Crapulous

This post feels a little disjointed, but it’s better than nothing, which was your other option for today.

I’m feeling crapulous today, which I just learned is an actual word. Seriously, look it up. (You should follow that link just to click the little speaker and hear the computer pronounce it for you, I did it like 14 times, but then I’m easily amused by things like that.) The real definition of crapulous is ‘suffering due to excess drinking,’ which is not exactly how I was planning to use the word. When I use the word I use it to mean ‘having the properties of crap’ or ‘feeling like a piece of feces.’ Classy, right? Anyway, I feel crapulous today, not the actual definition of crapulous, but my definition of it, although I did partake in some drinking last night so who knows what definition I’m really suffering from.

Oy vay, it’s been a while since I wrote a post. I can’t remember the last time I sat down to post something. Between Labor Day last Monday, travelling out to Salt Lake City for work last week, and the subsequent sickness that resulted from me spending time in those flying Petrie dishes that we call airplanes (aeroplanes for you Brits) I just haven’t found the will to post, or to run for that matter. My last run was in Salt Lake City last Tuesday. Being a creature of habit I ran the same route that I had run last time I was in SLC, around Liberty Park but was disappointed to discover that they still haven't erected the statue of me that I had suggested.

In other running related news my wife got me the new iPhone 3GS for my birthday last week and it is awesome. I’m not really sure how that’s running related but I’m guessing at some point in the future there’ll be a post about all the things I can do with it and how it helps or distracts from my running. I was going to formally acknowledge that Candis is the Best Wife Ever, but she’s been rolling her eyes at me since I’ve been answering every question with “I don’t know but I bet there’s an app for that,” and I think the Best Wife Ever would probably laugh at her husband’s jokes even when they’ve long since stopped being funny.

There’s one app that I’m downloading for sure, the shoelace app (video below).

Battle

At 6:45am I boarded the big yellow school bus that would shuttle me to the start of the race, and took the first open seat I saw. I knew that the bus would fill up and was expecting to be joined on the brown, vinyl seat by a fellow runner, I did not expect the battle of wits that was about to catch me unawares. She sat down next to me and offered a smile. I returned the gesture and then out of a habit formed in high school resumed my empty gaze at the back of the seat in front of me.

Once all of the runners had streamed onto the bus the doors closed and we were off, driving up the road that we would all shortly be running back down. I imagined that the driver was wondering why he was driving us 13.1 miles away from our cars so that we could run back to them, he must have felt the same way the pilot of a plane full of skydivers does. As we headed up the hill the woman next to me smiled at me again and took a deep breath as though she wanted to say something but couldn’t find the words.

Sitting there in awkward silence, it occurred to me that she was trying to be polite and start a conversation, maybe even hoping that I would start the conversation. She was a fellow runner and I didn’t want to appear rude so I began racking my brain for something to say to her. The longer we stewed in our unwieldy silence, the cleverer my comment would have to be. I didn’t want to be cliché and talk about the weather, I wanted to say something intelligent and obviously she did too. We sat there casting sideways glances at each other trying to come up with something to say, both of us wanting to be the first to break the silence and not the dimwit who couldn’t think of anything good to say.

It was as though we were locked in a battle of wits, a mortal struggle between intelligence and idiocy and I was slipping ever closer to idiocy. If I didn’t say something right quick I’d wind up a full blown idiot like Nitmos*. Say something! Anything! But before I could come up with the words she turned and looked at me smugly, I knew that she’d won. “Have you ever run this race before?” Wow. She was good. It was relevant, it was topical and it was obviously common ground for both of us. I began to wonder what I had gotten myself into. Surely someone clever enough to beat me in this battle of wits was not just asking this as a simple question, but what was the hidden meaning? What was she getting at? It was driving me nuts and I needed more time to figure out how to respond.
“Hmm?” I said raising my eyebrows as though I hadn’t heard her. I immediately regretted it for the lack of intelligence it showed, but this woman was impossible to get a handle on.
“This race, have you ever run it before?” She had changed the structure of the question, putting the direct object at the beginning. Very crafty.
I was flustered and in my haste to appear smart, I blurted out as many sesquipedalian words as I could, “No I haven’t, but it’s not because I have triskaidekaphobia or anything. It’s because I’ve always fancied myself as a bit of an antidisestablishmentarian.” I wasn’t sure what the last word meant but I said it with an English accent, because that always makes you sound cleverer. Then I deftly turned the tables back on her, “This race, have YOU ever run it before?”

Our conversation parried delicately back and forth, a whirling intellectual dogfight taking place up in the skies, high above the IQ of the average Joes on the back of the bus. When the dust settled I was too confused to know whether I’d won or lost the quest to appear more intelligent. It was after a several minutes of silence that she turned and looked at me again and said “So, did you run this race last year?” At first I thought that she hadn’t been paying attention to my answers, or that she had been too confused by my magniloquent stylings, but I’d already established that she was sitting on a supernumerary IQ. I had already determined that she was dealing from a fuller deck than I was, perhaps even playing with two or three decks like a Vegas blackjack table. Clearly this time there was a hidden meaning to the question because I thought I'd already answered it, at least as I understood it. Instead the question just hung out there in the open, unanswered, poking my pudgy IQ in the belly and mocking my ineptitude. I had no response and she had won.

*You didn’t think I was going to leave this completely unprovoked attack unanswered did you?

Bolder Boulder Race Report

Here I am with my wife in the stadium after the race.

Editor's Note: This is a pretty long post. I had a lot I wanted to say. Sue me. Sometime around dark-thirty yesterday morning my wife rolled over and started pushing me out of bed, it was time to get up and go run the Bolder Boulder Memorial Day 10K. Our kids stayed at their grandparents house last night which means that this is a prime opportunity to sleep in! If you don't have kids then you have no idea how cruel this is. It's kind of like when your favorite charity needs a big screen TV so you go out and buy them a state of the art flat screen. Yeah it's a great TV, better than yours even, but you don't get to use it and you're the one who's out 6 grand. I'm told that I'm supposed to feel good about helping others or something. Whatever. Being munificent isn't making my picture look any sharper. OK so it's not at all like that, but there's apparently some kind of irony thing going on. Eh, maybe I'm just in a bad mood because, who gets up this early on Memorial Day? To go running? I'm beginning to question my sanity.

First thing I notice is that it's hot. I'm going to estimate that it was around 97 degrees in the shade despite the fact that all credible sources are saying it was 84 degrees at the start of the race.

Mile 1 - 8:34. I’m off to a quick start, out in front of my wave. I’m feeling good, feeling strong. There's a guy in a giant hot dog suit, emphasis on the word 'hot' and I'm guessing that he didn't try it on prior to running in it this morning because it comes down so low that with every step the foam suit bounces up off his calves until the armholes jam up into his armpits. As I pass him I notice that as the suit bounces his face disappears from the face hole too. I'm just about to tell him "man, that must suck," but he knows that. He doesn't need me to tell him.

Mile 2 - 9:07. I’m trying now to temper my enthusiasm and settle into my pace. Still feeling good, I pass a group of obese belly dancers standing outside a house 'entertaining' the runners. My eyes take a second before the horror sets in and I quickly move from one belly dancer to the next hoping to find something that looks a little less like cottage cheese and more like a flat stomach or a six pack. No, no, no, no, yes! There it is, a six pack of Coors Light tucked covertly under the lawn chair where one of the dancers is taking a cigarette break. Poor thing. She must be all tuckered out from shakin' what her mama gave her, or more aptly what McDonald's gave her.

Mile 3 - 9:15. We’re headed up hill and my quads are starting to burn. I try to keep pushing on at this pace. Some college students are trying to recruit runners to do the slip-n-slide in their yard. I gave it a thought, but chances are pretty good that once I got to the end of it I'd just lie in the cool puddle of not-running-bliss until someone rolled me out of the way.

Mile 4 - 9:07. I try to rest my legs on the short down hill portions and push myself on the up hills, but I can feel my pace slowing. Another group of chubby belly dancers are cheering runners on. What is going on? Did I get lost and run this street twice? Is it possible that there are two separate groups of "big-boned" belly dancers tormenting runners today? Answer: yes.

Mile 5 - 8:55. I start making my way over to the left side of the street in anticipation of the upcoming turn. Here it comes, it's a right turn! I have no idea where I am despite being pretty familiar with the area and having run this event the past 2 years. My mind can't put a coherent thought together right now. The heat is really getting to me. Don't think, just run.

Mile 6 - 9:20. My mantra has become "how bad do you want this" and my head is willing me to push on and to run faster. As we come up the final hill to the finish I feel a surge of energy return to my legs, I’m yelling a new mantra in my head “I DON’T FEEL NO HILL!” One of the runners next to me smiles as I pass her and says “great job, go get it,” it was at this point that I realized I wasn’t just saying my mantra in my head. I don’t care anymore, I’m feeling good again. I push myself up the hill and into the stadium where my 4 year old is waiting. I wave to him as I expend every ounce of energy to cross the finish line as fast as I can. A quick glance at my watch shows me 56:01 which is a personal record (PR) for me despite being a little higher than both my goal and my prediction. This is an unofficial time as the Bolder Boulder has yet to give out official times and splits. It might be time to call the new timing technology a massive failure since I was supposed to get my time and splits 20 minutes after finishing.

I'll try to write something about the post race expo and activities at some point in the next few days, but I think I've rambled on long enough for now. Also, my official time, splits and race pictures will be posted as they become available to me.

UPDATED: Official Time of 56:00. Splits added above.

New Training Technique: Wogging

I'll occasionally surf the web while I'm here at work to find interesting articles about running or new training techniques. (Right, kind of like how it occasionally rains in Seattle).
Anyway, today I found this article, which explains the benefits of wogging:

A wog, Glenn explains, is just like it sounds: a cross between a walk and a jog. Take a little of one, a pinch of the other, and you’ve got a wog... he’s already discovered that moving quickly can be bad for your health. “… running is out of the question, despite my devotion to weight training and carb-watching. I am too lazy, too old and too fat to run.”

He's right about one of those (hint: I bolded it). He goes on to talk about getting your exercise while you work by carrying things and even goes so far as to mention 3 x 5 note cards - those suckers can be heavy!

When I’m feeling especially Olympian, I try to carry everything at once, closing the electric garage door with my nose, the door to the house with my foot. Talk about gymnastics. I combine weight-training and aerobics in one fell swoop.

Yeah, you're a gymnast alright.

Please don't mistake this post as criticizing folks who have to start out jogging and walking, if that's what you need to do to get started then more power to you, but when we start talking about getting exercise by hauling those note cards around it speaks volumes about how languid our society has become.
Also, can I recommend a tougher, more macho sounding name than "wog". I hear the name wog and it just makes me want to go lie down on the couch with a bag of potato chips. Even if we called it a Jolk it would sound better.