Cheese Sandwich: Breast Cancer Marathon (Half)

Well, I did it. Not quite as well as I'd hoped, but I did it. Check that, "we" did it. I have a wonderful partner, and I would never have even thought to try something like this had it not been for her.

Seems the return flight took a bit more out of me than I'd hoped. Or put something into me, I seem to be coming down with a cold. I woke up with a sore throat Saturday morning and immediately started consuming Cold-Eze and extra C and Zinc. I had some sinus drainage and a dry cough. Saturday night was feverish, but I was hoping I'd sweat it out.

Anyway, didn't feel great this morning, but I sure as hell was going to do the run.

To make a long story shorter, we ran well for the first nine miles, though it was clear to me that I was not feeling strong. Looking at the data from the Garmin, my heart rate was higher than at similar points on the Outback half marathon. Some of that may be attributed to the fact that we were pressing with sub-eleven minute miles for each of the first nine miles, significantly ahead of our Outback pace, but also slower than paces for similar distances in training when my heart rate wasn't as high.

In any event, I waved M. on at 10, because I had to change strategies. I walked for five minutes to get my heart rate down, then shifted to a two minute run, two minute walk during the uphill leg of the last bridge. Once at the top, I ran down the rest of the way, fighting an impending cramp in my right calf.

By the Garmin, I completed 13.1 miles at 2:26:37, for an 11:11 mile pace, exactly equal to the Outback. By the official results (the finish line was another tenth of a mile away!), I ran the course in 2:27:31, for an "official" pace of 11:15. M. came in at 10:58, which is probably exactly where we'd hoped to be - under 11 minute miles! I'm very proud of her, she totally rocks. Me, not so much! But I did okay. I'm pretty confident that had I not had to make the trip to Hawaii, I would have been pressing her, and we could have come in below 10:58. I usually outrun her, but she was the strong one this morning. Among 51-year-old males, I came in right about in the middle of the pack, 8 of 17. If you want to look for yours truly, the results page is here. Just search on my name, or my bib number which was 3781.

We are going to train for a marathon. Probably the Rock 'n' Roll, but we'll see what happens with her dog.

There was an emotional element to this race that I hadn't anticipated. Not sure it affected my pace, but at the expo where I picked up the packet, there were so many reminders of women who had been lost to breast cancer, and so many who were living with it, it was very affecting. Reminders all along the course too, including Donna, who we passed and who is apparently fighting a third bout with the disease.

Not sure how much running this race may have helped, but it seemed to help those women. I met some survivors on the bus ride back. Life is too short. Okay, can't see the screen again.

Cheese Omelet: Back at the Skypad

Just noticed I had to do some chronological repairs to the ol' blog. So February now has its own page.

Got home this morning a little before noon, very tired. Didn't sleep much on the plane from Honolulu to Atlanta. Did manage to sleep through take-off leaving Atlanta, which I think may be a first for me. At least, I have no recollection of the flight from the time I found my seat until they were completing the beverage service, just prior to landing.

Took a brief nap this afternoon, but didn't want to sleep too long so I could get a full night in the bag tonight, and hopefully again tomorrow night. Then Sunday I run. I'll run regardless of how I feel. If anything, I'm looking forward to it as a way of resetting my body following the trip.

Weather forecast predicts rain, but I don't care. The one really good thing is that the time of the race is the same time my partner and I have been running all along. So it's just another Sunday, with a little bit of a change in scenery.

Watched tonight's episode of Battlestar Galactica. The series is wrapping up and it's hard to capture particular thoughts, other than it is perhaps better than at any other time in the series. It's heart-breaking in many ways, as they're killing off characters left and right. The writers are also diving into deep philosophical questions.

I love it, but I especially, especially, love the character arcs for Adama, Roslin, Tigh, Apollo, Starbuck and Chief Tyrol. Baltar seems to be getting a bit of the short shrift at the moment. Adama started the series dealing with losses, the loss of his son, his marriage, his career, and the series wraps around neatly to conclude with Adama confronting loss again. It's rich, and heart-breaking and, well, it's just rich, rich, rich. He's losing the woman he loves, he's lost a dream that he embraced reluctantly though completely, and he's losing his ship - again. Tonight, he tells the Chief to "save our girl," and he's breaking faith with the blood of so many, to keep faith with something larger, and it's killing him.

And Michael Hogan as Saul Tigh is just one of the greatest unsung heroes of the series.

Mary McDonnell, what can I say? I just love her. Her performances, and what they've done with the character of Laura Roslin.

Starbuck? Starbuck can't buy a break. Love her or hate her, she's paid her dues. And another major character is lost (perhaps) tonight.

Anyway, I'm glad to be home. I'm looking forward to running a half marathon on Sunday. I'm really enjoying a fictional drama on TV that hits so many right notes for me. And I'm really, really, tired.

G'night.

Cheese Omelet: Post Hi-Run Update

Looks like the internet connection problem is a flaky ethernet cable. I normally travel with my own, but I tried to pare down a bit this trip. Also forgot the heart rate sensor for the Garmin. Anyway, we seem to be back up a little more reliably.

I used the iPhone and the maps app to figure out a route to run this morning. The beach wasn't looking very promising. Turns out there was a great route starting right outside the hotel.

I ran well for feeling like crap! So many people run here, it's incredible. My running partner says it's because of the weather, and she may be right about that. The last few weeks we've been running, it's been pretty cold! It was 71 degrees this morning when I hit the road at 6:00 a.m., and I worked up a pretty good sweat for the first time in a while. The last part of the three miles out is up Diamond Head road, which is uphill. It's very flat where I normally run, so that was a little challenging.

On the last half of the run, I made a point to say good morning to everyone I saw. Most people seemed to be sort of lost in their own heads, so I'm not sure if that was a good thing to do or not, but most of them smiled and said "Good morning," right back. I imagined I drew some energy from each of those interactions so I could try and keep my pace up.

At the end, I did six miles at a moving pace of 10:27, 10:36 if you include the time I spent waiting for traffic lights. Fastest was mile one at 9:57, slowest was mile three at 10:47 (running uphill!), and mile six came in at 10:18, so I guess I might have been picking up some energy from all those smiling faces!

This might be too wide for your screen (or not - fixed it), but here's the picture of the route from Ascent:

Cheese Omelet: Greetings From Hawaii

It's 4:36 a.m. local time, as I sit here trying to adjust to being several thousand miles outside my "comfort zone." I'm at an Embassy Suites in Waikiki, with free internet, but web pages load so slowly, my iPhone is faster on Edge. I'm guessing is a DNS thing, so I'm looking up Open DNS on my iPhone and I'm going to try that. (Later update: That seemed to work, though it was harder than it ought to have been Later, later update: This connection is very flaky and temperamental. Hmmm...)

In any event, here I am and I'm trying to get my body back into some semblance of feeling "normal." Apart from being out of sync with the rising and setting of the sun, I'm overcoming the effects of being stuck on an airplane for a total of eleven hours yesterday. My legs feel like tree trunks. I walked around Waikiki a bit yesterday evening (night), but it wasn't enough. I'm used to walking an average of several miles a day, and sitting in those silly airplane seats, well, it's not good.

I hope to go for a run about an hour or so from now. I tried to scout out a route last night, but the beach looks like a non-starter - not enough of it! I may check it before I start, just in case. There's so much development down here that I'll be dodging traffic, and breathing exhaust pretty much anywhere I choose to run. Hopefully running at 6:00 a.m. or so will minimize that. I'd use the treadmill, but I really want the GPS data from Hawaii in my Ascent database. Such is foolish ego-centrism ("Look what I did!"). Come to think of it, so's this blog.

Everybody loves Hawaii, and that's the problem with Hawaii. Waikiki is like a capsule summary of everything that's not right about our culture. It's not so much a case of "they paved paradise and put up a parking lot," as we've exploited paradise so much that it's no longer what made it a paradise anymore, it's now a caricature, a theme-park version. Well, at least down here in Waikiki. There's a Starbucks, a Denny's, a Ruths Chris, and many many more I'm sure you'd recognize, all within a few meters of my hotel. I'm sure there are other places that are more "authentic," or less commercial anyway.

But the weather is perfect, and the ocean is nearby, so I'm not too unhappy. I really didn't want to return here until I was doing so on vacation, accompanied by some female companionship. As it is, I'll be sitting on my butt for ten hours a day looking at PowerPoint slides. Then dealing with the dickering and bickering and pouting as the group decides what, if anything, it wants to do as a group each night, which is often nothing because nobody can agree.

I have a pitch I have to give on Thursday afternoon, after everyone is sick and tired and nobody's listening. Which is good, because it doesn't really matter anyway! After that, I beat feet for the airport and endure the shorter torture of flying back home, arriving in Jacksonville Friday morning about 9:30. That should give me enough time to recover enough to run the half marathon on Sunday. Which, in the grand scheme of things, probably doesn't matter either; except it matters to me.

These conferences are relatively important, and if we focused more attention or resources on my piece of it, it'd be important to me to. But I'm looking after a part of the navy we don't care very much about! I'm probably talking out of school now, so that's enough about that. The point I had in mind is that these folks getting together usually facilitates some important decisions in maintaining and modernizing the navy. Unlike all the people who fly all over the world to socialize together at conferences that have no real purpose, other than their own existence. All those resources consumed to no real end. And most of those folks probably wring their hands at climate change. Whatever.

Well, I'm going to try and do a few sun salutations, and get the kinks out. My toes still feel like they're vibrating.

I do wish to note however, that I miss my dog, I miss my friends, and I do enjoy living in my very imperfect neighborhood, and I miss that too. I don't need to come to Hawaii to find paradise. I left it at home.

Cheese Sandwich: Groundhog Day

Well, "Happy Groundhog Day!" Apparently Punxsatawney Phil saw his shadow today, which means six more weeks of winter.

Winter or not, it was a great weekend, starting Friday night with the third annual iteration of a little get-together at Action Dave's Cool-guy Bachelor Pad, my Groundhog Day Party. (Yes, Friday was not Groundhog Day! But who wants to party on a Monday?)

Had a great turn-out, and too much food. I'm definitely changing the menu next year. Or reducing the quantities at least. The keg was a good idea, though I may go with a domestic brand next year. I went to pick up the keg of Stella and they couldn't find a "European" tap. At least, not until another employee went into the back and found it, right where they keep all the taps. Still, there were about 10 anxious minutes there.

The Wii is a big hit at parties. Wii Sports was a natural with bowling and boxing. I was a little concerned at one point that the enthusiastic boxers might actually start hitting the screen, as they seemed to move closer and closer to the TV as they "boxed." There were many reports of sore arms.

Things kept hopping till about 1:00 a.m. or so, wrapping up a little earlier than last year. Everyone seemed to have a good time, and I'm looking forward to doing it again next year; though I am glad it's only once a year!

Saturday was a day of rest because Sunday morning I intended to run 10 miles as our last long run in preparation for the half marathon on the 15th. I did do some cleanup, but mostly just enjoyed doing nothing after the frenzy of getting ready for the party.

Sunday morning came soon enough. It was a beautiful morning, though a bit cold at 38 degrees. Someone gave me a knit watch cap as a Christmas gift and it's come in very handy twice now on these early morning runs. It was low tide again, so we had six miles on the beach with a beautiful sunrise to enjoy.

We ran 10 back in November, getting ready for the Outback half-marathon on Thanksgiving, though we ran separately as my partner slept a little later than I did! But comparing our time on Sunday with my time from last November, and we came in bit over a minute faster, shaving about seven seconds off our average pace. Not as much of an improvement as I might have preferred, but we've both had challenging schedules the last few weeks and haven't been able to train as consistently as we'd have preferred.

We're registered for the National Marathon to Fight Breast Cancer (the half part of it!) on the 15th of this month, and for the Gate River Run, a 15K event about a month later on March 14th.

My partner wants to train for a marathon, thinking about the Rock 'n' Roll marathon on May 31st, which is close to her birthday. I had no intention of running it with her, but I said I'd train for it with her. Well, in my somewhat more, er, lubricated state of enthusiasm Friday evening, I allowed as how I might actually go ahead and run it with her! Well, there are a couple of complicating factors that make it a bit of an open question for both of us at this point, but I think it's our intention to go ahead and train and decide whether to actually go as we get closer to the event, and the other situations resolve themselves.

I have to say, 26.2 miles remains a long drive to me, and the thought of trying to actually run that distance gives me great pause. Also somewhat daunting is the level of commitment necessary to train to complete it successfully. We have enough time, given where we are right now. But I would probably have to double the amount of effort that I'm putting in now, plus make some lifestyle changes. ("Lifestyle changes" being another way of saying "partying a lot less.") May 31st is two days before my 52nd birthday, which is 2x26, and while a coincidence of no particular import, it nevertheless has something of an inspirational quality. It would be another milestone achievement in my increasingly advancing age! (I know running marathons at 52 is not a particularly unique or remarkable thing. Except in the context of my heretofore relatively sedentary existence.) Finally, flying all the way to the left coast to do all this seems a bit much, but it is the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon, so truly, it would rock, and that's how I roll. (Okay, please stop groaning now.)

Anyway, more to follow on that score, I'm sure.

Following the run, I just relaxed and watched a movie, later packing up all the leftover food and the keg with the help of some friends and heading over to the clubhouse to watch the Super Bowl with neighbors. The game was great. I was kind of rooting for the Steelers, though I've been impressed and inspired by Kurt Warner's performance this season. ("Old guys rule!") So I had conflicting emotions. While I'm happy the Steelers won, I'm also amazed at Warner's numbers, especially against that defense. The little Springsteen concert was great, making up somewhat for the lack of any particularly entertaining commercials. (And where were you supposed to get those 3D glasses anyway? Shows how much attention I've been paying!)

So it was an altogether wonderful weekend with some truly great people. I'm a very lucky man, and happy to be at this place in my life. Groundhog Day has a lot of meaning for me. As a tag line I once had around here said, "It's about seeing your shadow." I finally saw mine, with some help from a very wise woman, and while I had several more "weeks of winter" in my life as well, so far it's been a beautiful spring.

Okay, back to being a crotchety old curmudgeon...