Shorter's opinion piece?
Where?
Joe(goggling furiously)Nation
Joe Nation wrote:Shorter's opinion piece?
Where?
Joe(goggling furiously)Nation
Nevermind. I found it.
I love Frank. His was the first running book I ever read and I still have the first Tulsa Run shirt with his picture on it from 1975(?).
I've always been lucky to be the most hydrated person on the course (and never overhydrated which is worse.) I always finish races soaking wet yet after downing a cup or two of water always have to pee about a cup or two.
I learned a long time ago about fluids. (Riding your bike through the Oklahoma hills in plus 90's for hours on end
by yourself trains one into knowing how much liquid is needed. Bonk out there between section lines and no one will find anything but your rusty bike after a year or two.)
Joe(I am also the kind of person who listens when the body speaks.)Nation
Joe Nation wrote:
Joe(goggling furiously)Nation
Goggling? "To stare with a bulging look in the eyes."
We are are all watching with total admiration in our eyes, Joe. Keep on trucking.
I know you are, Joe, thus I've not actually been nagging at you here. But you know that by now.
Yeh, I'm a Shorter fan too, though you're in better shape. With any luck I'll post a link for those interested, once I find it again. If people want to talk about it, we can start a new thread.
Here it is. Let's not go off the path here. Wanna talk about it, let's do a new thread.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/12/opinion/12shorter.html
Uh, you're in better shape than me. Don't know about Shorter, I bet he can still make it around the block.
It took longer to recover from Sunday's race than before.
I skipped one day (Monday) but both Tuesday and Wednesday mornings I could not get out of bed.
And my good intentions of running after work disappeared in a cloud of honey-dos and complete insanity.
The insanity is the sudden need for better socks.
So I ended up going to Paragon Sports twice, once to
look at the socks and try to remember the brand of the good ones I like and then again to actually buy some of them.
Now, this morning I am having doubts about the new socks.
Tomorrow is the last long slow run.
This morning is a merry little six mile to remind myself that I really like doing this.
Joe(I do)Nation
I had a killer day today. A near perfectly temperate day for a long run with just the hint of rain in the air. I ran up Fifth to Marcus Garvey Park in order to see what the roadway will look like at the point (22 miles in). As you turn back South and look down Fifth Ave you can just barely make out the trees of Central Park one mile away. Make that mile and you are just about home.
Two and a half full circuits of the Park with the little side run North and I finish the day with 17.25 miles. AND the hamstring gave little to no sign of complaint and my new socks were like butta. (That's New Yorker for good.)
Oh. and here is the Joe you know in the flow.
Two days rest coming up and then lots of short (5 miles) run before the day.
Joe(15 days to go)Nation
whoo whoo whoo
go Joe!
Great news about the socks. They're crucial.
Two weeks to go and I am champing at the bit.
I am also having the weirdest little bouts of paranoia?
I stepped on a cat toy. Ow, did I hurt something. Is is permanent????
Everything I eat is turning to fat.
My shoes are 1)too big 2) too small (Check the time of day.)
I am/am not carrying my cellphone.
Why do we all have to run together? Why can't we just do a marathon in maybe a small group of ten say and then call in the results. They do that sort of thing in golf all the time. Someone gets a hole-in-one, all it takes is one corroborating witness to make it official. (maybe two, I don't really know.) But I think I could go run the 26 miles plus a little more next Sunday instead of the Sunday after. Think of the money they would save on traffic control.
I am/am not taking the subway to the buses.
I am/am not taking a car service to the buses.
Everyone I know is going to be at 106th Street and Fifth Ave.
There will be no one @ 106th and Fifth Ave. It will be deserted by the time I get there.
Why can't we have a fourteen day weather forecast? All this money spent on going to the MOON and we can't tell what the weather will be on Nov 4th? For pity's sake, scientists, get with it!!
Oh, and get with before next Friday when I can have a ten day forecast.
What if it snows??
What if it rains and I am carrying my cellphone??
The 5 mile Marathon warm-up is next Sunday. They use it to test the timing devices and such. The trailers (four big ones) were being eased into the Park past the Tavern on the Green last Friday. A whole village of stuff is set up at the finish, for the television networks, for the Road Runner's offices (they basically live in the Park for a week or so.) In the warm-up we will do one shortened lap of the Park and finish (going up the frigging three hills to the finish) just like on Marathon day. Two years ago I was lined up with the 12 minute milers hoping I could finish the five miles. Two very speedy looking guys were lined up next to me and I heard them talking about wanting to start way in the back of these people so that they wouldn't get stepped on or otherwise hurt one week before the race. Now I know what they were talking about. I am going to start the warm-up WAAAAY in the back and trot around the course like the winner of the Working Dogs at the Westminster.
What should I pack in my baggage bag? A peanut butter sandwich? That would taste good after a five hour run. Hmmm. And something to drink... no there will be stuff to drink.
Okay, get a hold of yourself. Settle down. Be calm. Everything is in place.
Relax. Relax, Relax.
Joe(wait a minute.... is that another cat toy over there!!!!)Nation
When E.G. gets in this mode before something major (and he pretty much always gets in this mode before something major, more on the exceptions in a minute), I remind him that it's part of his process, and that the process ends with a successful project. The only times he's been utterly unperturbed and confident that all will be well, he's fallen flat on his face. (That hasn't happened too often.)
So, by E.G.-calendar, you're right where you should be. Paranoia should peak in 4 or 5 days (sorry), then will fluctuate slightly, then by a couple of days before the race you'll be raring to go and put all this damn worrying behind you, then you'll have a few more "eek" moments before it actually happens, and then when you need to be calm... calmo. Coast. Success.
Thanks.
It's very reassuring to know that others are going around and around and around. (There's probably 100,000 spouses and children stroking the 30,000 runner's heads right now, say "Calm. Calm. Calm like a lake in the morning. ... .)
And you are so right about being unperturbed and confident. I have had real flashs of that after a couple of long runs,,,,,, followed almost immediately doing something stupidly overconfident.
Aum...... I am seeking the balance point of the universe.
Joe(or at the least a cat toy free area for safe walking)Nation
Just want to clarify that he's not a runner, but in his line of work he frequently has Huge Important Projects with a Deadline that freak him out thoroughly. And after 15 years I'm verrrrry familiar with his process. And that's what I immediately thought of when I read your account -- substitute details and the substance is exactly the same.
You'll do great.
We all went through the same thing when Barbaro was getting ready for races. The horse would describe an anticipation similar to Joes. The horse would do its dailys in a fashion that anyone could see were havingan effect on the horses skull. Barbaro was always psyched.
Now my point is, dont get all keyed up over this because you too may get a bad case of laminitis and well then have to shoot you.
.
Thanks for the input, Farmerman.
(Joe looks carefully at both Farmerman's hand and is relieved that neither holds a pistol.)
Back in the dark, dark, dark ages of computers (I'm talking Tandy 100 here.) we had a game called Moonshot, or maybe Spaceshot, I can't remember exactly. There were no graphics, just lines of text which gave you a number of choices to make. The object of the game was to take the values you were given for fuel, speed and distance to the moon and combine them to take off from the earth, fly to the moon and then use you retro-rockets to make a soft landing.
If you took off too fast, you used too much fuel and couldn't slow down enough to avoid crash landing. If you took off too slow, you landed in the Atlantic, or, if you just barely made it out of the earth's gravitational pull, the game would inform you that you would reach the moon in 157 years or so. The game changed the weight of the ship and it's cargo at the start of every game.
I'm telling you all this because that is the game I am now playing in my head. At what speed do I run the first miles? Too fast and I might not have enough 'fuel' to get to the finish. Too slow and I will be out on the course for six and half hours. The road in Brooklyn is pretty flat, but I have been warned about "banking extra miles in the first half." (What?) and I think I will need to have a lot left to push beyond the 22, 23 mileposts. (My crew is meeting me at the 23 which is in the middle of the hill on Fifth Ave.)
Others have told me, quote "****, if you make it past the Madison Ave bridge there is no way anything's going to stop you." One guy told me he remembered seeing the trees of Marcus Garvey Park, that's at about the 22 mile point, and then he said "I just floated along to the end, I didn't care what my time was." (Liar) "The crowds just lifted me up."
Right now I'm thinking about keeping it to about eleven minute miles. I finish in about five hours (maybe better if I feel really good at the twenty miles point) and it will have been a fine day.
One thing I do not have to contend with is retro-rockets.
They were always the touchiest part of SpaceShot.
From where I stand at the moment slowing down will not be a problem 12 days from now.
Joe(Watch out!! Oh, no, he's running too fast to stop!!! )Nation
At the end of the Ocean State Marathon:
Three runners come in, the middle one in obvious distress.
Distressed Runner is as close to a fetal position you can get while still
standing
Friend of Distressed runner says "They got hot chocolate over there.
You want some hot chocolate?"
Distressed Runners answers "Screw the chocolate. I NEED DRUGS!"
No advice, and you know to not start off in rocket times.
I wouldn't worry about time at all (she says, I've never done this) at the beginning, you'll pick up after the morass, don't go all agita'. You may be trying to beat a time, but first you are planning to finish. You can improve your time on the next one.
(distressed runner may need electrolytes)
the next one.
I mentioned to my honey the other day that finishing the Staten Island Half last week qualified me for next year's marathon.
There was a long pause.
(I have been training hard and have not been too perky around the house of late.)
Joe(the pause continues)Nation
