Race Notes: The NYC Half Marathon

I ran the NYC Half Marathon for the first time on Sunday!  I'd been putting it off in past years because the registration fee is well over a hundred dollars, and the all-Manhattan layout of the course never really gave it the same kind of epic sweep as touching all five boroughs in the full marathon.  I'm always curious to try new courses though, and I figured this one was worth trying at least once.

So how did it go?  First of all it was cold.  And dark: the race started at 7:30, and the sun didn't come up until after 7.  There was still a bit of slushy ice in the water they were handing out along the course.  Also, they were funneling several thousand people through five metal detectors before we got to the starting corrals, which certainly isn't my ideal way to start a day.

But what about the race itself?  It started off fairly quiet, since the first six miles were in Central Park (which still had a fair amount of snow and ice left over from everything that got dumped on us in February).  That stretch was a lot like most of the other NYRR races, actually, with the exception of a part on 110th Street where we went out to a turnaround in the plaza at the northwest corner and came back.

When we exited the park down 7th Avenue at the 10K mark, things started to get more interesting.  There were a lot more people cheering as we got to Times Square, and they had some bands playing.  I wouldn't quite put it on the same level as the marathon in terms of excitement and energy, but it was a definite boost.  That continued as we went along 42nd Street to the west side, with more bands and crowds along the way.

One of the most interesting parts of the race came in the last mile, when we went underground into the tunnel beneath Battery Park where cars usually turn around to go up the FDR Drive.  I always enjoy running in places that aren't normally open to foot traffic, and there was a fun, dark eeriness to that place.

When I crossed the finish line at Wall Street I came in about a minute and a half behind my PR, which I thought was pretty good considering that I haven't been out running much in this frigid, snowy winter, and I had a bad cold a few weeks ago.  The field was a little over 20,000 people.  Overall I'd say it was an interesting and worthwhile experience, but the price tag will probably keep me from making this a yearly habit.

Running Season Is Back!

Wow, it's a beautiful day outside.  It felt great to not have my nose streaming like a faucet this morning when I biked into work.  Tonight I'm planning on doing a long run down through Prospect Park to take advantage of the warm weather and newly-extended daylight.

I'm running in the NYC Half Marathon on Sunday.  Come out and watch me then if you can!  My bib number's going to be 5387.  I'm not expecting to hit a new personal best in the race, and a lot of that has to do with what a miserable winter it's been.  Part of that was the temperature (I'll brave the 20's, but I can't make myself get out there for love or money when it drops into the teens), but part of it was just the constant presence of snow---and worse yet, ice---on the sidewalks.

There were also some personal reasons.  On New Year's Eve I went out for a run and fell flat on my face.  It was the first time it had happened in at least three or four years.  I was shaken, but not too badly hurt.  Then two weeks later I fell AGAIN, and that time things got a little more serious.  I didn't need any stitches, thank god, but I had enough serious cuts and scrapes to put me out of commission for about a week.  Also, about a month ago I came down with a cold, which isn't something that happens to me very often.

I'm starting to wonder whether I'm on the verge of passing my peak as a runner.  Sure, the pavement was torn to shit both the times I tripped, and the second incident was at night on a dimly-lit street, but eventually I'll have to face the fact that I can't keep improving forever, and someday I'll have to be content to just post a good time "for my age."

That's not to say I'm going to throw in the towel though.  Hell no.  I've got a running class that I'm taking with NYRR starting up next week on Tuesday nights, and they've done a great job of pushing me to new heights in the past.  Spring is coming too, which should make getting out on the road a lot easier (give or take a little pouring rain or a freakish cold snap like this coming Thursday).  I just started breaking in a new pair of running shoes last night.  The world is full of possibilities.

Walking (with) The Walk

If you've been reading this blog for a while, or just are used to hearing me yammering about my running all the time, you may have heard me mention an iPhone/Android app called Zombies, Run!, which has helped keep my runs interesting by adding a storyline and periodic zombie chases to them.  Now, the same UK-based folks behind that game have teamed up with the NHS and Department of Health to come up with something even more of you may be interested in.

It's called The Walk, and instead of setting it up when you're about to go exercise, you just start it at the beginning of the day, put it in your pocket or your bag, and let it keep track of your activity as you go.  All of the walking/running/stair-climbing/etc. you do during the day counts towards your progress in a story that involves your mysterious protagonist walking across the length of Great Britain to deliver an important package after an EMP blast shuts down almost all of the electronics in the countryside.  Hitchcockian spy antics abound.  As you make progress you unlock audio clips that tell more of the story, and there are a number of side-quests and achievements you can work on to switch things up as you go along.

I'm three days into it so far, and I've really been enjoying it.  It doesn't track my bike riding (the support folks I contacted said that motion's too complicated to monitor accurately), but the pull of the story has gotten me going out of my way to get in a few extra steps here and there throughout the day.  I've even been taking the stairs up and down to my ninth-floor office!  Progress is tracked by time, not by distance, so there's something here for folks at all levels of activity.  There's even an adaptive feature that can lower the number of minutes you need to stay active in order to complete the "missions" that make up the game (a slider in the settings screen lets you take control of this manually, too).

Now that the weather's getting colder outside (it's snowing like crazy here in New York as I type this), getting out and traveling long distances on foot may be a less-than-enticing proposition, but The Walk has me tempted to brave the cold a bit more.  I'd recommend it to anybody trying to avoid spending the entire holiday season curled up in a blanket on the couch (though hopefully you'll have time for that as well).  It's available for iPhones, iPads, and Android devices, and it's $4.99, but for the next few days you can get it on sale for $3.99.

Before I go, I should probably mention that buying an app called "The Walk" can prove quite difficult in the vast wasteland landscape of the iPhone's App Store, especially when there's a little show you may have heard of called The Walking Dead that's inspired quite a few apps of its own.  The company that makes The Walk is called Six to Start, so adding that to your search should be enough to narrow it down.  Enjoy!

A Full Life?

My life is full right now.  Full of commitments, full of surprises, full of love.  I can't stand to add anything else to my plate, and I don't want to start anything new until I get something good and firmly accomplished.  There's a bit of a problem with that, because a lot of the things I'm working on right now don't have very near-term goals, or even clearly-defined endpoints.  They all have milestones, of course, but there's always another carrot to chase after the current one's been caught.

Take the Philadelphia Marathon, for instance.  I just started my training for it earlier this week, but it's not my first marathon, and I have no intention of making it my last.  I had a good workout today on that front, too---five and a half miles, averaging an 8:20 pace.  That's just about the best I've ever done in this kind of weather.

I ran from my office, which was something I've never tried before.  I'd originally planned to wake up early, but I was writing so much last night that I got to bed late, and there was no way I was going to turn an already-pushing-it seven hours of sleep into six if I could help it.  So I brought my running clothes into work, thinking I might run at the end of the day.  Looking at the forecast though, it seemed more and more likely that it was going to rain later in the day, so I decided to run right when I got there.  Even that early in the day there was a bit of a drizzle, but it was a good drizzle---more refreshing than soaking.  I ran from DUMBO down to Red Hook along the waterfront.  The route's an interesting mix of parks, heavy industry, and hipsterdom.  When I came back I felt accomplished and ready to start the day.  (I stayed an hour later at the end than I usually did to make up the time---I'm not trying to goof off here or anything)

As far as the writing goes, I set a goal at the beginning of July to revise 15,500 words of my novel by the end of the month (using Camp NaNoWriMo), and I hit that goal exactly at midnight last night.  Now I'm a bit more than halfway through the whole thing, although I still have plenty of work ahead of me (some of the bits that are in most dire need of revising are still to come).

On top of all that, my wife and I are currently trying to introduce a kitten to our household.  She started life as a stray, and she's still trying to adapt to life among humans, so that's one hurdle.  She also faces the prospect of making friends with our existing cat, which currently is feeling like more of a challenge from Existing Cat's side than it is from Kitten's side.  It's only been five days so far though, and we still have plenty of tricks up our sleeves.  Kitten's starting to get more and more affectionate, and she's started playing with her jingle balls all on her own (although she could have chosen a better time than the crack of dawn this morning to reveal that to us).

Work has been keeping me awfully busy as well, with a project that could have a huge benefit to my career going live in two weeks, ready or not.  Right now it's looking a bit too much like "not", for reasons that are beyond my team's control, but we're pushing as hard as we can, and we're still a long ways from giving up hope.

I've let some things slide in the midst of all this.  I've managed to keep up with my progress using Duolingo relearn all the Italian I forgot from high school, but my Japanese lessons on Rosetta Stone have slowed to more of a crawl than I'd like.  I've been neglecting the piano and guitar lately as well.  Most significantly, however, I haven't been keeping up with my share of the housecleaning---that's the one I feel worst about.  It's funny: I generally consider myself a clean, meticulous person, but when I'm focused on a project I still find it all too easy to let that kind of thing slide.  My wife's convinced that she's been a bad influence on me in that respect, but even when I was living alone I never managed to develop much of a passion for keeping everything tidy.  We've used a maid service from time to time, but there's a weird psychology around that: you can start feeling that your home is too messy to invite a stranger into it, even if that stranger's job is to clean the place.  Part of the problem is the clutter.  When there's stuff lying around that you'll lose track of if somebody else rearranges it, you want to deal with that first before getting to the more sanitation-related stuff.  When you don't get around to putting those things away though...

Still, we're making progress even on that front.  We've vowed to have the place in a state fit for company by Sunday, so with a firm goal in mind we've got a fire lit under our ass to accomplish it.  Then it's on to the fifty million other things we want to do with our lives...

My First Day on a Citi Bike

The first question anyone who knows me would ask about why I joined the Citi Bike program is, "Um, don't you already OWN a perfectly good bike?"  This is true.  I'd been using that bike to commute to work for a few months now, ever since the weather started getting nice and I put in the effort to haul the thing from my parents' house to my apartment.  It's been working pretty well, except for the fact that for the past few weeks we've been experiencing a curious phenomenon whereby the weather forecast will predict possible thunderstorms NEARLY EVERY DAMNED EVENING.  I've had the experience once of having to take my bike through the subway because of rain, and it was an awkward process of circumventing turnstiles and navigating many more stairs than I'd remembered having to climb on foot.  In addition to that, taking my bike to work involved having to bring it in around the loading docks and up the World's Slowest Freight Elevator, with it's light fixture dripping a mysterious brown fluid and its tendency to be filled with garbage carts in the evenings.  So in short, I applied for a Citi Bike membership because I'm a whiner.

Okay, maybe that's not the ONLY reason.  When I heard that New York City was getting a bike share program I felt compelled to support it, both because it encouraged healthy lifestyles and because it might get a few more people out of their cars and off of the ridiculously crowded subways and buses.  An annual membership is only $95, and on top of that I was eligible for a discount because I have a Citibank credit card that I haven't gotten around to canceling yet.  So about two weeks ago I took the plunge.  Of course it was that very evening, after there was no turning back, that I came across an article in the New York Times about the many troubles the bike program was having, with tales of broken kiosks, bikes not locking into racks, annual passes taking forever to ship, and customer service being inundated with complaints.

I experienced the truth of at least one of these statements: the pass I ordered was supposed to ship in 3-5 days, and I found myself waiting just over two weeks until I finally received it last night.  I activated it online, and I was off to the races.

...Or so I thought.  When I arrived at the kiosk this morning I realized that I hadn't paid close attention to the directions for USING the annual pass: a long rectangular fob on my keychain with a bar code on its side.  The kiosk's menu screens didn't say anything about annual passes, and the many scanners and orifices on its front didn't seem designed to accommodate the fob.  After a few minutes of fumbling around with the kiosk I finally decided to go over and take a look at the bikes themselves, and sure enough I found that next to each bike there was a slot that the fob fit into perfectly.  No screens, no fiddling with the keypad next to each bike, just jam in the fob, wait for the green light, and then out comes the bike.  Okay, fair enough.

It took a little time to adjust to the bike, but that's always the case when I ride an unfamiliar model for the first time.  It rode well enough, and the tires were probably better suited to the streets than the ones on my regular bike.  My only complaint is that the bike just has three gears, and even the highest one isn't terribly powerful.  That made for a ride that wasn't terribly fast, although I still managed to pass the occasional slowpoke as I followed the bike lanes along my route (I was still passed by a great many more bikers, but that isn't unusual---I can't bike nearly as well as I run, though part of that may be that I haven't fully readapted to the practice yet).

When I got to the bike stand outside my office, I was able to lock the bike into place after just a couple of tries, which was a relief.  Then I headed over to the clean, normal person's elevator, and headed up to start my day.

So to sum up, I still may take my normal bike in with me on days when the weather's more reliable (and if I'm going long distances---Citi Bikes start charging extra after 45 minutes of use), but Citi Bikes do come in handy for less predictable situations, which in this city are always just around the corner.

Ireland in Six Runs

Gosh, it's been a while since I've written one of these things.  So where have I been then?  Well, most recently I've been running around Ireland.  Not the whole country, mind, but enough of it to get a good feel of the place.

The occasion of the trip was a big family gathering to trace my great grandmother's roots back to a tiny little town in County Leitrim, all the way up in the northwest corner of the country.  There were ten of us, so it became a bit like herding cats at times, but we managed to get through it all with tempers relatively intact.

Our trip started out with a package tour out of Dublin, and I took the bold/foolish initiative of running around Dublin on the morning after my first night in the city when my ability to sleep failed me after ten hours.  Dublin was by far the most urban of the places we visited, so I had to keep an eye out for traffic, and I still hadn't yet gotten the hang of looking for it coming from the reverse of the directions I'm used to.  I kept to running around the perimeters of parks as much as I could to avoid that.  Parks also had the advantage of being rectangular, which I soon discovered the value of when I had to veer off of them down the city's winding streets, and I ended up doubling back over a mile out of my way.  I eventually found my bearings and managed to get back to the hotel somehow.

Our next stop was Cork, which was slightly smaller and split up among a number of islands.  Our hotel was actually on an island so small that you had to cross its sole bridge to another island in order to really get anywhere.  There were some lovely parks there as well, and one bridge I crossed immediately took me up and up and up a hill, until I was looking down on the entire city (while also keeping an eye out for cars on a narrow road that was flanked by walls where you'd normally expect to find sidewalks).  I got lost a bit again on my way back, but not as badly this time.

After that we headed up to Killarney, which had the biggest park of them all.  Mists were still on the lake as I ran past lounging herds of cows and elk in the early morning.  The presence of large animals and the state of my jet lag-addled brain brought the experience to an almost surreal level.

Fourth up was Limerick.  Or at least that's what the destination was called.  I never saw Limerick, or anything else that would show up on a political map with any degree of detail.  Our hotel was a Radisson in the middle of farm country, which happened to have the cocktail reception of a wedding going on in its lobby as I headed out in my exercise clothes, feeling so out of place that I actually started to be a little proud of it.  The run consisted of me running up a road for two miles without hitting an intersection, then running back for two miles along the very same road.  There weren't any sidewalks or shoulders, and the bushes grew high on either side of the road, so I had to rely heavily on drivers' ability to see me as they came around a bend before splattering me onto the pavement.

Limerick was the last stop on the tour proper, so from there we piled into rental cars at Shannon Airport and headed north to Strandhill in County Sligo---the nearest place to my great grandmother's hometown that had sizable accommodations.  Right after we checked into the hotel I had my most beautiful run yet---nothing but picturesque countryside set between the mountains and the sea.  There was even a bike lane, which gave me some breathing room from the cars.  At one point I hit a fork that gave me the choice of running back on the side of the mountain I'd come from or circumnavigating it, and I regret that I didn't quite have time to take the longer route.

The last destination had what would prove to be the most challenging run of all: Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland.  We stayed at a hotel that was literally right next door to the Causeway, known for its unique seaside rock formations that resembled five- and six-sided crystals.  We all had fun hopping around them after our tour.  When I asked about hours for the Causeway at the front desk, I learned that the waterfront and the trails around it were always open, and that what we'd payed admission for was essentially just access to the Visitor's Center.  That's when I hatched my scheme to run as much of the shorefront as I could the next morning.

From what I was able to learn about the waterfront, there was no way that I was going to go all the way along it.  The full system of trails extended for 33 miles, which is far beyond the limits of even my insanity.  I ended up going only about eight and a half miles, but within that space I went from beaches to dizzying five-hundred-foot-tall cliffs, past railroad tracks and around golf course, and up and down dramatic undulations so steep that I had to slow to a walk even when going downhill in some places.  The mist turned to drizzle, until I wasn't sure how much of the water soaking me was rain and how much of it was sweat.  I finally stopped and turned around when I came across a pack of rams that was drinking from a pool at the edge of one of the cliffs.  They'd somehow managed to get beyond the fence that separated the trail from the farmland beyond (though I should note here that there wasn't any similar barrier between the trail and the sheer drop a few feet away from it).  The rams started to trot away when I saw them, and rather than follow in pursuit I decided that my madness had driven me far enough, so I ran back to the the hotel.

The runs were only a small part of the vacation, and I have an avalanche of memories from it that I'm still frantically trying to copy all down into a journal.  Seeing as how I've already passed a thousand words here though, I think I'd better wrap this entry up and save the rest for another time.

Once upon a Time...

When I look back on the course my life took as a teenager, it's amazing to think that I ever took up running, or writing for that matter (especially writing a blog).

In the case of running I'd always enjoyed sprinting through crowded places like malls, but I never had very much endurance.  This fact was driven home when I joined the "polar bears" in high school, which was a gym program where students ran progressively longer distances outdoors in progressively colder temperatures as fall turned into winter.  I think they topped out in the neighborhood of three or five miles.  For my part, I found just one mile to be a struggle.  I'd push for about a quarter mile, then have to take a long break, then try pushing again.  It was getting so that I wouldn't even be able to complete the class's mileage before we had to go back inside, so eventually I gave up and switched over to the weightlifting class, where I could go at my own pace and stay in relative warmth.  I remember lifting the entire rack on the squat machine in that class, which my young back fortunately survived.

Then there was the writing, which I had a couple of odd experiences with in middle school.  The first was when I took an admissions test for a specialized school and had to write an essay, which was something I'd never done formally in my life.  I had a vague notion that an essay was like a story, so in order to write mine---on the topic of the difference between intelligence and wisdom---I told a clumsy allegory that heavily ripped off a scene from The Princess Bride.  Needless to say, I did not get into that school.

Then a year or two later I took a summer writing course out in the wilds of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  I'd done other courses through the program the two previous summers---in math and computer programming---and had a pretty good time both those years.  Math and computers have always come easily to me, and beyond that I fondly recall setting many a high score on the Star Wars pinball machine in the tiny mall across the road from the college campus where the program took place.  That year it was different though.  I thought I had gone there to write stories, but it turned out that they expected us to write nonfiction.  Nonfiction about our own lives.  I panicked.  What had I ever done that was interesting enough to write about?  I didn't know the first thing about structure, or choosing an event that represented a theme.  And there was so much reading we had to do...  After only a few days I couldn't take it anymore, and went to see my resident advisor about dropping out.  He said that I wouldn't be able to leave unless I was considered a suicide risk, so I went so far as to say that I was seriously thinking about killing myself.  He let me play Doom on his computer that evening while my parents were contacted.  They picked me up the next day, and took me to Action Park (which I've since learned was something of a death trap) to cheer me up.  I recovered, but I never did go back to that program again (though that may not have been my choice to make---my parents kept those kinds of details away from me back then).

Looking back on those experiences, the high school running I can live with, since that was long before I discovered how to breathe steadily and pace myself (which they didn't really give us much help with in the class).  Maybe I'd have been able to accomplish something in track and field on the academic circuit if I started running earlier in my life, but then again that could just be wishful thinking, and at any rate I'm really happy with where I am with it now.

The writing, though...  It bothered me then, and it still bothers me now.  Granted, it came at a time in my life when I was bullied relentlessly, to the point where I developed an instinctive fear of expressing myself.  Even so I wish I'd found a way to stick it out, especially given how dramatic the circumstances of my exit were.  I've learned the most in my life from the situations where I've gone out of my way to make myself uncomfortable---to shake up my routine and try new things.  But even that realization wouldn't come to me until many years later, so maybe I shouldn't be so hard on thirteen-year-old me.  There are only two things I know for sure.  The first is that there's nothing I miss about being that young, naive, selfish, and lost.  The second is that I now have events in my life worth writing about (and probably always did).

Another Year Over...

The year is almost over, and I suppose it's time to set resolutions again.  It's been a pretty good year for my writing.  I've gotten a ton of great feedback on my blog, and even if it's only read by a couple dozen people who click on my Facebook links to it, they're still people whose opinions I value a great deal, so it's been extremely encouraging.  I've probably done more writing this year than I have in any other one, and I'm hoping to break that record soon.

Looking ahead to resolutions, I want to resolve right here and now that I'm going to finally finish revising a novel for publication this year.  Granted, I've made that resolution before, but I'm doing it now on a (somewhat) public forum, which will give me more incentive not to look like an idiot by failing at it.  I've already gotten a few chapters under my belt, and there's no reason I can't go all the way through with it if I keep myself to a schedule.  Granted, there's always the doubt in my mind that the world doesn't need another book about vampires or vampire-like creatures, and that may well be true, but I really feel that I brought a unique voice to this one, and the feedback I've gotten from some not-easily-impressed friends has kept me determined to see this through.

I'm also going to resolve to run a 3:30 marathon in L.A. this year, although I'm only going to get one chance in that case, so I can't be to hard on myself if lousy weather, or an illness, or injury, or any number of other unexpected variables gets in my way.  There'll be other marathons eventually.  I'm at least going to stick to my training, even if it means doing a lot of long runs in the cold of winter (or boring myself half to death on the treadmill with them if the weather just becomes completely unworkable).

This has been a remarkable year for me, and I'm truly grateful for all the people in my life who made it that way.  I hope you all are heading into the new year ready to meet the challenges it brings, and that you find the determination and support you need to reach whatever goals matter to you the most!

The Unbearable Awkwardness of Being

Listening to Dan Harmon's Harmontown podcast today really got me thinking about the nature of creative minds, and how to care for them.  He was reading from the old journals he kept as a teenager on the show, and they had a certain pretention in them that he openly acknowledged, and which I immediately recognized from my own past writings, which I've often winced at (and still do with some of my recent stuff).  There was also a segment near the end where he was talking to a guy in the audience who'd deferred his creative dreams in order to pursue a more practical line of work, and again I saw echoes of my own life choices.

The most important advice Harmon had to give was to keep writing, and that you're probably going to write a whole ton of shitty words to get to the good ones.  That's advice I keep reminding myself about, and it's advice that I've tried to put into practice with my daily entries on 750 Words.  I've written nearly 150,000 words there so far, which is the equivalent of nearly three years of National Novel Writing Month.  Granted, the vast majority of what I've written there hasn't been fiction, but there's a certain level at which it's all just expository writing, and I feel that we could all stand to develop a solid narrative voice even when describing our own lives.  I think that voice is still a work in progress for me, and maybe it'll always be that, but I know that I'm not wincing now as much as I once did.

I've also noticed that creativity, my case included, often runs hand in hand with obsessive behavior.  Sometimes I can use this obsessive behavior for good, like when I apply it to running, or writing, or cleaning.  Other times it drags me down, like when I become obsessed with a video game, or checking social media for updates.  I can't always control where my obsessions head (especially when I'm feeling tired and/or depressed), but I think I'm finally starting to understand this behavior better.  I think it's what makes creative people so prone to addiction.  Thank god I haven't had to deal with that in my own life, but it's something I keep at the back of my mind.

I think having other people in my life to support me---especially my wife, whom I can never thank enough for that---has really helped me keep my obsessions on the positive side.  That's not to say I don't still slip up every now and then, but the cycles are shorter and less frequent now.  I even feel that I'm being more productive at work, although it helps to have a job where I finally feel like I'm part of a highly capable team on that front.

It's funny---I was always somewhat of a loner growing up.  I always thought I was better off on my own, and that other people didn't understand me well enough to be my friends.  I was focusing, though, on the things that I couldn't change (i.e. other people's reactions to me) instead of the things that I could (my behavior).  Granted, when I finally did learn how to be a fully functioning social creature, there was a lot of trial and error.  That's what often scared me off from it when I was younger---I was an incredibly easily embarrassed boy, and kids my own age could be especially cruel when dealing with my weirdness.  Through it all though, I always regretted the times I didn't try reaching out to people more than the times I did.  I even managed to get over my all-time most awkward moments eventually (though perhaps that may have something to do with the passage of time making them less vivid).

There was one particular event that haunted me for ages.  Tim Robbins went to the same high school as me, and while I was there he came in to give a speech at the auditorium.  There was a Q & A session afterwards, and I got it into my head that this was my big chance to ask a celebrity a question.  The only question I managed to come up with, however, when I raised my hand and the kid with the microphone came over, was whether the veteran actor/director had heard any good dirty jokes from Walter Matthau on the set of I.Q.  The response he gave was a polite demurral, which is probably what I would have done in the same situation, but good lord did it ever take me a long time to live that down---and nobody had even made fun of me for it!  Even that, though, is finally something I can look back on and... well maybe not laugh about yet, but I'm getting there.

So I Ran a 60K This Morning...

Today I ran my first ultra marathon: a 60K, which worked out to about 37.2 miles.  It was fun, then less fun, then excruciating, as endurance tests often are.  It's funny how quickly one can go from finding climbing hills uncomfortable, to finding descending hills uncomfortable, to finding walking uncomfortable, to finding standing uncomfortable, as happened to me during the final twelve miles.  The race was a 1.2-mile warmup followed by nine laps around Central Park.  The scenery got repetitive pretty quickly, which I've heard isn't the case with the better ultras out there, but knowing the terrain as well as I do certainly helped me pace myself better.  The whole course took me about six hours and twenty-three minutes, which I guess was pretty good for my first time (60K is such an unusual distance that there really aren't metrics for it).

When I was in my seventh lap I saw a guy pass me going backwards, which first made me think, "Jesus what a fucking showoff!"  After a bit of reflection, however, I realized that he was doing it to switch up which muscle groups he was using, so that he could wear them out more evenly.  I ended up adopting this tactic myself a little further down the course, and I found it to be quite a relief.

The weather was pretty nice---a bit cold, but quite sunny.  I ran the first seven laps with my backpack, where I'd stored the sweatshirt I wore to the race, the souvenir shirt I got that morning as a part of my race entry, and other various race-related odds and ends.  After seven laps of carting it around (it was fairly light), I finally stowed it near everyone else's backpacks at the start.  It was actually more to get people to stop saying, "Wow, you're going all that way with that heavy backpack?" than it was for actual ease of running.

At the end of the race I was given a very nice lucite plaque to commemorate my finish.  I promptly dropped it while trying to put it in my pocket, my coordination not being all that great after running more miles than I ever have in my life.  The damage was minimal though---I didn't even notice it until I got home.

Epilogue:

While riding the G train home from the race, I met a man that I feel very sorry for.  He was trying to get to Coney Island to visit his mother, and I had to explain to him that in order to do so he would have to switch to another G train at Bedford-Nostrand (it's running in two sections this weekend), then take that G train to Hoyt-Schermerhorn (which is where it's being cut off this weekend), then take an A train one stop to Jay Street (maybe on a different platform, maybe not; I didn't even know how the MTA was handling it), then go upstairs and take a shuttle bus (the limited shuttle bus, not the local one, which doesn't go far enough) to the F train at 18th Avenue, because that was the closest stop that the F was running to this weekend.  For those of you not familiar with these particular trains, the trip in question usually involves making ONE transfer, to a train that runs on the same track.  As if Coney Islanders hadn't suffered enough in recent weeks...

On top of all that, the man I was talking to---although he didn't appear to be much older than me---walked with a cane.  There's never a good story behind a situation like that.  I really hope he made it to his mother's house all right...

The Marathon That Wasn't

Today was supposed to be the day I ran my marathon, after 16 weeks and almost 600 miles of training.  I guess it wasn't as big a deal for me as it would've been for other people: it wasn't my first marathon, and it wouldn't have been my last.  I also didn't have to travel to get here, and it'd be just as easy for me to try again next year (I heard we're all getting automatic entry into next year's race after this, but that might involve paying the entry fee all over again).  I was hoping to improve on my last official time for the NYC Marathon by about an hour, bit it's not like all the gains I've made during my training are just going to disappear overnight.

There were some people thinking that we could just get the marathon postponed, but I'm pretty sure that's not going to happen---the money's already been spent, and the work's already been done.  At least it's good to know that NYRR is planning on donating all the water and supplies that would've been given to runners to people who could use it a lot more right now.

Instead of running 26.2 miles today I ran about 14 and a third, tracing the marathon route up to the Queensboro Bridge, then heading back along Third Avenue in Manhattan to make a loop.  I remember Bloomberg saying at one point that running the marathon would be a morale booster, a sign that New York City was back and open for business, like when they ran the marathon back in 2001 after the September 11th attacks.  Running the route today, it was pretty clear that we were NOT back.  Endless lines of cars on Bedford Avenue and McGuinness Boulevard were still waiting for gas.  If the marathon were happening those streets would have been closed off, and I have no idea where those cars would've had to go.

I did see a number of runners along the route wearing the long-sleeve marathon t-shirts that they were giving out at the marathon expo this weekend to people who'd registered.  One of them even had her race number pinned to it.  I smiled and gave them a thumbs-up.  Even though their plans were dashed they were still out there working at it.  Of course that got me to wondering whether all the energy we were spending on this running could be better used to help in the recovery efforts somewhere...

Thoughts on an Impending NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo keeps getting closer, and I still haven't decided on a story.  I know it's going to be slow going if I just start writing off the top of my head without planning scenes ahead of time, so I'd better decide which story I'm going to go with over this weekend.  It's not that I have to have all my scenes planned out, but I need enough to at least get me through the current day's writing, so that I can take a breather and plan further scenes after it.  I think my issue is that I haven't particularly latched on to any of the characters I've been thinking of for my stories yet, so there isn't a particular story that jumps out at me.  Every so often I'll be seized by the notion to jump off and write something completely different---a prospect both dangerous and exciting.  I'm less worried about getting to 50,000 words this year than I ever have been before, but I have to be careful not to get cocky and just take it for granted that I'll finish on time.  I think in my fourth year I ended up going about ten thousand words over (and was still only about two-thirds of the way through the story, which I STILL haven't finished), but all the other years it came pretty close to the wire, and the story started to run out just as the 50,000 word mark became tantalizingly close.

Let me go over again what I've got so far: there's my coming of age story of a New York kid transplanted to Iowa, my fictional dystopian city anthology, my one about the struggles about an oddball Staten Island family, and (running a distant fourth) the tale of the world's last moviegoer, whose largesse supports the entire remaining industry.  They're all premises that I feel I could write at least a few chapters of at this point, but I don't know whether they'll peter out after that or inspire me to keep going.  I guess I could always start with one and switch to another if the situation becomes truly dire, but finding the momentum to start up an entirely different plot after the first one fails can be difficult given how fraught with discouragement that predicament is.

At the very least I'll have the opportunity to write with my friends again, and I'm looking forward to that in and of itself.  There's so much more creative energy in a room full of other writers than there is when I'm just alone with the blank page.  Granted the blank page doesn't terrify me like it used to, but other people's determination working towards the same goal is like a drug that there's just no substitute for.  Even after five years of NaNoWriMo I hardly ever write new work outside of November.  If I can find the time for my marathon training I'm sure I could find the time for writing, but then there's that question of momentum again...

At least I've been doing my daily writing pretty consistently (even if I only rarely work up the nerve to post it to the public).  I can write 750 words in 20 minutes pretty consistently now, which is something I never thought I'd be able to do before.  I'm sure it'd take me considerably longer if I was writing this all down longhand.  My penmanship was never the greatest, and I fear it's gone downhill significantly since the days I used to regularly practice it while taking notes in college.  I think I still have those notebooks somewhere in my parents' house, but lord knows what I'd ever do with them...  I just hope that I can keep this kind of speed (or anything resembling it) when I switch over from fact to fiction next week.

Marathon Training: Week 9 (And the Writing it Eclipses)

Last night I started on Week 9 of my marathon training.  I've now run 300 miles over the course of 47 hours in the last two months.  It gives me pause to contemplate that.  Two whole days out of that time were spent running.  That's five percent of my waking life.  It's definitely shown results.  Last night I ran over six 8:20 miles and felt great; my miles were about a minute longer than that back when I started.  There was also the half marathon the other weekend, where I kept running faster and faster as it went along until I began to wonder whether I'd been holding back too much, and yet it was still the fastest pace I've officially run anything more than 5 miles at.

On the other hand I haven't been writing very much.  (Or at least I haven't been writing very much fiction---my daily writing has kept up fairly well, but it's been mostly journal stuff)  My piano and guitar playing has been pretty sparse too.  If I had those two days back, would I have devoted them to creative pursuits?  There's no guarantee of that, so I need to tell myself that the important thing is I used them for something productive.  No sense beating myself up when I've actually been accomplishing some of my goals.  The creative ones are always the hardest to satisfy, too, since I can't just hunker down and be creative whenever I feel like it.  If I made writing my job of course I'd devote more time to it, but I find that I need a large chunk of time to ease into a good rhythm.  With running I can accomplish a good day's progress in half an hour anywhere there's a road, but when I write I need at least a full hour, devoid of distractions.  Hopefully I'll get some good work done at the write-in this Thursday, but last time I found myself drawn into conversations too much.  Maybe I should go find a place off by myself if that happens again; it's nice to meet with friends, but if they're not being productive around me it's hard to do it myself.

One of the biggest boons to my running lately has been my discovery of the marvelous effects that wearing a compression shirt can have on cooling me down.  Sweating waterfalls in high humidity has always been a problem for me, and the new compression shirts I got just suck all that sweat right through them, where it runs right off their slick surfaces.  On top of that they also help me better feel the cool breeze that my running creates.  I almost never feel a long and/or hard run in my legs; it's always been the heat in my face and chest that's hit me first.  With that problem gone I think I've been able to shave at least good thirty seconds off my pace.

I wish that there were some similar tool that would help me crank out a couple more hundred words per hour.  Writing every day certainly helps, but there's nothing in the way of purchases that really has an effect on the level of the compression shirts.  NaNoWriMo is coming up again soon, and I don't think I'll have my novel revised before it starts.  I'll have to make my peace with that.  I just wish there was a realistic schedule I could get into and stick with; something similar to my marathon training program, except with words.  I guess I could always devise a schedule of my own, but I don't know what goals would be realistic.  I suppose it's hard to devise a universal system for this sort of process---writers are very different from each other in terms of how much they can produce and how consistently they can produce it.  Plus, I don't know how realistic it would be to lay two rigorous schedules on top of each other and stick to both of them.  I already spend little enough time with my wife between my running and her long hours at work, and I'd feel terrible about cutting into that time any more.  As it is the night seems to fly by once the cooking, cleaning, and eating of dinner starts.  Things should cool down once the marathon and NaNoWriMo are over, but should I really put it off for that long?  Won't other appointments and obligations start to creep in then and fill up my calendar?  I need to devise a more systematic approach, but for the time being it continues to elude me...

Marathon Training: Week 5

I've been spending so much of my time running lately that it's started taking over my thoughts.  I think about how I can go faster, hold out longer, chafe less, and ignore the intense heat that I feel whenever I'm out running in the humidity and sweating all over the place.  I hear the Pace Lady, as I've taken to calling her, in my head, telling me that my pace is at 11 minutes per mile, or seven and a half minutes per mile, constantly fluctuating as if to mock me, and still it's probably the most accurate running app I've used so far (including the watch I used to use with the foot attachment).

At least I'm pretty sure I can rely on my legs.  My upper body might be doing all kinds of crazy things with the sweating, and the heart racing, and the constant need for more air than it seems possible to glean from the air around me, but I've hardly felt anything at all that's worried me about my legs.  Occasionally my calves or my knees will make themselves known more than they should, but it hasn't really gotten to the point of what I'd call pain.  I think that could serve me well if I ever worked up the nerve to try an ultramarathon, but I'm not there yet.  I still haven't gotten through a regular marathon without hitting a point where my legs made themselves known quite vociferously, though I'm hoping that'll change if I can get my time down far enough under 4 hours.  My best so far is around 4:15, but last year was the first time I got really serious about sticking to an official training schedule, and the one I'm on this year is more intense than that one.  It's been working out pretty well: I'm on week 5, and I've actually been running more miles than I've been scheduled to.  It can be hard to fit the runs into my schedule sometimes, but the only time I've outright skipped one was last night when a thunderstorm was raging outside.  Even then I took the opportunity to get back to P90X and do some plyometrics.  I definitely felt that it my calves this morning, which I hope is for the better.

In three days I'm doing the second NYRR Long Training Run in Central Park.  I'm either going to go 16 or 20 miles, depending on how my legs are feeling.  I've gotten to 20 before, but I'm not even sure it's a good idea to be running that many miles so long before the marathon, when I haven't been running anywhere close to that distance yet, nor do I need to in order to ramp up to where I need to be.  I've got 11 weeks still, and a number of long races to run before then.  I actually feel bad that I've scheduled so many races, since it leaves only a few weekends when my wife and I are free to get out of the city for a couple of days.  Even when we do get away I'll still have to keep up with my runs, since my schedule has me running 6 or 7 days out of practically every week.

Running has also become a major part of my Tuesday nights now, since that's when I'm taking my running class.  Including the warm ups and cool downs, each class has racked up nearly 7 miles for me, and some of them are the most intense miles of my whole week.  I've done three classes so far, and two of them have had us running loops in the north end of the park, where the most punishing hills are.  I've run some of my fastest miles there, but I can't keep up that kind of pace, and by the third of the three laps I've been dropping back a pace group to keep myself from keeling over.  The other week the course took place along what are roughly the last three miles of the New York City marathon, which helped remind me what I'm in for in November.  There were two minute breaks between miles during the class, which helped my pace tremendously.  Lord knows I won't be running nearly as fast after I've put 23 miles behind me, but it still felt good to know that I can keep up with everybody else when the hills and the humidity are a little less intense than they were on the nights when we were in the north end of the park.  I'd have to say that, from my two experiences with the NYC marathon so far, the mile coming up to Central Park has to be the most dispiriting mile I've ever run, since it's uphill pretty much the whole way.  It's not even a steep uphill, but it's constant, and it comes at a time when most runners don't have a whole lot left to give.  I'm not looking forward to that mile this year, but hopefully I'll be better prepared for it than I've ever been before.

A Quick Run through My Mind

I want to attack a piano right about now, but I'm still at work so I guess I'll just have to get my percussive urge out in another daily entry.  I was actually feeling somewhat listless and unmotivated earlier this afternoon, but then I had a cup of coffee (MEDIUM strength coffee at that), and now I'm bursting at the seams.  I want to create something.  Something spontaneous and awkward and raw and possibly terrible but then again maybe not.  It's like it's there inside of me, bouncing around, not yet fully formed but itching to get out like some kind of horrific demon fetus.  I want to run up and down the rows of cubicles, I want to parkour up the walls and lounge in the little window up by the high ceilings.  I want to do half a dozen things that would probably result in me breaking multiple bones, but I can't do any of them right now so I just need to keep furiously typing away at my laptop.  There's work to be done, and I'll get back to it, but I need my primal moment right now, even if I can't express it with my whole body.  It's the reason I snap my fingers and clap my hands as I go down the hallways.  I'm not sure how many people notice that, but it's an impulse too strong for me to contain.  The fact that it comes out so spastically is part of the reason I've never been able to play an instrument consistently.  My brain's always bouncing from one thing to another, and sometimes it's all I can do to focus for even a minute.  When it's something like writing where I have the luxury of starting and stopping and giving the thoughts time to resolve themselves it usually works well enough, but it's always much harder for me to do that in the moment.  I guess it makes sense, then, that running is my sport of choice: it's built on enough ingrained reflex that I can just keep putting one foot in front of the other while letting my brain take it's occasional wanderings.  I've run far enough in my life that I'm not going to just trip the second I think of something else.  Wait, no, that's not it.  It's more like running is such a physically demanding activity that my brain doesn't have enough oxygen to focus on anything other than making sure I have enough oxygen and don't bump into the people around me.  I actually CAN exhaust myself, instead of having to hold it all in and wait for another time to let loose.  I guess I could theoretically leave the office for a few minutes and run around for a bit outside when I get to feeling like this, but I'd end up coming back drenched in sweat, which would be awkward for a number of reasons.  Maybe it's the city.  Maybe it's the nonstop pace of New York that hooks me like a drug until I have to keep moving constantly or go insane (or both).  Maybe I need more sleep.  For the first time in many days I didn't feel tired when I woke up this morning, but I could still be paying the price from days past.  I have to wake up early tomorrow for a race, so things might not improve soon on that front.  Racing in the heat of summer can be awfully frustrating, since I never run as fast as I do in the cooler weather because I'm inevitably drenched and stifled by the humidity about a mile in.  Even the air feels harder to breathe, like it's too thick to fit into my lungs.  Still, I have to keep in mind that the heat's slowing everybody else down too, so it's not like I'm going to place lower in the rankings (not that I'm anywhere near good enough to actually win anything yet).  Nonetheless it's discouraging to see people passing me left and right and not feel like I can push myself any harder.  Sometimes I envy my wife's almost nonexistent sweating, but on the other hand she also is a lot more susceptible to hot and cold, to a degree that I wouldn't wish on anyone (especially her).  I have to remind myself that I'm still getting faster, slowly but surely, and I just need to keep at it and stay disciplined.  If I had that kind of discipline with playing music I'd probably be a lot better at it by now.  At least with my writing I can do things like this, which is essentially just keeping my head down and pushing until I hit the finish line.

Writing vs. Running

I ran a 10K this morning up in Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens.  It wasn't my best race, given that even by 8am in the morning when the race started the temperature was already at 86 degrees, and I'm one hell of a sweater.  Granted, I'm not sure anybody ran their best race today, since I finished pretty well in the pack.  It's actually my fastest 10K so far, unless you count any given 10 kilometers from the 15K I ran back in April when the temperature was actually reasonable and my miles went by 30 seconds faster.  (It feels weird to be measuring distance in miles when a race is in kilometers, but that's how we do things in this country, apparently)

Like I mentioned last time, running's been taking up a lot of my time in the past few years, and that's time that I could be spending writing and revising novels or short stories or anything else that I might be able to find a publisher for.  Sometimes it feels kind of selfish, since running (or at least running in races) is really something that I'll only ever really be doing for myself (unless I volunteer for a charity like Team for Kids, which is something I've been meaning to look into for a while now).  My writing is a hobby that I do in the hopes of someday reaching an audience, which might not be the most noble or useful cause in the world, but I'd certainly feel good about making somebody else's day a little more interesting.

So am I going to have to choose between the two, or sacrifice running in order to have enough time to focus on my writing?  No, I don't think I'm gonna do that.  I can already see me forcing myself to stare at a blank page endlessly during a dry period, trying to will creatures to life that just won't come.  Couldn't I spend that time better by running?  I mean, it's not like I'm constantly thinking up story ideas when I'm out jogging around the neighborhood, but I don't listen to music while I do it, either, and I think that ends up having a pretty calming effect on my mind.  I need that calmness: that break from the responsibilities of my job and my household and my family.  I mean, I enjoy all three of those parts of my life, but sometimes I'm seized with an anxiety that I can't quite quantify when I'm surrounded by them for too long at a time.  There may be medications for such a feeling, but I've always worried about the effect that psychology-altering drugs might have on my creativity and my personality.  As long as I can run though, or go lift some weights, or bang away at the piano, I have an immediate outlet for that anxiety.  Writing provides that sometimes, but the effect isn't always immediate, and there's often some higher-level problem solving involved.  I need things in my life that I can just do, finish, and then look back on and say, "I did this!" without feeling like I'm wasting my time (which may be part of the reason I've drifted away from video games over the years...  That's a story for another time though).

So I'll keep running, and I'll keep writing.  The writing may come more slowly, but at least I have my daily entries to give me something under my belt pretty often.  In fact, I just signed up for the monthly challenge for July on 750 Words, where I need to write the titular number of words every day of the month in order to win.  Gamification has worked out well for me in the past (thanks, Fitocracy), so I'm hoping it'll work for my writing as well.  Granted, I've tried and failed at one of these challenges before, but I've been on a good streak lately (with the exception of one very busy day), and I'm hoping to continue it for a good while longer.  There are badges on 750 words for as many as 365 consecutive days, but I'm not gonna hold myself to a mountain quite that tall just yet.  I'm just going to take this one day at a time, and see how far it gets me.

I'm a better runner than I was last year, and I think I'm a better writer than I was a year ago too, although obviously the second of these claims is a lot harder to quantify.  In both cases I'm pretty sure that I can get better if I just keep plugging away at it.

Running

And I run as fast as I can, but it's never fast enough. I'm not good at this. But I'm better now than I used to be, surely. Back in high school I couldn't even go a quarter of a mile without needing to slow down and now I've got two half marathons under my belt. Granted I still tend to finish towards the back of the pack, but not too far back. In fact it looks like I do better when compared just to other Staten Islanders; maybe it's the pollution, maybe it's all the smokers. Maybe we're fatter down here from all those big Italian meals like the ones that assaulted me during the holidays and which I'm back in the gym now to counteract. Not that it isn't great food, mind you.

The madness all started in the fall of 2007 when my on again off again love affair with the YMCA became on again... again. I was particularly drawn in this time by the notion of what they called a “fitness coach”. A fitness coach is something like a personal trainer, except he's not around all the time and instead is just responsible for setting you up on all the machines with programs that match your ability, then checking in every few weeks to see how it's going. This process repeats for about three or four months, and then you're on your own again. It wasn't very intensive, but it was enough, and it got me using the treadmills, which I hadn't really tried much before (I was more a fan of the elliptical machines, but since they've gotten in the newer models I've lost interest). Running on the treadmill led to running in the park, which in turn led to joining the New York Road Runners so that I could finally try my hand at some competitive racing. That's when I learned how far I had to go: those folks who do three miles an hour while they read a magazine in the workout room don't tend to sign up for this kind of stuff.

But still, it helped me build up my endurance. The real world is always harder than the treadmill, what with the wind resistance and the small but important shifts in the surface that end up slowing you down just enough to make you wonder what went wrong after coming from the perfectly flat and stationary simulation. The scenery changes though, which is nice, and the park is obviously a lot prettier than staring at a wall (or more specifically, at a window that looks out onto a wall).

One thing that changed since I started running is that I don't listen to music anymore. In the beginning it was the only thing that got me through my workouts, and I couldn't imagine going through the long, repetitive slog without it. But as I started to work myself harder I found that it was starting to become a distraction, making me dizzy at times, and it certainly didn't help that earbuds are phenomenally bad at staying in place while your body is constantly bouncing up and down and your arms keep threatening to snag on the wires and rip them out. My iPod also seemed to have a habit of turning itself upside down in the pocket of my shorts, and while I know that there are accessories that prevent this kind of situation I never had the desire to pursue them.

I overdo it sometimes, and it worries me. I've thrown up more times now from exercise than I have from drinking, and while the overall total is still pretty low it's a feeling that I can do without. When I've overdone it (and there doesn't seem to be any way to know when I've overdone it until it's too late), I start to feel about the closest I've ever felt to dying, save perhaps that one time at summer camp when I nearly drowned. It's like there's an intense pressure building up inside me, and I don't have a way to release it. Sitting down helps. Closing my eyes and pressing my palms against them to shut out all possible light helps. Vomiting definitely helps, if and when it finally comes around. I've never passed out from this sensation; in fact, I've never fainted in my life: I wonder now and then what it feels like. The sensation's only happened to me a handful of times, usually after using the weight machines, so I guess I should be glad that I need to wait for an appointment to set my FitLinxx account up again on the new machines now that they've been replaced.

In a way, I've always been a runner, or at least a sprinter. As a kid I had a tendency to break into a run at odd times, just because I found the energy for it building up inside of me; I especially loved to do it in crowded places like malls. I'll still catch myself doing it every so often, but now more because I'm in a hurry than just for the pleasure of feeling everything whipping past me. It's weird... normally I'm irrationally self-conscious about the opinions of strangers, but somehow that never seems to factor into the equation when I'm running (unless I'm around other people who are running, in which case they sometimes shame me into running faster).

As of right now I probably won't be running for a day or two. I think I twisted a calf muscle on the treadmill tonight, so even just normal old walking is a pain in the ass (a.k.a. leg). The strange thing is that it happened during the cool down phase, after I'd been running on it just fine for forty minutes. At least this time I was sane enough to end my workout and go home instead of just trying to work through the pain and probably screwing it up even worse. I've got to take care of this body... I'm finding out for the first time that it has hard and fast limitations that are probably only going to increase through the years. No complaints, though: it's had a good run.