I’d Rather Be Running

I have an obsessive personality. I tend to zero in on something and give it all my focus. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m also over-competitive. Meetin Portland caters to both these dark urges. They have a “Junkies” list on the site (visible I think only to registered Meetin users), ranking everybody by the number of events attended over the last 90 days. A few days ago, I cracked the top 10 and got on the first page of the list, having attended 52 events over 90 days. (For comparison, number one has 102.) That’s all well and good. Now I’m fretting about needing to stay in the top 10. That’s idiotic. This isn’t a competition, and if I go two days without attending any events — as I just have — it shouldn’t make me anxious. Like it does.

3.27 hilly miles around my house, in 33:33. I didn’t feel that great — mostly just sleepy, I guess. Not that I should have been — for once, I went to sleep early. My breakfast might have been weighing me down too.

Going back to work after a five-day weekend sucked, of course. After work, I had to do my run — I say “had to” because it was really hot out there. I should be running in the morning on days like that, but I’m running Monday evenings with the group, so I’ll probably be stuck running Tuesday evenings too, otherwise I’ll get only the night’s worth of recovery time. Anyway, it was hot. And I didn’t have much time to squeeze in the run — an interval training session — so I had to do it on the ups and downs around my house, rather than going somewhere flat. The schedule called for 10 repeats of 30 seconds fast, 30 seconds rest. Based on last week, I upped the rests to 40 seconds. In the heat and with the grade, this still wasn’t enough:

The first half was mostly uphill, the second half down. I did a bit better at not having my HR go up and up, but it’s still too high at the end of the rests — certainly I should get it down at least to 80% and probably to 75. And that was with 40 seconds, and walking most of the rests rather than jogging. Ah well.

After that I showered — then immediately resumed sweating, sigh — dressed, and went to play 42. Lost both games. Well, actually, I only played one game; for the first game, I was coaching a newcomer. I impressed our waitress by knowing how to pronounce her name, Thuy. A Vietnamese name, it’s pronounced “Twee”, which I know only because there’s a Thuy in MiPL.

After 42, down the street to the Buffalo Gap for, you guessed it, Karaoke. No crazy theme last night, so I didn’t get to wear a fez or a bright yellow Spongebob shirt. But it was a great crowd, with a lot of my friends showing up. Karaoke at Buffalo Gap is sooo much more fun than at the other bars I’ve been to. I sang two song: Talking Head’s “Burning Down the House”, and (for the second time now) R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World As We Know It.” I thought I did a decent job on both. Maybe I’m improving, a tiny little tiny bit. Naaaaaah. I was just tipsy.

It being Memorial Day, only a small group showed up for the Monday night run from Portland Running Company’s Beaverton store. And of the five who did show:

• One was tapering for the Newport marathon next weekend, and had a sore knee
• One had what seemed to be some fairly severe back pain and tightness
• One had, well, two broken legs. Bone scans had confirmed last Friday that he had stress fractures in both legs. Should he be running at all? Um, no. I think he might be in the first stage of grief — denial.

That left only two people who were even candidates for our normal six-miler, me and ultrarunner lad Tim. I usually “cheat” and run quite a bit more than the Portland Fit schedule says I should on Mondays. But it worked out right tonight: I was scheduled for 30 minutes and the group turned around after a mile and a half. Totals: 3.19 miles in 28:29 (8:56/mile average).

Afterwards we had a little barbecue at our running group’s fearless leader’s condo. A few other runners were there too, and one of them brought a chiweiner: a chihuahua-dachshund mix. Soooo cute.

I went down to Eugene yesterday to visit Mom. One of the things we did Sunday was to walk the first couple miles of the Butte-to-Butte route, so I could get an idea of the hills (after the first two miles, it flattens out onto streets more familiar to me). The race starts gradually uphill, progressing to what I’d call a medium uphill, then, somewhere short of a mile, goes distinctly and steeply uphill for a short stretch. After that there’s a very short little steep downhill, then a nice long, consistent, and pretty medium downhill.

This morning, after breakfast at Eugene’s ancient institution The Glenwood Cafe, Mom and I and the dogs hiked up Mount Pisga. The trail is 1.4 miles, mostly gravel, fairly steep in sections, and very busy. Mom was a trooper for making the attempt; she’s not much of an uphiller. Or downhiller. But we made it up and back.

My right leg might be starting to have some issues — a little hip pain there, which has never happened to me before. I suppose some aches and creaks are to be expected after Saturday’s 11-miler.

I get such a sense of accomplishment when I finish a new personal longest run. That might be part of why I feel drawn to ultras — if you stop at marathons, and only train for and run marathons year after year, you’ll miss out on the chance to set new personal longests. Yeah, I know: big talk for a newbie runner doing his first 11-miler.

Well, 11 miles is still the farthest I’ve ever run, and it’s certainly longer than some people will ever manage. (I did do that 12-miler before, but it had its share of walking up the hills. Of course, in trail-running ultras, people walk up the hills too. So it’s a bit arbitrary for me not to count it.) Our route was 3.5 miles UP Thurman street and Leif Erickson, then back down, then 2 miles down to the waterfront and across the Steel Bridge, then back. I ran with my heart rate monitor on, and tried to stay under 84 percent of max or so.

Garmin’s MotionBased site is flaking out on me right now, so I’m going to have to enter data straight from the watch. It thinks I ran 10.6 miles, but I think it had some accuracy issues there — I believe it was indeed closer to 11. So take the data that follows with even more grains of salt than ususal:

Totals: 10.61 miles in 1:41:09, averaging 9:32 miles and 81% heart rate (Note to M: that’s a faster average than I had thought.)

Mile 1: 11:06, 74% avg heart rate (warming up, in a crowd, uphill)
Mile 2: 10:54, 83% hr (steep uphill)
Mile 3: 10:46, 84% hr (uphill)
Mile 4: 9:41, 82% hr (up and down)
Mile 5: 9:03, 79% hr (downhill)
Mile 6: 9:14, 76% hr (steep downhill)
Mile 7: 8:55, 80% hr (downhill)
Mile 8: 9:16, 78% hr (slight downhill)
Mile 9: 8:20, 85% hr
Mile 10: 8:20, 85% hr
Last .61 miles: 9:07/mile pace, 84% hr (slight uphill)

How did I feel? Great! No leg issues, no fatigue issues. I was hungry enough to eat a bear after the run. Not finding a bear handy, I settled for a breakfast bar and a ham and swiss sandwich from Dragonfly Coffee at NW 24th and Thurman.

Update: I checked the distances using http://www.gmap-pedometer.com. Assuming the mileposts on Leif Erikson are correct (I skipped that part in my gmapping), we ran 10.9 miles. Which means I averaged 9:16 minute miles. Yay me!

It’s a hot sunny day in Portland, and I decided to run at mid-day to get some more heat training in. It didn’t feel as bad this time as previously. Or maybe it was my new sunglasses. I got the new Oakley Flak Jackets at the O store at the mall this morning, in gold lenses with the “plasma” colored frames. My wife liked many fancy expensive things, and Oakley sunglasses are one that I got a taste for, too. Anyway: my run. I live on a busy straight street, that heads uphill until it gets near Barbur and I5 a little more than a mile east of here. It’s unpleasant to run on, but I’ve seen plenty of people doing it, so to do something different I gave it a try. I ran up, up, up to the Barbur transit center and across the I5 pedestrian bridge there, which I’d never been on before. Then back the same way, mostly downhill now. Between the heat and the hills, it was a fairly slow run, but I felt pretty good. 3.8 miles in 37:33.

Last night after work I squeezed in my Portland Fit run — our first interval workout, eight reps of 30 seconds fast followed by 30 seconds rest. I used the heart monitor so I could get an idea if I was resting enough between reps, and looking at the graph, I’d have to say “no”. So I’ll work on that next Tuesday.

After that I trekked out to Hillsborough (Orenco Station) for a MiPL chess event. Only four people showed up; I won all the games I played pretty easily. I also had a sinful brownie. Oh dear.

Then off to karaoke at the Buffalo Gap. I sang “Radio Song”, from R.E.M.’s Out of Time. I think it wasn’t too bad. Oh, and I wore a fez all night. The theme was headwear. Don’t you have a fez? I talked a lot to my new MiPL-friend G, and she (easily) talked me into going to an Asian-themed MiPL potluck dinner tonight.

I’ve also started posting my first MiPL events — a trip to see the plasticized corpses of Bodyworlds at OMSI at the end of June, and a Saturday-evening get-together at Ava Roasteria this weekend.

I’d missed two Monday-night runs from the Portland Running Company in a row, so I was happy to make it there tonight. We ran six miles in 51:54, not counting time spent during a couple of rests along the way. Splits: 8:37, 9:00, 8:33, 8:33, 8:43, 8:29. I think the last two light weeks have really paid off; it wasn’t a slow jog, but it wasn’t a struggle either.

I’m starting to look forward to my two upcoming races: the Helvetia Half Marathon on June 9th, and the Butte to Butte 10K on July 4th. I’m not sure what my goal time is for the half marathon yet.  For the butte-to-butte, I’m thinking 10 minutes up the big hill the first mile, 7 minutes down the second, then 8:00 for the last four, for a total of… hmm… carry the two… 49 minutes plus the time for the last .2 miles. So between 50 and 51 minutes.

As they clamped the fetid panda-bear mask over my head, I knew I had made a mistake.

A true story, by S. Glazer

It all started innocently enough. A nice meet-in event at a small club downtown. The Someday Lounge, they called it. Looked like a stand-up place. Sure, their tiny food menu was all-vegetarian, but their Someday Martini was strong and wet and some nights that’s all a man wants. The place was dead. Maybe it was because it was Sunday, maybe it was the drizzle, or maybe it was the road construction in front that made the joint look like a smoking ruin on a WWII battlefield. We’d come down there to see some business calling itself Cirkus Pandemonium. They say they’re a “new age cirkus troupe of fire performers, clowns, jugglers, belly dancers and dare devil shenanigans” but I say they’re a bunch of tattoo-covered kids with some grammar and spelling issues, all having fun up on the stage. Their little three-piece band wasn’t too bad, but when it came to the actual circus arts they had a way to go. At one point, everybody in the troupe gathered up on stage and juggled. There were more dropped balls than at a Devil Rays game and pins were hitting the ground at a rate that wouldn’t be bad in a bowling alley. But the dames were easy enough on the eyes and everybody was having a good time, so I ain’t complaining. I just thought maybe I could do better.

I’ve always had a penchant for the circus arts. I was juggling in fourth grade and riding a unicycle a little after that. I spent seven months in that hoity-toity college trying to learn to juggle five balls. I couldn’t do it. I was a wash-out. I’d never dreamed of running away with the circus — who needs the indigestion? — but saying goodbye even to dreams you don’t have can hurt, like a punch in the gut from some loan shark’s muscle.

When they worked the crowd — all ten of us — selling raffle tickets for a buck, I was in. They looked like they could use all the support they could get. They drew three numbers, none mine, but the guy with the last one had gone missing and they drew a fourth, mine. We were herded up on stage like cattle to a slaughter, but I didn’t mind. My circus dreams were coming true. That Martini lingering in my gut helped a little too.

They grilled us for a bit up there — you know, name, rank, and serial number — but before long they got to their real questions.

“When was the last time you had a psychedelic experience?”

“What color is your underwear?”

I wasn’t sure where they were going with this, but I didn’t want to stick around for the hot pokers and bamboo slivers. I heard someone offstage shout that they should make ‘em juggle. I saw my chance:

“Yeah, make me juggle!”

That threw ‘em. But they were in the misspelled circus business and in no position to put the kibosh on the idea. Soon I had two balls and a club. And I worked ‘em. I juggled those babies like an Enron accountant. Sure, it didn’t stop me from answering their questions. (Never, black.) But I didn’t care. The glamor of the stage had grabbed me by the lapels and was holding on tight. I’d juggled for a few minute — not one drop — when they announced they were picking their “grand prize winner.” I should have got wise right then, snapped out of it, but the stage lights blinded me to the harsh lessons to follow.

Sure, I was the “winner”. Before I knew it, they were pulling some sort of furry coat over me. Then a furry head.  They turned me into their trained panda bear and ordered me to do tricks. And — I’ll never forgive myself — I listened. I had become the joke. I danced around like an Ailuropoda melanoleuca after one too many Singapore Slings, dizzy from spinning and heat stroke. Eventually they let me slink offstage and take off the props. They thanked me for playing along and let me slink back to my seat. All I got out of it was a handmade handkerchief. And a lesson: when the cirkus comes to town, don’t let the whimsy fool you. They’re out for blood.