Not entirely. I’ve broken down every time I’ve tried to get my legs to churn out more than 5-6 miles at at time for a few weeks. The most I’ve ever run in a single week is 18 miles – and that broken up into 5 easy runs. What I’ve learned from these set-backs is that my miles have to come off-road. I deliver too much of a pounding to my joints when I run on the streets & sidewalks. In the Summer my form suffers as I get dragged down by the heat & humidity. There’s no hotter place to run in the Summer than on blacktop! So, I’m spending more time outside in the perpetual 90 degree days and netting most of my miles on trails. For these reasons, and because I get BORED looking at cars going past during a run I needed a trail run half marathon which is somewhat rare.

The first one that came to mind is the “Half-Wit” race in my old hometown of Reading. It’s nationally recognized as an annual train-wreck. It is half trail-run and half trail-blaze with stream crossings, unnecessary hill climbs, sticker bushes and rock scrambles. I helped work one of the water stations a few years back and the people coming down the hill looked they had been through a war. This is a fun challenge and I’ve run a few of their other adventure races but this is NOT what I need to break into the world of the Half Marathon. I shopped around the internet looking for races. I explored traveling but without knowing what the “trail” is really made of it’s pretty difficult to judge the course. Crushed gravel is OK but some sweet single track  (see example at right) with enough log hops and creek crossings to keep my short-attention span is what I want! I wanted some elevation changes but not sheer hill climbs just for the sake of adding difficulty.  Plus I didn’t want a big race with thousands of runners either. And within driving distance would be nice.! Yeah, I’m pretty picky. Just when I was starting to think I might not find one this year I get an email from one of the race clubs touting the Sloppy Cuckoo Half Marathon! Saturday September 25th. 10AM. 13.1 miles of rolling hills and varied terrain. Limit 500 runners. Just outside Philadelphia. Perfect!

I quickly sent in my registration before I chickened out or made up some kind of excuse. Now I’m committed – like all the other Cuckoos! With just 8 weeks to prepare I set out a schedule then promptly began to ignore it based on the weather. Here’s my training log after two weeks:

Week 1: 14 miles in 3 runs (5,2,6). Too damn humid. Got a little bit of cross training on the bike though.
Week2: 14 miles in 3 runs (2,4,8). The 8 miler is my longest run since November. Plus 5 miles on bike & 5 by hiking boot & 5 by kayak. That’s cross-training!
Week 3: Less of an adventure than last week I hope. Depending on the weather we’ll see how it goes.

In six weeks I’ll post another entry here with my success story – or my tale of woe. =]

Now the biggest blow – possibly ever – has knocked my perpetual puerility for a loop. The Simpsons is no longer on in syndication. I’ve been enjoying my daily D’oh for as long as I’ve been shaving. Since before I could vote. Almost as long as I’ve been driving. How could this be? The Simpsons still was the highest rated show in its time slot this past Sunday, even in reruns, and Homer was just declared TV’s greatest character so again I ask; How could this be?! The worst part? They replaced it with life-long Jon Stewart wannabee Craig Kilborn’s new show. This is the guy who thinks he owns idea of asking his guest 5 questions and is so painfully uncharismatic that he originally needed writers to create a persona for him. I’ll say this for the guy: He’s apparently in good with the roaches… he just refuses to die.

Of course, my venom is mostly just in reaction to what he has replaced. I wouldn’t have had a cow, man if Fox overlayed TMZ. This almost felt personal and I had to find answers so I hit Fox.com. No mention of the Kilborn show. Interesting. Google was a bit more enlightening – it turns out the show is being tested in only a few markets! That means somewhere children of all ages are still enjoying 10-15 year old 21-23 minute comedic masterworks from the glory days of the show. There is hope! The test-run is only for 6 weeks – ending August 6th.

There are those who say the show is no longer relevant. Those naysayers have apparently allowed themselves to get old. For shame! Truth be told, I don’t watch the re-runs every day or even every week but it’s a comfort thing to know they’re there. I will also admit that the show isn’t what it used to be. It couldn’t be because I’m getting older and no longer fall into their target demographic. Impossible! No, the blame lies squarely on The Simpsons itself – in setting the bar too high. In a few years the Powers That Be will decide that the show has run long enough and I will… probably cry like a baby. Until then all I can do is wait and enjoy it while it lasts. Six weeks from now I may return to the glorious TV of my youth. Until then, Craig Kilborn can eat my shorts.

For the past 4 years or so I’ve had problems with the lower right molars. They don’t like cold. They don’t like hot. They really don’t like when I eat “Jolly Ranchers” or chew gum. Standard tooth pain and no big deal. Two dentists radiated my face and couldn’t find anything structurally wrong.

Score: Cannoli 2, Dentists 0. Undefeated!

It did not hurt when they went but something didn’t feel right. I excused myself and visited the lavatory where I spit & rinsed. The fragments were nowhere to be found. I’m assuming I swallowed them or the were pulverized into vapor by the mighty cannoli crust. Upon closer mirror-aided inspection, both teeth lost their interior side and part of the top. It blows my mind that two could break at the same time – possibly on the same bite! On second thought, maybe it’s not such an odd thing. After all, they are the same age and they had both been filled nearly 20 years ago by the same dentist.

All that’s left is part of the original enamel & a jaggy hunk of plutonium or whatever they used to fill teeth with back in the 80s. I’m kinda broken up (ha ha) about having tooth shards but I’m glad the teeth finally decided they had enough of being pains in the gum. For the moment they’re more sensitive being all exposed but hopefully I’ll have them capped and then… no more pain when I slurp a cold drink or breakfast up a hot bagel. I’ll be trying to arrange some dentistry this week to find out what can be done. Until then I have to do most of my masticating on the sinister side and resist continuously exploring my new mawscape before I wear off the side of my tongue.

It’s been a week now since I had a full-blown attack so I’m definitely coming out of this cluster pattern. This is the other defining factor and where Cluster Headaches get their name. They come in groups over a few months and then completely vanish for as much as a year or two. My current cycle will have lasted almost exactly two months, which is on the short side, but I’m certainly not complaining.

Due to the quick onset & (hopefully) rapid departure of the pains, taking medication isn’t really a solution. A few times in the past 2 months I had dull (for clusters) headache that just lasted all day. In those cases 12-hour pain caps took the edge off but for most of the days there’s just nothing you can take that will do more than slowly make you immune to the pain dampener. The only thing I’ve found that can truly beat down a cluster headache in full swing is a terrific rush of endorphins & adrenaline. If I’m at home I’ll hit the basement where we store the free weights. If I’m out and about I’ll do a few wind sprints. If I’m at the office – and this is where the headaches most frequently occur – there’s not much I can do. While working in New York I used to take a walk to the stairway and knock off a few dozen flights. 10 down and 16 back up followed by a walk on the roof usually did the trick. The panic inducing vertigo of looking down 16 stories onto the streets of Manhattan sometimes provided the finishing touch.

The correlation between circadian rhythms and exercise beating the pain is something of a mystery to me but I can see that getting the blood flowing & opening up the capillaries in my head is the solution. Now I just need my current employer to put in an additional 15 stories of building.

The weather looked to be a potential rainy problem early on but the night before forecasted that the rain shouldn’t start until noonish. Of course it decided to start at 5 AM instead. When the race kicked off at 10 AM it was 41 degrees and raining. Yuck!

The 15K started 10 minutes before the 5K and I misheard the announcement. As the starting gun sounded I was clear on the other side of the field so I ended up starting dead last. Fine by me. This way nobody can pass me!

I had decided early on that I would attempt to run every step of the race. The last time I tried a 15K it was the Mount Penn Mud Fest and the trails were often steep, narrow and crowded. This meant I had to walk portions. As I ran it with my cousin Terri I didn’t mind the walk as it gave me a chance to catch my breath and keep up my end of the conversation. I only walked a few tenths of a mile over all but I couldn’t really say I “ran” a 15K now could I?

This time I’m proud to say that I did run all 15K except for a studder-step-dance while I tossed a water stop cup. It got a little hairy early on when I hit the large back-of-the-packers trying to funnel over a narrow bit by a steam. I went over a guardrail and around about a dozen people but didn’t have to stop and walk! Most of those folks passed me in the next few miles but I got the positions back on the hills. I’m much more of a sprinter than a distance runner so hills don’t bother me as much as they do others. Well, the uphill parts anyway.

The downhill parts give me another problem – bouncing. For the final long hill I decided to spare my quads the typical pounding and just increase my turnover and wheel down the hill by converting some of my forward motion into bounding strides. For some reason this creates side stitches on my right side as the bouncing does something evil to the muscles. I’m no doctor but I know what hurts. With only a mile and a half to go I started cramping badly. It completely locked on me with just under a mile to go.

I could either walk and try to get the cramp out or I could (literally) gut it out and finish slow. I finished slow. 8 people passed me on that last stretch which was disappointing as I had worked really hard to get past them in the final few miles but at least I finished and accomplished my mission!

It rained off and on throughout the race but, thanks to an early Christmas gift from Heather, I was warm and dry in my weatherproof jacket. I had picked out the jacket a few months earlier and didn’t think I’d need it until true Winter hit but I was glad it was available today. Nature is all good but nothing beats good new-fashioned petrochemical science-crafted synthetic goodness to keep you comfortable when the weather gets ugly!

After I finished and walked off the cramps I found Heather and learned that she finished her 5K successfully and even thought she could have went longer. Yay! Adding to the fun was that my bib number was lucky 75 representing my birth year & winner of a random prize – a t-shirt and bag combo. The bag says X-C and features a cross-bones motif. I guess this means Cross Country. Hey, what do you want for free-random-prize-swag? Heather won a door prize too so both of our numbers came up lucky today!

Heather hooked me up with a sports massage when we got home and then we cashed in our free appetizer & drink voucher at the local Outback and enjoyed a victory meal. I think we earned it.

After seeing her picture on the results page Heather remarked that she wanted to do another race. I’ve created a monster!

Eric grunts through the finishing chute

Linkies:
Race Results: http://www.jsrc.org/raceresults/navesinkresults.htm

There’s something refreshing about running in the rain, but from the looks on the faces of the people who saw me, most folks don’t get it. Rather than try to explain it I simply suggest you give it a try! I try to rain-run as frequently as my shoes will allow during the warm months because:
A) It’s one way to stay cool.
B) It recharges my batteries like little else that I have discovered.
C) I get to play in the puddles.

On the back half of my loop I was watching my feet splash in a small stream that had formed on the sidewalk when I heard a cheerful “Hi”. I looked up and discovered another jogger, soaked to the bone but smiling, heading in the opposite direction. I shot him a smile & a “Hey” because I recognized a kindred spirit soaking up the weather. I bet he turned to hit those same puddles I was splashing when he saw me.

Water and running go hand-in-hand which is why I enjoy running the Ocean Grove Biathlon every year. The race was this past Saturday and I set a new personal record though I’m not sure how.  It was near 90 degrees and sunny at 8:30 in the morning. I placed 59th out of roughly 140 runners. The water was only 68, but it felt good after pounding out two 7 minute miles. I ran out of juice on the swim portion of the race but struggled through & was still passing people as I stumbled up the beach to the finish line. I came in at 20:58 (approximated based on where I assumed the starting line was). My official time doesn’t exist because this isn’t one of those super organized races. We don’t even wear bibs! All I know is that I’ve never finished under 21 minutes before, that I had a blast & that I’ll run it every year until I’m old enough to medal.

If I can maintain the 21 minute race I’ll have a shot when I hit the 60-69 age group!

Linkie:
OGBi results by age group

When I first heard about the race from my cousin Terri I thought it sounded like a really good time but too darn long of a run. Since then I’ve been training on trails, hills & mud for a few years and little by little (by very little) getting my mileage up. Last year I ran my first organized 10K (6.2 miles) so this year the next step was obviously the 15K!. Of course, I can’t do anything the easy way so I have to try the grungiest 15K anyone has ever conceived.

The weather didn’t make things any easier either. I don’t like running in the cold so the temperature was a balmy 29 degrees when I got up on race day. I had my bowl of Wheaties and a large helping of grumpies. I might have felt better but I forgot my Under Armor and was going to spend the next 2 hours or so freezing to death. We arrived at the race location about 45 minutes before it was set to start. About 15 minutes later it started to snow lightly. 15 minutes after that it was a minor blizzard! It wasn’t getting any warmer either. FINALLY, nearly a half hour late, the ceremonial pig was fired into the air and the race was on! I stayed all the way in the back of the pack because running anywhere else was near impossible. The race is capped at 850 runners and many of the trails are just wide enough for single file & no passing. Terri was also running the race so I caught up to her and we pretty much hung together for the duration of the race. I enjoyed hurtling over the fallen logs (there were at least 60 such logs) and dancing over the frozen rocks while others splashed through the streams (4 times). Some hills were walked. Some were climbed on all fours. One was an out of control downhill slalom that ended in a creek. It was fun, but tiring & despite the cold (it never came close to the weather channel’s prediction of 40 degrees) I was sweating like a hog after a few miles.

There were a few surprises along the route. I found a hidden easter egg on the trail that was worth a door prize (for my caching eyes!) & around the 7 mile mark there was a “Dehydration Station” which, unlike the typical water stop, provided “alternative beverages”. *wink* I saved just a bit for the final kick and sprinted over the finish line with an official time of 1:59:09 1:58:00. Of course, with races like this one nobody really cares about their time (the evidence of this is that apparently the official clock didn’t start until 5 minutes after we started – time stamps on the photos don’t lie!). The after party featured a live band (Ok, a 70 something husband & wife team), lots of food & drink & about a million door prizes. I have a t-shirt & a commemorative coffee mug to show I finished.

The bottom line is that I survived and did better than I thought I would. Two days later I’m barely sore though I think the post-race massage from Heather helped a good deal. I don’t know if I’ll run it next year but I’ll certainly remember it forever.

The RESULTS are in!

Having a house is a good deal of work. I was prepared for this but didn’t actually budget any extra time for unforeseen things like having to rake the front yard clear of pine needles. Those blasted trees dropped 4 giant yard bags worth of needles in under a week. Heather & I made the best of it by jumping in the giant pile of needles when we were done. It looked like a haystack. We found a haystack in the needles!

The inside of the house demands attention too of course and I’ve been just about ignoring the as of yet still packed boxes. We have to hurry up and get everything out of the way though… we have more stuff coming in! When Heather’s father moved into smaller digs we happily agreed to take some of his overflow stuff once we had the house. Well, we’ve got it and we’re getting it – even if we don’t know where we’re going with it! The big ticket item is a weight machine. The plan is to put it into the basement…. where we’ll never see it again.

The cats are segregated. Poor Smechy couldn’t hack having the other two around and soiled the bed. Twice. We’re trying the Zero Odor stuff to get the stink out. The mattress is also covered with a rubber sheet & mattress pad. No stink is getting through all of that! Anyway, the kittens have the basement and Smech has the bedrooms. The rest of the house they time-share but never meet (unless a midnight storm blows the door open like this past Saturday). It’s creepy to be awoken from a deep slumber by the combined sound of gail force winds & cat growling. *shiver*

I’m still finding time to go Geocaching now and then. I’m up to 270 finds – including my first 5 star puzzle “Cloak & Dagger” which dragged me all over central Jersey finding urban micro caches, solving riddles, puzzles, ciphers & enigmas. I’m co-hosting my first event next month (This little piggy went to old bridge) & plan to launch my own puzzle soon. It’s still fun!

Besides that Heather & I have been getting up twice a week for a morning jog just as the sun comes up. Routine is the best way to stay motivated and having a partner makes it even harder to skip a day. One of us will mention how it’s pretty late and we should go to bed because we have to get up early for the jog (translation: can we skip tomorrow’s run?) and the other will invariably reply that yes we should get some sleep because I can’t wait to run in the morning! Teamwork … works. This has also given me the opportunity to explore the neighborhood a little more. I’ve discovered a back way into our neighborhood & a new park which is exciting.

That’s about enough for now. I’ll try to be more active on this site in the coming weeks. It’ll certainly be easier if it gets cold out but right now … it’s just too nice to say inside typing these words. Until next time!

Well, that’s not entirely true. I did spend most of Saturday building The Grill. Sunday of course then had to be Test The Grill Day. I didn’t really have a choice as you can see! Despite my procrastination efforts (and it is an effort) the house is coming along slowly. I’ll post pictures one day.

The cats are still at odds though perhaps to a lesser degree. With the cooler weather we’ve torn open the shutters and thrown up the sashes and the cats (all of which were outside cats at one point) can’t get enough of sitting on a window sill and starting at … whatever it is that cats stare at when they look at nothing. One day they’ll get to go and explore the great outdoors but we’re not quite to that point yet. They haven’t even explored the entire INSIDE of the house!

The biggest news of the week is Heather’s new job. I wont spoil her fun of telling everyone so you’ll have to call her and ask if you want more information ASAP.

That’s about it for The News from Treasure Lake. Running? Geocaching? Football? Not enough time for everything. Not even for blogging! On the upside, I’m too busy for cluster headaches – the’ve all but subsided. Yay! Until next time… gotta go!

With our closing date of Aug 30th we’ll probably end up paying rent all the way through September. Drats. If the apartment masters are able to clean/repaint/rekey the place by the 15th however we could save six hundred plus dollars. The extra is what I expected to be paying movers to make it easier on myself, but now I’ll be toting my own bale. The upshot of all of this is that we’ll have lots of overlap where we can go between the two domiciles and pack/move/clean to our hearts content (or two weeks goes by, whichever comes first).

Want some good news? The mortgage has been approved and locked in at a rate of 6.125. Back to the magic number from earlier in the year! We were able to swing this lower rate because I qualify as a “moderate income” shlub. Fine by me. Any special program that saves me money is worth it. Label me a waddleflap for all I care, just as long as my bottom line is happier.

The next step is to get do the title search (another expensive proposition that really only takes some clerk 10 minutes + a phone call) and get the house insured. I’ll be going through NJ Manufacturers who currently insures our cars. I might even get a break on the car insurance. Once these two things are done we only have to wait until the 30th and the closing. I’m still waiting for a shoe to fall on me, but so far all is looking good!

Speaking of shoes… this past weekend I donned my running shoes & imported my Mother from North Carolina to run in the Ocean Grove Biathlon. I do it pretty much every year and had been training for about two weeks to make sure I didn’t embarrass myself. Well, the end result… I finished last. Or first. Depends on how you look at it. You see, the race was the 21st not the 28th as reported by this website:

http://www.njlaws.com/calendar_of_community_events.htm

Why I chose to look at that site instead of all of the others that told me the race was on the 21st is beyond me. I guess it wasn’t meant to be and that I’m supposed to run the Neptune City 5K this Saturday instead?

Maybe I will… maybe I will…

In the same family as the Migraine headache, Cluster Headaches differ in that they are usually isolated to a specific area – usually behind the left temple or eye and show up for months at a time sometimes several times a day and then stop for months. For me at least the individual headaches last from 15 minutes to an hour. I get the sensitivity to light & smells and all that lovely pain. Although they can just come on whenever they wish they can be triggered by stress, low-oxygen trance-like computer programming & pheromones (like the perfume counter at the Boscovs). I’m currently in a cluster cycle and getting a headache once or twice a day unless I’m able to abort it before it goes full blown. Actually aborting a pending C.H. is tough. By the time I feel it coming on (they have an “aura” much like a migraine) it’s too late to pop pain pills that might take a half hour to kick in. Caffeine helps but suffers the same time delay problem as pills and has the side effect of messing with my sleeping which can actually cause a cluster cycle to begin. No, for me there’s only one way to get rid of a C.H. – Adrenaline!

I wish (oh how I wish) I had learned the secret sooner, but the best way for me to kick a headaches ass is to kick my own ass. Grab the running shoes and sprint out the door or drop and knock out 50 push-ups or spend a few minutes fighting the heavy bag. Jump rope, squat thrusts, sex, it all works and it’s all good! Some research suggests that result is due to the increase in oxygen in the blood, but as I’ve personally seen an elevated heart rate & tried deep breathing techniques without relief, adrenaline is the only way to go! Its not always convenient to have sex or do squat thrusts while at the office though but I’ve found my ways around the problem. I used to walk up/down 16 flights of stairs while I was working at Spiewak. I’ve pulled off the highway and ran laps around the parking lot. I’ve dropped to do push-ups in the mall. I’ll do whatever it takes because an Eyegraine in full bloom is heinous!

So if you see me absentmindedly rubbing the back of my neck or left temple, it’s Cluster Time and you should immediately scream “What’s your major malfunction soldier Oh, does your head hurt? DROP AND GIVE ME 40!”

Headaches. They’re all in your head anyway.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_headache
http://www.clusterheadaches.com
http://www.ouch-us.org

Anyway, I use my running log to keep track of the pushups and I’m on target for my goal. As of this writing I have pushed 5230 ups and run 85 miles including my first ever 10K. The race was all trails & all hills. I finished and ran every step. I even managed to do 35 pushups that day.

I started doing my pushups in sets of 15 and increased the amount by 5 every month. Since it is June I’m supposed to be doing 40 at a clip but I usually do 2 sets of 20 or just some other number that works for me at the time. I’ve done as many as 45 at a time but I think I’ve plateaued as they haven’t been getting any easier for several weeks now.

If you could only do one “muscle” exercise, pushups should be that exercise. They hit your triceps, pectorals, deltoids and most of your trunk for support. Do them fast to get the heart rate up or do them slow to feel the burn! My Dad always did pushups and credits them for retaining good upper body strength well into his 50s. That’s all well and good, but I need a challenge. A few years ago I researched the training to become a NJ State Trooper and noted that a requirement was to do 45 pushups in 2 minutes. Well, I didn’t intend to become a cop, but I made sure I could do the required pushups. They’ve since changed the test to a point based system rather than a flat number. Oh well. I’ll just have to make sure I can do all of the ‘maximum point’ exercises on their new list!

Know what the hardest thing about the pushup challenge has been so far? That month where the vacuum cleaner was busted and I ran out of clean patches of carpet. Yech!

Linky: NJ State Police Physical Qualification Test