A Race Alone.
Next weekend, I run alone in our nation’s capitol in the Cherry Blossom 10 miler. BB was supposed to run with me, but she has a conference out on the West Coast, and so I will be running without her. This will be the first race of my life that I’m running without her and it feels weird. I guess it shouldn’t? I’ll have other friends running the race, but we won’t be running together, the way BB and I do.
I’m curious how the race will feel. I feel pretty fit, and I have run the course mostly before. It covers a lot of the same territory as the Navy-Air Force half marathon and the Marine Corps Marathon. Without a partner to stick beside, and talk too, will I run faster? Slower? BB keeps me conscientious on the course, because she’s much more aware of our surroundings than I am. Will I be running into people?
I have this vague goal of breaking 90 minutes in the ten-mile run. That’d be fast and hard for me, but doesn’t seem impossible. It just means keeping below a 9 minute mile. I’ve done that over 10 kilometers. This is just 3.8 more miles. Once, on a glorious training run, BB and I ran 10 miles at a 9:07 pace. And that’s how I’m thinking of this. As a training race.
I will automatically get a personal record, because I’ve never run a ten mile race before. But not running with BB, there’s a sense that it doesn’t “count”. It’s extracurricular. I’ll go and run like hell, but I won’t have my partner there to celebrate with at the end. It’ll be another run alone, like my training runs during the week. I can run fast on those. My last two four mile runs were below an 8:40 pace. But they’re not the same as running with her in a race.
So I’m looking forward to it, but I also feel a little odd about it. I’d like a good time, but it doesn’t really matter. I don’t run for times. I like to see improvement, and I’d love a good one. But I run for health and companionship and to feel like I’m capable of accomplishing difficult things. So whatever time I get, if I finish, I’ve done something hard. And that feels great.
I Am All Out of Words.
When I was fourteen, I traveled through the Brussels airport. It was at the end of my first foreign trip without my mom. She had told me that I had to get out of the house for a month, and I called her bluff. I said I’d bicycle in Europe, and she sent me. I rode across France and Spain with a group of teenagers, and then took a train to Brussels and flew home.
I don’t remember the airport. I’m sure it had changed completely in the twenty-six years between then and now. I remember being afraid to fly across the Atlantic ocean. What if something went wrong with the plane? Where could it land? I’m still afraid to fly. I fly a lot, for someone who’s afraid of it. I’ve made a conscious decision in life not to let fear stop me from doing the things I love.
Today, it seems, someone bombed the airport. More than a dozen are dead. A nearly simultaneous bombing at a subway station killed a dozen more. It might not be over. It comes on the heels of the arrest, in Brussels, of the last at-large participant in the Paris bombings and slaughter back in November. I was relieved when Abdeslam was captured. I hoped it represented a disruption of these events.
It never occurred to me, then, to fear bombings or shootings. I was afraid of a mechanical fault. Now, I am less naive about the risks, and better at statistics. Travel is very safe, and the dangers that attend it are myriad, but remote. Dining out, commuting, going to theaters. All of these things have risks I didn’t know to fear when I was a child.
The famous specter we all have in our heads these days is so-called Islamic terror. But in my own country, most of the acts of terror are committed with no Islamic motive. It’s usually a young man with a gun killing indiscriminately. Driven sometimes by mental illness, sometimes by hate, sometimes by imagined grievance.
We can’t stop violence. We can’t stop grievance. We can’t cure every mental illness and we can’t assuage all the toxicities of religions and politics intermingled. If I’m honest, I don’t know even how to try. I like to have answers and opinions. I don’t here. It’s not obvious to me what the best way is. Some obvious paths – like restricting access to guns – seem intractably sealed. The suggestions of understanding and integration and multiculturalism seem hopelessly naive on days like today. The calls for more war perplex and dismay me.
But here is what I will not do. I will not be made to hate. I will not be made to judge a community by the actions of the most extreme. I will not stifle my joy in exploration. I will not abandon my excursions nor refuse to experience the world with my own hands and breath and heart.
I can be made to fear. I am afraid of many things. But terrorism does not inspire an exceptional fear. And it does not inspire me to vengeance or to isolationism. Life is inextricable from risk. Safety is not my highest aspiration. I was the boy who goes to stand at the edge of the chasm, to feel the rush of air rising from below. I am still that boy.
No madman with a gun or a god can stamp that thrill from me. My heart is softer than that. Softer than they want it to be. Today, I weep for Belgium, but not for the boy I was when I visited. Not for the young man I was when I returned. And not for the man I’ll be when I go there again. I know what man I’ll be.
This violence cannot change me. They may make me fear. But they cannot make me cower.
The Virginia Beach Recap.
This was a tough run. The weather was miserable. It was 40 degF and howling rain at the start. And of course we’d been standing outside in that for 15-20 minutes by the time we got to run. We were very cold and soaked to the bone. Our shoes were sodden clogs. Our outer layers were plastered to us and running felt like slogging through sludge.
It was pretty obvious from the outset that a personal record was not on tap. I had to pee a lot. BB’s legs were cramped up from the cold. Around the time her muscles relaxed, my hamstring and glute seized up and the rest of the run was pretty painful.
Despite all that, the rain stopped around the 5K mark, and we found the energy for a good hard final push, running the last 5 miles at around an 8:45 pace. We finished the race running strong and fast along the beach, side by side and hand in hand, like we always do.
I had high hopes for a new personal record, or even breaking 2 hours. It didn’t happen. We finished in 2:11 and a little change. But you know what? I’m not the least bit disappointed. We ran hard, and gave what we had. We ran through weather and pain. We ran together no matter what got thrown at us.
Last year, if we’d run a 2:11, it would have been our record. That’s how far we’ve come. We had a hard, slow, miserably rainy and windy race with two bathroom stops, and we still ran at a pace that would have been our record time only 12 months ago. We ran like hell. Together. Alone together in the throng of runners.
That’s what I want out of this. Joy. Health. Love. Connection. Trial. Challenge. Victory.
And yesterday, that’s what I got.
Vacation.
I wish we had one planned. Life has been absurdly busy lately with travel for work, the racing schedule, and trying to sell my house. And that’s not mentioning various things that don’t get mentioned here. Suffice to say, the sorts of things that consume the lives of childless adults are consuming mine, and I’m feeling overstimulated and distracted a lot. My anxiety is relenting a bit, but as long as I own this house it’ll always be at a baseline trying level.
I want a vacation, and so does BB. We have a few destinations in mind. Argentina. Bulgaria. There are some more exotic locales I’d like to consider too. Astana. Tashkent. Uttrakhand. Gabarone. But those are less likely. One place I’d love to go that’s not so exotic but is very difficult to get to is the Faroe Islands. A week there, far from civilization of any kind, running sheep tracks in the wilderness seems delightful, doesn’t it?
But realistically, we don’t get to plan anything until early summer at the soonest. With a number of complicated things in flux, it’s hard to identify a good time to travel. We may just have to make a decision and hit it. Pick a week, and go and to hell with the consequences. Life is short, and taking time for ourselves to explore the world matters to us.
We went to Paris for a very short, whirlwindy trip in November. Prior to that our last trip, to Spain, was more than a year ago now. So we just picked a week in June, and we’re going to go somewhere far away and relax in a foreign place. Run and eat and experience another culture or two and see what there is to see in another new land. And I’ll add to my tattoo with another new country.
Tribal Justice.
Yesterday on twitter a total asshole was saying really offensive things. I assume that makes it a normal Monday, but this time it crossed my carefully-curated feed. I rebuked him for presuming to speak for men, because his hateful speech didn’t speak for me. And I offered to talk to him privately about why he seemed so angry, at which point, he got bored with me and went back to antagonizing people that gave him a more satisfying reaction.
Several people then started screen-capping his tweets and sending them to his employer, presumably in hopes of inspiring professional consequences for his impolitic opinions and aggressively asserted misogyny. I can’t support that. I think it’s wrong.
We see it happen a lot on twitter these days. When people spout hateful opinions others go and attempt to quash their perspective and destroy their livelihoods by making trouble for their employer until the corporation decides the public outcry is bad for their image. They defend this by saying, “Freedom of speech isn’t freedom from consequences.”
But to some extent, yes, it is. Freedom from formal consequences, that is. While I understand that the first amendment formally only protects us from governmental proscriptions on expression of opinion, I find that the spirit of it – that people should not be punished for failing to adhere to a culturally or legally enforced set of politics – is being abrogated wholesale in the online community.
When we attempt to insinuate ourselves into power over others’ economic viability based on not liking how they present themselves politically, we join a long list of oppressors. People with undesirable political opinions have long been marginalized, and I see the temptation to do so. We desire a society that respects women, so those who denigrate them should not be able to do so free from response.
But we also desire a society in which people are allowed to express even unpleasant opinions. Because every opinion is unpleasant to someone. And it takes little imagination to postulate a circumstance where liberal values are the ones oppressed: it has happened in many places and at many times. And it’s not over. It is happening now in places not far from here.
The whole ideal of liberal democracy is the rule of law and the freedom of expression. Extra-legal consequences like attacking someone’s employment as a silencing tactic is based in tribal justice: I feel aggrieved so I will recoup my imagined damages personally, through vengeance. We should not be surprised when we find ourselves looking down the barrel of that cannon instead of lighting the fuse.
Being offended – even by legitimately offensive things – does not entitle me to redress. It only entitles me to disengage. And it is not right to attack anyone’s livelihood to silence them. That way lies lawlessness and blood-feuds. It is, I think, literally uncivilized.
The Next Race.
Sunday, BB and I will lace up our shoes (but not too tight… never lace your shoes too tight) for the Virginia Beach half-marathon. We did this one last year too. I’m excited for it. It’s a flat, fast course with great support. I’m a little worried about the weather, which is currently listed as expecting a thunderstorm in the middle of the race. But weather forecasts a week in advance aren’t exactly reliable. And if there’s a storm, well, we run in the storm. I can survive that.
If the weather is better than that, then I feel like there’s a chance for BB and I to set a new personal record. Last year at VB, we ran a 2:05:03. Three months ago at Philly, we ran 2:02:15. I’m hoping for good weather, good legs, and a realistic shot at 1:59:59. Can we do it? Dunno. If we don’t or can’t, no big deal. Hell, if we run a 2:15:00, no big deal. I’m just thrilled to be alive to run. But I would definitely feel proud of a personal record and breaking two hours.
This is our first 13.1 of 53 race miles scheduled for the spring. I’m excited and I’m ready to get out on a course again. I’ve had a good winter training for this. I’ve been running, I’ve been on the bike. I’ve been in the gym a lot, working on strength and endurance. I’m feeling fit, strong, and ready. It’s a good time to go run.
I’m especially proud of us, for having really followed through on a commitment we made to ourselves and each other about 18 months ago. We said we would stay “half-marathon fit”. Meaning that if we had the sudden opportunity to run a half marathon in a week’s time, we could do it. Basically, I wanted to be able to roll out of bed in the morning and run 13 miles if I felt like it. And we’ve done that. For the past year and a half, we’ve been half-marathon fit.
What a difference. What a life.
Difficult Professional Situations.
I went to New Orleans in the beginning of this week to give a short talk about how to evaluate new skills, and decide if practitioners of those skills would be worth investing in in a hospital. The venue was a group of quality and safety leaders of peer institutions to MECMC. I was invited by my boss and the hosting organization. It was fun and my talk was well-received.
There were two sobriety-relevant events. The first was the evening before my talk, at a networking dinner. I met several C-suite level executives of important hospitals. The kinds of places that – if I continue to grow and promote my work – I might be looking at in 8-10 years for a vice-presidency of my own. If I decide to go that way. People with power, influence, and interest in the kind of work I can do.
I’m never comfortable at those events. I’m reasonably extroverted in a lot of ways, but social events where I’m alone and don’t know people and am feeling like I’m at the bottom rung in the room? That’s difficult. And of course, it was an open bar event. I arrived and got myself a club soda with lime early on. No one commented on my drink the whole night, and no one looked funny when I didn’t ask for wine with dinner.
The second event was dinner with my boss, the next night. I used to refer to her as “Boss’s Boss”, because that’s what she was. But I’ve ascended now, and there’s no one between us. She reports to the Chief/VP, who reports to the COO. This was a good time for us to meet, no one else from my department was on the trip. I got a 90 minute dinner alone with my boss and an opportunity to bend her ear about my career plans and our office policies.
I of course obsessed about the alcohol. She had a glass of wine. I didn’t. I stupidly asked about the poached pear for dessert, which I said sounded good but then couldn’t have because of course it’s poached in Pernod or whatever. I always worry about these kinds of events. What are they thinking? They’re thinking I’m an alcoholic and a liability, aren’t they? Of course they are. They’ll never invest in me. I’m too risky.
Of course, in more than 8 years now, not one single thing has ever gone wrong in those scenarios. And yet I am no more comfortable now than I was the first time I was in a situation like that. I don’t think I’ll ever get better at it. But I’m relieved that nothing went wrong, again, this time.
There was one incident that happened at the networking dinner that made me more uncomfortable than the alcohol situation. One executive, at a table of four men, one of whom was myself, started talking about, and showing pictures of, his attractive personal trainer. Really? This is not why I’m here. I don’t think it’s why you’re here, and it’s just a little skeezy. You don’t know me. Why do you assume I share your prurient interest?
But this was an important man, in an important meeting, and so I didn’t say or do anything. I grunted when he showed me the picture. And on went the night. This wasn’t harassment, but I can see how harassment gets glossed over, even by people like me who try to actively work against it. There would have been repercussions if I had said anything. No one was being actively harmed in the moment. It wasn’t my business.
I don’t feel like I did anything wrong, but I also didn’t do anything right. Maybe there was nothing right to do. I don’t feel it’s incumbent upon me to risk my career because a guy shows me a picture of a woman dressed for her work and makes a crass (but not vulgar) comment. But I also don’t like that I felt uncomfortable and could do nothing. I wish there were another way. Maybe there is, and I’m just not seeing it.
Silly Blog Challenge – Rescue Me.
My friendly-nemesis (or whatever) Drugmonkey challenged me, among others, to name the five characters I’d most want to come to my rescue in a bad situation, from TV or the movies I’ve recently been watching. “Recently” isn’t well defined, but I’ll say it means “stuff that I’ve crossed paths with in the past, oh, say, six months”.
The first one that popped into my head was easy. After that, I’ve had to think a bit. But not too hard. I mean, you know.
- Luther. I’m giving myself bonus points for getting Idris Elba on the list.
- Éomer. That motherfucker brings the cavalry.
- Michonne. I’m only in season 3, so if she dies, nobody tell me in the comments.
- Robert McCall. I’m really hoping they make a follow-up to The Equalizer.
- Evelyn Salt. I mean, I’m not made of stone.
That’s my current list. Who to tag?
How about 1) My sister. 2) Biochembelle. 3) Ian Street. 4) Matthew Garcia. 5) PsycGrrl.
What are your lists?
Starting to Run.
A friend on twitter peppered me with questions about starting o take up running and how to do it right. Let me say that there’s no right way. Whatever works for you is good. And it’s ok to make “mistakes”. The thing that matters is just keeping at it. I made lots of mistakes and that meant my progress was probably slower than it could have been, but so what. I am what I am, I did it my way, and I learned a lot about myself. As I’ve become more interested, I’ve invested more in tools that make things easier.
Let’s take my friend’s questions one at a time:
Did you focus on specific distances for training? No. I focused on being able to run a quarter mile without dying. Then a mile, then two. I paused at two for a long time before going further. Eventually, I decided I wanted to stretch out my distance.
Tips for running on the open road? Watch out for cars. I like concrete trails best. Wear bright colors, and reflective clothes. There’s a difference between trail shoes and road shoes, and it matters more going the other way. Trail shoes still work on the road, but they’ll wear out faster.
What is your preferred running shoe? I like the Hoka One One Bondi 4, because I need a wide shoe and a lot of cushion.
How many days in a row to run, rest? These days I run 3-4 times a week and cross train 2-3 days a week, making sure that I have one day completely off for recovery. Usually Wednesday. But I’ll skip days if I’m not feeling good. Key is: listen to your body. Run through mild pain, but not through swelling. Sharp pain? take the day off or cross train.
What do you eat before a run, and how long before? The night before a long run (10+ miles for me, but whatever your longest run of the week is, that’s your long run.) I like Indian food. White rice and lean protein is the key. Others like pasta. In the morning, about 30 min before a long run, I have granola. For my shorter runs, I just make sure I’ve got any old calories on board and then go.
How to hydrate for a run? If you’re hydrating right before a run, it’s too late. The night before have plenty of water, and don’t skimp on the salt. You want electrolytes on board. Bear in mind this changes if you have medical issues. ALL of this does. For runs longer than 5 miles, I carry a 20oz (1.3 L) water bottle. For runs longer than 10 km, I also bring Clif’s Shot Bloks chews for energy.
How long before you developed a consistent running gate? I’m not sure I have one. But I’ve read that our gait improves as we continue running. I know I feel more comfortable than I used to. It takes a while.
Any strategies fro improving run times? As my first trainer said, “If you want to run faster, you have to run faster.” There’s no shortcut to just putting in effort. As time goes by and you get fitter, you will naturally run a little faster. But if you really want to improve your times, you’ve got to do speed work: short sprints, tempo runs, high intensity impact training (HIIT). You want to go faster? Spend short times going faster, until you can spend longer times going faster.
Final word? Go run. All you need is feet. No need to be perfect. No need to be fast. Just run. Life gets better.
A Long Ride.
Yesterday I rode my bike 28.9 miles. That’s a long way, and a long time to be on a bike. It took about two hours and ten minutes. I haven’t ridden that far since I was about 15 years old. And it was after a 4.1 mile run. I’m feeling fitter and fitter. It feels really good to be able to ride that kind of distance for fun, and to actually enjoy it. Even though my butt really started hurting after about 20 miles. I like that I’m to a point where pain from exercise doesn’t diminish my enjoyment of the effort.
I’m not really a bicyclist. I don’t know (or care) how to fix one. I don’t understand how a derailleur works and I don’t want to learn. I can’t replace a flat tire, so I don’t even bring a spare with me. I suspect there are ways I could learn these things. I have no ambition to do so. But I do like getting on my bike, and riding it out on the trails around ECC. There are a lot of beautiful places to ride, and I’m excited to be able to.
I am discovering, though, why cyclists have such awesome torsos. I’m not sore, exactly, but my arms, chest, and core are deeply fatigued from the ride. Holding yourself up and gripping the handlebars gives you a good, steady clench that exhausts you after a while. I spent a long time in the jacuzzi after that.
Today I’m supposed to run but I’ve been eating cupcakes instead. I don’t know if I have the energy. I’ve been really kicking up my fitness the last few weeks. More time, harder efforts. I’ve added in a rowing machine to build up upper body endurance. It’s hard. But it feels good to be making increased strides. It’s hard to stay fit when you’re 41.
Infactorium 
