Look, I’m the first one to admit that I have issues.  I mean forgodsakes I’m in love with a race, how weird is that?

But even I occasionally concede that there exists a generally agreed upon version of reality that does not always mesh with my own customized model of the universe.  Even I occasionally bow to the gods of this communally defined reality, if for no other reason than that I need to maintain employment in order to keep myself in running shoes, and sane people are usually paid more money than crazy people.

But the clown? I don’t mind saying, I’m a little worried about him.  Of course he was there. How could he not be?

I first became aware of his presence at Mile 8. How long he had been trailing me prior to that I really can’t say, though I suspect he had been planning his move for a while. I had been driving along with the Black Eyed Peas at a perfect 10:40 pace on a perfect day, not a care in the world other than having to decide between a vanilla gel at the next water stop or the caffeinated raspberry gel I usually reserved for Mile 10.  I was pondering this very decision (vanilla or raspberry, raspberry or vanilla) when I heard a ruckus behind me and to the left.  The unmistakable sound of a cheering crowd, right smack dab in the middle of Imma Be.

Imma what?

Even as I registered this auditory anomaly and turned my head to seek out its cause, even before my head had fully executed its automatic swivel, even as my CNS struggled to make some sense of all the sites and sounds around me at that moment, even then I knew. Only the clown could get a crowd going like that.

Sure enough, there he was in all his glory, right off my rear quarter and gaining on me fast:  green page-boy wig, unshaven visage, Hannah Montana sunglasses, geometric print mini-dress.  Peacing the crowd and hamming it up.

I brought my pace up briefly in order to get a good look at the guy. My first thought was:  “Looks like somebody’s been hittin’ the gym, and we all know it ain’t been me.” Clearly the clown was not taking this contest lightly. The previous bulk that I had mistaken for fat was in fact muscle, lots and lots of muscle. Mini-dresses don’t lie, and this guy is no joke.

Then came the most shocking revelation of all.  It happened as I drew in front of him briefly, hoping to get a look at his number so that I could finally unmask this villain in true Scooby Doo style. I was initially bewildered by what I saw, or should I say, what I failed to see.

No number. A nefarious bandit!  I should have known. Just another freaking narcissist making a mockery of this time honored and revered tradition that is the Boston Marathon. A cheat.

I quickly reviewed my options. No police officers anywhere in site, no water table for another half mile, no official race personnel anywhere.  Just a bunch of clowns in running shoes, all of them far too busy thinking about the remaining 18 miles to care much about someone else’s battle.  As I say, he timed his advance pretty carefully. There was little I could do other than text my pit crew with the details. “Cln ahead at 8. Grn wig geo prnt dress.  BANDIT!”  The immediate response came back:  “Run your own race.”  Wise words.

I let him go. The unmasking would have to wait for another day, as I had other battles to fight.  I  ended up finishing with my best time ever on Monday.  An awesome day to end all awesome days.

And the clown?  Let’s review what we know about the him at this point in time.

1)   he is a cheat and a liar
2)   he enjoys dressing in woman’s clothing in public
3)   he is ashamed to show his face

Pretty big issues here.

And without a number, the contest with the clown has taken on all the validity of a card game of War with my deck stacking 7 year old daughter. At this point we don’t know if the clown started in Hopkinton or Framingham.  Was he really running the marathon, or was he running his own little 10k?  There are times when the generally agreed upon version of reality must be acknowledged, and road races are one of the few remaining bastions of this group-think model.

Get a grip Mr. Clown.  Then maybe we’ll have a contest.

Happy Marathon Monday!

To follow me along the route today, you can track me via the Twitter roll to your right.  I’ll be posting as the urge strikes and water breaks allow, and my fearless husband will be filling in from the pit crew locations.  You can also follow me by texting “runner” to 31901 (my bib number is 22745). Note my modified B.A.A. marathon course below showing where my times are tracked via chip and where my pit crew will be meeting me, provided the Green Line Gods are looking in favor upon us today.

While you are here, please consider making a donation to Dana-Farber.  The last 5 months of training have been about me, but today it is all about them.  They are the reason that I do this every year.  Check out Why I Run For Dana-Farber to see why.  Thank you!

Last year’s scheduled 18 mile training run occurred on a day filled to the brim with cold relentless rain and howling “Holy Kansas” winds. Not ideal running weather, to be sure. But the schedule is God (or at least a God), and the schedule said “18.” At the time, I was still harboring the illusion that I might someday run a sub-4 hour marathon.  It therefore seemed perfectly reasonable to run these 18 miles at a minute faster per mile than my normal pace.

Right.

Needless to say, after a few hours the minor injury that I’d ignored for weeks was now a full-blown catastrophe. A sane person would have stopped running. Me? What did I do? Do I really need to answer that?

Over the next 5 weeks I paid dearly for this ego trip with visits to just about every “ist” I could find in the yellow pages: radiologists, physical therapists, acupuncturists, psychotherapists, chiropractorists, etc. etc. etc. The next time I ran without the benefit of electricity was on The Big Day. You may recall my less than impressive results.

A quick glance at the training log (or for that matter, at the titles of my blog posts) reveals that this foray into insanity was far from anomalous. In truth, I have been living out my own little version of Groundhog Day right here in Southeastern Connecticut for several years now. As a benevolent service to other marathon runners (that they may learn from my mistakes), I have plotted out my emotional state for each Boston Marathon I’ve attempted, and present the data below:

Of course!  How could I have not seen this before?  The oft cited Marathon Hype Cycle: begin training, have great success at low mileage, enter inflated expectation stage, become injured in the final days of training, enter trough of disillusionment, etc. etc. etc. I am a classic presentation of this endurance phenomenon.

But this year, something is different.  This year, I’m shattering the stereotypes. This year, I injured myself at the beginning of the marathon training season. A brilliant plan, if I do say so myself. My premise (and don’t I always have one?):  an inflated expectation bubble tempered by early failure must result in a significantly modulated trough of disillusionment, and ultimately, an earlier slope of enlightenment. Thus far, it appears to be working, as demonstrated by the sophisticated model presented below.

It is clearly too soon to say with any certainty what will happen on April 19^th, but my 30 day forecast is calling for a 70% chance of success this year.

…26 days

PS.  My sincerest apologies to the folks at Gartner, who are probably far too intelligent to be associated with this blog in anyway.

PPS.  Quick reminder that my whole point in doing this each year is to raise money for a great cause.  You can play a part in all this in one of two ways.

1)  Register for the Quaker Hill 5K Challenge and Family Fun Run.

2) Donate directly to Dana-Farber via my DFMC fundraising page.

]]> http://www.miles-from-nowhere.com/?feed=rss2&p=430 3 http://www.miles-from-nowhere.com/?p=397 http://www.miles-from-nowhere.com/?p=397#comments Fri, 26 Feb 2010 02:28:08 +0000 Kristen http://www.miles-from-nowhere.com/?p=397 What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy. Voltaire

I do love a good endurance tale.

Mostly this is because we endurance athletes/authors have to support each other whenever we can. (Though admittedly I haven’t seen much from Lance lately in the way of reciprocity.)  Of course, I do have another reason for frittering away my life reading besides these apparently futile efforts to generate karmic camaraderie. If I am very lucky I will find sometimes find within these overpanned creeks a small, sometimes vanishingly so, nugget of insight deeply embedded within an otherwise innocuous paragraph.  Something I can take with me through Mile 13, or out the door at 0500, or back to the fundraising for another day. I take great comfort in knowing that there exist in this world fellow prospectors who make me look sane.

I was therefore beside myself with excitement when a famous ultramarathoner finally came out with his long anticipated and much ballyhooed “The 10 Commandments of Endurance.” But I quickly discovered that the ballyhoo surrounding this entrance into the endurance literature was all uproar, with no substance. In the spirit of constructive criticism, I have decided to forego running for yet another day that I might provide a reasonable assessment of this work.  My assessment is based on a valid, and I think you will agree, inarguable analysis.  Let’s start with the title:

1) 10: Anytime I see a list of “10” things I am supposed to do, I right off the bat assume that at least 3 things on the list are totally fabricated so that the author of said list could make the list seem complete, which of course leads me to wonder which of these things I am supposed to ignore. This has certainly been true for the original commandments (I have spent my life pondering which 3 commandments are dispensable), and it appears to be the case here as well.

2) Commandments: Am I alone in believing that commandments should come from God, and not from a crazy ultramarathoner who had all of his toenails surgically removed?

3) Endurance:  Okay, he got that part right.

As far as the substance of the work, well, I can’t say much, as I never did get past the title.  Anyway, the substance is irrelevant.  To me, the real question has become this:  Why do I spend so much time panning for wisdom generated by biomechanically blessed physiological wunderkinds who have never, ever been vomited on by their 5-year old daughter at the finish line of a 20 mile race?

Right.  Time to write my own rules.

So it is that with great gusto and ballyhooness that I submit my own manifesto:  A short list of things I wish people had told me when I started this ridiculous avocation lo these many years ago.

Truism #1: There is no such thing as an injury free middle-aged marathon runner. The middle-aged runner’s connective tissue, which once had the consistency of warm peanut butter, now mostly resembles frozen peanut brittle. Additional insults that add to our injury lists are spinal columns that refuse to decompress, knees that are a wee bit light on cartilage, and calcium ions that flee our bones like rats from a sinking ship. There was a time when I bemoaned my injuries with all the drama one would conjure up for a Shakespearean soliloquy:  “Oh, to run.  Or not to run.  That is the question.” Please. At this point in my running “career” an injury barely elicits a raised eyebrow.  Stretch it, ice it, tape it, and get back on the road.

Truism #2:  Stress is additive. Man, did I ever screw this one up. I could have sworn that I read somewhere (was it on the internet?) that stress should be assessed using an inverse logarithmic function. To wit, the physical stress from increasing mileage by 10% a week is significant in the two months prior to a marathon, but it is a physical stress. Being called into school for your fifth parent teacher conference in a week is stressful, but it is a mental kind of stress and is therefore handled by a different mechanism that is only tangentially related to the mechanism that handles physical stress, right? Not so much. We really only get the one immune system. If you find yourself in a situation where your child has taken on the persona of a dog AND you have 5 grant proposals due by Friday AND your spouse is at a “conference” in the Bahamas AND your actual dog needs emergency surgery for a torn ligament this would NOT be a good week to up your mileage.  Repeat this truism 3 times every day upon waking.

Truism #3: People who begin running marathons in mid-life will never be fast. As my philosopher friend Dave sagely pointed out, I will probably never be tall either. Most people are aware that as we age our muscles lose mitochondria, the cellular organelles responsible for generating the energy tickets that make us run fast. Lesser known is the fact that we lose these mitochondria because the raw materials of which they are comprised are needed in the brain to help us remember where we left our reading glasses. Unfortunately, these raw materials usually get lost along the way and settle into our hips and stomach, resulting in the ultimate middle aged trifecta:  slow pace, abdominal fat, and an inability to find the reading glasses on the top of our heads. Once these mitochondria leave our muscles, there is no getting them back.  Speedwork is futile.

Truism #4:  Marathons are 50% mental and 50% physical. Don’t sweat this one too much. Once you hit 40 you are pretty much screwed either way.

Truism #5:  Save the adrenalin for endurance emergencies (i.e. Mile 24).  Adrenalin is like a very young racehorse: Expensive, powerful, easy to bolt, and next to impossible to corral once it gets it in its head to be somewhere else (Figure 1).

Those adrenalin pumping hoo-rah moments that are so much a part of popular team sports have absolutely no place in a marathon.  Every molecule counts, and adrenalin is the most precious elixir of all. While other athletes approach their competitions with all the decorum of frat brothers on speed wasting hard earned energy on pep rallies and press conferences, marathon runners must approach the start line with the attitude of Rodney Yee on Quaaludes. On a practical note, this means:  1) Any emo music should be shunted to the last hour of your 4 hour playlist, 2) caffeine supplements must only be taken when you have less than 6 miles to go, and 3) the absolute maximum number of people one should hi-five in any given race is 200.

Truism #6:  The run may be long but life is short. Enjoy the ride.

53 days…

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: Quick reminder that my whole point in doing this each year is to raise money for a great cause.  Cancer is an evil plague, and it sure would be nice to  wipe it off the face of the planet for good. You can play a part in making this happen by donating to Dana-Farber in one of two ways.

1)  Register for the Quaker Hill 5K Challenge and Family Fun Run.

2) Donate directly to Dana-Farber via my DFMC fundraising page.

]]> http://www.miles-from-nowhere.com/?feed=rss2&p=397 4 http://www.miles-from-nowhere.com/?p=378 http://www.miles-from-nowhere.com/?p=378#comments Sat, 02 Jan 2010 13:03:35 +0000 Kristen http://www.miles-from-nowhere.com/?p=378 It happens this time every year. Someone, usually my 7 year old daughter, asks the question:  Do you think you will win this year?

I think that this question arises from ignorance, mostly, but also from the fact that Deena Kastor and I have enough in common that we could have been separated at birth. For the uninitiated, Deena Kastor is the darling of American Marathon circles.  She won the bronze in the Olympics in 2004, had a spectacular win in Chicago in 2005, and finished Berlin in 2:19 in 2006.

It is easy to see how someone would get us confused.  There are the obvious similarities: we both run marathons and are stalked by clowns (more on that later).   But there are also weirder Lincoln/Kennedy type things going on that simply can’t be explained by coincidence alone.  I will list just a few.

• My VO2 max (41) is exactly one half of hers (82).
• Her marathon pace is exactly my marathon pace divided by 2.
• Deena weighs 104 pounds, I weigh 140.
• We are both 5″ 4′ tall.
• Both of our last names have 6 letters AND end in the letter ‘r.
• Both of our ages are divisible by 4.
• We both write blogs.
• Deena is an Olympic medalist, while I once worked at the sailing venue of the 1996 Olympics.
• Our running wardrobes appear to be virtually identical.

Since Deena and I have never been seen together during a race, there has been much speculation that we might actually be the same person. I think this type of speculation is just silly, and detracts from the two goals of the marathon:  running and fund raising.  To end this speculation forever, I am sharing with you two images of myself and Deena taken during last year’s marathon season.  If you look closely, you will notice that  Deena’s bib number is in the single digits, while mine has five digits. This is one of the best and most reliable means of telling us apart on the course.

If you still need help telling us apart, remember this advice – look to the clown.  The clown that stalks Deena is very different than the one that stalks me, as seen in this side by side clown comparison.

Notice that while my clown sports a disguise that consists of only a wig and, occasionally, fashion eye wear, the clown that stalks Deena is usually seen in full body attire. The full face coverage of the costume and the presence of faux fur in a neon color is a dead giveaway  that one is looking at Deena’s clown, and not mine.

Hope this helps to clear up any confusion.

109 days…

In the second week of training
My coach he gave to me
2 ibuprofen
And a  fat man in a clown wig

In the third week of training
My coach he gave to me
3 hours of hill work
2 ibuprofen
And a fat man in a clown wig

In the fourth week of training
My coach he gave to me
4 pulled muscles
3 hours of hill work
2 ibuprofen
And a fat man in a clown wig

In the fifth week of training
My coach he gave to me
5 pairs of running shoes
4 pulled muscles
3 hours of hill work
2 ibuprofen
And a fat man in a clown wig

In the sixth week of training
My coach he gave to me
6 miles and counting
5 pairs of running shoes
4 pulled muscles
3 hours of hill work
2 ibuprofen
And a fat man in a clown wig

In the seventh week of training
My coach he gave to me
7 packs of Goo
7 miles and counting
5 pairs of running shoes
4 pulled muscles
3 hours of hill work
2 ibuprofen
And a fat man in a clown wig

In the eighth week of training
My coach he gave to me
8 snarling dogs
7 packs of Goo
9 miles and counting
5 pairs of running shoes
4 pulled muscles
3 hours of hill work
2 ibuprofen
And a fat man in a clown wig

In the ninth week of training
My coach he gave to me
9 iTunes downloads
8 snarling dogs
7 packs of Goo
11 miles and counting
5 pairs of running shoes
4 pulled muscles
3 hours of hill work
2 ibuprofen
And a fat man in a clown wig

In the tenth week of training
My coach he gave to me
10 packs of ice
9 iTunes downloads
8 snarling dogs
7 packs of Goo
18 miles and counting
5 pairs of running shoes
4 pulled muscles
3 hours of hill work
2 ibuprofen
And a fat man in a clown wig

In the eleventh week of training
My coach he gave to me
11 PT sessions
10 packs of ice
9 iTunes downloads
8 snarling dogs
7 packs of Goo
18 miles and counting
5 pairs of running shoes
4 pulled muscles
3 hours of hill work
2 ibuprofen
And a fat man in a clown wig

In the twelfth week of training
My coach he gave to me
12 ounces pasta
11 PT sessions
10 packs of ice
9 iTunes downloads
8 snarling dogs
7 packs of Goo
18 miles and counting
5 pairs of running shoes
4 pulled muscles
3 hours of hill work
2 ibuprofen
And a fat man in a clown wig

Merry Christmas Everyone!!

117 days

*It’s actually 18 weeks of training but that didn’t flow.  Forgive me the poetic license…

Of all the indignities we parents must endure for our adorable progeny, I believe that the loss of music might just be the worst of it.  I remember well the day the music died for me.  January 5th, 2002.  Sitka, Alaska.  On the surface of it, not an unusual day.  Horizontal sleet, sepia tinted air, partially frozen mud, grizzly bears scrounging through our trash.  Just another day in paradise.

The Ralph’s World CD playing on my 1995 Ford Explorer CD player had only been in there for three days, but my nerves were already frazzled by the off tune version of “Fly me to the Moon” that was insidiously carving a groove within my brain.  In an effort to replace that song with something normal, I made up a reason to flee our 400 ft² military quarters to go to the grocery store without my children (in a Sitka winter that’s about as good as it gets).  I must confess that I cared of only two things at that moment:  a double short mocha and a new, fresh out of the wrapper, Green Day CD.  Alas, it would be some time before I heard Green Day at any appreciable volume.  Ralph’s World had other plans for me.

I punched the eject button as soon as my children’s noses pressed against the living room glass could no longer be seen in the rear view mirror.  Horror of horrors.  The once dependable eject button on my CD player yielded no movement whatsoever.  Nothing. Nada.  Ralph’s World had taken up residence on my planet and refused to budge.

I don’t remember what happened immediately after that, but I do remember later that day sitting in a deserted local coffee shop, clutching a double short mocha and seeing clearly for the first time something that everyone else had known for months, if not years.  My cool factor was gone.  History.  Adios.   I drained the coffee cup, climbed into my salt encrusted SUV, and headed home.  It would be a long winter, indeed.

Ralph’s World stayed with us for many months after that.  When we shipped the Explorer from Alaska to New York, the Ralph’s World CD came with it.  We finally dumped that car when even my children could no longer bear the drivel dribbling out of the speakers.  I still get a smug smile when I think of that red monstrosity, CD included, getting crushed into a toaster sized cube.  (Again, not a violent person.)

For lo those many years I lived in a music free void, never seeing that the answer was right in front of my eyes.  Until one day, I started to run.  Running, contrary to what people will tell you, requires the purchase of many cool things.  Running shoes.  Running hats.  Water belts.  Reflective wrist bands with your ICE info in case you are hit by a truck while running.  Water bottles.  Running gels.  And IPODS.

Imagine, for a moment, my husband’s response if I calmly informed him that I needed 10 hours each week to sit around and listen to music on my headphones.  10 hours during which I could not be disturbed, and during which he would be entirely responsible for any family event/emergency/exigency that might arise.

Right.

Now imagine that I tell him that I am RUNNING for 10 hours a week, and during that time he is entirely responsible for any family event/emergency/exigency that might arise.  When I put that spin on it, listening to music is a sanctioned, even an encouraged, activity.  What would you do?

Right.  There’s a reason I run marathons, and not 5Ks.

I started with a shuffle, but eventually couldn’t fit enough songs on it to get through a long run.  So I upgraded.  And upgraded.  And upgraded again.  In no time at all I was back in the game.  I cannot even begin to calculate the amount of money I have spent padding my itunes library.  I have play lists for short fast runs, playlists for long slow runs, play lists for gym workouts.  Wall of sound guitar riffs are now a part of my daily existence.  Life rocks.

Running has become my middle-aged, suburban-life, socially-acceptable, form of public dancing.  In my opinion, running without music is just weird performance art.  Not that there is anything wrong with that.  Some of my best friends are weird performance artists.  I’m just saying.

Stay tuned for Part II, wherein I discover the power of beats-per-minute software.

150 days

When last we left our struggling heroine, she was confronted with the specter of a summer spent swinging in a hammock, reading dull novels while wearing ugly shoes. Understandably, this image struck fear into her heart: fear of weight gain, muscle atrophy, a lapsed subscription to In Style magazine and (gasp!) boredom. Did she survive? Well…

I tried. I really, really tried. Within minutes of posting my last blog entry I was en route to the bookstore with the intention of purchasing and reading at least one verbose Russian novel.

First mistake: forgetting that my once impressive intellect has been siphoned off into my children’s brains through some bizarre placental transfer that I do not fully understand. Consequently, the bright shiny book covers at the store entrance captured my attention so completely that I never ventured beyond to the distant shelves of arcane and dusty tomes. Instead I chose a pretty embossed book from the top of the pile whose 100 pages were filled with very cute, very short, very chicky lit.

Second mistake: stopping at the shoe store on the way home. They don’t count as heels if they’re platforms, right? I must have left the book there, because I haven’t seen it since. Anyway, who these days has the attention span to read anything longer than a status update?

Since I had nothing to read and no hammock (all the best hammock trees were downed this summer to free up light for the solar panels), I decided to take up kick boxing to while away my spare hours. My reasoning was simple and elegant. I spend half of my life at the karate studio anyway, why not get a work out in while I am there? That pesky little injury was inconsequential, as it was on the non-kicking side of my foot.

This may be a good time to point out that I am not, by any sense of the word, violent. The few experiences I have had in carrying and/or firing weapons left my hands shaking and my head filled with nightmares. I have searched in vain for the tattoo on my forehead that announces to all the world: “Nice person lives inside this head.” Supermarket cashiers tell me their life stories, stray animals beat a path to my door, and I burst into tears every single time I hear that dreaded Titanic song. You know the one.

But…put a set of boxing gloves on me and something very frightening happens. Turns out that I am really very good at beating the stuffing out of things. Turns out, too, that I actually enjoy beating the stuffing out of things. Guess I’ve been carrying around a bit more aggression than I thought. I blame the clown for this.

The upshot is that while laid up by my foot injury, I lost six pounds and gained an almost six-pack set of abs.   A four-pack if you will, versus my usual two liter bottle. Relaxation is relative.

My summer was proceeding along swimmingly, what with my Axmen tryouts and Linda Hamilton impersonations, when a critical piece of news came my way. The news was delivered via my podiatrist, he of the well decorated office, after he perched me upon an expensive looking dove-gray computerized foot pad to measure me for inserts that would allegedly fix my bio-mechanically unsound left foot. The audible alarms given off by the computer when I stepped upon the foot pad must have clued him in that something was seriously out of whack.  Turns out that one of my legs (the left) is longer than the other. Significantly so. In a flash, I saw that the differential leg length explains everything: the right hip injury, the left foot fracture, the stressed right IT band and, funny I never noticed this before, the Quasimodo gait.

Like most silver linings, this piece of news came with a few storm clouds. The good news? In these days of wondrous technological advances, this is fixable. I have a brand new set of inserts that will end my days of Quasimodinous forever (the purchase of which no doubt provided my podiatrist with a new sofa for his waiting room). The bad news? For the next few months I am more susceptible to stress fractures than ever while my body realigns to the new bio-mechanical forces. To avoid injury, I’m building up the miles like a novice: 4 miles, then 5, then 6, and so on.

The really big news though, is that Dana-Farber is once again going to allow me to attach my name to theirs for the purpose of raising a few bucks for cancer research (thereby proving once and for all that no one from that fine organization has ever read this blog). Mark your calendars for April 19th, 2010. Six months to whip myself into Boston Marathon shape.  Hi-ya!!

The plan (and don’t I always have one?):

1) switch it up with a new training program
2) focus on nutrition, nutrition, nutrition
3) don’t be an idiot

182 days…

In the meantime, no need to be shy about being the first to donate.  My DFMC site is already up and running (ha ha).

The goal is $8000 this year.

There you have it. Quicker than you can say “Open Sesamoid,” my dreams of winning the Portland Marathon on October 4th have been shattered. Smashed. Splintered. Busted. If running barefoot on broken glass appealed to me, I might actually consider taking a stab at it. Instead, I am yielding to someone else’s superior knowledge of foot mechanics and sitting this one out. Stressed out sesamoids. That’s the diagnosis.

 As I sat in a weirdly well decorated podiatrist office last week, absorbing this diagnosis while staring at the x-ray of my biomechanically unsound left foot, a series of realizations coursed through my brain:

 An entire summer spent in ugly shoes…Oh wait, I would have done that anyway…I’ll have to revert to harassing my youngest bro via old fashioned obnoxious texting (”where IS Portland anyway?”, ‘is it raining?” and “dude, get a job yet?”)…I am getting old…I am going to go insane… How, exactly, am I going to reduce my daily caloric consumption by 1000 calories?… Poor Sean…and finally – Hurraaah!!! <<insert clip of angels singing here>> It is NOT arthritis, it will heal, and I will be back at it by the fall, my favorite time to run anyway.

I briefly entertained the idea of coming out of my healing period strong and heading straight into training for the late November Philly marathon, mostly because I was intrigued by the potentially awesome Rocky themed playlist. I also considered easing into a half marathon training program and shooting for a good time in the late October Boston Half. Then my hairdresser, as usual, came through with a bit of sage advice. At the time she gave me this advice she was talking around a mouthful of hair clips, so I couldn’t make out every word, but I think it went something like this:  “freaking-chill-for-god’s-sake.” After removing the clips from her mouth she very clearly said:  “Go get a book. A novel. Read it.” I have to say, Trish has rarely steered me wrong before. Other than the famed Fashion Red Debacle of 2007 or the lesser known Posh Spice Incident of 2009, it’s all been good. 

Clearly, this concept of allowing an injury to heal is a radical departure from my standard Marathons for the Mediocre Training Plan (patent pending). If you are suffering from early onset dementia (and who amongst us is not?) allow me to refresh your memory with the Cliff Note version of that plan:

Day 1:  Decide to run marathon.  Call everyone you know and tell them you are running said marathon.

Day 2:  Invest several hundred dollars at Amazon.com (not including overnight shipping costs) on new training books by authors that all look vaguely alike.

 Day 3:  Invest several hundred dollars on new running gear, including size small compression tights.

 Day 4:  Choose new training program by drawing it from a hat.

 Day 5:  Develop multi-dimensional, day to day workout schedule in excel for entire 18 week training period.  Incorporate your work schedule, your husband’s work schedule, school schedules, parent teacher conferences, doctor visits, anticipated illnesses for all family members, spin schedules for 3 separate gym facilities, your running partners’ schedules (including their work schedules, husband’s work schedules, kids’ schedules, etc), holidays, family visits, phases of the moon, and any long term weather predictions you can glean from the Farmer’s Almanac.  Link workout schedule to equally comprehensive nutrition plan worksheet for same time period.

Day 6:  (AM) Go for a run.  (PM) Order second pair of compression tights in size large.  (Hang on to size small tights because they will no doubt fit in several weeks). Rewrite workout schedule to incorporate your pathetic inability to run faster than 10 minutes a mile.  Drink bottle of wine.

 Day 7:  Rest day!

 Week 4:  Unable to run because one of the children got sick (off schedule) and husband is traveling and you can’t leave sick child at home by themselves again or the neighbors will call DCF.  Husband returns!  Blizzard outside, gym closed.  Drink bottle of wine.

Week 5:  Rewrite training plan to incorporate the fact that you are already 10 days behind in training schedule. 

Week 7:  You failed to incorporate CGA/BOT meeting into plan.  Husband working 18 hour days.  All runs are cut in half due to time constraints. 

Week 8:  Husband returns!  But now you are sick.  No runs for 5 days.

Week 9:  Use training plan to start fire in wood burning stove.  It’s too %^&*ing cold out to run anyway.  Drink bottle of wine.  Cut size small compression tights into loops for daughter’s weaving toy. 

Week 10:  Go back to original schedule without adequate lead-up.  Obtain connective tissue injury. 

Weeks 11-13:  Pretend injury is minor and can be cured via consumption of liver pickling quantities of NSAIDs and ice. 

Week 14:  Acknowledge severity of injury only after cementing it in place for all of eternity by running 18 miles on it. 

Weeks 15-17:  Spend every moment of free time working out on low-impact machines in fluorescent lit soul sucking fitness center. 

Week 18:  Tank marathon. 

Weeks 19-34:  Complain bitterly, recover, spend every moment of free time with physical therapist.

 Repeat.

 This training program has served me well, no doubt about it. But lets face it – after four marathons it has become a bit stale. Time for something new. Time to chill, at least a little bit, at least for a while.

 Anyone know of a good training program for that?

 264 days.

“Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion”

-Democritus

You poor pale souls for whom summer is still a distant glimmer of hope on the horizon are no doubt dreaming of all the accouterments that accompany this ephemeral solar sojourn into our hemisphere. But we academics, having already thrown off the yoke of this most recent semester¹, find ourselves dreading summer’s odyssey of solitude and dusty computer screens, of arcane texts and arduous mental exercises. Having no other choice, we must take advantage of the dearth of sycophants² in the summer months to focus on the “publish or perish” aspect of our careers, a tortuous cerebral obstacle course of which you have no doubt at least heard. As a ratus juvinalus³ on the first rung of the academia treadmill, I have ample reason for feeling a modicum of panic when confronted with the evidence of my paltry publication record. To make matters worse, I have been informed (somewhat emphatically I might note) by various members of the tenure committee that under no circumstances are blog entries considered “academic” publications.

It is therefore with great reluctance that I have made the difficult decision to forego the start of the Portland Marathon Training Plan so that I might find time to pad my publication record. It is a small price to pay for brilliance, but a price to pay nonetheless.

This decision was made slightly less onerous by a recent rare-flash-of-brilliance realization⁴ that, perhaps, all my recent efforts at blog entries were not for naught after all. What if, I said to myself after three very dry academic-like martinis⁵, I rallied this ad hoc brain trust into a focus group and used it to review my work in a quasi-organized fashion? And what if I then called this “peer review?”

Before we proceed, we should clear up a critical issue upon which this entire house of cards rests. Inherent in the concept of “peer-review” is the term “peer,” which has a variety of connotations and whose meaning is occasionally muddied. As is typical during times of pedantic confusion, I turned to the parsed language of the law to clarify terminology. According to that most scholarly of web sites, definitionsuslegal.com, the term peers is defined as such: “…an impartial group of citizens from the judicial district (e.g. county) in which the defendant lives. However, jurors are not required to be ethnically, educationally, economically or sexually the same as the defendant…”

I therefore put forth to you this question: Would you not be eligible to be selected as a jury of my peers if so approached by a District Attorney and/or his/her practicably designated staff?⁶ Exactly! What tenure review board could possibly find fault with that argument? Especially if I hire a more competent attorney this year?

Now that we have that settled, I’d like to present to you the first portion of a book that I’ve been working on for three arduous, forebrain crushing days. Like most sane authors, I’ve begun where one should begin, with the front and back cover, and am now working on the first chapter. I’m not quite certain how the book will end, as I seem to be caught in a negative feedback loop of some sort, but, let’s begin at the beginning, shall we?  

Front Cover

Back Cover

Stay tuned for Chapter 1, which I will finish as soon as I can figure out how to get an internet connection at the beach.

¹Yeah baby! As of May 18th!

²See definition of “college administrators”

³Occasionally the Old English title of “Assistant Professor” is used

⁴Second flash of brilliance in 6 months! I am on a roll…

⁵1.5 oz gin, 0.25 oz vermouth, 1.0 olives

⁶Assuming you would not use one of any myriad of excuses to get out of said jury duty, of course.