Marathon training and blogging tip: be honest with yourself

Detroit Marathon 2012

When I was a Group Leader for CARA, every summer we’d have a crop of newbies who were training for the Chicago Marathon for the first time.  Most of them usually said the same thing, that they just wanted to finish the race.

18 weeks later they’d run the marathon and they would all finish the race.  But there would inevitably always be one or two runners who were a little disappointed, sad even. I’d ask them what was wrong and the response was usually something along the lines of:

“Well I really wanted to finish with a better time.”  Or “I was hoping to qualify for Boston!”

Well the problem is you were not honest with me, or yourself.  That’s a different type of training and it involves more than just following a mileage schedule.  It takes mental toughness and setting reasonable expectations.  If your top speed is a 10:30 mm you are not going to break 4 hours in the marathon without some major help. On the other hand, if you are a 9 – 9:30 mm runner and you want to break 4 hours, it can be done. It might involve speed work, cross training and even diet.  But it can be done.

I can’t 100% guarantee you will achieve your goal but I can help you improve your chances as long as you are honest with yourself about what you want to accomplish.

As as long as we are being honest, I’d like to share that I definitely was one of those runners who always wanted to finish with a better time than my last marathon. The difference is, I certainly never kept that to myself.   And I tried so hard to Boston Qualify that I ruined my knees running too many back-t0-back marathons.

It’s a costly lesson but I learned from it and am applying what I learned to blogging.  A lot of bloggers claim they just want to write their thoughts and thinky bits and don’t give a crap about readership or page traffic. But the truth is they really really do want readers and pageviews and Algonquin Round Table discussions in the comment section.  Some dream of  being a blogger with an audience of Baby Sideburns, Scary Mommy or even Dooce, and that doesn’t come easy.

When I first started blogging, my blog was just another boring online web journal.  But then I read other blogs and thought: why can’t I do that?  Well, it’s not as easy as it looks.  Truthfully, my talent level isn’t on par with the big guns of the blogosphere and honestly, I don’t have the bandwidth to go there.  Instead I’m using the blog writing as training for writing a book.  I’m hoping that by posting in this space often enough, I will get enough practice honing my writing skills to actually pen a book someday.   Hopefully my readers will help me reach my goals by providing encouragement and feedback every step of the way.
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Robert A. Heinlein thinks you should be able to do these 21 things

Robert Anson Heinlein (1907–1988) is considered to be among the “Big Three” of science fiction authors (Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke being the other two).  He wrote StarShip Troopers and other great works of Speculative Fiction in the Sci-fi genre.  He also had a remarkable life; you should definitely Google him and read up on his accomplishments.  He also has been credited with the following quote:

 

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.-Robert A. Heinlein

Well here goes.  A human being should be able to…

change a diaper:  Like a boss.
plan an invasion: Does invading a sports bar and plopping down in the best seat in the house to watch football count?
butcher a hog: Surprisingly not many opportunities for this growing up in Humboldt Park.
conn a ship: That’s just telling people what to do while I beam down to the planet surface and bang green chicks, right? #startrek
design a building: Design sure.  Afford, that’s another thing.
write a sonnet: a very bad one.
balance accounts: back in the days before online banking I could totally do this.  My secret: when paying recurring bills like utilities, round up to the nearest dollar.
build a wall: a fence is essentially a wall.
set a bone: that is what my wife, the former er nurse, is for.
comfort the dying: more than anyone should.
take orders: yep though not always as well as I should.
give orders: I’m getting  better at it.
cooperate: didn’t go to kindergarten but I’m learning.
act alone: like Lee Harvey Oswald.
solve equations: I took all sorts of calculus and differential equations course in college that I use every day.  NOT.
analyze a new problem: and sometimes over analyze (see all my dating failures).
pitch manure: see my resume.
program a computer: also, see my resume (I work in IT).
cook a tasty meal: my Orange Shrimp Linguine is one of the reasons Nightingale married me.
fight efficiently: Getting beat up a lot in grade school made me a good runner.
die gallantly:  when the time comes, I’ll do my best.

Specialization is for insects.  So how did you do on these?  Let us know in the comments.

Free Fun Friday is where I like to feature a video that has gone viral or is otherwise interesting. It started as a way to make a quick blog entry so that I wouldn’t go too long between post for my readers. Now it’s sort of evolved as a way to stretch my writing muscles and flex my creativity neural pathways.

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What Dungeons and Dragons taught me about the Game of Life

Remember in college when you played Dungeons and Dragons for the first time?  You don’t? Okay for those of you who were busy having sex in college like normal students, let me

If only we could roll for our college grades
Photo Credit: Scott Akerman 

give you a crash course.

In Dungeons and Dragons, by rolling special dice, players create characters with different races, classes, abilities and alignments.  (See this D&D Character Generator for examples.) 

Each of these choices have strengths and weaknesses, advantages and drawbacks to consider.  Different classes — paladin, thief, wizard, barbarian, elf, dwarf, holy man — have slightly different rules for role-playing that character.

For ability you have things like:

• Strength     Intelligence   Constitution
• Dexterity    Wisdom         Charisma

Not sure what she is but you need a lot of experience points to score with her Photo Credit: Kyle Nishioka 

No character starts out with high marks in all attributes, unless you are very lucky at rolling the dice when building your character.  As these characters move through their adventure, they gain experience points which help to enhance and augment their skills and abilities.  In D&D your alignment determines how your character acts.

In Real Life, you don’t get to pick your race or social class nor do you get to roll for your abilities.  And some people are born luckier than others, with access to better resources and opportunities.  But you do (hopefully) gain experience as you navigate through this crazy thing called Life.

IRL you will also met people who have different abilities, alignments, skill sets and class, and sometimes lack thereof.  Some people didn’t grow up in healthy stable environments or didn’t catch the same breaks as others.   You might work with somebody who is only out for self gain, or work for someone who is indifferent to the causes of others.  In DnD this is known as conflicting alignments.  IRL, it can be a minor inconvenience or the nth Circle of Hell.

Maybe you have a manager who is very Charismatic but just not technical enough to understand what you do.   Or a boss who is very much by-the-book and shows no sign of a sense of humor.  Very few bosses have high marks in all abilities and if you are very lucky, you get one who has the right combination: Smart enough to know what value you bring to the table, but confident enough not to be threatened by your skills.

It’s not limited to the job either.  You will have friends and lovers who have these same attributes in varying amounts.  IRL you might have dated someone hotter than you but not necessarily smarter.  Or vice-versa.  You might have a friend or two who are fun to have a beer with, but cannot be depended on when the chips are down, or even to just help you move across town.

The secret to “winning” Dungeons & Dragons and the Game of Life, is to play to your strengths, mask your weaknesses and align yourself with people who compliment your skills and abilities.

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There Can be Only One…Six Corners in Chicago

Throughout the city there are plenty of intersections where three arterial streets* intersect. What most people don’t realize is that calling any of these intersections Six Corners is likely to out you as a transplant. The intersection of Milwaukee, Cicero and Irving Park has always been referred to as Six Corners. It’s a proud name for a historic shopping district in the Northwest Side neighborhood of Portage Park neighborhood where yours truly happens to live.

* I’m assuming these three are arterial street, but I’m too lazy to look it up.

Although the shopping district has fallen on hard times in recent years, at one time it was the largest commercial center in Chicago, outside of the Loop. As a kid, my mom and grandma would drag me there for Sunday shopping.

The intersection is home to a number of prominent architecture endeavors, including the art deco Sears and Klee Buildings, the classical revival Portage Theater and the landmark Peoples Gas Irving Park Neighborhood Store.

In short, True Chicagoans generally agree that the name rightfully refers to the original Portage Park intersection.

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Driving to work with the demons in my head

What goes on inside my head is actually even worse than this cheesy photo

Like most members of the rat race, I have a long commute to the office.  I use to take the El to work but a few years ago a new job landed me in the western suburbs where my company keeps its IT staff and data center.  It’s a 20+ mile commute and public transportation is not an option.  That means driving an average of 40 minutes in the AM (garage to parking lot) and an hour in the PM.  This gives me a lot of time to think.  Unfortunately, my mind wanders to places best left untraveled.

A song will come on the radio and it will remind me of something, someone.  A different place and another time in my life.  A missed or messed up opportunity.  That memory, bad decision, horrible experience of lost love or betrayal that sneaks up and attacks my happy.  Reopening a wound that I finally allowed myself to believe might be healed.

Old Single Mom summed it up much better than I can:
We all have THAT THING that still takes us out at the knees – that memory/decision/thing/death/betrayal/love that can still creep up on us and attack our everything, daggers drawn. Flanked by grief, we are forced to drop everything and attend to the gaping, dripping wound a-fucking-gain….Dammit. Why am I not past this, yet? This was so long ago. What more is there to do? — Screw You Taylor Swift

Everyone has some experience from the past they’d rather not rerun in the DVR of their mind’s eye.  My problem is, I have over three decades of them and they are starting to clutter my mind the way a pile of garbage fills up a hoarder’s living room.  I need the guys from Garage Gold to come clean my head out and carry those old memories away.  Unfortunately, they wouldn’t get any money for them.

I hate the word closure because it brings to mind too many images of touchy-feely dippy hippies™ wanting to talk about their feelings about everything.  But it does apply here.  For the majority of these memories, I don’t have the proper closure.  You rarely get to expose the misdeeds of the person who betrayed you to the world.  Where was social media in the 90s!  You don’t get to know why she chose him instead of you.  You don’t get to find out if you should have fought harder.

Destiny is the choices we make and the paths we didn’t take

I really need to stop being so hard on myself about things that happened in the past.  In my younger days,  I didn’t have the necessary resources and tools to deal with this thing called Life and all its intricacies.  And life is pretty good now.  But I still cannot always ignore the voices of the demons in my head.

 

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5 Things I do NOT miss about running races

A couple weekends ago, I saw a lot of posts from friends who ran the Rock ‘n’ Roll Half Marathon I’ve run this race before in its various earlier incarnations and I can tell you, most of the time it was too F-ing hot to run. One particular year added insult to heat because the Saturday we went to pick up our gear was perfect running weather but the Sunday was sweatyballs hot.

I miss running. I miss being able to throw on my running shoes and being 3 miles into a 5 mile run without even realizing it. I use to average 100 miles a month; now I’m luck if I can get that much done in a year. It’s a vicious cycle: I don’t have the endurance I use to have so it takes longer to run any decent* mileage. Since I am getting exhausted sooner, I don’t bang out the mileage like I use to in my marathon training days. Since I’m discouraged about running, I don’t run as much which means my endurance suffers. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

* Decent Mileage was always defined as worth the effort of changing into your running clothes!

On the other hand, there are some things I don’t miss. Here are 5 of them:

1) COST: It costs a lot of money to put a race together, especially if there are street closures involved. You have to pay the city because you are usurping public streets and or resources. There are also sometimes police involved. Someone has to pay for all of that and most of the costs get passed on to you, the runner.

Note: this is for multiple races for two people!

2) WEATHER: the only constant is that you cannot predict what kind of day you will have. Thunderstorm the morning of a 5K, no big deal. Heatwave for the marathon, there goes 18 weeks of training down the drain.

2a) EXTREME HEAT: The 2007 marathon anyone? extreme heat can not only ruin your race but give you heat stroke. In hindsight I wish I had just skipped that one. In fact, I wish they had canceled the race before the gun went off. I realize there was a lot of money involved and elites were vying for world records, and it would not have been possible to reschedule but so what.

2b) EXTREME COLD: Now that winter running is more of a thing, race organization have jumped on the bandwagon.  It’s not just a chilly Turkey Trot or freshly fallen snowy Jingle Bell 5K.  Now we have races like the Polar Dash half marathon which mean you might just be training for a half marathon in the icy cold of winter.

3) EARLY HOURS:  in order to beat the heat, and release the race course back to society, these races have to start early. Which means you have to get up at the buttcrack of dawn (or earlier) to get to them.

4) STRESS: stress of getting there in time and not missing the start. I’ve never missed a race because I was late getting to the start line. I did start a race a little late because I was in the port-o-potty, but this was okay because it was a chip timed event and I was close enough to the start line that it didn’t matter.

5)POORLY PLANNED RACES:  This happens a lot, especially with new races or when a new entity takes over an established race.  It seems like no one ever asks the previous group what worked and what didn’t and they end up re-inventing the wheel.  Sure, they’ll get it right eventually, but at the cost of the runners.  You can deal with a 5K running out of water at a water station or not having enough goodies at the finish line.  But a half marathon that has the mile markers completely off or a poorly marked course will infuriate your customer base.

 

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