Crumbs

The most recent piece of spam I received was from someone trying to sell me 11 acres of land in Puerto Rico. "This is a must see with priceless views at day or night!"A 9-year-old picture was attached. This slice of tropical heaven could be mine for $45,000! I'll get right on that.

Last Saturday the Engineer and I ran the Holiday Hustle 5K in Dexter, an easy 12-minute drive from my place. Even better, the race started at 4:30 PM, so there was no oh-dark-thirty wakeup and waiting in my cold kitchen for coffee to brew. I saw a bunch of runner-friends and enjoyed the very un-December-like temperature of 59 degrees. In past years I have run this race while bundled up from head to toe, dodging ice, and being snowed on, so being able wear cropped tights and a short-sleeved shirt was a welcome change. I didn't run as fast on Saturday as I did four years ago, however, finishing in 28:35 (9:13/mile average).

Yesterday the Redhead and I returned to Lillie Park for a lunchtime run. We managed 3.5 miles and I returned to work reinvigorated for the rest of the afternoon. I need our midday runs to keep me motivated as my running frequency has dwindled, I have no goal race on the horizon (until possibly the Running Fit Trail Half Marathon at the end of April), and it's depressingly dark and cold in the mornings.

As an erstwhile vocalist for my company's pickup band, I agreed to perform a few songs for our holiday hoopla on December 18. My choice of song material was restricted to "pop" Christmas songs, as in, things than lean secular with no overtly religious references. However, I'm sneaking in some classical music in the form of the traditional carol "Noël nouvelet," which I will sing both in French and with my "opera voice." Gotta bring a little class to this joint!

Tomorrow afternoon in Dearborn my hashing kennel is gathering to bid farewell to one of our own. He's leaving the area and will lay trail for us one last time. It was at a hash in late June hared by the same person that I rescued my little trash pile kitten, Melvin. I named him for the city of Melvindale, which is where I found him, dirty, starving, and scrounging around in a discarded heap of household goods. I took that pathetic fleabag kitten home with me and now, over five months later, he looks like this:

My sweet baby. He loves me so much.

Still LIfe

That's where I am. Life is still. I ran the Cleveland Half Marathon on May 15th and I hurt myself so badly I haven't run a step since then. My right gastroc muscle staged a hostile takeover, a bloody coup, a rebellious revolution. I can pedal a bike at the gym but that's about all. Hence, I have been catching up with my backlog of New Yorkers (and a few trashy gossip magazines) as I sit and pedal to nowhere.

It's okay, though, because there is nothing on the horizon for which I must train. I registered for the Dexter-Ann Arbor 10K (June 5); it remains to be seen if I will be able to participate. My next half marathon is months away. The unofficial start of summer is this weekend (though one might not believe so, because it was 47 degrees when I went to work this morning).

This song came across my radar earlier this week and I've been listening to it repeatedly. I love moody British indie rock!



Have a great long weekend, everyone.

Thursday Thoughts: Oops...

The only appropriate word, sometimes, is "D'OH." Picture Homer Simpson saying it.

When I went to bed last night I set my alarm for 5:45 am with the intention of getting up to run 3 miles. In the middle of the night I woke up, decided 5:45 wasn't gonna happen (and, by extension, my run) and reset my alarm for 6:45.

The alarm went off, and I laid there listening to NPR for a few minutes and wondering why I still felt so tired. Ah well, time to haul the old body out of bed and into the shower. Freshly scrubbed and dressed a few minutes later, I went downstairs to heat some water for coffee. There was a little kernel of confusion rattling around in the back of my head, however: why was it so dark outside? It was past 7:00 and I should have been able to see the yard by now. I didn't think it was that overcast.

Wait a minute...

I looked at three different clocks, finishing with the one on my iPhone (because the almighty iPhone is never wrong), which confirmed my suspicions: it was only 6:15. I had still gotten up at 5:45, because when I was fumbling around with my alarm in the dark I had accidentally reset the clock an hour ahead.

Sigh.

I wished I had figured out my blunder before I took a shower, because I would have made myself go to the gym or go running. Alas, there wasn't much else for me to do but prepare for the workday. I made my coffee, washed some dishes, prepped my breakfast and lunch, and left for work.

Learn from my fail: don't try to reset alarms in the middle of the night.

This wasn't the only D'OH I have had in the past week. Last Thursday and Friday were spectacular in terms of weather: sunny and high 60s on both days. I opened the windows for the first time in months. The warm breeze and fresh air were enthusiastically welcomed by all members of the household:

Window Kitties!

That window is one of the Prime Kitty Viewing Spots in my house. There are a couple more upstairs, and when I left for Ohio on Friday I left a few windows open for the cats. It was such a nice day, how could I close up the house when they were enjoying themselves so much? It was 65 degrees outside!

Oh yeah, did I also mention I turned off the furnace?

Oh yeah, are y'all aware this is March? In Michigan? No further explanation should be necessary.

Fast forward to Sunday night. I arrived home and my house was 49 degrees. I turned the furnace on and immediately got into bed under my down comforter. The cats were on me like a duck on a june bug. I apologized profusely for my error.

Learn from my fail: DON'T leave windows open when you go out of town for two days in March. Unless you live in a place where it's already 75-80 degrees, in which case, I hate you.

In other news, I was in my ancestral homeland of the Cleveland area in order to attend an opera with my parents (Don Giovanni) and celebrate my nephew's third birthday. I hung out with my brother and sister-in-law on Friday night where I received Extreme Doggy Love:

PUPPEH PILE!

At Fancy French Restaurant Dinner before the opera Saturday evening, when it was time for dessert I bypassed all the gooey, chocolatey, cream-laden offerings and opted for one of my favorite combinations of all time, one I discovered while I was still in graduate school:

Fresh berries and crème fraiche = LOVE

Opera, dogs, awesome food, and family: it was a great weekend.

Attention Residents...

To those of you who have promptly and thoroughly cleared your sidewalks: You rock. I love you. On behalf of walkers and runners everywhere, I thank you.

To everyone else: Go to icy hell, and have your shoes be filled with five pounds of snow!

All You Really Need To Know About Me

Fact: I was in bed at 10:30 last night.

Conclusion: I am an old fart who prefers the comfort and safety of home over staying out too late and getting too drunk to drive home.

Fact: I received this from the Engineer for my birthday (it was December 28) and I am now utterly obsessed with it.

Conclusion: I am a HUGE bird nerd.

(My favorite call so far is that of the Common Eider. Oooooh!)

Happy 2011 everyone!

Aside: what will your moniker of choice be for the new year? Will you say "two thousand eleven" or "twenty eleven"? I'm going with "twenty eleven," myself. If we say "two thousand eleven" we will sound too French, á la "deux mille et onze," and we don't want to sound FRENCH, mon Dieu!

Charlotte Nightlife

I said I wouldn't find anything to write about before the weekend. Apparently, I lied.

During my first night in Charlotte, I woke up abruptly because of a loud noise. Banging. Hammering. What the hell...? groggy thoughts as I pulled myself into consciousness. A thumping sound in the hallway. I tiptoed to the door and put my eye to the peephole. Some guy was slumped against the door of the room adjacent to mine (for reference, my room was at the end of a short hallway, and the entrance to the room next door was at 90 degrees to mine, so I could see everything). I watched, fascinated, as he swayed and bumped against the wall and doorframe. A limp hand pawed at the handle. Muffled incoherent mumbling. He pushed back and stood upright...or quasi-upright. I realized he was totally drunk and probably had no idea where he was. Another futile jiggle of the door to his room...then he turned and tried my door handle. My face was inches from his, but I wasn't frightened; in fact, I was having trouble suppressing laughter. He turned away and began stumbling down the hall, caroming off the walls. I heard a distinct "FUCK!" as he turned the corner and disappeared...only to reappear about five seconds later, whereupon he threw himself at his door, pounded on it a couple of times (did he expect it to open magically?), leaned against the frame, and then retraced his crooked steps down the hall, bouncing off the walls as he went. I waited at the peephole to see if he would come back, and when nothing happened I went back to bed. About five minutes later I heard noise in the hall: the tinny beeping of the electronic lock disengaging, then the chunk-crash of the door opening and closing. Drunk Guy had returned with a new keycard and was safe. All was well.

It's after noon and I am in my pajamas. Darwin is propped up on my arm on the computer desk, purring madly. I have some Christmas shopping to do, and we're still under a boil water advisory. Yesterday I saw "Black Swan," talk about a twisted (but awesome) movie. Later today I get to see two old friends and tomorrow I am heading to Ohio. Now, if only I could do something about this damn snow everywhere...

Off to shower. I'll try not to get any pathogen-infested water in my mouth.

My Bad...I Guess...

Having lived in the Midwest for most of my life I know how quickly it gets dark at this time of year once the sun slips past the horizon. A run which begins in daylight at 6:00 pm will end in near-darkness an hour later. Said expedited twilight is enhanced when clouds blanket the sky.

I need to be aware of this when I do things like dress in all black and attempt to cross a busy road (in a crosswalk and with the green light right-of-way) near the end of a five-mile run.

A lady in an SUV driving into the crosswalk to make a right turn on red will screech to a halt as I pass in front of her, then pull around the corner where I am now waiting to make the next crossing, and will yell at me out her passenger-side window.

I was terribly embarrassed and didn't say anything. I thought about snapping back, "Give me a break, it wasn't dark when I left an hour ago."

She drove away in a huff, and as I crossed the next street I thought, "Note to self: from now on, BRING SAFETY VEST." It won't even be a point of contention in another couple of weeks because we will be switching back to standard time on November 7 and it will be dark at 6:00 (sob). My safety vest and headlamp will become default equipment in my winter running gear set.

My run was otherwise uneventful but for the fact that it was the first time I've run with the Thursday Night Gang since early June. The long, hot, horrible summer is over and I have no reason not to head to the Running Fit store on Thursday evenings to hang with my peeps. We even hit Banfield's afterward for beers (Bell's Two Hearted Ale).

On tap for tomorrow: 14 miles (hopefully) and then the Run Thru Hell 10K on Sunday morning!

The Quicker Picker Upper

How many of us have done this before?

I frequently find myself picking up others' discarded trash in order to dispose of it properly. Lazy assholes can't be bothered to do it themselves, so I'll do it for them, and silently direct invectives in their general (unknown) direction as I place the object in the correct receptacle.

Aside from picking up blatant asshole-deposited trash, how many of us have returned from a run carrying something more useful which we found lying on the road? I have come home with a wool U of M hat and a colorful tote bag.

The smorgasbord of clothing left behind at the start of major cool-weather races is a serious temptation, as are the innumerable hats, gloves, arm warmers and the like scattered on the road in the early miles of a race, but I do my best to refrain from picking up anything because I probably won't want to carry it for the next 24 miles.

Reemergence

Yo folks.

I'm not dead, I'm on vacation. And, yo, bitchez, this is some vacation. It may not quite approach the awesomeness of my trip to California last August (aka The Best Vacation Ever) but it is close.

I believe when I left y'all I was whining and complaining about the various obstacles life had thrown my way. Since then I am happy to report shit has straightened itself out. The last overly irritating thing to occur were the four fillings I had replaced on June 22, an episode which left me with an aching face and seven uninterrupted hours of reading accompanied by cats. When the pain became unbearable, I took two painkillers from my carefully hoarded stash and promptly passed out.

I also participated in the Green Mountain Relay for the second year in a row but that is a post for another time. Suffice to say I love all you guys (even if you are incapable of ever shutting the fuck up I'm looking at you M&M).

But for now I'm on vacation, getting obscenely tan and sitting here half drunk while the ocean breeze drifts through the open window. I'm training for marathon number 5, the Grand Rapids Marathon, and I ran 13 miles yesterday morning. Otherwise I'm sitting on my ass on the beach reading.

This is the life, folks.

Mobile Blogging from here.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Yes, I Would Like Some Cheese With My Whine

Hi folks. I'm breaking my 3-week silence solely to write this very whiny post about all of the annoying, upsetting, and generally unpleasant shit that has been happening to me lately.

My grandmother died.

I got a $330 speeding ticket on the way to my hometown to attend her funeral.

My car got a flat tire in the parking lot of my office the day before it was due to have all new tires put on.

My debit card was "deactivated," leaving me with no access to any monetary funds.

The band I drove all the way down to Toledo to see live canceled their appearance unexpectedly.

My water heater went kablooey, depriving me of hot water for four days. I had it replaced today, and thought all was well. That is, until I turned on my dishwasher tonight...only to find there is a major leak in the hot water line coming out of the tank. Water spraying everywhere. I managed to stem the leak by closing the cold water feed valve leading to the tank, but at 10:00 PM there's not much else I could do except place a panicked call to the plumber.

My basement partially flooded due to crazy insane amounts of rain Saturday night.

I had a small ant invasion in my kitchen.

I missed placing in my age group at the Dexter-Ann Arbor 10K by four seconds.

To say I've generally had it with just about everything would be an understatement.

I'm posting this from my bed because I'm too lazy to get up and do it in my computer room. Who cares?

Mobile Blogging from here.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Feline Filler

No Boston race report yet (still waiting on World's Most Overpriced Photos).

In lieu of such, I am posting a picture of Little Boo digging his claws into my shoulder (because cats are always cute).

Who's the silly cat!

No. Just....No.

Wearing full makeup while working out: Awesome!

Wearing a lacy tube top to keep your enormous fake boobs in place while running (barely): Even better!

Smoking a cigarette after working out: OMG just stop now.

Looking like a total asshat: Priceless.







Who is this bimbo, you may ask? She's some chick from that awful MTV reality show "Jersey Shore." The only exposure I have to "Jersey Shore" is the 30 or so seconds devoted to it on The Soup on occasion. Any more than that any my brain starts to hurt. The stupid, it burns.

When celebrities "run," the results are often...interesting.

Via The Superficial.

In other boob news: Amy Winehouse!

Decagon of Happiness

The Redhead tagged me in the "10 Things that Make Me Happy" meme that's been going around lately, and since it's been a while since I followed the crowd, I thought I would give this one a chance. Here, then, in no particular order, are ten things which give me warm fuzzies.

• My cats. My faithful feline companions, Darwin and Bouhaki. They give me unconditional love no matter what. If it wasn't for them I would be very lonely.
  

• Girl Scout Cookies. It's that time of year again, when I can indulge my annual craving for Tagalongs (Peanut Butter Patties) and Samoas (Caramel DeLites). It should shock no one that I can eat an entire box of Tagalongs at once if I feel like it.
  

• The owner of this foot.

• Running. I am more enthralled with running that I ever have been, and good thing, too, because I will be running the Boston Marathon in 12 weeks. After a 15-year hiatus I began running again in 2006 and never looked back. I have now run 3 marathons and hope to run many more. I finally think of myself as "a runner" more than anything else. If someone asks me what I do, I say, "I run."
  

• Beer. Sometimes I can't believe I only drank beer a handful of times in college. My, how things have changed! I feel so fortunate to live in a state which has a vibrant craft brewing industry. Within 90 minutes of my house I can visit Michigan Brewing, Original Gravity, Dark Horse, Bell's, Arcadia, Jolly Pumpkin, Copper Canyon, Atwater Block, Motor City, Kuhnhenn, Bastone, Rochester Mills, Arbor Brewing, Grizzly Peak, Dragonmead, CJ's, Fort Street, Royal Oak, Woodward Avenue, and Sherwood.
  

• My family.

• My farm share. I joined my CSA farm in 2008 and quickly drowned in a sea of vegatables. I learned how delicious braised collard greens are, what kohlrabi is, how to roast Brussels sprouts, and that beets make an amazing addition to chocolate cake. I love my farm share!

• Singing. I love to sing. If I could be or do anything, I would be a professional singer. Taking voice lessons and learning how to sing classical repertoire has been one of the great achievements of my adult life. When I began taking lessons in 2003 I had no idea what was going to happen. I just knew that if I never took lessons, I would never know if I had a voice buried somewhere inside me. To my surprise and great pleasure, I discovered I did have a voice.

• Rocks. My educational background is in geology and I still get excited about a really good outcrop. Michigan has a dearth of outcrops, so I take what I can get. Those who know me well know how I get when I see a really good boulder. (Picture taken at Guadelupe National Park, Texas.)

• Live music. I am obsessed with music, and I go to concerts whenever possible. Last year I saw Andrew Bird (twice), Neko Case (twice), Animal Collective, Grizzly Bear, Sufjan Stevens, Great Lake Swimmers, Over the Rhine, Blind Pilot, and Fleet Foxes. In the next couple of months I will be going to two live opera performances, Kings of Convenience, Horse Feathers, Spoon, Deerhunter, Bear in Heaven, and the XX. That takes me up to early April. Who knows what the rest of 2010 will bring? Of course, no mention of live music in 2009 can omit "The One That Got Away," the Depeche Mode concert I was supposed to attend during my vacation in August. That was the concert which got canceled the night before the performance, the concert I bought my ticket for in March, the concert I went all the way to California to see. I consoled myself by roasting in the sun and drinking beer.
  

L-A-Z-Y

YOU AIN'T GOT NO ALIBI

YOU LAZY

YEAH YEAH YOU LAZY

That's me, folks. Lazy. LAZY. What base mileage building? It's cold outside! It was 26 degrees the morning! No way I'm running in that (save it, Viper). I have barely put shoes to street since my spontaneous half marathon (a 13.1 mile long run around my parents' house in Ohio) of November 29.

I'm going to get my ass handed to me when I start training for Boston in approximately 3 weeks. I may whine about it being "too cold" right now, but winter hasn't even officially started and I know perfectly well what I'm in for when January and February roll around. Misery. Cold, horrible misery. Weeks and weeks of dragging myself out of my cozy bed in the frigid darkness, shuffling through snow and ice, freezing my fingers off...now doesn't that just sound like so much fun!

Last winter when I endured the same thing while training for the Cleveland Marathon, my mantra was "Boston Boston Boston." It kept me motivated. Now that I'm actually going to be running Boston, it will be the same. "Boston Boston Boston." I don't want to simply run this marathon, I want to rock this marathon. I want to prove to myself that I deserve to be there, that my performance in Cleveland wasn't a fluke. My ultimate goal (of course I have one already) would be to re-qualify for 2011 by setting a new PR. In order to accomplish that I am going to have to train my ass off. Sitting on the couch of doom after work and watching TiVo-ed episodes of "So You Think You Can Dance" or setting the alarm for 7:00 am isn't going to get this important job done.

Boston Boston Boston!

AWOL

Hi folks. Remember me?

I think this is the longest I have neglected the ol' blog since I started it almost 2.5 years ago: 18 days. I have just been extraordinarily unmotivated to write and there hasn't been much going on anyway. NYC was four weeks ago and it was only in the past week that I made any effort to run a substantial amount of miles (30).

Side note: considering I ran 5 miles the week of November 15-21, running 30 the week of the 22-28 violated the "10% Rule" by 590%. Oops.

I put on my game face Thursday morning for the third annual Thanksgiving Day Aurora Turkey Trot in Aurora, Ohio. Last year I raced to a sub-30:00 time, and this year I did not expect to come close to that. Not with the way my shoes had been languishing in my closet and the alarm had been going off at 7:00 am. Speed work? Tempo runs? What?

I pulled off a 7:29 mile 1 which shocked the heck out of me. Thereafter, acquiescing to the fact that it was unlikely I would able to sustain that pace, I concentrated on being more mindful of my breathing, footstrike, arm movement, and carriage than I usually am. In the end, I suprised myself by finishing the four miles in 30:28 (7:37/mile) and taking third in my age group again. Excellent. My fleet feet weren't completely buried under several weeks of laziness!

Yesterday I went out for a leisurely cruise around the old hometown in Ohio, taking my favorite out-and-back seven-mile route and listening to my iPod. I had every intention of running at least double that distance this morning but a late-night beer-drinking/Euchre-playing session at my brother's house squashed that ambition. I'm hoping to get in a final run tomorrow before I head back to Michigan.

My sole goal after I get home is to finally write my darn race report for the NYC Marathon. I can't believe I let such an important event slide for so long. It's really quite shameful.

Lastly, this morning I had a dream about running Boston. The race is five months away. In my opinion, it's much too soon to be dreaming about it. This dream was of the "unprepared/running late" variety. If I'm already having anxious dreams about Boston this far in advance, for what might I be in store four months from now when the race is mere weeks away?

Scary.

I hope everyone had a pleasant holiday!

Catastrophe

Yesterday I went out for a run when I got home from work. I was supposed to do 9 miles, and I was only able to do 6 in the morning. My GI tract, still upset about the amount of food I dumped into it at dinner on Tuesday, had other plans for me and I was forced to return (sprint) home. Therefore, in the spirit of adhering to my schedule, I returned to the sidewalks for those remaining 3 miles. It was a beautiful late summer afternoon, about 72 degrees and sunny. I was working on about an 8:00/mile pace (aided by my song obsession of the moment, "Dominos," again). On the sidewalk about 100 feet in front of me I saw a woman walking with her back to me. As I got closer, the small black smudge I saw next to her arm resolved itself into a cat. She was carrying a cat. I've done this particular walk myself: cat escapes, must be found and retrieved and brought home cradled in my arms. I had a sinking feeling as I approached. I just knew what was about to happen. I should have slowed down, or said something, or done something, rather than just barreling up behind the woman, because the moment that cat saw me it propelled itself violently out of the woman's arms into the air. I know exactly how that feels. The cat uses your skin as its launch pad. I have scars on my left forearm where Darwin leaped out of my arms once.

The cat landed easily on the front walk of the woman's house, sat down, and looked no worse for wear. She looked around, startled. As I went by, I did the only thing I could, which seems inadequate and lame even now, which was to say, "I'm sorry!" I have a feeling it was more of a yell since I had my iPod headphones jammed into my ears and the music turned up and I couldn't really hear myself.

Whoops.

I finished off my 3.23 miles shortly afterward and then made myself pasta alla Norma (pasta with eggplant and tomatoes) for dinner using eggplant from my farm share. It was absolutely delicious.

From the Shore of the Pacific

Hi folks,

I've been off the radar for a while. I'm currently on vacation; in fact, I'm writing this from my perch atop a beach towel on the sand overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Watsonville, California. I have been out here on my nostalgia tour for almost a week. I was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and before this trip I had not visited my hometown in eight long years. I spent most of last week in Marin County at the luxurious Tiburon home of an old family friend. Friday I moved south to my childhood stomping grounds, the two towns where I grew up (Sunnyvale and Los Altos).

Yesterday morning I went out for a very long trail run in Los Altos with my running buddy (and trail ultrarunner extraordinaire) TC. He promised long ago to take me to the top of a mountain to look at the rocks exposed there which are serpentinite, remnants of ancient oceanic crust which have been shoved onto land. The Coast Range is riddled with these fragments. I could not resist the siren call of actual rocks, fantastic rocks, so I put myself through 8 miles of grinding uphill hell to reach the 2200-foot summit and the rock outcrop. TC had a laugh or ten at my expense as I dragged my non-hill-running butt up the terrible final mile of the trail. I found a little in reserve at the end as he taunted me, "You can throttle me if you can catch me!" Somehow I found it in me to get my feet moving again as I ran after him to the top. All was as advertised and made the grueling uphill climb worth it. The view was amazing; the whole of the peninsula and the bay spread out beneath me. To the west lay the Coast Range and beyond that the ocean, invisible. The rocks were there, odd jagged grayish shapes protruding from the ground. I took a sample which is destined for my special collection at home. A few minutes, a few pictures, and then the dash back down the mountain. 16 miles, 3 hours, a run months in the making. Thanks, TC.

Despite some lingering fatigue I was up early again this morning to drive into the Santa Cruz Mountains for the Race Thru the Redwoods 10K. I picked this race out months ago and I wasn't going to miss it, hard trail run the day before or nearby forest fire be damned! I knew this was not a day for any record-breaking efforts. I just wanted to enjoy myself. The race was held at a state park thick with redwood trees (hence the name). It was primarily trail. Beautiful trail. With one crazy awful hill easily comparable to the worst of what I ran yesterday. I had to stop and walk. Once the hill had been crested shortly after mile 3, my legs felt like rubber and I still had half of the race to go. I pressed on, and after mile 4 the course went downhill for almost a mile. I let my legs whip out behind me as I flew down the slope. Flying! I was skimming the ground! Suddenly I felt a needlelike pain stab into the skin on my left tricep. "Ouch!" I cried as I swept my right hand back and across my arm, coming away with a hornet! I cast the offending insect to the ground as fire slowly took hold of my arm. Spurred on by pain and anger, I ran even faster, almost reckless in my dash downhill. A couple of times I felt my knees begin to buckle under the pounding; a failure at that point would have been a disaster. I kept my footing, though, and zoomed past mile 5. One more mile and I was feeling more energetic than I had for the entire race up to that point. I cruised through mile 6 and with only the last 0.2 left I slid into machine mode, that lovely zone where I feel as if I could run forever. Why now, when I only had a tiny slice of race left? Oh well, just go with it. I finished in 57:29, ten minutes off my 10K PR, but I didn't care. I was there for the experience.

After the race I drove down to Santa Cruz and then continued south to one of the state beaches. I have been sitting here listening to the waves and smelling the briny air for a couple of hours, hoping the sun will burn through the fog and I can get some serious sun baking done. I didn't come all this way to hide my hot pink bikini under a t shirt! The sun is out now more than it has been all day; an actual shadow is visible on the sand under my trail dust-encrusted feet. Time to lie back and soak up some rays.

I'm alone but not lonely. I have visited friends, some new and some old; seen family; gone running in exotic, beautiful places; drunk and dined well (but not too well; I have lost 5 pounds!); and generally have been enjoying the heck out of everything. And I still have a week to go!

Mobile Blogging from here.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Karma....Bites

Or would that be dogma bites?

After my improbable string of good luck, I began to get uneasy. Surely this was too good to last. A successful BQ effort, two 10K PRs in two weeks, getting picked for the Mackinac Bridge Run and the New York City Marathon, winning the Mega Millions lottery...

Okay, that last one was totally made up. (If only.) However, the rest was true. I knew it was too good to last. Something had to happen to bring my big head back down to earth. Like the proverbial balloon, my ego was popped via a set of very sharp dog teeth. Yes, of the infinite number of available vector paths in the space-time continuum, two of them intersected at a very unfortunate juncture.

It was a pleasant Saturday afternoon when my running partner, FK, and I set out on the Lake Losee trail in the Pinckney Rec Area. What lay ahead was a three-mile loop of bicycle-free trail. Shortly after we started, the trail went up a steep, pebbly hill. Coming down the hill toward us was a man who was being dragged along by two dogs. The man was scrambling to stay on his feet as they came flying down the trail. Upon seeing us, the dogs lunged forward even harder. The trail was narrow, and the man tried to reel in his dogs and move to the side to allow us to pass. The dogs were lunging at FK as he went in front of me. The man said, "Oh, they're friendly." As I passed, the dogs were both standing on their hind legs straining and pulling toward me. I went by and the bigger of the two dogs leaped out as hard as it could and I felt a nasty sharp pain lance across my left arm. It happened so fast I was already ten feet beyond them before it really registered. I thought, "well, maybe that dog just scratched me with its claws." But having owned a dog, and having felt her claws on me as a matter of course over the years, I knew I hadn't been clawed. It just didn't feel right. I looked at my arm and there were teeth marks surrounded by a wet smear of saliva. I looked again. I stopped and said, "Jesus fucking Christ, that dog bit me! MOTHERFUCKER!" I was furious and upset. I looked helplessly back down the trail. As much as I wanted to sprint back down the trail and confront the guy, what good would that do? He wasn't even within sight any more. I spat out another furious "GOD DAMN MOTHERFUCKER!" glared at my arm, and then gestured at the trail: "Well, let's get on with it." I grumbled and muttered the rest of the way and by the time we finished and returned to the parking lot, the teeth indentations had turned an angry red and the faint shadow of a bruise was beginning to appear. Now, several days on, the scratches left by teeth have faded to faint red lines but the bruise remains, a ring of purple with a clot of yellow in the middle. And it still hurts.

What do y'all think? Should I have stopped the moment I felt the dog's teeth make contact with my skin and raised a huge fuss? Fortunately, my skin was not broken, but...a strange dog bit me. On the arm, for crying out loud. Four feet off the ground. What if there had been a small child on the trail instead? Its cheek might have looked awful tempting. What's more, the guy never made any attempt to verbally control his dogs. No "sit," "stay," "down," or even a simple "no!" Nothing. Just the lame (and completely inaccurate, IMO) "Oh, they're friendly." Yeah. What the fuck ever, asshole. In my experience it's the dogs who are announced as being "friendly" that are the ones you need to watch out for, like the black bear in dog's clothing which attacked our then-three-month-old puppy on the sidewalk. As this tank of a dog came lumbering toward me and Hannah, its owner called out, "Oh, don't worry, he's friendly," just before the beast, hunched and bristling, plowed into both of us, knocking Hannah over onto the concrete. I was completely horrified and had no idea what to do. Hannah was squealing and I was on the verge of screaming myself and then the wretched "friendly" dog's owner arrived and grabbed it by the flab at the back of its neck and hauled it back into its house. Another "friendly" dog that was anything but. Every single time I go by that house and that jerkoff dog barks at me and runs up and down the fence in its yard, I narrow my eyes and think, "Friendly my ASS!"

So anyway...despite my tendency to shrink from any hint of confrontation, I think I blew it by not making a scene (okay, maybe just a small scene) immediately after the unfortunate intersection of Vector A (dog teeth) and Vector B (my bicep). I'd like to say, "Next time I won't be such a WIMP!" except I really hope there is not a next time.

In other news, this evening was the first gathering of this summer's session of Running Fit 501, the group training program I did last year. We met at the RF warehouse for a two-mile time trial, which I did in 14:21 (6:58 and 7:22). Our little Chelsea/Dexter group has grown considerably and tomorrow we have our first group run in Dexter, an easy run, since we had what amounted to a mini-speed workout tonight. After this, our Thursday group runs will be speed work(maybe some hill intervals, too? I'm not sure) at the track in Dexter. This is good, because I want to work on my speed. I'm determined to break 22:00 in a 5K before the end of the year. Bring on the 800 meter repeats!

And now, some random pictures:

If only it were this easy!

Randy Step, the owner of Running Fit, decides to forgo a plate and just eat pizza right out of the box. This was during the Swamp Party (literally, a kegger in the middle of a swamp) after the Tooth, Fang & Claw 10K "fun run" last week. I ran it in something like 52:00, got a free pint glass (leftover swag from some long-ago race), was harrassed by mosquitoes, drank cheap beer, and had a great time.

Speaking of bad beer...this can of Busch Light sits in the middle of chalk marks in the parking lot of a defunct Service Merchandise in Westland, which was the starting point for my first-ever outing with the Motown-Ann Arbor Hash House Harriers last Sunday. Yes, I am no longer a hash virgin. There was mud, mosquitoes, poison ivy (I didn't get any on me because I wore pants) and lots of really, really cheap beer. I drank...Labatt Blue Light...out of a can...forgive me, O beer snobs!

Finishing up the two-mile time trial. I'll see all my RF501 peeps at Thursday's group run!

Oh My God!

Congratulations! On behalf of the Governor’s Council on Physical Fitness, Health and Sports, we are pleased to notify you that you have been selected in the lottery to participate in the sixth annual Mackinac Bridge Labor Day Run! Winning entrants who will be asked to serve as ambassadors will receive a separate notification.

Oh, wow! Oh, holy shit! I guess I know what I'll be doing on Labor Day.

I entered the lottery for the Bridge Run last year but was not selected. Perseverance, people! Now, let's see if I can extend my lucky streak to the New York City Marathon lottery...

Unfilled Niche

From the Dilbert Blog:

I wonder if the world would be a nicer place if everyone exercised their biceps femoris muscles and experienced its euphoria. A sentence you never hear on the news is "He was a marathon runner and a serial killer."

Who wants to be the first? Get going, people! (I'm looking at you.)

This week's Take It And Run Thursday theme at the Runners' Lounge is "Ode to Running Shoes." I shall now channel our favorite running poet and thrill you all with my own shoe haiku:

Big wide ugly feet
Run gazelle-like when with you,
Brooks Adrenalines.

My good pal had this to say about my half marathon endeavor this weekend:

So enjoy your "just because" 1/2 marathon. That's like saying "Yeah, I was going to really hurt myself anyway that day, so I thought I might as well do it in a public forum..."

Yep, that pretty much sums it up.