No fly in the soup, no fly, and no soup

Duh

Mon, 16 May 2011 21:44:51 +0100

Oh snap! It looks like I was wrong:

Our benchmark results suggest that the ARRA created/saved approximately 450 thousand ... jobs ...

...but wait!

...and destroyed/forestalled roughly one million private sector jobs.

Of course it did. You tried to raise the water level in the pool by scooping up water from the deep end in a sieve and dumping into the shallow end what little didn't leak out. And then you were shocked when it failed.

You fucking morons.

Sometimes you're the windshield

Mon, 2 May 2011 02:49:53 +0100

The Apple Blossom 10k in Winchester is always a party. There are always wacked out zany weirdos running in gorilla suits, doing the whole race while hula hooping, etc. Last year there were these two guys doing an 80s hair band fan schtick, all long hair wigs and cutoff jeans and boombox. They annoyed me then, but I was kind of digging them when they came back this year. While I was waiting for The Boss to finish I saw a group run in dressed up as characters from Super Mario Brothers - there was Mario, Princess Peach, and even Yoshi.

I like to have an ambitious goal and a fallback goal at every race. This year I was thinking my training has been for crap and I've put on a few extra pounds, so I was really worried about my time. I decided to go with a fallback goal of beating my time at last year's race, and an ambitious goal of sub-50. Honestly, I was thinking about making a fallback-to-the-fallback of "doing my best", that's how sad it was.

I usually will drink a bottle of water to wash down my pre-race gel, but today I went with a bottle of diet coke instead, counting on the caffeine to give me a little extra boost. I have no complaints about the results of this plan.

Last year I started with The Boss near the back of the pack to kind of give her some encouragement, but that caused me to spend too much time dodging through fools after I crossed the mat and started running in earnest, so this year I started further up. I had the Garmin on my wrist, but I forgot to start it until I got some unspecified distance down the road, so I didn't know what my net time was. When I got to the 1 mile marker I saw that my watch showed like 0.8 miles, so I guessed I had run some 1:30 before I started it. It actually turned out to be a little more - I had forgotten that I'd still spent some time behind unpassable dorks at the beginning.

There are clocks throughout the course, and whenever I saw one I was trying to do some quick figuring - subtract the difference in clock time vs. chip time; figure out how much distance remains; calculate average pace required to get under fifty. I did notice that the course felt much easier than it had last year. Whenever I looked at my pace it was either in the 8:20 range or down around the 7:45 range, so I was feeling good about beating my previous year's time. On the downs my pace would sometimes dip down around 7:30.

The clock at the 5k mark said like 25:35, which was a little bit of a shock. I felt like it might have taken me as long as 0:30 to cross the mat at the start, so it was not impossible that I was right on pace for the under 50 finish. Not long after I passed the 5k mark I saw the leaders coming back along the other side of the course. It's not an out and back - the course only doubles back on itself in a few sections - so they didn't have far to go.

At the 5 mile marker the clock was at 40:xx, so I figured an 8:00 pace the rest of the way would get me in under 50. At this point is was looking doable, so I was determined to really go for it. At the "one mile to go" sign it was 42:xx, and 46:xx at the "one half mile to go" sign. Right on schedule, but it was going to be close, and there was a decent hill leading up to the final turn onto the home stretch

I had by this point passed almost all of my nemeses: The tattooed up guy, the old bastard who jumped in front of me at the water station and kept grabbing all the cups from the volunteers so that I couldn't get any, the two 9-year-old girls who were smoking me most of the race. The only one left was "Caroline", a forty-something-looking woman whose name all the spectators seemed to know. As I was coming to the final turn she started her kick. I followed suit, and wound up beating her to the finish by three seconds. I hate getting passed on the home stretch.

After the final turn there's like a tenth or two to the finish, and as I was coming up to it I heard the announcer dude calling out "Come on, you can make it under fifty, come on, kick," and such. I knew it was aimed at people up ahead of me - I had no realistic shot at getting under 50 by the clock - but I also knew that I had a little cushion between the clock and chip times. I got in sight of the clock hanging over the finish line, and it was like 49:52, 49:53, . . . I tried to kick my speed up a notch, but I was already in strong finish mode, and I had little extra left. I watched the clock tick over 50:00 and just powered towards the line, feeling the ticks sliding away. I got across the line and a volunteer cut the ties holding my chip on. I felt much stronger than I had after last year's race, almost like I could do the race again. I walked back down the course and waited for The Boss, not knowing if I sneaked in under the 50:00 wire or maybe missed it by a second or two.

After she came in we wandered around and got some of the mildly disappointing food they were offering while trying to figure out if and where they were posting the interim results. Finally saw them just as I was about to give up, go home, and wait for the results online. Huge mass of people crowding around them, worming my way in, scanning the tiny font, boom! I rule: 49:54.

The Boss put up with me on the ride home, but just barely.

Doing my civic duty (again)

Tue, 2 Nov 2010 16:20:53 +0100

Doesn't matter that my values are superior to yours; I still wouldn't try to impose them on you by force:

There is a deep and profound symmetry...

Sun, 26 Sep 2010 23:20:28 +0100

...between these two works of genius:

one hour fifty five minutes and twenty seven seconds

Mon, 13 Sep 2010 01:05:52 +0100

...is a long time to run without stopping.

This has got to be a hoax...

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 22:10:11 +0100

...right? Right? Jesus H. freakin' Christ wearin' a dashiki on a pogo stick. What are you people thinking?

You're really just not that important.

Event Schedule

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 18:14:34 +0100

May 1, 2010 (with The Boss)

May 15 - 16, 2010

June 5 - 6, 2010 (200 mile route)

July 4, 2010 (with The Boss and Ku)

September 12, 2010

At no time during any of these events will I be thinking "Wow, I really want to get online and tell all my virtual friends what I'm doing in real time!" Kind of like I never do that at any other time.

And if I write them up after the fact, I certainly don't plan to impose any arbitrary length limit on my prose stylings. Why? Why, oh why would people rather talk about their life than give their full attention to experiencing it?

Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 20:20:10 +0100

"Sorry about that, bud," I said to the guy behind me in the chow line after stumbling into him. "I'm feeling a little unsteady on my pins."

"Understandable," he said.

* * *

The threatened rain had held off, but the air was as cold as forecast. "There are reports of snow on top of the mountain!" the announcer called out to some thousand or so shivering nutjobs awaiting the start of the 2010 Hyner View Trail Challenge.

I had a liter and a half of water on my back, a GPS-enabled training watch on my wrist and a sour dread in my gut as we listened to the countdown. A final check of my gear, a last wave of encouragement from The Boss, and we were off.

It was a mile or so over road to the trail head. I had seeded myself some two-thirds of the way back in the pack starting out, which turned out to be a bad miscalculation. Once we hit the trail there was no room at all to pass, and I was stuck behind a bunch of lollygagging hikers, oohing and aahing over the trees and river. For the next mile or so we proceeded at a slothlike shuffle, and at times came to a dead stop. Finally hit the first real hill, and though it opened up a little bit, it was hard to get enough momentum to get around the shufflers.

That hill just didn't want to end. Every time I thought I was near to the top, another 100 yard stretch would somehow open up past what I thought was the crest. My calves were on fire, but when the trail widened out near the actual last 100 yards I had plenty of juice to hump it around some of the tourists. I sprinted up to the aid station, chugged a cup of water, and took off down the trail.

I felt great over the next 9 miles or so - two long downhills, some flat meandering through the valley with several stream crossings, a couple moderate ups, and even the dreaded S.O.B., which was much steeper in person.

Passing was still a challenge, as the trail rarely got wider than a foot and a half or so. Had to wait for open areas to the left or right. At one point I saw a chance to blow by a line of 5 or 6 people and I took off through the scrub just to the left of the trail. I had about a three foot gap to get back on the trail before braining myself on a tree, and I realized that my momentum was going to carry me off the other side. Where there happened to be 50-odd foot drop down to the river.

I managed to grab the tree, swing around onto the path losing less than 10% of the skin off my left hand, and keep on rolling.

After the aid station at the top of S.O.B. I started to fade a little. I was reduced to walking even some of the milder ups. And then came the final indignity: a quad-shredding downhill stretch that just went on and on. I pulled aside a time or two to let some columns of stronger finishers past me. I was still keeping a pretty good pace, so I was a little puzzled as to why these people were behind me if they were fit enough to be blowing by me at the end. Maybe they'd taken some rest at the last aid station, but I'd expect people at this position in the race to be more concerned about their finishing time.

When we finally made back to the road I was determined to run the last mile or so back to the finish line. I was pretty much all in at this point, and I was still dropping places to runners who'd marshalled their energy better, but I stayed above a walk back to the final hill leading up to the finish:

The Boss was a sublime sight at the finish line. Some dude shook my hand and collected my chip. Somebody dropped a finisher's medal in my hand. Within a minute after I stopped moving my legs were solid blocks of marble, and I could barely stagger through the chow line. I managed to down some bread, a single ladleful of ziti, and some chocolate cake with peanut butter flavored icing. The walk back to the car was excruciating and slow. It felt like it took me a minute and a half to lower myself into the passenger seat. I showered up at the B&B, and The Boss and I set out through the Pennsylvania hills towards home.

Just 363 days until next year's event. I figure if I train a little and seed myself up closer to the front I might break four hours.

What was I thinking about when I thought about running?

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 19:32:22 +0100

*

I'm not sure why I decided to start running races. I think it was Kona - I'm pretty sure it was Kona. The coverage every year is cringeworthily cheesy, but I found myself nibbling on that cheese and, if not growing to like it, at least not being sickened by it.

Who can finish something like that? Do you actually have to be strong, or is stubbornness enough? Am I that stubborn? Could I be that stubborn?

Anyway, I've been running. Only a few weeks, and mostly on treadmills, but enough to confirm that I've got a base of orneriness that I might could cultivate. If I had enough motivation. Having a long term goal is one thing, but to get there I need intermediate goals to keep my enthusiasm up.

A 5k race just down the road a piece seemed as good a place as any to start suffering. I had two goals going in: finish in under 24:00 (ambitious), and finish in the top half of my age group (looked probable based on past years results).

The Boss somehow let herself get talked into joining in as well. Her goal was not to finish last, which I'm happy to report she achieved.

I woke up that morning with a cold, but I felt fine as we lined up to start. I didn't feel nearly as nervous as I'd thought I would. There was a cop stopping traffic as they started us off across 4-lane Hastings Drive and we took off through the streets of Manassas.

Since the race was affiliated with an elementary school, there was a large group of skinny young kids bunched up near the front of the pack, but they soon spent up their meager stores of energy and I picked them all off in the first few hundred yards. Went around an adult or two as well. I was feeling fairly good, and at the one mile mark there was a guy calling out our splits. "7:16!" he hollered as I wheezed by.

This turned out to be a little ambitious. Over the next mile and a half or so I kept hearing heavy breathing in my ear just before getting run down by yet another racer with better pacing than mine. Must have been at least 20 - 30 people passing me over that stretch. "15:32!" was the call as I passed the two mile mark. My pace had dropped by about a minute.

Nearing the 3 mile mark we turned off the trail through the park and back onto Hastings Drive, into the teeth of a vicious hill leading back to a partial lap around the parking lot to the finish. A volunteer directing traffic called out "Come on, dig!", but I was dug out, and told him as much. No one passed me on that hill, though. Best I recall.

Coming back in to the parking lot, though, I once again heard heavy breathing over my shoulder. Sounded female. Determined not to get run down again that close to the finish, I didn't turn to look, just put the hammer down. As I neared the finish line the clock they'd set up there told me I was close to setting a PR, and I felt weightless as I crossed the line. I didn't beat my goal time but I did cut 4 seconds off my personal best. Good enough for my first race.

The way the timing worked was, someone clicked some sort of clicker to signify a finisher as each person crossed the line, then we had to keep our same order in the chute before ripping off the bottom portion of our bib numbers and handing them over. Then they matched up the clicks and bib numbers in the same order to get the times and positions. Waiting in the chute to hand over my number, I heard the woman behind me (I assume the same one that had nearly run me down) remark that her goal had also been 24:00. Oh well. Tough course, maybe.

I walked back out to wait for The Boss, and finally saw her walking out up that hill towards the parking lot. I saw she had some other walkers behind her, and worried that they'd take her at the finish. Every now and then she'd start into a little shuffle jog, and then fall back into a walk. The women trailing her were doing the same. In the end, they stayed in the same order coming into the chute, and The Boss finished ahead of some 50 - 60 people. Some of those were women pushing strollers, and people hanging back to stay with their families, but still, easily eclipsed her goal. Also cut some 2+ minutes off her personal best.

In the end, I wound up 54th out of 349. Around the 84th percentile, and 10th out of 34 in my age group. The Boss says my result was 80% ability and 20% stubbornness, which sounds about right.

Hey Northern Virginia Drivers...

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:21:59 +0100

...stop yielding the right-of-way, you mouth-breathing sub-morons. If you're too stupid to know when you have the right-of-way and/or too stupid to realize that you're not doing anyone any favors and that you're just slowing everyone down, then just stay off of my roads.

That is all.