconds slower than my intended half marathon pace. Ain’t now way I’m running 13+ miles at 93%. Uh, no. Just no.

I came home, banged things around in the kitchen and then moped all morning.

Then Jonathan went out for a run and, for the heck of it, decided to try running a fast mile or two. He came back and confirmed that it had been extremely difficult to do so. I can only think that my legs were still tired from the 5K race on Saturday. I wouldn’t have thought that a 5K can take that much out of you, but I guess it’s like doing a speed session or something.

Days like that make me think of the 19 year olds who regularly post on LetsRun with questions like, “Should I hammer my workout a day after racing?” It must be nice to be young. Beyond a certain age, “hammering” a workout doesn’t even seem to be a possibility three days after racing.

I just end up feeling so fucking old when this sort of thing happens.

I took yesterday off because I was very busy with work and then had to go shopping and after all that couldn’t cope with putting on my stupid shorts and going out and running in 25 mph winds for another dose of failure. Today was better, with a pleasant little recovery run this morning, not even 5 miles, at a reasonable effort vs. pace.

It’s Thursday. I’ve got a couple of days to get ready to race. The forecast isn’t looking too favorable — warm, humid and windy — but never mind. I don’t care about anything this season, remember?

Filed under: coaching, racing, recovery | 6 Comments »

Google search oddities

Posted on April 27, 2010 by threlkeld

Today: “crapped herself”

The madness continues.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Training: April 19 – April 25, 2010

Posted on April 27, 2010 by threlkeld

Another light week in terms of mileage. Between the 15K race and then a following week of three workouts, I was feeling a bit beaten up going into this one.

My only workout was a revisiting of the half mile repeats on the track I’d done roughly six weeks earlier. It was a screwy session since the intial turn on the track was blocked off so the high schoolers could do some sort of sport that involves climbing up to the top of a pole, strapping on a harness attached to a pulley, and letting gravity pull them rapidly forward along a tilted line. I wish I knew what this was called so I wouldn’t have to describe it every time. practice their zip line skills.

What this meant was that instead of rounding the track at the top, one had to cut straight across, then try to “make up” for the lost distance by running in the extreme outside lane for the rest of the repeat. I was probably slightly under 800m for my loops, maybe more like 780m.

This all makes sense if you understand the Bronxville High School track. This is one of the wealthiest square miles in the entire nation, and per-student spending in their school system is, well, astronomical. Yet they couldn’t manage to put in an accurate track when they spent a million dollars on one a few years ago. What they’ve done is cram a 400m track into too-small a plot of land. Rather than move the lane markers farther apart for the sake of accuracy, they went with aesthetics, distributing the markers as you would on a standard track. As a result, none of the lanes are 400m. The inside lane is 380m. Lane 4 is the closest at 404m. I haven’t a clue what the outside lane is.

Joe had seen my FB post about heading to the track with Jonathan, and there he was when we arrived! He and Jonathan did some 400 (or whatever they could approximate under the circumstances) repeats, first together, then Jonathan took his slower.

Aside from having to dodge around lounging teens, I enjoyed this workout and didn’t find its “twist” at the end (picking up the pace to 6:00 for the last 200m) nearly as taxing as I did the first time I did it some weeks ago. But I suspect I did too many of them. I probably should have done one fewer repeat to save my legs for Sunday’s 5K race and mullet appreciation day.

I took a day off again on Sunday, something I’ve made a habit of over the past couple of months. It was pouring buckets of rain all day and I didn’t feel like dealing with getting soaking wet or disassembling the bed in the guest room (it’s a tiny room) to make room for the treadmill, which is now shoved up against a wall.

I briefly considered going into the city to watch the More Half in Central Park, and maybe do a run in the opposite direction as I did last year (so I could watch the elites, followed by the March on Washington). But, man, it was just miserable out there. My AG hero, Colleen De Reuck, didn’t win, as I’d hoped. She was in the lead until mile 9 when she succumbed to hypothermia (that’ll happen when you’ve got 14% body fat). From what I can gather, later in the race her pace cratered by at least 20 seconds per mile and she ultimately got handily beaten by Sally Meyerhoff (although I’m a fan of Sally’s too, owing to her having meaty thighs and a substantial badonkadonk, like mine).

Colleen with her jaunty red brolly.

I’ve had it in mind that I should do one hard workout this (meaning the current) week, preferably early in the week, then a minitaper for the Long Island Half on Sunday. I spoke with Coach Kevin over the weekend and he confirmed this plan. But he surprised me by giving me a doozy of a workout to do: a 12 miler with the last 8 alternating between 7:15 and 8:30.

I did this workout six weeks ago and, to be honest, it was difficult. I’m expecting it to be a bit easier this time around, primarily because I’m fitter now, although the fact that the wind is low this morning should also help. Now I just need the sun to come up so I can go out there and kick my own ass.

Filed under: central park, coaching, elites, racing, training | 4 Comments »

The rock stars next door

Posted on April 25, 2010 by threlkeld

For years and years I didn’t remember a whole lot from my childhood. Now I find that something’s been released in my brain lately and I’m finding all kinds of things crammed away in there that I’d forgotten about.

The other day was warm enough to open the window in the second bedroom that serves as our office. When it’s warm, my neighbor’s dog, Lola, is outside on their deck. She barks at anything that moves, with the mailman and cats being the big winners usually.

Last summer I bought a device called the Barkstopper Pro. It was useless against Lola’s constant auditory onslaught. So I’ve gotten used to the barking and it’s only a real nuisance when I’m on the phone. Or when I think about what we’re going to do if we ever want to sell this house.

I knew the mail had arrived, because Lola was barking her head off. Then I suddenly remembered a song called “Barking Dog Blues.” It was written by Peter Kaukonen, brother of Jorma, both members of various incarnations of Jefferson Airplane/Starship. Like Proust’s fateful madeleine, that stupid dog brought on a flood of memories.

I mostly grew up in Mill Valley, California, which is about 20 minutes north of San Francisco. We moved there in 1970 and lived about halfway up to the top of Mount Tamalpais. Mill Valley was kind of a magical place in which to grow up, something I didn’t fully appreciate until after I left roughly 13 years later. It is a gorgeous town, with houses stuck into the side of the mountain, carpeted with old growth redwoods and sycamores and full of discoveries, like secret steps you can use to take shortcuts everywhere, horse farms and fantastic parks and trails.

In the sixties and seventies it was a hotbed of musical activity. To give you an idea of what it was like there, my best friend, Johanna, lived higher up on the mountain in a big A-frame. Her house was in earshot of Carlos Santana’s place, and we could sometimes hear them rehearsing in the afternoons. (She also had a neighbor a bit closer in who sometimes made pornographic movies outside on the deck. Needless to say, to our cultural peril, we found the latter activity of much greater interest.)

My family lived next door to Peter Kaukonen and his wife at the time, Jacky. They had no kids, but they seemed to like me, their seven-year-old neighbor. I found them fascinating. Peter had a home recording studio and a room full of musical instruments.

Even then I was intensely drawn to all kinds of music (I was, for example, obsessed at the time with a couple of albums my dad gave me by the Baha Marimba Band, a faux-Mexican outfit) and enjoyed just being around all the drums and guitars. They were like works of art and I loved looking at them as much as I liked hearing them played. Ten years ago I bought my dream guitar, a Gibson Les Paul Custom. I play it badly and it needs attention from a good luthier. But it’s a beautiful piece of art to me.

In the early seventies, people weren’t paranoid about their kids hanging around with adults. I used to go over to Peter and Jacky’s some afternoons after school just to hang out and see what they were up to. It still amazes me that they welcomed me into their home rather than seeing me as a nuisance.

Who would you rather hang around with after school? No fucking contest.

Peter had recorded an album, Black Kangaroo, and he wrote the song “Barking Dog Blues” as a minor protest against (or, really a lament about) our neighbors’ dog, which barked incessantly. I can only imagine how frustrating it must have been to try to record an album with a fucking dog going in the background. On that recording, he gave up and made the barking the song’s centerpiece.

Along with all their instruments, they had a menagerie of exotic reptile pets. It was like a little zoo of lizards and snakes over there. All this was so much more interesting than either school or my friends’ houses that I couldn’t wait to go over there sometimes.

One time I went into San Francisco with Jacky to a store (I’m pretty sure it was in Chinatown — where else would it possibly have been?) where she bought all the food for their pets: dried grubs, live bugs — and live mice. This was a big treat — going with an adult somewhere to do something undeniably adult, like buying live animals. Jacky handled the transaction with a perfect mixture of sensitivity and matter-of-factness. Snakes ate mice; that was just nature at work. I even remember her saying something to this effect before we went in. She was careful to check that I wasn’t upset by this concept, which I wasn’t, although it didn’t seem like I had much of an option.

Doing some casual Googling, I see that they’re both still around, although it looks like they split up quite awhile ago. Looking back, I realize that Peter and Jacky were just kids themselves at the time — probably not even 30 years old. But they seemed so grown up to me, yet accessible and cool in way that my parents and my friends’ parents could never be. They were very kind to me, and the impression they made on me has influenced how I deal with kids, since I know that small gestures can stick.

Filed under: everyday life | Tagged: , , , | 9 Comments »

Race Report: Washingtonville High School 5K

Posted on April 24, 2010 by threlkeld

I’m racing so often these days that I’m getting sick of writing race reports. Or at least I worry that my race reports are boring. I’ll try to make this interesting.

How’s this for an opening gambit: Jonathan was beaten today by a guy with a mullet. He was right in front of me at the start (I was just behind the guys at the front) and I found myself unpleasantly entranced by his straggly neck-shading locks during the National Anthem. After the race I got a look at his front and discovered that he bore a striking resemblance to Davy Jones of The Monkees. But with a mullet.

Now that I have your attention, here’s the race report: Warm up, blah blah blah. Feel crappy, nervous, blah blah. Stand behind mullet guy. RD yells “Go!” and we’re off. Too fast. I’m running with teenage girls and 12-year-old boys who have never run a race. I know this because they are weaving all over the place and asking me, “Are we supposed to run off to the left or something?”

We’re all going at around 5:50 pace and this is just silly. So I slow down. The 12-year-old boys die after 200m (no endurance, these kids today), but the confused girls are still with me. By the quarter mile mark we’re running at a more reasonable 6:30 pace. Then they start slowing down and I don’t want to get complacent, so I pass them, suddenly feeling very Kathy Bates in Steel Magnolias Fried Green Tomatoes.* The rest of the race, I see one woman ahead of me and wait and wait and wait for someone else to catch up. No one does.

The woman is a high schooler in black, probably about 5’10” and all of 130 lbs. She is floating and I know there’s no chance I’ll catch her. I hit the first mile split in 6:37. We turn north. And. Cue the wind. Mile two is way windy. My pace drops to 6:56 for that one. Ugh. But I know the course is sort of in the shape of a bent spoon (or helium balloon on its last legs, if you prefer; or crushed lollipop…), so we should be turning out of the wind eventually and getting it on our sides again.

But that second mile has killed me and at the 2.5 mile mark I start thinking how nice it would be just slow down a bit, or even walk. Or stop and sit down. There’s an idea. But I have to keep going. I’m a little mad at myself because I know I mentally gave up to some extent when I realized in mile 2, as I watched my average speed eroding, that I wouldn’t break 21:00 today. I’m at 7:00 pace at 2.5 miles. This is unacceptable. I snap myself out of it and run the next half mile about 10 seconds faster. Then I see people turning into the parking lot at 3 miles and gun it for the last tenth for a finishing time of 21:12.

So I’m a bit disappointed, but I ran as well as I could today. Since this was a nearly flat course (total up/down elevation was around 150 ft) I now have a 5K pace to use as a baseline for training and for coming up with a reasonable (ha ha) pacing plan for next Sunday’s half marathon on Long Island. I suspect my legs were still tired from Wednesday’s speed workout, since I had leg soreness in the middle of the night. I knew I should have gone with my instinct on Wednesday to do 4 x 800 rather an 5 x 800. Live and learn.

Today's haul. The graphic is a wizard hat ("Washingtonville Wizards").

This week’s haul included a lovely plastic trophy (and bonus non-haltingly correct pronunciation of my last name) and an AG medal. Jonathan came in (I think) sixth with 17:35 while also smashing the 50-54 course record by about a minute. He was, as previously stated, beaten by Mullet Man (who turned out to be in his 30s). We hung around, eating free bananas and watching the kids’ races, waiting for the awards ceremony, which could only happen after they raffled off 4,000 gift certificates from local establishments. These little races are a hoot. They always remind me of political protests — everyone and everything is given equal importance and tedium is never an obstacle in either planning or execution.

More fun stupid stuff…

The drive to Washingtonville, about an hour from our place in Yonkers, is very pretty if you get off of 87 and instead take the Palisades Parkway. On the way, you go past an exit for Letchworth Village (a sign that always makes us giggle). We made up a town to go with it: Lushton.

On the way back we noticed a Mercedes with a vanity license: 4MYBOGIE. What does it mean? That led to a half hour session of FBI style profiling the type of person who gets a vanity license plate. Highly critical profiling, naturally. This sort of thing is why I can go on long car trips with Jonathan; there’s no pressure to talk, and when we do talk, it’s usually at least entertaining, if not always deep.

For the hell of it, here’s a picture of our cat, looking more cute and less pissed off than usual. She was in bed when we left at 8:00 am this morning. I predicted she would still be in bed when we arrived home at 1:00 pm. I was right.

*Whoops. Wrong movie. I’m not surprised I got them mixed up as they are both insufferable movies about annoying Southern women that came out around the same time. Steel Magnolias was so awful that I finally decided it must be a satire of something. I only made it through an hour of it before returning the DVD. I don’t think I made it much farther through Fried Green Tomatoes.

Filed under: movies, racing | 8 Comments »

The 5K

Posted on April 23, 2010 by threlkeld

I have one tomorrow.

I knew it had been awhile since I last raced one, but I didn’t realize until I looked at my old logs just how long it’s been: nearly four years. It also turns out that I’ve only ever raced three 5Ks. In mid-2006, shortly after I started racing — with a 5K, 10K and 15K in under a month’s time — it became clear to me that I was better suited, at least temperamentally if not physiologically, for racing longer distances.

Or at least that’s what I’ve always thought. Namely, that I have no natural speed. But the truth is that I’ve never trained for shorter race distances (meaning less than a half marathon), so I really have no clue if that’s true or not. I stopped racing 5Ks because I hated how I felt when I was racing them. It was just too hard to run that fast. Because of the high level of discomfort involved, I bought into the “I’m not a 5K racer” perspective for years.

Now, after having recently raced a 2 miler and a couple of 4 milers, and having truly enjoyed each experience, I’m guessing that my dislike of racing shorter distances back then had more to do with my lack of aerobic conditioning and less to do with some sort of natural disadvantage in the speed department.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not proclaiming myself a fast racer at shorter distances by any means. I’m fully expecting to have my ass handed to me in the track races I plan to do in a few weeks. But I’m starting to doubt that I’m as irredeemably terrible at racing short as I’d thought.

Tomorrow’s race won’t exactly present the opportunity for a fair assessment, by the way, at least from a competitive standpoint. We’re running a small 5K way the hell up in Orange County. But, as with all my races this season, I’m going into this race essentially to see how things turn out, not to achieve any particular goal or beat someone else.

The last time I raced a 5K I hated it. Tomorrow I expect to love it.

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On a totally unrelated note, it’s spring and that means I’m thinking about my grandmother, who died just about two years ago at the age of 93. Flowers burst into bloom and I get reliably depressed; I’ve come to expect it, although it’s better this year than it was last year, when I found myself weeping on a few runs. I miss her dark sense of humor and appreciation for the bawdy.

I saw her in Iowa, alive, for the last time in April 2008 when I thought she was going to fight her way back from a stroke (having survived just about everything else life had thrown at her), then went back to say farewell at her funeral a month later. Then Cedar Rapids was hit with floods of Biblical proportions, which destroyed much of city’s historic downtown including parts where she grew up. I was relieved that she didn’t live to witness the destruction and loss.

My grandmother died less than a year after my great aunt, her older sister and best friend, died in the summer of 2007. That was also a tough one. We were hiking in Switzerland when I got the news about my great aunt and I remember sitting down on a log in the foothills of the Matterhorn and bursting into tears among all that enormous, vertical beauty. Both of these women were accomplished watercolor painters. I hate it when artists die in general, but it really peeves me when I know the artists in question.

Anyway. I don’t mean to be a downer. I just loved those two old gals and miss them both terribly.

Filed under: everyday life, racing | 6 Comments »

Training: April 12 – April 18, 2010

Posted on April 21, 2010 by threlkeld

Since I’m in a somewhat manic “oh I’ll just change everything” period, I may as well also change how I label these training posts. I realize that since I’m not training for any particular race, saying I’m in “week n” doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. So I’m going to do what the pros do and just tell you what dates I’m talking about.

First things first — and I’m skipping ahead into this week, so if you’re confused, it’s not you, it’s me — I did not run the Boston Marathon, which everyone else in the world seemed to be doing. (And I should add that I never will run the Boston Marathon, despite its caché, for a host of reasons). But I did have a grand old time watching it on Monday evening.

Since I had so much to do workwise (don’t people know not to schedule meetings on Patriot’s Day? Sheesh.) I had to sit on our Tivo recording until about 8:00PM. Staying away from all news was challenging (although, let’s face it, Facebook was harder to go cold turkey on for an entire day — I slipped once, but only to post something, not to read).

It was a thrilling race, especially on the women’s side, which is becoming a happy pattern in recent years. There are great summaries of the race elsewhere, so I won’t bore you here. Except to say that I wish Larry Rawson would truly retire. He’s like the Rolling Stones (only older) — constantly announcing his retirement only be exhumed yet again, our sport’s own version of Grandpa Simpson, rambling on about how much everyone is earning and how far that money goes in Kenya, reading leg turnover rates like so many tea leaves and getting nearly everyone’s name wrong. At one point he was laboring to compare running the mile (he was a miler in the Mesozoic Age) to running the marathon. Seriously. It was funny.

Okay. Onto the good stuff. I was a bit dumb about training last week, getting carried away and running a bit too hard. But I felt so good after the Scarsdale 15K that I couldn’t stop my legs, which wanted to go. On Wednesday I gave in and let them do a general aerobic run. I was surprised at how slow that was considering the relative effort, although I shouldn’t have been.

I was obviously still tired from Sunday — and probably also from racing over hills for three straight weekends — but that didn’t stop me from doing another speed session two days later. I went back to the “cutdown” workout that I’d done just once before, about three weeks prior. It was a strange session. The first repeat (a mile) was a minor disaster. It was quite windy and between that and running about 15 seconds per mile too fast I just died toward the end. I ended up cutting it short to 1400m. I figured the rest of the session would suck, but that first repeat turned out to be my warmup. The other three legs went extremely well, considering the wind.

I took Saturday off both to rest my legs and to clean our house from top to bottom so my sister and niece would never know what slobs we are. No one must ever know. Niece has decided she’s going to UC San Diego, although since Rutgers’ Honor College apparently offered her a metric fucktonne of financial aid she thought she’d better at least check the place out before deciding to remain a California girl.

While I’m sorry that I won’t have her around on this coast, as she’s really quite charming and the complete opposite — outgoing, cheerful and enthusiastic — of everything I am, I had trouble seeing her living here, especially sequestered away in East Brunswick, New Jersey rather than among the bright lights of New York City that drew her here (insert gratuitous “moth to flame” analogy here) in the first place. But she has her entire life left to move to New York and in the process ruin said life. Like I did! (Just kidding. Sort of.)

On Sunday they headed off into the city for theatre and lunch with more eagerly awaiting family and I dashed up to White Plains and back. Again, it was ridiculously windy and my paces were all over the place, anywhere from 9:30 to 7:50 per mile. But it was a satisfying run and allowed me to eat this monstrosity later on.

This week is considerably lighter: just one speed workout and then my first 5K race in several years on Saturday. I’ll go ahead and say my goal is to break 21:00. Unless it’s windy, I think this might be doable. But you’ll be able to read all about that … next week.

Filed under: eating, everyday life, racing, recovery, training | 4 Comments »

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