5 weeks...

5 weeks from now ... I will be sore. But I will hopefully have a new PR under my belt.

Did a 20 miler tonight... hard after last nights 10 mile pace run. hit the wall at 18 miles, chugged a can of Fruitopia and chowed a fruit bar and finished with 4 laps of an 800meter loop. After I got the nutrition sorted out, I felt surprisingly good. Miles 19 and 20 each under 8 minutes... weird.

Anyone wanna run beside me with a cooler in the next marathon?

Music lately: I'm From Barcelona - Let Me Introduce My Friends (obviously)
Sean Lennon - Friendly Fire
Live- Throwing Copper (why can't songs from black mountain sound remotely like this?)


Tomorrow holds a day of php, painting, and assembling IKEA. A 5 miler too, if my legs will take it.

I built a tree house

Have you heard this album? I'm From Barcelona - Let Me Introduce My Friends!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

god damn. its perfect.

I also built a back end. Its fugly right now, but CSS will fix it. I guess its not a back end... its about 1/10 of a back end. but hey, it changed the articles on the page. hell yes.

I also ran hills. 8 of them. Runners high is like no other. I wish I could live there.

and then I slept

PS - Sorry Pluto

Another Night, Another Raccoon

Tuesday night. 10 miles. Wasn't so hot - Lately I have been digging deep to find the burn, looking for every ounce of lactic feedback to remind me that I'm improving. Tonight, I didn't have to dig deep at all. In fact, vietnamese vegetarian pad thai induced heart burn left me looking for a shallow grave. Those red chillis that tasted so good at dinner hours earlier proved evil upon second inspection. I knew it would happen, its happened before... I suppose I shouldn't ask for burn anymore. Bring me solitude and sweet disassociation, let my mind wander far from my lungs, my penchant for burn has been cured. For now.

My 10th mile concluded with a showdown. This showdown was not unlike one that you may have seen in a handful of old western movies. First I felt the stare, seeing a looming shadow swagger into the middle of the road, blocking my path. The beady eyes glowed an ominous yellow, reflecting sudden and previously unnoticed moonlight. I took one step forward, out of the shadows, to make my adversary aware that I would not back down. He tottered backwards, stumbling slightly, his dark mask hiding his expression. I calculated my chances in such a battle, weighing the pros and cons of an attempted confrontation. I realized that I was outmatched, as this stealthy ninja of a creature would surely slice and dice me to shreds. I turned my back, surrendering to fate. Would he attack or show sympathy and revel in my surrender. He did neither. As I slowly paced away, with one eye glued over my shoulder, he crept along the curb, mirroring my movements as only the most trained assassins can. I quickened my pace, further demonstrating my desire to avoid any disturbances.

My rival must have sensed my resignation, causing his innate adrenaline charged challenge sensors to lose interest in stalking. Just as quickly as he had emerged in my path, he was gone, vanishing into the shadows. Minutes later, I heard him topple a garbage can.. surely accomplished with an effortless and unexpected attack... this was definitely a warning sign... that garbage can could have been me.

Let this be a warning to you. Despite what you may have been told... just look at their masks, their gleaming eyes, their ability to appear out of the night's blackness unnoticed.

Yes, raccoons are the ninjas of nature.

$i Doesn't Look A Lot Like Jesus

WOw its late again. Remember, the time on this blog is cali time, meaning i am i+3.

Realized its been almost a week since the last post, and I don't want to fall into the Uncle Travelling Matt Forever persona again. Zen and the art of paint scraping is now over - the kitchen in the new place is painted, and looks hella good compared to the "agent orange" theme of yesteryear.

Running is still on an upswing - last week's recovery was a beautiful change of intensity... but the 800m repeats on Thursday night injected the well needed pain to keep the evolution going. Saturday's 6mile pace was fueled with frustration on a few fronts, meaning it turned into a 40 minute search for the depths of legs and lungs. On nights like that, I become a hill-seeking missile, searching out every source of added resistance - and Saturday's run was predominantly on an incline. Legs burned, I was near crosseyed by the end, making it more of a tempo run, but Sunday's slow 12 miler cleansed away all memories.

So whats with the $i ... $i am learning the whole php/mysql thang. $i had a problem that $i couldn't quite figure out tonight. $i called out for help. mattiek came to my rescue. $i++. Thanks dude.

now that its solved, $i can sleep

soundtrack tonight? The Killers - When You Were Young.... I can't resist its Springsteen hooks, Meatloaf bridges and U2 riffs... unoriginal, but damn good song.

also Matisyahu - Youth .... orthodox jew reggae? only in Brooklyn. I think diesel plays the drums.

Sleep is for the Weekend

Last week, I wrote that 2 am was invincible. Here I am at 3am - I suppose 3 am is an insomniac. I figured I'd update, just to keep the few faithfuls up to date.

This week is a mega recovery week - last week's speed was tempered during Sunday's long slow distance. The last few miles were ugly, with that feeling of impending muscle breakdown creeping in. Every marathoner knows the feeling; the mild ache that accompanies each footstrike, the tightening of hamstrings, deadening of quads and numbness of mind. Ah, the wall; the brink of meltdown. When approached with slow controlled pace, you can balance on the edge and stare deep into its abyss without its deleterious and devastating effects. When approached in Ottawa last May, we all know I took a fearless nosedive into its blackness, landing on my knees and crawling through its grasp. Each time I get there in training now, the extra experience will hopefully prevent further meltdowns from happening.

Monday was a 4 mile recovery run, which ended up being more of a 2 mile run + extra useless jogging. Dead legs. Tonight's 6 miles happened, nothing fast, nothing special... legs are slowly coming back to life.

Tomorrow looks like it will be a day of XHTML; hopefully a design will take shape. Fun new project, I will disclose more later. For the work, I needed a new soundtrack. How's this for balance:

The Roots - Game Theory
The Decemberists - The Crane Wife

Also - a new microphone has arrived. Podcasting will take on a whole new life. Sleep is for the me.

Teach Me How To Fly

This is turning into a sweatblog lately - my brain isn't functioning enough to wax philosophic. But, there isn't much to wax about anyways... most of what i see is paint. Can you paint philosophic? hmmm...

Seriously, the last 5 days have been all about paint. To be precise, its more like anti-paint, which is the paint equivalent of a positron. If i were to wax philosophically, my title would be "zen and the art of paint scraping". What started as an art; precision and perfection, not leaving a speck unturned quickly degraded to something less precise. Is there a law that says that walls should be flat? Sure, most walls that you see are flat, but that doesn't make it the rule. It was once believed that the world was flat - and we all know how that one turned out. So, as I make my pronouncement that walls needn't be smooth and planar, I accept that I may be burned at the stake, but I see myself as a great mind ahead of its time. Besides, I like to think that the wall of the kitchen now has some symbolic meaning; a long lost braille dialect of irregular shapes, that will someday be decoded to reveal the secret of the universe.


Ok - enough pseudo philosophy. 10 miler tonight. I hesitate to say this, but it was nothing short of effortless. If only marathons were run at 10pm, in 16C temperatures. Averaged a 7:45 pace, but my mind was everywhere else. As mile 9 elapsed, my Garmin woke me from my revery, meaning there was 1 mile to go. As I couldn't remember the miles that had taken me 5 miles from home and nearly all the way back, I decided to tune in for a mile; to actively breathe and see what life was like below my shoulders. So I dug deep, and looked for pain. I tried to light my lungs aflame, to feel the burn, but steady breathing put out the fires. I tried to churn up some lactic acid to remind my legs of mile 23, but my chemical efforts were buffered. In no time, the Garmin beeped again. Mile 10: 6:45/mile.

This week has been unbelievable. Tomorrow is a 20 miler. I can't wait.

Tonight's soundtrack- Loveless - "Go"

Threshold

Something had to give. For a few weeks, everything was drenched in the oppression of humidity. Sleeping was uncomfortable, leading to days of sleepiness and nights of wakefulness. They say people in the south do everything slowly - from slow paced steps to the characteristic slow enunciated spoken drawl. For those few weeks, I didn't do things slowly; it was as if I didn't do anything at all. Even running was brutal.


Somewhere in the past few days, that humidity is gone; the thick curtain of air that was perpetually rubbing me the wrong way was lifted. Suddenly, everything felt easier. It was like I was a fish, struggling to breathe the wet stagnant air, being thrown from the water only to realize that I didn't have gills after all. The air made things movable, breathable and liveable.

Training this week has been almost too good. I feel as if I am reborn as a runner. 4 miles monday, 10 miles tuesday, 6 mile trail run yesterday, and a 6.25 mile lactate threshold run tonight. Splits on the fast sections were as low as 6:19/mile. Heart rate hit 192, and then rebounded back to normal.

Other projects are coming along nicely too, after weeks of wondering. Got some great feedback on one, a great idea for another, and an interesting proposal in the works. The good news came like a shot of EPO - my lungs tonight felt endless. Despite irregularities in training, fitness or the events in your life, sometimes the only things weighing you down are your own thoughts. Lose your mind and you grow wings. Tonight I flew.

Oh yeah, new shoes arrived in the mail today. 500 miles have done their worst to the old ones.

Music tonight? Kano - Sometimes (Remix feat. Kaleshnekof). From the Brown Eyes CD Single. So smooth.

Bulletproof... I wish I was

I have always thought that 2 am was the perfect time of day. Each night, I would go to sleep, hoping to wake up at 2 am. I would lie awake and stare at the stars on my cieling. No matter what had happened the day before, or was to come the next day, 2 am was invincible. Nothing can touch you at 2 am; deadlines lose their looming, failures fail to fail. If you lost everything, had nothing left to your name, you would still have 2 am.

Went for a midnight 4 miler tonight. The moon was almost full, casting a metallic glow on the lake. I turned the volume down low, so I could hear my feet crunching and my breath breathing. I realized that its not 2 am that is invincible. Midnight can be invincible too. If you lost everything, and had nothing left to your name, you would still have you.

Tri and 19 miler

Seems like a yearly thing - watch triathlon in the morning, then run until it hurts. Well, not a forever yearly kinda thing, but I did it last year and this year, so as far as the blog-readers are concerned, this has been going on since the beginning of time.

So, woke up at 7:20 (there's a 7:00 in the MORNING too? jeez, who knew)... and ate a quick bite. Out the door to watch the Ktown Tri. The bug has almost caught me; maybe next summer. I wanna get a solid marathon under my belt first - preferably not finishing on my knees. The whole purchasing of bike gear may be a hurdle, but I fear that when the bug catches, it will bite hard.

The tri was awesome, enough visible pain to get the endurance sport spidey senses tingling.

Spent a long day walking and swimming in the sun, and then got home exhausted for a quick nap. Probably slept for 45 minutes, before rolling out of bed to put on the runners. 19 miles. First 10 were smooth, then some ugliness, then rocked a couple of 7:45's, and then the last couple were just about survival. Home for a quick meal, soaking in ice water, and now its time to crash.

Three posts in two days... I guess I'm back!

Play-List

Music needs to be updated too... so lets do it. quickly

New London Fire - I Sing The Body Holographic
Antony & The Johnsons - self titled
Rhymefest - Blue Collar
Jurassic 5 - Feedback
TV On the Radio - Young Liars EP

done

Back By Popular Demand

Whoa. time warp. its been awhile. Late at night now, but at the urgings of a faithful reader, the time has come to wipe the dust from the control panels in the underwater base, flip the switch and power up.

Its been over a month since the last post. I got back from the alternate reality of European vakay, and hurled myself back into heavy training. Although I kept somewhat in running form, via some sojourns deep into the hills surrounding Cestin, Serbia.. the days that will forever be known as "contamination of 06", the required diet of bread and iced tea, and the resulting feelings of maximum exertion coming around mile 3 - lets just say that getting back into a serious regime was less than rewarding.

The first few weeks back, it was as if my legs had never known how to run. Perhaps their last memory was the meltdown at the finish line in Ottawa, and they were simply resisting training for fear of repetition. Despite the frustrations of slowness and decreased fitness - the back of my mind remembered that after 3 weeks, it would all be back. Every time that my perceived effort screamed redline - my GPS yawned 8:00/mile. Every time my lungs wanted to fly, my legs howled to stop.

But, all the research says 3 weeks... so I trusted ... and counted down the days.

This week, things have come around. Put in a 4 miler on Monday (was scheduled for 3, but the weightlessness took over). 9 miler on Tuesday, reaching a sweat-drenched equilibrium with the monsoon humidity. 5 miles on Wednesday, cruising. a 6 mile hill workout on Thurs went so well that it prompted me to register for the next marathon...

October 1st, 2006 - The Prince Edward County Marathon. The same course as last year's 3:39:00, lets see what a year has done.

Tonight was a 9 mile pace run. Felt like crap. Something was off, and the legs were screaming. My mind was running faster than me, trying to figure it all out. Why was I running so slowly? What happened to 3 weeks? GPS doesn't lie... the military made it... they can hit a target from 30 000 feet.

As I walked in my door, I recalled a few times when military GPS wasn't so accurate. Every now and then (unfortunately, more often than that), those bombs hit villages....

As I stood in the kitchen, my brother came in the door from his run... swearing at his GPS. "Damn cloud cover - GPS is useless tonight... this thing lost me like it was its job!"

.... Three weeks :)