Walden Pond (of sorts)

Nope, we didn’t build the house with our own hands.  Our closest neighbor is mere inches away.

But Goddess and I have made our retreat.

We’ve been in our home for a month now.  We finally received the last of our household goods a couple of weeks ago.  Most of the boxes are gone, although there’s still unpacking to do.  One musn’t rush these things, you know.  One of our most interesting dilemmas is that we’re going from a family of three (plus dog) to a family of two (plus dog), so we really don’t need anywhere near as much stuff as we do.  So we’re whittling stuff down a bit. 

Perhaps the most enjoyable part has been we’ve done a fine job of disconnecting from the world.  Don’t get me wrong.  We’re socializing quite a bit and getting out and doing all sorts of things in this beautiful country.  But we’re disconnected.

We don’t have TV, phone or internet in the house. 

It’s quite nice.

Really.

I did finally connect the DVD player to the TV the other night and we watched part of a movie, but that’s been it. 

I catch a bit of news on the computer here at work, do a quick check of e-mails and some very light browsing at moments like this when I need a break from work, but other than that, we are, for all intents and purposes, disconnected.

Now it won’t last forever.  We know that.  Daylight is rapidly shrinking towards those winter days where we have only eight hours of daylight, which just happens to coincide with the hours that I’m at work.  And it will be cold enough that we can’t sit out on the back porch for hours after sunset.  So we’ll slowly reconnect.

But one musn’t rush these things, you know.

Craziness

Pure craziness.

That’s how this week has been.

After last Saturday night’s 20-mile RUTS, we headed back to the room.  The next day we were planning on running a local 5K; seriously, who can pass up a 5K put on by the local brew house?  Well, we did.  Too much going on.  A quick visit and farewell with some friends, then back to the room to finish packing.

Monday was quite hectic, with picking up the rental beast (Suburban), loading it up, then heading to work to finalize some things.  Then the drive towards Atlanta.  We had no plans on making it all the way to Atlanta, but as we got to where we planned on spending the night, we realized that we had just about an hour more of light traffic ahead of us, instead of 90+ minutes of morning traffic headed in to the city.  

Tuesday was the big day.  Thanks to some poor timing with turning the rental beast in at the airport, we had eight hours to spend in the airport before takeoff.  But we had a good time, sitting back and watching everyone walk by and gaze into Skinny’s travel kennel.  He made lots of friends.  One the airline counter opened a few hours before takeoff, we made sure Skinny was fed, walked and evacuated before we checked in.  It was nerve-wracking turning him over to the airline, but he seemed to be taking it in stride.

The flight on Lufthansa was fairly nice.  It was a bit interesting, being only two days after the loss of the Air France flight, there were some nervous folks.  Especially when we hit some turbulence over New York.  But none were worse for wear. 

We got to Frankfurt, anxious to see how Skinny did.  He came out on the conveyer belt and didn’t look any different than he did any other day.  After about 12 hours in the box, he was happy to get out and walk around, which was the only way we were going to get him out of the baggage check area.  There’s just no way that Goddess and I could pick up the crate with him in it.

The rest of Wednesday we fought to stay awake as long as we could.  That happened to be 8pm, which is about 90 minutes before sunset here.  We were good with that, but not good with being wide awake at midnight.  Luckily the convenience store was open, so we could go pick up some local beer and relax in the room until we fell back asleep at 3am.

The next few days have been taking care of some work stuff, getting to meet folks, fighting jet lag and just adjusting.  It sure is a beautiful country.

Goddess is truly a goddess.  Just a few days before we left the states, I was asked if we wanted to attend a formal ball on Saturday, just three days after we arrived.  Of course, the invitation came just a few days after her gowns and shoes were packed.  Being the trooper that she is, she agreed.  So she was scooped up by a couple of the spouses here on Friday and spent the day shopping for a dress and shoes.  Luckily she has that option here, unlike Japan where all of the women were a size –5.  They did a fine, fine job and she looked absolutely gorgeous (much like she does every day).

Sorry, no pictures.  You’ll just have to take my word for it.

This coming week will be good.  We’ll finally get to look for a house (some bureaucratic red tape got in the way this week), get our licenses (more red tape) and decide where to live.  There are plenty of beautiful villages around to pick from.

Wish us luck.

Yummm!

I am spoiled.

Goddess sure puts up with me.  Even when I say silly things.  She tolerates my training and racing, although she will shake her head at times and tell me that I’m nuts.

I am.

To some, I’m sure.

The most impressive thing has been her support of my eating habits.  She’s actually adapted quite a bit and makes wonderful treats like these Flourless Chocolate Muffins for me.

So what’s the big deal about it?  It fits quite nicely into my Paleo/Primal eating habits.

Both concepts were something that I had been doing a lot of research on for quite a while.  As Goddess can attest to, if I get interested in something, I research the hell out of it.  Mostly to satisfy my curiosity. 

Because I am a sponge.

Initially I poo-pooed both as concepts that were capitalizing on the Adkins fad.  And that was one thing I stayed the hell away from.  I saw many friends and co-workers jump on that bandwagon and do some pretty rough things to their bodies that they did not understand, all while eating crap and claiming that all carbs were evil.

And that was one belief that I fought violently.  I knew, and still know, that carbs are not evil.  Matter of fact, we need them.

But a dog got me to look more closely at the carbs that I was eating.

Yep, a dog.

Growing up racing in the ‘80s and through the ‘90s, carbs were king.  Racing track, cross-country, bikes and building up to ultra-marathon bike races in the late ‘90s were a great excuse for me to inhale carbs.  The more the merrier.  Pile them high, pile them thick.  Matter of fact, I swore that I was an Italian in a previous life.

And no matter how active I was, the waistband kept expanding.  I got pretty thick, but could still ride hard and ride long.  Unfortunately, with the added girth, any time the road tilted upwards, I’d get dropped.  But on the flats, I was a locomotive that the teams would love to jump behind as I’d drag them across the countryside.  So I made sure that I kept the engine stoked.  But I was failing at simple math, so I was easily taking in more than I was burning.

Once I figured out the math, I worked on that.  So it dropped off quite nicely.  But even though I tracked everything as closely as possible, I still was softer than I needed to be.  Even in 2007 when I was training for my IM-distance race, I dropped a fair bit, but just couldn’t get below 190lbs.  I didn’t worry about that though, figuring that 190lbs was my body’s comfortable “floor”.

But then the dog came in.

In late 2007, we started looking at rescuing a retired greyhound.  While we were waiting to be approved and waiting for a dog that would adopt us, I did a lot of research on feed, especially after the dog food contamination scare of 2007.  One thing that I kept returning to was the concept of feeding raw or biologically appropriate raw food (BARF for short).  Basically the idea is to feed the same foods that the animals ancestors ate, instead of the processed food with additives and chemicals.  It made perfect sense to me.

So we discussed with one of the ladies that fosters and helps place the retired greyhounds in homes.  She was extremely supportive, especially since she feeds her dogs the same way.  The resident veterinarian for the group was there as well and she was supportive.  That vet support is something that we’ve found to be rare. 

So when Skinny adopted us late last January, we started easing him in to a raw diet.  The pooch took to it immediately.  And as I’d stand there, holding a chicken leg quarter while feeling him crunch his way through the bones and flesh, it got me to thinking about the foods that I ate. 

<…to be continued…>

Well, that didn’t go as planned

Gorgeous day today.  Temps in the mid-60’s with gusty winds that kept it feeling cooler than that.

Today we were to take the greys to a meet and greet, which is where we introduce the greyhounds to the public and hopefully find a few folks interested in adopting them after their life on the track.

But the greys had other plans.

Plans that involved a trip to the vet.

That involved a general anesthesia.

Many, many stitches.

And picking up one drunk pooch.

All is well now.

Although it will be a while before the wounds heal.

And the hair grows back.

For the two guys, they’ve been getting along famously.  The only thing we can figure out is that one got very possessive of a stuffie (stuffed toy) or one of the bones lying about in the back yard.  The blood made it look worse than it really was, but the fact that greyhounds have very thin skin required the trip to the vet.  It’s not pretty when you look at a dog’s neck and can see the muscles directly.

It was hilarious picking Giddy up from the vet.  Poor guy was still drunk from the anesthesia.  Since he’s getting much more comfortable with us, he leans against our legs whenever we’re around.  So I had ahold of his leash while Goddess took care of the financials and Giddy leaned up against me.  Really leaned, as one does when they’re drunk.  The problem was that we were on a tile floor, so the poor guy couldn’t keep his rear leg under control; it kept sliding out from under him.  So he’d pull it in, then it’d slide right back out, which would make him lean more.  So he’d pull his leg in, then it’d slide out, making him lean more.

Back at home, all is well.  They’re lying around as if nothing’s happened.

Giddy Up

Tomorrow, January 26th, is our greyhound Skinny’s “Gotcha Day”.  Although we recognize his birthday, his “gotcha day” is more important to all of us, since it’s the day that we adopted him.

He’s been a great addition to the family.

Yesterday we got a phone call out of the blue.  The Nashville chapter of the Greyhound Pets of America needed help with the latest batch of hounds rescued from the track.  They had one last pup staying in the kennel, finishing up his two-week veterinarian stay.  Of course we agreed.

So after a quick visit to REI to take advantage of their January clearance sale (lots of good cycling gear to be had), we headed over to pick him up.

We’re now foster parents.

Everyone, meet JJ Giddy Up, aka Giddy:

That’s Skinny in the cow PJ’s.  We don’t have any PJ’s for Giddy, so he’s nekkid.

He’s quite a change from Skinny.  When we got Skinny, he had been off the track for almost a year, had been vetted, fostered, adopted, returned, fostered and then finally to us.  That’s a lot of time to have been acclimated to houses, people and given some basic training.  Not so for Giddy, who other than the two week vet visit, is straight off the track.  The track where he met with modest success over his career of 49 races.

Giddy had never experienced a TV, a mirror or a ceiling fan.  Still full of energy, he’s been interesting to watch explore.  Skinny, on the other hand, lifts his head once in a while to see what the interloper is doing, but otherwise is quite nonchalant about the whole situation.

So Goddess and I (mostly Goddess) have been working to get him to understand basic commands (“Wait”, “No”, “Here”).  As they all are, greyhounds are very intelligent and he’s catching on quite quickly.  The one thing that he’s a bit slower to pick up on is that he thinks that he can assert himself over Skinny.  Again, Skinny’s pretty blasé about it all.  And we also make sure that Giddy understands where his place is in the pack.  He’ll get there pretty quick.

We’ve decided to foster since we’re curious about adopting a second grey.  That doesn’t mean that Giddy will be our second, although that’s an option.  Fostering helps us gauge how Skinny will do (he’s doing just fine so far), plus it’s our chance to help out.  Over the coming weekends Giddy will be made available to people interested in adopting a greyhound.  It’s our responsibility (and pleasure) to take care of him as well as train him during this transition from track to home.

And Skinny will have a friend tomorrow when we has his “Gotcha Day” Frosty Paws treat, which is made of yogurt, honey and other goodies.

Oh, and no one comment on my ugly-ass avocado green ’70s reject chair.  Someone gave it to us 7 or 8 years ago and it is soooooo comfortable.  Goddess has tried to cover it a couple of times, but it’s just not the same.  So the monstrosity sits in the living room, an eyesore to all who see it.  But it fits me perfectly and I lurve it.

Plus, it’s low enough to the ground that I can reach over right now and run my hand along Skinny’s side as he sleeps.

Life, or something like it

Been a crazy week.

After last weekend’s long run and some other stuff, it was a week out on the east coast.  It was nice to run with the ocean breeze in my face as it warmed up through the week.  It’s taper time, so the runs were short (5-7 miles), but the pace was brisk.  Especially one evening when I was 3 miles from the hotel and realized that I had to get back to the room, shower and drive across town to meet folks for dinner – in 30 minutes.

I made it.

Midway through the week, Goddess got ahold of me.  Horrible news.  The husband of her bridesmaid, who just turned 31, didn’t wake up Wednesday morning, passing sometime overnight.  Apparently it was a congenital heart issue, although you’d never know it.  He was a healthy man.  Left behind a wife and two daughters, aged 5 and 3.  A bit of scrambling and we worked out travel arrangments for Goddess to get out to Colorado.

Unfortunately she landed less than two hours after the funeral.

But we got her out there.

A bit of shuffling to get Skinny a sitter for the weekend, since we had already made plans to be out of town.  So after dropping Goddess off at the airport, I drove Son and two of his friends north to Louisville.  We were off to see Gigantour, which we had been looking forward to since January.  The lineup was High on Fire (meh) Job For a Cowboy (meh), Children of Bodom (excellent), In Flames (good) and Megadeth (great).

I  didn’t enjoy it as much as I was hoping, mainly because I was worried about Goddess traveling (although she has traveled halfway across the world by herself), about her friend, her friend’s girls and the emotional trauma that I could only imagine that they were all going through (or about to in Goddess’ case).

But the show went on for six hours, which is about 30 minutes past the limit my ears (as well as Son and his friends) can take.  Even with earplugs.  Shame too, since that happened during Megadeth, who I’ve followed since the mid-80’s.  I was jazzed since this was the first time I’ve been able to catch them live.

And what was a first in the hundreds of concerts that I’ve been to over the past 25 years – the concert was paused for safety.  During Children of Bodom’s set, the crowd surged forward hard enough to break the barrier.  They cut the power to the stage and Bodom left for 30 minutes, giving the crew enough time to fix the barrier.  I was sitting up in the stands at that point so I had a pretty good view of everything.  Son was down in the crowd and immediately texted “WTF?”, so I talked him through it.

We got back to the hotel at 1230am.  Much to their chagrin, I woke them up at 700am.  Nothing like trying to wake three 16 year old’s up after only six hours of sleep.  But we had to get on the road so I could get back and spend the rest of the day writing a paper for school.

Joy.

Marathon in 5.5 days.

“That’s it. You can’t race anymore!”

Not my words. That phrase came out of Goddess’ mouth this afternoon. I’ll explain later.

This weekend I ran a marathon. Not a race, but a marathon.

Training.

It came about in an interesting way. Following my training plan, I had my standard 20-miler scheduled for Saturday. You know, the same 20-miler that’s in every marathon training plan. Yeah, that one. No worries, but it was a matter of scheduling.

Everything was piling up towards this weekend: two mid-terms due, the 20-miler, volunteer hours for the Greyhound Rescue and multiple jobs for both work and home. There just wasn’t a good fit for a 20-miler. At least, not without getting up at 4am and running in the dark.

So I ran across a very good blog entry by Gary Ditsch that reminded me of some viewpoints on the 20-miler. Specifically, don’t do them.

Now, there are many arguments on both sides of the fence for and against the 20-miler. And there’s certainly a time and place for them, but not in a typical training plan. At least for me.

I don’t know about you, but a run that long wipes me out for quite a few days. The quality of my runs in the following week are marginal, at best. And that’s assuming that I do them. Some days I’m just knackered and don’t feel like getting out there. That’s tough on the psyche to see the red flag on workouts I’ve skipped.

After my normally scheduled Saturday long run, I take my standard rest day on Sunday. That was something that I stuck with all last year through the IM training – keep a weekend day open for family and relaxation. I’ve continued that this year with the run-focused training. Unfortunately I often feel my legs slowly stiffen up through the day, which makes for a painful Monday morning run.

I think I found a solution to part of the problem, which I worked through last weekend’s 16-miler. Following Jeff Galloway’s plan of run/walk, I felt pretty fresh in the days following the run. Sure, my legs were tired, but I wasn’t stiff and sore. By Tuesday my legs felt recovered and I was quite comfortable through a 6-mile cruise interval workout.

So what does that have to do with this weekend and the title of this entry? Quite a bit.

After reading Gary’s blog and recalling several articles along the same lines, I looked at employing the Double Long strategy this weekend, which I could fit into my schedule. Much easier than a 20-miler. But instead of doing simple math, I decided that I’d do a 15-miler on Saturday before our Greyhound Rescue commitment, then a 10-miler Sunday morning. That adds up to more than 20 miles (at least by my calculations, but math in public is not my strong suit).

Saturday was a beautiful day to run – 42 degrees, a bit of wind and cloudy. I employed the same run/walk strategy as last week – 4 minutes running, 30 seconds walking. The walk breaks do a great job of making me stay focused on hydration and fueling. Plus, by keeping an eye on the Garmin, I was able to quickly catch the two times that it decided to turn off by itself.

And I felt good. Real good. Running the same course as last weekend’s 16-miler, I covered the distance in 2:26:50, which averages out to 9:47 miles. Certainly not anything that will get me on the Olympic Team (right, Karl?), but better than last weekend’s average of 10:19 miles. I was even able to push the last half-mile at 8:05 pace while knowing I still had more in the tank. Here’s my accumulated pace:

For the increases in accumulated pace (Miles 4, 9, 11 and 14), there are long, gradual climbs. Miles 11 and 14 are the same hill, which is a wall at the bottom, followed by a steady climb for 200-300 yards, then leveling off. Mile 3 is a nice flat section where I finally start warming up, so I’m usually much quicker through that stretch.

During the run, I realized that my weekend plan would have me running 25 miles (see, I’m real quick with that math in public). Well, that’s only 1.2 miles short of a marathon, so that means I needed to extend my Sunday run to be 11.2 miles. Why? Just because. Well, not just because, because “just because” equates to junk miles. There was actually a purpose. Mentally and physically.

Within two hours of finishing the run, we were standing on concrete for three hours introducing folks to the joys of greyhounds. We had seven hounds in attendance and they were everywhere. Since they grow up in very close quarters, they are very comfortable with other hounds. As soon as we went through the front door of the store, Skinny caught sight of the others and about pulled my arm off so he could get to sniffing butts.

Standing on the concrete didn’t do much for recovery, so my glutes tightened up a bit. Nothing horrible, but I was definitely ready to go when we were done. Even Skinny had enough and curled up in the one crate that was set out; too much standing for him, especially since he’s used to lying around the house for 20 hours a day.

I woke up this morning, just a touch tired in the legs, but no soreness. I’m really starting to see the benefits of a run/walk strategy.

Another beautiful day – low 50’s, a bit of a breeze, overcast. But humid. Plenty of moisture as a precursor to the rain we were to get this afternoon.

I figured that the first mile or two were going to be pretty slow as I found the pain in my legs. No such thing happened. Right out the gate I was pulling very comfortable 9:30-ish miles. Even through the hills. Heading out to the turnaround, I had a tail wind, which isn’t all that great, since I end up heating up too much. As I approached the turnaround, I wanted to wait until my scheduled walk (today I was employing a 5-minute run/30 second walk strategy), so I ended up turning around at 5.78 miles, guaranteeing that I’d be over 11.2 miles for the run.

Coming back, I had a good 5 mph head wind. It was beautiful, since it really cooled me down. Double layered up top with a technical long-sleeve shirt and an Under Armor compression shirt, the breeze really helped with the evaporational cooling. Ahhhh, sweet relief.

How did it go? Awesome. Negative split, even with the headwind on the return leg. 11.53 miles in 1:47:38, which works out to a 9:20 average pace, 27-seconds per mile faster than yesterday. Here’s the accumulated pace:

Mile 2 is a long uphill. Since it’s climbing out of a deep ravine, the return leg was mile 11. I was cruising at that point and didn’t lose any time. Mile 4 was a very convenient porta-potty stop. So even with the headwind, my average pace dropped from 9:35 for mile 6 to 9:20 overall by mile 11.5.

And same as yesterday, I was able to crank it up for the finish, starting about a mile out. Not a sprint, but a strong, steady effort. The last half mile’s split pace was 8:12 average, but my Garmin tells me that I was down to 7:04 for a stretch there. HR was in Zone 5 for the last 1.1 miles and it all felt good; I still felt like I could have given a bit more if I needed to (e.g. if this was a race).

And that’s how I got the title of this entry. Goddess asked how the run was and of course I was quite pleased. That’s when she said “That’s it. You can’t race anymore!”

We both find it funny how I can have these excellent workouts and then suffer and slog through my races. Each and every one of them. Go figure.

While these were both good experiences, the proof will be in tomorrow’s pudding. I ran my PT test on Friday and was not at all pleased with my 10:42 for the 1.5 miles (7:08 pace); I was shooting for 9:45 (6:30 pace), which I held for the first 1/2 mile, but then faded gradually the rest of the way. We’re doing the test again tomorrow and I think I’ll give it another go. I suspect that I won’t better Friday’s time, but it will be interesting to see what my legs have in them. Then I’ll take Tuesday off.

Well, off to read some California 70.3 race reports…

Adoption

Well, today was the Southeast Tri Expo down in Nashville. We were looking forward to heading down there, checking out the goods and hearing Michael Lovato speak.

But we were sidetracked.

By an adoption.

We now have a new baby in the house.

Everyone, meet Skinny, aka Skinny Man. He was born SMK Skynyrd, as in Lynryd Skynyrd.   At just three and a half years old, he’s still a young pup (who weighs about 75lbs). One who’s actually never raced.

The Rock & Roll name will work well in this house, given our love of music.  It would have been really great to meet his siblings – SMK Rush and SMK Zeppelin.

The fine folks at Greyhound Pets of America/Nashville (GPAN) brought Skinny to our house, along with two other wonderful greys. If we could have pulled it off, I think we would have been fine with all three. At once. But it’s better to take things slowly. I’m sure Goddess and I will adopt a few more over the years.