Long Island Running: The Greenbelt Trail

The only good map I could find of the trail

Note: Reposting from Reading, Running and Red Sox, slightly edited for clarity.

I used to work for CA Technologies, an enterprise software company that was snapped up by Broadcom years ago. They were headquartered in Islandia, NY, in the middle of Long Island, and so a few times a year I would take the New London ferry to the western tip of the island and drive west past a surprising amount of wineries that fade away in favor of suburbian development (strip malls and box stores). Boring running. And since i'm always on the lookout for trails, I eventually stumbled across the Greenbelt Trail. It's extremely difficult to find any information on it so here's a rundown of my experiences for any of you looking for some Long Island Trail Running.

I stay at the Hyatt next to Hidden Pond Park in Hauppauge, NY. By looking carefully, I was able to find the entrance to the trail on the north side of Long Island Motor Parkway,a simple split in a chain-link fence overgrown with vines. Once inside, I slowly jogged the loose gravel up and down a few steep, rolly hills. This first portion of the trail system - just north of the Park - consists of interconnected trails, some single track, and some wider ones obviously designed for mountain bikes. Continuing north, I dropped down a steep hill into Hidden Pond Park itself, where the path flattens out near the swimming pool and baseball fields. There are a number of trails winding around this complex, but if you keep heading north, you'll find yourself in a narrow right-of-way between single-family homes and a golf course. Despite all of this proximity to buildings, all of my runs on the Greenbelt Trail were quiet and isolated - I think I've seen one other person in all of the times I've run there.

I should mention the strange blaze system in the HPP. White blazes mark the main trail, but when coming to a fork or change in direction, there are two white blazes - the second one to ostensibly indicate the change in direction, but it's somewhat confusing as these are interspersed with blazes of different colors. I haven't determined the reasoning behind these markings, nor have I seen a trail map anywhere. Regardless, once you hit the golf course, the trail is unmistakable.

After crossing Townline Road, the trail becomes more rural, following a stream and a few tranquil bodies of water. The local Boy Scouts have constructed a number of helpful wooden bridges over the more marshy portions. (Thanks!) The trail twists and turns, is overgrown with vines, and has a lot of exposed roots, making it difficult to keep up a fast pace, but you'll want to take it slow to enjoy the silence and to see all of the rabbits bouncing out of your path.

The most challenging part is traversing Route 347. It's essentially a highway, with no crosswalk or lights nearby, so you just have to sprint across when you find a break in the traffic. The effort is worth it because the next section goes through some sweet, quiet conifer forests where the pine needles just swallow up the sound of footfalls. The trail continues from here all of the way to the North Shore, but i've only gone as far as the shopping center in Smithtown. Click here to see my longest northbound run on Strava here.

The section southbound from Hauppauge is located directly across the road from the northbound trail on Long Island Motor Parkway. Here, the trail follows the power lines for a bit, weaves through some significant rolling hills with evergreen trees before dropping down to Old Nichols Road. On the other side of the road, the trail is pleasantly flat, meandering around some horse farms before meeting up with the power lines again. At this point, I lost the trail - the map indicates that the trail continues down to the Long Island Expressway, (somehow) crossing it en route to the southern edge of the island. Here's what this portion of the run looks like. I hoped to find my way further southbound - there are some nice looking Strava segments south of the interstate - but Broadcom quickly shut down the office and made my commute miserable so I haven't been back in years.
 

If you're in the area, be sure to look for the trail - it really is quite enjoyable. If you find yourself there and find this post useful, let me know - i'm curious to hear if the trails are still maintained. 

First Lines of Alex Hutchinson's "Endure"

 "The broadcast booth at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza, a historic Formula One racetrack nestled in the woodlands of a former royal park northeast of Milan, Italy, is a small concrete island suspended in the air over the roadway. from this rarefied vantage point, I'm trying to offer thoughtful guest commentary to a live-streaming audience of an estimated 13 million people around the world, many of whom have rousted themselves out of bed in the middle of the night to watch. But I'm getting antsy."

- Alex Hutchinson, Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance

Hutchinson book examines what goes into the physical and mental limits of human performance. And there's a lot to cover! At times the book feels likes a collection of articles rather than a cohesive narrative. Regardless, learning more about what drives fatigue and what science is discovering  about overcoming it is fascinating. Much of what he presents is on the cutting edge, with many techniques (e.g., electro-jolts to the brain!) out of the reach of an average athlete. I had some good takeaways, including that simply "swishing and spitting a carbohydrate drink" without consuming it provides endurance benefits: 

"...the mouth appears to contain previously unknown (and as of yet unidentified) sensors that relay the presence of carbohydrates directly to the brain. In Tim Noake's central governor framework, it's as if the brain relaxes its safety margin when it knows (or is tricked into believing_) that more fuel is on the way." (p. 190)

Running and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society

In three short weeks - October 19th - I'll be running in the Empire State Marathon. I've decided to do so as a member of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s (LLS) Team in Training program in order to help find cures and ensure access to treatments for blood cancer patients. So I've set up a little widget in the left corner of this blog - anything you can spare would be appreciated. (Mobile users might need to view the standard webpage.)

Some history: my wife was diagnosed with an aggressive form of Lymphoma last year. While she has since eradicated the disease (after undergoing an unpleasant chemotherapy program), the whole experience was extremely scary. The LLS website was one of the few calm, objective sources of information that helped us get our minds around what we were dealing with in the initial dark days after the diagnosis.

Since the recovery, I strive to continually be grateful for my family's health, and recognize how lucky I am to spend absurd amounts of time running outside. So it only seems right that I spend some of that time trying to help those that aren't as lucky. The LLS does excellent work funding treatments that save lives every day; like immnuotherapies that use a person’s own immune system to kill cancer. I was beyond impressed how the oncologist was able to customize a chemo "cocktail" to address my wife's specific form of lymphoma. LLS helps give doctors these tools.

So if you can, send along what you can to help us get closer to a world without blood cancers. Any money I raise will be matched by my company - so anything you give will be doubled! If you don't have any money to spare, no worries - I understand. Thanks for your attention, and i'll be sure to let you know how the run goes!

Gonna Have to Face It...

The Dish recently posted some thoughts on being addicted to running. I think that anyone that runs even moderately seriously has either felt this way or can easily see it happening. James McWilliams tells us that

An estimated three percent of the general population suffers from exercise dependency. The more endurance-oriented the sport—ultra-marathoning, Iron Man competitions—the better the chances there are for some sort of addiction to set in. Exercise addiction overlaps with other disorders—most notably eating disorders, but also drug and alcohol abuse—about 25 percent of the time. ...

He details the varying stages of the addition and concludes:

It’s hard to see how—given the tendency of the high to diminish for the exercise freak—the temptation to add one more mile could be resisted, especially when acute negative consequences do not result. It’s hard to imagine ever effectively treating this “disorder.”

While I find this interesting, I have a hard time seeing running or endurance exercise as an addition on par with a chemical addition. Despite what he says, its seems to me that there's a world of difference between not wanting to stop something and being unable to stop something (e.g., as in the case of a meth addict). Glibly, I note that our bodies also have a built-in way of treating this type of disorder: it's called injury. I know more that one person who has over-trained or over-raced themselves into an injury that could have been easily avoided if only they had rested now and again.

Regardless, I think any person who doesn't recognize that any endurance athlete gets off of endorphins is fooling themselves. I've always looked at it as similar to people that get hooked on spicy food. McWilliams describes it this way:

My own experience of needing increasingly more miles to feed the seductive opiate rush of a workout speaks to the insidious impact of this possible chemical rationing. The body and mind recall all too vividly what it’s like to exist (blissfully, mind you) in post-exercise equilibrium and will do what it must do to rediscover that balance. 

Andrew astutely brings in Stanton Peele, who points out that

“People can become addicted to anything, whether drugs, alcohol, food, shopping, gambling, love, or sex, if it is the focus of an encapsulating experience that alleviates bad feelings and buttresses their self-esteem”

Which seems to me to get more to the point. I feel that "addictions" of these kinds aren't so much a change  in body chemistry leading to loss of decision-making ability as they are a positive feedback loop gone awry. The trick to to realize that and put it in perspective. Easier said than done, but to my mind a better way of treating the condition than like you would a normal addiction.

Interestingly enough, McWilliams concludes his article by flipping the whole premise on its head:

Contemplating the mysterious nature of this pleasure, something occurred to me that led to rethinking the whole idea of exercise addiction: Those we classify as exercise addicts might be a rare sort who are honoring what their bodies are designed to do and, historically, have done.
...
What if the real addicts are those who seek to be sedentary—which could be just as unnatural as seeking to be drunk or high—while the crazed athletes are the ones who are seeking the deeper wisdom and capacity of the human body?

Now that's a theory I can get behind!

Cross Posted on Reading, Running and Red Sox

Race Report: TARC Fall Classic

thx to GoMotion and Topham Photography

It’s funny how things evolve. A few years ago, not only was I not running on a regular basis, but the idea of running on trails was something I had relegated to the closet with my high school XC mementos. Fast forward a few years and now I’m addicted to running as much as I can – and running in my first trail race since my senior year of high school. The event? The TARC Fall Classic – a loop through Great Brook Farm State Park in Carlisle MA on an absolutely fantastic fall day – a clear, chilly morning fading into unseasonably warm temps by late morning. I did the half-marathon (two loops) but runners could also do a 10K, marathon or a 50K. Most of the course was relatively smooth trails with some rolling, rooty hills, alternating with a few miles of fields and a highly technical 1.5 mile stretch towards the end (the Woodchuck Trail).

I had run the course a week before with Eric and Adam, so I knew what to expect. However, the race was structured so that the ultrarunners would go directly onto the trails while the half and full marathoners needed to do an extra field loop or two before hitting the trails. This meant that for good positioning, I needed to haul ass in order to get ahead of as many ultras as I could before hitting the single-track. As evidenced by my pace the first two miles, I did my best, but an unfortunately-timed loose shoelace meant that I lost valuable time and was stuck behind a fair number of runners by the time I started up Indian Hill.

I’m not entirely sure what the etiquette is for passing runners on trails. In my high school days, I would have just bushwacked into the woods to pass someone, but now I don’t want to thrash up the wilderness and am much more aware of the risk of turning an ankle. So when I found myself behind someone on the single-tracks, I typically hung behind them, only passing when a suitable place presented itself. I’m sure I annoyed some foax but it I felt like I essentially stayed on pace.

A clear majority of the race was comfortable, striding up the hills and hammering the downhills. However, the extremely challenging Woodchuck Trail and its immediate aftermath was windy, extremely rocky, and with a lot of quick ups and downs. I traversed it the best I could, trying to keep my feet up, but you can see by the slow pace times how different it was from the rest of the course (miles 6 and 12).

At the end of the day, I scored a 5th place finish with a time of 1:42:25. I didn't really know what to expect, given that I felt my training was just adequate—I wasn't doing a lot of speed work and certainly not as much technical trail work as (in hindsight) the course demanded--so I was pleasantly surprised by my performance. (Full results here.)

I’d be remiss if I didn't mention the DIY food tables – easily the best I've ever seen at a race. Kudos to the TARC folks for throwing a great event – a challenging race with an atmosphere a perfect blend of friendly competition and campfire party. Perfect weather, good friends, solid run: you can’t ask for more than that!

Cross-posted on Reading, Running and Red Sox

Block Island Running 2013

Block Island is a small island off the coast of Rhode Island that is only accessible by ferry. Perhaps for that reason, it is, in my opinion, the perfect ecosystem; a perfect mix of town, open space (over 43% of the island is protected from development), beach, and shrubland.

On my vacation the last two years, I focused on running on the road or beach. This year, however, I really wanted to take advantage of Block Island’s trails. The Greenway, named after the famous UK walking trails,  consist of ~25 miles of trails that wind all over the island – a lot of coverage for an island that’s only about 10 square miles. Since I knew from previous experience that the trails were not well marked, I spent a lot of time studying the maps before I headed out. I was helped by the fact that our rental home was in the heart of the island right next to a major trail (near Turnip Farm).

Trail Entrance

Block Island trails feel incredibly remote, even when paralleling roads. The only other beings I saw on the trails was one runner, numerous deer (BI has a serious deer overpopulation, countless birds, and an a rooster defending his chicks.

My first outing was a combination of roads and the Fresh Swamp Trail. This served as my introduction to the themes of Block Island trail running: extreme humidity, lots of bugs, rolling terrain, and lots of brush to duck and weave around.

On my second run, I hit the beach around the southwest corner of the island. As you can see, the bluffs are dramatic and served as a nice backdrop as I labored through the sand. I had assumed there would be a trail up the cliffs to the Elizabeth Dickens Trail, but this did not exist, so I had to run to Black Rock Point where I found a path up to what turned out to be Black Rock Road. Unfortunately, there were no markers and I turned left when I should have turned right and ended up hopelessly lost in the meadows.  (It didn't help that I had no GPS signal!) Eventually, I made my way Lewis Farm Road (with a minimum of bushwhacking) which lead me back home. The lesson: verify your beach access points before you start out!

The third run I hit up the Rodman’s Hollow loop, a dramatic basin that's only 20 feet above sea level. Despite laboring up and down some intense hills in massive humidity it was a nice run with a fantastic view north towards the end. Afterwards, I ran down Black Rock Road - a disused dirt road perfect for hiking - and enjoyed the views of the southern part of the island.

Path down to the Beach

My favorite run was heading north through Turnip Farm past the Island Cemetery and all the way to the Coast Guard Station. These trails were the most poorly marked, mainly because there are a large number of small spur trails. Still, these were perhaps the most fun, and led to at least one amazing view over the airport towards Old Town. These trails were diverse, and mainly went along the stone walls that you see wherever you look.

One of many Stone Walls

As much as I'd like to say I finished off with a bang, by the end of the week the hard living was catching up with me, so my last run was a short a short run to and from Dories Cove for a (extremely cold!) swim. On the way back the trail took me past old Dodge Cemetery which lived in the bushes above our house.

The Trail past Dodge Cemetery

In conclusion, if you find yourself on Block Island, there's no doubt you should explore the trails - they're fun, challenging, and lead you to areas of the island that feel miles away from the hustle and bustle of the town and famous beaches. Just be sure to take along a map and a compass!

Thoughts on the Boston Marathon

What started out as a fun day with my son cheering on famous runners, friends, and complete strangers turned quickly into a stomach churning afternoon when the news of the reprehensible carnage came in. Like a lot of people, I got caught up in the fear and terror and spent a night distracted by news reports and rumor mongering. But after a few days of sleep and reflection, I choose to reject the fear sowed by these cowardly terrorists and instead focus on the strength of my great nation and people of my adopted hometown. When I'm healthy again, I will continue to run races without fear. And i'll be down at the marathon again in 2014, supporting it in every way I can.

Many people with more talented pens than I wrote much better reactions than I could ever hope to do. Here are some of the best.

Patton Oswalt:

“I don’t know what’s going to be revealed to be behind all of this mayhem. One human insect or a poisonous mass of broken sociopaths. But here’s what I DO know. If it’s one person or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population on this planet. You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out. … This is a giant planet and we’re lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in awhile, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they’re pointed towards darkness.
But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We’d have eaten ourselves alive long ago,”

Heather Hurlburt , on combating terrorism like being a marathon

We don't know who planted those explosive devices, but, as former West Point academic Brian Fishman reminds us, we know what those who resort to terror's indiscriminate violence want:

Terrorists kill for two basic reasons: They want to disrupt and destroy institutions or symbols of a political order they despise and they want to intimidate people not touched by the attack directly. 

... My fellow Americans, our hearts are broken, but the state of our union is strong. Maybe stronger than it was yesterday, before we saw those pictures of our fellow-citizens running from the race to the fallen.
So what about sowing fear and division among the rest of us, terrorists' other goal?
Americans of every political stripe have been calling out speculation and scapegoating as fast as it happens. Bostonians of every faith and race have come together to mourn their losses and celebrate their heroes. Maybe the attacker or attackers, whomever they are, didn't know Boston's difficult history of race and religious relations, maybe they did – but for those of us who do, this unity is especially beautiful to see.
That's pretty good for mile one. But we have so many hard miles ahead. Not turning on each other, or our institutions, or our own freedoms, whatever the truth behind these terrible attacks proves to be… can we keep it up?

And finally, my friend Norb, writing on Facebook. He watches the race from the other side of Route 135 than I do:

For those of you who don't know, I live a short walk from the mile 4 water stop on the Boston Marathon route in Ashland, MA. In the years I don't have to work, I take in the race with my kids. It's always quite amazing to stand on the hill there and watch a wall of people running towards us.
But then the fun begins. We pick out people to shout encouragement to. Maybe they have their name on their shirt. Maybe they're wearing their country's flag. Maybe they're just wearing pink sneakers. If we can find a way to address you, we will shout our encouragement at you as you run past.
And that will continue from mile 4 (and earlier), all the way to the end of the race. People you have never seen before, and will probably never see again, shouting heartfelt - and often hilarious - encouragement to those souls crazy enough to run 26.2 miles through our home towns.
It's one of those things that makes Boston Boston. It's why I love living here, and would never consider moving anywhere else. And no act of terror is going to change that.
Therefore, while I grieve for those people killed and injured today, I will say this to all you runners: I'll see you next year. And the year after that. And the year after that, too. Because for every "real" athlete out there running the race, there are five running it because they lost someone to cancer, or want their schools to have better technology, or any of a thousand other noble causes that drive people to test themselves against the Boston Marathon.
So, next year I will stand on the hill up by Ashland High School and watch that wave of crazy people washing down Union Street. And, while my smile may be a little sad, it will still be a smile. And then I'll go down and shout myself horse at the crazy people, helping them stay crazy enough to keep running for another 22.2 miles.
Because we're Boston. It's what we do.

Bride of Tab Dump

Who has time to write up thoughtful reactions to all of the cool things out on the internet? Isn't it easier just to throw you some links and let you read what you want? Enjoy!

• A collection of excellent old SciFi Illustrations by Shusei Nagoka. Although it's incongrous to see cool spaceship art side-by-side with cheezy 70s band cover art. 
• Los Bros Hernandez are continually singing the praises of Bob Bolling's Little Archie comic books as the inspiration for their work on Love and Rockets - in particular the awesome "Lil Kids" segments. Big Blog Comics shows us an example of his work, and it's as fun as you expect.
• Thinking of working in some fartlek work into my running, but haven't actually done so yet.
• Cool footage from Pavel Klushantsev's The Road to the Stars film, an inspiration for 2001
• Miles Davis: Genius, Hustler, and Superstar.
• David Byrne recently published what sounds like a fascinating book: How Music Works. Brain Pickings has a synopsis, while Smithsonian published an excerpt that includes his interesting thoughts on silence:

  In 1969, Unesco passed a resolution outlining a human right that doesn’t get talked about much—the right to silence. I think they’re referring to what happens if a noisy factory gets built beside your house, or a shooting range, or if a disco opens downstairs. They don’t mean you can demand that a restaurant turn off the classic rock tunes it’s playing, or that you can muzzle the guy next to you on the train yelling into his cellphone. It’s a nice thought though—despite our innate dread of absolute silence, we should have the right to take an occasional aural break, to experience, however briefly, a moment or two of sonic fresh air. To have a meditative moment, a head-clearing space, is a nice idea for a human right.
  John Cage wrote a book called, somewhat ironically, Silence. Ironic because he was increasingly becoming notorious for noise and chaos in his compositions. He once claimed that silence doesn’t exist for us. In a quest to experience it, he went into an anechoic chamber, a room isolated from all outside sounds, with walls designed to inhibit the reflection of sounds. A dead space, acoustically. After a few moments he heard a thumping and whooshing, and was informed those sounds were his own heartbeat and the sound of his blood rushing through his veins and arteries. They were louder than he might have expected, but okay. After a while, he heard another sound, a high whine, and was informed that this was his nervous system. He realized then that for human beings there was no such thing as true silence, and this anecdote became a way of explaining that he decided that rather than fighting to shut out the sounds of the world, to compartmentalize music as something outside of the noisy, uncontrollable world of sounds, he’d let them in: “Let sounds be themselves rather than vehicles for manmade theories or expressions of human sentiments.” Conceptually at least, the entire world now became music.

• What successful people do with the first hour of their work day. 
• Warren Ellis awesome talk on on "How to see the Future" A must read, filled with interesting stories and facts. My favorite is this:
  

  The Olympus Mons mountain on Mars is so tall and yet so gently sloped that, were you suited and supplied correctly, ascending it would allow you to walk most of the way to space. Mars has a big, puffy atmosphere, taller than ours, but there’s barely anything to it at that level. 30 Pascals of pressure, which is what we get in an industrial vacuum furnace here on Earth. You may as well be in space. Imagine that. Imagine a world where you could quite literally walk to space.
  That’s actually got a bit more going for it, as an idea, than exotic red deserts and canals. Imagine living in a Martian culture for a moment, where this thing is a presence in the existence of an entire sentient species. A mountain that you cannot see the top of, because it’s a small world and the summit wraps behind the horizon. Imagine settlements creeping up the side of Olympus Mons. Imagine battles fought over sections of slope. Generations upon generations of explorers dying further and further up its height, technologies iterated and expended upon being able to walk to within leaping distance of orbital space. Manufactured normalcy would suggest that, if we were the Martians, we would find this completely dull within ten years and bitch about not being able to simply fart our way into space.

Thoughts on Running the Vermont City Marathon

“My time, the rank I attain, my outward appearance — all of these are secondary. For a runner like me, what’s really important is reaching the goal I set myself, under my own power. I give it everything I have, endure what needs enduring, and am able, in my own way, to be satisfied. From out of the failures and joys I always try to come away having grasped a concrete lesson.”
- Haruki Murakami, from What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

I finally ran 26.2! The Vermont City Marathon was last Sunday, and your RR&RS bloggers all took part. I was particularlly excited to run the VCM for two reasons: one, I grew up in the Burlington area, and running the first few races as part of a relay team were so fun that I wanted to experience the race in its entirety, and two, I know that Burlington knows how to throw a party. And the VCM didn't disappoint on the latter! The day will filled with incredible sights that I don't have the time to list now, but short list of some of the more memorable ones were: wall-to-wall people lining the streets of the city to cheer us on, a clapping drag queen on Church Street, Eric and Mo’s wives with their “Dads of RR&RS sign, seeing a view containing both Mount Mansfield and Camel's Hump at once, and lots of bands ranging from the to the country rock ensemble on North Street playing “queen of hearts” to the random guys on the sidewalk strumming their guitars or blowing hot oboe riffs.

But all that was in the future. The three of us toed the start line filled with the confidence of a good eight months of training. So good, in fact, that visions of running a 3:30 filled my head, so from the gun, I ran with that pace group, luxuriating in my tapered legs, soaking in the crowd cheering us on, and enjoying seeing some of the old sights from my UVM days (Bove's, the beautiful house of the Fiji fraternity). As we worked our way onto the Burlington Beltway – an out-and-back on a closed freeway – the running started to get serious. Still feeling good, I slowly passed the 3:30 pace group on a downhill and sunk into myself for a bit, enjoying my music and trying to ignore the annoying footing on the canted freeway. Looking back on my splits now, I was running much faster than I had anticipated, but it sure didn't feel that way – I was cruising and feeling damned good doing it.

So I was surprised when I started feeling my calves around mile 10 as we turned onto Church Street. Not good. I've experienced this before in races: the calves tighten up because of the faster pace of the race and the extra pounding on the pavement. I slowed down and tried to drag my toes a bit in an attempt to stretch out the calves as I ran, but as we started south the situation wasn't getting any better.

My own personal cheering section!

One major highlight was mile 12, where my family gathered to offer me encouragement and water. After that, after this my race went sour. I knew I was in trouble because my calves were hard as rocks and not loosening up. I was drinking lots of water and Gatorade in fear of cramps. I was stopping  to stretch the calves. None of this helped. At the half-way point, I just tried to relax and enjoy the awesome scenery of the Adaronaks across Lake Champlain, and this distracted me enough to get me to the Burlington Taiko drummers situated at the foot of the course’s major hill: the assult on Battery.  Hearing the pounding of all of these deep drums was incredibly invigorating, and fueled what was a great run up the hill: it was actually a good rest for my calves. Unfortunately, as I crested the hill and started down North Ave around mile 16, I started experiencing sharp nerve pain in my right knee.

KBVCM Splits

I toughed it out for a while, but by mile 18, I was half walking and half jogging in an attempt to mitigate what was an electric nerve pain shooting from my knee. It was occasionally so debilitating that I literally couldn't run at all. Cursing my bad luck, I sunk into a dark place within myself as I struggled to keep moving, completely ignoring  the lawn parties lining the race route as we weaved our way through the suburbs north of the city. By mile 20, I was miserable and debating giving up. People were passing me left and right, and I wasn't even enjoying the families offering me water, oranges, watermelons and, in one extreme case, small cups of beer.

The turning point was at mile 22, when a guy in an oversized foam cowboy hat passed me, smiling and having a grand old time. This finally drove home that I wasn't going to achieve the time that I expected, and just needed to relax and focus on finishing. My dirty secret is that I’m a stubborn bastard at the core, so I vowed to keep moving the best that I could and finish the race even if I needed to walk the rest of the way. I felt like DeNiro chanting "I've come too far" in Midnight Run. So I soaked my head in a garden hose sprinkler, took a bathroom break, texted my wife to let her know not to expect me until after the 4:00 mark, and figured out a way to “run” that minimized the pain. This involved pumping my arms as hard as I could, which eventually lurched my legs into motion, and I alternated between this shuffling jog and speed walking for the last few miles. For this reason, the last hour of the race passed in a delirious haze - all I really remember is the pain, my thoughts as I struggled to keep moving, and a few more memorable scenes (incredulous joking with another slowpoke that we were doing this for Michelob; the woman wearing diamond-studded Mickey Mouse ears; an annoying sign claiming that "Pain is Weakness Leaving Your Body").

I wish I could say that I crossed the finish line and felt an incredible sense of accomplishment at my time of 4:15, but honestly I was just glad that it was over. I grabbed my knees and sucked wind for a few moments, tossed back a few chocolate milks and a banana, and worked my way over to my family, where the endorphins carried me through an over-loud and overcrowded “reunion zone.” It was a hot day and my kids were overstimulated, so we didn't partake of the end-of-race scene: we took some pictures and headed to my Mom’s house for BBQ and cold Magic Hat. Is there anything better than a cold beer in the sun after a long race?

It was a long race, and one that I enjoyed overall, despite the uncomfortable finish. Reflecting upon the experience, I've been pondering which concrete lesson to take away (as Murakami suggests above), and  the major one is how humbling running 26.2 miles is. I consider myself a pretty fast runner, and yet 343 runners passed me in the last six miles of the race! Still, I finished, which I didn't believe I could do even six months ago. I'm also surprised I let ambition take over my belief that running is practice, but next time i'll be more diligent about adhering to my pacing plan - really, just looking at the marathon as another long run. And there will be a next time, because at some point, i'm taking another crack at 26.2: I want to see what I can do with a healthy knee!

Cross-posted on Reading, Running and Red Sox

At the Finish Line

Happy to be done running!

I'll have more to write about this later, but for now here's me celebrating after the Vermont City Marathon with my lovely and incredibly supportive wife. A year ago, I wasn't even sure i'd be able to run a half-marathon, much less a full one, so just crossing the finish line was a major accomplishment. I was a bit disappointed because I hurt my knee half-way through the race and thus didn't run nearly as fast as I would have liked, but keeping things in perspective I now can say i've finished the Vermont City Marathon - something I always wanted to do! It's a nice feeling.

How to Listen to Music, and One Reason Why

Don't stop the beats! Why? Well, listening to music can boost your running performance by 15%. That's pretty significant, and part of the reason why I feel that i'll have to listen to at least some tunes when I run the Burlington Marathon later this month, despite their strong discouragement.

No word on if this will help you achieve this 15% productivity gain, but Elliott Schwartz presented seven essential skills for listening to music in his book Music: Ways of Listening, originally published in 1982. In it, he says that our ears have been “dulled by our built-in twentieth-century habit of tuning out” and thus need to be actively developed. It sounds a bit pretentious, but Brain Pickings gives us a quick synopsis that's worth a read. Essentially, the skills are:

1. Develop your sensitivity to music. 
2. Develop a sense of time as it passes
3. Develop a musical memory. 
4. Acquire a working musical vocabulary. 
5. Develop musical concentration (especially when listening to lengthy pieces)
6. Concentrate upon ‘what’s there,’ and not what you hope or wish would be there. 
7. Bring experience and knowledge to the listening situation (e.g., info about its composer, history and social context)

Running as Practice

I’m running more than I ever have before in my life, and I’ve been running (relatively) regularly for 26 years. Ostensibly this increase in my amount of running is to get me prepared  for the Burlington Marathon, but the more I’ve run the more I’ve come to learn that it’s more than that - but before that, my training went through three distinct phases:

1. Running longer distances at my normal pace. When I first started training, I continued to build up my speed along with distance. This trend maxed out where most of my runs were run at 7:30-8:00 pace. This continued until a major calf injury slowed me down for a few weeks and then...
2. Running to a training plan. I downloaded a “beginners marathon” training plan, one that told me that I should be running 4-5 days a week, cross-training one day, and resting 1-2 days. I did this for a few weeks before getting discouraged in its robotic nature; it wasn't in tune with what my body or my mind required. So I entered my current phase, which is...
3. Slower running a few days a week. I now start off as slow as I can and slowly pick up the speed over the course of the run. This has enabled me to relatively quickly achieve distances that I have never done before (my first 20 miler, for example). I've cut back on the number of times I hit the pavement, which keeps me focused when I do run.

While all of this running, has me in good shape for the marathon (7 weeks away!), I no longer subscribe to the current thinking that “every run has to have a purpose.” It's just not how I roll. Planning when and the speed at which I needed to run was taking all of the fun out of it! Now that i'm going out with the only goal being distance or time (to run 20 miles, or to be jogging for 2.5 hours, for example) has been incredibly relaxing. To get all zen on you, this has taught me that the journey is it’s own satisfaction. In other words, while I’ll be excited to finish the marathon (and hopefully beat Eric and Joel & drink their scotch), it’s no longer what I’m running these long distances for. Rather, I’ve fallen in love with the story of the long run, of the sheer ego-destroying time it takes to run 16+ miles (there’s a reason that running makes us stupid).

I was inspired to write this after reading Weapon-Grade Ennui's posting on George Leonard’s Mastery, and his musings on how practice is neither glamorous nor interesting and thus the process can be its own payoff.  Money quote:

“…[Leonard] enjoys Zen parables. … [like] how you have to empty your cup before you can fill it, or how you have to let go of that cup of expertise to grab the quart on the table.

Someone aiming for excellence might roll their eyes at these Zen paradoxes. I am convinced by them. Maybe to get good at something, you have to not care if you ever do. The road is too long to be motivated by a destination you can only imagine and never see. The journey has to be its own satisfaction. I don’t fantasize about seeing my name on a bookstore’s shelves, anymore. I am more interested in learning how to pay attention to all the steps leading to it.”

This sounds about right. All of the writing and pondering and soul-searching that has lead up to my ability to not only run but like running 20 miles has been enjoyable in and of itself. I know this because I am looking forward to continuing my long runs even after May 27^th has come and gone, something that was inconceivable just a half-year ago. I’ve liked learning more about my body, my capabilities and my limits, and it’s made me a better person for it.

Running the Half of Quincy

Pacing for the Half of Quincy

I've read that for those of us new to marathon training that it’s a good idea to run a half-marathon about two months beforehand to get a feel for long-distance racing. Since the Burlington Marathon’s at the end of May, I signed up for the Half of Quincy – a new half-marathon / 5K race that was held this past Sunday. The race had the added benefit of being on the water (always nice) and being in Josh's hometown , my old college roommate and a longtime friend who also happens to be a speedy runner.

It hasn’t been much of a winter this year in New England, and this Sunday was no exception – it must have been 55 when we lined up to start and rose into the 70s as the day wore on. Still, it was March, with a chilly wind off the water, so Eric, Josh and I lined up in shorts and long-sleeve shirts. Eric and I started out slowly, quickly losing sight of Josh in the crowd, because we had both stated our intention of treating this race as a training run and because I was fearful of aggravating the strange right-calf pains I'd been experiencing the last few weeks. However, the great weather and competition meant that after the first mile I felt comfortable enough settling into a comfortable 7:30 pace. I was loving not carrying the hand-held - many thanks to the volunteers handing out water! - and the flat course. Training on Ashland’s hilly terrain really paid off here, with a max elevation gain of 100 feet - and all that within a mile - I was able to keep a faster pace for longer than I normally do. 

Most of the race, I was by myself, although afterwards Eric told me that he was on my tail for a long time before I had to stop for a quick bathroom break at 7.5 miles. The crazy thing was that when I started running again I passed him at some point without even noticing! At that point, I was locked in – I had changed my music from my typical ambient downtempo (The Orb, mostly) to straight rock and roll, and  suspect that I passed him when Zevon was pounding out "Boom Boom Mancini". That song energized the second half of the race for me – and between the toons and my stop, I felt very strong, and started slowly increasing my speed, becoming ever more confident in the health of my calf.

I finally saw Josh up ahead of me around 10 miles and worked steadily to catch up. I caught up with him after mile 11, with Eric (unbeknownst to me) right on our tails. I said Hi to Josh (and our families, who had come out to watch) and, not wanting to lose the great feeling in my legs, took off for the finish line. While I didn’t finish with a kick, I slowly sped up to a 7:00 minute mile pace as I crossed the finish line in 1:37:51. Josh was right behind me at 1:38:32, with Eric on his heels at 1:38:39. An excellent effort by all! We celebrated with bananas and coconut water, I gave my medal to Hunter, and enjoyed the incredible food provided by the Culinary arts program at Quincy High School - homemade cookies, chicken and minestrone soup, and wraps - before heading back to Josh's house for cold beers.

All in all I couldn’t be happier with my performance. My calf injury not only appears to have cleared up but I was also able to run much faster than I had hoped (I was anticipating finishing in 1:50; certainly no faster than 1:45). I’m feeling much more confident in my ability to tackle longer distances, which is good, because the next few weekends are going to be filled up with ever-longer distances (this Sunday I tackle 16 miles!) And, most importantly, it was an excellent time on an amazing day with some of my best friends. I look forward to running it again next year!

Cross Posted on Reading, Running and Red Sox

Fall Running Fragment

I recently found a fragment I wrote about running during the fall that I was going to use as a springboard for a longer post, but now that that the window has passed, i'll simply present it here without any fluff. Enjoy!
---
Fall has arrived, and as the leaves pile up on the ground, the sounds of far-away trains and motorways travel farther through the skeletal trees, bringing otherworldly mechanical hoots and dull hisses that fight for prominence with my breath as I run down suburban roads. I say suburban, and there are certainly traditional suburbs on my running routes – too many houses on streets named for the trees that were cut down to make way for them. But one of the reasons that I love New England is the small scale of everything, and so my runs are punctuated with small portions of wilderness as nature fights her way through the structured settlements. Hence the scene as I run through southern Framingham, and as I transition from one suburb to another I find myself, if only for a quarter mile, on a country road, a small spit of pavement between two ponds, fall colors on the trees and also mirrored back to me on the still water, with only a few ripples coming from a shockingly white swan drifting about in the first light. Or jogging up a slow hill that divides a golf course, pale light floating down all around me through the early morning mist, not a car or person in sight.

Cross Posted on Reading, Running and Red Sox

Journalistic Hyperbole

Christopher McDougall’s Born to Run is a fun, fast paced, dramatic story about a lost tribe of super runners. It’s incredibly entertaining and thought provoking, but has been criticized by many people for including too much “gonzo” journalism, for letting exuberance overwhelm the facts, as seen by Ed Ayres detailed criticism, summarized as “The first [of the book’s] two stories are somewhat misguided and misinformed, though entertaining.  The third is well researched and, I think, profoundly important. I don't know if I have ever before read a book that is so wrong and so right between the same two covers.”

Peter Richmond’s article on Ryan Fitzpatrick is similar. An interesting portrait of a thoughtful man, it nonetheless includes such pronouncements such at this: “It kind of makes you wonder if, in a graphic-novel alternate universe, Fitzpatrick has been predestined to visit failing American post-industrial towns until one of them recognizes his mission as Savior and anoints him.” The Goose’s Roost – a thinking man’s Buffalo Sports blog – takes him down by pointing out the ambiguities behind the hyperbole.

These two writings shine a light on an interesting question: What exactly should be the relationship between telling an entertaining story and being faithful to the facts? I don’t have the answer, but like everything, the answer falls somewhere in between. On one side, you have someone that tells a story with no regard for the truth, aiming for nothing more that entertainment. On the other hand, you have someone who strives for the most accurate representation of reality as possible with no regard for storytelling. (This along with incomprehensible jargon is why so many academic papers are so unreadably bad – they have no concern with telling a story.)

Personally, I find the prevalence of hyperbole these days to be mildly disturbing, simply because we negate the power of words if we don’t use them for their intended purpose. For example: it’s entertaining to use the word “epic” as a synonym for “great” (as in “That was an epic game, man!”) but what it means is that you now don’t have a word to use when you want to say something was truly epic (by definition “heroic; majestic; impressively great”) I’m as guilty as the next person of doing this, BTW, and I’m not sure it’s going to go away anytime soon .

As for representing nothing but the truth in text, well, the truth is always more complex than any narrative you can create. The mere tactic of picking and choosing facts and presenting them in a certain order by definition leaves things out and thus doesn't paint a complete picture of a thing. It’s like the old story about the only accurate map having a 1:1 scale that includes everything you could ever want – like something out of a Borges tale. So if you accept this fact, why not make your story entertaining? Why not stay as accurate to the truth as you can, but have some fun along the way?

And so in the end, I fall on the side of the entertainers, with the caveat that a little bit of hyperbole can go a long way. What do you think?

Canal Diggers 2011

The results from the Canal Diggers 2011 5K are in. Here's what I was able to accomplish:

Time: 19:24.7
Pace: 6:16
Place: 21
Division: 6 out of 100

I'm obviously pretty happy with the results. Might try doing some speed work before my next 5K to see if I can't improve on that. I'd say that I'd see if I could improve in my division - the top three finishers make some money after all! - but the 5th place 30-39 year old finished in 17:45. That's faster than I was able to run a 5K when I was 17, when I ran a 17:58 in the VT XC State Championship. Yikes!

Cross Posted at Reading, Running and Red Sox

Quote of the Day

"Beyond the very extreme of fatigue and distress, we may find amounts of ease and power we never dreamed ourselves to own; sources of strength never taxed at all because we never push through the obstruction."
- William James, as chosen by Scott Jurek as the Young Gun's unofficial creed as detailed on Born to Run, p. 112

Gone Fishin'

In a few short hours, i'm packing the fam into an overstuffed car and heading to Block Island for a week's vacation. While i'm hoping to check in now and again, I anticipate blogging to be light until my return.
If anyone is familiar with the small island and has any recommendations for things to do or good running trails let me know in the comments.
Cheers!

Running and Character

Due to illness, insomnia and extreme readability, I’m already halfway through Christopher McDougall's Born to Run. The thing that has stood out to me so far - other than the sheer awesomeness of the story - is the emphasis on the personality traits that make up a better runner. As evidence, McDougall presents the fascinating story of Czech runner Emil Zatopek (starting on p.95), or the antidotes about Joe Vigil:

Posted on the wall of Vigil’s office was a magic formula for fast running that, as far as Deena could tell, had absolutely nothing to do with running: it was stuff like “Practice abundance by giving back,” and “Improve personal relationships,” and “Show integrity to your value system." p.119

or

Over the previous two years, Vigil had become convinced that the next leap forward in human endurance would come from a dimension he dreaded getting itno: Character. … Vigil wasn’t talking about “grit” or “hunger” or “the size of the fight in the dog.” In fact, he meant the exact opposite. Vigil’s notion of character wasn’t toughness. It was compassion. Kindness. Love. p.92

I’m looking forward to where this all leads, but from a book that I expected to hear more about running form than racing psychology, this angle was a pleasant surprise.

Crossposted on Reading, Running and Red Sox

Quote of the Day

The human experience is populated by dreams and aspirations. For me, the animal totem of these dreams is the antelope, swift, strong and elusive. We chase after antelopes and sometimes we catch them. Often we don’t. But why do we bother? I think it is because without dream antelopes to chase we become what a lapdog is to a wolf. And we are inherently more like wolves than lapdogs, because the communal chase is part of our biological makeup.

- Bernard Heinrich, Racing the Antelope