That's the Way the Vegan Cookie Crumbles...

My math skills never come into question; mainly because they're unquestionably bad. I'm no mathematician (though, in the field of chaos theory, as explained by Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park, I could probably hold my own, at least long enough to know I don't know nearly as much as I should before trying to domesticate dinosaurs). Numbers appear before my eyes like indecipherable gilded tomes of ancient alien hieroglyphs based in a language of communication long forgotten by things resembling living organisms. So, this goes a long way towards saying when my American mind's eye is presented with the task of converting things into that blessed metric system (not joking: love the metric system, hate the clunky imperial system, that I'm all too familiar with, imposed on people in the States), it's an outlandish sitcom situation ready to unfurl like a banner of shame in the international idiot parade, for which my proudly pink & purple paper-mȃché plastered float may not place with the first prize contenders, but spectators, who eagerly line the streets to gawk at such silly sights, are surely going to notice it pass by. 


I set out yesterday with a recipe not yet refined for the international crowds in an attempt to make vegan cookies with only mild success... 

Bleak Week

I'm fast approaching the one month mark after meeting the feat of accomplishing the Tokyo marathon; it's been more of a Man On Wire* tightrope balancing act (at unimaginable heights without a safety net below) than I ever thought it would be, and I'm afraid of heights (in all honesty I'm not that fond of circuses either, though that's a digression—for once?—I won't bother you, most honorable reader, with today)! I'm trying to regain my respectability as a runner, but things, thus far, haven't been easy going. It seems that every time in the past month that the thought of running has crossed the confetti strewn starting line in my mind, some wannabe Don Juan riding a tricycle with a wobbly third wheel inevitably swoops in to sock-block me from putting those shoes on and finally making my moves to get on out the door. I was feeling a bit lost & defeated without running to comfort me, so a week and a half after disaster made it's mark across Japan, with rain clouds steadily elevating the city's radiation levels, and a wonky left knee, I grabbed my gear, stepped outside, and pointed to the cloud crowded sky, proclaiming "Up and at them radioactive man!" to the deaf ears of an unusually empty midday Tokyo street. 


and then...

Hello Kitty!

Is radiation responsible for turning our strawberries feline?

いちご猫 (strawberry cat)

Cat Island, after all, is part of Ishinomaki city, in the hard hit Miyagi prefecture. Maybe this is their way of saying they're OK, but could use a little love and attention...

A Moveable Beast: Japan's Earthquake & Tsunami Disaster 2011

I'm not going to try to make a tenuous connection between the purpose of this blog and the earthquake & tsunami disaster (and currently increasing radiation woes) that occurred in the northeast (Tōhoku, which means northeast) region of Japan this past Friday. I don't need to frame this catastrophe in any other terms than the direct experience of it, since, after all, this is a chronicle of a runner's life, and both Vincent & myself have always approached the subject of running from a personal point of view. Nothing becomes more immediately personal than living through the history of a natural disaster.


So what happens when history allows you to escape unscathed from the surrounding terribleness?

Earthquake Cross Training

So since the earthquake forced me into walking, biking, and going up and down stairs all day, I suppose the tale is appropriate for this blog.

I was sitting in my office when it began and, as usual, I just kept working through the start of the earthquake. We have so many of them that you just get used to it, but this one quickly got a lot bigger than the others. I looked outside to see if I could see other buildings swaying, but I couldn't. The building soon announced an evacuation, and when I saw the office manager and a few others heading out, I thought that was what we had to do, so I went with. (Turns out only about 1/3 of the office left; the others pretty much just kept working.)

As we made our way down 37 flights of stairs to the ground floor, the walls were literally cracking around us. That sounds scarier than it is, because it was just the spackling between plates of drywall that was cracking for the most part. In any case, you couldn't make it down those stairs without holding on to a rail, and the many women with heels on were faring even worse. Heels are definitely not earthquake wear.

When we got to the bottom, we milled about for a while as security told us the building was being checked out. It seemed that we'd be waiting for quite some time, so I decided to head off to check on my family. Neither my iPhone nor my Blackberry were working, so that meant a walk home.

Midnight Run

At about 11:58pm last night I was reading a post in a running forum about losing motivation in running, while that's not exactly my situation—I still very much LOVE running, I'm just currently in a main event no-holds-barred battle royale with an unforgiving feral beast in the form of ITBS. The marquee above this event spells out INJURY VS. RECOVERY in thick red plastic block letters, though the promoters were missing a second "Y" so they just broke an "X" to replace it, from the streets below, hardly anyone notices the difference, but I know it's there, and it bothers me—I took note of one piece of advice in particular, "Just put your shoes on and get out the door". The advice was a floating piece of driftwood in a crocodile infested river that I immediately jumped on to get across to the other side. Shortly after midnight I was out on the cold-cold streets of Japan, running through the cold-cold Nippon night, trying to bang out that 4 miler from the recovery schedule I had pretty much given up on attempting until the moment I began accomplishing it.

Pretty much the first 1.6km (mile-ish) was fine. I cruised the shallows of darkness like a slumbering shark, who despite a preternatural instinct to attack the pavement moving below, drifted by surprisingly reserved.  Too bad I can't say the same for the next 1.6km. The pain in my knee threw it's head back and howled at the moon: pain was a wolf pack nipping at my tendons as I passed beneath the lamplight lining the きゅうえどがわ waters. I reached the turnaround point and walked beyond it for a few minutes, then stretched. Despite the late midnight hour, a decent amount of other runners passed by this same path. One guy swished by so nimbly in bright white pants he looked like nothing more than a blur; though my eyes were somewhat watery from the chilly winds I was facing, so speed at that moment may have been an illusion. Still, he was surely faster than me.

A little bit looser from the stretching I headed home; 3.2km away, strong winds now cutting against my choice in direction, and a painful wolf pack with jaws hinged tightly around my knee, it wasn't easy. I'm not sure if I was stupid for pushing along, or just tenacious (a little bit of column A, a little bit of column B, perhaps), but I made it home running the whole way. I hit up a second bout of stretching and iced the left knee. I should probably be more mindful of my limits here so fresh off the marathon course, but I can't help but crave that long distance run. There's something in me that enjoys the thrill of enduring the distances. Hal Higdon suggests taking it easy for the month following a marathon race, but he's also a man who stacked up 6 marathons on 6 consecutive weekends, so we all recover differently. It's also worth noting he was no novice when he attempted that feat. Training is once again around the corner. Not for another marathon, not yet at least, but there's a 10K (6.2 miles) race at the Imperial Palace a few weeks down the road that I wholeheartedly want to take part in. If this ITBS pain doesn't leave me burnt on the side of the road, the Higdon intermediate 10K training schedule  starts on Monday. Here's hoping all goes well...

Vegan Cherry Almond Cookies

I poached this palatable, pretty much, perfect recipe from a good friend back in Philly. It's far from complicated, and the results have been consistently incredible. I've witnessed non-vegans devour these delectable delicacies as if they suddenly found themselves, mid-mastication, in the midst of a spontaneous magic act where they are desperately trying every sleight of hand trick in the book to make as many cookies as possible disappear right before the eyes of an unassuming audience. 

Despite promising more than a few people I'd bake more than a few batches, I haven't had the chance to try these out in Japan yet. I'm not exactly sure how difficult the ingredients will be to procure here, but again, it doesn't really require anything all that complicated to begin with, so I remain confident that it won't take Houdini to pull off this trick. Feast your eyes on the astonishing third act prestige: 

Vegan Cherry Almond Cookies!!!

I've skipped the almond extract every time I've made them, because they already have fresh almonds in them, so why bother? The taste, to the best of my knowledge, hasn't suffered. The texture turns out to be far fluffier than the majority of other vegan cookie recipes I've tried in the past, so in tandem with impeccable taste & tantalizing tactility—not to mention a timeframe, from start to finish, that pleasantly puts these treats in edible order in under thirty minutes—this treasured recipe trumps the cookie competition by a swift mile. 


Onto the recipe...

Rhythm Method: Minor Threat "Salad Days"

I was 5 years old when, while playing in the spring sun on the front lawn of my great grandmother's house, I heard a call from across the street, "Hey, do you want to come over and play?". The boisterous beckoning came from the mouth of a kid with close-cropped jet-black hair and a camouflage T-shirt—it's a wonder I could see him at all while outfitted with such an elaborate array of combat gear, but the suburban Philadelphia sprawl isn't the most cooperative terrain to test out the field of camouflage tactics in, especially when said camouflaged person is shouting at the top of their lungs on a street corner in the bright afternoon sunlight. After taking my toes to the edge of the property line, where the fine cut blades of grass clearly contrasted the curbside concrete of the intersection between us, my immediate responsible response was, "I'm not allowed to cross the street by myself". The words barely had time to stretch their wings and fly from the nest of thought through the air between us when the kid shot back the cannon blast solution of "Go ask someone older". That was the day I first met Vincent.

In hindsight, traveling 26.2 miles down the same marathon road is not even a drop in the bucket compared to the distances we've gone together since that first day met. It's a rare treasure to form such a bond at that young of an age and continue on with it well into adulthood. When Vin didn't make the first lottery round, I didn't really fret, because somehow, it felt like it was going to work out in the end, and, of course, it did. In my minutia filled marathon post (as well Vincent's post), we both make references to the early morning cannon blast of nostalgia that was Minor Threat. While pondering over the enigmatic mystery of why Ian McKaye sounds so British, we reveled in the fine flood of adrenaline that those hardcore/punk rock bands of our youth always seem to be able to fuel us with. Aki was at a loss as to why we were listening to such irritating fare at some Gawd awful pre-dawn hour of the marathon morning, but the simple response of "It's Minor Threat" was, in our minds, enough to suffice.

So...I present to you the faux-British stylings of Minor Threat's Salad Days.

Weak Week

Living in a post marathon world is a strange new time. It's quiet out here on the cusp of frontier land, held up in a ramshackle shack waiting for the limbo dust storm to blow past, all the while being slightly parched from the lack of running injury & fatigue has imposed on me. Hal Higdon calls this Zero Week in his recovery schedule, and running is a tenuous venture at this point. The flare of the 42km (26.2m) festival has faded like a setting sun in a land fully renowned for the rising of it. Gone are the pre-race jitters and the alluring mystery that, in hindsight, just flooded over the the whole spirit of the marathon like a tsunami of excitation: Ah, how to keep those Good Vibrations a happening?

Runner's Delight: Swag at the Expo

Welcome to Japandyland

Subway Showdown: 2 days to go...

So it goes...

First post-marathon run, first run in Vibram Five Fingers

As you might guess, my knees are not back to normal after the marathon, even though ice + stretching + ofuro has been doing them well. After the marathon, I was walking like a stiff-legged zombie. The day after the marathon, getting up was painful and I was walking slow, but I could at least try to fake that I was walking normally. And it's kept improving; as of today, I still notice that it's there, but it's not affecting movement, except that going down steps remains a no-no. There's also a pattern of what feels vaguely like pressure building up in a knee, which makes it hurt more, but cracking a knee quickly brings it back to normal.

On Tuesday—when the knees were still pretty stiff—I wondered if I could run ball-to-heel; I heard that running barefoot can help you to avoid runner's knee by changing the biomechanics of how it's all working down there. I figured that if it let you avoid the injury, perhaps it wouldn't aggravate it when you already have it. So on one trip from my office to the bathroom located past the elevators, I did a little jog. It couldn't have been more than 10 meters.

The immediate results confirmed my hypothesis; it didn't hurt to run like that. But the weird thing was that, immediately after my mini-jog, my knees felt so much looser and better. That seemed to defy all explanation, but it was what it was.

And it made me think that, despite my knees not being back 100%, I could give the Vibrams I bought a few weeks ago a spin, and today I did just that.

So on went the Vibrams and out I went.