DEN=>IAD=>DCA=>EWR=>CMH=>DEN

A couple of days on the road … first a visit back to the D.C. area, so I kept my habit of getting down to the National Mall.  

And then a short engagement in Ohio.

Limited jogging because of the travel … 

Run and tell all of the angels

Last week was a 70 mile week – the first time I have hit that sort of mileage in months.  Perhaps slightly better than the overall volume was that the general pace of the runs was quicker. 

I recognize however that any slight improvements I see are minimum and perhaps accidental (random?), and are equivalent to what I am doing – managing some consistency, not really focused with any specific training or execution objectives. 

There is a “ying and yang” to this of course – a general dissatisfaction with the on-going and slow decline of performance associated with aging, a bit of disgust that I am only willing to fight it so much, but a realization that I have gladly chosen other paths and some satisfaction that I have not fully tossed in the towel. 



I am off to D.C. and the Columbus OH area for the week. 

Mid week update

Looking very aged at a recent speaking engagement.  Maybe I ought to let the hair come back in.
 

It is a week at home so I am getting to do some of the running with the XC crew.  This is all simple training … get out, do some running.  No crazy workouts.  Run, stretch circle, chat a bit, hit the gym.


It is the summer of miles to make for fall smiles.  It is not sexy training but showing up every day and putting in the reps.  Most days it is hot.  We have nice trails and even occasionally travel to other places to run but you are going to see the same half dozen routes more times than you care to over the summer.  For the newbies (and that is not just freshman), it can be brutal.  You go and run for a time and distance than you have ever done before.  And then you workout in the gym.  And you wake up sore, stiff and tired.  And then you have to do it again.  If you can make it through the first couple of weeks, then you start to see and feel the strength gains, but they are probably only nominal.  You have to keep plugging.

Once you know the process, as our upper classman do, you roll with it.  It’s a 45 minute jog with your buddies, and a couple times a week you’ll touch the gas on the hills to get in some work.  But you wake up on the day, get out for some laughs with the team, tell stupid jokes and stories, hangout in the weight room for a hour before going home to eat the door off the fridge. 

The 100 days of summer training are no guarantee you will be a champ, but it is about as sure fire a bet that you will be better than if you would be by showing up on the “official start of practice” on August 15. 

Plugging away with daily exercise here.  I thought I might jump in a mile or 800 race at the BRR all comers meet tonight but I will skip it because …

1.)  while my consistency keeps me in general shape, banging away each day as a near 50 year old seems to leave my legs feeling like crap more days than not.
2.)  while my consistency keeps me in general shape, anything quicker than a 6:15 pace is moving into that space where I am wading over my head. I feel that running another 5:30 mile or 2:40 half would leave me more humiliated than motivated.  I can manage that without dropping 7 bucks. (yes, not doing much other than easy running means fast running is hard)
3.)  there happens to be a community related activity that gives me a good excuse to bail on this.

I’m bummed I’ll miss Lucho racing at this but I’ll get back to him in July.

Hail hail

From the Marathon Relay a few weeks ago, a shot of me running through Mile High.  I had never been there before.

A bit closer to the finish, I looked a little more harried. 

The hail here last night was a bit nuts.  Broomfield got a good hit, but not nearly as bad as some areas (like Louisville). 

Good couple of days of running here with the cooler temps though.

Weekend update

Finished the week with 65 plus miles, which is okay given averages as of late, the travel to the east for work, and two days that were about five miles each.

On Saturday, I ventured into Boulder to do the relatively recently started Parkrun there.  It was a small field, I started too quick, I am out of shape, and thus only barely managed to eek out a sub 20 effort. 

It was not easy but frankly it was not hard.  Frankly my ability to push to “hard” seems to be somewhat broken.  More on this silliness some other time.

On Sunday we ended up in the mountains.  JZ and I did a little exploring up Mosquito Pass gulch.  I had thought perhaps I’d head up to the pass proper but I elected to explore some of the other roads heading up to the west.  It has been a bit since I huffed and puffed up high and I was feeling that.

Segments and plane respect

I was in the Fairfax area this week and got in some running around the work day (Larry can you see these photos?)

Sometimes my Garmin loses its mind and won’t boot (so I have to wait until it battery is completely discharged before bringing it back to life) or I have forgotten to charge it.  In these cases, I can use my iPhone as a GPS tracker using the Strava app.  This choice is not my favorite to use because it chews battery on the phone a bit more quickly and it shows only a time run, the distance and the average pace (vs. a near real time pace).  It does the job in any case.   

One thing the phone Strava app does do however that the watch doesn’t is inform me when I am approaching some established Strava segment.  Almost without fail when I am traveling in some town for business, when this comes up … it becomes some sort of dare that I cannot ignore.  The phone will inform me that I am approaching the “hairy horocrux hill climb of Hallow Haven” and I feel obliged to at least give the segment a spurt of some pace.  If I already know the segment, then I may well ignore it, but when it is new to me, I feel obliged to bite.  The problem / neat thing about this is that I really have no idea if the segment is 100 yards or several miles (unless of course it is named something like “Sisters of the Holy Hand Grenade 5k” or “Marriott Parking Lot Quarter Mile”).  I can sort of see on the phone the general path and make a guess as to what the length might be but I really don’t know (although most segments in suburban settings are somewhere between 0.1 and 1.2 miles in length. 

There is also a clock gauge that appears when you are in the segment letting you know how much time you have taken on the segment.  You can sort of judge how much of the segment you have done as this meter fills the length of the gauge. 

Of course, when I complete the run, I am curious to see how well or poorly I have stacked up in the mix.  Usually in larger cities, I end up somewhere ranked in the couple hundreds (but then I note that the top performances are almost done at 3:28 per mile pace), and if I am in a bit more isolated area, I might crack the top ten, or even snare an FKT for my efforts between two ash trees. 

===================================================================Things to remember when you travel on a plane that you don’t own (an list in progress):

- help someone who needs their bag put into / taken out of overhead storage
- give the person in the middle seat the right of way to the two arm rests
- don’t assume that you can sit in any seat other than the one you have purchased or reserved.  There are the increasingly rare occasions where there are indeed seats open if the flight is not fully booked, and you can switch seats, but don’t take the seats that are not your reserved seats until you know that seat won’t be occupied. 
- this is not the place to take off your shoes
- when standing up, do so under your own power and try not to use the seat in front of you as a gym bar to get up.   Only under extenuating circumstances should you use the body of an unknown person to prop yourself up into a standing position.
- if you elect to listen to something (like a movie), you should do so through headphones
- I too am a fan of many foods with strong odors but this not the place to enjoy such fare (also true of strong perfumes, colognes, body washes, etc).
- there are people who truly need a service animal.  We all know who they are.  Let’s not mix up a desire to travel with our pet as an expected service.
- don’t drink alcohol to excess
- stay in your seat when you sleep (meaning don’t move your sleeping self into the seat next to you)
- don’t read, view, etc the stuff on the computer or device of someone else.
- use the rest room as if you are an adult and not at frat party.  If you must fart, use the rest room.
- if you are creating an incident, expect that everyone on the plane will take video of every second of it
- when leaving the aircraft under normal circumstances, we unload it from front to back

I have some for the airlines as well, but that is probably of little use.

2018 XC season start

First day of XC practice for 2018. 

I love the summer gig with the kids.  Summer training is not pretty.  It requires getting up when kids don’t want to (to be there at 8).  It is often hot.  Your show up and run.  It is the miles of trials and trials of miles.  You have to put in the reps.  We don’t do things like drag around sleds or run with parachutes.  You show up, lace them up and get out to grind through a run, getting a bit better every day, every week and with the eye on putting physical money in the bank for September and October when it will matter.  Show up every day and you will likely get stronger and faster.  But you don’t have to.  You can sleep in and let others do that if you want. 

In the midst of this drudgery, the process teaches.  In the midst of this, kids who would probably never hang out otherwise become brothers and sisters in sweat and lactic acid.  They share miles and with that time and effort, they bond.  It’s about as cheesey as it gets man, but I love it. 

The first two weeks for the newbies are the toughest.  You show up and run probably farther than you ever have had to then before.  You probably go out too fast on your first day, get dropped by the upper classman who are truly jogging easy, and are left wondering how the hell you will be able to ever do that.  And then you wake up sore the next day and do it again.  And again. 

If you last a month, you look back and suddenly see a difference.  Those early efforts of 30 minute easy runs that seemed insurmountable are now the easiest of your days.  You don’t wake up achy every day.  Maybe you still fall asleep in your dinner though. 
===================================================================
I did a little running before practice and saw several of these flags along the Ridgeview (or the so called Lake Link) trail.  I am not sure if they were placed out there for the upcoming flag day or since they seemed to be almost perfectly 100 meters apart if they were there for some workout.

I’ll admit that I took a bit of some sort of seasoned traveler’s pride in that I managed to be at the start of practice at 8 for the kick off the season and buzzing through TSA precheck at 9.  I’ll take that as a PR of sorts.

You make your story

TZ and I were walking the other day and the topic of Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade’s suicides came up.  Like I assume many observed, it would seem success, fame, and apparent happiness on the outside often does not reflect the inner state.  TZ mentioned she had heard a radio show on it and there was some discussion on how suicides are on the rise, and there was some speculation regarding a possible correlation to our constant connectivity.

I am certainly not well educated in such matters.  Nor am I well read or a good writer on things like “the pursuit of happiness.”  But I do recognize how we as a creature are easily programmed with a story – any story.

In our very firmware is the need for the story.  We want to hear stories from our youngest age when we can comprehend them.  We tied to books, TV shows, movies, sport events, news outlets, social interactions, and internet’s social media.  We create our own stories to be an academic, an athlete, a leader and how we will strive for greatness.  Or how we have been wronged, victimized and how we will deal with that with that.

There have been the occasions where I have checked out from the world – the long backpacking hike or camping trip, paddling in a raft on the San Juan River or a long canoe trip in the Boundary Waters of Canada.   In these environments, the need for the story is not any less, but it is the events I have visibility into that are the story.  It is always a bit of a surprise when I come out and you get re-exposed to the CNN-Fox News-Facebook-blitzkrieg of information.  You had no idea of that story and it was unimportant. It had no ability to impact your mood or your state.  You did not hear about a school shooting or a Presidential tweet or how the come from behind victory in the last 50 meters of the 4 x 400. 

What I am suggesting here is that the stories we pay attention to set up how you will be programmed.  That is no surprise of course – we know this but it seems we nonetheless look to bypass this awareness and follow a desired set of stories nonetheless. 

If you were born 100 years ago, or on the other side of the globe today, your story, your pleasures and your worries would be completely different.  Your story is a function of your environment but perhaps also how you respond to the story. 

Having dealt in some regard with a handful suicides of people I knew well, dating back to prior to the ubiquitous nature of cell phone use, I recognize that it is a complicated set of affairs, often with no logical conclusion as to why it occurred (despite us wanting to put a story on that so we can understand it).  But I can give a nod to that idea that constant blast of stories and happiness now we are creating a story that is testing our bounds. 

I don’t mean to say “it is all in your head” but given what is in your head is what you can more effectively control, it is probably better to manage that and manage your story.

Of course that said, this is my own story on stories.

Keep trying

I wake and I seek a perfect day.

Perfect in my speech, my work, my relationships, my eating, my exercise, my response to my response.

I never have done it.  I say something stupid.  I get upset.  I get lazy.  I screw around unnecessarily.  I eat a whole box of donuts and drink a keg of beer.  And I justify it. 

So I go to sleep and try again.

Refer to Jocko, Jordan Peterson, Adam Carolla, Rob Jones.

Week end wrap

A 63 mile week, which is not a lot but it was not bad given the travel and long days for work in Silver Spring MD this week at my favorite government office.  On the way, I got to stop at the Pack Burro Racing exhibit on the bridge to the A concourse.
It was a fair week with the running.  I was often tired, and maybe even a bit cranky because of it but I got in some fair efforts nonetheless.  I do need to maintain some level of some running to be sure I can manage a 29 mile race for Burro Days at the end of July. 

I got home Friday night, had Saturday to catch up on laundry, cut the hair, the lawn, etc before I was supposed to head out on Sunday.

As it turns out, tonight I am back home.  I basically took a six hour field trip to DIA today.  As I hit the door I got an email notice that my flight for 4:30 was now going to be at 5:11.  Then 6.  Then 9.  Then 9:49.  When they came out and said, “we are not sure if it is going to take off tonight anyway so if you want a refund” and I saw that a 9:49 was going to get me in at 3:17 in the morning, I caved.  We’ll try again tomorrow. 

I have done Parkrun when in England and when in Ireland before, and have often wondered if it would ever take off in the US.  I am pretty stoked to see that an event like this has started in Boulder.  I am going to see if I can get on this soon.  My excuse of having to pay stupid prices for a 5k might actually be dead!

Journeys and Destinations

Let’s say someone had a running career that included PRs of 3:56 for the mile, 13:15 for the 5k, and 27:30 for the 10k.  Let’s also say that  this person never won a national championship, or made an Olympic team or set any records – as unlikely as you might think that outcome would be if you run that fast. 

Would that be considered a successful career?

Such a set of times would not be accomplished without significant focus, training and commitment and arguably with a goal of wins and scoring team slots.  So it is likely that this imaginary person could face a frustration of not “making it.”

In a similar regard, those of us with more modest goals – break some time barrier for the local 5k, get in the next faster wave for the big annual road race in town, make the varsity squad, win an age group, etc … are likely to face coming up short.  And with that is the question as to if we were successful or not. 

It has been my observation that the more energy we put towards the goal, the more that the actual outcome is perceived as important.  As a result, we see things like the happiness of coming in second trailing to coming in third. 

It is hard to really absorb that it was the process of what you put into it that determines some portion of that success, even if we know it is true.  I often hear people say “the quality of the process dictates the quality of the outcome.”  I am not sure I agree with that, or at least it is not wholly accurate. 

It is also interesting to me where we place this consideration of success.  We see a PR in a race as a point of success, but we’d scoff at the idea of someone claiming they set a PR in their parenting.  And that is because we consider that a single outcome there does not matter – and that it is the overall process that is important. 

Yeah, so classic “journey v. destination” stuff. 

Back to Green Mountain

As best as I can tell from this blog, today’s round trip on Green was the first one I have done since the 27th of January.

Of 2017.  So, yeah, it has been a little while.

Knowing I don’t have the climbing chops given the lack of practice, I looked to manage the effort.  It was fine.   I was a sweaty mess of course, which seems to scare the day hikers, but I managed to not slime anyone, or even take any digger wipe outs.  I was especially careful on the way down, and wondered how I ever bombed some of these descents.  Of course, I remember and they did come with a fair number of spills, scraped knees and ripped up hands. 

It was a fun and different outing. 

Green, and Bear, and South Boulder made sense when I was regularly training for Pikes.  These days I seem more stretched for time, and the additional half hour (at least) to get there and back bugs me.  But on a cloudy Sunday afternoon, it was good. 

The Business of Expertise

I got through the two days of Pack Burro Racing over the weekend generally unscathed, meaning I did not have any mishaps like falling or getting stepped on by a donkey, but I was a touch sore from some of the effort.  Nonetheless, I felt good enough to run a bit quicker on Monday, and then came back on Tuesday for a good hill fartlek.  Greg hit me up for a fartlek Wednesday morning and I took the bait.  So of course on Thursday I felt horrible and then I caught the crud that KZ had been carrying. 

Thursday evening we picked up JZ at the airport after his week of this.

His track season ended with him being hobbled by an angry shin.  Sitting on a 51 foot boat in the Bahamas has made not running an easy affair.  His recovery seems to be coming along nicely. 

I have been “reading” (really I am listening to it as an audiobook) David Baker’s “The Business of Expertise.”  Its foundational concepts are “experts develop insight by isolating patterns in data; they convert those insights to wealth by crafting a unique positioning for which few available substitutes exist; and their confidence grows as the marketplace embraces their application of expertise.”

I have certainly recognized that pattern recognition is the basis of almost any expertise.  I see this in my work, sometime almost surprisingly so.  Many of the organizations I deal with, despite being very different in the product and services they provide, share many similarities (or patterns).  I see it in coaching – in that good coaches recognize what is going well, what is not, how an athlete is responding or not.  It comes with seeing a pattern enough times that it is quickly evident to be recognized by the trained eye. 

The unique positioning is a different challenge because while you may be able to recognize a pattern, it has no economical value if the positioning of that is not considered unique.  For example in Broomfield, 10 years ago there was only one microbrewery – and it was the one that everyone flocked to. The beer was good, but the location was small and uninteresting.   As the craft brewing market exploded and several of these establishments came into town, with beer as good (maybe sometimes better or even worse) the unique nature of what the original had to offer faded.  They have since moved out of town.

The confidence growing as the marketplace embraces their expertise is an interesting concept.  I struggle between a confidence in “hey I know what I am talking about because I have seen this countless times before” and recognizing that I am seeking the exception, the difference or that I could be wrong this time.  It is a dichotomy that always needs to be considered.

Good read – (or listen) – I’d recommend it.