I'm Going To Pay For This Tomorrow

I woke up this morning and my entire body felt oddly…. weak. Not painful, just weak. I did a bunch of sets of man-makers last night cause I still can’t run on the bad ankle and I wanted a tough workout. I think my muscles are insulted because I treated them with such contempt. 

They’re sad, depressed and pouty so they didn’t want to move as I laid there in the bed. My mind is stronger than my body, so I got up, ate a few Advils and got to work. With twenty-four hours to think about it, tomorrow they’re going to be pissed.  They’re going to inflict pain back on me, and I am not looking forward to it.

I found this man-makers exercise on the internet. Supposedly Navy Seals do it. I don’t know if that's true because I don’t know any Navy Seals and I have discovered that not everything on the internet is true.

Start out with a pair of dumbells. The metal kind, not like the slowpoke in front of you at the supermarket writing a check for $4.38. I used 25 pounders.

So you have one in each hand, and you do a squat-thrust. Then do the push-up. Then while still in the plank position, lift the right hand up to the chest and back. Repeat with left hand. Hop back to the squat position still holding the dumbbells on the floor. Rolling your weight forward, lift the dumbells and reach back between your legs as far as you can. Bring your hands forward and stand while curling the dumbells up to your clavicles. Finish it by pushing the dumbells straight up over your head. Repeat.

There's a bunch of variations on this exercise. Here's a video of one using kettlebells...

This is really a full body workout. I did reps of four with a one minute recovery and I was really huffing and puffing. I did maybe six sets and then a half hour later did another six. It was far tougher than I thought it would be. I could have used lighter weights, but the next lighter ones I have are ten pounders, and the bar was not high enough off the floor so it crushed my knuckles. If you’re a Navy Seal or a Marine, you probably think I’m a wuss. I’ll get over it.

If I was being chased by a pack of wild dogs, I could probably run on this ankle. It feels structurally sound but it’s still pretty sore. I’ll try to do three miles Saturday. Can’t afford to lose too much time because there’s a marathon May6th and I have only one week of fat in the training schedule.

Don't pay too much attention to my whining. I really do have some perspective. This bum ankle is just a minor annoyance compared to what our injured service members have to deal with every day. Jump on my bandwagon and help support these injured heroes through the Semper Fi Fund.

Some Say I'm an Idiot

Some people said I’m an idiot and deserved what I got. Others said, “It was inevitable, you should have known that was going to happen.”

Well, I don’t think it was inevitable and I certainly don’t consider myself an idiot. The jerk who almost killed me the other night is definitely an idiot, though. Here’s what happened:

I was scheduled to run seven miles and the Manakin - Hermitage loop was an easy choice. In order to keep things interesting, I decided to run it by starting out south instead of the usual northbound direction -- see, we play these silly games to keep from getting in a rut.

It was after 6:30 but I probably should have gone out a little bit later. It was still rush hour-ish. There were more cars on the road than I like, and they were acting odder than usual.

I am hard to miss when running in the night. There is reflecting material on my waist pack, my vest and my shoes. I think some of those drivers thought all that reflective stuff was a target to aim for because they came awfully close. Several found me interesting enough that they blasted me with high beams to get a closer look. More than once I got so totally high-beam blinded that I had to step off the road and wait for them to go by.   

Plenty of those drivers weren’t paying any attention at all. I don’t know if they were racing to get home in time for Entertainment Tonight, or just arguing with their wives over what to have for dinner. I do know they were not looking for runners on the road. You can see me fifty yards away with all that reflective stuff, but a lot of those cars would come right at me then suddenly see me and swerve in a panic.

You can run the same route a dozen times, but if you go the opposite direction it’s like being on a completely different road. The up-hills and the down-hills are all in unexpected places. On the opposite side of the street the footing isn't the same, and the terrain off the side of the road is unfamiliar too. It probably would have been prudent to have run that opposite direction once in the light.

Well over five miles into the run, I had passed the golf courses, passed the gas pipeline and was coming up on the little house with the doggie obstacle course in the side yard. The road was straight out in front of me with a slight hill crest. I could tell a vehicle was coming when its lights lit up the treetops. As it topped the hill it looked like a big SUV and didn’t seem to have high beams on.

In spite of all the traffic I felt really good. I was moving at a decent pace. In the zone, I didn't want to stop. As the SUV approached, I put my head down so the visor of my cap could block the glare from its headlights.

After running a few times in the dark facing traffic, you get so that you can read the headlight shadows. You can tell where a vehicle is without having to actually look directly at it. This monster was coming right at me. He had plenty of time to see me. There was no traffic from the opposite direction so nothing prevented him from sliding over into the other lane. But he just kept coming.

In a few seconds, It became clear the truck was not going to give me any room. I was right up on the edge of the pavement and the headlights were now so bright that I couldn’t see anything. All along that road, there’s about an eight inch shoulder of granite dust and crushed gravel between the edge of the blacktop and the ditch.

I stepped off the pavement and brought my left foot down onto the shoulder, but it wasn’t there. Instead, my foot landed on a jagged softball sized rock. The ankle immediately rolled to the outside. I tried to recover and hop off it, but my center of gravity was already over the ditch. I went down on hands and knees. I had gloves on, and much of my weight went onto my hands which was fine. My right knee and shin hit those rocks though and got all banged up.

Bear in mind this ridiculous ballet unrolled right there in the dazzling brilliance of that SUV’s headlights. As I bounced around in the rocks, its brake lights flashed red; then the driver hit the gas and was gone. I know the shithead saw me go down.

If I’d stepped off the road five feet sooner, I’d probably be fine. But the spot I picked was right near a driveway. In order to keep weeds down, the homeowner lined the ditch with grapefruit-sized rip rap as it approached the culvert that passes under the drive. Lucky me.

I popped back up right away. My left ankle and right knee were both barking pretty loudly. I couldn’t put any weight on the left leg, so there I was hopping around on my right foot at the end of these people’s driveway cursing, “Son-of-a-bitch, son-of-a-bitch, son-of-a-bitch.” Someone looked out the front door then switched off the porch light. Southern hospitality, I guess.

It wasn’t the first time I rolled that ankle, so I knew what to expect, but the immediate instantaneous pain is so bad when it first happens that it always feels like someone cut your leg off. I bent over with hands on knees, caught my breath and tried to walk on it. That was not going to work. I also happened to notice the bloody wetness on my right knee. “Shit,” I said. This is going to screw up the training, I thought.

I really did not feel like trying to hop and gimp home under my own power, so I pried my mobile phone out of the arm holster and called Kim. Hoped she’d answer. Girl’s notorious for not answering her phone. I got lucky; she answered right away. I told her some dope ran me into a ditch and I couldn’t walk. Could she come and get me? Told her where I was. She said she’d come right away.

Kim really is the best person on Earth. She showed up in about ten minutes – I was that close to home. As I climbed into the truck, she hands me a fistful of Advil and a Diet Coke. How can you beat that? She dropped me at the back door and went down to the indoor riding ring to finish her lesson.

Nice Foot, Eh?

I hopped in the backdoor on one leg and found Stephen in the kitchen, crushing ice cubes on the counter in a zip-lock bag. What a great team I have. I stumbled down to the family room, piled some pillows on the ottoman, tied the ice bag to my foot with a dish towel and swallowed an old pain pill left over from the last time Kim got beat up by a horse. Stephen poured me a glass of wine.

I know, I know, you’re not supposed to mix alcohol and pain killers but I believe in moderation. One pain pill, one glass of wine. Definition of moderation.  

This vignette played out on Thursday night. Today’s Saturday. The ankle is still petty swollen and discolored, but I’ve been icing it and elevating it. When I wrap it in an ace bandage and wear a good shoe, I can walk pain-free, as long as I concentrate on going only straight forward and don’t pivot or twist.

I figure I’ll have to quit running for a week. I found a cross-train exercise I can do though. It’s called Man-makers. Google it; it’s a lot tougher than it looks. 

Please Support our injured heroes through the Semper Fi Fund. 

They deserve our help. 

It's All Dad's Fault

I went trail running Sunday and while I was out there I got to thinking about my father. He introduced me to hiking when I was a little kid back in about 1965. Our family vacationed in Vermont for two weeks every summer. We'd rent a cabin with a dock on Lake Bomoseen or Lake Dunmore and spend two weeks eating off paper plates, fishing and reading all the books we took out of the library before we left New Jersey.

Lake Dunmore From Rattlesnake Point

Before 1965, my sister and I were really too little to do much else. That summer, Dad wanted to try something different, so he decided we would tackle The Moose. Mt Moosalamoo juts a full 2,600 feet into the rarified atmosphere over central Vermont. 

The whole family went on that first expedition. We packed hot dogs and potatoes wrapped in foil into an old Army rucksack. I carried my Army surplus canteen on my kid-sized web belt. We hiked up to Rattlesnake Point, collected sticks for a campfire, burnt our lunch, laid around in the grass and then walked back down.

It wasn’t more than 3.5 miles round trip and less than 1,000 ft of elevation change, but for a seven year old kid, it was grand adventure into the high country. We ate food we cooked over a fire! That was the first time I remember being on a (real) trail in the woods.

My father also introduced me to running – jogging was his preferred term. He invented jogging, you know. In 1964. I’m not kidding. It was on his resume.

Dad got into an exercise routine when he was in the Army during the Korean War and never got out of the habit. Each morning he’d do calisthenics in the bedroom before going to the office. Sit-ups, push-ups, jumping jacks. Like that. Usually he’d finish by running in place for five minutes.

We moved from Staten Island, NY to Morris County, NJ on Norm’s thirty-seventh birthday. November 22, 1963 - it was quite a day. After we moved to Jersey, the running in place morphed into running around the house. Out the bedroom, down the stairs, through the living room, and a couple laps of the dining room table.

One day in that spring of ’64, the morning trot through the house dodging furniture and small children became prosaic, and Norm ran out the front door. He ran down the driveway and up the street. This is how jogging was invented.

Exercise couture was not important to Norm in the infancy of jogging. He usually ran in a pair of old gray dress slacks, a polo shirt and sneakers from Woolworths or A&P. When it was cold he added a sweater and a beret. Sometimes we kids went with him, but he was serious and it was hard for our little legs to keep up so we typically turned back pretty quickly.

He got picked up by the cops, too. They wanted to know what he was running from. He said it was for exercise. They asked for ID. He didn’t have any. They asked him where he lived, put him in the back of the cop car, took him home and turned him over to my mother. It happened twice with the cops. After that he became known as Crazy Norm, the nut who runs through the neighborhood each morning. They laughed at Columbus, too.

So Dad got me started hiking and running, but not trail running. That started in the early 80’s on the Appalachian Trail with Gary Borysewicz and it’s a story for another day.

Sunday I did about seven miles on muddy horse trails out to the west of our place. I was supposed to do nine, but trail running is a lot tougher than road running, and all that freaking mud made it even tougher. Kicked my butt. I have to do a lot more work on the quads. JFK 50 Mile has almost 14 miles of Appalachian Trail and you climb the ridge twice.

All this running and blogging is fun and games for me, but it’s really about reminding everyone to support our Injured Service Members through the Semper-Fi Fund.

The Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are winding down, and many of these great Americans who’ve lost limbs or become critically injured or ill in other ways will need our help for a long time – possibly the rest of their lives. I’m dedicating my running this year to help these service members and their families because we owe it to them and they deserve it. Come on and jump on my bandwagon!

I’m really getting to like running in the night.

Ran in the dark for the first time a couple of weeks ago.

I went south a little after sunset on our semi-rural country road. It’s got a yellow line down the middle (That’s it up there on top of the blog). It’s mostly horse farms and golf courses down that way so there’s some commuter traffic, but not much. If you see three cars together, it’s a lot. Manakin road is a good running road.

The only thing I worried about was getting hit by a car. I put on a reflective vest and hoped for the best. It was cold. I wore a fleece cap and learned new respect for the term “deer in the headlights.”

That reflective vest is a good way to keep visible. But when the first fifty mile an hour BMW with xenon high beams blasted the eyeballs out the back of my head, I found a whole different set of issues that a baseball cap could help solve.

Blindness is not always dark. Blindness can be very, very bright. It also confuses and disorients. You don’t know where the road is, you don’t know where the ditch is, and you don’t know where your feet are. The deep instinctive part of my brain knew that a misstep and a millisecond in one direction could mean death and in the other broken bones and torn ligaments.

After the xenon explosion passes, your eyes are still trying to adjust to the sudden brightness and the result is the darkest dark you will ever know. It’s like Milton’s description of hell: “Darkness, visible.”

I can be a resolute runner. When in the zone, I prefer not to stop. The first few xenon blasts, I pushed through the blindness and trusted to luck and reflexes. Cursed myself for not wearing a baseball cap. But soon rationality triumphed over doggedness and I just gave up. Saw it coming, stepped into the ditch, closed my eyes and let it pass.

This all sounds pretty terrible and you’re likely wondering how in hell I can say I’m getting to really like running in the night. The second time was a lot better.

It’s about 35°. I wear a ball cap, shorts, long-sleeve t-shirt and vest. It’s after 7pm. The commuters are home and the sky’s clear and starry. There’s less than half a moon, but it’s bright. This time I go north.

Just north of our place is an enclave of black families. They’ve likely lived here for a hundred fifty years. The “old negro schoolhouse” is in the woods right next to our place and it’s now a little rental bungalow with a bright red working hand pump in the side yard. Sanitized reminder of a near distant time whose spasmodic and reluctant death is still remembered clearly by the older ones among us.

I run in the darkness through the neighborhood of organically grown homes. White church and graveyard on the left. A small home of painted concrete block. A wide an expansive one, bricked and wrought ironed. Here’s one with a new Mercedes in the driveway and another with a rusting tractor trailer hunkered in the weeds. It’s that kind of neighborhood. Old families with long roots.  

The houses are near the road and lighted windows confirm a life daylight just implies. There’s a late-season Christmas tree in one window, otherwise the colors have all gone gray and the smell of wood smoke is in the air. The road looks like a flat charcoal river, but it’s not flat at all. It’s ribby and pimpled, pitted, boiled and roily. Headlights coming up behind throw shadows on the imperfections and blow the secret. All the while, a womb-like darkness presses in close and intimate.

I follow the white line on the pavement’s edge. Nature is silent. It’s wintertime. The insects are dormant and noisy birds gone. I hear my feet on the pavement and nylon swishing of my shorts. Water sloshes quietly in my CamelBak. My breath ties all the sounds together in a rhythmic opus. I’m huffing pretty good by now as I turn left and slightly uphill past the new Hindu temple.

I don’t know if it’s a coincidence that the Hindu temple is on the edge of the black neighborhood. I heard the Hindus fought the county for a while before they got their permits. There’s a big white fence around the property so you can’t easily see its pastel pinkness. Rumor is they have a cow in there.

Further west there’s more cows. Lots of them. Beef cattle on the right and more organic homes on the left. The beeves startle but curious and unafraid run with me along the wire fence, ear tags bobbing. It gets darker as clouds slide in and cover the moon. The temperature is perfect. I leave the beef behind and trees arc over the road while the sour stink of dairy farm creeps down a lane. Tall pines on either side of the lane focus the smell so it lasts only a minute or so and is gone.

My body is warm and the rhythm of everything just sweeps me along. Legs move on their own without any conscious effort. I feel coolness only on the front of my knees, back of my arms and newly de-bearded chin.  Darkness masks the world’s details and I float along the road towards the turnback point.

As I head for home it begins to sleet. I don’t see it or feel it. I hear it crackle on the dead leaves in the ditch and the hedgerow. My mind has disassociated from my body and each exists in its own separate moment. The sleet doesn’t matter either; it’s simply another fact of the night and I’m really getting to love running in the night.

Please support Injured Marines through the
Semper-Fi Fund. These heroes deserve our help.

Major Development

There’s been a lot of action since my last post – sorry it took so long. My second week of training culminated with a 9.4 mile run last Saturday. I was only supposed to do 9, but it’s 4.7 to the end of Miller’s Lane, and it seemed more complete to go all the way to River Road before turning back.

I discovered more trails, too and confused Kim in the process. After finishing her morning lessons, she decided to take a drive to check on my progress and make sure I wasn’t lying in a ditch somewhere. So she drove all the way to River Road and… No Bruce!

She found me, though. On the way back. I heard the diesel coming up behind me and recognized its sound. Didn’t hear it on her way out, though. There’s a nice section of trail about 600 yards long through a horse pasture with a line of heavy junipers between the trail and the road. It’s a yummy soft downhill coming north. I must have been on that trail when she went by the first time. Listening to Eat A Peach.

I get a kick out of her driving out to check on my training runs. She brings me Diet Coke, too.

I go hot and cold with running music. In the past I haven’t bothered mainly because the music I like never seems to harmonize right with my running. Ran the Monument Avenue 10K last year listening to The Ultimate Santana the whole way and that worked out ok. Training for the Ultra calls for a slower pace, so music seems worth a try. Eat a Peach is just a big long bluesy jam so the tempo and timing matched that 9.4 miler pretty well.

Today I ran five miles listening to a new Steven King audio book. 11-22-63, it’s called. That's the title, 11-22-63. Never ran listening to a book before. It could create a whole new paradigm. Got so into the story I didn’t want to stop running. I’ll let you know how that goes. Both the story and the listening.

I've digressed. Here’s the Major Development: We've dedicated my running this year to the Semper Fi Fund for injured Marines.

I was introduced to this fund by Captain Mosi Smith, USMC while investigating the JFK 50 Mile. Mosi’s a Naval Academy grad, triathlete and elite ultra-marathoner. His mission is to raise $1 million for  The Semper Fi Fund. Our goal is much more modest -- $10,000 by the end of 2012. We will need your help.

Another big development is the race schedule starts to take shape:

• Irish Sprint 10K – Marine Corps Base, Quantico, VA March 17^th – this is the race that gets me into the Marine Corps Marathon.
• Monument Ave 10K – Richmond, March 31^st – This is my only non-Semper Fi Fund race. We’ll be promoting the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation for this race as we did in 2011. It’s a great organization dedicated to finding new homes for retired racehorses and saving them from the one-way box car ride to a Mexican slaughterhouse.
•  New Jersey Marathon at the Shore – Long Branch, NJ May 6^th – Hey everybody, we’re coming back to Jersey for the weekend! We expect lots of friends and family to come out and cheer us on.
• Marine Corps Marathon – Arlington, VA October 26^th – The People’s Marathon it's called because it’s the biggest marathon in the world that doesn't offer prize money. My final long training run before the JFK 50 Mile Ultra.
• JFK 50 Mile – Boonsboro, MD November 17^th 2012. This will be the 50^th running of this race. Finishing is the ultimate goal.  

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for information on how you can help support us as we support the Semper Fi Fund.

Training Week One and Done

When I finished eight miles today, I completed my first real training week. Ran over twenty miles in a week for the first time since November '04 when last ran NYC Marathon.

I confess that I'm a little weary. Probably didn’t help that I’ve been cleaning twenty horse stalls a day for most of the past two weeks. Business gets real quiet from Christmas to New Years, so we gave the barn workers a couple of weeks off and Kim and I have been handling the barn chores ourselves with a little help from Haley, Stephen and volunteers on a day or two.

To get ready for the JFK 50 Mile Ultra, I’m using Hal Higdon’s eighteen week marathon training guide. I’ve used it before and it worked well for me. Higdon once ran six marathons in six weeks – to celebrate his 60^th birthday! We should all be so healthy and strong.

This training schedule will put me in marathon shape by the end of April, and that leaves the Blue Ridge Marathon or the Gettysburg North and South Marathon within reach. I don’t know which I will pick, but Blue Ridge runs along the Blue Ridge Parkway in and out of Roanoke, Virginia. It's is supposed to be really hard. I have some time before making a final decision, so we’ll see.

I already screwed up the schedule. I was supposed to run 3-5-3 Tuesday through Thursday but instead ran 5-3-5 and an eight miler on Saturday. I laid out an eight mile out and back course along Miller’s Lane.

The weather was bright and sunny in the high 50’s at noon (There are definite advantages to wintering in Central Virginia). I used my CamelBak waist pack for hydration and carried a smart phone, but didn't listen to music.

Almost 40 miles of the JFK is off-road, so I got my trail shoes and figured to stay off the road as much as possible. Miller’s Lane runs through a section of Goochland County that is much like New Jersey’s Somerset Hills. Mile after continuous mile of horse farms and equestrian estates cover gently rolling terrain.

The road is a single lane in each direction edged with gravel. There’s also anywhere from three to fifteen feet of grass between the edge of the road and the pasture fences. That’s where the riding trails are. They also wind through the fields and woods on either side of the road beyond the tree lines. 

There's single track and double track that's real soft and easy. Some landowners mow the grass close to make footing a joy. At one point a couple of women on horseback popped out of a wooded section. They were all decked out in blaze orange  – it’s hunting season in rural Virginia. Freak on foot spooked the horses a bit. What a beautiful place to run!

I only got attacked by three dogs. A golden retriever and two boston terriers. All at the same time. Vicious they were… Hmmmmm. Nah, I’m lyin’. They were very friendly but I had to stop because they wanted to play and wouldn't get out of the road. Was worried they’d get turned into buzzard buffet by a passing pick-up.

Walked the last hill past Dover Stables, but so what? Sue me. It was a good run and my longest in seven years. Eight hours later, I feel pretty good and am excited to be back. Look for future posts on my hydration dilemma and I’ll get some pictures up here as well.

If anyone wants to run with me, there are a few races we’re already committed to enter: The Monument Avenue 10K, the Irish Sprint 10K and the Marine Corps Marathon. The Irish Sprint is at Marine Corps Base Quantico on St. Paddy’s Day and all finishers get a guaranteed entry to the Marine Corps Marathon. I am planning MCM to be my final long training run for the JFK 50 Mile.

Keep in touch, keep running and keep smiling – it’ll make people wonder what you’ve been up to.

Get Real - The Training Begins

OK, I went from December 11^th to 26^th with no training. Lots of eating though. And drinking.

I know I need to get serious so I went out today. Cold still lingers, but I need to get some miles under me. I figure that if I’m going to cover 50 miles, the biggest challenge has to be picking up and putting down the feet that many times. Speed is not the first concern, endurance is. Legs and feet have to be strong and resilient enough to hold up.

If each stride is 36 inches, that makes 1,760 strides per mile and exactly 88,000 strides in 50 miles. That’s a lot of strides. I did 8,800 today. Nice and easy. When my breathing got strained I slowed down. Hardly even broke a sweat. Cardio has never been a concern for me, dead legs have. When in marathon shape, my resting pulse is about 45 bpm and blood pressure is 90/55.

Some say one of the hardest things about training for an ultra-marathon is learning to run slow. I will have no problem with that. 

My target race is the JFK 50 Mile Ultra-marathon in November 2012. It starts in Boonsboro, MD. The course follows the roads out of town and uphill for 2.5 miles until it meets the Appalachian Trail and gains about 1,200 feet of elevation to the top of the first ridge.

The course follows the AT south for 13.5 miles. It climbs and descends the ridge twice over that distance. It's a rugged and rocky stretch of trail. At around mile 16 the trail drops off the ridge through a bunch of switchbacks and joins the C&O canal towpath along the Potomac River for 26+ miles.

I'm comfortable running towpaths, and that's part of the reason I picked this race for my first Ultra. On countless Sunday mornings I've run towpaths along the Delaware and Raritan Canal in NJ & PA. I've run from Bound Brook to Princeton along the Raritan and Millstone Rivers. I covered every inch of the towpaths along the Delaware from Scudders Falls to Frenchtown  in twenty-mile chunks. Up one side and down the other.

The JFK Race leaves the canal at about mile 42 and the final 8 miles or so are on paved rolling roads into Williamsport, Maryland.    

This is going to be fun. I am still working out my training program and will detail it more in later posts. For now, I'm aiming for the Irish Sprint 10K at Quantico Marine Corps Base on St. Patrick’s Day (3/17) and that will get me a guaranteed entry into the Marine Corps Marathon which will be my final training run. I recently saw the medals they give out for that race, and I really want one.