Losing it!

Well despite my little plan the inevitable is happening. I'm getting lazy fat and less fit. The tummy is pooching and I just feel like a pig. But I had no where to go but down I suppose and that's exactly where I'm headed. Going to have to step it up--soon (but not today).

Workout update

I have been spending the last few weeks running a sort of "maintenance" fitness routine. This is the first time that I have actually gotten back out running consistently after recovering from a marathon. I'd considered a couple of options for what to do now that the big race was over; one was just to do some more base building. Lots of long slow miles. But that just sounded really boring and too similar to what I had been doing. So it was really a very easy and natural decision to go with my initial idea which was to spice things up with a "routine of variety". An oxymoron if ever there was one.

Trouble is most of my running would have to be lumped together on my three days off, Friday thru Sunday. Ten hour days make it tough to add a run on either end of my time at work and that is especially true in the evenings when there is usually some type of commitment to the boys in addition to making and eating dinner. Plus most of the time I'm too stinking tired anyway. So Friday, Saturday and Sunday are the days I can count on to run.

I had read somewhere, likely Runnersworld, that if you only had three days to run each week a combination of hills, speed and distance was the best use of your time. Sounded good to me. I especially liked the part of incorporating a weekly speed workout into the mix. In my early running days a few years back, speedwork was my staple. That's pretty much all I did, I think because that's all I knew how to do. Any distance was a totally foreign idea.

The rest of the weekly just kinda fell into place after that. Work offers a 45 minute spin class twice a week during my lunch hour (15 minutes to shower up) and so it made sense to take advantage of that opportunity. The classes are short but intense and I like the idea of cross training and doing something "no impact" while not race training. So Tuesday and Thursday I can get my workout in during the day - which is sweet. The only drawback has been staying consistent with it. Between my work conflicts and the instructors, I probably only attend half the scheduled sessions. I need to work on my end and try to do a better job scheduling around the class but that might be tough. As the days get longer it may be easier to go for a short evening run on days I was not able to spin.

That leaves me with Monday and Wednesday as rest days with the possibility of some easy runs when the chance comes up and I feel the need. But days off are a good thing too.

I've been looking at some races coming up. If I actually sign up for one I would need to give up on the current plan and adjust to race training. Not sure what distance that would be. Ran into Justin today and he mentioned wanting to do the Newport Marathon in June. that would be ambitious. Randy and I had talked about during the Helvetia Half since he has never done it. And I would really like to do that Bridges to Brew, just because it finishes with an ice cold chewy Hefeweizen. So those are some good possibilities. Until then, I'll just keep with my little plan.

Team Point Two... Point Five

I'm not sure how many people John Ellis has coached by email before me but I suspect not many, so his invitation meant a lot to me. Not long after the time we spent together working toward my spring marathon in 2008 he came up with the idea of coaching a small group of people who had already run a marathon and see if he could improve their performance. He called the idea "Team Point Two".

The meaning of the name mostly came from the miles in a marathon. The forgotten and oft overlooked two tenths of a mile at it's end. Ask someone who has never run a marathon how long it is and the most accurate answer you will get is "26 miles". Ask the same question to someone who has actually run one and they are sure to include that 1/5 of a mile or 26 point 2.

So when John was looking to put the "team" together I was one of the first he asked, and I accepted. The only condition was that I be willing to document my training and experience via a blog, a podcast or some other social media thing. The only thing I really lacked was a Twitter or Facebook account. Easy enough to rectify.

But then we hit a leee-ttle bump in the road because John also wanted the "2" to represent a second try at a marathon. Sacramento would be my fourth, as I reminded him, and so he came back to me with "oh too bad, you would have been perfect". So I was out before I was ever in. But John graciously agreed to coach me anyway, which I have written about often here.

So the training cycle came and went and frankly I think I would have added something to the whole concept. The people who were eventually asked were great, the group became close and goals were met, but I sense as an outsider that despite the successes, the potential of the project was never really met. The team's website (http://teampointtwo.blogspot.com/) hasn't been updated since last spring and many of the runners have dropped off updating their logs since running their events in the fall. I honestly think I would have brought something to the team if I would have had the chance-at least from a promotional sense. As I have stated here so many times, running and training is less about the numbers and more about living the life of someone on a journey of self exploration.

But after my qualifying at the CIM John was suddenly keen on the idea of me being involved in the wrap up podcast for the team! Hmm, imagine that! Suddenly I'd become "team worthy" to borrow an idea from Seinfeld. So I agreed, thinking it would be fun to tell my marathon story.

So last Wednesday night after work I did the show called "Runner's Roundtable". Steve, who sometimes hosts the show (he hosts Phedippidations all the time) had said during the our set up when the team members were phoning into the conference call that I would tell my story after the rest of the team. When John Ellis called into the "room" just moments before it started he changed it up and asked me to go first. No problem really, I wouldn't have any chance to "warm up", but that was okay. The only thing was I had no idea how the "conversation" would work and instead of asking about the marathon, John asked me about the running relationship with Randy. Totally not prepared for that!!!

I had thought about what I would say regarding John's help with training and about the race itself, but had not given any brain cells to talking about running with Randy. So I babbled, hemmed and hawed and eventually crashed and burned, and Steve, sensing that I'm a shitty interview, just moved on quickly. Smart man. I sucked.

Towards the end they came back to me, briefly asking about future plans, and I did better the second time working with a question I had anticipated would be asked. All in all it worked out but I would have liked to told my race story.

John will likely form another team later this year and if he does maybe I'll be asked to join it and, if it even happens, maybe I'll make the cut! It would be kinda fun and I would have an excuse to get Twitter or Facebook accounts. We'll see.

http://runnersroundtablepodcast.blogspot.com/

Pursuit

Kids in Oyugis

If anyone were to actually read this blog, and why would they, they might see that since July a certain pattern is vaguely apparent. The first paragraph or two of each weekly entry are more or less developed and then I finish off the rest of the theme in haste without so much as a proofread. The misspelled words and bad grammar I can live with, but I feel bad that my idea is not developed the way I would have liked. Yeah, I could write less often and so have more time for each theme but a major incentive for writing the blog was to add another type of motivation to keep me running. Writing less could eventually lead to less running and since only a few people read this anyway the content in only a secondary concern.

I bring this up because there were some ideas that I didn't really get into last week when I wrote about running in 2009. One of these was the whole idea of creating goals and challenges and living a more meaningful, and indeed a more happy life. My thought, the one that I did not make very well and it occurs to me may fail just a miserably this week, is that all of us are actually more fulfilled and satisfied during periods of challenge. We can see examples of this all around us.

My brother Chris took a trip with some of his work mates on a "mission" of sorts to Oyugis, Kenya a few years ago. When he returned and told the story of the villagers lives and showed the pictures of the people there, I was shocked. Poor living conditions I expected. People with very few things and a dismal future, I was braced for. But what shocked me were the faces of the children (and children are what you see in Oyugis, very few people live long enough to get old there). Their faces were the brightest and most beautiful I had ever seen. Not sad and crying as I had expected, but smiling and full of... life. Bursting with the pleasure and simple happiness of the visitors and the serendipity of their picture being taken. The most genuine and luminous smiles you could ever imagine.

I can't help but compare this image to my own kids. By contrast, they have no want. They can eat to excess any time they choose. Our house is pretty nice and always within a degree of the ideal temperature. They will have all the educational opportunities that are offered with their almost certain academic scholarships(they had better) . Statistically they can expect to live for a good long time, and yet given all this they still can easily fall into a funk, complain about that which they do not have and all too easily, it seems to me, seem unhappy.

And when we take their picture they have to be reminded to smile.

Why the difference? It seems so backwards, and yet I can see other examples of this all around me. A little girl of the couple that mows the lawns and trims the bushes in my neighbors yards dances around with much more glee and playful abandon than the children who actually live in those houses. Their beat up old pickup truck sits in the center of our cul-de-sac in grating contrast to the SUV's which swing wide to avoid it. But they seem so happy.

During my firefighting career, my fire station family would slowly, surely and predictably slip in a routine induced sulk until some shared work tragedy pulled us together. Struggle and co-experienced hardship made us closer and in a strange way, which is difficult to explain to others, improved our collective mood. Again, not what you would expect.

Happiness doesn't come in a gift wrapped box and left for you on your door step. Instead it comes from the conflict and grind of everyday life; it's a product of the contest. This is an idea known by every schoolchild in my country, who learns that one of our earliest notions was to link the words pursuit and happiness in eternal wedlock. Pursuit comes first. An idea forgotten by most adults and one that must be relearned.

This is yet another reason that I run; setting contrived goals, establishing a self-proclaimed struggle in a world made far too easy for me. Setting a target of qualifying for Boston and working toward that end in 2009 was really a way of simply having fun and staying happy.

Anyway, I could on about this....but I'm out of time for this week and need to work on my next entry.