Sanuk D

I don't know what I'm doing here, I should be someplace else.

So, yesterday it seemed like such a good idea.  I was all giddy with the possibilities, and I went with it.  You know how this story goes, don’t you?  Morning regrets.  Walks of shame.  Maybe a typical Thursday for @michaelfmuller, but I continue to grasp at gossamer threads of dignity.  Why, then, did I go ahead and sign up for another marathon?  Didn’t I do my marathon for the year?  Yes, but having trained for one in the first half of the year means I still have time for another round of training.  I feel so ashamed.  What to do other than begin the training plan again.

“So what, exactly, is the plan Sanuk D?” you may be thinking to yourself.  Good question.  The first time I did a marathon I used a plan laid out by the venerable Hal Higdon.   Venerable because he is old, not because he is an Archdeacon.  I am not an Archdeacon, but I do like to take the Sabbath off from running.  So I stuck close to the plan except I ran a long run on Saturday instead of Sunday.   It was very good because I had never run a marathon, and I had no idea what to do and here was this thing that said “here, do this!”  So I did that and it worked out, mostly because I had some confidence in the plan.

So, the next couple of marathons I sort of did the Higdon plan, meaning that I did the long runs and sort of did the runs during the week.  This approach was not quite as successful.   In fact, the marathons — especially the second one — sucked.  Running marathons is not really healthy, I don’t think.  I mean, it’s healthier than not exercising, but it does do damage to the body.  The point of the experience ought to be something other than health.  Like fun. For me, runs around the 16 mile length are fun.  Lots of +20 mile runs are not fun.   Weeks that have a lot of < 5 mile runs bum me out too.  I get moody.

So, this last time I did a modified modified Higdon plan.   I ran 30 – 35 miles most work weeks and spread that out fairly evenly across the days. 6 weeks or so out, I ramped that up to around 35-40 miles for a few weeks.  On Saturdays, I ran increasingly longer runs working up to a 20 miler 3 weeks out.   My longest week was somewhere around 55 miles.  After that, I ran an 18 miler and a 16 miler and went back down to about 25-30 miles during the week.   The week before the marathon I ran about 20 miles total.  That’s all approximate.

So basically, the idea of building up mileage and then tapering seems to work, except that I have a relatively slow metabolism.  I need to give myself plenty of time to ramp up and not taper off too far.  Plus, this is supposed to be fun, right?  Ok, it’s a bad way to have fun but still.   I want to run enough for what is good for me mentally and what will allow me to have some fun when I go out.  I have heard that the Hanson Brothers have a plan that is essentially longer runs during the week and a shorter long run.  Whatever.  Running around like a loon sounds good to me as long as the total miles per week add up.  Given how the most recent race turned out, I’m willing to give this a shot again.

There was once a television commercial about a guy who was trying to dry his pants using the radio antenna on his car as a clothes line.  I do not recall what product was being advertised, which may say something about the value of cheeky ads.  What I do recall is that he wound up at his soon-to-be in-laws’ home with no pants.  In a similarly inspired yet demented move, I am hoping to arrive at the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games sans pantaloons on Saturday morning sometime around 10:30.  This feat may be the most inspired stunt I have ever pulled off, or it may be the dumbest idea in since Phidippides decided not to wait for the train.

Coming off last year’s Flying Monkey Marathon, I was both thrilled and disappointed.  Thrilled that I was not violently ill but actually recovering quite nicely.  Disappointed that my performance during the race was not what I had hoped (or that I did not manage my time around the race so as to spend more of it with my sister.)  The problem with the race lay, I believe, in my being too aggressive on the early hills.  Hard to judge, given that I was not wearing a watch that day.  Wherein lies another lesson.

So somewhere in the preparation or aftermath of the Monkey, I devised myself a plan that should be the envy of any man.  I would redeem myself in the mountains by taking on the Grandfather Mountain Marathon.  Idiots who sign up for this Samsonite of hurt get to run from Kidd Brewer Stadium in Boone to McRae Meadows on Grandfather Mountain.  The thing is that the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games are going on at McRae Meadows.  The games apparently involve other running events because there is a track at the Meadows.  So marathoners finish on the track, at the Games, in front of like 15,000 people.  And bagpipes.

So I know what you are thinking.  There is only one way to do a marathon like this, right?  Right: in a kilt.  Any guy can strap on a skirt, drink some mead, throw a pole, and call himself Scottish, but only an insane few would dare put on the kilt to run all the way from Marathon to Athens except with something like 2,000 feet of elevation gain.  Sorry, Dr. Phil, I can’t answer your question.  I have no idea what I was thinking.  Except that I was in need of a kilt.

Which are often made of wool, which is hot, and which theoretically should come to about mid-knee, which is annoying.  The solution to these problems could be found where all problems for skirt-wearing men are solved: The Internet!  I Binged the Google to find Angus and his Sport Kilts.  (If you are going to buy a kilt, you should buy it from a guy named Angus, should you not?)  While one could purchase a man kilt and trim it up a bit, the advice I found on the internets suggested buying a lady’s kilt which comes in a slightly shorter size to begin with — all other features being the same.  To say that my Sweet Lady was bemused at my request for this as a Brumalia gift is a generous description of her skepticism.

My full vision, however, had yet to be revealed.  It would be several weeks before the temperatures outside warmed enough for a trial run, so to speak, of the kilt.  When it did happen, the conditions were so wet and nasty that it was easy to imagine myself traversing the Hieland moors with a not-so-racist Mel Gibson.  In other words, the kilt was perfect.  What I needed then was conditioning.  If I were to run the GMM, it would be my fifth, but it would be the first that I had trained for in the spring.

Initially, I thought I would run everyday.  Starting a streak seemed appropriate to the madness of this whole exercise.  The madness was stopped almost as soon as it started, however, when I came down with what the urgent care doctor insisted was a social disease but which later turned out to be either kidney stones or lady problems.  I’m choosing kidney stones.  Streak over, time for more reasonable training to begin.  Like routine days of 6 + miles and long runs of 16 miles or more on the weekends.

To my pre-runner, dilettante bohemian self, this does not sound reasonable at all.  Camel Lights, little chocolate donuts, and John Coltrane sound reasonable.  I can still go for the Coltrane.  And the occasional little chocolate donut.  I can also go for the higher miles.  The trick for me is to build a bit more slowly and not taper quite so much.  Some runners will ramp up the mileage and the lay off for a couple of weeks immediately prior to a big race.  They are like Ferraris or Lance Armstrong: nimble, quick, and over the candlestick. I am more of a Jan Ullrich (without the drugs or Porches.)  I tend to get going in one direction physiologically speaking and sort of stay in that direction for a while.

So instead of ramping up and tapering, I have been building a pretty strong base and then dialing it back a bit.  My longest run, about three weeks ago, was around 21 miles.  During the work week through that period, I was running about 7 miles a day.  You’d think I would be skinnier by now.  In any event, while tiring, the 50 + mile weeks felt good.  Subsequently, I have done 18 and 16 mile long runs, keeping my week day mileage between 30 and 35 miles for a total of 40 to 45 in those weeks.  This week’s runs have gotten progressively shorter such that I will run 3 miles tomorrow morning for a total of around 25 miles so far this week.  In comparison to previous tapers, my legs seem to have more “spring” in them yet I do seem to have recovered from many of the aches and pains that continuous high mileage is destined to deliver.

I have also been spared the serious dip in confidence that has come with previous tapers.  Not that I’m again taking the hills for granted, but more the opposite.  I won’t have to prove to myself over the first several miles that I can do this.  I can start relaxed and not overextend myself in the early part of the run.  Which is important because I want to look decent at the finish.  After all, the whole kilt thing kind of puts me out there to begin with.  I hope that I will hear the cheers of appreciation at the finish, not the jeers of mockery.  You will be able to judge for yourself, as another feat of sibling bonding may be accomplished when my brother serves as official Sanuk D photographer for this race.  It may be Sunday before you hear from me again, so please pray, preform a ritual, do a scientific experiment, or whatever your thing is for me on Saturday morning.  It’s supposed to stop being hot then, right?

If I had fought in the Civil War, I think the hardest part for me would have been the inconsistent supply of coffee.  And maybe all the bacon they ate which would have made for rough going what with being a vegetarian at all.  Hard tack and honey is not so bad, but no coffee may well have done me in.  They solved that by the Second World War with the invention of instant coffee.  ”Invention” being somewhat loosely used in this instance.  Like Columbus “discovering” America, some WWII army dude walked into a Quonset hut where the coffee pot had been left on all day, scraped the tar off the bottom, mixed it with tap water, and said “Hey! Coffee!”

So that is how it came to be that my grandparents, and everyone in their generation, drank instant coffee that tastes like burnt coffee.  The also called all decaf coffee “Sanka.”  It was very elegant to ask if your guests would like some Sanka after dinner.  There are those for who Sanka is about as interesting as Near Beer.  Seriously, why would anyone bother?  Well, some of us are either more sensitive or more finely tuned that others.  I will choose finely tuned.

The tuning getting more fine as the days progress toward the Hell of the Highcountry this weekend.  In a concession to the tradition of tapering, I have been taking shorter runs so far this week.  Today’s was a lovely jaunt beside the trail of the Suwaree, around the River Bend pasture.  The cattle were just waking in the lee of the ridge, seeking the tender shoots of grass near the fences.  Fortunately, I did not encounter any bear on Suicide Ridge, their summer domain.  What I did encounter was a lovely, fun run.  This slightly shorter taper does seem to be doing it’s job of allowing some rest while breaking the monotony of training.

So what I do when I’m not running is as important this week as what I do when I run.  That includes making sure I have enough fluids going in as fluids going out.  Caffeine is, of course, a diuretic.  (That means it makes you pee.)  I happen to like the taste of coffee as well as its effect.  Sipping a fresh cuppa joe while watching skinny men fall on cobblestones is a rare pleasure.  Therefore, I will brew up a bit of Sanka and enjoy this hellish day on le Tour de France.  Thanks, Gramps!

Wednesday morning at 8 am in the master bath.  There I was, innocently shaving my face when I felt a slight scritchy scratchiness at the back of my throat.  All of a sudden I began to understand why Tour de France cyclists push elevator buttons with their elbows when they are racing.  I’m peaking, dammit, and I’m not getting sick.  Ok, maybe I am not peaking like a Tour de France racer, but I have been preparing for the suitcase of hurt that will be next weekend for some time now.  My lunch date on Monday mentioned that she was recovering from a little cold.  Perhaps she was just practicing Step 12 when she passed it on to me?

My denial of illness powers can be formidable, and at times I have had to be truly miserable before I did anything about being sick.  Not this time around, however.  It seems unlikely that the Ingles in Marshall would have as wide a variety of herbal remedies as the one I visited, but maybe that’s yet another reason not to live in Madison County, NC.  I loaded up in a way that would have made Howard Hughes proud.  Zinc, echinacea, and Vitizemin C.  The US Anti-Doping Agency is bound to be sending vampires to my house any minute.  They’ll never make it stick, though.

And in the meantime, I’m still training.  In fact, I can really only tell that I’m fighting something when I run.  That’s fine except the one reason I really don’t want to be sick is because I’m running a marathon in a little over a week.  Oh well, more spitting and coughing for my fellow runners to enjoy.  It really is a thing of beauty to watch me excrete bodily fluids for 26.2 miles.  Fortunately, it looks like I’ll have support present with a camera so you likely will not have to miss a thing.

Sometimes all you want is a simple futball jersey.  And maybe a grilled veggie sub.  Plus some gas.  And possibly a new cell phone.   Except cell phones are expensive and all the new ones come with costly data plans and what you REALLY want is an iPhone 4 but you definitely don’t want their network.  So what is a man about town to do with that part of the proceeds from the sale of his old but good road bike which he will not be using to cover upcoming marathon expenses?  Take ‘em over to East Altamont, of course, where there is a mall.

Just as I never, ever blog at work, I never, ever go to the mall.  Except when I’m desperately in need of something like an authentic Clint Dempsey #8 US National Soccer Team away jersey (the blue one with the white stripe.)  That’s something you can desperately need, right?  So of I went for a lunchtime retail experience like I had been dreaming of some weeks ago.  A funny thing happened on the way to the agora, however.  Like Moses descending Mt. Sinai with engraved tablets, the sign at Black Dome Mountain Sports reminded me about the Vibram Five Fingers.

After the Samsonite of hurt which will be the Grandfather Mountain Marathon, I will need something new, something fresh to add to my running.  Barefoot is all the rage these days, but the hazards of rocks and glass do make me wary of taking it up.  Thank goodness there is this new fangled slab of rubber you can strap on to the bottom of your foot.  So long Landon Donovan, hello Caballo Blanco!  As I say goodbye to the wheels that carried me for over ten years, I’m glad to say hello to a new extension of the sport I love.  Say hi!

Oh hai!