Thinking about Goals.
As I think over my goals of the past year, I hit almost all of them. I ran another marathon faster than the year before. I completed an Olympic triathlon. I set a sub-two hour personal record in the half-marathon. I ran a 10-miler in under 90 minutes. 2016 was, pretty objectively, the best fitness year of my life. Even though I had some real “setbacks” in races when I couldn’t perform in the heat and humidity.
I put setbacks in quotes because I didn’t actually fail at anything. I finished all my races. I just had to walk some. That happened in three races, two half-marathons (one a brutal trail), and a 10k. I don’t like having walked, but that’s where I was at the time. I’m allowed to miss my mark. Especially when I know precisely why it happened.
So I hit my fitness goals and made progress and learned a lot of things about who I am and what I can (and can’t) do. But it occurs to me that in the past year, all my goals were about fitness. I didn’t really set any career goals. I didn’t set any personal goals. I just wanted to putter along.
Puttering along is ok. I don’t need to be quivering with ambition every moment. I don’t need to be always stepping up and never pausing. But I don’t need to be in that state to be setting and accomplishing goals. And I certainly did accomplish things professionally this year. I had three or four papers accepted. I lectured in Italy and Canada. I got a nice little raise. But I haven’t felt productive.
I’m thinking about my goals for 2017. I don’t make “New Year’s Resolutions”. I think they’re a little silly. But I do like to take the new year and think about what would make it feel like a successful one. I’ve set my major fitness goals. A marathon, a half-Ironman, and 100 miles a month running through the summer to maintain my heat fitness.
But I don’t know what to do about career, personal, or fitness goals.
Should I pick the novel I’m writing back up? Finish my symphony? I have unfinished things that could use attention. Should I aim for a promotion? Another grant? Three papers? I have official “goals” from my actual performance evaluation but they don’t interest me much, or inspire me. I’ve been meeting with other parts of the institution to inspire more interesting collaborations.
I have time before January to decide, and there’s nothing magical for me about January 1 being a start date. But it does feel clean. So I need to think about things. What do I expect from myself this year? What am I going to take on?
Going Halfway.
I have done it. I have taken “step three” towards competing in a half-Ironman race. I have made a commitment. I purchased an entry to the Atlantic City Half Ironman race, September 17th, 2017. I have nine months to train. In between, I have a marathon and a half marathon already registered. Then I will do an Olympic triathlon in June, probably, to train and be acclimated to the transitions and rhythms of the sport.
I’m hiring a coach to get me there. I’m going to be training for nine straight months, good and hard. I’m going to be run-heavy in the summer to heat condition. I’m going to commit and not take things for granted based on a good race or two in the spring. I’m going to take the whole season seriously and “professionally”. My knee has been twingey for 8 months now. I have to be smart about this.
I’m excited and scared. I know what it’s like to compete in a triathlon now. I’ve done it. I completed one. It took me 3 hours and it was a lot of fun, and a lot of work, but I did it. This one will be harder. It’s more than twice as far for the bike and run legs. It will be a challenge. A big one.
The swim is 1.2 miles. That’s very manageable. Especially in the ocean, where it’s buoyant. I love swimming and I feel comfortable in the water. The water temperature will be about 70 degrees Farenheit, so I shouldn’t need to worry about managing a wet suit. It’ll be cool but not risk hypothermia to wear no top.
The bike is 56 miles. This is a big deal. The furthest I’ve ever ridden without stopping is about 30 miles. So I’m definitely going to need to put in some big rides to train. Some really big rides. But the course is pretty flat, and that means it should be easy on my knee and relatively fast.
The run is 13.1 miles. Half a marathon. I’ve done a lot of those. I’ve even done a couple immediately after a half marathon. My only fear is that it will be hot and humid. There is nothing I can do about that. I’ll just have to lumber through and make sure that I get enough heat training in and stay hydrated.
That’s the race: 70.3 miles on a Sunday morning in New Jersey in September. Either I’ll make it or I won’t. But I’m gonna work like hell to get there.
Jealousy and Competition.
I just read a fascinating post by a friend and colleague on the way competition – especially over money and salary – influences how we feel about ourselves. It immediately struck me that I only compare up. Maybe that’s a good thing.
When I look at people who make more money than me, I do get jealous. Not of like, celebrities or CEOs or such. For me, the biggest source is when people make much more money for skills that are no more difficult to acquire than mine. MDs, for example, or lawyers. Those are skills that are impressive and valuable, but they’re not, objectively, any more difficult than what I do. Nor obviously any more important. Yet they’re better compensated. I get jealous of that.
I get jealous that managers make more than the high-skills people they manage. Being a manager is not a lazy, easy job. But it’s not any harder than being a subject matter expert in a field as an individual contributor. I don’t see that managers should make more than the people they manage except to set up a hierarchy.
So I look at people who are roughly in the same career stage (or earlier in their career stages) who make more money than I do, and I am often a bit jealous. I compare myself and find myself lacking, or I compare myself and think I see injustice. Neither is true (though, certainly, I am occasionally lacking). Economic incentives are complex, and I chose what I chose knowing it would never make me rich.
But interestingly, I never compare myself “downwards”. I never look at people with less lucrative skills or career paths and feel satisfied and superior. And what an ugly thing if I were to! We are rightly taught that we shouldn’t judge people by their salaries. We all know people who think they’re better than others because they make more money and it’s a vile and disgusting attitude.
Isn’t looking up and feeling inadequate the internal mirror of that? Aren’t I saying something ugly about myself when I look with avarice on what others have I feel is not deserved beyond what I have done as well? Instead of looking at compensation and judging people or what it says about economic incentives in society, I should look at myself and see what my attitudes say about me.
It’s easy to see an ugliness when we are denigrating others. It’s harder when we denigrate ourselves.
The First Workout Back.
I still haven’t run since the marathon. It’s coming up on two weeks. We did walk some 47 miles in Hong Kong, but that’s not the same as getting running miles in. Though, I’m a huge believer in walking as exercise. When I first decided to get in better shape, I did it with push-ups, sit-ups, and walking. That alone helped me lose 20 pounds and change my whole outlook on life and fitness.
But what I did do is a gym workout. It was my first one since the marathon as well, and today I’m pleasantly sore. I didn’t try to break myself, or anything. I did some “power” work, like throwing the medicine ball, and some strength work. I can reliably do 3-5 chin-ups in a row these days, which is a huge accomplishment for me. Now I’m starting to work on pull-ups, which I’ve discovered are an entirely different animal.
To do a pull-up, you have to have back muscles. Chin-ups are largely about your arms and shoulders. Pull-ups are your lats. For me, that’s much harder. So I’ve been doing band-assisted pull-ups where you use a giant rubber band to reduce the load. That’s how I started with chin-ups too. It’s a slow process to build strength, but it’s a lasting one.
I read an article recently that endurance doesn’t come back as fast as strength does when lost. Something to do with building cell-nuclei or mitochondria or something biological that I don’t really understand. Strength builds lasting structures that don’t vanish even when you lose fitness, whereas endurance training doesn’t. Thus, when you get out of endurance shape, you have to rebuild it all over again, as I learned this summer.
So, in order to maintain my cardiovascular fitness when I’m not running, I put in some time on the rowing machine, which ought to help with my pull-ups too. I rowed two miles in 14 minutes. That got my heart rate up to my maximum, and felt like a lot of work without being high impact on joints and such.
So, while avoiding true burnout and taking a break from the monotonous parts of constant endurance training, I’m trying to make sure that I do a good job of keeping fit. I actually lost a couple of pounds in Hong Kong with all that walking. I’m feeling like I’m in pretty good shape despite a few nagging injuries, and I’m talking with my new endurance coach in a couple of weeks to prep for next year’s challenges.
Right now, I’m committed to the Love Run in Philadelphia, the Garden Spot Inn marathon Lancaster, PA, and I’m looking for an Olympic distance triathlon or two in the late spring or summer. If I get all that in, then I’m going to do a late summer/fall half Ironman. In addition to several more half-marathons. I want to get back to the NAF Half in DC, and maybe a destination run in the fall. And of course, I’ll be supporting BB if she commits to the 50km trail ultra she’s considering.
It’s going to be an exciting year, fitness-wise. Right now, my training consists mostly of resting my knee and mind before the big lifts of the season.
Using Every Tool.
November was a difficult month for me. Well, the last three weeks were, anyway. As everyone knows, the election hit me very hard, and I went through an anxiety spiral. I’m emerging from it now, but I had to reach deep into my bag of tricks. Because I was feeling things I hadn’t felt in a really long time. Things that scared me and that scared some of the people close to me.
As I wrote before, there were times shortly after the election, including election night, when I felt like I wanted a drink. Because I didn’t know what else to do to sleep. To relieve my anxiety. To make the world go away for a little while. That’s what alcohol does for me: it makes the world go away. It’s easy not to care about anything when you’re drunk. It’s easy not to hurt. It’s easy. I like easy.
But I’m no fool. I know what alcohol does to me. I know where it leads. I know that I can’t make the world go away for an evening and then wake up and expect it to come back again. When I go in, I go all in. I go in for life, and I go in for death. That’s how I drink. That’s how I drank, and how I will drink again if I do. Alcohol is not a companion for me. It’s an endgame. And I lose.
So this month I’ve deployed a lot of tools to straighten myself out. Because the idea of a drink is terrifying. It would immediately ruin everything I’ve spent almost nine years building.
Tools I have used this month: my program and my meetings; directed visualizations; talking to my sponsor; talking to my partner; talking to my friends and family; writing about alcoholism and my feelings here; talking to professional therapists. And, while it’s not optimal, suffering. Sometimes, if there’s no way out of intolerable feelings except a drink, I simply have to suffer through intolerable feelings. Being able to experience suffering and see it through to healing is a cornerstone capability of an alcoholic in recovery.
I’ve emerged now. While I am still greatly distressed by the direction this president elect is likely to take the country, and the methods he’ll likely use to get it there, I am not in a state of active, strangling despair. I am no longer in a state of peril. I don’t think I was ever in any real danger of drinking, but I know I felt things I hadn’t felt in a really long time. I needed to marshal much of my arsenal, not because of a true emergency, but because I don’t fuck around with my sobriety. I don’t walk on rails.
When something is off, I overcompensate. I have to. I have to take my disease and my life seriously.Failure to do that is how alcoholics relapse. It’s how we die. And I remember that I am not fighting. I don’t battle my addiction, my disease. I remember each time I am distressed that I have already lost this battle. I am in recovery because I have stopped fighting. I don’t fight the feelings I have. I surrender to them.
I am an alcoholic. There is nothing I can do about that. I accept it. I am even grateful for it. Because I can do nothing about my alcoholism, and because I know that, I don’t have to drink. I am powerless. I am abandoned. So I am free.
Home and Resting.
BB and I have returned from Hong Kong and are back in our respective cities until Friday. It was a pair of very long flights for a very short time in Hong Kong, but we really had a wonderful time. Hong Kong is a great city. Just amazing. Very New Yorkish but cleaner and felt safer. Everything glittered. And the skyline, well, the Hong Kong skyline is among the most amazing things I’ve ever seen.
I’m basically of the opinion that skyscrapers are just as natural as, say, anthills. They are a formation of crystals that grows where humans congregate in large societies – a natural formation that is a peculiar phenomenon arising from the strange chemical reaction we call “life”. So I find them beautiful is a wholly satisfying way, like a mountain range or a forest. And the HK skyline is set up so that in the evening they have city-wide light shows set to music, where dozens of buildings flash and shine in unison.
We ate great food (I even tried dim sum and survived!) and walked almost 50 miles in three days through the city. We saw the real markets that locals shop in and the sparkling high-end districts that visiting billionaires frequent. We went to the night market where everything is cheap and chintzy, and the malls where everything is so overpriced it’s ridiculous – spending simply to prove you can spend on things that don’t even have price tags.
We took ferries across the harbor, and to Macau. Macau is to Hong Kong like Atlantic City is to New York City. Full of casinos, and rapidly becoming poorer and seedier as you leave the strip. But it has some amazing colonial and pre-colonial sights, like the ruins of a massive cathedral and the A-Ma Temple, which predates the Portuguese colonization. It’s an hour on the jet boat from HK to Macau, and worth the trip even if you don’t gamble (we don’t).
The municipal parks in Hong Kong are free and beautiful, surprisingly expansive for being wedged into densely populated real estate. We saw aviaries and horticulture, and elegantly manicured stone paths. Much of Hong Kong has raised pedestrian walkways so you don’t have to fight traffic, and would be a parkour-practitioner’s paradise.
The weather was a mixed bag, with Saturday being dominated by monsoon rains, sheets of warmish water flung earthwards from a grey sky. Hong Kong can be done cheaply: $650 flights, seedy hotels, street food. Or you can spend $300,000 a day and still feel like your poorest friend. We had a lovely time on a reasonable budget and thoroughly enjoyed the trip, even if it was short and punctuated with a terrifying cable car ride and quease-inducing catamaran trip (I was ok until the lady next to me began using her seasickness bag copiously and noisily.).
A fine trip, better company, and worth the long travel time. Hong Kong has earned its place on the list of great world cities. Really one of my favorites. Now I’m going to rest for a few days and then get back to things.
Some Pictures from Hong Kong.
Well, it’s pouring out and we’re having coffee. We walked some 17 miles yesterday around the city, leaving me chafed and sore. But we also got foot massages. Some pictures:
Tomorrow we go to Macau probably. Tonight we hope the rain passes and we can go on a harbor cruise.
Wrap Up of the Fitness Year.
Well, my racing season is over for 2016. How did I do? I think I did really well. I’m proud of myself. Though there was a stretch of really difficult races in the spring and summer, I generally performed well this year, and difficult races where I don’t achieve what I expect are great learning opportunities. It builds character to lose and come back for more.
I did two half-marathons and a 10 miler in the early winter/early spring, the Virginia Beach half, the Love Run, and the Cherry Blossom 10 mile. While VB was marred by horrible weather, we still turned in a strong race. The Cherry Blossom I ran alone, and ran well on a cold day in DC. My fastest race ever, at any distance. And only one week later, BB and I ran the Love Run half marathon and broke two hours for the first (and still only) time.
Then came the astonishingly hard Charlie Horse trail half. I learned a few important things. One: 85 degrees and humid are not a good racing environment for me. Two: I don’t like trails. Three: pain is surmountable. We finished very close to dead last after I turned my ankle and had to walk the last seven miles. It was very hard. Even though I felt well trained, heat and humidity really defeat me. Every time.
From there, it was time to focus on my first triathlon, an Olympic distance tri in New Jersey. I did the 1500 meter swim, 20 mile bike, and 6.2 mile run in just more than three hours. I wasn’t fully trained for it, because I ran too little and biked too much. I learned that biking doesn’t maintain my fitness like running does. And I wore out my knee, which is still not right. I’ll be getting a pro bike fitting before putting more miles on two wheels.
Up next were two disappointing races: the Philly 10K, and the Rock and Roll Philadelphia half marathon. In both, the heat and humidity exposed my lack of training. I didn’t run enough, by far. And I had to pause and walk in both races. The first time I’d had to do that uninjured. It felt like failure. I overheated, dehydrated, and had my heart rate spike to unsustainable levels. It set me up with a lot of fear for the full marathon.
But fear is best assuaged with action, and so I ran and ran and ran. As the weather cooled, I extended my training runs. I began doing 10 mile tempo runs after work, and really putting in the time and effort to gain fitness. It worked. And on race day, I had what it took to finish strong, go the whole distance, and break my prior time by almost 9 minutes.
I’m still quite slow. Almost 75% of the field, including 80% of men, and men my age, finished in front of me. I doubt I’ll ever finish in the top half of a well-attended marathon. And that’s fine. I’ve only barely ever finished in the top half of a half marathon. And I’m ok with that. I’ve never been a gifted athlete. What I lack in talent, I make up for in being stupidly dogged about getting to the end, even when it hurts.
And it often hurts. And that’s alright. I’m an ordinary person. There’s no reason I shouldn’t hurt. Today, 48 hours after the full marathon, I’m feeling better. And I’m looking forward to my massage at 5pm. It’ll be really nice. And then a trip far overseas. And resting for about a month before it’s time to train for the spring racing season. And this summer, I need to keep my miles up. No matter the heat.
I’m proud of this year. I raced 122.1 miles. Trained hundreds and hundreds more. And I feel like I did a lot of good for myself. Now it’s time for a month of rest. Starting with a massage.
The Philadelphia Marathon.
Well, dear friends, we did it. Sunday was cold and windy, with race start temp at about 38 degrees. We got up at 0530, and had granola and coffee, and dressed for the race. We left home at about 0630, and got to the start right at 0700. It took us about 25 minutes (enough time to scoot to a porta-potty) for our corral to be called, and then we were off. We started nice and smooth, keeping a pace about 10:45.
One of my biggest problems is that I have to pee all the time, and since I’d hydrated well for the race, this was no exception. We had about a 5 minute pee stop at mile 4 for a porta-potty line that didn’t seem to move. But after that it was easy sailing. We followed our nutrition plans, kept our pace right at about 10:45s, slowly cutting off the long pause mile by mile, and finally settled into an 11:05 pace for the full distance.
Physically, this race hurt much less than the Marine Corps marathon last year. We didn’t stand around for two hours before hand. We had our water and calories with us, rather than relying on the course. And I think we were better trained. Certainly, things came together in a positive way for us, and we set personal records with a time of 4:50:38. That’s in improvement of 8:45, or about 20 seconds per mile.
That’s a big accomplishment. Hell, finishing any marathon on your feet is a big accomplishment. I ran 417 training miles, followed by 26.2 on the big day. 443 miles in four months. Lots of marathoners run a lot more than that. I’m not fast enough to train a lot more miles; I just don’t have the time. But my body held up for this race. And the only obvious “injury” from the race didn’t hurt at all during it.
My knee help up, my quads too. And while a few things hurt from time to time, and everything hurt from mile 24 on (as it will), overall this was a good race and I felt strong during it. And then, of course, we had some 6000 calories to replace:
Now I’m going to rest for a long time, people. We’re off to Hong Kong on Wednesday for a few days. I hope to have some good pictures to share.
Sunday Long Run.
Well, the weekend is upon us, and I have a 26.2 mile long run this Sunday. I’m nervous. It’s a long way to go and I don’t feel like my nutrition this week has been up to the challenge. Anxiety, which can spiral in me and ruin my appetite and my sleep. Sleep has been better the past few days, but my eating is still screwy. I did eat some rice and fish with veggies last night, and that’s a good thing. And some chicken.
Physically, my body is fit. I did an easy workout yesterday to tune up and stretch out. That was good. I feel better after I work out, for a little while anyway. I’m trying to remember how I felt during my divorce. I was constantly terrified that I would be dragged through a years-long legal process. That didn’t happen. I catastrophize a lot. I look at the world and my situation in it and I see the worst of all possible things happening, and no way to influence it. I’m always wrong.
But I still need to find a way to move forward in peace. To address the anxiety and fear and find a path forward for myself I can live with, and in. I don’t know how to do that right now. I’m hopeful that completing another marathon will remind me of my ability to take on big challenges and succeed. My problem is I don’t like uncertainty. It interferes with my ability to function normally both physically and emotionally. And intellectually.
And I can’t control the uncertainty in the world. Perhaps the prior sense of it was always illusory.
Infactorium 