Insomnia

If you can swing it, I recommend life as a functioning insomniac.  Contrary to its reputation as the destroyer of souls, a constant, predictable insomnia  is freeing.  I was designed to require little sleep, but it wouldn't matter if I did require it.  I'm just not very good at it.  And so when the rest of  the world is sleeping, folks like me get work done at odd hours, finish the three books we've been reading, and have ideas worth having.

This is not tough guy talk.  There is nothing commendable about getting by with less where sleep is concerned, any more than it would be admirable to require less air.  It's just how you are riveted together.  I've never been one of these Spartans who assure you sleep is overrated, or they'll sleep when they're dead, or any such platitude.  These folks are nothing like me. They are tacitly conceding that sleep is important and feels good, but showing off their tough guy behavior.  It's pride in self-denial, in endurance, the idea of hanging in there to git 'er done, when most couldn't.

As a practical matter, I suspect a lot of these no sleep tough guys are lying.  Everyone I ever  knew who offered that he could go for days without sleep is someone I eventually caught napping.

Thing is, something's up.

I'm sleeping.

Heavily, and well, and a lot.  I fall asleep early and end up uncharacteristically sleeping through alarms.  and I don't wake up during the night.  This, after a lifetime of waking up every other hour, nonsense dreams, and routinely throwing up my hands, saying screw it, I'm up now, and getting dressed at 3:30 AM.  Triathlon season is over, so skipping morning swim practice for Zs is fine -- for now.  I am not troubled, during my off season, to be a single workout per day guy.  And it wouldn't matter of  I were -- this is like a virus I can't shake.  I leave work, go to my kids' practices, ride my trainer for an hour, and pass out.  Often without showering.  Then it's 7 AM and I am waking up and considering rolling over for another 15 minutes.  As opposed to sitting bolt upright at 4:30, and 25 minutes later using a pull buoy and paddles.

I suppose it's possible my body is telling me I need the sleep, but I don't buy it, at age 44, for the first time.

And you normal sleepers -- is this how you feel? Do you wake up after 8 hours feeling sleepier than when you went to bed?  What the hell is that?  I wake up at 7 and am paralyzed.

This better be a phase.  There's a reason this blog has gone unattended like an overgrown garden.  Insomniacs get stuff done.  Just maybe at odd hours.

Insomnia per Ed Norton's nameless character/Tyler Durden..
Love the book, love the movie, love this scene -- but this is the conventional view of insominia.  Well, I dissent.  I hope not to sleep though the night again, and soon.

What Have I Become

    Three seasons ago, I broke down and procured a time trial helmet.   Now, you might reasonably see this as a throwaway moment in a fungible life:  an instantly forgettable economic choice.  Not so. I gave it at least as much thought as which lever to pull in the voting booth,  because it underscored a larger, ugly truth:  life is a series of compromises.

    See, I deplored the sight of these helmets the moment the first one showed up at a sprint triathlon somewhere.  I despised the absurd stinger jutting out impractically behind the rider's skull.  I hated the ostentatious, frivolous expense, and the notion that the wearer intended to buy himself some extra speed.  Of course every race I went to, there were more. These helmets spread through the elite triathlon ranks like cold sores among strippers. I scoffed.

     Soon,  setting up my bike pre-race, I'd find myself the last holdout with an old-fashioned bike helmet, that didn't  look like what you'd wear to work on the Death Star.  

Kona?  Check.  Alcatraz?  Check.  Alderaan? Check. Check.

    Well, TT helmets were my line in the sand.  Bucking the trend was not just a matter of sports and fashion, but a moral imperative not to join the aerodynamic herd. 

    Triathletes are like competitive sheep, if sheep could compete at something.   When the newest pricey gewgaw comes out -- provided it is rumored to confer some athletic advantage -- everyone gets one.  Which is why everyone I know has a Quark Power Meter that costs more than his first bike, and a Garmin 310XT, two sets of race wheels, and the ubiquitous time trial helmet.*

     Part of my pit-of-stomach revulsion at TT helmets was the poseur factor.  Triathlon is saturated with athletes who crash the gates and immediately try to buy their way to the top.  I speak of the mid-life crisis surgeon, who attends his first sprint triathlon on a $7500 tri bike with top-end race wheels, but leaves the toe bucket pedals on, because he hasn't actually ridden the thing yet, and doesn't know how to clip in.   Or the low country cyclists who ride exclusively where there are no hills to climb, but obsess over bike weight -- this new crankset will save me 75 grams! -- as opposed to riding what they've got, and losing the 29 pounds that have a accrued around their middles.

     And so all haughty and superior, I clung to my old, round, plastic yarmulke of a bike helmet, and snubbed the TT helmet crowd as if they were sneetches without stars.   I mocked them.  Called them cone heads. There was only one problem.  Time trial helmets work.  I mean, really  work.  The science is in.   Depending on whose study you buy into, they may matter as much as your 1500 dollar rear disc wheel, more than what anything on your bike weighs, and may tie for second behind the body positioning you spent a year trying to dial in, tinkering with seat yaw or stem pitch or something.

    I view running and cycling industry articles and posts and studies about the "science" of running and cycling with a jaundiced eye.  I don't use the air quotes to suggest that there isn't a ton of real science on endurance sports -- God, is there ever -- but to emphasize that much of what they foist as science is really advocacy.  Or speculative entertainment.  Or just gussied up, generic advertising with graphs.  And some photos of stern men in lab coats observing some skinny specimen on a treadmill, often wearing an air tank.  And electrodes.

     Lava and Velo News need you to buy stuff from their advertisers. Runner's World needs you to buy those motion control shoes and built-up orthotics, because without a running industry -- the latest Asics whatevers -- they don't have a magazine. As an aside, I tossed my built up shoes and orthotics in 2011 and started running in glorified slippers. Since then I've been running with impunity, after four years of nagging injuries.  I agree with this man that the shoes and inserts were making me worse.  But with the billions Nike and Asics and the rest pump into advertising, it's hard for the industry to admit that you were better off running in 1975 Nike Waffle Racers -- slippers with waffle soles -- than in the latest Air Max.

    I quit subscribing to anything from, for example,  Rodale Press, partly because they write down to an audience of  giddy initiates, and partly because the same publications contradict themselves like Nathan Thurm.  And it isn't just the newbie fanzines like Runner's World, either.    Granted, science and medicine -- and athletes -- advance.  Carb loading used to require a carb depletion phase, then it didn't.  Until it did and didn't again.

    But some matters are settled.

    Like time trial helmets.  Arguing against their efficacy is like arguing for a flat Earth.  The evidence is in -- they work. They absolutely make you faster, on the identical effort, vs. wearing a conventional helmet. Free time, just by wearing a pointy hat.  But I had my pride.  The mouthy critic would be eating major crow, if he broke down and got one.  And then a friend at the bike shop, knowing that I had USAT Nationals coming up, handed me a new, black and blue Giro TT helmet for free.  Someone had worn it a few times, sweated in it, and brought it back claiming there was something wrong with it.  Bike store guy said here, it's yours.

    A conundrum.

     People who know me and like me almost invariably describe me as "uncompromising," or similar. That, or "you asshole!" Two ways of describing the same phenomenon, I suppose. But so much for that -- these alien helmets forced me to compromise, and I loathed them for it. Two competing values weighed against each other on my internal ethical scales: my strident individuality on the one side vs. athletic advantage on the other.

  As I learned in tenth grade -- but occasionally have to relearn -- Emerson wrote that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.  Truer words never spoken.  Tenth grade is a good time to read Emerson and Thoreau, because that's when a fellow ought to grasp that doing something to be different for the sake of being different allows others to influence your choices just as much as does conforming.   Sheep or anti-sheep, no matter.  Each is equally controlled by the herd.  My innate need to be in the minority, to be different for its own sake had -- yet again -- collided with a more reasoned, mature individuality.  Wear the helmet, don't wear the helmet, whatever.  Just do what you're gonna do, and be who you are. 

  Overthink much?


  And so the man who'd ridden his first two iron length triathlons on a used 400 dollar aluminum road bike, showed up at Nationals in 2009 in a shiny new TT helmet.  I was mildly chagrined -- I still deplore how they look -- but there you go.  Change is glacial with me.

  I ended up biking 57 minutes for the hilly 40K bike leg, at 41 years old.  A credible time.  That helmet bought me 30 to 45 seconds, and helped qualify me for Worlds.  I out biked most men of any age.  Wearing the TT helmet, I had both beaten 'em and joined 'em, simultaneously.

   Whatever.    Time trial helmets still make you look like a douche. Here's a quick primer for the uninitiated, then I'm off to go sell out some more.

One big reason I resisted TT helmets: I didn't want to look like small-time retro super hero, The Rocketeer.  A flying bellhop in the very first time trial helmet  saves an art deco Los Angeles!  At least it's easier to go to the bathroom in his flying suit than in Tony Stark's.

 

 

 

This man at least has the excuse of being European, and also riding in the Tour De France, so I will cut him some slack.  He's still a douche,because his TT helmet has a blast shield, but in mitigation it also has plastic mutton chop sideburns, which are novel.  NOTE the clothing, however. This man is also wearing a bike onesie, a close relative of the tri-onesie.  This means it is harder for him to go to the bathroom than it is for either Tony Stark or the Rocketeer.  This will be addressed in further petty, judgemental  posts about racewear.

 

 

Which settles the debate:  can a woman be a douche?  Why yes, yes she can.



*See also:  Skinsuits and --in the case of wealthy luntatics -- oxygen sleep chambers.

Nothing to add.

Best Food Yet!

   

If you grew up in the South, you are probably familiar with Huddle House. For those unfortunate enough to have grown up where grits are exotic, Huddle House is like a lower rent Waffle House.  Truly.  It's a chain like Waffle House, but more resignedly self aware. Huddle House knows it only gets off the bench late in games, for junk minutes.  Management understands it can't compete, so it erects Huddle Houses in places like Millen, Georgia, where they only have to compete with a tire retreader and the 18-34 year old males openly selling crack in the parking lot, vying for your wages. Crack, not meth!  Quaint.

It's Waffle House minus the waffles, resigned to its fate as a vo-tech dropout.  In that regard, it's like Mr. Pibb, Dr. Pepper's underachieving half-brother who couldn't hack anatomy, but constantly reminds you of it by calling himself "Mr.," even  in casual settings.

For my money, Waffle House has more parking lot fights, but Huddle House has better ones.  And that is just fights between customers.  A friend of mine used to manage a Waffle House, and has managed other places.  Like so many of my friends, he is a skinny triathlete, often at a size disadvantage.  He avers that staff-on-staff violence is a store-to-store thing, irrespective of the company, but that controlling it is more about attitude and how a man carries himself than brute size. He adds that managing a diner chain requires a fellow to be part cook (cooks get arrested a lot, and otherwise no-show), part bouncer, part ref, and -- routinely -- father confessor.  If the priest-penitent privilege doesn't apply to conversations between shift manager and waitress, it should. 

When I was a kid, I associated Huddle House with football games, because we insisted that our dad take us to the one in Newnan, GA, late at night, on the drive home from Athens  We wanted to go because brand identification works: the logo for Huddle House was a cute cartoon kid in a helmet and pads, hugging a football.  At age 7 and 8, that was why we wanted to eat there. 

Also, even then, we knew what most fair minded, reasonable adults eventually learn for themselves:  waffles are ghastly.  Bland, window-pane batter, singed by a good ironing and rendered either brittle and vile, or gooey and tasteless.  You can only stomach the things with syrup.  Waffles are syrup vehicles and then ashtrays, but I'd never call them food.   So  as kids we went Huddle and left Waffle for others.

Years later I would realize that no one eats the waffles at Waffle House:  they go there for the omelets and coffee and -- if they are cops -- to pick up the younger waitresses.  As an adult, I've taken my business to Waffle House and freely admit it is now my favorite chain.  Breakfast is my favorite meal, and I have no compunction about making co-workers join me for lunch at an all day breakfast joint.   If I'm driving, tough darts, boys, expect to return to work smelling like hash browns and No Melt.  I have migrated to Waffle House partly because it's better, but also because Huddle House abandoned the football kid logo.

So I grew up, said so long to the Huddle House Football Kid, and eased into paying taxes, being a parent, and wearing clothes to work that had to be dry cleaned.  I began going to Waffle House once a week, when I wanted to feel like someone who lifted heavy things for a living and didn't wear a tie.  IE, myself until after college.  I didn't so much abandon Huddle House like an old teddy bear, as end up living somewhere civilized.  There aren't any Huddle Houses in my immediate area, because I live in civilization and all.

That's not to say there's nothing I miss.

I find I miss Huddle House's frank, sober self-appraisal as offered in its own slogan.

Best Food Yet.

That's genius.

They were banking on you to reward their honesty with your patronage.

Best food yet.  We mean, sure, there's better food coming, maybe a Waffle House, where the waitresses feign interest -- but we are the best food since exit 119, And it's pouring out there tonight.  We both know you're hungry, and it's late, and hey -- like you'd be ordering waffles anyway?

And so, after years away, I heard the sirens' song and  found myself in a Huddle House last Sunday evening.  It was pouring rain, I was hungry, and I was in fact in Millen, GA. 

Best Food Yet!  Please pay the ransom.
 
That's because I had raced the Augusta, Georgia Ironman 70.3 on Sunday, stuck around for the awards in the rain, and started my drive home wet and famished.  I inhaled  my 4 scrambled, double grits, wheat toast, coffee and tomato juice, stretched my 6-1 frame across the ketchup red and mustard yellow booth, and reflected on my race.  I'd done well and was pleased, and was now nursing my coffee to warm up in the over-air conditioned vault of a diner.  It occurred to me that I was probably the only triathlete in there this week, and certainly the only ovo-lacto vegetarian.  It further occurred to me sitting there pleasantly sore after a race I was happy with, full of greasy spoon breakfast, that Thomas Wolfe be damned, you really can go home again.

Just kidding.  What occurred to me, simultaneously wired and tired, was:

1.  Jesus Christ I am lucky not to live here;
2.  Should I sleep through masters swimming in the morning?;
3.  This coffee is marginally better than police station coffee;
4.  A bunch of abstruse stuff about bike fit, seat position, stem height, and aerodynamics vs. power;
5.  Look!  A shiny thing!  And of course,
6.  I need to get a blog entry done about this race while it is still fresh.

And so I sat down to blog about triathlon, and changed my mind, because I was spent and just wasn't up for it,  and decided to put it off  until midweek.  And Huddle House will let a man feel fatalistic about his underachieving.

300 Minutes of Heck: Augusta 70.3 Preview and Ramblings

    This Sunday is the  Augusta Ironman 70.3.  It's been a while, and I am curious how I will fare. 

    See, after the birth of my daughter and immediate divorce, I jettisoned long distance triathlon, to focus on things other than my hobby.  This was no noble sacrifice, but rather a necessity of divorced parenthood, career, and time management.  Moreover, let's not kid ourselves, the longer the race, the weaker I get.  I'm hell for an hour, no question about it, which is how I continue to win sprint triathlons outright in my mid-40's.

Me for an hour.

    Alas, the 60 minutes of hell I unleash dissipates quick-like.  I remain hot up to the Olympic Distance (2 plus hours), but beyond that, I'm embers.   At the half iron distance, the brimstone fizzles and I bring you, at best, 300 minutes of heck.  I am more than OK with this:  better to be strong at one distance than mediocre at all.  The exemplar of  endurance extremes, I've won 15 tris outright just since I became a dad 10 years ago, all but two of them sprints.  Yet if you'd seen me walking sideways, crab-like in my last ironman, you'd agree I am not mediocre at that distance either.

    Whatever your distance, whichever leg is your best, triathlon is a hobby.  Call it a "lifestyle," get the M-Dot tattoo; change jobs and cities twice to accommodate your training and race desires;  but  unless you feed your your kids from your winnings, or are bleeding through the nose trying to get your pro card and some sponsors, then triathlon is your hobby.  Not your job.

    I get it that you are addicted to the training, the hours, the sweat, the feeling of accomplishment that approaches hubris, and that delicious soreness after a brutal track session. This sport attracts addictive personalities.  I get it that you surround yourself exclusively with the similarly fervent, and that your social life and your sport are so intertwined, wisteria-like, you can't distinguish between them.

    Well, trainspotters are obsessive too, they are just tougher to spot in a crowd, without the Livestrong bands and bike tans.  Your avocation is what you choose to pass the time before you die, and impose meaning on your life beyond work and sitcoms.   I applaud your choice in hobbies -- I gravitated to this sport in law school back in the last century, and haven't left the fold --  but there are birders who will gut you over a tufted titmouse sighting.  And rival Trekkie gangs beef over Kirk vs. Picard with Biggie vs. Tupac combustibility.

 

My Vote.  Fellow Jew.  And debauched and awesome in his dotage.  Note that Spock, too was a member of the tribe.

    And I wonder if, on the whole, birders, and comic-con types and Trekkies and Jehovah's Witnesses are better adjusted than triathletes, of if we could trade obsessions  and find interchangeable underlying impulses.

    I digress.


    Now then, this 70.3 race on Sunday.   This will be my first venture back at an M-Dot incorporated event since they rebranded the half-ironman distance as "70.3."  Remember how we used to call them half-irons?  Perhaps the "half" seemed reductive, hence the name change.  "Half " resonates with lite beer and half-off sales and the implication that you couldn't hack something fully or completely, since it was just half the full hot order.

    Then again, with the proliferation of decimal point car window stickers -- 13.1!  26.2!  70.3!  140.6! -- perhaps the 70.3 title makes brand sense.  Maybe this is M-Dot corporation following the decimal point sticker trend, not setting it.  Branding aside,  I am keenly interested to see how my short course skills suit this distance after a 7 year hiatus, and whether I am as weak at long stuff as I remember it.   More mileage in the final month would have helped going in, but it's been a strong summer on the bike, I am not over trained and I believe plenty fit enough.

    I look forward to finding out:  300 minutes of heck unleashed on a race, and that same number of minutes spent imposing meaning through sweat on another Sunday morning in my life, until I run out of them.

Winners announced in the 'Will Power Indoor 5K'

Winners announced in the 'Will Power Indoor 5K'

Getting out of town for Labor Day weekend.

Treadmill Trackstar

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3epCwbclw0&feature=plcp

So last Wednesday I woke up and it was race day, and the sheets weren't sticking to the scabs. 

I found this encouraging.

Most open wounds from Sunday's bike wreck had scarred up enough to wear shorts in public.   I took it as a sign that I was supposed to race. Of course I would have raced anyway, and justified it on some dubious theory that my road rash needed to "breathe," or something.  The go compulsion, like The Bible and the U.S. Constitution, can be employed to justify multiple and opposing outcomes.  Here it justified testing the knee, which took the brunt of U.S. Hwy 80 in my spill, on a hard run.

Also,  I knew the race course was blisteringly fast, and designed for an easy P.R.

I called the race director, told him to count me in, and drove to run the Will Power 5K .

I laced up my Minimus Zeros, and thought OK GO. Then I torched the flattest, straightest course I will ever run.  Although the course isn't USATF certified, it is accurate within the meter, and it has not one single turn, hill, pot hole, or intersection. 

Because the race is on a treadmill.  Really. 

How the race worked was, you booked it, showed up at  World of Home Fitness, and raced the clock alone, like a cycling time trial, and store owner William Sutton posted your time on the wall.  And he did it with alacrity.

Because let me tell you about Mr. Sutton.  He speaks in ALL CAPS.  I walked in and he leapt over, trumpeting YOU MUST BE JERRY!  He might have been average height, if muscular, but I can't say for sure, because HE WALKS, TALKS AND MOVES IN ALL CAPS.  This eclipses everything else about him, and in the rest of the room. He reminds me of a tattooed, heavy duty spring.  Or Tigger, if he knew about hack squats. This is one enthusiastic fellow.  He vibrates.  And he WAS GLAD I WAS THERE TO RACE!  He assured me the treadmill had sufficient horsepower and maximum speed to accommodate my needs.  He was so energetic, I only noticed the thick black cast on his foot when I was leaving.  He would explain he'd broken it when he  FELL OFF A ROOF.  I remarked that this sucked, but he countered that THERE'S ALWAYS SOMETHING ACTIVE YOU CAN DO, and that he JUST HAS TO WORK AROUND THIS SETBACK. 

He took an intense interest in my run.  I had an attentive audience.  Matters of pace, form and -- to the extent I had one for a treadmill run -- strategy fascinated him.

He had to deal with others while I was starting.  This gave me a moment to settle in on a treadmill in the storefront window, facing busy Abercorn Street.  I was doing this race on my lunch break from work, and watched the traffic lurch while I warmed up.  And let my mind wander, as it does when I run slowly.  Look at all the cars;  do I look like that when I drive;  his bass is thumping the windows in here; this treadmill is fancy;  I want peanut butter;  look, a shiny thing;  oh, time to start.

Three miles easy, then I began.  I decreed that I would not let the treadmill fall below 10.1 mph, or a bit faster than 6 minute pace.  My plan was to open at that speed and ratchet it up every tenth of a mile until I hit 11mph, or 5:27 pace, then assess.

Mile One:  5:41.

I felt good.  I now resolved not to fall below 11 mph again, and probably run it out right there.  Pshaw.  Picking a manageable speed and holding it is so responsible.  Where's the fun in that?  It's like carefully avoiding all the other drivers on the bumper cars. 

Also --  you try racing 5K on a treadmill without variance.  After a mile or so, ennui sets in.  And so I maxed the thing out at 12mph (5 minute flat mile pace) for a minute, recovered at 10.1, maxed it again, surging that way for the next two miles, as if to shake a phantom competitor.  It's heresy for running purists to say anything good about treadmills, but this was now fun.

Mile Two:  5: 26.

By now Mr. Sutton was on hand and into it.  Say what you want to, tell me you are an individualist, that you run only for internal satisfaction;  tell me you are unmoved by the exhortations of others, and that you always race your own race.  Whatever.  When you have someone watching you run, particularly someone who is passionate about athletics and expects something of you -- when that happens, you run harder.

Mile Three:  5:19. 

I hit mile three surging, maxing the Precor model 9.33 out at 12mph.  I held that speed across the constructive finish line and was astonished.  A recent P.R.

5K total:  16:57.

For you skeptics out there, yes, I am aware that it takes a treadmill from 20 to 30 seconds to get up to speed once you start it, depending on its horsepower and how much pasta you've been packing away.  With Mr. Sutton's consent, I got a moving start.  After my warm up,  I had him witness my full speed start  at .1 mile,  my saying GO, and my hitting my stopwatch.  We timed me for 3.1 miles, from .1 mile to 3.2 miles.  My thinking was, in the real world the gun goes off and you are running.  It doesn't take 30 seconds to run, you just run.  The purist counter-argument goes, right, but it still takes some time to accelerate from a dead stop.  Certainly true, but it's an imperfect world and I wasn't gonna get penalized for standing there while the thing eased into action. Running start.

Now, I haven't broken 17 minutes on pavement in probably ten years.  Partly because I don't race many 5Ks any more, partly because I am nearly 44, and partly because of a spate of  nagging injuries from 2006 -- 2011 that reduced me from runner/triathlete to cranky cyclist who dabbled in running. 

So I well understand that my 16:57 isn't the same as if I had clocked it at Heart Of Savannah.  Treadmills give you a 3 to 5 percent advantage over running on the ground, because when you run outside, your body moves.  Duh, right?  But more specifically, your body moves through air. It faces wind resistance.  That slows you a little.  On a treadmill you stay in the same place, so there is that savings of effort -- you don't have to fight wind.

But even accounting for that pleasant five percent discount, I'm still not that fast.  Treadmills offer a bigger freebie than the wind factor.  They pace for you. And that's what makes racing hard.  They man up, all you do is keep up.

When you go out too fast in a race, you end up easing up in mile two.  You scorch your legs around all those downtown squares, and so you pay for it with fatigue in mile 2.  Your legs want to tie up, so you give in like an indulgent parent,  rationalizing that discipline will come just a bit later.  You tell yourself you will pick it up in the third mile.  You don't.

Ah, but the treadmill, provided you can resist tampering with the buttons, maintains your pace.  You just have to hang on like George Jetson and not call for Jane  to save you. *

No idea what this 16:57 translates to.  Gun to my head, I'd guess 18 minutes flat, which would be a respectable time for me these days.  If I could run it off the bike in a triathlon, then afterward I would dance.  Doesn't matter though, because everyone ran the exact same course and our times make sense compared internally, to each other, in this race.  I was about 80 seconds behind Robert Santoro, my occasional training partner, which means I raced well. Rob's a beast and has gone 15:20-something this year.  I will take it!

I warmed it down briefly -- had to get back to work, and only had time to splash my face and towel off first -- and was about to thank Mr. Sutton for having me, but he THANKED ME FIRST FOR COMING TO HIS STORE AND GIVING IT ALL I HAD.

I was content, and had happily discerned that my knee must be ok, for the big race coming up later this month.  I was the one who needed to be thanking Tigger.

I heard that runners came by all last week and raced alone.  Mr. Sutton submits their times to Fleet Feet, who will email out the final standings this week. If you placed, you'll just go get your trophy. What this awards ceremony format lacks in, well, ceremony, it makes up for in efficiency.  No waiting "just a few more minutes"  after the race, while the timing crew scratch their heads at the 12 year old girl who ran an 11 minute 5K, or the 88 year old who somehow finished before he started.   A coffee junkie who's always doing 3 things at once, I endorse this sort of awards ceremony.

To put this race in perspective, when Savannah can accommodate a treadmill race, its running boom has matured. Just like Atlanta's (In 1978).  It's hard to miss the throngs in Daffin Park during your hour jaunt after work. You'll acknowledge groups of up to 50 newbie runners, often in matching attire, and nod at their coaches.  Sometimes these are charity groups, like Team In Training, aimed at some specific race and an ardent cause. Good for these people.   Neither training in packs, nor busking for donations (noble or otherwise) has ever been my scene.  But I am pleased to see them all out there.

More runners out there benefit us all:   motorists notice us;  safety in numbers;  more races.   So let's resist the urge to be running elitists.

Yeah, I know. You were a runner here back before it was trendy.  Me too.

And you knew about R.E.M. before Murmur.   Me too. Let's get over it.

It's okay if other people discover your favorite band; your identity isn't watered down because you have to share Peter Buck's jangly guitar solos with the rest of us. If you feel diminished, get a life.   If you must, go ahead and wear your 1992 Savannah Marathon long sleeve T (white with blue trim! Proof of your runner street cred!) to packet pickup for the Rock'n'Roll Marathon.

But these new runners don't just crowd your lonely hearts club.  Those courtesy coolers around town weekend mornings,  full of iced water for your long run?  Unheard of 10 years ago, before Robert at Fleet Feet started driving around and putting them out, to accomodate running groups.

And shuffling down Bull Street at dusk, you are less likely these days to get robbed of your ipod or Oakleys, or receive a pointless beat down.  Thugs with guns will never fear a solitary, bony runner, but that throng of witnesses decked out in Team In Training singlets may give them pause.

And you may have noticed, weekend before last, you had the option of two local races:  a half-marathon (in August) and and a cross country race for grownups.  Each unique, each stellar, and both on the same day.  Because we have enough runners to support two races.

The causes of our delayed onset running boom deserve their own blog entry and they shall have it.  For now, I observe that we are fortunate to run in a town where we suddenly matter, and where the racing market is so saturated that we can go do a treadmill race inside a fitness store if we want to.  One where someone fervently WANTS TO SEE HOW FAST WE CAN GO.

That might be worth taking off the hairshirt singlet, and admitting Savannah's new runners into the enclave.

On! On!

Jerry


*That I felt compelled to include this Jetsons' link makes me feel old.  But no one under say 35 would get it.  Plantar fasciitis, bad knees, and stale pop culture allusions.  Oh My.

Hubris ( /ˈhjuːbrɪs/), also hybris, from ancient Greek ὕβρις, means extreme pride or arrogance. Hubris often indicates a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one's own competence or capabilities, especially when the person exhibiting it is in a position of power.
The adjectival form of hubris is "hubristic."

So yesterday was a pretty good training day, as I wrote last night.

I went to bed feeling just a little too comfortable with my fitness going into Augusta, and was recalibrating my race goals.  I can think of some ridiculous times.  And make myself think they'll happen.  Part of my charm.

So this morning I wanted to get out on Valentine, my new triathlon bike, and do something short and fast.  I figured I'd ride out to Tybee, hammer it on Hwy 80, maybe add a detour through Ft. Pulaski, drag race up and down Butler Avenue a few times, then return home.  The plan was to shower and then take the kids back to the beach -- in a car thank you.  Sand castle equipment was already laid out -- three adult shovels,  three large home depot buckets (they double as seats), and these castle shaped molds for the turrets.  My son doesn't build sandcastles so much as he stages elaborate sieges of them, complete with moats, a road infrastructure,  prison yards, complex (and draconian) systems of government, and, ultimately, a biblical plague or tsunami, or other horrific act of God.  He reasons that the ocean is going to destroy his architecture by nightfall, and he'd rather see something epic.  Better to burn out than to fade away.

I digress.  I found myself on Hwy 80 to Tybee, down in the bars, holding 26mph into the cross-wind.  Other than a stiff breeze, a perfect day for a solo ride out to the beach. Cobalt sky, chrome clouds, and not even 80F yet.  Sinful to stay inside and spin on a day like this.  I don't know that I've ever been happier on a bike,  and that's saying something.

So I did 6 drags up and down Butler Avenue,  holding 30-plus with the tailwind, 23-24 coming back into it.  Only my third ride on it, and I have to say my legs were getting used to the larger 54 tooth chain ring and longer 177.5 crank arms.  What can I say, Valentine is a custom job, and her builder and first husband Charlie is a beast.  Now, I push big gears too, but this baby has taken me some getting used to.  I was afraid she might be too much woman for me, but  today was the first ride on Valentine where I was firmly in control.  My broomstick legs can make her go just fine. 

Sailing back from Tybee with a tailwind, I was thinking about the rest of the day, about how well the training is going, and was contemplating Augusta 70.3 and Rev3 Anderson, and  thinking how this bike and I were gonna flatten Augusta's hills like a rolling pin.

Then something went wrong, quick.  Down in the bars I felt the bike kick.  It felt like it was falling apart.  The back tire was the culprit.  This is a deep carbon wheel with sew ups that I bought separate and put on there.  It's fast and at 101mm deep, it's perfect for low country racing when it's windy.   Lighter than a disc, nearly as aero, and less susceptible to the cross winds.

But the tire blew (not a new tire or new wheel) and I hit the deck hard.  My whole left side -- wrist, side, back, knee, ankle, foot --  all got whacked pretty good.  I  have some impressive road rash, but have had way worse.  Knee is skinned and really got bashed -- bruised is all, I hope.  Ankle is sprained.
I am very lucky.  There is always traffic on 80. The guy in the truck behind me was paying close attention -- let's hear it for attentive motorists.  He could easily have hit me like a fleshy speed bump and certainly it wouldn't have been his fault.  He missed me and managed to turn around and come back and block off the lane while I gathered my wits and bike parts.  My Livestrong Oakleys were smashed, I have no idea where the water bottle ended up, but the bike frame seems OK. Aerobars are a mess, and I will want new Gatorskins and tubes,  just to be safe.

But that is a bargain!  My helmet is caved.  I banged my head something good on the tarmac.  A wreck like that -- skittering down Hwy 80 on your side, after you slam your knee and head at 28 mph -- that wreck generally comes out worse. Phew.

And as much bitching as we cyclists do about motorists and our rights, let's hear it for one Justin Knapp of Tybee Island, Georgia, who loaded me and Valentine into his truck and drove me all the way home, after making me lay there for a minute and deciding whether to listen to me when I assured him I was fine, I was fine. Thanks, Justin, and no, I don't mind if you smoke in your own truck!   Particularly when you and your buddy just blocked traffic for me, then volunteered to drive me all the way home to Parkside from out near the beach.  Instead of getting run over after eating it, I got cleaned up, my stuff gathered up, and a lift home. Sorry about all the blood on that shirt.

I am not running with this banged up knee for a week.  Will spin inside on my road bike.  Probably too bloody to swim until Weds.  But I am home in one piece, watching the Three Stooges remake with my kids, and contemplating an (indoor) outing here in a minute.  My kids are past embarrassment with a dad like this, so the blue icepack on my knee won't bother them much at either the Jepson Center* , or Barnes and Noble.  Now, my exaggerated zombie walk and groaning for more brains might, because when you are ripped up from the pavement, that's the look you have and you just need to go with it.  Nothing else to do but deal with it and move forward. 

Introspection is overrated.  Ask Lot's wife.  Look back too long and sure, you might prevent some future mistake or other, but you can over think yourself out of a life.

I am glad I got to ride this day.  Until the wreck it was perfect.  Freak things happen.  And while I won't say that this just makes me stronger when I bounce back, or any of that neo-Friedrich Nietzsche pablum that athletes always spout when shit goes wrong, I will aver that a life worth living includes the occasional black eye.

And thanks again, Justin.  Long walk home.
On! On!

Jerry

* Zombie-friendly Jepson Center:
http://telfair.org/visit/jepson-center/overview/
http://www.pillarofsalt.com/
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Yesterday's entry:

Augusta Dry Run #1
So, five weeks out, I figured I would road test the fitness before Augusta.
Today there were two local race options -- the XC Kickoff Classic, my hands down favorite local race, vs. The Milestone Half-marathon.
I would much prefer 3.1 miles all out on the soaked XC course in Daffin Park, with ankle deep standing water, high grass (they intentionally don't mow it before the race), pine straw bales to leap over, and water pits.  Something like 400-500 high school varsity boys and girls run the course at 8 and 830. Grown ups run at 7AM. It's a blast to race, catch up with runners you've missed during triathlon season (when you vanish from the local running scene, generally not to appear until next Winter), then watch the high school kids fly. I adore running as a team sport, and the parents and friends and family that line the sodden course to cheer make it worth sticking around in filthy, wet shorts to watch it all.
Plus you can see Daffin Park from my backyard. I run there 3 to 4 times a week.
However, desperate times call for desperate measures.
I made a rare responsible training decision and eschewed my favorite race for the. Milestone Half  out in Pooler.
Brian Nash lives near the start at West Chatham Middle School. He is a faithful training partner. We got there at 515AM and set up our bikes on trainers. By 5:30 we were pedaling in the dark, going nowhere, but working hard at it, and listening to Eminem (Brian remains a devoted fan, and still kinda sports the Slim Shady clone look, but with Livestrong gear instead of baggy overalls and a white T.)
Once race volunteers and athletes began trickling in, we got some looks.
We were shooting for 2 hours on the trainer, but fell a bit short, because we needed to pack up the bikes and trainers in his truck.
Probably shoulda hopped off the bike sooner. The 5 port-o-jons for hundreds of runners (there was also a 10K) were jam packed, with a line stretching dauntingly long. There were no nearby woods to run to. Race director assured us he would delay the race until the lines had cleared. Hopping from foot to foot as the lone inched forward, I had doubts. Race was already 10 min late.
Naturally, when I stepped into the port-o-jon, I heard the gun go off, and the cheer that erupts when a race kicks off. I actually laughed sitting there.
Good thing this was a low key race-as-brick workout day.
90 seconds after the start, sprinting across the parking lot to the starting line, I was going. Legs felt good after 1:45ish trainer ride mostly in large ring, and a hard training week. Ran a 7:15 mile, weaving through walkers and female joggers wearing calf length tights (in August, in Georgia), and was on my way.
The course tracks our Saturday Coffee Shop Ride ("the Fast 50) and it was amusing to be bopping along at 8 mph when you are used to 28, down in the aerobars.  Went through 10 in 1:14, so 7:24 pace. That is getting near where I wanna be in Augusta.
I expected to pick it up and run a hard final 5K, but instead waddled through calf cramps and finished gingerly. The Endurolytes that I left back at Brian's truck would have solved that -- must remember them in Augusta.
Jogged across the line in 1:39, glad my calves only really erupted in the last quarter mile, when I attempted to sprint. Plan B was not to sprint. Plan B worked better. I plan B'd it in, lunging in zombie fashion. Whatever works.
Immediately found a banana because all we've been told since middle school football that bananas are for cramps. Perhaps. But sitting down was unwise. Because I later had to stand. Really surprised how much I cramped after just 13.1 miles. I have no respect for the distance, I suppose, but had better at least acknowledge it.  When you've been doing olympic dist and sprints all summer -- and exclusively since 2005 -- it's a mistake to dismiss the half iron distance as easy, because it isn't as intense as an olympic, but isn't an all day sucker like an ironman.
Yeah well I was surprised how wrecked my legs were after a half-marathon time that was 21 minutes slower than my PR, and after a mere 105 minute spin.
The upside is that an hour on the trainer is worth 75 minutes or more on the roads, so this trainer ride was closer to my Augusta split (one hopes) than you'd think. I will get it together.
I believe sub-2:20 bike and sub 1:37 run seem very doable in Augusta. After all, but for cramps I think today was sub 1:37, and it ain't like I tapered, or even skipped weights the evening before. No wonder legs were beat!
So that is today's brick.
The Milestone Half is worth a look. Gets its name because Race Director Steve White  decided there should be a progress check before the Rock'N'Roll Savannah Marathon. That race is the first Saturday in November, so if you struggled today you have ten weeks left to get after it. Timing was perfect for Augusta.
I admit I felt a pang of regret looking at the cross-country results tonight, and receiving texts about the race, but I needed a long-run brick, and got one precisely tailored to my needs.
Savannah Century next Sunday. With a brief run afterward. That will leave four weeks.

On! On!

Jerry

Rash -- had way worse.