Week in Review: 22-28 January, and Fixing Things

Here we go with this again:

22 January: 15 miles (200 minutes), the bitter end of the Winter Beast of Burden 100-Mile Run.

23 January: 6 miles (50 minutes) in Tel Aviv, struggling on a tender right Achilles tendon.

24 January: 1 mile (10 minutes), plus about an hour of walking around Tel Aviv, still struggling with that Achilles.

25 January: 1 mile (10 minutes), plus about half an hour of walking around Tel Aviv.

26 January: 1 mile (10 minutes), and then an all-afternoon walking tour of Tel Aviv.

27 January: Back in the US and A, 12 miles (85 minutes), on a very weird weather day, somewhere between sunny and rainy and cold and warm, all at once. Achilles still not entirely happy, but I managed a "normal" 7-minute-mile pace by the end.

28 January: Up early for no real reason, to run 10 miles (70 minutes), which felt markedly better than yesterday, finishing up at around 6:40/mile pace.

Total Time: 435 minutes
Total Distance: 46 miles

And, one more thing: Last night, when I was resting, I finally fixed my jeans, which got torn during this escapade: For having very little experience with any of this, being partially distracted by the Nine Inch Nails "Lights in the Sky" DVD, and doing this totally by hand, I'm pretty happy with the result:



And I did this, and I wrote about this, because when you read the rest of this post, you'll see that I take pride not only in my craftsmanship, but also in my ability to be a living, breathing metaphor . . .

The most notable omission from my race report (which was written just hours after the race ended, on no sleep, and contained a few spelling errors) was that I ran most of the race on an injured right Achilles tendon. I injured it somewhere in the first 12 miles of the race or so, as I recall first feeling the pain on my first run out, then having a brief debate about whether or not to stop running. Of course, to stop running at that point would have felt really foolish, considering how logistically difficult it was to even get to the race, not to mention the fact that I hadn't even run 10 miles yet. So I tried my best to ignore it, and persisted. Perhaps this injury was the greatest factor in my mysterious slowdown. I think one of the reasons that I've been so sturdy over so many miles is that my body has a pretty good sense of when to sound the alarm and force me to slow down when I'm at risk of injury. Over the course of the race, the alarms were probably going off somewhere, but they were hard to feel, considering that the cold temperatures had a tendency to numb everything.

That said, the Achilles aside (I'll spare you pictures of my foot and ankle being swollen to about twice its usual size), nothing really hurt the day after the race. The 6 miles I ran in Tel Aviv were cut short solely by the Achilles trouble. In a way, that's frustrating, because again, it means I didn't go as hard as I could have. But in that case, had I gone as hard as I could have, I might have seriously injured myself, so considering how well I've recovered, I think everything turned out the best it could.

Which brings me to the philosophical point of this post, which is about fixing things. At some point or another, assuming we're pushing our limits, we are all subject to some sort of illness or injury (physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, spiritually, or otherwise). What we aren't necessarily subject to is being crippled or limited by it. There's always a way over, around, or through, provided that we're both appropriately patient and active in our recovery. Continuing to push, not harder, but smarter, just below the pain threshold, below that "edge," heals us faster and ultimately makes us stronger.

So in this case, I backed off on the injury, but I didn't stop completely. Short runs certainly hurt, and long walks, although not as acutely painful, were colored with persistent, low-grade pain. But none of the pain was beyond the point of injury, and all of the effort was purposeful, focused on playing with the pain point, finding a way to move past it.

And within a week, I did - today, I ran 20+ miles, finishing the last couple of miles at low-6-minute-mile pace, feeling totally comfortable. In fact, I feel better this weekend than I did last weekend before I ran Beast of Burden. In a way, the injury not only made me stronger through the recovery process, but also because the little bit of forced rest helped my body catch up on its response to the stress of hundreds upon hundreds of miles in the last couple of months.

Not only that, but, as I type this, in 20-mile run afterglow, it's about 50 degrees in the middle of January, and the afternoon sunlight and the sun-warmed air made it feel like early spring on the Baltimore city streets. Just one more thing that's a little "wrong." It always makes me a little nervous when a season seems to be coming before its time. At the same time, in the spirit of welcoming uncertainty and disappointment as opportunities to grow and push limits, it's exciting to have the feeling that this is "fixing" to be one fast year. (I am just barely south of the Mason-Dixon line, so I am allowed to use that word that way.)

Week in Review: 24-30 July 2011, and 6-Hour Pajama Run Race Report

Okay, making with the miles:

24 July 2011: 6 miles in the morn (45 minutes), 9 miles in the eve (60 minutes), all on the streets of Tel Aviv

25 July 2011: 10 miles in the morning (70 minutes) - last run in Tel Aviv for a while

26 July 2011: 14 miles (95 minutes), back in Baltimore, MD, USA

27 July 2011: 1 mile (10 minutes), in Baltimore - feeling lazy

28 July 2011: 5 miles (45 minutes), including a half-mile warmup, 35 minutes of treadmill hills (1628 feet of gain), and a half-mile warmdown, followed a couple of hours later with a 15-mile (105 minute) run through the streets of Baltimore

29 July 2011: 1 mile (10 minutes), in Baltimore - lazy again

30 July 2011: 46.81 miles (360 minutes), 2nd place at the 6-Hour Pajama Run in Queens, NY (revised total - see race report)

Total Time: 800 minutes

Total Distance: 107.81 miles (revised total - see below)

And now, the Pajama Run Race Report:

The 6-Hour Pajama Run, put on by the Broadway Ultra Society, in Astoria Park in Queens, NY (so-called because it starts at 6 p.m. and ends at midnight) was a "spur-of-the-moment" decision for me. I had been toying with jumping on the Burning River bandwagon, but a 100-mile race between Badwater and Beast of Burden (alliterative though it may have been) seemed like I might have been pushing the envelope a bit too far, not to mention the significant time and cost commitment (probably around $500). I still felt like this was a good weekend for a long run, and so on Thursday night, I looked at the ultrarunning.com website, and lo and behold, a race that was relatively close, time-limited, and only $50 to enter on race day. Pretty much sold . . . but I still waited until Saturday morning to decide to drive up there.

The drive was well-timed, with minimal traffic and only one wrong turn, and I arrived there in about 5 hours, right at 5 p.m. . . . only to find that they were waiting to let "post-entries" (i.e. race-day entries) in, because they had only 6 volunteers, and probably no extra pajama pants. I waited for about 20 minutes for them to let me enter; in the meantime, I made small talk with a long-time internet-only acquaintance who lives in New York, and who, via a series of Facebook posts on the drive up, I conned into running the race. Definitely an odd time to be meeting somebody face-to-face for the first time.

With 40 minutes before the race, this gave me just enough time to go to the bathroom, change into my shorts and singlet, set up a bag to put near the one aid station at the start/finish, and meander about for a few more minutes before the pre-race briefing.

At this point, I should mention that I did absolutely no research on the course prior to driving up, and, as it turned out, it was a paved path (good), but under a noisy bridge (bad-ish), in a crowded park (which meant dodging and weaving between people the entire race, also bad-ish), and on a hill. Over the course of the 1.27-mile loop, there was about 50-70 feet of gain/loss, which doesn't sound like much, but adds up, lap by lap, until you're not really running a very flat, fast course anymore. To add to this, the temperatures at the start were in the mid-90s, and humid, thanks to our proximity to the water (and never dropped below 80 as the night progressed). None of this boded well for a 6-hour PR for me (my previous best was 44.4 miles, set in the fall of 2007 on a much more forgiving course), but nevertheless, since I figured I was in much better shape now, and my Nike LunarTrainers seemed to have an extra spring in them today, I thought, why not go for it?

The race started exactly at 6 p.m., and the "lead group" of 4 or 5 of us (consisting in part of Phil McCarthy, who holds the US 48-hour record, Byron Lane, who usually wins the Staten Island 6-hour race, and is capable of running around 50 miles in 6 hours, and Tommy Sung Pyon, the heretofore unknown Asian) ran tentatively through the first loop, since the race director had only been allowed to mark the route lightly with chalk. Once we made the circuit, it was time for everybody to take off and settle into a pace. Tommy led the chase, with me close behind. We were hitting low-9-minute laps (or high 7-minute mile pace), which was pretty fast, especially considering the hilly course and the heat. I decided not to push the pace too hard, and diligently took my Endurolytes (one every 20 minutes or so) and my cups of water/Gatorade/Coke at the aid station after each lap.

Things were feeling good, and everything was clicking, but Tommy had run off. I was slowing to a walk through the aid station at each lap to make sure that the fluids wound up in my stomach, and not on my singlet, but I never heard footsteps behind me. With no idea where anybody was, I decided to continue to run conservatively, in the hopes that Tommy would blow up, and I would take the lead by default. I was worried about a Badwater epic-cramp repeat in these temperatures, and I felt as though I was running on the edge of what my nutrition would allow. (Several people later told me after the race that they didn't think I was going to last, because I was sweating so hard at the beginning. Of course, nobody knew who I was at this race, so it was pretty amusing to tell people - including Byron Lane at the start of the race - who asked if I had ever run an ultra that I had run "a few" . . . In Byron's case, he yielded a position on the starting line to me due to that response.)

This all proved to be a tactical blunder, as somewhere around 2 hours and 45 minutes, Tommy lapped me. Now I had pretty much no choice - I had to sit in second, keep up the pace, and hope that he would blow up, because it was far too risky at this stage in the race to mount a charge to make up the 1.27-mile gap. So I sat where I was, running around 10 minutes per lap (or just under 8-minute mile pace), and it felt pretty good.

I was in such a good groove, in fact, that the rest of the race hardly felt like a struggle at all. There were a few points where I thought my stomach would rebel and ruin things for me, but as it turned out, 4-6 ounces of water every 10 minutes or so seemed to be just the right amount for things to stay steady. The fact that I had to re-adjust every 10 minutes was also helpful, as I spent a fair portion of my laps (when I wasn't dodging pedestrians or gawking at the sunset over the New York City skyline) deciding exactly what would be the appropriate nutrition the next time I passed the aid station.

The crowd, as it were (minus my internet friend, who, somewhere between two and three hours, left, as it probably was not all that fun for her at that point), was starting to get excited, seeing that I was cranking out the laps with hardly a sign of exertion, even if they weren't sure exactly what place I was in (these things are confusing in a short-loop race with 70+ people running). The race directors had me run the "big loop" all the way up until about the last 6 minutes of the race, at which point I switched over to the "small loop" (a 0.323-mile loop, divided into 17ths, just to make any kind of mental math virtually impossible).

At that point, I was solidly in second, and the only question was whether or not I would PR (as it later turned out, I would have had 44.45 miles, had I simply stopped at 35 large loops, which is how many large loops I ran - EDIT: actually, I had run 36 large loops at this point; the initial results were incorrect). Not having any idea how many miles I had run, I dropped the hammer on the small loop, and, in the last 6 minutes, made it around 2 and 11/17ths small loops, finishing with a heroic dive for the "11" marker, in part because I wanted every last bit of distance that I could get, and in part because after all that running, it seemed like fun to dive in the grass. 45.22 miles (EDIT: 46.81 miles, in the corrected results), a 6-hour PR by nearly a mile, and good enough for second place . . . because Tommy kept on rolling, and ended up with 47.22 miles (EDIT: 48.34 miles), 2 miles (EDIT: about 1 and a half miles) ahead of me. He must have slowed in the second half, which of course makes me question even more my tactics in the first half (especially since early on, I was gaining on him on every hill), but, oh well . . .

The real point of all of this, though, is that there was free pizza and soda after the race, I got a nice plaque for my second-place finish, and the race director was even nice enough to give me a pair of pajama pants, after I thanked him copiously (and genuinely) for allowing me to enter the event last-minute, and he found out that I had driven there all the way from Baltimore to run the race.

In conclusion, a fun race, a solid training run, and I felt pretty good for almost the entire time, which made me wonder how much damage I could have done if they had let me at the course for another 6 hours . . . but I suppose I'll have to wait until Beast of Burden to find out.



The spoils . . .

(Epilogue: The Molly Pitcher rest stop on the Jersey Turnpike was a mess at 3:30 a.m., with somebody in the restroom vomiting just like in that Crank Yankers "Phone Sex Vomit" skit - I couldn't believe that anybody vomits like that for real - and an arrest in the parking lot, involving four police cars. Oh, adventures . . . :)

Catching Up: Weekly Mileage, 3-23 July, and Escape from Trash Mountain

Badwater race report aside, my blog has been a little bit quiet this month, as I've been a little bit busy with a lot of things (most notably, being in Israel, for longer than expected . . . international negotiations, as it turns out, are tricky).

Anyway, because there aren't enough irrelevant things in the world to bore you, here's what my weekly mileage has looked like lately:

3 July: 15 miles (110 minutes), on a super-hot day, through some super-bad neighborhoods

4 July: 10 miles (75 minutes), downtown Baltimore vicinity

5 July: 12 miles total: 25 minutes on the treadmill, at a 15% incline (2 miles), 2 miles on either side of that (15 minutes), 2 mile warmup before track workout (15 minutes), 6x800m (2:48, 2:51, 2:49, 2:49, 2:49, 2:52), 2 minutes jog rest between, 2 mile warmdown (15 minutes), 95 minutes total

6 July: 12 miles (90 minutes), with the Wednesday night run group

7 July: 2 miles easy (15 minutes)

8 July: 2 miles easy, in creepy Las Vegas Sunset Park (15 minutes)

9 July: 2 miles easy, also in creepy Las Vegas Sunset Park (15 minutes)

Total Time: 425 minutes
Total Distance: 55 miles

10 July: 2 miles, just outside of Stovepipe Wells resort (15 minutes)

11-12 July: Badwater Ultramarathon - 135 miles in 34 hours, 18 minutes, 14 seconds (round to 34:20 for ease of calculation)

13 July: 3-mile shakeout in the ol' Sunset Park in Vegas (25 minutes)

14 July: 5 miles in and around Sunset Park (35 minutes)

15 July: 5 miles at good ol' APG (35 minutes)

16 July: 11 miles (80 minutes) in Baltimore, before my flight to oblivion . . . um, I mean, Israel

Total Time: 2230 minutes
Total Distance: 161 miles

17 July: 13 miles (90 minutes) along the Mediterranean (out to Jaffa-ish and back)

18 July: 10 miles (70 minutes) in the morning, 5 miles (35 minutes) in the evening - south along the sea in the morning, and north in the evening

19 July: 5 miles (35 minutes) in the morning, heading south, and 10 miles (70 minutes) along the sea in the evening, heading north

20 July: 5 miles (35 minutes) in the morning, heading south along the sea, and 13 miles (90 minutes) in the evening, running off the script and heading into town, getting lost, and taking an extra 3 miles to get back to the hotel

21 July: 8 miles (60 minutes) in the morning, adding 3 miles to the planned 5 due to being lost in the city

22 July: 6 miles (45 minutes) in a late-night Jaffa jaunt

23 July: 24 miles (180 minutes) on my journey to Trash Mountain and back

Total Time: 710 minutes
Total Distance: 99 miles (so close to 100! oops :P)

And now, for something different . . .

If you haven't noticed, I've been taking full advantage of my first trip to anyplace outside of the US, and I've been turning every run into as much of an adventure as possible (without heading into disputed territory, of course). 23 July was my first truly "free" day since I've been here, so I took advantage of this opportunity for a long run to venture east from Tel Aviv, towards the mountains, to see if I could make it to something worth climbing. I wasn't entirely optimistic, but as it turns out, I did . . .

I wound up in an overgrown lot behind a run-down neighborhood - a lot which was full of this:



Which soon gave way to this:



Which I have dubbed "Trash Mountain." (The real story behind this is that it's a landfill about 87 meters high, containing about 16 million cubic meters of waste, in Hiryia that's being converted into a park, to be named after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Please note that I mean no offense to him with my informal name for the mountain.)

So, counting the climb from the ditch, I had the opportunity for about 100 meters of gain, which, running from pancake-flat Tel Aviv, was an opportunity that I couldn't pass up. I'll skip the part about the watermelon patch and the rose field in front of the mountain, and get to the climbing. As it turns out, there's sort of a trail up the mountain for construction equipment, which is smelly and dusty and ends like this:



To venture beyond the construction equipment plateau, you have to navigate a series of uncovered trash mounds, which look a little like this:



And then, the trail ends, and you have to go straight up this:



Did I mention that it was dusty and hot and smelled bad? Like, fecal-waste bad? Because that detail bears repeating.

Anyway, why go through all that trouble? Well, if only my cell phone camera were good enough to do this justice, but you have a 360-degree view of Tel Aviv, a bunch of other cities, and even, way off in the distance, Jerusalem. Also, you get a little preview of the park at the top. Here's the payoff:



and



and



and



and



And then some guys in a white SUV drove over to me and told me that I couldn't be there, Shabat be darned (so apparently they weren't Jewish). I left peacefully, since at that point, I had all of the exclusive photos of the view from the top that I could reasonably take with my camera phone.

Then I had to run all the way back to the sea, which ended up taking longer than the way out, because they made me run down the backside of the mountain, which, it turns out, has a very convenient (but also very clearly prohibited-to-traffic) paved path to the ground. Then I wound up running further south than I thought (using the "follow the sun" method to work my way west), so I had to run about 3 miles north from Jaffa back to the hotel.

I hope you enjoyed hearing about my little adventure as much as I enjoyed experiencing it. In conclusion, I leave you with the following: The question all week is, do the streets smell like urine in Tel Aviv because people are peeing on the streets, or because of the stray cats peeing on the streets? (My vote has been mostly for people, as I am well aware of what cat urine smells like, and the urine smell is not that smell.) Here's the picture; you decide. :)