Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Bad cats


Merus has been eating like a fiend lately.  She is served oversized meals, and yet that doesn't seem enough.  She scavenges around the kitchen for about an hour after eating in hopes of finding something.  *Sigh*

Last night she decided that the dry food bags on top of the fridge, which have lived there since the cats and I moved in with Nathan, were suddenly fair game:


The bag now has a new home inside a drawer.  Not much later I heard metal scraping.  Turned around to see, and couldn't grab my camera fast enough:


Now, the kittens are nothing if not competitive.  This morning I found the rubber basting brush on the kitchen floor.  I left it in the sink after using it to spread olive oil on bread last night.  Sadie's rubber fetish struck again:



No evidence of any chewed off ends, no pile of orange dotted puke either.  *Sigh*

The half-aero ears indicate plotting.

Friday, November 23, 2012

A modest domestic party

Our good friend (and vicar) John is working hard to upstart a new business, the website of which will go live next week.  Nathan and I intended to hold court at our place, but when John realized he needed to continue working on Thanksgiving we decided to move our cooking party to John's place to as to blend with his sewing party.  The result was a calm and pleasant day.  I was particularly proud of my pie, which was the first time I've made the entire thing, crust included, from scratch.  Hazzah!

I made:
- kale chips (eaten as an appetizer, not pictured)
- Red Red (spicy bean stew of sorts)
- roasted potatoes with rosemary
- nom nom nom pumpkin pie (from scratch, including my first crust)

Brant made:
- green bean casserole
- bacon
- supplied giant smoked turkey wings

Kevin made:
- stuffing
- cranberry sauce
- rolls (warming in the oven, not pictured)
- pecan and chocolate chip pie

John made:
- torch-finished the smoked turkey wings

Nathan made:
- an excellent supervisor ("Can I eat it yet?  How 'bout now?  Um, and now?")

Seems more appropriate to celebrate with my face stuffed: Wowwrrah!







Monday, November 19, 2012

Train karma and a double taper -- Philadelphia Marathon race report

I needed to leave work on Saturday by 3pm to make my 4:05 train to Philly.  Biggest reason: I needed to get to the convention center before it closed at 7pm to get my bib, since no race day pickup exists.  Any later train would have put me into Philly's 30th St Station at 6:30, so I needed the 4:05-5:30 train.  It has also been a work week where a minimum number of patients per day is now mandated ongoing for numerous reasons (reasons for which I will not get into) so I really needed to squeeze in one last treatment for the patient who had declined earlier.  I left their room at 3:05, ran up to the office, speed-typed a note and plugged in my stats etc, found myself uber thankful for outsmarting myself and doing certain clerical items the day before, changed out of my scrubs, and flew out the door by 3:15.  Usually an arrest-stat is the only time running through a hospital is warranted.  With my duffel slung over my back I ran down 7 flights of stairs, the block and a half via the overpass to the train, and nearly felt like I was back in the 800m start from high school what with trying to elbow my way through weekend mullers to get to the A train.  Time: 3:20.

Mechanical voice announcement, next Brooklyn bound A train is 2 stations away; time: 3:23.  I'm at 168th St, and need to go 5 express stops to Penn Station/34th St.  It's gonna be close.  Update: 1 station away; time: 3:26.  I'm rocked back and forth between feet and trying my best to not be one of those futilely annoying people who look up the tracks for an incoming train as though putting on such a display will make it arrive faster.  Eons later (3:28) it arrives.  It's pretty full, but it rolls.  And for all my jittering I am able to make myself read so as to not check my watch every minute while we get through the windy and slow sections between 168th to 145th to 125th.  Miraculously we arrive at 34th at 3:50.  I speed walk to the Amtrak platform, and I end up with 5 minutes to spare before the track assignment is announced.  The mob forms, we all make it on the train, I even have an open seat next to me, and we take off on time.  No traffic to deal with, no slow and cautious driver who rides the break.  We arrive at all stops, including Philly, on time.  I get to calmly walk to the expo past some amazing buildings like City Hall, and I arrive with one hour left of the expo.

I definitely call that a good start, particularly since my participation in the Philly Marathon is all last minute.  I received notice of having a lottery spot for for displaced NYC Marathoners only 9 days prior, and took a chance on my being allowed to come in at 7am the Saturday of travel in order to leave on time.  Since I don't really do phase training aside from the ebb and flow of long runs according to my next race, I hadn't stopped running following the cancellation of NYC the way many others had.  I treated the extended taper by feel, trying to re-establish better leg turnover with moderate distances and yet not get sucked into over-training at the last minute.  The course is flatter than I'm used to running, and I didn't anticipate needing to train for flat and speedy until late winter for Boston.  Lots of unknowns.

The feel of the Philly M is quite nice.  It's a big marathon what with over 20,000 runners, and yet is nowhere near the headache to get to the start as it is for something like NYC.  They said to get into corrals by 6am in prep for a 7am start.  Really you could get in five minutes before starting and you'd still be okay.  From negotiating an unknown city and unknown start area I got there at 6:15.  There were a few schmucks waxing negative about NYC not giving refunds (helloooo, just because the event was not held does not mean the equipment wasn't already rented for multiple weeks and that all items like shirts, bibs, post-race heat sheets/fleece blankets weren't already paid for and received), but on the whole people were relaxed and happy to be there.  The feel was much more like the NYC Half.  And that was fine by me.

NYC runners were given two separate corrals that fed in parallel to the original six corrals.  Their waves take place every 3-4 minutes (NYC was going to have 4 waves this year filled with some 30 corrals each).  We didn't realize this.  At 7am the elites took off.  I had doffed my giant trash bag in prep to start, and the small shivers turned into big full body shivers while we stood there watching the time clock roll and waiting.  The first age-group corral lets loose.  We waited.  We were maybe 50 feet from the start line with an open expanse ahead, and yet we couldn't go yet.  Four minutes go by.  Full body shivers become full body spasms.  The second age-group corral lets loose.  We still wait.  We get to 7 minutes of waiting.  My hip abductors are starting to cramp from all the shivering.  The volunteers are mistakenly told to let us forward, and before an organizer can correct them we've all started pushing through the breach on one side.  Note to Phillians: you cannot stop an impatient NYC mob.  It's not that we can't listen or can't follow directions.  It's that the directions seem somewhat counterintuitive as to what we judge for ourselves, so we will do as we wish.  Thanks in advance.

And so, some 8 minutes after the gun, we are off.  I hadn't realized my feet were numb until then.  No matter.  By a mile into the race I was feeling much better.  By 4 miles in I had removed my arm warmers.  Philly is relatively flat, plus it has narrow streets what with being an older city, so it makes you feel really fast.  Each corral is quite varied in terms of ability, so the faster crew from NYC played Frogger for the first 6 miles.  I ran on the sidewalks a lot.  I think the other issue was that even though we may have been ahead of many slower marathon corrals, all half marathon corrals had already been released so you had to get through all run-walkers and those who prefer to run in groups of four though do so in side-by-side fashion.  But because Philly was that much more chill than NYC there was plenty of space and opportunity to jump on the sidewalk during the first few miles if needed without clobbering pedestrians.

I had 6 salt pills with me, and I was glad I had them.  In my freezing frenzy I started faster than advised, averaging ~7:10 miles.  By the time we hit half way I was already feeling heavy in my legs. So I upped my intake from 1 pill per hour (based on the amount I was sweating) to 1 pill every 30 minutes.  Yet another time when Traprock memories loomed.  I had two gels with me, one intended for mile 20 since it has a mega caffeine boost.  I downed a gel every 5 miles, and luckily Clif was the gel sponsor and I was able to pick up two gels mid-race for use at mile 10 and 15.  My pace was slowly decreasing with each 10k, and I had to keep redefining my cruising speed to avoid imploding.  I had enough rest stamina-wise thanks to the double taper, but my legs felt like they were two weeks overdue from a break from the roads.  So from the halfway point to the end was all about hamstring mitigation.  I kept doing the math, and I wasn't so sure I could hold pace enough to equal last year's 3:21 pace.  Pre-Sandy I had hoped for 3:15.



This is when the 50 mile experiences really helped.  You still have your mind intact, and you've experienced something way more painful than the current predicament.  By mile 20 I had to force myself to relax into a short though normal stride, but I was able to minimize the peg leg bad form that was starting to wreak havoc on my left leg (the side with more chronic patellofemoral and ITB stuff) and my right hip flexor out of compensation.  Math check: If I could hold 8 minute miles, then I could just maybe get within reach of 3:15.  Four miles to go, and my stride is getting smaller and smaller.  Solution: arms!  This will sound judgemental when I'm not meaning to be, but those who think you don't run with your arms have never really run before.  This point during NYC 2011 was when tunnel vision started setting in.  Thanks to the salt pills this year was just dying legs.  The 8 minute miles were holding somehow.  It sure as hell wasn't easy.

Other memories came back from the NYC Half, which was total complete desperation at the chance to finish under 1:30.  With so much stiffness and fatigue you can't suddenly unleash a manic beast, but with one mile to go I probably looked like I fist pumping my way to the finish line in my penguin waddle-sprint.  But, miraculously, my body complied.  I was able to pass those who had passed me four miles earlier and were now paying for it.  And I managed to squeak in under 3:15.  I couldn't straighten my right hip for another half hour while baby stepping through the finish festival, but I was very, very happy at being able to revive the end of this year's race season into a personal best.  It also means I get to up my seed at Boston in the spring.


Eventually I picked up my bag and changed clothes, which was a 15 minute ordeal.  Some NYC runners were meeting a restaurant/bar north of the finish line, so I slowly meandered north to keep myself moving and hopefully get warm again.  I got there an hour before the room was reserved, so I sat at the bar and watched football while sipping warm coffee and eating a treat of french toast (which I realized I hadn't had in years).  In the end the other runners were much later in getting there, and I had to leave for my train before they even started to head over.  But it was a nice little place with good food, and I actually enjoyed the quiet of sitting with myself in reflection of the last year as a whole.  And when I got back to the train station my train was on time, people actually line up for trains in Philly (Did you read that correctly?  They LINE UP.  I almost fainted...), and when I got back to Penn Station 10 minutes early an A train arrived exactly when I hit the subway platform.

Everything went smoothly for Philly, and the race was a surprising personal success.  It was a nice way to end the year with a bang, and a good solid effort to make me want (and thus comply) with a few weeks worth of yearly off-season. 

Monday, November 12, 2012

Longest taper ever.

Numerous marathons throughout November and December opened their doors to those left race-less by NYC's cancellation.  I am one of 3000 lucky enough to be selected via lottery for the Philadelphia Marathon this coming Sunday. 

NYC's cancellation was not that big of a loss to me since my big race for the year was Virgil Crest in September, plus that was by far the more appropriate decision under the circumstances.  But I realized that after a taper period I will be too antsy to allow myself a genuine rest period unless I have a race to exhaust myself.  I may have knees twice my age nicknamed the Old Ladies.  I may be early to bed and early to rise in total opposition to all others my age, and I may scoff at going out if it means leaving home after 7pm.   But, for better or worse, I am still the annoyingly energized puppy that needs lengthy, daily constructed play time so that I don't chew up an entire closet's worth of shoes.  Or in Sadie's case, yoga blocks and shoe laces and foam rollers and the box spring and power cords and.... 

So be it.  Philly, here I come.  Who knows what result will come from the double-taper, but it will let me finally take my off season before the slow build up Boston.