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February 22, 2006
Oops
I completely spaced last night on the fact that today is Ash Wednesday.* Consequently, I pulled my “I’m tired and have a lot of work to do so I’ll just have a bowl of instant oatmeal for dinner and make up for it tomorrow” routine last night. This after doing my TLT (yes, that TLT… finally got around to doing it). When I woke up ravenous at 6 this morning my first realization was that I had completely screwed up. Fasting on Ash Wednesday is one of my few religious observances, so I considered just sucking it up and fasting anyway. But then I started thinking about everything I needed to do today and the inefficiency that low blood sugar would cause, so I ate… a lot. One of my other religious observances is giving up a couple of things for Lent. Generally I give up something silly (like chocolate, or television… or one year I gave up wearing pants to work) and something more serious aimed at making me a better person. I would like to give up laziness or procrastination, but I fear that it would be too easy to inadvertently slip and not even notice.
I felt really strong on the TLT yesterday, which surprised me. But it probably only meant that I didn’t run hard enough. I may have tweaked my upper hamstring at some point because it started feeling really tight towards the end of the L portion of the workout and it was bothering me quite a bit early in my run today. After I stopped and stretched it felt a little better. I think if I’m really diligent about stretching and spend some quality time with the foam roller it will be ok.
In other news, I’ve decided that I’m going to do the Avenue of the Giants Marathon instead of Boston. I have a number of reasons: it makes more sense to do a flatter marathon since I have no hills to train on, and to do Boston after I move back to New York and can train on hillier terrain; Avenue of the Giants is a few weeks after Boston so I’ll have more time to prepare (and maybe make up for my less-than-stellar training the past couple of weeks); but, most importantly, it will be my friend E.’s first marathon and I’d really like to be there to say, “I told you so” when she surprises herself by exceeding her goals. She has been training really hard, and, given what she ran for Cherry Blossom the last time she trained seriously, plus the fact that she’s one of those people who can run her 5K pace for a 10-miler, her goal for Avenue of the Giants is well within her reach. I know that being there and being excited for her will make me run better.
*Ha. So, today ISN'T Ash Wednesday -- it's NEXT Wednesday. Yay! Thank you, Mary, for setting me straight.
Posted by alweiss at 03:12 PM | Comments (8)
February 16, 2006
Sympathy for the Devil
In keeping with the quote theme I seem to have started, this is perhaps the most appropriate quote for today:
“Part of the trouble is that I’ve never properly understood that some disasters accumulate, that they don’t all land like a child out of an apple tree.” - Janet Burroway
This quote is applicable to many aspects of my life, though most pertinently to the tight spot I’ve gotten myself into regarding an edit/cite check I’m working on for my law school journal (which was technically due yesterday). I drastically underestimated the amount of time it was going to take me (and the familiarity I would develop with the main science library here at the University, as well as a couple of other libraries I would not have otherwise have had occasion to set foot in). The entire situation was perfectly avoidable – had I stayed on top of my coursework from the beginning of the quarter and read ahead, I would not be in the situation in which I now find myself. So, I can’t even complain.
My running has definitely suffered for the past week or so. After yet another late night at the library yesterday, I got up early this morning and started to do a TLT workout (was supposed to be 4x6:00 T with 1 min. jog between, 1 hr. easy, 15 min. T), then panicked about 20 mins. into the easy run portion. Or maybe it was a combination of panic and low blood sugar. At any rate, it was ridiculous. So, after running 3 miles easy, I threw in another 2 at tempo pace and rushed off to the library. In retrospect, the whole thing was absurd: the 36 mins. I saved by not finishing the easy portion of the run certainly isn’t going to make or break me in terms of my ability to finish this cite check within a reasonable approximation of the due date and it DID completely foil the purpose of the workout, so I’ll just have to do the actual workout on Saturday now. I guess I should be happy that I at least managed to get in 10 mi., ~6 of which was at a decent pace. Still, it is certainly not what I would have liked.
Additionally, I’m feeling really guilty about leaving my bird alone for such long stretches of time (hence the title of this entry). I believe that in making a unilateral decision to keep a pet (after all, the pet has no say in it), one incurs a moral obligation to provide that creature with companionship. One cannot simply expect the animal to be one’s companion when one wants to spend time with the animal, but then neglect it when one doesn’t, or when one is very busy. The animal has to be there as the “owner”’s companion; it has no choice. Similarly, the “owner” should have to be there as the animal’s companion. At the moment, I am most surely failing in my moral duty to Ms. Toby.
Posted by alweiss at 10:18 PM | Comments (2)
February 15, 2006
Too Good Not to Share
From my friend E.:
"I was thumbing through a magazine yesterday and I saw 2 running related things that I thought you'd think were
funny:
1) a lady saying that her chanel glossamer lip gloss had lasted through an
entire marathon, she didn't have to touch up until the last mile. Wha???
2) a column suggesting that you should set solid workout goals for yourself,
like 'I'm going to train until I can run a whole mile without stopping.'"
I guess the second item is a realistic "goal" for people who are just starting an exercise regime. However, as for the first item... well, of all the crazy things I could imagine running through my mind in the last mile of a marathon, the state of my lip gloss probably has a toe over the line dividing "unlikely" from "impossible." However, it's good to know which lip gloss is best for the marathon. I will definitely have to invest in some Chanel Glossamer before Boston.
Posted by alweiss at 08:55 PM | Comments (1)
February 14, 2006
Happy Valentine's Day!
Being a quote collector (and seeing as my tax class is just deadly this morning), I’ll share a couple of my favorite quotations about love (feel free to contribute yours!):
“Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. That’s why people are so cynical about it…. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.” - Erica Jong
“We love only that which we do not own entirely.” - Proust
“The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.” - Thomas Merton
Posted by alweiss at 09:10 AM | Comments (2)
I Suck
I wasted close to three hours today wandering around the library looking for books I need for a cite check that I have to complete by Wednesday (for those non-lawyers and non-editors, a cite check involves checking all the citations in an article and verifying that they’re technically correct, formatted correctly, mean what the author of the article claims they mean, etc. Unfortunately, electronic versions of articles and cases won’t do – because the pagination might be off, one always has to go to the hard copy. And, I have the good fortune to be cite checking an article that references a number of obscure medical journals to which the University apparently doesn’t subscribe, so I’m going to have to go over to the science library tomorrow and try to figure out how I can get my hands on them).
I revised my TLT workout to a 12 mi. MP run to save an hour… I then revised my 12 mi. MP run to a 4 mi. MP run plus 1 mi. tempo, which saved me another hour. I still have a couple of hours of reading to do before my 8:30 class, so I figured my time would be better spent doing that… I ran enough that I don’t have that terrible “I haven’t gotten off my butt today” feeling, but not quite enough to feel as if I actually did anything. I guess it will have to suffice. My week should get better by Wednesday, so I’m going to put the TLT off until then, which will bump my tempo workout to Saturday. I’m hoping to get in 8-10 mi. tomorrow, which will still make my mileage for the week extremely low. Erg. Ok, back to the books.
Posted by alweiss at 12:13 AM | Comments (1)
February 12, 2006
Time Crunch
It seems, lately, as if there are only 30 seconds in every minute. I sit down to get some work done at 8 o’clock, and all of a sudden it’s 2 o’clock and I’ve barely made a dent. I try to fit my runs into spare scraps of time, using the time when I need a mental break to get the miles in. Lately, though, I’ve found myself working through mental burn-out just to get everything done and sacrificing sleep (and therefore workout quality) to get my runs in. In short, I’m feeling a bit… squeezed.
All my best intentions to stay on top of things early in the quarter to make things easier later in the quarter never really got off the ground. And I have a sufficient amount of work outside my coursework that I won’t be able to catch up before finals – it seems as if every time I get myself to a point where I can start preparing for the end of the quarter, some new task appears on my desk. Although it might appear to be too early to start worrying about preparing for winter quarter finals, past events have proven that with the short quarter and without a reading period, it’s NEVER too early.
I’m looking on the bright side, though: while I will have a miserable amount of work to do, I should be more efficient than I was during finals winter quarter last year, when I had additional misery due to the machinations of the guy I was seeing at the time. Having decided he wanted out of our alliance, he elected in the couple of weeks leading up to finals to employ the method of extraction practiced by those whose cowardice outweighs their integrity and/or who want to break off any emotional involvement while preserving the option of occasionally hooking up: he attempted to… evaporate.
Now, the evaporation method is not entirely inappropriate in situations where there have only been a few dates; in such a case, it fulfills its function of sparing its user the awkwardness of the break-up scene and, while it may cause prolonged anguish for its victim, it isn’t much of a betrayal per se as in such situations a high level of trust probably hasn’t yet been generated (although, even in such cases the more considerate thing is always to tell the person that you don’t want to see them anymore). It’s a different matter when the individuals have spent time together every day for a couple of months.
The evaporation method is most effective in situations where the individuals would rarely or never cross paths but for their planning to do so. It’s trickier to employ when without careful avoidance they would naturally see one another each day. It’s an especially difficult maneuver to carry off when they have classes together, live in the same building, and have the same friends. In such a situation, it requires a high level of subtlety and finesse. So, I guess I have to give the guy credit for succeeding in some measure in pulling off such an ambitious feat.
But, I digress. I guess I feel right now that if something has to give in the next couple of weeks it’s going to be running, but I don’t want to end up on the starting line undertrained. So, I guess my plan right now is to proceed as if I’m going to run and if I can’t get the miles in, finish up the training cycle and use it as strength-building going into my training for a spring marathon. Tomorrow I have my first TLT workout.
Posted by alweiss at 02:27 PM | Comments (2)
February 06, 2006
Call Me Drago
If you're not a "Rocky" fan, you won't get the reference, but my recent excessive and unnecessary use of the treadmill puts me in mind of a fabulous montage of images in Rocky IV. In it, shots of Rocky training in Siberia by pulling logs through waist-deep snow, chopping wood, doing pull-ups, and doing lateral pull-downs by raising a large log attached to a rope thrown over a ceiling beam, are juxtaposed with shots of Ivan Drago (aka the "Siberian Express") training in a state-of-the-art facility by running around a track, using a versaclimber, using various weight machines while hooked up to machines presumably measuring metabolic effects, and being injected with steroids. All my treadmill running makes me feel like Drago, minus the steroids of course. And it's Rocky who wins in the end... which is to say that there's no substitute for battling what the universe feels like throwing at you. Put another way, training under carefully controlled conditions is probably making me soft. Gotta stop using the treadmill as a crutch.
I did what is generally a tough workout yesterday (Saturday) of 4x12 min. tempo with 2 min. jog recovery on the treadmill. I did the tempo portions at 6:39 pace and the recovery at 8:30 pace. I generally struggle with this workout, but this time I felt surprisingly strong; in fact, I felt as if I was getting stronger as the workout progressed. Which probably means I should have done it faster, which I would have done naturally, letting my body determine the right pace for a "comfortably hard" effort, had I done the workout outside. Nonetheless, I guess it was a passable workout.
I only ran once today for 9 miles because I had a small Super Bowl gathering and just didn't have time to fit in two runs. It was probably a good thing as I felt pretty flat. Tomorrow I'll double (probably 8 and then 4 or 5), and Tuesday I have 12 at marathon pace... whatever that is. ;)
Posted by alweiss at 12:02 AM | Comments (0)
February 01, 2006
Marathoning
Kemibe's entry yesterday in response to a disgruntled 6-hr. marathoner awakened the running snob in me, the one who is singularly unimpressed, in fact a little offended by, the many thousands who each year shuffle through a marathon, check it off their list, and feel as if they've accomplished something extraordinary. Covering a distance of 26.2 miles is no great feat; although perhaps we lazy Americans tend to forget or never consciously realize it, covering distance is what our bodies are built to do. The challenge of the marathon (or any distance for that matter) is not in simply covering the distance; it’s in testing limits. It is in training the body to endure and the mind to accept the maximum amount of discomfort and effort it is capable of without collapsing prior to completion. The number that results is different for everyone; I’m not disputing that. But one cannot possibly arrive at that number by running 3-4 times per week and doing a few long run-walks. The only way to arrive at that number is to train like an animal, right up to the fine line separating productive training from overtraining and injury. If your goal is to lose weight and get into what passes in our society for “in shape,” that’s great, it really is, and I respect that. But unless you’re willing to lay it all on the line and compete (even if only with yourself) and not just complete; unless you’re willing to make the commitment to doing the workouts, the long runs, the doubles that you end up dragging yourself through when you want to be doing anything else, I’m not going to respect you as a marathoner.
I think I’ll end my rant here before I get into deeper trouble than I probably already have. Also because I’m feeling a little like the proverbial pot since I have no real goal going in to Boston and am in fact just going to run it for the experience (or anyway that’s what I’m telling myself). Then again, I’m not asking for a pat on the back for running Boston. And I’m using it as a stepping stone, another marathon under my belt, another training cycle, which will move me closer to achieving what I can at the distance (assuming I don’t decide to abandon it altogether).
Oh, and speaking of running… in keeping with my plan to be smart, I did just 8 easy yesterday because I was feeling run-down and my foot was sore. Today was 8 in the mid-morning and another 4 in the evening. It was nice and windy for the 8-miler. I’m wondering if wind can be a passable substitute for hills. I feel as if my body responds both physiologically and mechanically to wind in the same way it does to hills. I tend to lean forward, get up on my toes and drive in the same way I do while running uphill when I run into the wind. And I feel the same increased effort level. On the other hand I definitely struggled with hills when I was first home over winter break. Oh well. No sense worrying about what I can’t change.
Posted by alweiss at 06:27 PM | Comments (6)