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.

Tokyo Marathon 2011

The evening prior to the race Vin & I didn't really have much of a plan, more like a general inkling of when to get together and basically stuff ourselves full of carbs: this ultimately happened around 6pm on Saturday. In most every training schedule "carb loading" is renowned for its pre-race importance, and I can't argue with it otherwise. We both planned to call it an early night after watching Earth with the kids, and though I told Vin's oldest daughter that it was Darth Vader narrating, she refused to believe me on the basis of Darth Vader being just a character in a movie, and Earth was based in real life. That's solid logic, but the fact remains James Earl Jones is narrating that damn thing.

Before nighty-night time, Vin & I both opted to partake in pre-race お風呂 (ofuro), which is a wicked awesome Japanese style hot bath—OK, stop the snickering, the baths were at separate times—and that really went a long way to loosen the muscles, and just in general relax the mind the night before the big race. Though, I should comment on the two completely different attitudes that were taking place the night before: 1) Vin: yea, there's this thing we're doing tomorrow, maybe you heard of it, it's a marathon. No big deal. 2) Joe: Am I insane for even thinking about trying to attempt to take down this beast? Will I live only long enough to regret ever having tangoed with such a gigantic monster? Good-sweet-sweat-beaded-Christ beard, I'm doomed. And so, with those thoughts akin to visions of sugar plumbs dancing through our heads, we sought sleep.

5am, Vin wakes me up and we start "carb intaking", I want to be careful in the wording here since the night before we literally loaded our bellies with so much pasta & bread it was hard to move; cautious of how full we felt the night before, we didn't want to stuff ourselves past a humanly decent satiated threshold. Our departing time was 7am, so we had 2 hours to kill with nothing much beyond being awake that we needed to do. I think these 2 hours were very crucial to the mental state we left his apartment with. We played Minor Threat songs, joked around, debated the weather predictions from 5 different sources, and sipped on green tea. We basically did the same things we always do when we're together and get pumped up about doing something awesome: in an escalating fashion, we feed off of each others excitement until we're roaring juggernauts of kinetic energy. Perfect for a race day.

7am, we head for the station, which is conveniently on the backside of the apartment. Along the way other marathoners can be seen with their running shoes and clear plastic clothes bags that are sanctioned by the race officials to put your stuff in before the race starts. We picked up a friend along the way who followed us up until the Starbucks where we met people from Vin's running club, Namban Rengyo. We had a good hour or so to kill there, and the baggage despot was in sight across the street, so other than being crazy crowded with runners and an overflowing abundance of consternation from the usual patrons who just wanted latte, but instead were met with a packed parlor of people in various states of dress & undress, it was a perfect location to bide our time. I photo-bombed a few snapshots just for fun and sipped on a small cup of black coffee with faint images of Dale Cooper boasting "damn fine" in the back of my mind.

Twin Peaks Love

Minutes skipped by like Daniel Faraday's description of time travel physics by way of a needle playing on a scratched record, and the loudspeakers were threatening people that if they weren't on their starting blocks in 15 minutes they would be escorted to the end area behind all the runners. I still had to check my baggage, so this was the point I lost Vinnie. He was starting in block B and I was back in block E. We had a loose plan of staying on the left side, I would run fast and he would run slow, and at some point we would meet. It was a madhouse of people slowly shuffling to their starting positions. Though it was morning and cold, the good news was, with so many people around the bodies not only blocked the chilly breeze, but provided an adequate amount of heat. The bad news was, that black coffee I had back at Starbucks was ready to leave me. I followed an arrow that pointed in the general direction of sections C through K. When I got to the top of the ramp, the Freddy Krueger nightmare image of a person holding a sign designating the area I had spent so long shuffling towards as K slapped me in the face like razor fingers. I caught sight of another guy with an E on his number tag that was pushing up the sidelines, and immediately followed behind him. I know it seems like a lot to risk, putting my faith in the fact he knew where he was going, but I also had an ace up my sleeve in the chance he was wrong: since arriving in Japan I have had the good fortune of getting my way in various situations simply because I am gaijin. If, say, we ended up in the wrong block, I was just going to simply say, "I don't understand" repeatedly, and sooner or later they would either let me be, or escort me to the front of the line, which are consistently the only two outcomes that seem to happen in those scenarios: win-win!

Can say I finished a marathon, but can't say I ran one

So today was what Joe and I have been building up to: the Tokyo Marathon.

To recap how I've come into this race, runner's knee knocked me out of my running schedule around Christmas. At that point, I decided to take off from running to recover and ordered a stationary bike, just in case taking off didn't do it. A day or so before the bike arrived, I gave running a go, and things still weren't better.

So that forced me to choose between the lesser of two evils. The longer I stayed on the bike, the more likely my knee would be better, but the worse prepared I'd be for actually running in the marathon. On the other hand, if I tried to run before and screwed up my knee, that could have put me out of the marathon completely. So I ultimately decided that I would just stay on the bike until the marathon, while doing exercises and stretches the help with the runner's knee.

That also changed my whole perspective on the marathon. While training through December, I'd been watching my pace go down and down. Things were progressing so smoothly, I was getting hopeful for a 3:30:00 time or so. That inclination went out the window with my injury.

The plan became survival. I would just go out at a nice and easy pace and focus on getting through the race, rather than worrying about my time. Joe's plan was to run with me for the first half, chatting while running, but then pick it up on the second half. I figured I'd try to pick it up a bit for the last 10km if I was feeling good, but I didn't want to push my luck.

And that brings us right up to the marathon.

Ye Olde Haunts

Yesterday I was in a pretty unique position. It was the first cross training day of the taper week 1, the weather was decent—though slightly chilly—and I had errands to run; which really equates to giving me a reason to go out with Schwinny Cooper. So I took a leisurely foot to a half broken pedal and set out about the town. I immediately grew nostalgic for the streets I have spent so many cold winter weeks pounding & puffing through in the past 16 weeks. I rode through Oreland, my hometown, the town I've spent the majority of my life in, and then headed over to Flourtown—a favorite area for skating back in the day—and breezed back through Erdenheim, a place I had lived briefly in high school, until I circled back through North Hills, and found myself once again back in O-town. It was a good ride. My legs felt heavy at the hilliest points, but I chalk that up, like an outline of a body in a seedy motel parking lot, to the 12 mile LSD I had done the day before. While 12 miles isn't that big of a deal anymore, it still tires out the legs something fierce. When I got home I google mapped my ride to find something I probably should have realized long before now, but it just didn't hit me until that moment; my life, has been neatly contained in less than a 12 mile perimeter, that exists on the outskirts of Philadelphia. I could run 2 laps around the borders of existence as I know it, and that still would not be a full marathon. And here we are, by all accounts, about to break the boundaries.

Today was meant to be a rest day. If you look at the Higdon schedule for any given week, you'll see Mondays & Fridays are primarily rest days. Ah, sweet sweet Mondays & Fridays! But this isn't a normal week by any means: I leave for Japan in less than 24 hours. Part of what I like about the Higdon schedule is its flexibility. Higgy Stardust certainly knows that marathon training is not an easy undertaking, even for someone as seasoned as himself, it is time consuming, as well as physically & mentally draining (though, I must also say there is something exhilarating about pushing yourself farther than you've ever gone before, and finding there's a new, stronger, side of said self way out there). So, instead of resting, I swapped out tomorrow's 5 miler for today's rest day. This was my last run on US soil before the marathon; unless of course I find myself restless at 3am tonight, terrified of the flight ahead of me, and just go for a pre-dawn jog to settle my nerves. I couldn't have really asked for a better day though: it's 58°F, sunny, and just generally uplifting. I ran in shorts outside for the first time in months! That's always a sign of good weather. The only downside is that my Nike+ has already died on me. I don't know why, maybe it's not meant for marathon training, but if it doesn't hold up to constant running, who would really bother buying it? I'm also pretty certain the thing never kept accurate track of my distance, because google maps often gave entirely different estimates. It's kinda too late to do anything about it, so I'll probably just end up shelling out the yen for another one when I arrive in the land of the rising sun. But it's truly a bummer, especially when I face the unfamiliar streets of Nippon for my taper week 2 runs; I'll simply have no idea how far I've gone, unless I find a nice park to pounce, like Tigger, around in.

Also, I can attest, first hand, to the warnings that Hal Higdon repeatedly emphasizes in his 2 week taper schedule prior to the BIG race day: the drop in miles seems very significant, especially after 15 weeks of racking up the miles like Steve Wiebe racks up points for the high score in Donkey Kong, and one immediately begins trying to compensate, whether by running faster, or looking for that extra mile to squeeze in there somewhere along a route that is meant to be a low mile run. I hate it. I really feel like I'm cheating myself out of valuable training days, but I have to reason that Higdon knows what he's talking about, and he wouldn't steer me wrong at this point. Essentially my training is over at this point, what's left, after that 20 mile precipice, is a waiting game. So it's best to listen to Higdon. I'd rather not take unnecessary risks with just under 2 weeks left, which means listening to reason, as opposed to my gut reaction cranking out more miles. The idea now is to keep your muscles loose, give them a nice little respite before the shock and awe of 26.2 descends upon them like winged monkeys tearing the Scarecrow apart in The Wizard of Oz. Hold on to your ruby slippers boys & girls, we have a bit of a journey still ahead of us, and sure, while there's no place like home, home doesn't necessarily have to be a place to begin with, it can easily be a concept you keep close to heart.

Rhythm Method: Spoon "The Underdog"

"Spoon!" for me, was a battle cry in my halcyon teenage years. It was a humorous bit of poppycock that Saturday morning cartoons, like The Tick, showcased with droll non sequiturs so hilarious, to our ears (and impressionable minds), that we just had to filter them into our daily vernacular. Also worth noting, is the general good nature of the phrase itself, while most other utterances at the time were euphemistic in nature, "Spoon!" stands out as something so entirely innocent that its sincerity as pure unadulterated fun never comes into question.

What does any of that have to do with Spoon the band from Austin, Texas? Honestly, they both share a noun. I know, I seem to have pulled some Slumdog Millionaire three-card monte scenario on you all with this tenuous connection, but who's to say Britt Daniel didn't have The Tick in mind when he penned The Underdog (I realize the answer to that question is most likely Britt Daniel, but humor me here)? Most likely Mr. Daniel had the sardonic double-barreled two-fisted middle finger blast in the face of industry in mind when he wrote it, but what still comes across is a brazenly earnest approach to getting by from doing things your own way and succeeding without selling out your values. Whether it's the happy-go-lucky fighting of evil doers, or humming a ditty that never makes it past your own ears, we've all been underdogs from time to time, and the message remains clear: don't give up.

ChicagOreland

I've read innumerable accounts of how the 5 miles you run after that first 20 are the hardest, but I thought they were talking about while you're running the marathon, not 2 days later with a rest period in between. It was far too presumptuous of me to think it only applied to the race. Within the first few strides of today's 5 miler, I knew I was in for a challenge.

The main thing, besides immediate fatigue in my legs, which were obviously not ready to be put to work just yet after Sunday's 20 mile monster mash, that hindered today's run was the howling winds that seemed to kick me in the face at every turn on the road. It was quite the blustery day here at this pooh corner of the Hundred Acre Wood. Wind, especially the bitter cold variety, has a way of greedily tearing the air away from your face before you've had the chance to inhale a significant amount of O2 when you need it most, while running, which really wreaks havoc on the respiratory system, and all those other important systems that keeps a body going. It's not like I'm some cyborg from the year 3022, who can readily handle these conditions, I'm from now's time, and human no less, so I'm on my own when it comes to breathing an adequate amount to sustain life, which I enjoy doing, often, if not always.

I made it to the full 5, but I definitely struggled through much of the run. I trust Higdon. I've gotten this far based on his wisdom alone, and now that the longest training run is out of the way, the only thing between me and the marathon is two sweet sweet weeks of tapering. I know I'm still in crazy marathon mode when I look at this upcoming weekend's 12 mile run as relief, a treat even. I have one more week of good old USA earth beneath my feet before heading overseas to Japandyland to take on one heck of a beast of a long run, and whatever else life has in store. I started this whole running craze with Vincent jogging patiently at my side, and here's hoping his knee heals enough to take on this next big one with me as well. Hey OK, folks, we're in taper country now, there's no turning back, so we're marathon bound.

Down to my last saving throw

So (both of) our frequent readers may have noticed that I've been missing from this blog for a while. That largely comes down to two things: work (including the business surrounding switching jobs, which I recently did) and injury.

I was going to make a detailed post about all of the trials and tribulations of my injury, but let me just give you the short version. Based on my basic internet self-diagnosis, I seemed to have run into a case of good old runner's knee right around Christmas. That led me to take a few weeks off. When I tried running again, I was only able to get through about three miles before it started acting up. All my training has since been switched to a stationary bike that I bought, which doesn't bother the knee at all.

So here's the revised plan for the marathon... Continue training on the bike until close to the marathon. The week of, go out and feel out the road a bit. If the knee seems alright, give the marathon a go, with survival (not a good pace) being the mantra. That's my last saving throw for the Tokyo marathon. If I know it's not going to work out beforehand, I'll pass off the number to someone who can actually run it and maybe I'll ride around on my bike from point to point in the marathon to cheer on Joe (and get in some cross training to boot). If things are looking OK up to the marathon but the knee gets choppy during the marathon, I drop out at the first sign of trouble and turn towards my next race. Otherwise, I suppose I just might actually muddle my way through the whole darn thing.

Riding the bike feels like cake, so I've been making my bike sessions longer than my running sessions would be, assuming a slow 10-minute-per-mile pace. My shortest bike sessions are maybe 1:15:00, and I try to do them every day since I don't really feel like I need the off days. On Sunday, the day when Hal had us doing our longest 20-mile run, I sat on that bike for 3:50:00, which was actually the first time I ever felt sore on it. (I figured that 20 miles at a slow 10-minute-per-mile pace would have been 3:20:00, so I just added some more on top of that.)

And that's basically my revised pace for the marathon; rather than the 9-, 8-, or even 7-minute mile pace I was striving for previously, I've now been relegated to the middle of the bell curve (according to the data from last year, at least) with only a hope to even get a 10- or 11-minute mile pace. That puts my marathon time in a range from approximately 4:20:00 to 4:50:00. If I do pull that off, I suppose it's not horrendous, but it's much worse that I had hoped.

In any case, keep your fingers crossed...

A Perfect Day For Bananafish

I was stuck in a bit of a trance when I was approaching mile 19 today, but was immediately zapped out of it while passing a guy about to get in his car who asked me "Is this your second run today, or are you still going from earlier?". He was speaking directly to the plan I had approached the day with, because I was on a freshly mapped 4 mile loop system, so at any given interval within the past nearly 3 hours he could have seen me pass his house up to 5 times, this being the 5th. 


Anyway, this was my first interaction with a would-be spectator, and when I responded to his question with "I'm still going, just about to finish off 20 miles", the guy's face registered a look of such incredulous shock at my nonchalant utterance of that statement that one might assume his internal thought process was interpreting what I really said as "I am a cyborg from the year 3022. I am skipping through time collecting pivotal information that will eventually be used to finally overthrow the fascist hybrid canine rule of the planetary alliance of galactic star chasers. Do you sir, own a dog?"


I've seen that look time and time again, as non-runners, hearing someone confess their goal of getting to 26.2 in one long run, immediately look disgusted by the mere thought of it. But I've come to question something myself out of this look: is the disgust really with the runner, or is it with their own realization they're not doing anything active & healthy in their lives? I don't mean to sound conceited here, just throwing that idea out there, because along with that look of disgust inevitably comes a more guilty introspective downward glance at the ground, wondering, even if ever so briefly, how far they themselves could move along that same ground. Or maybe the thought of, "I no longer want to be in a conversation with crazy here anymore" is what's really going on. Either way, I certainly encourage all to run, but of course, at this point in my life I may be biased. 


It wasn't all that long ago that I gave Vincent that same look on a day when I picked him up at Trenton train station, and his first question to me when hoping in the car was, "Do you want to go for a run?". The hem & haw routine started almost immediately. I didn't want to run, but I was also extremely curious about what would happen if I started to—I was on the cross country team for exactly 2 weeks in high school. It took me exactly 1 week to realize I didn't want to be running long distances out in the winter weathered air, and exactly another week to decide I was right about my initial instinct on that first week. I quit— and though there's a lot more to that story, we'll gloss over it for another time, because, as you might might guess, the outcome of that fateful day is that I'm here typing this running blog 3 weeks away from my first marathon...


Let's get down to the nitty gritty shall we?

Groundhog Day

So, I've been forced to trek out as much as my training as permissible bunkered below ground in my aunt's basement while the rest of suburban Philadelphia has been glazed over day after day with a fresh coat of snow & ice. There is good news in the forecast however—well, not so much in a meteorological sense, but in a traditional one— since that lovable 125 year old li'l rascal Punxsutawney Phil has gone on record as noting we are in for an early spring.

He saw no shadow when emerging from his hog-cave this frigid wintery morning. I find the great irony in all of this is that if he's right, we only have 2 more weeks of egregious winter weather to make it through, but for me, with a 20 miler on the calendar for this weekend I need the spring break now, because in 2 weeks, I'll be 6,800 miles away and I don't know if Groundhog premonitions apply to international weather systems. I'm sure as I leave Pennsylvania, I'll take with me the knowledge that even if not scientifically accurate, at the very least, what I hear the Groundhog saying is "I know, I hate all this snow too, so let's be done with it already". He's a hog after my own heart.

Nearly Triathletic

I had given up on the day. The snow defeated me. In order to avoid potential catastrophe, I spent the morning shoveling snow off my Grandma's roof so it wouldn't collapse under the additional weight of the inauspicious snowstorm predicted for Tuesday. I hate the snow so very much this winter. I used to be charmed by its romantic allure, but no more. I'm terrified of heights, very much so, so standing on an icy rooftop flinging heavy mounds of snow over the edge made me nervous at first, but I was comforted by two realizations: 1) I used to climb onto that same roof as a kid to get in through the window whenever I was locked out. 2) there was enough snow on the ground that if I did fall off, I would most likely be fine having a nice pillow of whiteness to soften the drop. This, I acquiesced, was going to be my cross training for the day, and I would just push the 14 miler off until tomorrow (Sunday) in hopes that fitness under consent of the sun king would be granted to me by way of clear roads tomorrow afternoon.

I was napping like a narcoleptic when the phone rang. It was my cousin asking if I wanted to come with her to the gym she had just became a member of; she had a free pass for me and thought I'd like to give it a go. What perfect timing! I snapped into a state of tiger-like readiness and grabbed whatever running gear was available and stuffed it in a backpack, then paced passed the window precariously perched to pounce at the opportunity which had presented itself to me as I waited for her to pick me up. 

I arrived at the gym with drifting thoughts of taking it light & easy. Maybe a little cycling and some slow jogging, just so I could give my body some motion. I started with a half hour on the spinner bike: 11.5 miles in a half hour. I wasn't pushing it, but my legs still felt hefty & thoroughly used once I was done. I was slightly bummed that the TV function wasn't working on my screen, but I survived, though ever so slightly less entertained. My next choice was between running on a treadmill or the quarter mile track on the second floor that overlooked the various sections of the facility. I like treadmills and all just fine, they're wonderful inventions, really, but something in me is inherently drawn to the oh naturale aspect of putting my legs to use on an honest to goodness track. Again, I was planning on just taking it easy and maybe doing 5k at most...but the floor itself was so comfortable & my legs felt nice and loose from the brisk cycling I had just done that I kept going. I got to 7 miles and thought maybe I could do 10...I got to 10 and knew I was doing the entire 14. I finished and stretched, then just kept walking another mile and a half or so while waiting for my cousin & her 3 year old son to finish up at the pool. I could wave to them as I passed by on the outside loop, and could see he was having a blast himself going down the frog shaped water slide in the kiddie pool.

After tonight I am thoroughly aware what I've been missing through all this egregious winter training: a gym membership. It's too late now, with only 2 weeks left in the country, but if I get the chance to do the Tokyo marathon again next year, indoor tracks at the gym on inclement days are the way to go. I've never been more excited that I could breath easily; my legs felt so great that I barely noticed the 14 miles I moved them through after cycling. Tonight also gave me a small clairvoyant window to peak into the future of what things might look like come time for vegan triathlete training. If I had more time I might have hit the pool for a few laps too. As it is, I ended the day nearly triathletic, but exuberant all the same. 

So Tired of Snow...

The view from my window sill is a sad one. This winter training schedule has been plagued by a barrage of unprecedented snowstorms, the most recent two (that's right, two! back to back, with only a few paltry hours to separate their accumulation) have been dubbed Thundersnow '11. Mother nature has officially gone one louder. Yep, last night there was lightning adorning the constant stream of sleet & snow filled skies. How is one supposed to run when there are no streets to run on?   

Dreary Old Wednesday

In all honesty, Wednesday wasn't so bad. I made use of my aunt's treadmill for 9 miles while listening to the ever evolving awesomeness of the Vegan Marathon Runner playlist. I've pierced the lid on the 3 hour mark for that bad boy, and it is pure agave nectar sweetness. I came home and, even though I knew I shouldn't have, threw in some lifting exercises with my stretching. Nothing too challenging, but you know, enough that I felt like I had done them properly. 

Thundersnow'd Thursday

Moving on up, Thursday, I wake to find more snow than I had even anticipated, and I was anticipating a lot! My arms ached slightly at the sight, but there's little choice but to sac up and take it shovel by shovel full, and move it, ever so slightly out of the way. There's really no place to put any of it anymore, so you just start making high reaching mountains that just crumble back to where you moved it from to begin with: it's like Sisyphus. What I thought would take no more than an hour ended up being a 2 and a half hour thankless chore. I could barely lift my arms by the time I was done. My knees were killing me from the repetitive crouching tiger hidden dragon scoop method I was furiously applying to clearing the way. I had planned to run 5 miles at my aunt's house again, but lost all potential kinetic energy to the outdoor elements. I was beat. I still might try to squeeze in a run later in the evening (on the treadmill), but I'm not sure I want to push it. Judging by the sheer amount of accumulation, the forecasts calling for more weekend snowfall, and the fact that the township no longer seems to bother plowing the side streets anymore, I'm going to safely say that Saturday's 14 miler is most likely not happening. But I remain hopeful, that possibly, Sunday will be more promising. 

[UPDATE]

I did in fact muster up the energy to attack the 5 miles late in the evening on the treadmill. Though I started out pretty beat, I eased into a comfortable groove and ended the run feeling reinvigorated. This certainly doesn't excuse old man winter from being a cantankerous li'l son of a biddy, but I'm jazzed that I got my run in for the day. Hooray. 

High Five

Today's 5 miler, the first run after the post-18 mile precipice, started off sluggish, and continued along those same lines throughout. It wasn't that I was in pain, all the symptoms of excessive exercise had diminished, my legs just didn't want to give it their all. I think also, mentally, I'm getting tired of slugging through the unfriendly winter weather day after day. Breathing through a mist of icy mines doesn't agree with how my lungs prefer to take their oxygen. I ended the 5 miles with an average pace of 8:34 per mile. This was disheartening as well, since taking ill last week seems to have come along with a scythe and chopped down all the pretty flowers in my speedy garden. But not to worry, speed is not my overall goal for this marathon, completion is. I didn't even start timing my runs until a few weeks ago anyway. This worry-free belief in speed as inconsequential for my first time daring to conquer 26.2 miles was only reenforced by an excellent quote from Hal Higdon himself:

"In the marathon, you don't beat others, as you might in the mile or the 100-meter dash. Instead, you achieve a personal victory. If others finish in front or behind you, it is only that their personal victories are more or less." (Higdon, pg. 10)

So, I finished running 5 miles for the day, came home and dove into my stretch & strengthening routine. I took the stretching slow, and added a few different lifts into the cycle. After about a half hour I was done & sufficiently cooled down. At this point, and as it still continues to this very moment, I am experiencing something that I can only describe as radiating awesomeness. I've felt runners high before, but at week 14 of marathon training, I didn't think 5 miles could really put me there. It's been almost a good 2 hours since my run, and I'm still feeling the same. It's a prolonged stretch of clarity & elation. It's as if, at this very moment, the cells in my body are rejoicing, like the ewoks at the end of Return of the Jedi, with the combination of vegan diet & long distance running. Yub Nub folks....


Higdon, Hal. (1993). Marathon: The Ultimate Training and Racing Guide. Emmaus, PA: Rodale Books.

Rhythm Method: The Clash "I'm Not Down"

The Clash: dare I venture to say they occupy the strata of rarified air that only favorite bands can ascend to, and continuously deliver on their placement there. Yes, London Calling is a perfect album. This song, I'm Not Down, is just one example of that perfection. I could easily point you towards others, such as Spanish Bombs and Death or Glory, but my whole hearted recommendation would be to just let the whole album envelope you on a single listen.  Find your own place within these songs and from there on out enjoy the perpetual rewards of repeated listens.

Joe Strummer left the world too soon, that's for sure, but in the wake of the passing vessel of his life's work, there's a whole heck of a lotta goodness. I should probably also mention that in 1982 he ran the Paris Marathon, to completion, on a whim. It was during a prolonged disappearing act towards the end of the Clash's existence. Details of his performance are spotty at best, but it is often implied that he placed somewhere near last. Still, he finished.

Good Morning

I woke up this morning feeling surprisingly refreshed. The tear rendering pangs of pain in my knees were a slight fraction of what they were last night, and the majority of my aches & soreness were contained in my quadriceps. Overall, it was a rapid recovery from the pile of post-run wreckage I had become less than 24 hours ago. Steps are still hard to handle after the monotony of moving past perpetual patches of pavement for 3 straight hours, but that's far from a complaint. I'm relieved that my body figured out what it needed to repair while I was sleeping and got on it over night. Of course I actively aided this recovery prior to going to bed with a fine hot bath, ice, & rest routine.

Today's cross training was little more than strolling around at a casual shuffle. I focused on strength training where possible, endurance over bulk, and threw in a prolonged bout of stretching to round everything out. As well as alternating ice & heat on my knees throughout the day. Ultimately, I would have enjoyed some cycling today, but I really didn't want to push it too much, and feel like I made the right (safe) choice by limiting the cross training to near leisurely activities. If nothing else, marathon training has honed my skills at listening to my body during & after runs. I'm certainly no expert, but I've learned a thing or two about a thing or two these past 13 weeks, and I've continuously surprised myself at how far I can actually go. I think back to when 2 miles was a daunting distance that seemingly tested the boundaries of my humanity, and it seems like nothing anymore. There's only one more bump in the LSD runs left in the training program, it's the 20 miler 2 weeks from now, and that's it: the marathon is all that remains. So it goes...be well peoples.

Barely Legal

Today was 18 miles (about 29km) of grueling running. Earlier in the week I had to skip my 9 miler do to fluish-ness. So, of course, the logical step was to strut right into the weekend's 18 like a distance pimp handing out smack downs to those fresh faced unruly miles with little consideration in regards to what skipping runs, still being weak, and facing 16°F (-8° C) temperatures would do to a person; even one with platinum plus MasterCard of pimp-licious street cred such as myself(?).

I had spent the hour prior to the run adjusting my Vegan Marathon Runner playlist. I've got it up to 2 hours & 22 minutes so far (road tested and approved too!). If you've ever used a Nike+ unit before, you'll know that there's a custom setting for distance runs. SO it was somewhat amusing at the outset, standing in the freezing cold windy afternoon, while my thumb spent what seemed like forever winding around the clickwheel in order to set the mile marker to 18.

Then I was off...

Return of the Running Dead

What little credence I gave to the fast running zombies that have invaded the horror genre these past few years has been completely debunked by today's run. There's no way a recently deceased body could reanimate and hit the ground running. This I've gathered from the amassed empirical evidence of maintaining a near catatonic state for the past 72 hours and then deciding to run 4 miles today. Now granted, I'm not exactly sure how the metabolism would react to the cannibalistic dietary leanings of the walking dead, so maybe there's something there that really fires up the adrenal glands and shifts the muscular system into high gear, but I'm vegan, so I'd rather not find out. And what does all this mean on a vegan level? I've been craving veggies like mad, but I've been skeptical about consuming anything that presents itself as being more than unleavened bread. But I'll get back into the routine soon enough I'm sure.

When all was said and done my 4 miles was accomplished with an average of 9:18 min. per mile. Which I suppose isn't terrible, but it felt like I was moving an average of 15 min. per mile. Weather & body permitting, I'm either going to go forward with the 9 miler tomorrow, or replace it with the 5 miles that would have been meant for tomorrow's run anyway. Most likely I'm going to stick with the lesser, because I can already feel the tightness on the outside of my knees (that's right plural!), suggesting going from bed rest to street bandit at the drop of a hat has aggravated the ITBS beast again. One day, maybe when I'm older and much wiser, I'll learn that if you throw rocks into the lair of sleeping dragons, they tend to wake up angry and give chase. Don the chainmail kids, the race is a coming.

Scott Pilgrim Vs. the Vegan Power

"No vegan diet, no vegan powers!"

Flu Me to the Moon

I'll start off by stating I won't get graphic at all in the following post. I'll gloss over all the terribleness that having caught the flu saddles one with...but here's what it means to my running schedule. My Saturday LSD got pushed to Sunday because of time constraints. It was here, while babysitting my little cousin that the exposure to the illness began. But even though I felt "off" late on Saturday night, I reasoned that it must be mental, and there's no way a virus could have infected me that fast. So Sunday I waited until the late afternoon was at it's snow-blanket sunniest, and took off for a 12 mile LSD.

It was fine. Actually, a lot finer than I remember 12 miles ever being before. Upon arriving home I stretched like the Dickens, and sure, I felt tired, I'm not a machine, but otherwise OK. So for dinner I stuffed myself with lots of nutrient dense foods and protein supplements that I had picked up at Whole Foods market that morning. I had even just finished reading Food Rules by Michael Pollan (which isn't necessarily vegan oriented, but has a good all around get closer to the earth and know what you're eating message), that a friend had lent me, and was fired up about trying to start my own little garden of goodness come Spring. So with visions of sugar plumbs (or at least basil & mint leaves) dancing through my head, I was enjoying the evening; then the night came...

SO the polite way to get through this is to say I lost all the nutrients I had tried to gain after completing that late afternoon 12 mile run. Fast forward to Tuesday night (right about...now), and at most I've had a handful of crackers here or there in the past few days. I think I'm at the tail end of the terribleness, but I'm really curious as to what impact this shock to the system will have to my expected running schedule this week, which is R-4-9-5-R-18-C (R = Rest; C = Cross training). I've already skipped the 4 mile Tuesday run. I'm considering just pushing everything back a day, if I feel up for a 4 miler tomorrow, OR, if not, then push everything back 2 days, and drop either the 4 or 5 miler along the way. The weather is certainly not helping much either, as we're faced with forecasts of icy & snowy conditions all week. Today & Tomorrow supposedly being the worst of it. We'll see how things go. It's seems like my body & the weather are pitting themselves against me, an internal & external winner take all (though there's not much to take, so, ultimately, trick's on them) struggle for my eternal soul. We're really rapidly approaching the culmination of this whole training process. At a mere 6 weeks away from race day, this noted terribleness may just be a hiccup in the overall process...maybe for the next marathon 1) I'll move to somewhere with more consistently awesome weather 2) Become more diligent in quarantining the infected away from my person at all times; if this were the onset of the zombie plague, I'd be showing signs of turning into the walking dead already. I certainly feel close enough to that now. Anyway...keep well folks.

Mo' Snow...No Go.

So the weekend was met with yet another snowstorm. The first of what the weather forecasters have been promising are many such white and fluffy flurries to force their way into my training schedule in the coming week. The 16 miles I was supposed to run didn't happen, because this is what the day looked like:

Although the following day was sunnier, and the storm had ceased to taunt me with its ever mounting mounds of maddening slippery slops of snowy flakes, the sidewalks remained far to icy to partake in, what is basically at this point (end of week 11), the mandatory running regimen.

As not to let the day go to a total waste, I spent it doing the opposite of exercising: cooking tons of food, and then consuming it! Though I had a handy helper at my side to assist me in both aspects of what is essentially a double-headed coin of gluttony, I still did my fair share of munching away at all the goodies.

First up: Vegan COOKIES!!!

Titor Told Me To...

Hello technology,

I'm glad we had the opportunity to meet. Because of you I finally have a way to measure my run times amid a myriad of other minute details that hold varying degrees of importance for my training. Nike+ is my new running buddy! I'm not really happy with how clunky the website is, so strike one against you technology on that one, but I DO like the sheer amount of information I now collect like a mad scientist shrouded by dank shadows in the basement of an abandoned Presbyterian church, as I cackle at the moon through a cracked stain glass water well window, all the while Tesla coils spark & flicker behind me as my hair stands on end at the epicenter of a maelstrom of static electricity.

OK technology, I admit, up until now I was a luddite runner; something I euphemistically referred to as Zen before we got together. Don't get me wrong, I still love the tranquility of natural sounds on a brisk run. It's just these 2+ hour runs Hal Higdon has me doing now that leave me craving something more than nature to occupy my time with. Enter nano & Nike+ and something in the the universe has changed from here on out. It's been 3 days since our first run. Oh that first time out, remember how you were set to kilometers and my American mind had no idea what you were telling me? What a hilarious episode that would have been if life on the run were a sitcom on NBC. Or how about earlier today, when Tiger Woods made a voice cameo after our workout to congratulate us on the fastest mile time yet? That was surreal.

Well technology, I hope this will be only the beginning of what promises to become a beautiful friendship. Oh, and if you could, on the dawn of the day of the inevitable machine uprising, could you put in a good word for me? Or at least have Tiger tell me to hunker down in a bunker until the robot apocalypse has passed. Thanks buddy!

All the best,
Joe-joe Rock!

Rhythm Method: Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks "Gardenia"

Former Pavement frontman makes good as a solo artist making more Pavement songs...

Two Shoe Running

So what's 15 miles? It's a mile for every minute of fame that Andy Warhol once said a person is entitled to, or it's a kilometer for every hour of the day, and to be honest, running it wasn't necessarily so bad, it just sorta takes forever to do. My soul is that of a navigator. That's right! It's possible an ancient mariner once occupied the marrow of my existence in a previous lifetime, and I've called on this from as early on as road trips in my teenage years as I earned my spot in shotgun, which believe me, was a highly competitive field, by being the most capable person when it came to pouring over maps, or just sensing the direction we need to take ourselves in. It's this preternatural onboard compass that always comes in handy whenever I pop out of a subway and need to regain my bearings quickly. Something I'm quite eager to test out when I hop over to Japandyland in a few more weeks. But in present day form, I put this skill to best use by plotting out fresh courses to run each week for my LSD.

15 miles was accomplished in three 4 mile loops, with a 3 mile end loop to round it all out. The weather was unbelievable really: snow mounds lined the listless lawns along the way that have slowly lost their luster from days of gathering exhaust from the sidelines of their suburban perch, and although the sky was overcast, the temperature still reached 50°F (10°C). I had just finished making a vegan pumpkin pie and set it out to cool, and realized I needed to get a jump on running if I was to be done by 4pm. SO I laced up my shoes, threw on the least amount of clothes I've worn running in easily over a month, and grabbed the nano.

I was band on the run...