Yes, I suck

I just read this really well written article about surfing, and sucking, and sucking at surfing, and it's like someone who is a much better writer than I could ever be summed up my attitude and ability when it comes to all things surfing.

I'm a vacation surfer. I get out once or twice a year, fortunate to be part of a family who loves warm water and climates, especially after a Seattle winter. What that means:

I "read" waves the way that a 2 year old "reads" his favorite books, meaning I can't read them at all. but can repeat what others tell me after they tell it to me, a lot. Most of what I understand about any break has been repeated to me by other surfers between sets.  They can accurately and intimately talk about the channels, faces, pitches, wind, underwater reef and rocks, and other key variables that make the character of the break. I listen closely to the minute detail they are providing ('look at the way that water flattens out on top of that submerged rock, it gets real shallow at that point, either ride down the face around it or kick out before it') and try to associate sentences to locations, instead of seeing and deducing the evidence in the water all around me.  As a result of this incomplete understanding, I  usually end up blundering into whatever section they're telling me to avoid at least once (Hello, submerged rock! Good thing you were covered in kelp to soften the blow!)

My tone-deafness extends from reading waves to catching them.  I can't read the feel and pitch of a wave well enough to know when to take off straight or angle in the direction of the break. So a lot of my efforts end up with me either pearling into the ramp or sliding off the back.

When I do make the wave, my popups suck, especially when I'm tired. I can't read the wave good enough to get up with minimal effort, so when I'm not tired I 'brute force' my way into the wave, paddle too long, and miss the best part - the critical section of the wave where all acceleration and set up for going down the line really happens. When I am tired, my  'stagger to my feet' method of getting up means I'm way too slow and end up trying to get to my feet when the board is racing and bumping in front of the actual wave, as opposed to gracefully springing up in the smoothest part of the wave right before it breaks. Pop ups are my crux right now. I'm obsessed with them, even though the next time I'll get a chance to surf is in August.

Basically I'm a total dork out there. I do have reasonable manners, and can get out of the way just fine, but I'm not that guy that can spot the wave, set up, take 3 hard strokes, bounce to his feet, and then dance across the face. I am scared to actually see how I surf. My wave riding is honed by 20 years of muscle memory from snowboarding, so I power my back foot and hold my arms out wide, elbows high. I'm pretty sure I look like an ape.

However.

When I do stand up, the feeling I get is the closest a non spiritual, data driven geek like me can get to God, or whatever powers the universe.  If I were more spiritual I'd know more about whatever that is, but spiritually speaking, I'm the village idiot, so all I've got are images and sound and feeling. Images of my board moving across the face, racing the whitewater and the sound of the wave, like ripping velcro. The feeling of the board underneath my feet as I pump and lean and adjust. And being suspended in a moment that lasted until I kicked out or fell off (option 2 - much more likely).

I'm still experiencing happy flashbacks from our our last trip to Punta de Mita. In that trip we stayed in a very low key, very nice surfer oriented apartment, where the proprietor took anyone interested to where the waves were breaking.  I lucked out and one of his favorite breaks had a really nice left. Since most people are regular footed and I'm goofy, I tend to get more lefts because there are more to be had. On a left breaking wave I face the wave and can see where to go as I move across it.  With that extra vision I was able to point and ride along the face, pumping up and down the wave with slow, sweeping, longboard turns. I'd let the board run out on the face, then gently guide it back into the whitewater. The left was long, really long, and I was able to get the hang of moving across the wave instead of just rocketing towards the shore. This particular break also had really long rights, which gave me the time to get the sensation and apply it to them after I'd mastered it on the lefts.

Just those small improvements- finally being able to travel up and down the face, moving down the line, understanding what was going on with the wave and working with it - made the vacation. In those moments everything suspended. All I had was the board and the wave and the feel of the sun and wind on my body.  I got out 6 days in a row, twice a day, and chased that fleeting sensation until my shoulders felt like they were going to fall off.

My one qualm about vacation surfing is this: I'm in a race, one I'm going to lose, with age. I can definitely feel it now at 48. I only have so many more years of surfing in me, and at 1-2x/year there is a limited amount that I can improve.

And to keep showing up I need to stay relatively fit. There is no training for surfing (even paddle boarding doesn't transfer particularly well), but being fit enough to go at it 2x/day, a couple of hours per session,  has required significant lifestyle changes, including running, paddling, cycling, weights, and (goddamnit) diet.

This is, I suppose, a reasonable price to pay, with decent side effects, like being physically fit. Every once in a while I fantasize about creating a lifestyle that allows me to live in warmer climes with good surf. But then I'd miss the other parts of my life - the snowboarding, the skate skiing, the road and mountain biking, and even the work, which right now requires that I am available in the office instead of telecommuting.

Thinking back on the article, and on this latest vacation, I believe that surfing for me is and will always be about being a beginner - and taking any progress as great progress. Sucking so badly at surfing means I lower my expectations, and from that comes a correlated rise in enjoyment. It's something I try to bring to everything else I do - that degree of openness and feeling can only be good.

Trumping myself on the Mt Catherine Loop

I think I post to this blog maybe 2x/year. So they'd better be memorable posts :) Well this one is going to be good, or at least memorable.  it's January 2017 and in this alternate reality Donald Trump won the general election. Holy fuck. No, really, holy fuck. His first week in office he signed executive orders to:

• Ban Muslims from all Muslim majority countries he doesn't do business with
• Build the south border wall and get Mexico to pay for it
• Start dismantling Obamacare and uninsure up to 20 million people
• Structure the National Security Council so that his Neo Nazi strategic advisor gets to sit on it, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff do not.

This is heavy, pre-apocalyptic, post democratic shit, and so tonight, instead of happily coding my 'spray GPS Data into Google' side project, or planning out my week like I do when I'm on my 'uber work achiever' game, I'm writing stuff down so I hopefully wont wake up at 2AM in a silent scream like I have for the past week wondering when shit is really going to go sideways, or if it already has and 5 years from now I'll be living in a cave, reminiscing about how it went sideways and I had no clue and didn't even appreciate the fact that we had internet and central heating and I was such a fucking punk.

There is only really so much one person can do -- and before you get all judgmental, let me just say that I went to my first protest, unless you count the one where I was walking around in a daze the day after the election and just happened to get swept into a protest march on the way to the bus stop. I really enjoyed it, and have decided I'm all about peaceful protesting.  I was even overcome with emotion in the middle of it when I started to think about my parents and how they came here with $9 between them and built an amazing life. I'm planning on making a regular thing out of protests, apparently there will be plenty of reasons to keep protesting. One nice thing to come out of all of this is that I'm pretty sure the next generation is going to be very involved in keeping America a Democracy, assuming we get it back to being one. 

Right now the situation is completely sideways pear shaped and when it's like that I sometimes just need to get the hell away from other people and sort my shit out. Really, it's my shit, I'm the one having the bad reaction to an authoritarian regime, and I've got to sort out what to do next, and I cant do that glued to facebook watching the fellow members of my bubble have a collective meltdown. 

I decided to get up to the mountain and go skate skiing. This wasn't a monumental decision - I mean I had done it a couple of weeks back, between Leela's soccer tournament weekends. But last time I went up it was purely for physical fitness. This time it was purely for mental fitness. 

The Mt Catherine Loop is easy. If you have a VO2 Max above 60 and the legs and back of a Norwegian ski champion. I'm clocking in at between 45 and 50 on a good day in the middle of summer, and have weak legs, a gimpy back, and a belly I can't seem to lose. So the Mt Catherine Loop is a fucking crucible to me. Today I decided to tackle the hard part, the grind up to the pass, and then head back home. The last time I did the pass it was about 5 degrees above zero and everything was numb. Sweat froze on my eyelashes and I got slightly hypothermic on the long downhill home. 

So it was a mix of dread both real and imagined that I rolled my ass out of bed and started pulling my stuff together. I had just gone out paddling for the first time in long time the day before, and my back, lats, and hips  -- all very much needed for skate skiing -- were achy in a way that Advil couldn't help. Fuck this getting old shit. I used to be able to go for weeks and now I can't even string 2 days together. 

I find that for the most part 'going through the motions' is about 80% of success for efforts like this. So I did that, even though I fell into reading about Donald Fucktron Trump and  ended up rolling out about an hour later than planned in a foul mood.

The start of the loop is a straight uphill slog to the trail, right under the chair of the main ski area. The snow had melt-thawed into a series of jumbled mini slabs that made gliding a distant fantasy. I lurched my way up the hill under the watchful and confused eyes of skiers and boarders, then caught my breath a bit before starting the prelude to the climb. 

The first section of the climb is actually a descent, where the biggest hurdle is navigating the throngs of snowshoers who don't really understand the concept of staying to the side of the trail. I usually alternate weaving through them with v2 practice, which is usually pretty shaky because of the suspect snow quality (those snowshoers know how to churn up a nicely groomed track). 

The second section does go uphill, but gently, in a way that builds false confidence. I usually drop into a rhythm, alternating sides in v1 and even picking it back up to v2 when I get up enough speed. 

That all ends in a hairpin turn that has me picking up the cadence a bit to negotiate the corner. Then it's solid left v1 to the next hairpin. I suck at left v1. I have no idea why. It feels like I'm falling off of a step every time I plant and step on my left side. I can sense squirrels and rabbits laughing at my pathetic left v1. It especially sucks when real skaters pass me, doing beautiful left v1 that looks like they're dancing the tango. I mean it looks that good. Fortunately these people are always nice, and always encouraging, even if it's actually very discouraging to get passed at speed by a guy that is flying uphill and not even breathing hard and can, in fact, toss out an encouraging sentence or two while I can only grunt-wheeze in response. Must be one of those 60+ VO2 Max guys on an easy day.

The next hairpin is the last, and that's not a good thing, because past that hairpin is where the shit gets real. From there it's about 2.5 miles of straight up grind. I can't do this without stopping. Lots. This time, in between stops,  I remembered my favorite part of Captain America, before the Cap gets turned into himself and he's a puny little geek and getting the snot knocked out of him by some jackass behind a movie theater. Cap takes a solid punch to the face, flies back about 5 feet, then gets up and says "I could do this all day". 

Thats what I think when I'm in endurance pain. I think "I could do this all day" and the pain doesn't go away, it just gets a little easier to deal with. I thought "I could do this all day" a lot today. I also just focused on stepping and committing to each stride, and really pushing with my legs and not my triceps. And I lost myself in all of that focus. 

I also lost a lot of the anxiety I've been carrying around all week. The thing about the mountains (and the waves, and the lake) is that they're just there.  They don't have an opinion, they don't 'like' anything, they aren't pissed off about the latest fucked up bullshit. They just take it all in and go...."Whatever". After getting all that angst translated into upward motion worked out  on the way up to the pass, I got to the top and I looked at Mt Catherine, and she looked back at me just like she always has for the past 10 years and I knew that even if I am living out of a cave next year and missing central heating and the internet because, you now, Apocalypse/End of Days, that basically life goes on until it doesn't.  I also realized for the 90th time that the mountain is going to outlive me, like she should. 

My dad used to say stuff like this all of the time and I'd look at him and think "that's really stupid" and maybe it is. But I find it comforting that I can go outside and let go of lot of baggage and basically get right-sized. 

So I'm feeling better. Not physically. Physically I feel like someone took a bat to my quads and back and lats. But mentally, I just wrung all that crap out of my head. 

9 Weeks To BadAss

Every year the email comes. "Middle Aged Superheroes in Spandex" it begins. "Come join me on the Xth Annual 9 Weeks To BadAss!"

Mike is funnier than hell and always inspirational. He has to be to get me out of bed at 4:45 on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays to ride my bike in the dark and sometimes wet Pacific NW springtime.

Cycling here is different than cycling in Colorado, and for a while I just didn't start riding until the weather was perfect, like June, July, or August. Of course that meant I was never in shape enough to enjoy the ride. 9 Weeks to BadAss is like ripping a bandaid off. It starts out feeling like hell, but in the end, I've got 9 weeks of hard riding under my belt, which has gotten significantly looser as I've lost my winter lard.

The middle aged heroes in spandex are a motley crew. From very competitive racers to those of us that have put on 25 or more pounds since our racing days, all are welcome. We are loosely affiliated into two basic groups. The Seattle group, aka the Dawn Patrol, rides out from the U district to the island, their Badassery lasts about 45 miles. The Mercer Island group, aka the Misfits, has it much easier. We latch onto the Dawn Patrol train at various points around the island.

I meet up with the Dawn Patrol and a couple of Misfits at the intersection of I-90 and West Mercer Way. The DP has just come off the bridge, they have about 10 miles in their legs, and for a bunch of 40 and 50 year old men, have a surprising degree of testosterone. I'm not quite awake, and feeling less than rowdy.

This means that they tear off like a bunch of teenagers up the first climb up to the mailbox while I'm still waking up. The climb is about a mile long. You can ride it in the big ring but you will pay. The only thing I've got going for me is that I'm not awake, and as a result the lactic acid hits me much later than usual, about 3/4 of the way up the climb, when momentum and sheer force of will can usually succeed over road gradient, speed and early season love handles.

Once we're over the top, the pace increases.  I take an occasional pull but for the most part tuck in and try to recover from the climb behind the hardcore racers as they wind the group up over the rollers. It's pitch black outside, and I feel like we're in a tunnel as we negotiate the gentle curves of the west side of the island.

Pain rotates from my quads to my glutes to my back in it's own sick set of laps. I have mixed results keeping my breathing measured and even as the pace winds up faster. 4 miles goes by in a flash and then we're at "The Stop", where the south-end Mercer Islanders wait to jump on the train. We take a brief respite to let them get on, and then pick it back up again.

We rotate through, taking 1-2 minute pulls. The road is getting twistier as we move to the East side of the island, and rotating through quickly is not an option in the dark, through the corners. All I can see is the person in front of me, and maybe the next one, as we lean through the apexes and set up for the next turn, all at speed. All of a sudden I'm at the front, negotiating the curves with a combination of headlight, braille and memory. It's the best, and when I think about it, the most terrifying part of the ride. My front wheel is inches from the rear wheel of the next rider. We're moving at 25 mph, leaning the bikes over hard. We've done the ride enough to know when to pedal and when to coast, but this part requires total and complete attention. When it's wet I back way the hell off. No need to hit the deck at my age.

Now we're nearing the north end of the island. The road straightens out and the pace picks up to the point where it doesn't matter if you're on a wheel because at 30+ mph the shelter doesn't help. We're winding out for the sprint by the JCC. There is enough ambient light now to see everyone jostling for position down the final straightaway. The usual suspects fire off the usual attacks. In the early season I'm happy to let them go. Over the weeks I get used to the pain and the effort of the wind up. Sprinting all out is never easy, but I try to stay in contention as much as possible.  I've never come close to winning, as I'm not a true sprinter (nor am I a true climber, or roleur, or soloist, which means at my best I'm mediocre at all aspects of cycling :). The sprint goes off and we circle back to the JCC to recollect the shattered group.

We head back around the island, starting slow, then winding it up. By the time we hit the steep downhill past Clarke Beach, it's back on. The uphill out of Clarke Beach is where the pain begins in earnest. It builds around the south end of the island through Schuler Chutes, as the more fit members of the tribe put the hammer down. The pack shatters again on the relentless grade, and we re-group at the Spot for one final push to I-90.

At this point it's about pain management and attitude. Some days my head and/or body is not in the game.  I fly off the back and soft pedal home. Some days I've got the eye of the tiger and gut it out. In the middle of the hardest efforts I pull for as little as I honorably can, then recover in back. Sometimes I peter out just before the crest of a roller, then think about what could have been on the long solo ride back in. My fitness is as much mental as physical. In the beginning I crumble easily, overwhelmed by the pain. By the end of 9 weeks I'm expecting it. On good days I'm looking for it.

If the hardcore racers have stepped it up too much, I can at least roll in with some members of the 'B' team, as those of us who are less than elite call ourselves.  As we pile back down mailbox hill toward the finish, everyone is spun out. Mike usually leverages his size to zoom off the front. We dive through the final corner to the big uphill climb. If I've got anything left, I try to leverage my rapidly diminishing momentum up the first half of the hill, then grind it out up the last half. My arms lose sensation, and on good days, I start to get tunnel vision as I try to keep up with the real cyclists. Those are the days I feel the best about, because I left it all out on the final climb.

We top out at the stop sign, then roll down to the I-90 trailhead. Much shit is given, especially to those that peeled off the back, or lost it on the climb. Many battles are relived, either the sprints, or the grinds through the rollers, or the final uphill.  It's always fun to catch up with everyone and relive the morning. Eventually the Dawn Patrol rolls back to Seattle, and the Misfits roll around the top of the island to get some more miles in. The pace is usually mellow, we're spent, and rolling gently as we drop people off.

These rides, just like my morning SUP sessions, are essential to my well being. They get my head right for the day ahead, and ensure a good night's sleep. Without them I start to get a little crispy around the edges. My temper gets short, my stomach gets large, in general I go into a bit of a decline. I don't think I could muster the discipline to do this alone, and it certainly wouldn't be as much fun as it is with these guys.

Surfing in Esterillos Oeste

The trip started super mellow, but all hell has broken loose for the past 2 days. The soundtrack in my head went from Bob Marley to Ozzy. Gotta feel aggro to take 3 on the head just to get outside. I've met up with some much better surfers at the small hotel we've been staying at. In a pattern that has repeated itself throughout my life, they've taken me under their wing.

We are 200 yards offshore, sighting the big white tower on the shore to keep ourselves lined up with the reef. My newfound friends tell me to follow them, to paddle from where they paddle. They both catch waves at will. Me, not so much.

The waves at Esterillos Oeste can be random. There is a reef outside that produces a nice longboard wave, and another one that makes a steeper shortboard wave to the inside, but this trip,  the combination of direction and tide means that waves break whenever the fuck they want to. Also, they take a while to break. They rear up, stand tall, and march right by you. Or they break way outside and you scurry around the whitewater. It always takes a little bit of calibration to launch one right on the shoulder. From the outside I can see the backs of waves that rolled by and eventually broke. They're head high, which means that the front is at least a head and a half, or more. No big deal to your average surfer, but I'm a middle aged, desk bound, started in his 30s, now late 40s vacation surfer. Once a year, twice if I'm lucky,  I grab a longboard and try to make it work.

When they finally break, the faces of the waves jack up and go vertical, with flecks of whitewater misting off the top. Then they crumble, big slabs of whitewater sliding out over, and then down the face. They're powerful but they're not hollow tubes. They're fast but not too fast. In other words, they're made for the desk bound, late starting, middle aged schmoe to have his hero moments.

After I get the timing down and place myself in the general vicinity of where my friends have caught their rides, I find my wave and pivot the board. No matter how early I start paddling, it feels like I'm late to the party.  The board jacks up and I lift my chest up to keep the tip out of the water. I'm pulling hard and I can feel the wave start to move past me, I take three more strokes and bring myself back to the ledge.  Then I'm sliding down the face and Shit! it's a long way to the bottom. I'm pulling myself into a crouch.  I'm riding goofy on a right breaking wave,  navigating by sound and peripheral vision, so I hear the wave more than I see it...

Now I've stood up and I'm milking the ride. No slashing turns - I haven't figured out how to do that on a longboard -- just gentle leans to move up and down the face, right in front of the wave as it curls and breaks. Everything is silent and I realize that this is it. This is what I was chasing by coming back here. The sun, the water, the size of the drop, the steepness of the face and the speed that I'm moving across it. Most of all the total silence. This is what I'm going to replay when I'm sitting in a shitty meeting, listening to someone drone on and on. When I'm plugged back into the Matrix, I'm going to remember what it means to really be alive.

Morning SUP

Last summer, while training for RAMROD, I started SUPing as a way to do something when my legs were too sore to ride. I would wake up early, load my board into the car, and roll down to the lake. Paddling became my zen moment, completely different than riding at my limit in a pack through the S turns of Mercer Island.  I didn't have to constantly pay attention to the wheel in front of me or the riders all around me. All I had to do was reach forward and pull.

Eventually I found my way into a group that paddled on Tuesdays and Thursday mornings. I showed up on my wide, soft board and heavy aluminum paddle at 6:30 AM, and watched them glide away from me as I furiously scratched the water trying to keep up.  They were so nice and encouraging,  waiting for me at the turnaround every time, for as long as it took. On the way back they let me get on their boards and use their paddles while gently correcting my lack of form. And then they talked me into doing the 'Round the Rock', a race around Mercer Island.

Had I really, really thought it through, I would have realized that paddling 13 miles after only having paddled 5 at most was a little foolhardy. But I didn't overthink it, I just signed up and muscled my way through it.  It felt good to finish, but I had to curl up like a little baby afterwards and hold my arms because I thought they were going to fall off.

It's good to do things that seem like terrible ideas when viewed in the cold harsh light of reality, because they make for really funny stories, and because they remind you of what you can do when pushed. And while for most people it was a race, for me it was about finishing.  I had to shut down my competitive inner voice as people of all shapes and sizes passed me at will. Then I had to talk myself through the middle section of the race where all there was to do was paddle. The one phrase that kept coming back to me was something one of my early morning comrades had yelled at me as the race started - 'Find Your Rhythm, Arun!!'. Not his, not hers, not theirs, mine. I stopped worrying about everyone else and just tried to find that pace that balanced fatigue and progress. When I did that I started to enjoy the privilege of being out on the water on such an amazing day. Because that is what it is  - it is a privilege to live in such an amazing place and be able to get out on the water for that long. Sometimes I take this life for granted, and it takes efforts like Round The Rock or RAMROD or climbing to Camp Muir to really bring home how beautiful this part of the world is, and how lucky I am to be able to hike, climb, ride, paddle, and board here.

So I did what I always do when I find a sport that makes me feel so good. I "invested". I  bought a nice board and nicer paddle. Much to the chagrin of Lopa, who has lived through many expensive bike, snowboard, windsurfing, and climbing purchases. Armed with extra guilt from my expensive ways, I was compelled to use that gear. I just couldn't stand looking at it. So I started using my new board and paddle pretty religiously this past winter.

Winter paddling is  fun. You need booties. You need roughly the same clothes you would go running in. And uou need to not fall in.

Here is what late winter paddling is like.

Its not quite dark outside. It's 6:30AM and the sun is still not up. The water is black. It looks like oil.

I'm with the group at the launch. Boards on cars, starting to come off. Smiles and greetings but not a lot of words because at this time of day no one really has much to say. We grab our boards and walk down to the launch. One by one we place our boards in the water and push off.

I always start out a little shaky. Every little wobble sends me off my center, and I lash out with my paddle to try and get stable. But that's only for a couple of minutes. Stiff shoulders and back soften up, knees get loose, and my reach lengthens. I stop splashing the paddle down and start placing it into that black, soft, water. Now I'm going. 10 strokes on one side, 14 on the other, trying to negotiate the curve of the island. Head down, eyes up, I watch the paddle slide into the water.

It goes in and I pull. Arms straight, driving down, knees bending down. The water parts silently around my board. and curls up along the edges. The paddle comes out of the water with a whisper. I feather the blade and concentrate on bringing it back forward. Docks, houses, buoys go by like a silent movie.

I'm in a rhythm now. I place, pull myself past the paddle, then flick it forward.  I focus on placing it back into the water, keeping the shaft vertical, arms straight, core locked.

I try to make that motion perfect,. Most of the time, I come up short. Sometimes, in a happy coincidence of form, I get close. The closer I get the better it feels. I chase that sensation the whole time.

Now I'm gliding. Surging less, flowing more.  The water is still and somehow it's getting lighter, more gray green than black. The shine of the lights from the houses and the city is fading and daylight is coming in over the Cascades.

I'm sweating now, and breathing hard. Chasing them. They look like they're hardly working. How could they be moving that fast? How do they make it look that easy? I speed up my strokes, trying to stay smooth and silent. Slowly making up ground, breathing harder.

I feel the faster rhythm in my arms, shoulders, back, core, legs. Waves of fatigue sweep across me.

Every time, before I place the paddle there is the smallest moment where I'm poised above the dark water.   When I'm not at my absolute limit, I try to stop and feel it. My shoulders are stacked vertically, my torso is rotated. I'm on the balls of my feet and my arms are straight and extended forward. My head is up, my eyes straight ahead. Right there, before I drive the paddle in, reality fades away. Old age, the shoulders, the knees, the back, the job, and the tiredness all recede and in that one small moment I'm young and strong again.

When we finish,  I'm drained. Muscles all wrung out, I can barely hold on to my formerly ultralight board as I carry it up from the lake.

Every time I come off the water, I feel connected. I'm connected to the water, to the air, to the guys who I chased for 5 miles.  My mind, for once, is silent.

The next Tuesday, or Thursday, when I'm lying in bed starting to justify staying right there, I flash back to the way paddling makes me feel, because it sets up the day so much better than sleeping in.

Even when I run it slow, the half marathon still hurts

Today I ran the Mercer Island Half Marathon. I ran it in 1:52, with a bathroom break in there, and to be honest, I'm pretty happy with that time, which is way slower than my course pr of 1:45. My watch clocked the distance a little long and had me running 8:26 miles. The official time had me at 8:37. Might have been the piss stop. Who knows?

I came into the race with very low expectations. I have been fighting off some kind of cold picked up during the last couple of weeks on the road, my training had completely nosedived the last part of Feb and all of March, and I had done very little speedwork. I had been traveling a lot, and work has been through the roof lately. Getting up and running at 5am after being up till 11 working was getting difficult to the point where it wasn't happening.

The one thing  I did have going for me was that I had put in some good base work in late December, all of January and early February. Lots of miles on the road, most of them firmly in the 'base pace' category, but I did get some hill sprints and even some Yasso 800s in. Plus a lot of time up skate skiing. In late Feb the travel kicked up again, and training dropped off. Before I knew it, the race was the next day, and I was barely walking up the stairs without getting winded -- whatever virus du-jour that was on the airplane with me had come home to roost.

So it was with a completely open mind and detached head that I showed up the morning of the race. I jogged the 1 mile to the start, which was great to loosen up the legs. When a race starts a mile from your house, you've got little excuse to avoid it -- I was cracking jokes with the course marshals on the way in ("what do you mean the race hasn't started yet? I thought I was just having a great day!")

On the starting line I was overwhelmed by a feeling of irrational exuberance. Just f*ing happy to be there and be alive. No idea why. But, prior to a big endurance event (and this counts as one for me), feeling irrationally exuberant is just the right place to be. For a brief, fleeting moment, I felt 20 years younger and stronger.

Lopa always wonders out loud why I run these events. She does these kind of things with friends, so she can have someone to talk to. Well, I don't like talking, especially when I'm out of shape :) Truth is I do feed off of the other people at the events -- just being around people running makes it so much easier, especially since I train alone --  between travel and work and family, training is something I do when I have time, not when it's convenient for anyone else. When I'm at a race the paces that feel hard feel easy, and when it gets hard there is always someone ahead of me to focus on. My best races have felt very painful, but afterwards I can always look back and say 'hey, that was pretty damn fast!'

Of course there was going to be none of that today. I felt better than yesterday, but still not in PR shape. My speed is nonexistent, and my endurance was questionable. I had decided in a fit of conservative pacing to try to break 2 hours, sticking to 9 minute miles.

The gun went off and of course I wanted to stretch a little. Keeping an 8 minute mile pace was easy with everyone around, and I had to put the brakes on.

I usually suck at pacing. It's like I have a devil on one shoulder, poking me with his pitchfork, saying "Faster! Faster! This feels Awesome!" and an angel on the other shoulder saying "whoah there. Let's not get too excited, we're a mile into a 13 mile run". Yeah, I think the angel sounds pretty lame too.

Today was different, either I'm maturing mentally or physically -- which, btw, is not a good thing for someone in their 40s.  My newfound mental or physical maturity enabled me to hold back.  I didn't want to explode on the back half of the course, which I've done before when running with a slight cold. I kept the pace around 8:30, and really had to work on holding back.

At mile 6, I started to take the brakes off, slowly, just to see how I was feeling. Because I had been sick I had no idea if I would explode once I picked up the pace. Of course, miles 7-10 are where the rollers are, and those kick my ass whether I run them fast, slow, or backward.  It wasn't a 'here comes the BOOM' kind of moment, but on the other hand it wasn't a 'The Di-Lithium Crystals are crackin, Capn Kirk' moment either. I basically held it even at 8:30 or so during that phase, which is a slow grinding uphill with short downhill sections.

Mile 10-11 are a fast, sweeping downhill, and 11-12 has the toughest hill on the course. I finish on this hill with most of my training runs, and thought I was prepared for it. It still hurt, it was still really hard, and I had to dig into my bag of tricks to make it up the hill. I attached a mental rubber band to someone that had come by me and pulled myself up the hill that way.

Miles 12-13 were heavy fatigue miles. I knew the barn was close, but the legs were starting to feel it, my calf was twinging a bit and the burn was consistent. This race ends with  a nice steep uphill, and when I started up it, I felt like someone had turned up the gravity. And coated the road with molasses. I played my last mental trick ("I'm a bird! I can fly!") and got across the line.

My watch, which is normally pretty accurate, went a little long on the course. I'm pretty sure they are right and Garmin is wrong in this case, but Garmin has been very right in the past, so I'm wondering why my watch shows me running 13.3 miles instead of 13.1.

Summary:

• I guess this shows that you can get a good base, slack on training for a month and a half, and still have a reasonably good time. 
• However, my speed really needs work. Time to get that Mercer Island High School Track pass. 
• The course is tough. I wonder what I would clock on a flatter course? 
• I love this distance. It really stretches me without the killer 3 hour long runs that marathon training requires. I can have a life and run half marathons. 

Gotta be the wax

Today was a stellar day on skate skis. That doesn't happen for me very often, but this year I've actually gotten out more times than I can count on one hand, and I think the coordination is starting to come together.

I wasn't expecting a great day: I had just done a 12 mile long run that turned into a 'cave of pain' tempo run the day before, and was pretty cooked. But, in a fit of forethought,  I had taken my skis and rubbed them down with some One Ball Jay snowboard wax.

This turned out to be the killer move of all time. I was gliding extremely well, passing people who looked like they were sticking a bit. I also didn't get as hyperspasmodically tired. I was able to put long climbing sections together without stopping, and when I stopped, I felt rational, not on the edge of passing out.

Skate skiing works well for me because I waddle naturally from side to side. When you put that waddle on skinny skis and long poles, it works pretty well. I don't know how good I look -- I'm willing to bet not as good as I feel -- but I feel like, occasionally, in fits and spurts, that  I'm dancing up the slope. Especially today. Again, it's gotta be the wax.

At the same time I can feel a lactic acid bath going on in my legs and lungs. Only focusing on the movement actually gets me up the hill without stopping.

I realized on the 12 mile run that the pain cave is a romantic concept (romantic as in enduro geeks get all dreamy eyed about it), but the reality is, well, painful. The only way I can get up in there and stay there is to stay focused on the movements and not think about the futility of the effort. I'm not sure how other people get through tough efforts. For me, thinking about anything other than right now = slowing down.

Left foot and ankle feel odd. kind of twingy. I'm going to hopefully get my ass out of bed for a recovery run tomorrow, and I'll check it out then. Maybe it'll get pounded out?