T'zafrir Elite

Inconsistency

2009-08-06T13:29:00.002-04:00

Continuing with my theme of inconsistent consitency, I'm writing again.

The days and weeks are flying by as September approaches. Soon, very soon, friends will start going off to school, and the population of greater-Concord will begin to shrink.

Tonight, is a bit of a send-off for Gwen, who heads to Ghana this weekend for a semester of studying. We all wish you well Gwen, but you will be missed!

As for me, I'm almost beginning to feel recovered from the weekend. My body can usually handle one night of little sleep, but two in a row is just a recipe for disaster. I need a lot of sleep as it is, so that took a while to get over.

Tuesday I had a pretty terrible workout. I found myself struggling to keep up with Jon by the end. For some reason, anything longer than 200m right now just feels like I'm running through sand. I hate not being in shape, but I know that the more of these workouts I suffer through, the closer I'm getting to being able to run the ones that will go well. I guess I just need to adjust my expectations.

Yesterday, I had my second test in my calculus class, which I thought had gone well but then we reviewed it today in class. The problem with a 4 question test is that when you fuck up one problem there goes a quarter of your points. Oh well, last time a 28% was scaled to a C, so I'm not too worried. I spent the afternoon working on Ableton and in the evening went to Cold Springs to run with the Newton Summer Running Project. I had a pretty nice run with Terry and a few others. It felt good to run at a steady, but quicker pace. I think part of my problem with these workouts the past few weeks is that I'm just not running fast enough most days. It's definitely good to run easy, but I need to get my training pace back down to 6:00 instead of 6:40.

In other news, Phish is on tour again! The boys kicked off the tour with a 4 day run at the infamous Red Rocks Amphitheater in Morrison, CO. I haven't listened to all of the shows yet, but what I've heard sounds good. After a few more days on the West coast, they head back through the midwest and then back to New England for the end of the tour. I'm planning on catching two of their last shows in Hartford and Saratoga.

Speaking of Saratoga, I'm a little bummed out in the Skidmore denied what I thought was a pretty reasonable request for a single room. I guess the part that bugs me the most is that I actually spent a pretty good amount of time filling out a long application with lots of long-answer kind of questions and they responded with what was clearly an impersonal email. It just kind of sucks because I don't want to go into this experience with a bad taste in my mouth, yet I feel like that was kind of a dick move on their part. Is it bad to go into my first year of college already planning a transfer?

I think that subconsciously I must be much more anxious than I think I am. I've started having panic attacks and a lot more general anxiety lately. I imagine it's a whole lot of things, some biological and some enviornmental, but it's still definitely never fun.

Building Up

2009-08-03T17:29:00.004-04:00

I return to an attempt at regular writing already experiencing a problem of commitment. A few weeks ago, in thinking about where I had been a year earlier, I remembered the start of this blog. I started on the first day of August in 2008, which for me, at the time, was actually late at night on the 31st of July. I had been thinking about writing, thinking about what I wanted to write so much for those weeks leading up to that point that I couldn't wait.

Upon realizing this anniversary of my little journal's inception, I decided that would be as good a milestone as any to push me into writing again. I set out to begin writing again on that first day of August and, as with many ideas that I have on runs, I promtly forgot about it until now.

So, here I am. I'm a few days late, but a little late is better than never, right? Indeed.

Build-Ups.

August will be a month of build-ups, of escalations. Almost everything in my life is gaining intensity at what sometimes feels like an alarmingly fast rate.

The building up of mileage in running is a good model for almost all similar build-ups. When one begins to run more and more miles there are strange effects that the body and the mind can handle in different ways. Some of these results are relatively predictable and similarly easy to deal with. As you run more miles, you eat more. As you run more miles, you sleep more. The list goes on.

However, something remarkable happens after a week or even a few days. What was an increase becomes the norm. Your body has a wonderful way of adapting to stresses, especially for a youthful soul such as myself. Before you realize it, the same intensity that was stressing your body to the max a few weeks ago is just another commonplace, daily activity.

All of this for what? Why the stress and the increase and the fighting against yourself? It's simple: we're working towards that catalyst. In running, your looking for that workout that tells you that you're a runner again, that you're in great shape. A build-up is the stress that lies in the fore-shadow of catalysm.

So, August. August is September's introduction, warm-up, opening band (depending on your metaphor). It's that anticipation throughout the month that makes everything seem so much more intense.

I have a feeling that this August will be particularly intense for me. One of the largest changes in any young person's life, moving out of the house (and into college in my case) is only a month away.

I feel like I should write a bit about the last few months, not that anyone is reading this, but it's nice to look back on myself later. Let me work month by month from when I last wrote:

February: I spent the entire month living with my grandparents in Florida. Running was going great; I won every race I entered and built a large base of miles for the spring racing season. They were lonely times for me, though. I missed the human interaction of being around my peers.

March: I was set to leave Florida at the beginning of this month with my parents. What began as a quick visit from my parents ended up being a week long stay for all of us as my grandmother suffered a series of strokes. As things cooled down, my father and I drove from Florida to Virginia for Phish's first concert in nearly 5 years. We then returned home and I spent a week or so in New Mexico hiking and running with Anna. Near the end of the month, Anna and I broke up. More on this later.

April: April is the cruelest of the months. Although broken up Anna and I continued to talk and act relatively civil to each other. It seemed clear that our friendship would last beyond our relationship. After a few weeks, however, I found out that she had been acting with inappropriate duplicity, had lied to me directly about it, and refused to take any responsibility for her actions. That was the last time we spoke regularly. My running was going okay, but I found myself in a rut in terms of racing. I was running about the same times, which were pretty mediocre, and showing little improvement. After searching for a job for a few weeks, I found myself working at Wendy's, the only establishment that would hire me at the time. Between my social problems, my terrible job, and my poor running performances, I found myself very depressed and alone.

May: May was when things started to change. I quit my job at Wendy's and started doing IT work for triple the pay. People started coming home from college and I found myself being more social. I spent a few weekends visiting my brother at Dartmouth where I had a few very memorable nights. Near the end of the month, I finally had my break-out race at the USATF Grand Prix 12k. I started running faster in workouts and was feeling great about the summer and my last few races.

June: June started on a down note as I was injured just a few days before one of my last races. What I thought was at first a stress fracture of the fibula ended up being some nasty tendonitis around my ankle. I was on crutches for a few weeks but once I was accurately diagnosed and taking ibuprofen, I improved very quickly. Duncan and I went camping in the white mountains for a few days. By the end of the month, I had started minimal running again.

July: In picking out my classes for Skidmore in the fall, I somehow ended up taking a 6 week summer course at UMass Lowell in an effort to place out of more classes. I continued running and increasing my mileage at a frustratingly slow pace. I often found myself surrounded by people that I love. The sun seemed to shine brighter.

August: What will August hold? I imagine an increase in intensity. All of the emotions and practicalities of moving out come to the forefront as there are less and less days for me to not think about it.

For now, I'm just trying to enjoy it. I'm trying to enjoy the people, the places, the sights and smells. Hopefully, that will leave me in a place where change is welcome, not needed or feared.

Valentine's Victory

2009-02-14T15:17:00.008-05:00

This morning, I toed a starting line with a few hundred other people andfor the first time since Fenn cross country, I crossed the finish line first. It's true; I haven't won a single race in the last 5 years or so. I've had a few age-group wins and a few good times and places, but I hadn't legitimately won a race until today.

The morning began as any raceday morning would: in the dark. The first light is always the hardest to turn on when it's still dark out. I have it down to a science by now, though, where I can turn on the bathroomlight and then stay in my room until my eyes are adjusted to the light from the bathroom, then I can finally make my way in and face the day.

I got my bag packed up with some food, drink, spikes, etc. I hit the road a little after 6:00am and it was still pretty dark. I pulled off 95 a half hour or so later and sun had begun to show signs of rising. In addition to the light, a thick fog had settled on the Florida inland, restricting visibility to less than 100 meters. I pulled into "Pointe West," one of the the many Levittown-esque housing developemnts in South Florida. I followed the line of cars with "run" and "26.2" stickers and parked on a large field.

By the time I got checked in, got my t-shirt, and had gotten back to my car to regroup, the sun was a giant gleaming ball just above the tree-line. I looked at my watch: 7:10. Still too early to start the warmup. So, I sat back in my car and read about Quentin Cassidy's race against famed Australian miler, Jon Walton. The selection always gets my blood pumping and puts me in my most competetive of mindsets.

I finished the chapter and headed out for a few easy miles before the race. The 7:30 pace felt remarkably stiff and difficult, but I find that it almost always does before a race. In fact, I can't remember the last race when I DIDN'T think to myself "Oh my gosh, if it's this hard to run 7:30 pace, how am I going to run [race pace]???"

Following Quentin's advice, I ran away from the hubub of the race and down a long dirt road for a few miles. When I headed back, people were already lining up, so I headed over to my car to change into my spikes. After my terrible experience with wet socks weighing me down the other day, I decided to risk it and go barefoot. I've always liked this, though I've been known to get blisters.

I did my drills on the way over to the line and a few strides. I felt solid on my strides, like I was getting a really high turnover, so I felt decent while toeing off.

The signal was just a "GO" shouted into a megaphone. There was a bit of chaos but by the end of the first stretch (maybe 300m), I was already alone. I looked down at my watch which said I was running 5:00 pace, so I eased up a bit after that.

Running alone on a quick race like the 5k is a hard thing to do. It's remarkably easy to slow down and not know it when there's no one around you.

Anyways, I came through the 1 mile in 5:21, which I figured would be on the fast end of my goal pace given the quick start (by the way, I will post all of my half mile splits at the bottom for anyone who's interested). Also, before I forget, going into this race Jon and I had set my goal time as 16:40-50 which is about 5:21-5:25/mile pace. Given that I've done very little speed-work and mostly base running and I ran a half marathon 6 days ago, I didn't expect this race to be a monster PR or anything.

Anyways, the second mile was a loop though fog-filled Levittown before heading back to the first mile's road and back to the finish. The course was pretty poorly marked. This neighborhood was a maze of identical streets with identical houses on streets that were all labeled 32nd Ave or 76th Blvd. The turns were marked with flour which I'm sure lasted through about the first 20 runners. With the fog, I'm amazed I didn't get lost.

When my watch told me I was at the 2.5 mile mark, I picked it up a bit. I've been practicing surges at the end of my moderate runs, which I think paid off well. My last 800 was tied with my first for the fastest of the race and I had a good amount of energy to kick in the last 200m or so.

It was a good feeling crossing that line first. I know it may have been a po-dunk race without any real competition, but it was still a good feeling. A win is a win, no matter how inconsequential.

Anyways, I got a little trophy and then I headed back here. I've just been chillin out the rest of the day. I did a bit of grocery shopping and a light pool run workout this afternoon. I'm planning on doing a long run tomorrow of 16-20 miles, depending on heat, humidity, etc.

All in all, I'm much more pleased with today's race than Sunday's half. Besides the ego-boost, I think it was a better performance overall and my time more accurately reflected my effort, which is the most important thing.

EDIT: Here are the 1/2 mile splits I forgot to add:

Pace Total
2:39 2:39
2:42 5:21 (5:21 Mile)
2:51 8:13
2:45 10:58 (5:36 mile)
2:45 13:43
2:39 16:23 (5:24 mile)
0:24 16:47 (Last .1 and Finish)

Lucky 13

2009-02-13T11:12:00.003-05:00

This week has gone by pretty quickly and I have a while free now, so I wanted to jot some things down.

After spending Monday getting fully recovered from my half-marathon, I got back into my regular training regimen. This week may be slightly lower mileage due to a day off on Monday, but I've actually been working out harder than before. I've finally added my core routine back to my morning workouts, and I'm now doing two workouts a day every day except for long-run-Sundays.

I'm being careful to keep my mileage in the 60s, so my morning workouts only consist of a pool-run or bike ride. I find two really nice benefits to these morning workouts. One is that I'm able to basically double my aerobic exercise per day without adding too much more stress on my joints. The other, and if anything this may be more important, is that it loosens me up for my afternoon workouts. For example, I've been doing intervals or tempo on Wednesdays, and I've often found that my Thursday runs feel stiff and slow for the first 20 or 30 minutes. Well, having a workout in the morning, be it a pool run or a bike ride, let's me get that stiffness taken care of before I even lace up my running shoes that afternoon. That way, I may feel a little stiff in the pool, but that's okay. Once I get to my afternoon run, I'm ready to run at 6:00 pace instead of having to waste the first half of the run just getting loose.

Anyways, so that's been going well. Wednesday I did my first interval workout in a while. I went down into Ft. Pierce where they have a pretty nice track. Unfortunately, the track is around a football field which they were watering with sprinklers while I was there. It was almost fun playing gauntlet on the warmup, trying to dodge the plumes of water being shot onto the track, but once I started the workout, it became pretty annoying. My shoes and socks were quickly drenched which about doubled the weight of my feet. All in all, it was still a decent workout and it was nice to get moving quickly again.

I also managed to get some employment this week, though it was only a one time thing. I helped my grandmother's neighbor set up her computer and tried to get AOL set up, which was far more complicated than it should have been. Anyways, I made some decent money, so it's all good.

Yesterday (Thursday), I had a pretty decent run, despite it being 80+ degrees and humid. I did an 8 mile out/back with the out at 23:55 and the back at 24:04, quite comfortably. My moderate pace seems to have settled between 5:55 and 6:15 pace, which I think my lungs have been okay with since Ecuador, but my legs are just finally getting used to. I'm glad, though, because I feel like training with a slightly higher turnover has made me a lot smoother and will hopefully give me more speed when track season comes around.

I got on the mailing list of a local running store and it turns out there are actually a lot of races around here. There's a 5k this weekend and a 10k next, so I may jump in one or both for kicks, depending on how I'm feeling. I often use Saturdays as a tempo day, so this would work out well (and maybe give me the opportunity to interact with some people who eat dinner after 5:00.

Anyways, I'm still not sure what my plans are for the end of this stay. There's been a lot of confusion about when my grandmother wants me to leave/what my parents want to do/how I'm going to get home, etc. I think the current plan is that my parents may fly down for a few days or a week or so and then my dad and I will drive to Phish before heading home. But who knows... it's all crazy, as usual.

Also, not sure if I mentioned this but it looks like I might be heading to New Mexico for a week or so in March with the Hagers which should be a lot of fun. Hopefully, it'll all work out.

So, that's about it. Not a whole lot else to say. I'll try to keep writing when exciting things are happening.

Tyler Andrews' US Half Marathon Debut

2009-02-09T09:06:00.010-05:00

Now that I have my brain functioning again, I'll write a bit about my half marathon experience yesterday.

All week, I've been getting up earlier and going to bed earlier in preparation for Sunday's VERY early morning. Saturday, I drove to Melbourne to see how long it would take and to get my race packet and it took about an hour and fifteen minutes. With a 6:45 gun, leaving an hour to park, warm-up, etc, I wanted to get there at 5:45, which meant leaving the house at 4:30. Yikes!

So, I got up between 3:30 and 4:00 and packed up everything I'd need for the day ahead. Despite the sun not even considered rising yet, the temperature on my outside thermometer read 64 degrees. This was a whole lot warmer than I expected and so I was a bit nervous heading out. The drive actually took me longer and I was a bit late leaving, so I didn't get there until close to 6:00. Luckily, I followed all the other cars (figure that most everyone up and driving at 6:00 Sunday morning would be people for this race) and found a big grass lot that was only a few blocks from the starting line.

I parked and hopped out and for whatever reason, Melbourne's air was a good 10-15 degrees cooler. Perfect for a good, long race. Even more exciting was that the wind was very calm. I jogged down to the starting line, so I knew where it was and then jogged away from the crowd and commotion, into the comfortably cool pre-dawn darkness. At one point, I found myself a mile or so away from the start, where the world had not yet come to embrace the day, and it seemed like even the streetlights were still asleep. Suddenly, I saw something scurry across the street. It was the size of a small dog but moved like lion, sprinting across the deserted road. I was convinced that I wasn't even going to make it to the starting line as I was about to become some sort of strange southern-mountain lion's breakfast.

Remarkably, I made it back to civilization with no more chupacabra sitings. By the time I got there, a good sized crowd had already amassed near the starting line. I looked at my watch and still had a good 10 minutes before the start, so I walked away from the crowd again to do my foot drills and strides. Feeling pretty solid, I began to work my way from the back of the start-line to the front.

There were a few thousand people crowded together at this point, and it took me a couple of minutes to walk through all the pace zones :"9-10 minute miles" all the way down to "sub-6 minute miles." I stopped there at the first sign and looked around. Surprisingly, most of the people around me looked pretty old. Eventually, I would figure out that this race was the US Master's Half Marathon Championship, meaning that these were the best runners in the country (over 40) at this distance. It calmed down my ego a bit when I saw 50+ year olds passing me on the course.

There was a pretty long pre-race ceremony that involved a pretty poor saxophonist, some jingoistic speeches about country and military, and the general welcome that you just want to be over so you can start the race. During this time, an older fellow behind me said "good luck!" and shook my hand. I reciprocated and continued shaking the hands of a few people around me (the good ol CA way). It wasn't until a few minutes later when someone walked by and whispered "There's Bill Rodgers!" to her husband, that I realized who had wished me good luck.

The day before, when I had gone to pick up my race packet, there was supposed to be a signing and photo-op with famed marathoner Bill Rodgers, however, after waiting for 45 minutes with no Bill, I decided he wasn't going to show and left. I knew that he was supposed to run in this race, but I hadn't thought that he would be toeing off right behind me.

I began to talk to him again, realizing who he was. I told him that I, too, was from New England and asked him about his racing, etc. All in all, he seemed like a nice enough guy.

Finally, after the longest opening ceremonies I've ever had to sit through, the gun fired and we were off. The first few miles are the ones I remember the most clearly. The leaders went out slow, and so running my pace I was in the chase pack for the first mile or two. Two 40-45 runners broke away right from the start but there were probably 8-10 of us in that first chase pack. I thought it would be great to run with a pack like that the whole race, but they started to pick it up and go sub-5:30 which was just way out of my league. It was also around this time that I was passed by Olympian and the eventual winner of the women's race, Coleen DeReuck. She was still in shape to run 1:12:00 for the half, so I was okay with letting her by.

And so, as usual, I was in no-man's-land. It seemed like there was this huge empty space between that chase pack and (if there was one) the next pack back. From miles 2-6 or so, I ran with a younger guy, probably about 25, who told me he had tried to register that morning and couldn't and so was just running for fun without a number. This guy was wearing baggy, basketball shorts and a long sleeve t-shirt. I figured, either he's a really serious runner just goofing around, or he's going to fall apart pretty soon. Well, we continued on and he would talk a surprisingly large amount given both of our effort levels. I guess he was just a friendly guy.

The first 6 miles are basically due North. The course is basically shaped like a rectangle around the Indian river, with two long 5-6 mile stretches on either side and two long causway bridges to cross the river. We went through 5 miles in 28:40, which was right on pace (5:44/mile). My goal of 5:48/mile would bring me in with a sub-76 (1:16:00) and I felt like I had gone through the first 5 miles very comfortably and a bit ahead of that pace.

The first bridge felt pretty good. The bridges were long and arched, making them the only real hills on the course. I had dropped my friend at this point and was making pretty decent time going up this bridge. About a third of the way up, a guy came up on my right and told me to stick with him as he really booked it up this bridge. For whatever reason, I listened, and it really tired me out.

Coming down was a nice break, but a half mile or so of downhill pounding on pavement is never all that pleasant. Still, I was able to recover a bit and get back into my pace. miles 6 and 7 were the flat part of the causway and by the time I got to mile 8 in 46:08 (5:46/mile), I was still feeling good. About halfway through this mile, though, we were coming around a corner and I made a mistake that cost me my time. There was a cement drainage channel between the curb and the shoulder of the road, and between that ditch and shoulder there was about a 1-inch lip that I didn't see. Had I cut that corner half an inch wider, I may very well have run a great race. But I didn't see the lip and my right foot twisted and rolled to the right enough to make me let out an audible yelp.

I slowed to a near stop, but continued jogging. It was probably a few minutes before I even started really running again, and by that time it was a whole lot slower. I felt terrible about watching my great race slip away between my fingertips for (basically) being a clumsy idiot, but it wasn't worth putting the next weeks of training in jeopardy. So, I took the last couple miles a lot easier, until I finally felt like I could start to push it again. The last mile I got back under 6:00/mile pace and even finished with a good kick.

I finished the race feeling pretty dissatisfied with my time (somewhere near 1:20:00), but overall very satisfied with the effort. The race was supposed to be an indicator of my strength and fitness. Not only did I get that indication, but I think the results were pretty good.

After I got some water and walked around in a haze for a bit, I found the free-massage-table and hopped on board. I got stretched out and had her work my ITs and hamstrings and it was super-nice. I told her about my ankle roll and she pointed me in the direction of the medical tent. The medic told me that as long as I had full range of motion and it wasn't too swollen, that it wasn't too bad. He told me to ice and and take some ibuprofen tonight.

There were a whole bunch of post-race activities going on. There was a free pancake breakfast and a bunch of booths and stalls giving away stuff. I actually headed back to my car pretty quickly because once I stopped running I got pretty cold. I changed my shoes and put on a few more layers and jogged a couple of super-slow miles to cooldown.

I'd heard that Bill Rodgers would be presenting the awards, so I decided to stick around, hoping I could talk to him or something. Also, I hadn't seen many other sub-20 year olds, so I figured I might get a shout out for being first in that age group. So, I was stuck listening to a ZZ-Top coverband for 40 minutes before the awards started. I did meet a couple of nice guys who had flown down from Maine just for this race. They were masters who were both getting awards and had both run a good bit faster than me.

When it finally started, it took a while, but I ended up getting a Gold Medallion for my achievements. Not bad for a day's work. Both one of the older guys I met and my coach, Jon, who I talked to later, said similar things about winning. I didn't really give this medal that much worth because there really wasn't a whole lot of competition in my age group (the next finisher was 10 minutes behind me). But, as Jon said, "Winning is winning, you can't beat it." I think there's a whole lot of truth to that, and I also think of what Peter Jennings once said about cross country which was "even just being out here on this team you are beating all of the people who were too chicken to even try." I think this is even more applicable in a race like this where my time may not be that great, but the dedication it took me to get here is worth something. Between getting up at 3:30 in the morning, running on a mildly sprained ankle, and just having the drive to want to run a race this long, maybe I deserve something.

Getting There

2009-02-06T14:04:00.003-05:00

It's now been almost two weeks since I've gotten here, and so far, my search for work has been seemingly fruitless. I've sent my resume to a good 30 classified ads, applied in person for 5 or more positions, and put up flyers all over the condo complex where I'm living advertising computer help and general handy-man work. Still, alas, I have nothing.

The week down here has been going pretty well. I ran a tempo run on Wednesday morning, which went quite well. It was the classical example of feeling pretty lousy on a warmup and then getting into the run and feeling all right. I ended up running 22:34 for 4 miles (5:38/mile), which is in the range I was hoping for. Also, I was running into a very strong headwind that probably slowed me down by 10-20 seconds per mile coming back, so the effort was probably close to 22:00.

I've been waking up and running earlier and earlier each morning to prepare for the 6:45am gun on Sunday. This morning I got up between 5:00 and 5:30 and ran at 6:45, which is pretty close to what I'll have to do on Sunday. I'm feeling pretty good about the race. I don't think my goals are unreasonable and I don't have too much emotionally invested in it. I've only been in this phase of training for a few weeks, now, and I wouldn't expect to be in tip-top shape.

So, the rest of the day will probably consist of a nap, eating, maybe a bit of light core or pool running or something just to get rid of some of my excess energy, and getting to bed good and early. I say that every night, but no matter what, I always end up going to bed at 10:00. Every night I say "right after colbert, I'm going to bed." And then I get caught up in something else, and before I know it, another hour has gone by. Oh my. Well, tonight for sure. If it's in writing you're more likely to do it, right?

I'm also gaining some clarity about what the coming weeks and months are going to look like. It looks like I may be going to New Mexico with Anna and her mom (kind of randomly came together, but it should be super cool if it works out) for a few days of hiking and camping and the like. This would be in March, after I get back from Florida and before my grandfather's surgery.

After that, it looks like I'd head up to Hanover relatively soon after. I believe my grandfather's surgery is on the 26th, so I imagine I'd be up there by then at the latest. Hopefully it won't be too cold and snowy; I'm really enjoying running on grass and dirt.

So, today and tomorrow are likely to be low-key days. Getting up early tomorrow again and then probably driving up to Melbourne in the afternoon to get my race packet and check out the course. The temperatures look like they'll be just about perfect: no precipitaiton and low to mid 50s. The only wildcard is whether the wind decides to act up. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Heartless Punk

2009-02-02T18:25:00.002-05:00

Greetings! Last night I figured out how to record some of my live mixing, so I posted a couple on Jam Glue. Keep in mind, the quality is pretty bad because what I did was literally plug my headphones out into my mic in. So, it has that PC microphone hum behind it. You should get the idea, though. I think there are three mash-ups there right now, which I just recorded while mixing around during a set. One is Notorious BIG's Juicy and Massive Attack's Teardrop (also the theme from House). Next is a mix of MIA's Paper Planes and TI's What you Know. Finally, Kanye's Heartless and Daft Punk's Harder Better Faster Stronger. Check em out here:

http://www.jamglue.com/people/TylerCAndrews

Just look on the right and click the play button next to the track listing and you should get it.

Anyways, things have been going pretty well down here. I'm getting ready for my American half marathon debut this weekend. I'm doing a tempo run tomorrow as my hard run and then a mini-taper.

Well, the week has started off all right. February certainly seems a whole lot nicer when there's sun instead of gloom, despair, and snow. Yesterday, I managed to get some work fixing this woman's laptop, but other than that, I've been unsuccessful in the work front.

All in all, things down here are going pretty well. I can tell that this kind of atmosphere is what I need to really train successfully. Other than the environment and facilities, which are wonderful in themselves, I have enough time to get 10 to 11 hours of sleep a night and I don't have a whole lot down here to distract me. There are no parties to go to and stay out late at, nothing to push back workouts. I'm able to really focus on my training and all the other parts of training that aren't running: diet, sleep, stress, core/weights/cross training, etc.

I think it's a double-edged sword though. I've only been here a little over a week and I'm starting to feel a little bit like a hermit. It's not that my training doesn't satisfy me or tire me out, because it does both entirely. I think it's just hard to be a social being living somewhere where there's really no one with whom you can be social. So yes, it's great because I don't have any social opportunity to distract me from my training, but at the same time, I feel like a minimal amount of human contact might be nice too.

Well, that's all for now. I'm going down to the gym to do some core and maybe some leg-lifting if I feel up to it. Tempo tomorrow!

On The Road Again

2009-01-31T14:20:00.002-05:00

It's been a while!

Welcome back faithful reader(s). I've been thinking about restarting the website for a while now, and now that I've had a week to get settled in here, I think it's time.

So, where is here? Currently, here is located a couple thousand miles South of chilly, icy Concord, MA. I'm living on the east coast of Florida in a town called Ft. Pierce, about 3 hours north of Miami. I'm living with my grandparents and plan to stay for another month and a bit. But how did I get here and how did my plans change so drastically? Well, let's go back to the last time I wrote in here.

I wrote my last entry just a few days before my parents arrived in Quito. It seems like an eternity, though it was just a little over two months. My parents flew down to Ecuador and after my stunning Half-Marathon debut in a time of 1:23:25 (at 10,000 ft, I'll add), we flew to the Galapagos Islands. We spent 5 days on a boat, traveling from one Martian landscape to the next. After that, we flew to Peru, took a plane to Cusco and then a train to Machu Picchu, the lost city of the Incas. Overall, the trip was tiring but well worth it.

Upon returning to Concord, I was a little bit shocked by the weather. My first week back saw a cold front move in with temperatures dropping into the low 20s, unseasonably cool. The following week, Mother Nature started to drop foot after foot of unrelenting snow. Yikes!

My training suffered a bit in the few weeks right after I got back, as I was getting used to the cold and the snow. I raced on an indoor track for the first time, with few remarkable results. The weeks I spent back in Concord were nice, though, as I got to spend time with the many people who I had missed in Ecuador. I got to spend a good bit of time with Anna, do some workouts and races with my coach and friend, Jon Waldron, and party like the good old days with Duncan, Paxton, and the rest of the gang. All in all, December was a pretty comfortable and low-key month.

January brought my first running injury in a while which forced me to take off a few days and miss a race. However, I rebounded pretty quickly, running my best race, 16 minutes, for the 5000m at the Dartmouth Relays the next Sunday. I should have ended my racing season there, but decided to push it one more week, despite my body giving me signs that it needed a break, and finished the season with a pitiful 3000m at the poorly run GBTC invite.

We're now up to mid January. The week following the GBTC race was my "off week" from running. I wanted to take a down week between my indoor racing season and my late winter-early spring buildup to let my legs and body just relax a bit. It ended up good timing, as I had to spend the beginning of the week in Canaan, NH with my Mom's parents while my Grandfather was having surgery. All was well, though, and we returned to Concord and prepared for my departure.

After a good bit of discussion in late December and early January, my parents and I had decided that they would feel better and thus it would be better for all parties if I were to spend my winter with my Grandparents in Florida as opposed to my dad's friend who had offered to house me in Colorado. Originally, the plan had dictated that my Dad and I would drive down together so that he could visit his parents and then fly back and we would do the drive in one long day, but the complications with my maternal Grandfather led to him staying home.

So, on Friday, January 23rd, around 6:30am, I hit the road in my lovely Toyota Matrix, packed full of my stuff. I drove about 11 hours the first day, which got me to the bustling metropolis of Roanoke Rapids, NC, a small developement on the border of North Carolina and Virginia. Wanting to get to Ft. Pierce in time to get a run in the next day, I got up and hit the road by 4:30 and drove for another 11 hours or so, to arrive in Ft. Pierce in the afternoon.

Since I arrived here in Ft. Pierce, things have been going pretty well. I have a lot of time and not a lot of responsibility, so I can really focus on my running and everything that goes around it. I've also been looking for work, which has so far been unsuccessful, and helping out my grandparents with their day-to-day needs.

One other project I've been tackling is to become a decent laptop-DJ. Tim Douglas introduced me to a program called Abelton Live, which is a mixing, recording, and producing program. Well, I love music and I think this will be a worthwhile project to undertake. There's actually much more that goes into mixing tracks together well than I used to think. I'm hoping that when I get to Skidmore in the Fall, I might be able to put this to use.

So, what's my plan for now? I'm staying here until the beginning of March. On March 6th, I'm seeing Phish's first show back in Hampton, Virginia with Mr. C, and then I think we'll probably drive back together. After that, I'm planning on heading to Hanover to live with Brett and Erin until summer time. My grandfather who lives near there is getting more surgery in mid-march, so I'll be able to help them with things and also possibly do same training with Dartmouth's track team. Summer is a long ways away, but I'm trying to find a job at a local day camp or something. I've already applied to a few and hopefully at least one will pan out.

In the immediate future, I'm about to head out for a run. I had a pretty tough one yesterday, so today's will be an easy moderate. I've got a half-marathon coming up next weekend, which I'm pretty excited about. I'll keep you posted on how everything is going.

Okay, well, I'll try and update this relatively regularly, but not a whole lot of exciting stuff happens down here. Gotta run.

The Beginning of the End

2008-11-21T15:20:00.003-05:00

Today was my last day working at the hospital, so I decided to take in my camera and take a few shots. It was a bit nostalgic, but I was definitely ready to leave. Though I did meet a pretty nice American guy named Josh. It turns out he´s been working here for a while too but somehow we never really crossed paths.
This shot below is me and my ¨boss¨, Tania, if you could call her that. She is basically the nicest person I´ve ever met and somehow manages to be cheerful, but not obnoxiously so, every day. This hospital is really quite blessed to have her.
These are some shots of the Ludoteca, the play area where I spent most of my time.
The phooseball table, where I spent a good number of hours being not competetive in the slightest.
And finally, this is what my room looks like as I try to pack all of my stuff up. See, I packed it all up on Tuesday, and have basically just been living out of my suitcase since then. Still, it´s a bit hectic.

Anyways, I just got back from picking up my race number and packet, which was fun. Jefferson Perez was there, but unfortunately my camera was not. Still, I got to shake hands and talk a bit with an Olympic gold medalist. Pretty sweet!

Ryan Hall: Living with everything I need, not everything I want

2008-11-20T14:48:00.004-05:00

The always gracious Ryan Hall has written a very nice ¨journal entry¨ available here:

Ryan Hall Journal Entry

Ryan´s letdown at the 2008 Olympics didn´t hold him back from continuing with his life or his running. I´m always amazed when I hear this young man speak and this is no exception.

Also, this comes at an interesting time after Ryan recently announced he will be running in the 2009 Boston Marathon!

Okayalright

2008-11-19T15:21:00.002-05:00

I know how worried you all were, but my toe is feeling fine.

Today was pretty solid. A reasonably normal day, but solid nonetheless. I iced my foot a bunch last night so it was feeling pretty decent this morning. Still, I decided to take it safe and take the bus to work. Unfortunately, having never taken the bus before, I took the wrong bus and ended up farther away than when I started by the time I realized it. Oops! But I ended up still getting there on time.

Work was all right and then I took the bus home and had some lunch before heading out for a run. One thing I´ve noticed is that my moderate runs are getting both easier and quicker. I´m hoping this is a result of both my lungs becoming more efficient at this altitude and my body and muscular system become more efficient at covering ground. Either way, I covered about 8 miles at 6:40 pace and felt pretty comfortable the whole time.

Anyways, I only have two days of my project at the hospital left, which is a bit weird. The last few weeks have gone by really quickly; it´s hard to believe that in a few days my parents come and then it´s adios a Quito.

Photo Update!

2008-11-18T17:45:00.003-05:00

I just got the chance to upload some photos from the weekend so here they are!

The always lovely beach!

My roommate Carla with a beer the size of her head.

Another shot of the beach and the coast heading South.

Yes, I DID eat that whole pizza. Thank you very much.

Me and Margaret, our fellow i-to-i volunteer.

Margaret and Carla at cocktail hour.

I just thought this was a nice artsy shot of a palm tree

These next few are from my run. Here, any CAXCer will remember with great joy Jon´s foot drills. Frankensteins!

Happy and oxygen deprived after 15 minutes and 49 seconds of hard, fast running.

15 Minutes

2008-11-18T13:12:00.003-05:00

It´s been a pretty hectic bit and it´s probably going to stay that way until I get back. It seems a bit wierd that I can now say ¨until I get back¨ and not have it be that long.

Anyways, this past weekend, I went to the coast with my roomate Carla and an older Irish woman who works at the hospital with me named Margaret. It was a pretty solid trip. The weather was actually a lot nicer than the last time we went. Unlike the two women, my main purpose for going to the beach was to run a 5k time trial at sea level to see how my intervals had affected my fitness.

Well, it seems that Jon´s workouts have been doing pretty good work getting my legs and lungs and heart into an unstoppable trifecta. I ran the same route as last time (Early October, 5km, 16:07, 5:11/mile pace) and my goal was to go under 16:00. My secondary goal was to run negative mile splits, meaning each mile is faster than its predecessor. Well, I was able to meet both my goals! I ran 5:08, 5:07, 4:56, with a total time of 15:49, 5:05/mile (average) pace. I was pretty happy with my results and I think that my entry into the realm of 15 minutes can finally qualify me as a decent (pre-)collegiate runner.

The only buzz kill about that trip happened after my time trial when I walked down to the beach for a morning of reading and soaking up the equatorial sun and I saw a big crowd of people down by the ocean. I walked down, not exactly sure what to expect, but with a pretty bad feeling about it. I saw that there was a man lying on the sand and this didn´t help me feel any better. Finally I saw his face and he was very dead. It looked like he´d been dead for a while, too. He probably drowned the day or night before and was washed ashore. It was pretty haunting and a pretty nasty way to end an otherwise pleasant weekend.

We got back late Sunday night and so far this week has been pretty hectic. I´ve been packing and making sure I have enough room in my suitcases. It turns out I´m only allowed to bring one suitcase on the flight out of Quito, so I´ve had to consolidate a good bit.

I took a day off from running yesterday, but today I had a pretty decent workout, despite my time trial 2 days prior. For those of you who aren´t runners, you can probably just skip the next paragraph or so.

I did my usual 2 mile warmup and then foot drills. Today, though, I think I might have pulled something in my right foot during my drills. I was doing the long-walk and I got a pretty bad pain in my right big toe. I stopped and took a few minutes to massage my foot and try and feel where the pain was, and it ended up feeling all right. I didn´t do anymore long walking but finished up the rest of the drills and felt fine. It was still bugging me a bit so I said I´d do some striders and if it was bothering me, I´d call it off. strangely enough, it really only bugged me when I was walking and I didn´t really notice it at all during running. So, I figured I´d go ahead with the workout.

I was able to keep all my times at or below our goal times. The 300s I ran like you said: the first two on pace at 51 and the second two a bit faster. The 200s I tried to get faster with each, but I started a bit fast.

Here´s the workout:

2 Miles easy (7:30 pace), Drills, 4x Striders

2x400 (70): 70.3, 67.2
4x300 (51): 51.7, 51.3, 47.7, 47.4
4x200 (30): 29.7, 27.5, 29.6, 27.4

2 Mile cooldown easy (7:45 pace)

It was actually quite a fun workout. I liked the idea of getting faster and faster with each distance.

Anyways, the rest of the week I´m working, doing another interval workout on Thursday or Friday and my parents get here saturday night! Sunday morning, I think I´m going to run in a half marathon, but only as my long run (so I can get a cool t-shirt). Sunday, my parents and I are in Quito and then we´re off on our adventures. I believe the schedule looks something like this: Monday, we leave early for the Galapagos where we have 5 or 6 days on a boat tour around the islands. After that, we have a few days traveling and then we get to Perú, where we have a few days to see Maccu Piccu. I think we fly home from there and get back on 12/3.

I´ve been spending a good amount of time thinking about these past 12 weeks and I don´t think there´s a whole lot I´d change. I´ve accomplished things with my running that I never dreamed of being able to accomplish, at least not in such a short amount of time. I´ve also gone way farther with my Spanish than I ever could have dreamed. I´ve learned a lot about myself and I´ve spent a lot of time alone.

I´m incredibly happy I did this, but I´m also looking forward to going home. I don´t think these ideas have to be mutually exclusive. I´m all right with the idea that my time here is coming to an end. I am really excited to get back to the States and see my parents and friends and eat good chinese food and pizza and run outside of a city.

The Start of Something

2008-11-11T16:31:00.004-05:00

I did my second interval workout in three days this morning. It was what Jon has dubbed a ¨Benchmark Workout.¨ That is, it´s a workout that will be repeated after another 4-6 weeks of good hard training.

The workout consisted of 5x800 meters at 2:36 or better, with 90 seconds jogging in between each. Basically, it´s 800s at VO2 max pace with very little rest between each. The workout would not only let us know how my body has been reacting to the intervals that I´ve been running for the past 5 weeks but also it would give me a better estimate for what I can run for my time trial this coming weekend.

I was still a bit stiff starting off, so I was almost pessemistic. Nonetheless, I got into my normal routine: 2 miles easy to warm up, full foot drills and dynamic stretching and two sets of striders. By the time I was ready to start, it had warmed up considerably, so I was glad to have worn layers.

The workout ended up going a lot better than I expected. I ended up averaging about 2:33 per rep, which I was pretty happy with, with the last at 2:29.

Looking over my intervals, I´m really happy with the progress I´ve made. This week, the 5x800 workout was a bit less volume than usual, and I felt it. However, looking back even a few weeks shows that I was doing shorter workouts, with more rest, and at slower paces. With that in mind, I´m feeling relatively confident.

In other news, I´m making some progress on my plans for next year, though a lot is still up in the air and seems as if it´ll stay that way for a while. The one thing that I´m feeling quite strong about is that I don´t want to spend the whole six months in one place. This presents a bit of a problem with finding a job, especially with the state of the current economy, but I´m confident that I can find some work.

My thoughts right now are some sort of permutation of the following: Spend December and part of January in Concord living at home. Here I can see my friends, get some work, and run in some indoor track races.

In January, I´m hoping to drive west somewhere for several reasons: First, to avoid (part of) the super cold and icy New England winter. Second, the two cities I´m thinking about living in right now are Tucson, AZ and Boulder, CO (slightly less warm...) which are both at relatively high altitudes, Tucson not as much. Being here in Quito has shown that my body reacts really well to altitude training, so this would give me another few months of that. It would also give me a nice change of scenery, which I´ve found is really important to me. Hopefully I´d be able to find a job in either place, and since both of them are high tourist season (Boulder, skiiers, Tucson, snowbirds) I´m relatively confident I could find some sort of work.

I would head back East in early March to see Phish in Hampton, VA. And then drive back up to Concord. The next few months depend a bit on my monetary state at the time. I have the possibility of living at home, living in Hanover with my brother, and living in Western Mass somewhere. I would try and get a job here as well and continue training and be able to race some outdoor track in the Spring.

It´s an ambitious and complicated plan, I know, but I´m hoping it works out.

Anyways, I´m headed to the coast on Friday early morning. I´ll try and update before then, but I may be busy with work and getting ready. I´m running my time trial Sunday morning, so send me fast vibes if you´re up between 7:00 and 8:00am!

Speedy Speed

2008-11-09T12:20:00.003-05:00

This morning I did my first sharpening workout. That is, I did my first interval workout of shorter, faster intervals.

Most of my interval workouts up until now have been longer intervals (600-1000 meters) at 5k pace or a bit better. The workout this morning was of 200s and 400s at mile race pace or better. Well, it went pretty well. Perhaps a bit too well. Jon told me to be careful not to go too fast, since it was my first workout, and unfortunately, it looks like I did just that. My 200s were a bit quick, with my second to last at 26.1, but my 400s were right on, which was good.

I was luck enough to have my flatmate, Carla, accompany me on my warmup and cooldown and she was nice enough to film a bit of my workout. I put this little thing together to partly spoof the flotrack workout videos and partly because I was bored :P Anyways, let me know if it works:

Unfortunately, the weather was not nice enough to permit us to hike this weekend, but I think that the workout was accomplishment enough. I´m feeling pretty solid about my time trial this coming weekend at sea level. Hopefully it´ll go all right.

Anyways, it´s lunch time!

A Long Overdue Update

2008-11-07T17:28:00.002-05:00

First of all, congratulations to the country for regaining a bit of my faith in one of the most important elections of our time. Yes. It´s true. Proposition II WAS passed. Take that you doubters.

Oh, and in other, less important, news, apparently Barak Obama was elected as well.

I have an awful lot to say and too much time. A whole lot has happened in the last week or so since I last updated.

Last weekend, my roomate and I took a 4 day hiking trip around the Quilotoa Loop in the Andes. It´s a group of 5 or 6 small Andean villages with beautiful hikes between each. The centerpiece is the Laguna Quilotoa, which is a giant Volcanic Crater lake high up in the mountains. We ended up hiking about 50 miles in 4 days at 4000m, so it was a pretty tiring weekend. A more long and detailed report of this is hopefully coming soon.

Other than that, I´ve been working and running and not a whole lot else. I had a great interval session Monday, a difficult but satisfying long run yesterday, and I have more speedier intervals on Sunday.

This weekend, we´re planning on doing a bit more hiking, but just around the mountains in Quito. Assuming the weather´s all right, we´re going to try and summit the big volcano next to Quito.

Also, next weekend, we are heading down to the coast, which should be really nice (again, weather permitting). I´m set to do a time trial down there on next Sunday at sea level. Jon has told me to shoot for 5:08 miles which comes out to a total time of 15:56. A 10 second PR at this level is a pretty big deal, but given that last time I ran this distance at sea level I was running about 10 miles per week less and not doing any intervals, I´m feeling at least relatively confident.

I´ve also been thinking a lot about what I´m going to do with the rest of my year off. The hiking trip made me really miss Arizona for some reason (the terrain is remarkably similar), so I´m going to try and spend at least a bit of time out west. Mostly, though, I need to get some work so I can pay off all these expenses that I´m incurring. I presented a first draft of my plan to my folks which was regarded only as ¨pretty ridiculous¨ so I see that as quite a success!

I´ll try and post more later but I´ve got to eat and then we´re off to see the new James Bond.

300

2008-10-27T16:51:00.002-04:00

As of yesterday, I passed an important mark that has made me think a bit about this trip in terms of numbers. About halfway through my seven-miler, I ran my 300th mile in Ecuador. That´s averaging about 38 miles a week for about 8 weeks.

So, with this relative milestone, I´ve been thinking a bit about my trip. It seems like an awfully long time ago that I was sitting in the Miami aiport waiting for my flight to Quito, but it was actually less than two months ago. Here´s a short list of things I´ve accomplished (that I think are worth mentioning) in those two months (in no real order):

Climbed a 20,000 ft volcano

Traveled out of the country on my own for the first time

Spent a lot of time volunteering

Became (relatively) fluent in another language

Ran a 16:07 5k, 4:40 mile at sea level and a 17:38 5k at 10,000´

Trained sucessfully without getting sick or injured for 8 weeks

Became much more self-sufficient

Realized I really like beans and lentils

Read an entire book in Spanish

Kept in decent contact with friends and family

Gotten plenty of sleep

7 runs of 10+ miles

Traveled the farthest South in the world that I have ever been (Cotopaxi)

Got Phish tickets!

Written some decent music

Survived (almost) getting mugged/beat someone up

Updated this blog (somewhat) regularly

Made friends

Realized I actually am inerested in learning, specifically in math, science, and economics

Read a lot

All in all, I think it´s definitely been time well spent. As much as I have realized that I do need some intellectual stimulation, I can´t see myself sitting in a lecture classroom taking notes right now. This time, so far, has actually made me much more excited for college and has given me a lot of ideas about what I do and don´t want to do there.

Either way, I still have a good 8 months until I have to start thinking about college too seriously, anyways.

I only have 4 (3.5 really) weekends left here, which is really strange. My parents come down to Ecuador on the 22nd of November (I think) which is a Saturday. At that point, we´re doing some traveling around Ecuador and Peru and then flying back together. It should be nice to show them around my now stomping grounds.

But that leaves me with only 3 full weekends! Oh dear! There´s so much traveling around here that I want to do. So many hikes to hike, so many mountains to summit, so many runs to run. I think I´m going to try and do one more mountain with my new flatmate, Carla. There are a few smaller (but still 5000+ meters) mountains that you can do in a day, so I wouldn´t have to miss any training.

This weekend, I´m hiking the Quilotoa loop, a 4 day hike around the Andes centering around a huge volcanic crater and a big lake. Apparently this is also a good way to see some indigenous Andean villages and meet some people. I´m pretty psyched about it.

Other than that, I´m going to try to get down to sea level once more before I leave to get in one more good time trial. Hopefully Jon´s interval workouts have been paying off!

Racing At Altitude

2008-10-25T16:48:00.001-04:00

I woke up this morning bright and early to run in a charity 5k in Quito. I´ve done a few interval workouts at altitude, but no real racing. The morning was quite nice, though as usual, the weather was a bit crazy. I warmed up in sweat pants, an overshirt, and a hat and by the time the race started, I was in just a singlet and shorts. And I was hot. Oh my.

Well, the race went okay. I did my usual pre-race routine. 2 miles real slow, followed by striders about 5 to 10 minutes before the race. Luckily, I got a pretty good spot on the line, it was basically first come first serve, and (no offense), there were a few women right on the front of the line. In a race of a few thousand, there´s really no reason for that... But it was chip timed, so it didn´t really matter.

Anyways, there were a few anxious minutes on the line and then the gun. I got off pretty well. I had told myself that I wasn´t going to get caught up in the undoubtedly crazy start of a bunch of people who thinkg they´re a lot faster than they are. And I didn´t. A minute or so into the race, I was probably barely in the top 100. About 95% of these people were going to run out of gas before the first kilometer mark. The other 5% were incredibly fit univeristy runners who live and train here in Quito.

So, by the 1 mile mark, I had passed a good 80 or so people. There was a pack of about 8 runners about 20 seconds in front of me. I was able to close this gap and eventually pass most of this group. I couldn´t see the leader(s) for most of the race, so I didn´t know exactly where I was place-wise. I felt like I was going at a pretty good clip and I passed the 3 mile mark right around 17:10, I think. I didn´t have too much left, but was able to kick a bit and catch about 2 more runners in the last hundred meters or so.

I came in around 17:38, not sure of the exact time. A bit slower than the 17:20 that Jon had told me to aim for, but all in all, not too bad. I was also in the top 10 (I got a little medal) which was exciting.

Overall, a time that´s about 40 seconds faster than I could run at sea level last year is not bad, especially given that I didn´t really taper at all (did a 14 miler on Thursday). So, yeah, not so bad.

Back to Reality

2008-10-23T09:28:00.004-04:00

Things here are settling back down a bit after the craziness of having so many new people in the house this past weekend. Two of the three English girls left for their projects in the jungle, so it´s now just me, Pablo, and a new girl named Carla who´s going to be here until January.

It´s actually kind of nice to be the source of knowledge for once. I never thought that I would be helping other people with Spanish! It´s also nice to be able to show someone around and show them the ropes and the little ins and outs of this wierd city. I kind of wish that I had had someone here to do that for me when I arrived. Though, then again, it was kind of nice to just explore on my own and figure everything out through trial and error.

I´ve got a long run today, about 14 miles. Hopefully it´ll go all right. Jon has told me to take it real easy, never strain the pace, since I´m thinking about racing this weekend. There´s a 5k on Saturday morning in the park, and it´s for charity, so I figured I`d give it a shot. I would usually be doing another speed workout anyways, so this just takes the place of that. I have no idea what kind of pace I´ll shoot for. Jon gave me some numbers but they sounded awful fast. Oh well, I haven´t raced in like three months anyways, so it´ll be good just to have a break from training.

The only bummer is that this race is pretty early in the morning (I think the gun is at 8:00am), which means I´m going to have to get up around 5:00am. I´ve been getting up around 7:00 though, naturally, so this shouldn´t be too bad. Also, early in the morning its usually not too hot and not too rainy (knock knock knock).

On an unrelated note, I´m really pissed off at the American embassy right now. So, yesterday, I was going to turn in my absentee ballot at the US embassy (it said on the ballot that you could turn them in there and not have to pay postage). Anyways, Maria said that the embassy was quite near my work, which it seemed to be when I looked it up online. So, after work, I hitched a cab, since I didn´t know exactly where it was and I was trying to give my legs a bit of rest.

Well, I got there and the place was all boarded up and there was a sign saying that the embassy had moved to a new address that I didn´t recognize. So, I hailed another cab and figured it would be somewhere relatively close. Oh no. It turned out the new embassy was just about as far away as you could be and still be in the city limits. By the time I got there, I had about 50 cents left to get back (the cab ride there cost about $4.00). I also realized that I didn´t have any sort of ID which I figured I might need to enter the embassy. I was already feeling pretty downtrodden.

I finally got to the front of the line and asked the guard about absentee ballots. He said that the person who deals with all voting issues doesn´t get in until 2:00. It was now about 12:00. So, I said ¨forget it,¨ and hopped a bus. Luckily, the buses are only 25 cents, so I was all right in that department. I didn´t really know where the bus would take me, so as soon as I recognized the downtown area, I just hopped off. It was still about a 45 minute walk back to my house. Oh, and I had forgotten my lunch and water! Pobre mio...

But other than that, it´s been pretty good here. I ended up just taking my ballot to the post office and mailing it for less than the cab cost anyways. Joy... Also, apparently one of my friend´s mother said that absentees´ votes on proposition questions don´t count. This seems mighty strange, can anyone verify? Well, either way, Vote YES on 2!

Pebbles and Marbles like Things on my Mind Seem to Get Lost and are Harder to Find

2008-10-21T14:42:00.002-04:00

It´s been a while since I wrote anything about what I´ve been doing so I guess I´ll give a bit of an update now.

Last weekend, I decided to take a relatively spur of the moment trip to Otavalo. My old flatmate, Benedicte, had just left, so it had been really quiet and boring for a few days and I really didn´t feel like sitting on my ass all weekend. So, I just hopped a bus and headed out of town.

Otavalo is a nice town a few hours North of Quito known for its crafts markets. Any kind of South American or Mexican crafts market that you´ve seen could fit in a tenth of the central market in Otavalo. It was incredibly overwhelming but it was nice. I spent a good amount of time practicing my haggling skills, which I honed in and eventually became a haggling machine.

So, I bought some gifts for friends and family and then did some nice running out of the city. On Sunday, I did one of my hardest runs yet, which started in the town (about 9000 ft) and then ran up to a series of high mountain lakes (about 13,000 ft) and back down. So, about 4,000 ft of elevation change and about 30k. Not too shabby. The lakes are at the top of this mountain:

I also did some hiking around in the forests and mountains which was nice.

Oh, and there was also a really cool rehabilitation center for Raptors (bird of prey). I spent an afternoon wandering around here checking out the super cool birds. I even got to see a few Andean Condor, the largest flying bird in the world! Sweet!

Trying to get back to the town from the park was interesting, since it was in the middle of nowhere. I was afraid I was going to have to walk the 6 miles back (after my long run), but luckily, I hitched a ride with a bus full of German tourists. Always an adventure...

Anyways, so then this past week was pretty uneventful. I went to work, ran, ate, slept, watched some Spanish cartoons (which is actually remarkably helpful). It was pretty quiet.

This past weekend, I stayed around here. I tried and failed to get face value Phish tickets. Sunday night, a new girl showed up who is going to be here until January. It was really, really nice just to have somebody to talk to for once. She doesn´t speak a lot of Spanish, so I kind of showed her the ropes. It was nice.

Then yesterday, two other English girls showed up who are only here for a few days. They were pretty social and so we went out last night, which was fun. It was good to get out and do something and go to bed after 9:00. I didn´t drink though, because I had intervals to run this morning.

Speaking of intervals, my workout didn´t go too stupendously. I´ve been used to being able to run a few seconds faster than Jon tells me, and this was the first workout where I´ve been a few seconds behind. The workout was 6x800m in three sets of two. The first one a bit slower than VO2 max pace and the second a bit faster (2:36, 2:32). Anyways, I actually felt pretty solid warming up and doing striders, so I had high hopes. But alas, the times just weren´t quite there. I would go through 400m right about on pace and then run out of gas (oxygen) around 500 or 600m. So, my paces were closer to 2:38, 2:36, but oh well. It´s still much faster than the last 800m workout I did at sea level!

Anyways, so that´s about it. I´m thinking about racing 5k this Saturday in Quito. It´s for charity and I could just run it as a tempo run, so we´ll see.

Return of the King?

2008-10-20T15:28:00.003-04:00

Thanks to Tim Douglas, my Ecuadorian bubble was recently burst as I learned about rapper T.I.´s newest release ¨The Paper Trail.¨

Without a CD player or bit torrent, it was a little more difficult than usual to find a copy of this album to listen to. Having been a TI fan since his release of ¨King¨ in 2006, I was pretty excited about his newest release. I rediscovered his 2007 release ¨TI vs TIP¨ over the summer and found there were actually a few tracks that were really great. With this, I was excited for an album full of ¨Watch What you Say¨s and ¨What you Know.¨

Unfortunately, I found an album that seems like it was produced by monkeys trying to reproduce the hits of the past year on BET. I found an album with tracks full of imitation of styles that didn´t sound like the TI I know and love. Where is that heavy synth and dirty south beat that was so typical of his first two albums? Where is the almost laughably bad-ass lyrics (¨I´m da dope man, nigga¨) from TI vs TIP.

This album was an all right pop-rap album, and I´m sure it will sell millions. But for TI, this was a disappointment to me. The most popular track, so far, ¨Whatever you Like,¨ is a cute, R&B sounding tune in which TI sings about how he will ¨blow a few stacks¨ on that special girl. This song sounds like a radio hit from Fabulous or some similar R&B guy. Come on, dude.

The one track worth listening to is, as usual, the Just Blaze produced ¨Live your Life.¨ Other than that, you can save your time and just listen to ¨King.¨

I Hate Ticketmaster

2008-10-18T16:48:00.002-04:00

Ticketmaster has got to be the worst organization known to man. I do not jest. I hate ticketmaster and it subsidaries with a burning passion that cannot be extinguished.

I´ve spent a good amount of the past week thinking about how to score tickets to Phish during the general onsale which happened this morning at 10:00am. See, Phish is better than most. Phish had a lottery for a small percentage of tickets before the general onsale. We did not participate in this, but we did bite the bullet and pay quite a bit of a marked of price to a scalper for Friday night tickets, in case things didn´t work out. I figured that even if we did get tickets from the loto or from the onsale, we could easily resell and break even.

It´s a good thing we bought those tickets then.

So, I had a brilliant plan of how we were going to try and get tickets. Between me and both my parents, we had 4 computers and 3 phone lines. I figured ONE of us must be able to get through, and that´s all you need.

Anyways, so this morning rolls around and my plan for the phones was to call around 9:40 and just bullshit about other concert tickets until 10:00 when Phish tickets went on sale. Well, by 9:35 every ticketmaster line in the country was busy. Every single number. You couldn´t even get through to a point where they´d put you on hold. You just got a busy signal. G-d I hate ticketmaster.

The basic problem here is supply and demand. The venue, Hampton Coliseum, holds about 13,000 people. Even a 3 night stand, that´s only 39,000 (and it´s safe to assume that most of the concert goers will go to more than one show.) So let´s say there are 20,000 tickets available. Well, just in the lottery, which wasn´t advertised that well, over 150,000 people entered. Assuming that there are more people going for the onsale, and assuming that most of them have their neighbors, girlfriends, and dogs all helping them, the amount of requests could be close to 1,000,000.

I eventually got through on the phone and got on hold. I got my call answered at 9:56, which I figured would be perfect. But no. The first thing the woman says is ¨are you calling about Phish tickets?¨ It turns out that you have to call after 10:00 to be able to buy over the phone. What?? I can´t even get on hold at 10:00, how the hell am I supposed to get answered in time to get tickets?

Well, I gave up on the phone and just hoped for the best with the online. We still had 4 computers between the three of us, which I figured might give us a chance. Ugh. Getting tickets when there is this much demand online is basically a lottery as well. It´s all about exactly when you click ¨refresh¨ and get to get in the ¨virtual line¨ for tickets. Well, I got in the virtual line a few seconds after 10:00 but, I hate ticketmaster, there´s a little word in a box that you have to type in to verify that you´re not a machine (hackers used to use these machine cheat that would simply flood the servers with requests). Anyways, the word didn´t show up. I hit give me a new word and nothing. I went back (getting out of the virtual line) and finally there was a word there. By now it was 10:00:45 and I knew it was probably long over.

I sat and waited 15 minutes for it to tell me that the show was sold out. Thanks. And then, here´s where I get really pissed off, when you get to the little screen where it says ¨you didn´t get tickets,¨ it has an advertisement on the side for one of its sister companies ¨tickets now.¨

Now, these tickets were $40.00 each. Ticketsnow is a scalping website where you could buy tickets for the low price of $300.00 each. So, here´s what´s happening... ticketmaster is taking these tickets that it has a right to, selling them to its sister site, and jacking up the price nearly 1000%. Not only is this a huge dick move, but it´s also ILLEGAL. Selling tickets above face value is AGAINST THE LAW. It´s a CRIME. How can they get away with this?

I hate scalpers. I hate ticketmaster.

It breaks my balls that most of the people who were able to get tickets (by the way, all 3 nights sold out in less than 8 seconds), were scalpers or brokers who paid 1000 guys in India to sit in front of a computer and click refresh and type in those words really quickly. And then we, the fans (phans), get screwed over because suddenly there´s enormous demand and the only supply is in the hands of a bunch of heartless, soul-less scalpers who sell tickets for now OVER 1500% of face value. Let me just say, I felt shitty buying a scalped ticket, but even though it seemed like a lot at the time, right now, Friday tickets are OVER $500 each.

The worst part is that there´s nothing we or bands can do about it. Ticketmaster has contracts with almost all major venues, so if a band wants to play at anything bigger than Andrew Bernard´s living room, you basically need to deal with them. It´s a monopoly and it´s terrible.

Anyways, sorry to rant and bitch, but this really drives me mad. I haven´t updated in a while and I will try to get to that in the next few days.

Atacames Part III: ¡Vaya Jefferson!

2008-10-10T13:51:00.002-04:00

I woke up Tuesday morning feeling super stiff. My first thought was ¨Ugh, I don´t want to run.¨But I dragged myself out of bed, got some breakfast, and was feeling a little better. We didn´t have a ton of time (our bus was leaving at 3:30) and it had started sprinkling. If I was going to run, I ought to do it quick.

I hadn´t run a fast 5k since the summer when I was only running around 20 miles per week, still recovering from my injury. I felt like, with the good training I´ve been doing recently, I had a good chance at a PR. One of my last weekends in the states, I had run 17:09, so I was shooting for better than that, or hopefully sub-17.

I was so rushed because of the rain that I just warmed up in my racing shoes. I was running on the now empty roads, so it should be a bit faster, I thought. I would run 800 meters out and 800 meters back three times and then a final, all out 200 meters. My goal pace would require me to run each 800 in about 2:45 (5:30 mile).

I went out in 2:24, 2:31 (4:55 mile). Until recently, this would have been a PR for the mile. I didn´t feel like I was running that hard, but when I saw the split, I got a little worried. I thought maybe I should just go for a 2 mile or 3k, but I kept on truckin.

On the second out-and-back, people started to shout things at me (¨corre! corre!¨). Some yelled ¨vaya Jefferson!¨which is a reference to Ecuador´s National star, Olympic race-walker Jefferson Perez. I can see how people mistake us. We do look so similar...

I´m sure that most of them were laughing at me and getting a kick out of this skinny, white kid passing cars and trike-taxis, but to me, the shouts were just cheering and that was encouragement. It only spurred me on to run faster.

As expected, my middle mile was slowest (5:23), but with the quick first mile, I was still under pace. The last mile I really pushed the pace and came through 3 milesin 15:36. The last 200 meters, I gave it all I had to come in at 16:07, a 31 second last 200 and a PR by more than a minute.

I had pretty bad blisters on my achillies from not wearing socks, so I kind of hobbled back to the room. I cooled down on the beach and came back and showered.

We grabbed lunch and then took a trike into town (walking was out of the question for me), got some ice cream and waited for the bus. Much to my joy, the bus only had about six people on it, and none of them were small children! Oh happy day! I took my own two seats so I could put my feet upand relax. What was even nicer was that we didn´t stop in Esmereldas to get more passengers, as I had expected.

Not only was the trip about two hours shorter, but it was infinitely more pleasant. If all bus rides were this nice, I would have no qualms with traveling like this all the time.

We arrived in Quito around 10:15 (only six and a half hours!) and took a cab back to the house. By 10:45, I was sound asleep.

All in all, a solid trip that actually made me like the country a lot more. And I got a sick 5k PR. 15 minutes, here I come.

And, most importantly, Phish is getting back together.

Atacames Part II: I like this town

2008-10-10T13:07:00.002-04:00

For some reason, probably my biological clock, I woke up at 6:30am the next morning. Despite the fact that I was used to getting 10+ hours of sleep in Quito, I was not tired at all, so I spent an hour or so just sitting in the hammock and reading and enjoying the ability to wear shorts. Benedicte was still sleeping, so I decided to walk down the strip and see what what it was like in the light.

The first thing I noticed was a lot of people already drinking (it was about 8:00am). There were a surprising number of people awake already and out and about. I was planning on doing some time trials, so I found a good map with an accurate scale. I walked back on the beach and even hopped in the ocean! The pacific is a lot warmer than the atlantic.

I returned to the room and told Benedicte that everything was open and we should get breakfast. In just about every restaurant, you can get standard breakfast (coffee, eggs, toast, jam and fruit) for a dollar or two. We ate at a place that seemed popular and was fine. Though we did see the owner hitting her 5 or 6 year old daughter with a shoe...

Benedicte wanted to tan, so we went to the pool. By 10:00 it was well over 90 degrees with the sun out. I got bored pretty quickly with tanning and went to run my time trial.

The streets looked pretty crowded, so I decided to run on the beach. I jogged the one mile I was going to run to make sure the course was clear and about two more after that. I switched into my racing shoes, stretched and headed out. By this time, it was nearing noon and close to 100 degrees. There was a nice wind on the beach, though, which helped a little. But it was still HOT.

I ran the first 800 meters in 2:24, which was a lot slower than I wanted. I felt like I was barely moving because I was running into the wind. I looped around and headed back and immediately felt better. I kicked hard at the end and had plenty left to come in at 4:40.

I wasn´t thrilled with the time, but given the heat, the win, and the sand (which is not ideal running terrain), I was satisfied. I jogged back to the pool and cooled off and stetched. I was finally able to convince her to get lunchand so we hit up the same pizzeria from dinner. Since our room has a fridge, we were able to save our leftovers for afternoon snack! Hooray!

The rest of the afternoon was spent on the beach and walking around town. They have a market type area with lots of cool stuff, so I was able to buy some presents for my parents and friends.

Before heading to dinner, we hit up an internet cafe to check our email. About a week ago I had gotten a note on facebook from a girl I hadn´t talked to in a year or so saying something about Phish getting back together. I hear a lot of rumours about this, and did a quick search and didn´t find anything about it and forgot about it. Well, much to my surprise, I had another note from the same girl, in all caps this time, telling me that it was true, Phish had officially announced tour dates. I was still skeptical but I follwed a link she had sent me and sure enough, the boys were back. A three night stand at the Hampton Coliseum in March, 2009.

I immediately sent a message to my dad telling him that it was an emergency and he had to call me right away. We were both pretty psyched and put our names in for the lottery for presale tickets for all three nights. I was in a good mood.

After this, I started to really feel the lack of sleep. We decided to try a different restaurant (which turned out to be basically the same) and went back to the room and crashed. We decided that this would be our rest night and we could go out tomorrow.

I woke up around 9:00, late for me, and we got breakfast. Different restaurant, same deal. But no child abuse here. Mondays are my day off from running, but I still wanted to get some exercise. I went for a nice long pool run in the morning. The weather was nice and hot, again, so it was reminiscent of pool running in Tucson in March. The big difference was that this time it was by choice.

In the afternoon, it was pretty cloudly, so we decided to get a few drinks. The bars are even nicer during the day, when youcan look out at the ocean and the big cliffs down the beach. A nice (virgin) fruity coctail is a great touch on a hot afternoon on the beach.

We spent some time at the internet, where I tried to get skype working but failed. It was then time for dinner. We ate at our usual restaurant. I think I had pizza almost every meal. It was astounding. But it was tasty. It was surprising how few international tourists there were. I would say over 90% of the tourists were from Ecuador.

After dinner, we were walking back to the hotel and ran into a guy who Benedicte had met in Coca (the jungle.) This is really random if you think about it, because Coca is literally on the other side of the country and the fact that he was here at the same time as us was really crazy. He said he would try to catch up with us later so we went and found a nice bar. The difference between Sunday and Monday is amazing. A lot of bars didn´t even bother opening and the few that were were sparsely populated at best.

Her friend and his buddies turned up after a few (still virgin) drinks. They were very friendly and invited us to go back to their hotel which had a private beach where they were going to make a bonfire. We decided against it, though. Their place was pretty far away, and it was dangerous late at night, even in cabs, so we stayed.

The one downside of these open air bars is that there are no barthrooms. So, around 11:00, we decided to to head back to the room for a bio-break. We sat around for a while, debating our plans for the rest of the night, and headed out a bit before 12:00. Much to our dismay, things looked pretty dead. We walked a bit further, though, because we could still hear music and see some lights further down.

Being stupid tourists, we were thankful that a local man told us to stop as we were about to walk into the middle of a pretty serious looking fight. One guy broke a bottle on the curb and that was when we turned around. The lights and music turned out to be just a few sketchy looking people milling around. We talked for a few minutes with a very nice local man, named Luis, who told us that it was very dangerous at night when there were no people around. He also had a herd of stray dogs following him, which he assured us had their rabies shots. Luis was a large, black man with a big scar on his forehead. Between him and his dogs, we felt pretty safe. He was even nice enough to walk us back to our hotel. People from the coast are nice.

I just want to take a second to elaborate on that. Both Benedicte and I were really happy we took this trip because we were both starting to think negatively of the people here. The few people who were nice, it turns out, are from other parts of the country than Quito. Basically, it seems that only people from Quito are really unfriendly. Everyone we came in contact with in the coast was incredibly nice. I think this trip has really changed my opinion about Ecuadorian people.

Anyways, we got back to our hotel safe and sound. We were a little bummed that our night to party had gotten cut short, but oh well. I crawled into bed still a bit shaken upand did not sleep very well.

Atacames Part I: Vamos a la Playa

2008-10-09T18:44:00.007-04:00

Driving from Quito to Atacames is a vacation in itself. As with any vacation, it can be a peaceful, quiet time for relaxation or you can find yourself at the mercy of constant annoyances and you want nothing more than to go home.

My flat mate, Benedicte, and I had decided to use this week (her last weekend in Ecuador) to splurge a bit and have a mindless self indulgent weekend at the beach. Ecuador has a good amount of coast with some towns famous for their beauty and atmosphere. María, my homestay mother, recommended that we go to Atacames. It was known to have a bit of a wild reputation, or so says ¨The Lonely Planet,¨ but it´s a touristy destination which means it should be nice.

In our spirit of splurging, we decided to book a room in advance at the Villas Arco Iris, billed in the lonely planet as ¨Atacames´ cosiest destination¨. Sounds good!

I was a little nervous because the trip was basically piggy-backed onto Benedicte´s weel-long Jungle trip. She was scheduled to return to Quito around 5:00am saturday morning, and we were trying to leave before noon. I was worried that this might be cutting it a bit close, especially since she has said that she can´t sleep on buses.

Well, saturday morning rolled around and I slipped out early to put in a few miles. I knew we´d get there after dark, so I had to get my run in early. I came back and had some breakfast and still hadn´t seen Benedicte. Eventually, I knocked on her door and found her half asleep but alive and ready to go.

The bus shedules are pretty hard to figure out, but I was pretty sure there was a bus leaving around 10:30. The trip takes 7 to 8 hours, so that should get us there in time for dinner. We had to hurry to pack, but we eventually made it out in time. We got to the bus terminal around 9:50 and got aboard. Luckily, the bus company we used was one of the nicer ones, and unlike the cheaper buses, it only stopped for gas. Many buses will spend hours circling around Quito calling out their destinations until full. This can get very frustrating.

Unfortunately, we got stuck in a bit of ¨hora pico¨or rush hour and it took us over an hour just to get out of the city. Atacames is a popular destination for Ecuadorians (especially people from Quito and the highlands), so the bus was full with families headed for a weekend at the beach.

The drive, once out of Quito, was reminiscent of the American South West. Soft rolling mountains with stark vegitation and sand dominated the landscape. However, every time I opened my water bottle, there was a hiss and pop that reminded me we were going down.

Within an hour, the mountains had become green. We could have been driving through Western Mass until you looked carefully and saw that most of the vegitation was fern, palm, and other jungly looking plants.

Since the drive was supposed to take 7-8 hours, I decided to tackle listening to the entirety of Phish´s ¨Big Cypress¨Concert, which is no small feat (the band played from midnight until sunrise!) Unfortunately, I don´t have great headphones, so I had to listen at a much higher volume than I would have liked in oder to drown out the loud and incredibly violent spanish movie being shown. I think I probably have irreversable hearing damage.

Anyways, within afew hours, we began to descend really seriously. The enviornment around us became serious jungleas we plunged into a canyon. This was the only part of the ride that I actually enjoyed. We were driving along the wall of a canyon. A few feet to our right was almost a cliff that dropped several hundred feet into the dense jungle and riverbed below. I kept seeing signs that said ¨¡Reduzca Velocidad AHORA!¨(Reduce speed NOW!) and waited for us to go tumbling over the edge. Luckily, we made it.

Once we descended a few thousand feet, we entered the aptly named Cloud Forest, which reduced the view to about 10 feet on either side of the bus. It was at this point, after about four hours of traveling, that the children on the bus began to get antsy. It seemed that we were surrounded by families with little kids as we were pummeled with noise from nearly every direction. A little girl actually began to play the recorder, which happens to be the most shrill and obnoxious instrument ever created. I went on for hours.

Around 3:00, we stopped to get gas. There was a convenience store and fast food place, so we got some chips and candy to keep us occupied. We picked up a few more passengers, including a large black woman who sat across from us. About 30 minutes later, I heard a commotion and loked over to see that she had been carrying a live chicken, held upside down by its legs. And I thought I was uncomfortable!

The only stop we made was in the city of Esmareldas, a port city about 30 minutes north of Atacames. Esmareldas, to be frank, is a pit. It is a dirty and dangerous city. I´m glad we didn´t have to get off the bus. Luckily, though, a lot of other people did, which made the last 45 minutes almost calm.

After seeing Esmareldas, I was a little nervous to see what Atacames would be like. Finally, almost nine hours after leaving Quito, our bus drove up to a seemingly central area. I realized I was still a little anxious. For one, we had forgotten our ¨Lonely Planet¨ book, a travelers bible in Ecuador, and neither of us could remember the exact name of our hotel. Eventually, though, we got off the bus and found someone who knew where we were talking about.

In Atacames, most of the roads are too narrow and crowded for cars, so people get around in suped-up tricycles, which are basically motor cycles with two front wheels and a bench to sit on between them. Kinda cute, actually.

The entrance to our hotel was on the main drag of Atacames, which was a road right along the beach. On one side were scores of touristy stores with $3 tshirts and hemp necklaces and assorted seafood restaurants and pizzerias. On the other side, the beach side, were about 20 similarly designed thatched-roof, open air bars which looked out at the ocean. We were feeling pretty good about our hotel´s location.

We walked down a path through some very jungly plants and trees and came across two rows of secluded cabins. A man with a long mullet approached us and asked if we wanted a room. We followed him to a main lodge with a sitting area, an outdoor dining area, and the check in desk. We explained that we had a reservation, at which point I discovered that my homestay mother, who had made our reservation, did not actually know my name. It was under ¨Taylo¨.

The mullet man showed us to our room and we were amazed. We had the second floor of a cabin, with our own private balcony which looked over a pool, equipped with our own hammock and beach chair. Inside, we had two large bedrooms, a small kitchenette, and a bathroom (with hot water!!). The book had been right. Cosy it was.

We unpacked a bit and headed down the main drag to get some dinner. We ate at a pizza palce which would become our second home. At that point, a few bars were already beginning to get some patrons, so we decided to go back to the room and rest abit before going out.

Having been on various buses for 18 of the last 24 hours, Benedicte was pretty tired. It took all of my convincing and effort just to get her out for a while. We walked down the strip looking for a place that wasn´t too crowded but not totally dead. We settled on one place with no floor, just the sand of the beach, and swings that hung from the ceiling around the bar.

The town is famous for its fruity concoctions, so we both ordered a few (virgin, of course) drinks. They do have really fresh fruit here. The atmosphere on the beach was pretty crazy. Incredibly loud Latin music blasted from every bar and created a cocophony of noise that made it nearly impossible to think.

We made it back to the room around 1:00 or 2:00, with many of the bars still in full swing, and had no trouble getting to sleep.

Wilson.

2008-10-08T10:37:00.003-04:00

I have a ton to say, but first, the most important news possibly of all time:

PHISH - March 6-7-8, 2009. Hampton Coliseum.

The greatest band of all time returns to the stage.

2008-10-03T16:22:00.004-04:00

I´m in a better mood today, though the incredibly slow internet today is seemingly trying to change that.

It was super clear this morning and part of me wanted to blow of work and go run up into the mountains, but I felt a little bit of responsibility, so I didn´t. But you could see all the way to Cotopaxi and the Ilinizas (about 100km away) so it was really nice. The main reason that I felt obligation to go to work today was because yesterday Ligia (our boss more or less, from Sol y Vida) came in with a new girl who was going to start this morning. I would have felt bad abandoning someone on her first day...

Anyways, so I was working in the downstairs big open waiting room area this morning, which is usually really intimidating but wasn´t so bad today. The girl, who turns out to be German and I can´t quite remember her name, actually speaks really good Spanish (she´s been in Ecuador since July), which is really helpful because often times in the downstairs area, parents will ask us things and I usually have no idea what to say. So, it was actually nice to have some company, especially when said company could communicate with the general populus much better than me.

The real point of today, though, was my tempo run. I planned on running the same 4k loop (around la Carolína), but hopefully a good bit faster than last week. Last week I ran 14:14 or about 5:45 pace per mile. My goal for today (which I gave myself the incentive of ice cream if I suceeded) was to go under 14:00. Well, as I set off on my warm up it was really hot. It must have been over 80 degrees. My warmup was a mile, pretty slow, around 7:40. I did a couple of striders and then got ready to head off. The annoying part of this course is that the one really narrow part of the loop is right at the beginning, where it can get a little congested. So, I went out pretty fast and just sort of plowed through a couple of groups of people.

There´s a strange thing about trying to run fast at altitude. The first minute I felt totally solid: really strong and fast. After that I realized I was going too fast and settled into my pace. This is pretty normal for any altitude, but what´s strange is what happens after about 6 or 7 minutes. See, at this point, my mind, instead of focusing on the run, just starts to think of reasons why I should stop. I don´t usually experience this running. I´ll hear a voice in my head say ¨why don´t we just go to this corner, that´s far enough¨ or ¨maybe we should just sprint for another minute and then we can stop!¨ I have never felt such difficulty in simply not stopping.

The only point of reference I had for pace was that at the last corner, before a long straight section, which I had passed it at 10 flat last time. So, I knew that I would have to pass it between 9:40 and 9:45 to make my goal time. As I came close to the corner, I looked at my watch and saw that it read barely over 9:30. I was pretty excited as I was pretty hopeful I was going to do it. The last long, straight section went by like a 100 mile race. Eventually, though, I pulled up to the corner at which I had started and stopped my watch. I looked down and it read 13:49 (5:33 per mile). Solid.

I was feeling pretty good about this, so I stood around and caught my breath and then jogged back. I listened to my new victory-celebration song (Phish´s cover of ¨After Midnight¨ from Big Cypress http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBReuEFy_JI). Check it out.

Since then, I´ve just been refueling and then came down here to the net cafe. I talk to Annie for a while and tried to get her video chat working, which failed :(. But then talked to Pax which actually worked really well, despite a shitty connection. It was good to talk to that kid.

It´s not a perfect connection, but it works okay. I´m going to try and buy a webcam so I can figure out how to do this with other people.

Alright, I´m out of here.

Feel the rhythm

2008-10-02T17:16:00.003-04:00

It´s been a pretty quiet week. I guess that´s to be expected with the only other English speaker gone from our house. Not a bad quiet, just quiet.

I think it´s good to because Benedicte leaves in a week or so and at least now I´ve had some time to get used to the quiet. Maybe someone new will come or maybe not, either way is okay with me.

October has been off to an interesting start. Yesterday, I had a great run. Really top notch. It was my first real ¨long run¨ that I´ve done in 8 months. I say it´s the first real long run not because of distance but because of how I felt. It was actually my third run over 10 miles since I´ve been here, but the first one that didn´t feel either like I was going super slow and not working that hard, or just an extended moderate run.

I set out to run 20k faster than the last time I had run 20k (early January). This run, at sea level, was paced around 7:30, so I figured sub 7:30 was do-able. In general, I really like long runs. I love being able to lock into a rhythm and just go and go and go seemingly forever. However, there´s a big difference between the long runs I did back in Concord and those I do here. My long runs in concord were usually one big loop. Out to Carlisle, to Bedford, and then back to Concord. This was my favorite loop and it worked so well for me as a long run because it was so simple. I only had to make three turns in the whole run, so I was really able to just get into that rhythm and forget about what I was doing.

My long run route for Wednesday was: run to the Parque Carolína. Run around the park. Run aroudn the park. Run around the park. Run around the park. Run back a slightly longer way. Personally, I really hate this kind of looping. For me, having to run the same are twice (or in this case four times) makes it seem infinitely longer. Especially when you have to constantly duck around people and stray dogs, it makes that rhythm really quite ellusive.

But somehow I managed it. I was able to really sink into it for the first time since I´ve been here. I was able to really get out of my body and just sort of watch myself run from above. The results are always tremendous when you have a breakthrough like this. At the halfway mark (10k) my time was 42:04, well under the 7:30 pace that I was aiming for. After my last lap of the park, I was under 7:00 pace, something that was far beyond my expectations. Unfortunately, there are a couple of stop lights between the park and my apartment, so my rhythm was gone. Suddenly I felt the pain of 11 sub seven minute miles and the stiffness and the cramping. Suddenly, I remembered what I was doing and my body wanted no more of it. I ran the last mile in 7:52. (N.B. there is a really long, pretty steep hill, so my last mile is always 30-60 seconds slower than it ought to be, but still, no excuses).

I think that the longer I stay here, the more the little things start to bother me. Things that I used to just brush off as different culture or no big deal, suddenly really piss me off and are incredibly frustrating. One of these things, which I think I´ve mentioned before here, is the people here and their conception of sidewalk ettiquite - or lack there of. I can´t believe it´s that complicated that when you are looking straight ahead and you see someone coming, especially a runner, that you move, just a few feet, you alter your velocity vector just a few few degrees. How fucking hard is that people? The worst is when there´s a group of four or five people, and instead of walking in a clump, they walk in a horizontal line. Why peolpe? ¿Por que? And, similarly, when you run towards one of these lines of people, do they take the half a second to move out of the way or split down the middle? No, they look you right in the eye and just keep on fucking talking to each other.

At first, I felt bad, and I would run around, but now I´ve just gotten sick of it and have no qualms with running right through a group of people. I have a higher velocity than you. You are going to lose this one. People here...

Maybe I´m just in a bad mood now thinking about people who don´t move when I´m running, but I´m honestly not a big fan of the Quiteños. I must first say that everyone that lives in my appartment is incredibly kind and sweet. But outside of those people and a few people from the hospital, most people I´ve had any sort of contact with here are not very friendly.

I honestly think it´s a good thing that I´m so paranoid or I´d probably get a lot more of my stuff stolen. I don´t like it; I don´t like having absolutely no trust for the people here, but that´s what I was told and that´s what I´ve learned is necessary. At first, I thought that people might be exagerating, but then my watch got stolen and my bag almost got stolen. Now, I feel like I´m a stereotypical white person who´s scared of foreigners. Honestly, though, I think if you´re not then you´re going to get walked all over, ripped off, and robbed.

Anyways, I hate to be a negative-nancy, but sometimes I can´t help it. I think I´m going away this weekend and I have my first interval workout on Tuesday. I also have a tempo run tomorrow, so hopefully there won´t be as many people for me to run into...

Ok, it´s time for me to get out of here and finish my yogurt.

Tired

2008-09-29T13:53:00.002-04:00

I woke up this morning feeling pretty lousy. Nevertheless, I got up at the usual 7:00 and ate a nice hearty breakfast of pancakes, yogurt, juice, and bread. I was still feeling pretty sluggish after this, so I laid down for a few minutes to try and rest it off.

I woke up a few hours later feeling only a bit better. I had trouble sleeping the night before and it´s been a pretty tough training week. I guess I´m just over tired.

Yesterday was the big election that has been polluting Ecuador´s TV airwaves since I´ve been here. I don´t really speak enough Spanish to understand the fine points of the election, but basically one side wants a constitutional reform (this is the current president and the seemingly more liberal side) while the other side wants to get rid of the current president and keep the old constitution (this side is managed by the current Mayor of Guayaquil).

Well, the result was sí, or yes, by a pretty hefty margin (something like 65%). I was a little nervous yesterday when a woman in a store told me that there were going to be riots and protests just as in Cuba and Bolivia. I´m really hoping the country doesn´t fall apart. So far, so good (I think).

Benedicte, my flatmate, left last night on a night bus to the jungle. She´s doing a 4 or 5 day trip there with a language school. Apparently they take classes in the morning and do excursions in the afternoon. It sounds pretty cool and I´m going to have her give me the report on it when she gets back. As long as I can still maintain my training there, I think it would be fun. I´d love to see the jungle.

I think that this coming weekend, we´re going to head to the coast for a few days. Benedicte leaves next week, so we figure it´s as good a time as any. I´m not too worried because I´ve now been at 9500 ft or higher for a month. A few days down at sea level will be nice. I can get in some good fast running! And more importantly, relax a bit, enjoy some warm weather, and have a grand ol time.

In other news, I´ve gotten strangely nostalgic for things from home. And they haven´t been the things I would expect like my house or my room. It´s strange little things that I didn´t think about much but were, now that I´m thinking about it, a big part of what I did. Here´s a brief list:

Driving. Though I would never want to drive here (the drivers are absolutely insane!), I really miss driving. I never really realized it until now but just driving around from place to place and listening to music often accompanied by Annie or Duncan or Paxton or whomever was a really relaxing time for me.

Running in Concord. Running here is a huge mixed bag. In one sense, it´s great to have the altitude. A little resistance is really great. On the other hand (and I don´t think this is just Quito) running in cities super sucks. There´s a ton of pollution from big ugly buses, and more importantly a bunch of people who have no sense of sidewalk etiquitte. I´m constantly having to duck into the street or into a bush to avoid plowing over a bunch of slowly meandering Quiteños. Moreover, I also hate having to stop for stoplights which, until I get to the Carolína, is something I have to do pretty often. I really miss some of my routes at home. I miss running on Harrington Avenue, I miss my big triangle of lowell rd, 225, and 62. I miss knowing exactly where I am and exactly what pace I´m running. I also miss running on trails. I miss having people to run with. I miss running with Annie through estabrook or with David around Concord center.

Duncan´s living-room: I was thinking last night about this place. It was honestly one of the first places that I began to miss. It´s a little wierd, but I think it makes sense. So many of my memories over the last few years have taken place in Duncan´s living room. I miss playing rock band with Max and Pax and Duncan and Will and watching ridiculous movies just chilling out and listening to telefon tel aviv.

Elson: For some reason, I really miss Annie´s huge dog, Elson. Perhaps it´s just a manifestation of something that reminds me of her and it´s easier to miss a dog than a person, but either way, I miss you, Elson.

I guess all these things are the kind of things that were really important to me but I never really realized it before. All of these things were a part of my life on a daily level and I guess I took them for granted. Oh well, it´s all good. I´ll be back soon enough.

I miss you Timothy Treadwell

2008-09-28T19:07:00.003-04:00

This morning it was super clear, so Benedicte and I decided to hop over to the TeleferiQo again and admire the views. As expected, it was beautiful. We didn´t do a whole lot of walking, but a lot of sitting and just enjoying the scenery. I decided to do a few striders to see how they felt and to see if I could get a good picture.

After this, we headed into old town Quito, a place that we hadn´t yet been, despite been raved about by the locals. Our taxi driver there was kind of a dick and took us to the wrong place and over charged us. Oh well. It was a little overwhelming at first. There were about a million people in these crowded streets. Needless to say, this was a hands in pockets expeditition.

We saw the one really big church that we came to see and then walked around exploring for a bit. Benedicte was seeming a bit uncomfortable with all of the people (ring any bells, Puerto Rican parade?), so we snagged a cab a got out of there.

We grabbed lunch at the Quicentro (yay pizza hut!), since Maria was out voting and told us she couldn´t make lunch today. We grabbed a cab back to the house and I had just enough time to breathe, lace up my Asics Gel-DS and head out the door.

Inspired by Haile´s unbelievable 2:03:59 (see below), I decided to try a bit of quicker running. I was going to jog to the Parque Carolína (about 1.5 miles) slow, and then run around the park speedy speedy (around 4k), and then cooldown back home. I haven´t done any fast running in about a month, so the fact that I´ve had no speedy runs in my legs and the fact that I´m still up pretty high made me a little dubious. I was hoping to run under 15:00 for the 4k which would be right about 6:00 pace.

I went out hard and fast. I flew by groups of slowly meandering Quiteños shirtless and got a lot of wierd looks. The heat really took its toll on me after about a half mile. I ran under a fountain to cool off.

About 10 minutes into it I started to feel the oxygen. I told my body to go but it just wouldn´t. Faster, Faster! but I got nothing. The last few minutes were pretty brutal. I don´t know my splits or anything, but I imagine I was going over 6:00 pace for the last half mile or so.

I ended up coming in around 14:14 (5:43/mile pace), which I was surprised and happy with. I jogged back to the house aroudn 9:00 pace and retired to my shower feeling satisfied. Not too bad for my first real fast running in a while. I think I´ll do the same run next week and see if it gets any better. I don´t think it´s a matter of pacing it´s just a matter of oxygen.

Because I missed the New England cold SO much... (Finally, a Cotopaxi post!)

2008-09-28T18:02:00.001-04:00

I have never wanted to stop doing something as much as I wanted to stop climbing Cotopaxi at about 3:30am this past Sunday. I remember having an intriguing thought as I stood on the side of a glacier, several miles up in the dark, buckled over with terrible stomache pain. I though: ¨Fuck, I´m actually paying to be here right now.¨

My Cotopaxi expedition began really a few weeks ago when I was talking with my then Spanish teacher about mountains in Ecuador. I had known that I wanted to do some climbing around Ecuador while I was here, but I didn´t really know where to begin. After seeing a few pictures of the nearly perfect conical volcano, I was hooked; it was love at first sight. I had to be there.

Yet, I tamed my enthusiasm for a while. Cotopaxi was a good 10,000 feet taller than any mountain I had ever climbed. It seemed a little bit unreasonable to me at first. Yet, after my running got pretty normal and a pretty sucessful hike around Guagua Pinchincha, which is still a good 6000 feet shy of Cotopaxi, I felt pretty solid in terms of my confidence.

And so, I found myself first in the office of Safari Tours, a guide company recommended to me by my project coordinator. However, Safari Tours seemed a little too touristy for me. The prices were ridiculous and everything was in English (including the people working there), which I took as a bad sign. So, I wandered through the Mariscal, something I hate doing, looking at the several million tour companys, and finally found my way into Ecomontes, a tour company which said it ¨specialized in eco tourism.¨Sounds good.

I immediately felt much better in here. The man started to describe to me the programs they offered and the prices of each. Everyone I had talked to maintained that it was imperative to do an ¨acclimitization hike¨, a hike of a smaller mountain but still tall enough to give your body a day to get used to a much higher altitude and thus much lower air pressure.

I settled on a hike up Pasachoa on Friday, returning to Quito to sleep on friday night and then climbing Cotopaxi saturday night-sunday morning. A note about this: since Cotopaxi is a glacier, it has to be climbed in the middle of the night when the snow is hard. During the day, with the equatorial sun high in the sky, the snow actually softens and can create large gaps in the ice where it is possible to fall through the ice and die. This is why we hike at night.

Anyways, a few weeks went by and a few days before I was supposed to depart, I headed back to Ecomontes to get my gear. I had to be fitted for cramp-ons, snow boots, lots of warm clothes, special wind proof glasses, etc. When I arrived, my friend there told me that apparently another couple was climbing this weekend and I could team up with them for an acclimitization hike nearer to Cotopaxi, which would thus allow me to sleep up at a much higher altitude than Quito. To be perfectly honest, the only thing that I was thinking about at this point was how I was going to keep my weekly mileage up... I figured I could run friday morning before leaving for the acc. hike and then maybe Sunday afternoon when I got back. So, it was all good.

Friday morning, I indeed went for a nice little run and then headed to ecomontes with all my stuff. I was a little anxious because the place was closed and there was nobody there when I got there, but I got an ice cream across the street and just chilled. Eventually, my friend showed up and a few minutes later, I met my guide, Henry. Henry (for some reason pronounced Ken-Jee), was a great guy right off the bat. He spoke great English but I tried to just talk to him in Spanish when I could.

We loaded up our 4x4 and headed out of Quito. Pretty quickly, he was able to point out the first mountain we would be climbing, Rumiñahui. Rumiñahui has three jagged peaks with the highest around 4800 meters.

We stopped in the small town of Machachi and picked up a bunch of food for the trip (juice, yogurt, cheese, bread, etc), and then headed into Cotopaxi National Park. Unfortunately, the weather was terrible when we first arrived. We literally drove into a cloud. After about 45 minutes on one of the worst roads I´ve ever encountered, we arrived at Paja Blanca, a small restaurant and set of Cabañas (little cabins), where we would be sleeping that night.

I figured it was a good sign that as soon as we walked into the restaurant, everyone there, owners and other guides, seemed to know and like Henry. I was feeling better every second until it started to rain.

After a few minutes, the rain turned to a torrent which turned to hail which at that point included some of the loudest thunder I had ever heard. I was doubtful that we were going to get our acc hike in. However, as I was told, the weather up high changes quite rapidly, so as the rain started to die down, we hopped back in the 4x4 and drove a few minutes up the road to a parking lot where would begin our hike.

The landscape was otherworldly as we drove up. We were in the middle of a huge flat rocky plain surrounded by these enormous jaggy and often snow topped peaks. The hail had left a nice white dusting on everything, as if it weren´t wierd enough.

We started our hike on the side of a lagoon. What began as a flat walk, became a relatively steep uphill climb. My guide didn´t seem to care to much about the idea of a trail, and at this point, most of the terrain was tall grass and bushes, so we just sort of pushed our way through.

After about an hour, we reached the top of a bluff where my guide informed me (in spanish) that I was his first client who had ever made him sweat. Looking back behind us, it was true; we had come quite a ways in that first hour (up and across).

We made our way then across a ridge, which was possibly the most beautiful part of the entire hike. We carefully made our way across a razor thin ridge with wild cows and horses on one side and a drop of about 1000 meters straight down on the other side. The storm had receded and you could just about see all of Cotopaxi across a long open expanse. It was stunning.

After the ridge, the hike became really difficult. Not only was I starting to notice the lack of oxygen, but the trail became much steeper and much sandier. For about an hour we were basically climbing in a sand box. You would take a big step up and slide down about 80% of the headway you just made. This made the going tough and frustrating. After another half hour or so, we eventually made it out of the sandbox and to the final part which was a steep steep rocky climb.

At this point, the altitude was really getting to me. We were well above 4500 meters at this point, and I had never been that high before. To add to the fun of things, it also began to snow. And it was pretty serious snow. The winds whipped and the snow blew and somehow even in my oxygen deprived, shaky legged state, I made it to the top.

It was quite a summit. The clouds had moved which left an amazing view of Cotopaxi to one side. To the other side, you could see the other peaks of Rumiñahui. The coolest part about this, was that on one side of the mountain, it was perfectly clear, and on the other side, there was simply a pool of mist.

Needless to say, going back down was a lot easier. In fact, the ever so frustrating sand box part was actually kind of fun on the way down, as you kind of skiied through the sand. Woo hoo!

When we got back to the ridge, the weather had worsened and we found ourselves ¨en un nube¨(or in a cloud). You couldn´t see more than about 10 feet in any direction, which, for anyone afraid of heights, is probably a good thing!

Once we finally reached the bottom, I was tired but feelin confident. If I could do that sandbox part, how hard could Cotopaxi really be? Then I realized that it was another 1200 meters taller and I thought, maybe I´m getting in over my head. But then again, if you don´t get over your head, you´d never get your hair wet. And that´d just be gross.

I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening eating and resting. I met a big group of travelers who were all in their lower 20s I´d say. They were an interesting group of people. I believe they were American, Irish, and Australian. We played poker together until about 8:00 when we all decided to head back to our cabins.

I did not sleep very well that night. I don´t know if it was the altitude or my nerves, but somehow I found myself feeling really sick and not being able to sleep much. I was really hoping I would be able to get some rest the next day.

Well, I woke up feeling fine the next morning, so I was optimistic. We had breakfast and then drove to the front of the park to pick up the other mountain guide and the American couple who were supposed to accompany us on Rumiñahui. Luckily, the couple actually spoke very good Spanish (not common for Americans), since the woman had been working here in Ecuador and the man had been in the Peace Corps in El Salvador several years back. Though they did speak with terrible American accents.

They were in their late 20s and really quite nice. We sort of got to no each other a bit as we drove out to the base of Cotopaxi. Our guide explained to us that today we would be climbing up to the base camp and settling in and then learning to use all of the snow and ice gear. We would try to get to sleep sometime in the late afternoon, since we would have to get up around midnight to begin the summit.

We parked the car in a pretty large parking lot and looked up at a tiny yellow dot on the side of this enormous volcano. There´s the refuge!

The hike up to the refuge was the only hike that I really did not enjoy at all. Almost the entire trail was sandy (like the sand box section of Rumiñahui), and to make matters worse, we had to carry all of our gear and food that we would need for the next 24 hours, which added up to a lot of weight. It was not a whole lot of fun.

Eventually, though, we made it up to the refuge. The refuge is a small, two storey building, with the bottom being occupied by kitchens and tables and the top by the most efficiently used stacking of beds I have EVER seen.

We staked out a few beds and found a few closets which you simply occupy and then lock (you have to bring a lock). We sat around for a while, ate, and rested from the morning´s hike. Aroudn 3:00, we walked about 45 minutes out to the glacier to learn how to use the crampons and snow axes.

It was at this point that the man from the couple told us that he had broken his tibia a few months ago and didn´t think that he was going to be able to do this. To climb with crampons requires a lot of trust in the strength of your ankles and a lot of twisting in awkward directions. Needless to say, he wasn´t feeling up to putting his ankle and leg at that much of a risk.

We spent about half an hour just discussing this out in the cold, which kind of pissed me off because I was tired and we could have done the talking back in the warm lodge... but oh well.

When we got back to the refuge, we ate a quick dinner and then headed upstairs to sleep. It was around 6:00 by the time we got there, which would allow me about 4 and a half hours of sleep.

Sleep would not really be the correct term here. Rest, would be more like it. Wheb you are in a room with 30 or 40 other people all quite close to you, it´s pretty hard to sleep. People are constantly rolling, snoring, talking, grunting, getting up to pee. It´s basically impossible to really sleep.

Around 11:30, people started getting up. Most people would leave between 12:00 and 12:30, but since my guide said I had done really well on the acclimitization hike, we would leave at 1:30. So, with one theoretical hour of rest-sleep left, all of the freaking Germans got up and started stomping around in their heavy boots, shining their headlamps in my eyes.

After about 15 minutes of this, I decided it wasn´t worth it and just got up. I went down to the lower section where I found Henry and we had a pretty big meal. We just sat around and talked for a while before getting dressed. One last trip to the bathroom and we were on our way.

As we left the refuge, we could see Quito, glowing, in the distance. It was quite something.

The first 45 minutes I was antsy and the seemingly funeral march pace seemed insufferable. However, Henry insisted that we start off slow. We quickly caught up to the American-Irish-Australian contingent, and so we had to slow our pace even more. Eventually, the red rocks began to turn into red rocks and snow and then red rocks and ice, until eventually we stopped. Time to put on those crampons!

We strapped up our crampons and then Henry tied a rope to me and to himself. On the ice, everyone has to be tied together, in case of a fall or slip. To my great delight, we were able to set off before the others. We plunged forward, into the darkness.

Up ahead of us, we could see tiny flickering lights in the distance, other groups who had started earlier. Despite what seemed like a pretty slow (but still very tiring) pace to me, we caught up with most of these lights within an hour or so.

The climbing was not like any hiking I had ever done. It was physically and mentally demanding. We were climbing up a steep sheet of ice several miles up. A poor step and not imbedding all of my crampons in the ice could lead to a broken ankle or worse.

About an hour and a half into the glacial climb, I started to feel really bad stomache cramps. Now, as a distance runner, I´m pretty used to feeling wierd, painful things after you´ve been asking a lot of your body for a long time. But this was different. After maybe 15 minutes I was in really terrible pain. I was having to stop every few minutes not out of muscle tiredness or oxygen problems, but because of my stomache. I was afraid to drink the water, thinking that maybe that´s what had caused my problem, and so I continued to deteriorate.

All of my memories from the hour between 3 and 4 are hazy. I remember being in terrible agony and thinking ¨Why the fuck am I here?¨There were a few times when I very seriously thought about turning back. I really didn´t think I was going to make it to the summit. But, as Kanye says, ¨to me, giving up´s way harder than tryin´¨ I forged on.

Around 4:30, I was having to stop so often that Henry said, ¨Ok, we will take a break up on that ledge and decide if we want to continue.¨ I knew that I wanted to keep going, I just didn´t know if it was physically possible. I thought about having to tell all of the people who knew I was attempting this hike that I didn´t make it, that I had to go back. I hate that kind of thing.

When we got up to the ledge, I finally decided to just man up and try and deal with it. I asked Henry and he said it was ok, so I walked about 50 feet away from everyone, dug a little toilet, and went to the bathroom. Let me remind you, that we were now probably over 18,000 feet up, in the middle of the night, on the side of a glacier. It was COLD.

But it was absolutely the right descision. I immediately started to feel better. For anyone who knows anything about the Ideal Gas Laws (PV=nRT), when the pressure around you lowers, and the pressure inside you stays the same, any gas will feel like it´s at a much higher pressure. That was a poor explanation, but if you think about it, it makes sense.

To make things better, the sun was also beginning to brighten things up. I felt that things were really beginning to turn a corner. We continued up and up and up and it seemed like every horizon brought another vertical wall of ice. I was getting really tired of this.

At this point, my stomache was feeling fine but I was REALLY feeling the altitude. Luckily, we had caught up to another group in front of us, so we were going super slowly.

The last part of the climb is the steepest (wonderfuly, right?). I found myself trying to trick my feet into continuing. Telling them ¨Ok, a few more steps and then we´ll stop¨ over and over and over. I found myself in a rhythm of One, two, three, four, breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe, repeat.

About 100 meters below the summit, the sun had risen and the air was clear and it was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. I could see the ocean, over 100 miles away. I could see Quito and the mountains around it. It was a truly breath taking moment (I was indeed taking a lot of breaths). Unfortunately, Henry told me not to stop long as we were almost there. I didn´t take any pictures.

Somehow, I made it. I didn´t even know I had gotten there until I saw a couple of other people
cheering and waving. Unfortunately, we were en un nube otra vez! We were in the middle of a snow cloud. The winds whipped at us and you couldn´t see too far. But it was still a feeling of accomplishment. Super dooper dooper high!

The climb back down was actually pretty stressful. Unlike the hikes I´d done before, here you really had to be careful or you could get quite hurt. We took our time, stopped a lot to take pictures and rest. The hardest part was over. I knew that for sure.

Eventually we made it to the rocks. We de-cramponed ourselves and began the last 30 minutes back to the refuge. It seemed almost impossible that it was only about 9:00am when we got there. To me, it seemed like it was still saturday. Like we had been awake for 40 hours (which we just about had...)

In the lodge I was greeted by the one group who had come down before us and the many who had turned back. All in all, out of the 20 or 30 people who attempted the summit that Sunday morning, 8 made it to the top (not including guides).

The one really bad thing that I didn´t plan for was what to wear after the climb. Between the snow and my sweat, all of my clothes were really wet and there was no fire in the furnace now. Oh no! I basically sat shivering in the refuge for I don´t even know how long until the couple came back from their morning hike and spotted me some clothes. Thank G-d for really nice people!

I realized eventually that we still had a multi hour hike back down to the parking lot and I was not happy about this. But with a warm pair of socks and some soup, I was ready for anything.

The way down really wasn´t as bad. It was a lot of skiing through the sand, and my pack was a lot lighter (no more food to carry!). I got to the car in one piece.

As we loaded up the car, I climbed in the front seat, took off my boots and socks, rubbed my feet, and promtly fell asleep. I don´t know how but somehow I managed to sleep most of the way back to Quito, despite the first hour or so on terrible, terrible roads.

Some documentary once said that people climb mountains because afterwards they feel like the have conquered them, that they have displayed their dominance over nature. I couldn´t feel more the opposite. After climbing Cotopaxi, I stand humbled in the face of nature. I have in no way conquered this mountain. If anything, this mountain has simply reinforced its massive dominance over me. I stand humbled in the face of nature.

The Emporer Strikes Back

2008-09-28T16:57:00.002-04:00

While most of us were asleep this morning, history was being made in Berlin. Haile Gebrselassie became the first human being to run a marathon (26.2 miles) in under 2 hours and 4 minutes. Haile bested his previous world record of 2:04:26 to a truly spectacular 2:03:59. For those of you who don´t know the paces, that´s about 4:44 per mile. Wow!

Some people were giving Haile a hard time after he decided not to participate in the Olympic Marathon in Beijing. Haile cited the air quality as his reason for not participating, along with his asthma. However, some wondered whether Haile had been mistake when Kenya´s Samuel Wanjiru one the race in an awe-inspiring 2:06:32 despite terrible conditions

Haile, at 35, is, as he said after the race, ¨fighting against his age.¨ With London now 4 years away, I wonder if he´ll be able to truly be in contention in that race, at the age of 39.

However, after seeing today´s performance and that one more Haile-smile, if anyone can do it, Haile can.

Thank G-d for Asics

2008-09-24T16:44:00.005-04:00

I almost got robbed today. I say almost because I´m a runner. This should be a warning to any potential robbers out there not to rob skinny looking guys (or girls) in asics.

I was walking through the Mariscal, the touristy section of Quito, which is known for being plauged with robberies, even during the day. I usually avoid this area on principal and on the aforementioned fact. However, I heard there was a good English bookstore in the center, so I decided to risk it.

Now, before you hear the story, you must understand that there are two types of people who try to rob you in Ecuador. There are ladrones, which most literally translates to the English word mugger. These are people who will come up to you at night with knives or guns. Then there are people who I don´t really know what the word is in spanish but are basically con-artists. These people don´t carry weapons but simply try and get you to give them your stuff willingly. This is what I had to deal with today.

So, the story begins as I was walking through the Mariscal and stopped to find out what street I was on. I set my bag down next to me and pulled out a map. This was my first mistake. A lot of people had told me that if you take out a map you will probably get robbed. I assumed that they were exagerating, but apparently not. As I´m looking at the map, a man walks by and spills some nasty cheese sauce all over my favorite shirt and one of my few pairs of pants (luckily, tomorrow is laundry day!).

I think, shit, today is not my day. I have cheese sauce all over my pants. This should have been a red flag but I was too flustered by the idea of having dirty pants to make the connection. The man apologized and handed me a pile of napkins. As I looked down to wipe off the mess, someone yelled at me in spanish and pointed at a taxi which was beginning to pull away. I immediately noticed that my bag was no logner next to me and made the connection. I took off.

I must have sprinted a few hundred meters to catch up with the taxi before I could smack its windows and make it stop. I pulled the door open and saw the man who had spilled his cheese sauce on me. He, of course, pointed in the opposite direction, trying to suggest that the man who had really robbed me was going the other way. After a few seconds, I realized, there had been another man in the taxi, who was now running off down the street in the opposite direction.

Having caught my breath from the chase of the taxi, I was ready for my second interval of the day. Again, I took off. The man must have had a 10 second lead on me. About a 60 second 440 later, I pulled up next to him, told him he was a whore in Spanish, and tripped him. As he went down, I pulled my knee up and smacked him clear in the nose. Triumph.

In perfect Spanish, I knelt down over his now bleeding face and said ¨Si trata robarme otra vez, va a matarte, putita.¨ (If you try to rob me again, I will kill you.) I picked up my bag and jogged back down the street where I found the bookstore I was looking for. Full of adrenaline.

Other than that, my day has actually been pretty good. I was able to get a bunch of interesting looking books and I had a great run (after the aforementioned mini interval workout). It was the longest run I´ve done since February, about 10.5 miles. It was super hot, so the pace was a little slow (7:15), but it was all right.

Also, I need to write an entry about the Cotopaxi hike from this past weekend, but right now I´ve had about enough excitment for today and I don´t have enough money to stay here much longer, so I´ll try and do it tomorrow or something.

All in all, I think the lesson learned today is don´t try to rob someone who looks faster than you if you´re not armed. I guess he couldn´t see my super jacked thighs through the cheese-sauce-stain on my jeans. Better luck next time.

Te Siento Cerca

2008-09-17T17:51:00.002-04:00

I´m sitting in a cafe munching down a whole bag of these DELICIOUS cookies and drinking a big calorie-filled fanta. I just ran the longest I´ve run since my injury and, needless to say, I´m hungry!

I almost didn´t even run today because the last few runs have gone pretty poorly, but I´m pretty glad I did now. I ran about 10 miles in 67:42. The best part was that I had no idea how fast I was going (since my watch got jacked) and I had thought I was going a lot slower. I felt really comfortable basically the whole run. I made sure to eat a whole lot today and not walk too much so that I didn´t run out of gas like my run yesterday.

Anyways, I felt really comfy and then I even had room to push a bit on the last big uphill and straightaway toward our house. It was one of those good runs that makes you think maybe I will feel like an athlete again soon (knock knock knock).

I´m trying to get some mileage into the beginning of this week because this weekend I´m climbing Cotopaxi! I´m actually really excited. My plans have changed a bit (for the better, I think), where now I´m doing my acclimitization hike near Cotopaxi and then spending Friday night at a refuge at like 15,000 feet. So, that should make the climb a bit easier. The actual climb will take place starting aroudn midnight on Saturday night-sunday morning. The summit should take 7 or 8 hours with the hike down taking only 2 or 3.

In other news, work at the hospital is going pretty well. Today, there weren´t a whole lot of kids there, so we were sent up to the floor of kids who were too sick to come down to the play room. It was pretty intense; this a a really poor hospital and there are some kids who are in really bad shape. Some look like accident victims with lots of burns and such and others look like abuse victims, with broken noses and broken legs and arms. It´s quite sad.

Anywho, on a brighter note, it´s been really nice weather here today. Yesterday it POURED for hours (leaving me no choice than to become a drowned rat walking home from the bakery). But today it´s been sunny and not too hot all day. The weather here is nuts. It´s basically impossible to predict (which is probably why the weather.com forecast always just says ¨rain¨). It will be 50 and cloudy when you wake up, and by lunch time its 80 and sunny. It´s always dry, though, which can be nice, but is also means you have to drink about 4 liters a day (especially with the altitude as well).

I´m getting a bit of a tan! Even with SPF 30, that direct angle with the sun is pretty brutal.

Meanwhile, apparently Pandora (online radio) only works in the U.S. Bummer.

Once A Loper

2008-09-14T11:39:00.017-04:00

I haven´t updated this in a while, so I guess I should have a good bit to say. I just finished my first (somehwhat) full week at the hospital, whiched ended up being a lot better than I expected. It was actually really nice to work on the Ellison 18 kind of floor because, even in a few days, you begin to get to know each kid. It´s pretty nice.

First of all, this is a picture of the kind of service I get here at my homestay (parents take notice). Not only is my laundry done and brought back to my room, it is even decoratively arranged.

I´ve been running pretty steadily for the last week or so. I´m running 6 days a week now, which so far feels okay. This week I´m putting in about 30 miles, so I´m pretty happy with where that is and how I feel. The pace is definitely getting easier to maintain the longer I stay up in the mountains. I´ve also added my PT and core back into my daily routines, which I didn´t do last week while I was getting adjusted. Other than plank, I´m already at about the same level I was before I left for my core and PT. Also, I find myself doing a TON of walking here. Benedicte and I walk to work each morning, which is about 90 minutes round trip, and then I usually also head to the park or internet afterwards. So, in general, I´m getting about 2-4 hours of nice walking every day. This can´t be bad for my legs OR my lungs, so I´m glad it works out well.

These past few days, I´ve been traveling a bit. On thursday after work, Benedicte and I took a bus to Baños de Agua Santa (literally baths of holy water), a town about 4 hours south of Quito which is a big tourist destination with lots of hiking, climbing, and several (hot and cold) natural volcanic baths.

The trip there was much more eventful than I had hoped for. Being relative n00bs to traveling in Ecuador, the bus system out of Quito was really overwhelming. Unfortunately, we got on the lesser quality bus to Baños, which stopped more frequently, and was generally less classy. The ncie thing about travel in South America is that it is ung-dly cheap. Our 4 hour trip to Baños cost us USD$3.00. At some point during the bus ride (around the town of Ambato, which I now have a permanant grudge against), my running watch fell down while I was sleeping and someone behind me walked off the bus with it. It bothers me that I have to be so distrusting of the locals here, and I was trying not to be, but this just reaffirms my distrust. Oh well.

Once we got to Baños, things were pretty nice. We arrived after dark on thursday night and took a cab to the Hostal de Eden (recommended by the Lonely Planet book, our traveler´s bible). The accomodations were actually really nice for a whopping $7.00 per night. We had comfortable beds, TV, a bathroom with hot water (though it wasn´t on the first day), and the location was pretty central. Though, everything in this small city was within a 10 minute walk of anything else.

When we got there, we were both hungry and decided to grab some dinner. We spent a few minutes wandering around looking for one of the restaurants recommened by the Lonely Planet, but eventually were hungry enough that we just walked into a pizza joint. The food was great and cheap: about $4.00 for a pretty big veggie pizza. The food didn´t taste like regular american pizza, but had a different sauce and much more spicing (I think it must have been cilantro).

Here is the big Cathedral in town all lit up at night:

We basically called it a night at that point and headed to bed after watching some Spanish TV. The next morning, we woke up pretty early since we wanted to do some hiking. We got breakfast, again, really cheap and good (<2.00>

And so, Benedicte and I set off on our hike. The trails around Baños are truly spectacular, but are SO poorly marked. It took us over an hour just to find the trailhead. In a town that is probably only one or two square miles, this should not happen.

Anyways, the first part of the hike was really beautiful. It was a pretty steep and narrow trail that led up to the Bella Vista, a point on top of a ridge where a large cross stood over the city. Along the trail, there were lots of little vistas where one could peak out and see the whole city tucked between the huge mountains on either side. The higher you go the more breathtaking it was.

Actually, though, the most amazing thing for me was what I assume was some sort of sports team that was doing repeats of this hill (running up and running back down). There must have been about 30 or so teenagers in uniforms that passed us going up and then again going down. Again, this was a steep trail which climbed probably 500 or 1000m.

From the spot with the cross, the view was specatacular. Not only could you see the whole city, but you could see mountains probably 100km away. After resting a bit at the top, we decided to hike along a trail which followed a ridge along the top of several mountains with views of the big Volcano towering over the city.

Again, this trail was pretty steep and at times very narrow and poorly maintained. We ended up climbing at a similar pace as a few Americans who were hiking the same trail. Eventually we came to a building in a clearing, which we realized was a Hotel! It looked really beautiful, with pools and jacuzzis on the roof overlooking the city some 1000 meters below. Too bad it was more than $7.00 per night!

We continued along the trail until we came to a small settlement of local people who lived up in the mountains. There arragements seemed very poor and basic, but they were very nice and greeted us and wished us well.

At some point near here, we (us and the American couple) took a wrong turn and somehow ended up in a cow pasture. For some reason, the American husband just kind of wandered off, so Benedicte and I ended up finding the trail with the American woman but then could not find her husband. We waited for a few minutes with her, but as it started to rain, we decided we ought to head down. As we were talking about how strange it was that the man had simply wandered off, the woman as well just kind of wandered off. How bizzare. We waited a few minutes and then just told one of the locals to tell them that we had headed down.

The descent trail was probably the steepest trail we encountered. It actually hurt the knees it was so steep. To add to the strangeness of this whole experience, about 200 meters down the trail, a cow stood, tethered to a tree, in the middle of the path. This was a narrow path with a barbed wire fence on one side and very dense jungle vegitation on the other. We waited about 10 minutes to see if it would move and eventually tried tugging on his rope. With sucess, the cow jumped over the fence and back into the pasture where he belonged and we continued our descent.

Overall, the hike took about 5 hours and was not easy. We had eaten lunch on the hike, so we spent the afternoon just relaxing and doing some shopping. I purchased a bootleg copy of Batman Dark Knight (El Caballero Oscuro) for all of $1.00. This is really a Jew´s paradise.

Also, one thing to note. Guinnea Pig (or Cuy, here) is considered a delicacy here in Ecuador. Personally, I´m a little turned off by the presentation:

Eventually, after my bad run that morning, I convinced myself to try to run again. I decided not to run in the city but instead take a trail leading out into the Andes, hoping it wouldn´t be too steep. The run was beautiful. One of the most beautiful I have ever been on. Really really jaw dropping. I´m hoping to write a more detailed report about this trail later when I have time, so stay tuned.

After that, we had some dinner at a local restaurant. We happened to run into two i-to-i people who were working in Tena (jungle) and just happened to be visiting Baños at the same time. Really wierd coincidence. They told us some funny stories about the jungle and then we headed back to bed.

Yesterday morning, we woke up early and headed to the famous baths, hoping to beat the crowds. Maybe it gets even more crowded, but by 8:00 there were already a lot of people there. The baths are really nice. They look super dirty, but it´s simply because there´s a lot of minerals in the water (which are said to have medicinal purposes). The hot water flows directly from the ground from the underground volcanic pools and is piped into pools. Also, the pools are right next to a 100 meter waterfall. It´s a really nice setting and a great way to start the day.

After this, I headed out to run again on the same trail. I continued farther than I had on the day before. This was one of the few runs I´ve had recently where I found myself saying ¨Oh, well I guess I can go a little bit longer than I had said I was going to.¨ It was that beautiful. There were some really steep climbs and some rocky parts and at one point I had to ford a small river, but all in all, it was amazing.

On the way back, I saw a man bungee jumpng off a bridge 100 meters above the rapids of the river before. Wow.

As I said before, the town is pretty touristy, so there are lots of nice spas and things. I found one right down the street offering Deep Sports Massages for next to nothing, so I decided to indulge myself before I headed back to Quito. It was really good to get some of the tension out of my muscles before what is probably going to be, a hard week, physically.

After this, I packed up my stuff and ran down to the bus station to catch a bus to Quito. I was sure, this time, not to take Transporte Amazonas (remember that!). Instead, I took Transporte Baños, which was a much nicer experience. The bus stopped many fewer times, had a bathroom, and just felt a lot nicer. The trip out of Baños was beautiful, since it was still light (the sun had set by the time we got here on the way), so there were a lot of beautiful views of the mountains and valleys and such.

On the way over, we got a great view of Cotopaxi, the mountain I am set to climb this weekend, but unfortunately, it was too cloudly to see it on the way back. Bummer.

Anyways, the return trip was uneventful and I got back to my house in time for dinner. All in all, it was a fun trip, despite the watch being stolen. Baños is a really nice town and the nicest part was that it felt a lot safer than Quito. I never felt like I was going to get mugged (Wow, what a novel concept!).

Ok, well I have to go eat lunch now as this has taken quite a while. I will try and update some more this week.

Also, one final note, I learned that the word for ¨runner¨in Norwegian is basically the English word Loper (one who lopes). I don´t know about you, but I think being a loper is a pretty sweet title.

Subir

2008-09-09T14:38:00.003-04:00

Today was Benedicte and my first day at the hospital. Technically, it should have been yesterday, but due to some unforseen troubles with the organizer of our program, today was the day. We showed up at the Sol y Vida office and waited for the organizer (whose name I´m not sure of) to tell us what to do. I don´t think she likes us very much because she was talking in Spanish to another person there (I dont think she knew I could understand her) and was saying how she was annoyed that we were there and why did she need to show us around again... Uh oh.

Anyways, it turned out that the people we are working with are all very nice, so it´s ok. We don´t really ever have to talk to that woman... We started out in the big open waiting room area, where we will work on mondays and fridays. This was really intimidating and overwhelming for me. Basically, we had a table with a bunch of toys and books and things and kids and some mothers would come over to use it. It wasn´t that nice for us though, because the kids we usually with their parents, so they weren´t very social. It was kind of awkward to just sit and watch the kids play.

But after a few minutes, the same organizer woman came down and told us to go up to the fourth floor, where the long term patients were housed. We spent the rest of the day in a big play room with lots of children. This was actually a lot nicer. There were a lot of really nice nurses who introduced us to some of the kids and we basically spent the morning coloring and playing with blocks.

All in all, I think it´s going to be a good experience. I´m hoping that we can also do some more medically relivant things, but I guess we´ll see.

I also just paid my Cotopaxi guide, so I´m officially going to climb next weekend (9/20-21). I´m pretty pumped.

Super Dooper High

2008-09-07T14:50:00.016-04:00

So, I have a while here again, so I´m going to upload some more pictures. I haven´t taken many other than today, when I took quite a few. So first, here are a few from a few days ago.

This is the view from our dining room. There´s a nice little balcony where there are often hummingbirds and a nice view of the Northern part of the city.

I´m not sure if you can see this well, but to show Ecuador´s technological status, here is a BETA cassette player that´s in my room. Very classy.

This morning was pretty exciting. Benedicte and I decided to head over to the TeleferiQo, the big tourist attraction in Quito. The TeleferiQo is a multimillion dollar cable car that goes up the side of part of Ruca Pinchicha, a pretty sizeable mountain on the North side of Quito.

We arrived pretty early, to unknowingly beat the crowd, so we got basically right on the cable car. It´s a pretty nervewracking ride if you don´t like heights or rickety machinary. The ride takes about ten minutes and leaves you at a plateau about 80% of the way up Ruca Pinchicha. The altitude here is about 4100 meters, or about 13400 feet. It´s actually quite a noticable difference from Quito, which is about 2900 meters, or 9500 feet.

This is a shot from the start of the TeleferiQo. As you can see, Quito is already pretty far down!

Once we got to the top of the TeleferiQo, we sort of explored the area up there. It was really pretty already, but I wanted to explore the mountains some more than just the few minutes worth of trails that were inside the official TeleferiQo zone. So, we walked over to a barbed wire fence (which everyone seemed to be ignoring), and past the sign which warned that we were no longer under TeleferiQo security, and headed into the Andes.

We walked past a place where you could rent horses and there were still a good amount of people around us, so we felt pretty safe. We had heard some people talk about robberies happening up in the hills, so we were a little cautious.

After about a kilometer, it was just us, but the area was very open, so we still felt pretty comfortable. The trail was well walked but very steep at points. The added bonus of being 14000 feet up took a pretty serious tole on our staminas. We stopped to rest every few minutes.

One thing that was really cool to see were the airplanes taking off from the Quito airport. Keep in mind that Quito is 2900 meters above sea level, and the planes coming into the city were a good ways BELOW us. It was quite something.

Here I about a kilometer before we turned around. This was one of the only times you could see the top of the Volcan as it is usually surrounded by clouds.

Eventually we came to the crest of a hill and saw a person just sort of sitting there and looking a bit sketchy, so we decided to head back. At this point, though, we were probably about 85% of the way up the trail to the summit of Guagua Pinchincha, so I would estimate that we climbed about 1000 meters.

Here is my flatmate, Benedicte, near the top of Guagua Pinchincha. It was pretty high up!

The walk back down was, needless to say, a lot easier. We took the TeleferiQo back to Quito and that was that. All in all, it was a very tiring experience.

Lunch and some relaxing and then I willed my legs to take me for a run. I ran the same loop I have run now for the past five days (down to the Parque Carolína and back). I felt surprisingly good (maybe all the time up at that higher altitude did me some good?), so I did a bit of fast running to test out my lungs and legs. I ran nice and easy down to the Park and then did two pretty quick miles around the park (around 6:20 and 6:10). Again, I think the rule of 60-90 seconds per mile slower than effor applies here because I felt like I was running more like 5:00 effort.

Now, I´m in the internet cafe down the street and I think I may go buy a whole loaf of bread to refuel from all of the calories I´ve burned today! Wahoo!

Picturas!

2008-09-05T10:24:00.009-04:00

Greetings! I finally figured out how to upload pictures, so to start let me explain a few of these:

This is a shot from the first plane ride. I just thought it was cool.

Here is a picture that tries to capture the sunset over the Andes from my flight to Quito. I don´t know if you´ll be able to really see what it is, but I thought I would at least try.

Again, this looks really dark on this computer so I don´t know if it will work, but this is a shot of Quito from the air when we flew in. The city is laid out like a long, narrow rectangle because of the mountains on either side.

This is part of my room. As you can see, it´s very nice and quite well furnished.

Another shot of my room. My bed is HUGE!

This is the view from my window this morning. As you can see my house is pretty close to the mountains. In the mornings there are usually a lot of clouds that hover around the mountains. It can be quite stunning.

This is a shot from the roof of our house looking the long way down the city. It is quite sprawling and goes just about as far in the other direction!

Well, that´s all the pictures that I have the time and patience to upload right now. Things here are going pretty well. I´ve had some quite intense spanish classes, about six hours per day, which are really tiring me out. So far I have been pretty lame. I basically get up, eat breakfast, run, rest, eat lunch, go to spanish school, come home and eat dinner and go to sleep at like 9:00. I´m so cool...

I was able to run again yesterday, which went pretty well, around 7:20 pace for the same loop. Again, it went ok until the half mile relatively steep hill at the end of the loop. That is pretty killer. I doubt I was running much faster than 10 or 11 minute pace there.

Lo que bueno is that we have the whole weekend free, so Benedicte and I are going to get to know the city a bit. I think we might go out to a club or bar tonight and then go to the big shopping mall area tomorrow. I need to buy some warmer clothes!

Yesterday, we toured the hospital where we are going to be working. It is very, very poor and disorganized and clear that they could use some help. However, since they are pretty unorganized, it´s unclear exactly what we are going to be doing. We start on monday, so I guess we´ll see then.

I think that my spanish is actually improving quite a bit, even over just a few days. I can basically understand everyone, it´s just difficult for me to speak. Hopefully my speaking will get better so I can really start to communicate with people.

Ok, well I´m going to try and go run again. I will try and update again in the next few days.

Super High!

2008-09-03T09:55:00.003-04:00

Greetings from 10,000 feet above sea level. It´s been a hectic few days but I´ll try and recap the best that I can.

Monday was travel day. I woke up pretty early and didnt end up doing the time trial. I couldn´t sleep too well the night before, so I just did a nice easy two miler in my neighborhood. My parents took me to the airport where we sat around a bit (having gotten there super early) and then I went through security and I was on my own. I was pretty relaxed because I had taken two doses of Ativan by the time I got on the plane, so I actually was feeling pretty good. However, it turned out that we ended up sitting at the gate for an hour before actually taking off, so by the time the flight got underway, most of my relaxation had turned back into post-benzo-anxiety.

Nonetheless, the flight was fine and I landed in Miami with over two hours to make the connection. Also, it just so happened that on my flight to Miami, I sat next to a girl from Carleton who was also connecting through Miami to Quito. For some reason, it actually made me feel a lot better to know that there was someone else in my situation that would be there. We exchanged emails, so I at least felt like I had some sort of contact.

In Miami, I grabbed some shitty, overpriced food and sat around, waiting for my flight. This time, to avoid the situation from the first flight, I took my Ativan pretty close to the time of the flight. However, even with this, our flight managed to be delayed for some sort of ¨mechanical problem¨ and thus I was again pretty anxious on the flight.

Once we got up in the air though, it was one of the most beautiful experiences I´ve ever been a part of. We flew above one layer of thick clouds and below another hazy section. I was in the window on the right side of the plane and, since we were flying south, I was able to watch the sunset through these clouds. It literally looked like we were in some sort of acid-trip, space-time thing. It´s impossible to describe and unfortunately I wasn´t really able to capture it with my camera. Oh well.

It was also really beautiful to fly over Quito and see the whole city lit up. When the plane landed, we were ushered into passport control and customs, which was much less intimidating than I had imagined. Pretty simple actually.

One of the things I was most anxious about was meeting up with the i-to-i people at the airport. Luckily, it was pretty simple, as well. Gaby, my in country coordinator, was waiting with a big sign right outside of customs. She was there with a driver and another girl who was also staying in Ecuador. Also, Gaby spoke to me in English, which was yet another pleasant surprise.

We drove through the city to my homestay home where I was dropped off. I walked up the four flights of stairs (which took A LOT out of me seeing that I had been at altitude for all of an hour or so) and met my Mother, María. I basically just fell into bed and fell asleep.

Tuesday, Sept. 02.
I woke up around 7:30 and unpacked. My room is huge! It´s probably about the same size as my room at home. I also have my own bathroom with a shower, toilet, and hot water. The flat we are staying in is really nice on the whole. I´m actually not sure how many people live in it...

Anyways, I woke up and unpacked and then had breakfast at 8:00 with my host Mother. It was a little stressful, as she does not speak English and was interrogating me about everything from my parents, brother, life, girlfriend, etc. After breakfast, I finally met Benedicte, a Norwegian girl who is also staying in my house and is working at the same project as me. The two of us then headed to the i-to-i office to meet the rest of the Ecuador volunteers and go through orientation.

There were about 8 volunteers total, and I was the youngest. There was one other 18 year old girl from England and the others were all in their mid to late 20s. We talked with Gaby, the program head, for a bit, and then hopped in a van and headed to el Mitad del Mundo (the site of the equator). It was a little touristy, but ok. Some of the science was actually interesting (why the water spins one way when draining and the opposite only a few feet away.

After this we headed back to the office and had the real orientation, where Gaby went over a lot of the safety and other such things. It was pretty slow and boring, but it was ok. Around 4:00, those of us who had signed up for Spanish lessons split up and met with our teachers. This was actually incredibly helpful. It turns out I´m probably one of the more knowledgable speakers in the group (NOT what I expected). The lesson was one on one with a teacher and entirely in Spanish for about 3 hours. It was super intense, but really helpful. We not only went over some grammar but mostly just got experience talking and listening. Also, she was helpful in telling me some important things to know about Ecuador y Quito (do NOT climb the mountains without a guide, no matter how experienced you are).

Finally, Benedicte and I were picked up and taken back to our homestay. We had a delicious dinner and then went for a walk to try and find a cellphone store. The city does seem pretty dangerous after dark. Even I would not want to go out alone, and I certainly would not as a woman.

One thing that is really nice, though, is how cheap everything here is. For example, in this internet cafe, it costs $0.70 per HOUR. A bottle of spring water costs $0.10, the most expensive cab ride would be $1.50.

Anyways, we found a cell phone store but didn´t buy any since we didn´t bring any money (one should not walk around with more than a few dollars and a phone is 45). Benedicte and I seem to be getting along quite well. She speaks very good English, which is a nice break from the intensity of constant spanish. We are thinking of doing some traveling around the country, since we have the weekends free. Traveling is also very cheap here. The longest bus ride (500km) costs about $15 and the most expensive hotel is about $10 per night. It seems silly NOT to take advantage of this!

That´s about all for now. I might try and go for a run at some point today, but we´ll see. The stairs still give me some trouble!

Halfway there

2008-09-01T15:41:00.004-04:00

One plane ride down, one to go.

I hate airplanes so much. If the world weren't so interesting, I'd have a hard time justifying travel at all. This whole day has been pretty blurry (partially due to the fact that I downed a few ativan before the flight...).

I didn't sleep last night much at all, so I called off the time trial this morning. I did end up running, of course, but not very much. I ran out to the end of the neighborhood and back, totaling around 2 miles. The pace was slow, but I just felt awkward. It was probably the lack of sleep.

We managed to get all my stuff packed up and in the car by 8:00 or so. So, naturally, I got to the airport with a ridiculous amount of time to kill. Luckily, it's labor day, so the airport is pretty quiet (at least Logan was). I sat around for an hour or so with my parents and then bid adieu and headed through security.

I only had a few minutes to kill then and then I got on the plane. I hate planes. I may have mentioned this before. There's just something in everyone's DNA that notices how unnatural the act of being 40,000 feet up in the air is. It takes a while to learn to repress that.

In actuality, my flight was fine. I sat next to a nice girl who happened to also be going to Quito through Miami. We talked a bit and exchanged emails, which is nice because I now know of someone in the country who definitely speaks English and is interesting.

Most of the flight I was half-asleep watching Maid of Honor, possibly the worst movie I've ever seen (why is that a trend with on-flight movies...?). Luckily, I slept through a lot of it.

And so now I'm in Miami International Airport, chillin like a villain. I have a few hours to kill before my flight to Quito, so I figured I would update this and grab some food. Unfortunately, my new friend from the first flight was connecting on an earlier connection, so I have nobody to talk to :(. Oh well!

Right, well I'm going to go get some food. I haven't eaten anything with real sustance all day, so I'm going to go get a piece of pizza or something.

And They're Off!

2008-09-01T00:25:00.000-04:00

It’s technically already Monday. I have quite a day ahead of me. I’ve been quite busy the last few days, and it seems likely that I’m only going to get more busy from here on. I leave in the morning.

I only have a minute but I must say a few things. Last night (Saturday) I went down to Amherst to visit Annie. It was pretty wonderful to see her.

In the morning I might do a 5k time trial depending on how I feel. It’s quite late and I have to get up mad early.

Anyways, I had this long entry I was going to write but I’m super tired right now. I have no idea when the first time is that I’ll be able to get to an internet café. Maybe I’ll be able to write in my layover in Miami.

Choppy Seas

2008-08-29T16:34:00.000-04:00

It’s my last weekend before my trip. I’m pretty anxious, to be perfectly honest. My preparation is going well, I’d say. So far, I’ve packed most of the clothes I need. I have to work on getting my running clothes and my carry-on packed. That’s about it… It’s pretty sad how you can basically pack all of your life into a few suitcases.

Last night was entertaining. I picked up Will in town and we headed over to Addy’s house. What was supposed to be a big party turned out to really just be a few of us sitting around and watching TV. The good news was that Brandon and Gwen stopped by. It was great to see them, especially since Gwen leaves for school today. Those were just two more people that I wanted to see before I left. All in all, it was a pretty laid back night. It was good to chill with William as well. We had grown apart a lot in the last school year, but I’m glad it’s still chill when we hang out. He’s a good kid.

Today was pretty low-key. I cleaned up at Addy’s and then came home, did some errands, and had some lunch. So far, this afternoon, I’ve been cleaning my room some more and running. I had been thinking about doing a time trial this weekend and so I thought I might as well do it today. I had a few goals and I don’t know how many of them I’m really going to be able to tackle in the next few days. The first was to run under 4:30 for the mile (previous best of 4:39), also under 17:00 for 5k (current best 17:31). So, today I warmed up with a few really easy miles (8:00 mile pace) and headed over to the track. I decided to go for the mile today and then maybe the 5k on Sunday or Monday, if I have time. I did a few striders and then toed off. I ran a pretty even pace, but was behind from the beginning. I was pretty disappointed with my time at the end (4:42) and so I decided to just count it as an interval and jog it off and run an 800m. Again, it also felt pretty slow; I didn’t get the exact time but I think it was around 2:20.

So, it looks like that is one goal I’m going to have to wait three months to try again. I really doubt I’m going to do any fast running in Quito at 10,000 feet above sea level. But hey, this gives me something to look forward to; I’ve never run indoor track and here’s a chance to make my mark.

Still, I need to remind myself sometimes to have perspective. Four months ago, I was on crutches. Three months ago, I could run no longer than five minutes. I guess I’m being a little hard on myself.

Back to Normal

2008-08-28T18:47:00.000-04:00

I hate to say it, but I think I’ve started to out-grow Six Flags. It’s incredibly depressing to come to the realization that something that used to bring you unconditional joy and happiness now has little effect on you. I mean, it happens all the time as a kid; toys fade in and out of popularity. Every week I had a new favorite movie as a child. Somehow, it feels different now. I guess I thought that I was relatively grown up when amusement parks and roller coasters used to really turn my crank. It’s depressing to know that I’m so little like the person that I was not so long ago.

Or is it not? Maybe it’s a good thing that I’ve find other passions. I guess that’s the real crux of the matter: have I replaced the old toys that I don’t like to play with anymore, or is there simply a big hole in my happiness quotient?

Or, just as likely, I was just still not feeling 100% since things with Annie were on the fringe. Maybe Six Flags is still awesome any other day…

Anyways, so that was most of my Tuesday. Yesterday was actually a pretty big day, centering mostly around my run. I had planned to do my longest run of the summer (a WHOPPING 8 miles…) and I had mapped out a really nice route. Starting at 9-acre-corner, I ran what began as part of my normal bike loop. I set out at about 1:00pm, which was probably not too wise because there was very little shade and it was quite hot. The first two miles go relatively flat down Concord Road through the Nashawtuc Country Club. It’s an easy start, but I actually ran it pretty poorly, strategically, by going out too fast. I aimed to run around 7:00 pace, and ran the first two miles in 13:20, so I was a little worried that I would hurt later on. After bearing left at pantry road, Concord Rd. takes a relatively steep uphill for about a mile. I began to struggle a bit, but was able to make it to the turn onto Morse Road.

This is one of my favorite parts of this loop. Whenever I’m on my bike, the most tiring parts of my rides are the uphills. To try and distract myself, I try and think of clever little names for each hill while I’m riding up them. The section of the loop starting at Morse Road I call “The Back Hills” (an inside joke for anyone who has run Van Cortland Park). I was feeling a little better once I turned onto Morse but immediately started to ache as I approached the first of the Back Hills: Horse Shit Hill. Horse Shit Hill is a very steep hill which also happens to be next to a farm (hence the name). Runners or bikers are treated to the delightful aroma as they run/ride past. On this specific run, I had the dual joy of also being treated to air filled with grass pollen and dust as the grounds crew was out in full force on their John Deer’s.

After HSH, there’s a long, gradual descent. I was able to cruise pretty comfortably for a few minutes and regain some strength; also, shade was an added bonus. Then, yet another hill, nearly as long as the first before turning onto Marlboro Road. Marlboro brings you back to Haynes which brings you to Pantry, where you are faced with the biggest hill yet. Unfortunately, I don’t have a clever name and usually just call it Pantry Hill… Sorry.

Finally, I turned right at the top of Pantry at 117 and headed back towards 9-acre-corner. I had never actually run or biked on this section of road (I usually extend the loop in the other direction), so I didn’t really no what to expect. It turned out to be a little trafficy, but actually quite pretty. There was very little shade, though, so I was really struggling by the end.

Overall, I ended up doing okay. It was a little depressing to know that my recovery runs were this long 8 months ago, but eh. I think my pace averaged out to around 6:55 with a pretty quick last mile. I’m not too disappointed with that given the hills.

The rest of the day was spent making great progress on my packing pile. Up until now, packing had simply been a theological endeavor. However, with the realization that I had all of three or four days left, it was time to get down to business. Now, most of my belongings are strewn about on my brother’s floor and bed. Oh goodness.

Annie’s off on her rock climbing orientation trip, which means I can’t talk to her for a few days. Bummer. If all goes well I might head out to Amherst this weekend before I leave. We shall see.

Today has been relatively uneventful. I went to Skid School this morning, which is a driving course that teaches you all the important stuff that they don’t teach you in drivers ed (how to handle a skidding car correctly, braking and swerving, etc.). It was all right, but I was pretty pissed off at having to get up at 6:00 to get to Andover. Oh well.

The rest of the day, I did some core (no run today), upper body, and went and had a nice chat with Liz Bedell. I ran some errands and now I’m about to eat dinner. I think a party is on the menu for tonight. I’m not sure if it will be an overnight or not, depends how tired I am and how the night unfolds. I also am still thinking about doing a time trial this weekend, so I don’t want to be too, too sleep deprived. I’ll let you know how it goes.

The Nigerian Prince Scam

2008-08-27T00:06:00.002-04:00

My mother has never been great with technology. Yet, tonight, she managed to surpass my wildest expectations. While I was in the midst of a relatively important phone call (which I may get to later), I got a frantic call from my father from downstairs yelling something about anti-virus on my machines, etc. Anyways, it turned out my mother had managed to download and run some sort of Trojan program which had embedded itself in her windows system folder. Lovely. At least she didn’t send her bank account information to a prince in Zimbabwe. Sorry, Mom. It was too good a story to pass up.

Anyways, so I’ve been spending the past 40 minutes trying to make sure all our computers have anti-virus software and trying to get rid of this little bugger on my mom’s computer. Not exactly how I pictured the evening unfolding.

I actually have a lot about which I’d like to write, but it’s pretty late and I’m pretty tired, so we’ll see how far I get. I woke up relatively early this morning, around 6:30, to go for a run. I hate morning runs. I can never figure out how to time the nutrition and hydration. I always either eat too much too close to when I run and feel bloated and nauseated or I don’t eat enough and feel fatigued really quickly. Today, I basically rolled out of bed, popped a glucose tab, and hit the road.

I actually felt surprisingly decent for an early-morning run. It was pretty chilly and my pace wasn’t hard enough to warm me up right away, so I eased into it. I ran the first three miles pretty slow (around 6:45-6:50) and picked up for the last two, with the last mile almost entirely uphill. My last two splits were 6:12 and 6:15, I believe.

After the run, Addy and I had planned to go to Six Flags New England for the day, so I showered and went to pick her up. We made a pit-stop at Dunkin Donuts for some breakfast and then began the long drive out to Agawam.

Driving west on I-90 reminds me of how much of our country is undeveloped land. There are so many trees! I mean, we did pass through the bustling metropolises of Worcester and Springfield, but other than that, it’s pretty quiet scenery.

I’m going to have to dub this “To Be Continued,” because I’m far too tired to finish now.

Comparing Athletes: The Pyramid Theory of Sports

2008-08-26T18:17:00.001-04:00

Thanks to my mother who found an interesting article on sports and demographics, I can finally try and articulate what has been bothering me about the recent Olympics hullabaloo regarding swimmer Michael Phelps. The article talks about a theory of “sports pyramids, where a sport like equestrian or the steeple chase in running has a very narrow base (not many people try it as children). This is in opposition to a sport like soccer or running where an enormous part of the world has tried their luck with said games.

“The pyramid in question is demographic. The base represents the number of people who have ever tried the sport, usually as children, while at the peak, naturally, stand the top achievers. The broader the pyramid base, the greater the athletes at the top, all other things being equal.”

The basic idea is that in a sport like soccer, where so many people have tried it, it’s a lot harder to become the best because there is simply more competition. Competitive swimming and diving and other less popular sports have a more narrow base of people who try them seriously, and thus have an easier time becoming elite in those arenas.

And so, the author seems to agree with my point that trying to compare Olympic athletes from different sports is a matter of apples and orangutans. The only person who can really claim to be the greatest athlete in the world right now is Brian Clay.

Closing Ceremonies

2008-08-24T22:50:00.000-04:00

The end of an era. It’s been a difficult six months in terms of transitions. Today was not what I expected. I think that no matter how well you try and prepare for a difficult transition, there’s no way to really predict how it will turn out.

I woke up mad early (for me). I got to Anna’s by 6:20am and we headed out to run. Most of the run was silent. We just sort of zoned out. I couldn’t keep my mind from wandering, from thinking about the events of the next few hours. Every once in a while, my eyes would begin to sting and then I’d just try and focus on the run again.

We had an awkward breakfast with her family and tried to get some time to talk alone. There were only a few tears. We went outside to finish packing up her car and I gave her a letter and my Berklee sweat shirt. It was pretty hard. The actual goodbye wasn’t quite as bad. It was so sudden that neither of us really had time to get upset.

The drive home was probably the hardest part of the day. In all honesty, I probably should have pulled over and cooled off a bit, but oh well, I made it home safe. I spent a few hours reading through the journal that she gave me and then got out of my room and started to think about the rest of the day.

My parents wanted me to head into town to run some errands, so as I was driving I gave Duncan a call to see what he was up to. He said nothing, so I drove to his house. We hit up Cumbie’s and then walked around the CA campus for a while, trying to see if there was anyone there or anything open. Alas, there was not, so we just got my Dad’s mail and headed back to my house. We chilled there and had some lunch with my parents before heading off to his Dad’s house.

We spent most of the afternoon playing rock band and relaxing. It was good to just chill and get distracted. I was actually in a surprisingly good mood most of the afternoon. My parents were a little bitchy when they were trying to figure out evening plans, but no big deal. I dropped Duncan off and headed home for some dinner.

The evening has been pretty relaxed. My parents went out for a bit after dinner and I decided to go for a brief run. I’ve been finding that over the past few days, my emotions have been determining my runs more than my brain. I’m not too upset with this because I’ve had a few pretty quick runs in the past few days, but I feel like it could be a dangerous habit to get into. I don’t want to HAVE to run a fast pace just because I’m upset. I want to be able to run fast when it’s good for my training, not when it’s good for my emotions.

Nonetheless, emotions or not, I felt pretty quick today. After running a 30 second 5k PR yesterday, I went out today with no warmup and ran a 4:39 mile. Not too shabby if I do say so m’self.

And now, here I am: watching the closing ceremonies of the 2008 Olympics. I may not have been there, but I’ve had my own Olympic tasks over the past year to have to complete, vanquish, overcome. And so, these closing ceremonies come at a coincidental time. As I watch the spectacular event that is the closing of the Olympics, I think back to this morning and think about the awkward rushed goodbye. I’ve watched two entirely opposite closing ceremonies today.

Naturally, I’m drained.

Look Out, Haile!

2008-08-24T22:40:00.002-04:00

I hate to say it, but I think Haile might be in trouble. After watching the Olympic marathon, I am no longer convinced that Haile Gebrselassie, the current world record holder, is the greatest distance runner alive.

Sammy Wanjiru of Kenya won the race in a time of 2:06:32, smashing the 24 year old Olympic marathon record by nearly 3 minutes. The most impressive part of this race was not his time (2:06 is no small feat, but at the same time nothing to get too excited about), but the conditions in which he won the race. The temperature by the middle of the race was consistently in the mid to upper 80s and the humidity was over 50%.

For anybody who has ever run in the heat, you will no how difficult this is. Heat raises the heart-rate, making the runner much less efficient. In addition to this, the high humidity makes it more difficult (sometimes impossible) for sweat to evaporate.

Brad Hudson, coach of US Olympian Dathan Ritzenhein (2:11:59, 9th place) has said that Ritz was in shape to run 2:07, which makes one wonder if Wanjiru could run 2:06, what could he run in ideal conditions? 2:04? 2:03? Who knows?!

All of the US marathon team ran very respectable races: Ritz finishing first for the US in 9th place (2:11:59), Ryan Hall finishing 10th (2:12:33), and Brian Sell finishing 22nd in a solid time of 2:16:07. Go team!

I’d like to end with a note that Haile still has my respect as the greatest marathoner of all time (so far), and at the very least my favorite.

Easy Day

2008-08-23T18:20:00.002-04:00

I just got back from my “easy run.” It’s funny how often times the run that I think I’m about to have when I step out the door is nothing like the run I’m on five minutes later. I had planned to run with Annie, which would make it a very relaxed-pace run, but she decided not to come, so I went off on my own. I was in a pretty pissed off mood (I’ll get more to that later), so I guess I let my anger get to my head, or actually my legs as was the case here. I was supposed to do about three miles easy, I ended up basically doing a 5k time trial by myself. I ran the first mile (downhill) around 5:30. At the point, I decided to see how long I could hold it. My second mile was a little slow, closer to 5:40, and I closed around 5:35-5:38ish. I felt pretty comfortable, given that it was a hilly course and I was in my training shoes. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get a well recorded time on a real course before I leave.

I was supposed to spend the day with Annie, but it didn’t really work out that way. We went to Kennedy’s pond this morning, which was fun, a little buggy, but fun. After that we headed to Friendly’s in Acton and got some lunch before going back to her house. We just sort of flooped at her house for a while, trying to figure out the afternoon. We knew that at some point, she and her family had to get to EMS or REI to pick up a camping backpack for Annie before she left. So she and her family went to do that.

So, I head out. I had been thinking about seeing Paxton again before he left, but he was busy, so I just went to the bank and came home. I figured they wouldn’t be more than an hour and a half (25 minute drive each way, 40 minutes in the store?), so I sat down to watch Tropic Thunder. Suddenly, Tropic Thunder was over and there was not a word from her. Eventually, she called me back and let me know that they were still in the store and I ought to run because she wasn’t feeling well.

All in all, it took about four hours out of our last day together. I it just sucks that this keeps happening. Anyways, she just called and said she’s home, so I’m going to go to her house for dinner and Olympic Marathon.

Go Ryan, Dathan, and Sell!

Upping the Anti

2008-08-23T00:37:00.002-04:00

Well, it’s technically Saturday, but I feel inclined to try and update daily so here we are again.

Today was at least a break from the norm. I spent most of the morning sleeping and then sitting around and waiting for Annie. She picked me up and we went to her house for a bit before driving to Walden. One of my goals from before was to swim across Walden Pond, and today was supposedly my attempt at doing that. After my swim across Kennedy’s Pond last week with David, I felt pretty confident in my ability, so I wasn’t too nervous.

Naturally, with my confidence raised, I decided to up the anti a bit. I mapped out a triangular route on map-my-run that would cover a mile of water. I figured it was the natural next milestone after simply swimming across.

Personally, being a relatively skinny guy, for me the hardest part about swimming is getting in the water. I’ve always hated cold water, so unless it’s a really hot day or I’m already really overheated from running, generally I’m a toe-dipping kind of person. Maybe a wader at best. So, today, the most arduous part of the swim was just getting myself submerged. Once I had dunked myself, Annie and I set out on our roughly half mile swim across the pond. It was pretty relaxed once we got going, not too cold, not too stressful. It was a very conversational pace.

We got to the other side of the pond, but Annie’s hipflexor was still bugging her and she didn’t want me to finish the swim alone, so we decided to just walk back to our stuff. It wasn’t too strenuous of a workout and at least I can say that I did it.

We toweled off and drove into Lexington center because she needed to pick up some form from her doctor. I hadn’t had lunch yet, so we grabbed some pizza at Bertucci’s and then got her stuff. She had to fax it to Amherst, but didn’t have a fax machine so we headed back to my house to do that (good thing my mom was there, since it turns out I have basically no idea how to use a fax machine, let alone understand the complex underlying fax-etiquette). Annie left, but I was hoping I’d get to see her later. She had plans to hang out with her sister and I wanted to see Paxton anyways since he was leaving on Sunday.

I ate dinner with my mother and then drove over to Pax’s. I was planning on spending the night but we ended up both being mad tired, so I headed home after a few hours. Unfortunately, things with Anna fell through and I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see her again. Not that it’s her fault, it’s just an unfortunate trend that seems to keep coming up… Bummer.

And so, I’ve been sitting around and watching some Olympics that were on this evening for the past hour or so. The women’s 5000 meters was supposed to be on, but it seems that NBC has flaked out on us again and just lied.

Tomorrow is my last day with Annie. I don’t know how I feel about that. Oh well, if I don’t acknowledge it, it won’t happen, right?

Right.

The Forgotten Story

2008-08-22T00:07:00.003-04:00

With all the buzz about Usain Bolt, I think that the world and media is greatly overlooking one of the biggest Olympic accomplishments in track and field. Who could I be talking about? Why no one of course except Ethiopia's Haile Gebrselassie.

Haile, a 35 year old marathoner, is not only a decade or so the senior of most of the fellow 10,000 meter runners against whom he competed, but also hasn't raced a 10,000 in quite some time. In fact, the Ethiopian olympic committee doubted his ability enough to make him compete in a time trial before allowing him to compete on the Olympic 10,000 team.

So, what is it that makes Haile so impressive? Well, Haile ran 27:06, which is 4:21/mile pace. Haile's marathon pace is around 4:44/mile, almost thirty seconds slower. 35 year old Haile finished 6th in a deep field, but it didn't seem like he was particularly upset with is placement. Haile went out and paced fellow countryman Kenenisa to a perfect victory and finished with his trademark smile.

Personally, I'm tired of seeing Olympic athletes crying over their silver medals. Haile was thrilled just to be there and I wish I saw more of that.

Keepin On

2008-08-20T23:47:00.000-04:00

I awoke to an empty house this morning, a feeling I’m not quite used to. Still in bed, I called Annie and actually woke her up (wow, record books take note). My day wasn’t too exciting. Annie and I headed to Burlington to run some last minute college errands for her and then hit up Chili’s for lunch.

In the afternoon, we hung around her house and then headed to Great Brook with her mom to run. Annie and I ran together for the first half mile or so and then she pointed me on my way (I’m not too familiar with the Great Brook trails). I ended up only getting lost for a few seconds; I was quite proud of myself. The run overall felt a little sluggish. This could be due to the less than 24 hour time difference between my last night’s run, or any other thousand factors. Anyways, my first few miles were on a VERY rocky and root-y trail and so were all around 7:30 pace. As soon as I could, I got off that trail and did a few loops of the CA cross country course. I picked up the pace here, averaging closer to 6:45 pace for the last few miles. I wasn’t trying to push the pace, though, so I’m not too upset with the run.

I had a lot of weird aches and pains in my legs today. I’m glad tomorrow is my legs-off day. It started out with a surprisingly intense outside-left calve pain. It was a sharp, shooting pain that made it almost impossible to put weight on my left foot. This was quite worrisome. However, it seemed the kind of tweak that I could just walk off and stretch/massage out. Later, my same right hamstring was still a little sensitive (though much better, even now after running, than before), and during my run, my left hip/upper IT was giving me some grief. Goodness gracious!

So, I still have a mile time and a 5k time that I want to run before I leave. I don’t know if it’s gonna happen, but I guess we’ll see.

Catch Up

2008-08-20T23:36:00.002-04:00

I’m almost caught up, so let me start with yesterday.

I woke up relatively early, but it was kind of nice actually. Annie came over while I was still half asleep and we just got to snuggle and talk for a while. Quite the nice way to start the day. Unfortunately, things were mostly downhill from there. We headed to her house after eating some breakfast and just hung out for a while. For some reason, we’ve been getting really tense with one another over the last few days. I think that the fact that she leaves so soon makes us both nervous. With so much uncertainty about where our relationship will go and what roles we will play in one another’s lives, it’s hard to focus on enjoying this time.

Anyways, she went out to lunch with Aaron Freedman and I ended up staying at her house and finishing up the painting in her dad’s office. When she got back we just at some lunch together and talked a bit more. Again, though, it was pretty tense and not really happy talking… Oh well.

After a few hours, she had to go pick up her dad and I stayed home to start the cleanup of the paint room. It also turned out that she was meeting Fannie Watkinson at the train station so they could go run together. So, I just sort of puttered around in the paint room for a while. Annie and Fannie came home around the same time that her mom and Emily got home from Maine. Everyone was pretty pooped and hungry, so the three of us, me and (F)annie, went to get take out from Maynard. Fannie’s a good kid; it was nice to see her.

After dinner I headed home and still had to run. My lower butt/upper hamstring/groin pain on my right side had died down a bit, but was definitely still there, so I decided to take it really conservatively. I didn’t leave the house until 10:00 or so. Night running is really fun sometimes. I love running in my neighborhood at night, for example. There are barely any cars to worry about and the streets are nice enough that you don’t have to worry about your footing. Anyways, I had told myself I would try and put in about 3 miles at whatever pace felt comfortable. I warmed up for the first half mile or so and was feeling pretty smooth and comfortable, so I picked it up a bit. I ended up feeling really great after a mile or so, and so I decided to do a longer loop that included a nice big hill in the middle. Overall, I ended up averaging around 6:35 pace, which was much quicker than I thought I would run, given how poorly I was feeling earlier.

I came home and watched the men's 1500 meter Olympic final and hit the sack.

Martha's Vineyard Part III: Return to the Real

2008-08-20T00:41:00.004-04:00

I woke up naturally on Monday morning around 8:30am and was jolted out of my hypnopompic state when I pushed open the half-open bathroom door to find Duncan naked and taking a shit: a wonderful start to my morning. I was planning on running but decided against it when I awoke with some pretty alarming right hamstring pain.

I packed up all my stuff pretty quickly and bid adieu to David, Ginny, and Jesse. Duncan and I drove and ferried over to Oak Bluffs for some breakfast before I had to catch my ferry. We grabbed some apple fritters from a little bakery which are apparently the hot item for people who know their shit. We headed over to the ferry port and just sat around and talked for a while. We thought the ferry was coming in at 11:15, but when we looked at my ticket it said 11:45. Oops! Oh well. We had a good talk and then I boarded my vessel and headed for Quonset Point, RI.

The ferry ride was nice again. A little bit choppier than on the way there. Still, I got a lot of reading done on the boat and was even able to nap a bit. My mom picked me up and we drove home via Concord center to run some errands.

I spent most of the afternoon relaxing, reading, watching Olympics that had been taped from the weekend, and cleaning. Anna was supposed to be back around the same time as me, but it turned out she was going to take a lot longer coming coming home.

After dinner at home, I went over to Addy’s for a while. She had just gotten back from being a counselor at her strange hippie camp and had many interesting stories. We walked around for a while and just talked. I’m glad that we can actually just be amiable with one another now. Annie called around 9:30 and so I took her out for a bit. We drove around and were both seeming kind of miserable. It seemed that this week was set to be a disaster. Oh dear.

Anyways, things ended on a better note and so it was okay. I ended up not running at all because I didn’t want to aggravate whatever it was that was bugging me. I spent a lot of the day being pissed off, which I try to avoid, but sometimes it’s unavoidable. That’s all for now.

Martha's Vineyard Part II: Lazy Sunday

2008-08-20T00:17:00.002-04:00

I awoke in the morning far earlier than I had hoped. Duncan was out of bed by 9:00 and so I had my second night in a row of very little sleep. After tossing in bed for 45 minutes or so, I decided it wasn’t worth it to try and stay asleep and got out of bed. We spent an hour or so lazing around the house and just relaxing. One of the nicest parts about this trip was how low-key everything was. With my family on vacation, everything has to be planned out, meetings have to be held; it seems like sometimes vacations with my family are more stressful than being at home. But anyways, so we just sat around for a while and then I headed out to do my run.

I’ve always had this image of running with a dog at my side. It just seems so natural: man’s best friend. This was the first time that I went running with a dog that wasn’t chasing me (you have NO idea how many times I have put out a 30 second 200m to escape from the jaws of Cujo). Jesse and I went out for a 4 mile fartlek on the dirt road that led to Duncan’s house in the heat of the late morning. The first mile was a little quick to be my easy mile (I was trying to alternate 7:00 and 5:30), running about 6:30. My first repeat was a little rough. First of all, it was really hot, so my heart-rate was already through the roof. The fact that I ran the first mile too quick also hurt a bit, but it was ok. My third mile was a lot more like I had meant the first one to be. I ran it right around 7:00 and thus felt solid on my last mile. Duncan joined me for a half mile cool-down; Jesse had already deserted me.

I did some PT and core circuits after I came in and hydrated a bit. Then Duncan, David, and I decided to drive/ferry over to Martha’s Vineyard proper for some lunch. By this time, I had gotten slightly more used to the whole “car being a few inches away from the water” idea and was only mildly clutching the door-handle. We got some greasy fried food and ice cream and sat in a quiet little park that was hidden from the main hubbub of Edgartown. Martha’s Vineyard proper, or at least the parts of Edgartown that we walked through, kind of bugged me. For the most part it was filled with obnoxious-looking, wallet-waving, white people in polo shirts tucked into their plaid shorts. It was the opposite of what I had seen on Chappy and exactly what I was afraid of.

Anyways, we had a few errands to run afterwards, so the three of us walked around the uber-touristy part of Edgartown and then drove to the grocery store. From there, we drove, ferried, and drove back over to Chappy where we had a bit more relaxation time. It was at this point that we realized that Duncan’s hand was still quite swollen from his bee-sting, which was then 24 hours old, which seemed odd. So, he took two benadryll, hoping that would reduce his reaction. He seemed to be feeling better, though, so we decided to head to the beach for a swim.

Now, usually getting to the beach is a walk or a short drive or bike ride, but here it was actually a sail away. So we had to set up Duncan’s Sunfish (a small one or two man sailboat) to get across the bay and to the beach on the other side. Also, Duncan had decided that we would need music, so we had a backpack with an ipod, speakers, and his cell phone in it (though all in sealed plastic bags). The sail over was relatively uneventful. It was actually really nice to be out on the water; I almost understand the appeal of it. There were only a few moments I thought that I was going to die, but mostly it was calm because we didn’t have to turn.

We sailed to one side of a very narrow strip of land that separated our cove from the ocean. So, we tied up the boat and walked a few minutes over the dunes to the sprawling ocean. There is something truly magical and indescribably about the pure vastness of the ocean. I hate to get sappy in what I try to keep a relatively down to Earth journal, but the ocean is really something. For a good while, we just lied on the beach listening to Herbie Hancock’s “The Piano” and enjoying the solitude and beauty. Eventually, though, we both got restless and decided to dig a big hole. Why is digging a hole at the beach so much fun? I honestly could not tell you. All I know is that there is something in everyone’s deep subconscious that sees sand and wants to dig a really deep hole. And what’s more, usually once that hole is dug, somebody has to crawl in and then buried in it. That person was unlucky enough to be me. As I was just about up to my chin in sand I realized that we had dug our hole in a huge nest of some sort of larvae of shrimp or fiddler crabs which were popping out of holes everywhere and biting me. I then sprinted into the surprisingly steeply deepening ocean.

With the discovery of creepy-crawlies, we traversed the dunes once again and returned to our boat. Much to our dismay, the wind had changed such that we now had to sail a diagonal away from our house and then cut back along the shore (I don’t really understand sailing, don’t ask me…). It started out ok, but the wind was gusty, which meant that the pressure on the sail would change from moment to moment. This meant that one second, I would have to lean back as far as I could to keep from capsizing, and the next moment I would almost fall out of the boat because it was so flat. Also, to make matters worse, on this trip, Duncan had entrusted me with the backpack full of electronics. It was possibly the most terrifying thirty minutes of my life.

But we made it (despite my very nearly falling out of the boat with the electronics). I have never been so happy to be on land once again, even rocky and slippery land.

We walked back up to his house where everyone was quite lethargic. Duncan’s benadryll was really doing a number on his energy, so he ended up taking a nap for a few hours, along with his dad. I sat for a while and relaxed with Jesse and read a bunch. It was very calm. Once people started waking up (I literally had to threaten Duncan with cold water to get him out of bed), we made some dinner and played some boggle. Afterwards, Duncan, David and I drove down to the ferry and walked into Edgartown for some ice cream.

When we got home, we worked a bit on the puzzle but mostly just sat around and talked. We called it a night relatively early after a pretty late night before. All in all, it was one of the calmest and low-key days I’ve had in a while. I wouldn’t want to make a routine of it, but damn did it feel nice for once.

Martha's Vineyard Part 1: Long Day

2008-08-19T21:34:00.004-04:00

I spent the weekend in Martha’s Vineyard with Duncan and his family. Being a pretty well-off white suburbanite, I realized I was actually quite surprised to have never been there. A few notes before I begin: I’m going to split this post into a few posts (day by day) and also, I’m going to try to intersperse some pictures since I just got a camera! I’ll start with Saturday.

I woke up long before I usually do (around 5:00am) after staying up late with David and watching Olympics the night before. My parents were heading to Newport for the day, so they were able to give me a ride to the ferry. I ended up being about half and hour early and so I got a nice long bench to sleep on. The ferry ride itself was nice. I hadn’t been on a boat in a long time, if ever, and so I was a little nervous about getting sea-sick. Nevertheless, babies don’t sleep as well as I did. To me, the rocking of the boat was like being an infant in a crib and being rocked to sleep. It was serene.

I arrived in Oak Bluffs, Martha’s Vineyard, where I was supposed to meet up with Duncan. However, not realizing that I was on a different ferry than he takes, it took us a few minutes to realize we were in different spots. We headed over to a pastry shop where we met up with Karen, who it turned out was staying with Duncan too. After a little breakfast, we all piled into Duncan’s land cruiser and drove off to run some errands and then head to his house. The Forbes’ house is actually on Chappaquiddick, a small island right next to Martha’s Vineyard. The interesting thing about this island is that there’s no bridge, so the only way to get there is to take a three-car ferry across a narrow section of Ocean (only 100’ or so). The ferry ride is less than a minute, but for the first few times, it seems a little weird (especially after you hear about the story where a few weeks ago someone accidentally left their car in neutral and slid off the front of the ferry into the water).

Duncan’s house is about as far away from civilization as one can comfortably live without having to sacrifice the New York Times. Built as a duck-hunting lodge many moons ago, the house boasts 270 degree views of the bay and marshland, but lacks air-conditioning, internet, and tv (arguably, not a bad thing). After a little relaxing, the three of us ferried our way back to Martha’s Vineyard proper for an afternoon of fun with Tim Douglas.

Martha’s Vineyard’s road systems are mediocre at best. I defend this with the trip that we took to Tim’s house. Despite Duncan’s GPS system in his car, it took us around two hours to make what should have been a thirty minute drive. Don’t you love when that little machine says “You have arrived at your destination!” and there’s no houses in sight?

Well, it turned out that Tim’s house actually wasn’t on GPS. In fact, according to the GPS, Tim’s road did not exist (our little car icon was shown driving through a big patch of green). After many lost cell phone calls back and forth with Tim (Vineyard cell phone service is also notoriously bad), we finally arrived at the Douglas Compound. It turns out that Tim’s grandparents bought three lots on the Vineyard a long time ago, which were now undoubtedly worth an obscene amount of money.

Tim’s house was beautiful. We stood in awe for a few minutes and then made the ten minute walk down to the beach (which was actually a pond, which was actually a cove). We took Tim’s motor-boat out on the water and Karen and Duncan did some water-tubing. We ended up on a beach across the cove just sitting around for a while and eating some snacks that Tim’s mom had packed (grapes and cheese!). At one point, Duncan got stung by a bee on his hand (more on this later).

We then motored back over to Tim’s beach and set up his sail-boat. It ended up taking us over an hour to set it up because Duncan had dropped a pin into the murky depths while we were trying to set it up. He blamed it on his then slightly swollen hand from the bee sting. We ended up only sailing for half an hour or so, as we were all growing hungry. So, we headed back to the beach and decided to eat at Duncan’s.

It was getting pretty late at this point; it must have been after 6:30, and we knew that once we got back it was going to be a while before dinner (we had to cook it). So, on the way home we stopped at the grocery store and at an entire bag of pita chips while getting our dinner supplies. We managed to make it back to Duncan’s in about a third of the time it had taken us to get to Tim’s that afternoon. Funny how that works when you know where you’re going!

At Duncan’s, we all sat around and relaxed while dinner was cooking. After eating, it was close to 9:00, so Duncan’s mom called it a night and headed to bed. However, moments afterward, we were all drawn to the porch by the sounds of very professional sounding and looking fireworks. The illegal spectacle lasted nearly 10 minutes and I must say it bested some of the local fourth of July fireworks shows I’ve seen in the past few years. The four of us (Tim had come home with us) then decided to go for a walk on the beach and investigate this mysterious but spectacular display. Eventually, we made our way to a house that was blaring music and had little bits of firework wrapper strewn all about the beach. With Jesse (Duncan’s dog) leading the way, we walked up the steps into the back yard. We expected to find a bunch of teenagers at a pool party but what we ended up discovering was a bunch of semi-drunk adults under an expensive looking party tent listening to John Mayer. With that, we headed back.

When we got home Duncan’s Dad had gone to bed and we all sat around the living room table admiring the work that Ginny (Duncan’s mother) had made on a 1000 piece puzzle. Slowly but surely, we all began piecing together little bits of sky, grass, window, etc. Two hours passed before we realized that our plans for a night on the town had turned into us sitting around and making a puzzle. We are so cool.

It was about 1:00am at this point and we decided to drive over to this bridge where there were allegedly thousands of glowing, phosphorescent jelly fish that passed by. At first, we were disappointed to find no such jellies, but after a few minutes, we found a large hoard of them heading under the bridge. It was beautiful, and we stayed out on that point for a long time watching the jellies go by. I got cold, though, and everyone was getting tired, so we drove back along the dusty, dirt roads to Duncan’s cabin.

Upon returning, we worked a little more on puzzle-making and had a bit of a freestyle rap battle. All was well. We fell asleep listening to The Album Leaf. What a day.

Steady Does It

2008-08-15T23:59:00.000-04:00

David Wilder came down to Concord for the day, so I spent most of the day thinking about running. This was furthered by the fact that we both spent the late afternoon/early evening with Jon Waldron, our High School coach.

The day started when David arrived and we headed out to get some lunch and pick up Anna from her last day on the farm. We then ran over to “Fire Your Desire,” a paint-your-own-pottery place, and dropped Annie off. David and I then drove over to Kennedy’s Pond in Westford for a swim. It gave me a new appreciation for how hard it is to swim. Water is remarkably more difficult to move through than air. Still, David and I swam the farthest that I’ve ever swum, which may or may not be depressing, given that it is shorter than Michael Phelps’ cooldown swim. Still, I’ve run 4 or 5 mile cool downs after races, and I’m sure there are some people who have never run that far.

After our successful swim, we drove home and headed to Concord center to meet up with Jon. As we were driving over, the skies began to darken, which wasn’t a great sign, and as we pulled into our parking space, the heavens seemed to open. Once Jon got there we ended up sitting around for an hour or so and just talking while waiting for the worst of the storm to pass. We talked a lot about training and how the last few months have gone for me. Sometimes it’s really nice to have someone else give you a fresh perspective on things. See, I look at my training and I don’t see that much improvement because my expectations keep changing so quickly. If I could run so fast last week, then I expect to be able to run a little faster the next. But Jon was able to remind me that this really has been an incredible three months in terms of progress. Three months ago, I was running six miles a week and two miles seemed like a long-run.

Again, I hate to cut things short, but it turns out I have to get up at 6:00am tomorrow and head to Duncan’s house on the Vineyard. With that said, I’m afraid I won’t be able to update this until I get back. I’ll try to write some while I’m there and then type it up when I get back. Either way, I’ll certainly be back Monday and should be able to update then.

My Beef with Swimming

2008-08-13T22:44:00.001-04:00

There’s something that bothers me about Olympic swimming. It’s not that I doubt the ability and athleticism of swimmers; they are clearly incredible athletes. It’s more that with all the recent buzz over American swimmer Michael Phelps and his bazillion gold medals, it seems a bit unfair. Here’s my beef: it doesn’t seem fair that swimmers can compete in like 15 medal events in the same Olympics. Let me explain. In running, for example, one trains for one or MAYBE two races (100m and 200m, 1500m and 5k). My problem with swimming is that swimmers can compete in all of these races, while a runner has to train specifically for each distance. If you want to run the marathon, you train for the marathon and you put all of yourself into it. You can’t run the marathon and the 100m and the steeplechase in the same Olympics.

I have a related beef with Michael Phelps, himself, which is actually more a beef with the media and how they refer to him as “the greatest Olympian of all time.” This cannot be claimed of anyone. Yes, Phelps does have the most gold medals of any Olympian, but does this make him the greatest? No. It may make him the best Olympic swimmer of all time, but the best Olympian? I think not. Think about decathletes, pentathletes, people who compete in multiple events but only get one medal for their abilities. What would make somebody the greatest Olympian? Is it about how many medals they win? How many records they set? How fast they run, swim, bike? Or maybe the span of their Olympic careers?

Anyways, enough of that. Today was a little stressful. I had a lot of pain in my left hip this morning, which was pretty worrisome. Needless to say, I did not run today. I didn’t spend a whole lot of time on my feet and luckily, I’m feeling a lot better now. Hopefully I’ll still feel ok tomorrow. I believe that Annie and I are running together in the afternoon sometime. It should be fun.

I enjoyed a lazy morning. I woke up relatively early but spent most of the time just sitting around. I played some music, cleaned my room a bit, and just enjoyed not doing anything. I picked up Annie from work and we spent some time at her house babysitting her little cousins and then taking them home. I did a little more painting in the office and she went out with Liz Bedell. Addy called me from her hippy camp in Vermont. It was good to hear from her. I also heard from Max and Colin today; I’m hoping to be able to see them in the next few weeks before I leave.

Ok, so I have the rest of this week, next week, and then the week after that. I’m going to try and break it down a bit and see if I can actually get all of this stuff done. So, tomorrow I’m hoping to see Fitz with Annie in the evening and hopefully spend most of the afternoon with her. Friday, Annie heads up to Maine in the late afternoon. Hopefully, we’ll get some time in the afternoon. Also, I think I’m running with Jon Waldron in the morning or some time. Then, this weekend I might go to Martha’s Vineyard to chill with Duncan. Then it’s next week, Annie’s last week here. I’m hoping to spend most of the week with her. Some things I want to do: go rock climbing, swim across Walden Pond, go for a day hike, camp out together, go to Kennedy’s Pond. Well, that’s five things and there are five days…Oh my.

My last week here I’m hoping won’t be too tainted with the fact that Annie is gone. I want to try and get to Six Flags with Addy. I also want to see a bunch of people before I leave. Also, one more thing I want to do in the next 2½ weeks is run a 9:42 3000m. We’ll see.

Flight

2008-08-12T23:59:00.000-04:00

I’m feeling more and more anxious as each day goes by. And I don’t see it getting any better. I think that in a way uncertainty makes me really anxious. I wouldn’t call myself a control freak, in general. There are certainly specific things about which I am a perfectionist (take music, for example). But on a whole, I don’t see myself as a control freak. Still, there are things like airplanes that just scare the hell out of me, and I think a big part of that is lack of control. I KNOW rationally that airplanes are relatively safe (I’ve heard even more so than cars), but the fact that there is nothing that I can do, myself, to improve my odds of surviving freaks me out.

Maybe it’s the same thing with life in general. Right now I feel like a lot of things are like big long plane rides in my life. In my relationship, most of the cards are out of my hand. There’s nothing I can do except wait and see what happens and where things end up. I’m a little worried about my hip, but again, there’s very little I can do besides wait and see. I feel like my life is becoming one increasingly scary, bumpy plane-ride and I’m stuck in coach watching the clouds go by.

My 7.5 miler went ok this morning. It was my longest run by 1.3 miles since injury and it felt like it. I ran out the Great Meadows trail from the Keyes Rd parking lot and made it a little ways beyond the water treatment plant in Bedford. I wonder how far/where that trail ends up going. Someday when I have more miles under my legs, I’ll find out. I did have some pretty bad hip pain about 5 miles in though, which actually forced me to stop and walk it out for a few seconds (not out of actual pain or tiredness, just worry to see if I was limping). I am listening very closely to my body, especially for groin pain, and so far I think I’m doing an okay job. I will almost certainly take tomorrow off unless I feel miraculously better tomorrow morning. I think I’m doing a much better job this time around of listening to myself and dealing with pains rather than ignoring and running through them.

Duncan is back in town for a few days. It was good to see him for a few hours tonight. Hopefully, I’ll be able to go spend this weekend down on Martha’s Vineyard with him and his family this weekend while Annie is in Maine.

It is now well past my bed time and so I must be off.

Tick Tock

2008-08-11T23:44:00.002-04:00

Happy Birthday, Mom.

Time flies when you don’t want it to. I wish that I wasn’t so anxious. I’m anxious about a lot right now. I’m anxious about the trip, anxious about traveling on my own, anxious about living on my own, anxious about living in a foreign country on my own, anxious about leaving the comforts of my home, anxious about my hip, anxious about just about anything. I wish that I could practice what I preach. Sometimes I feel like I have really helpful things to say to other people, but I can never seem to apply that same lens through which I see others so clearly to myself.

I think in some ways I’m sort of in denial about this whole situation. I think that once Annie leaves it will all feel real. For now it just seems like it’s still so far away. Packing and cleaning my room seem like ridiculous tasks. I have all the time in the world, right?

Today was fun. I spent most of the morning and afternoon with Annie. We spent the morning at her house. We spent the afternoon out running some errands and visiting my elderly neighbor. It was good to check in on her, but sad since she recently lost her husband. She must be pushing 90 at this point and she was glad to have some company.

Eventually, due to the rain, we made our way over to the CA gym to work out. This was a strange experience. It was bizarre to park in my old parking spot in West Gate and walk across the quad and work out in that room that I spent so much of my senior winter and spring in. In a way, though, it was nice because I was able to do a workout much harder than I could have done 3 months ago on the elliptical machine. All in all, a solid workout, despite the fact that it felt really weird to be back there.

I picked up some Chinese food and the fam celebrated mama’s birthday. After a brief break to see Annie for a bit, we continued to watch the Olympics. Beach volleyball is a great sport to watch.

Tomorrow I get to run 7.5 miles! I’m thinking of doing it on the Great Meadows trail. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Running on Empty

2008-08-10T23:40:00.001-04:00

It doesn’t usually take this long for me to decide what to write. Well, I guess some relatively interesting things happened today. My mother’s birthday is tomorrow, so today we had a little family gathering. My cousins, aunt, uncle, and grandparents all came by and I picked up my brother who took the bus down from Dartmouth for the day. To be perfectly honest, it was pretty awkward. My cousins and I don’t really have a lot in common. They’re perfectly fine kids, I just feel like they see me and my family as a bunch of spoiled rich people (which arguably we may or may not be) and we see them as relative ludites.

But it was okay. Picking up Brett from the subway station actually saved me a lot of the socializing time and since the Olympics were on, it provided at least one source of common entertainment. My one cousin, Brian, who’s a year or two older than me just got his second several-hundred-dollar tattoo on his other bicep. The first is, in gothic letter, “To Thine Own Self, Be True.” The second is a large cross with the image of Jesus sort of super imposed into it. One wonders, though, if he’s simply going for irony. In the same conversation in which he showed us his cross, he mentioned how he tried to get out of going to church every week. And I never once have heard him mention Shakespeare.

The grand parents and cousins and co left mid-afternoon. After a little bit of cleanup and argument about plans for the evening, we headed out to dinner at Myers and Chang, an Asian-fusion joint in the city. It was all well and good and we then dropped Brett back off at the bus and headed home. The car ride was only worth mentioning because of the re-broadcasting of “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me!” and some remarkable thunderstorms.

I finally got to see Annie. She got back from Maine with her sister about the same time that I returned home with my parents. She came over and we watched a few pint-sized Chinese girls swing themselves around bars and fly across mats (gymnastics). It makes me really depressed to think that all of these 16-20 year old athletes are already Olympians (many Olympic medalists) and here I am sitting in my room at home, naked, typing out my boring thoughts for no one to read. Sure, I have dreams and aspirations, but I haven’t gotten anywhere. I have a few things at which I’ve become decent, but nothing I can really say “Yeah, I’m world-class at that.”

I would love to run in the Olympics some day. I wish I had the confidence of a Steve Prefontaine type to simply proclaim it to be true while watching TV with my family, but I guess my Jewish sentiments make a little more pessimistic than Steve. There are 300 million people in the United States and three people on the Olympic marathon team. That means I’m basing my dreams on a roughly one in three-hundred-million chance. Now, whenever I hear someone say “Oh, it’s only a one in a million chance that such and such will happen,” I think of that thing happening a hundred times and that’s the likelihood of my dream coming true.

The speed workout this morning went okay. Like last week, the shorter repeats went pretty well with the longer ones not quite up to snuff. This week, though, the short repeats were quarters and the longer ones were 800s. All in all, I wasn’t thrilled, but it was okay, especially since I had to basically roll out of bed and go run. I didn’t even have time for breakfast! Oh no!

Two weeks from today, Annie leaves for Amherst. I try not to count down days but it’s really hard not to. I just want them to be special.

I always try to think of something witty to say to end these ramblings, but sometimes I got nothing.

Forgetting

2008-08-09T22:43:00.001-04:00

I just finished watching “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” a Jud Apatow flick about a guy whose girlfriend dumps him and yet he can’t seem to escape her. As a whole, it was a funny movie (no Superbad or Knocked Up, but solid). On a more subtle note, it actually struck a relatively poignant chord with me. While most of the situations were hilariously over the top and slapstick, there was an underlying seriousness that reminded me of the utter desperation of being forced to let go when you’re not ready.

I’ve already had to do this once with her. Well, maybe even twice? Still, this time is different. In two weeks, she’ll get in her car with her parents and head away to an exciting new place: a place without parents, without curfews, and without me. It’s hard to think about what those last few moments will be like. Will we both be too stubborn and stone-faced to show how we actually feel or will we bawl our eyes out? All I know is that I’m not ready. I’m not ready to let go of her; I’m not ready to hear that she IS ready to let go of me. Maybe that’s what hurts the most, the idea that she is okay with the uncertainty.

I’ve never been good at getting over girls. One of two things has happened in the past: I’ve either completely ignored her, told myself I hated her and that she was a miserable part of my life until it became the only thing I remembered and then never talked to her again or I simply didn’t get over her, but simply harbored my own feelings (in secret or not) and then eventually get hurt when I try to communicate about them. Both of these scenarios lead to shitty outcomes. Either I end up hating her and never speaking to them again or I end up getting my heart broken again. Relationships are hard.

Anna broke up with me once already, so in theory I should know what to expect. But it was different the first time. I think that part of me, deep down, thought that we might be able to get back together. So there wasn’t that same finality that I feel now. That was in March, so we still had three months of school and another three months of summer, so we had time if we did want to get back together. But now, it seems like even if we did want to, which doesn’t seem likely on the other side of the equation, we don’t have that same convenience. We’re not going to school together. And for the next year I’m going to be at least 2000 miles away. Fuck.

I think that the biggest problem or paradox in my mind is how to deal with the three months that I’m in Ecuador. It’s the time immediately after we will have been separated. Right now, she is the person I go to with anything. She is my best friend before she is my girlfriend. She’s the person that I see every day, the person who puts a smile on my face, the person that I think about and structure my day around. In a very blunt way, there will be a lot less to think about if she’s no longer a part of my life. And that’s what I’m worried about. I don’t want to let her just slip away and have her no longer be a part of my everyday life. But at the same time, I know that I’m going to need to get over her and need space and need time. Why is this all so complicated? Fuck.

I’m just trying to enjoy these last weeks, days, hours. If I don’t think about it, it won’t happen, right?

Right.

Anyways, my hips were both acting weirdly today. I did a bit of walking and played some tennis, which was probably not a great idea, but oh well. My dad had been asking me to play with him for a while, so I felt inclined. I’m hoping that I feel a lot better tomorrow morning so I can try out this speed workout. I will probably run in the old Asics Gel Racers again.

The Olympics are in swing now, but track and field doesn’t start for a few days, so it’s not too exciting right now. There’s a lot of swimming. Boring.

I wish that I felt more excitement than dread. Well, dread is much too strong a word. Anticipation? I wish that I didn’t have so much to lose. Then again, sometimes you need to stir up the routine, throw a wrench in the works. I guess the only difference here is I feel like it’s all so permanent, like there’s no going back. I’m coming to the end of a very important phase in my life. Hopefully, this will give way to an even more exciting beginning.

Open Up

2008-08-08T23:56:00.000-04:00

I had a similar run to my Tuesday run today. I ran a 4 mile out and back on the minute man trail from Merriam’s corner. The first mile felt like I was running through sand. Every step felt like an arduous, Herculean effort. This was probably due to the still very sore hip-flexors from my Pine Hill workout on Wednesday. After a first mile of around 6:50, I picked it up a bit and ran between 6:30 and 6:40 for the rest of the run, which is about what I was aiming for with today being an easy run. The only part in which I really pushed the envelope in terms of effort was the last 400 meters or so where I picked up my stride rate a lot to practice kicking. I felt really strong and smooth for the last minute or so. I blew by a couple of middle-aged soccer moms with puppies. It felt good to open up my stride.

In other news, the opening ceremonies of the Olympics were tonight. Well, actually they were this morning, but they were broadcast tonight in America. It was a pretty humbling geographical lesson when you realize how few countries you could actually locate on a map.

Annie is gone for the weekend, which is very sad indeed, but also means I can cross a lot off the list of chores and things I need to get done before I leave. Hopefully I’ll get to do some of the fun things next week. Rock climbing? Swim across Walden? We’ll see.

On Sunday, I’m scheduled to do a pretty tough track workout: 2x400, 4x800, 2x400. We’ll see how that goes. After the relative success of the Pine Hill repeats, I’m a bit optimistic. Still, my hip flexors were really sore today and I don’t think I could have even run ONE 60 second quarter. Only time will tell.

The Sinister Minister

2008-08-07T23:08:00.002-04:00

Last night I saw a pretty intense concert. It was one of the best double-features I’ve ever seen. First was Bela Fleck and the Flecktones and second was Return to Forever. The Flecktones are one of the strangest instrumented bands ever: banjo, electric bass, saxophone, and electric drums. The music is a fusion of jazz, funk, and bluegrass (all instrumental) and the sound is unbelievable. Bela Fleck is one of the best banjo players I know of (certainly the best jazz-banjo player, though, albeit, they are in short supply). In addition, Victor Wooten on the electric bass is regarded as one of the best bass players in the world. All in all, an incredibly tight band.

Return to Forever was a group that I didn’t really know much about and so I was utterly shocked when they started playing. First of all, I thought they were a lot older (they were started in the late 1970s, I believe), so the music seemed much more modern than I expected. Also, every single player in the band was a virtuoso on his instrument, most notably the guitar player, Al Di Meola, who, I believe, may have be the pioneer of the “shred” guitar movement. All in all, this was a night that far exceeded my expectations.

Today was all right. It was a little crappy here and there. I woke up with really bad pain in my right hip-flexor and a little in my left, and I started to freak out. Before I got my stress fracture in February, I had a lot of pain in my hip-flexor, so I was afraid I had overdone it and was going to have to deal with another four month break from running. Still, I went over to Annie’s to paint and eventually she mentioned her hip-flexor was sore as well, so I felt a little better since we both did similar Pine Hill workouts yesterday. Also, I realized that it probably does make sense for the HF to be sore if you’ve been doing steep, steep hill repeats all day. I’m a little calmer about that now, but still uber paranoid.

I’ve been feeling kind of pissed off all day and I’m not sure it’s coming from one specific place. I think I may be getting addicted to running again and I’m feeling the withdrawal on the days I can’t run. Also, Annie and I got in a bit of a fight this afternoon. Basically, I didn’t want her to go back to work for the next week or so because I thought it was too soon given that she is still recovering from mono and is trying to train. Obviously, I’m slightly biased because if she doesn’t go to work it means I probably get to spend more time with her, so that’s also on my agenda. Still, she decided to go back to work, despite the fact that we only have a few weeks left on the same continent. Oh well. Yihyeh beseder.

I did get to go out to dinner with Jenny, which was nice. I haven’t seen her in a long while (maybe since graduation?), so it was really great to catch up. We got dinner and then wandered around the city a bit. I got my mom a birthday present (her birthday is on Monday) and then headed home.

I’m not really sure why this one thing with Anna and the work bothered me so much. I think that maybe it’s the fact that it seems like she has a complete disregard for what’s going on on my end of the equation sometimes. Like, today when we were arguing about her farming she mentioned that we would have the whole last week after she finished to spend together. This, however, would be assuming that I don’t have any commitments that week. What if I got a job that week? But see, this is the difference between us: I wouldn’t. I guess I feel like I’m tired of making all the sacrifices in this relationship. And I know that that’s a huge exaggeration and that everyone sacrifices things, but I guess I feel like I’ve been getting the short end of the stick recently.

I’m not really sure what to do about this or even if there is anything that I CAN do about this. In fact, the one thing I do know is that I don’t want to spend the last few weeks I have with her being pissed off all the time. I really do want these weeks to be happy and memorable.

In other news, I was reminded that I leave three weeks from Monday. Holy shit.

Conundrum

2008-08-05T22:35:00.001-04:00

I think I ought to start writing earlier in the day. See, the problem is that I want to be able to write about the day as a whole, yet usually by the time I get to the end of the day I’m tired enough that I don’t feel like it. Quite a conundrum.

Let’s see, where to begin. I woke up a little later, which was nice after a pretty late night last night, and headed over to Annie’s. We did some work on her Dad’s office and then took a break. We headed out to get some lunch at main street’s and stopped by Crosby’s and Concord Lumber for some groceries/painting supplies. We got back, unpacked and then decided it was a nice enough time as ever to work out. So, we drove back into town (oh-so-efficient with the gas…) and I dropped her at CA to x-train and I drove to the Minuteman trail-head. I did an out and back run on that trail which ended up being about 10k. I had been hoping to keep the pace under 6:30 and ended up average 6:37, so not too bad. I’d also like to note here that this is the farthest I’ve run post-injury by 1.2 miles. So, all in all, I think it’s not too shabby. The only problem was I felt like I was running more like 6:10 effort and turning out 6:40 miles. I did do a pretty hard bike yesterday, so that could be it. Who knows…

Picking up Annie from CA was a much bigger deal than I had imagined. First of all, it was CA summer camp pick-up time, so there were a million little kids and preppy looking kids in pink CA shirts wandering all over the campus. Secondly, she wasn’t actually done with her workout, so I had half an hour or so to kill. I decided to walk to cumbie’s and back as a bit of a cool-down, but mostly to get a Gatorade because I was feeling light-headed.

Finally, we headed back to her house and actually did some work. After a few hours, I came home and had some dinner with my parents and went on a nice long walk through the neighborhood and talked to Kelly for a while. She seems to be in pretty rough shape; I’m worried about her. Apparently she has a meeting tomorrow with her parents and therapist as to whether or not she should wait to go to college and enroll in an anorexia rehab program for a few months. I don’t know exactly the whole story, but what I’ve heard is pretty upsetting. Basically, she seems to be back to as bad a place, if not worse, than she was in when she was first brought under the eyes of doctor’s and therapists almost eight months ago now. It seems really terrible that they could let her get to this point when they have apparently been monitoring her pretty closely. How does this happen? How is a teenage girl with a known eating disorder allowed to lose weight with doctors allegedly weighing her often and tracking her weight to the point where she now weighs less than she did when this whole process began? That’s pretty upsetting.

On a lighter note, tomorrow I’m going to run pine hill for the first time since cross country season. I’m pretty psyched about that.

I’m going to try and get some rest now. I’ve found that if I don’t get nine hours of sleep, my workouts don’t go too well.

No Apologies

2008-08-04T23:58:00.001-04:00

I’d hate for this to become the kind of journal in which the writer simply complains about his or her lack of time to write and apologizes for his sparse entries day after day. The last few days have just seen me arriving home later than usual and, though I hate to admit it, I do require a good amount of sleep. Tonight I saw Jethro Tull at the Pavilion, quite a solid performance for a band of age-60+ musicians.

The rest of the day was relatively uneventful. I spent the morning around town running errands and then on my first bike ride in a week. It was nice to get out though. I feel even stronger on the bike than I remember, especially for the first half hour or so. After that, I headed over to Annie’s where her little cousins had dropped in. We looked after them for a few hours (I was a part of my very first tea party and also learned about the new bi-lingual-friendly programming on PBS) until Patty took them to Carlisle Castle and ice cream. Being a kid is so tough…

I came home afterwards and then went off to this concert with my dad. It was a pretty good time. One of these days I really will settle down before it’s almost my bed time and write something worth reading.

Getting Closer

2008-08-03T23:26:00.000-04:00

A break from the usual. Today started out long before my days usually do. I woke up at 7:00 to get ready for the race. My parents drove me up to Newburyport and I registered and got some water and then just relaxed for about an hour. The race itself was way behind schedule. There were four races set to go off in 15 minute intervals. Not only did they start 20 minutes late, but the intervals were more like 20 minutes, rather than 15. Since I was running in the men’s open race, which happened to be the last race, I was bestowed the joy of racing in the heat and sun. Fun, fun, fun!

For some reason, I felt unusually nervous before the start. Perhaps it was the waiting and waiting that took its toll on me. Perhaps it’s the fact that I’ve only raced once in the past 8 months. Perhaps it’s the fact that I’ve never raced this distance before. Either way, wandering around the starting line, I felt like I was an insect among gods. Everyone there looked incredibly fit. I just felt out of place.

The race was short. The gun went off and I managed not to go out way too fast, only a little too fast. I ran the first quarter in 69, a good bit faster than I had aimed. I’m not 100% sure what my 800 and 1200 splits were, but I ended up coming in around 5:0something. Still, I had a lot of energy left at the end to kick, so I feel like I just don’t really know how to race this distance yet.

All in all, I’m happy with the time I ran given the effort I put in. Certainly a new PR and not bad for all of 16 miles per week. Place-wise, I think I was 37^th out of around 100 (but that’s just the men), so eh, not too bad. Again, I don’t think I should expect too much more from this performance.

After the race we drove home, relaxed a little, and then went into Boston for Shakespeare in the Park. The play was As You Like It, quite solid. Good dinner from PF Chang’s. I’m super drained though, so I’m going to call it a night.

The Cycle

2008-08-02T22:52:00.002-04:00

Another day spent mostly covered in paint. Is my life becoming too ritualistic? Sometimes I worry about that. I worry that if I fall into a pattern, even if it’s a really wonderful pattern as I’m in now, then suddenly the days blend together and, before I know it, a month has gone by. Sometimes I have to switch things up and make every day seem like an individual day, rather than a piece of a larger whole.

I’m running a race tomorrow morning, so I won’t be too long here. I’ll review the day a bit since I’m not feeling too prolific currently. I woke up in the late morning; it was nice to sleep in for the first time in a while. I spent a little bit of time trying to fix my external hard-drive, which ended up going well (surprise, a first for tech problems…). I headed over to the Hager’s after to do some more painting. The big hole that I had plastered yesterday was looking pretty good and I put another layer of spackle on it. I spent most of the afternoon painting and driving back and fourth from Concord Lumber. Annie was in and out; she went to CA to work for a while, so I spent a lot of time on my own, which was actually kind of nice. It reminded me a bit of when I was cooking for the golf tournament and I would just put on an old album that I hadn’t heard in a while and zone out and really focus. It was the same basic thing except I was painting shelves instead of cooking burgers.

In the evening, Anna brought Elson over and we took him for a walk around the neighborhood. It was a nice night and it felt good to just get out for a bit. I’m now going to try to get to bed so that I can be relatively well rested for tomorrow. I don’t have too high hopes. I think I can run sub 5:30; I’m hoping to run sub 5:12, and really hoping to run sub 5:00. Most of all, I’m just hoping to not embarrass myself.

The Best

2008-08-01T23:53:00.000-04:00

11:41pm

I spent most of the day covered in paint and plaster. After a brief amount of time spent in my own house, I drove to Annie’s and continued to work on painting and fixing up her Dad’s home-office. To be honest, this is basically the best arrangement that I could have imagined for the summer. I get to do relatively easy work, get paid quite well, get to spend my whole day with my girlfriend, and have no real set hours. It is quite wonderful. It’s also nice to find out that something that you imagined was just a normal household skill is actually somewhat rare and useful. Go me.

I had probably the best run I’ve had in six months tonight. Well, the second part of it was. I spent the first two miles in Carlisle with Annie, which began quite nicely. The night was beautiful and the pace was very relaxed, but she started feeling sick after about a mile. It didn’t seem like she’d be able to continue so I sprinted back to the car (about seven tenths of a mile) and drove to pick her up. She seemed to be doing ok after, and even then ran a little more when she got home apparently. That girl. She’ll push herself forever.

I was supposed to do 4 miles in total today, so I still had two to put in after I dropped her off. I decided to go home and test out my old Asics gel racers. To my great delight, they proved to feel wonderful, despite being a bit too small. My run was truly spectacular, despite its brevity. I started out jogging relatively easy for the first half mile (around 3:20), and then ran a pretty quick half mile (2:19), followed by another jog half mile and another quick half mile (2:29, uphill). All in all, it felt pretty solid. I felt quite strong despite feeling pretty stiff this morning and being on my feet all day.

Well, it’s nearing midnight, so I’m about ready to hit the sack. Also, I am thinking about running in the High Street Mile race in Newburyport on Sunday. Could be fun or could be a disaster. I guess there’s only one way to find out!

The Opening Phrase

2008-08-01T00:34:00.001-04:00

12:20am

Here we go. I’ve wanted to do this for a while now and I’ve only been waiting for a good excuse. Reading over my old journals brought me to the point of nostalgia for my older days and also simply reminded me how nice it is to have an account of everything. To be able to go back and look at what I did, even if everything now seems petty and unimportant. I can’t imagine being the person that I was just a few years ago.

So what is this? It’s a prelude. An introduction of sorts. A place where I can ramble away about.. well, anything I suppose. I’m not going to edit this really and I’m not going to try and make it seem intelligent or thoughtful. It will be full of thought, however, but not necessarily thoughtful.

A prelude to what? You may ask. A prelude to a trip, to a new experience, to a new chapter of my life. I guess that this prelude will serve as a sort of setting up of this coming experience. How do I feel about it? What to I have to do to prepare, mentally and physically? Where am I going? What am I leaving behind? All these questions will be (maybe) addressed in the next 31 days before I depart for the Southern hemisphere.

I want to start by talking a bit about language, since language has a lot do to with this trip. After attempting to learn another language, I’ve found a lot of flaws in English. I first noticed this in a conversation today with Anna in which we were talking about the word love. In Spanish, to love someone in your family, you would say “te amo;” to say that you love someone romantically, you would say “te quiero” (literally, I want you, cool, huh?). Well, besides English’s lack of a differentiation between different types of love, I realized there was another lack of clarity when I tried to think about how I feel about the coming months. I want there to be a word that means really excited about something new but at the same time terrified because it is new and upset at having to leave so much behind. Apprehensive seems to negative. I guess I’m at a loss for words. What can I say? I’ve never claimed to be a good writer.

I will try and update this once per day for this month which will conclude my prelude. Then, the true symphony will begin.