Art La FlammeArt La FlammeArt La FlammeArt La Flamme
Antidotes are what you take to prevent dotes.
Antidotes are what you take to prevent dotes.Antidotes are what you take to prevent dotes.Antidotes are what you take to prevent dotes.Antidotes are what you take to prevent dotes.
Less than one week back from Iraq, and I’ve already covered just shy of 50 miles of running. I’m a little sore, but it feels great. Between server issues, moved half way across the world, and readjusting the life at home, I’m not said much about what’s going on. Let’s start with the running — it’s easy to talk about.
Last week, as we were waiting at the airport in Tikrit for our chance to fly to Kuwait, I stayed focus on my running and managed to put in three runs for almost 18 miles while staged on the flight line, ready to fly out on a moments notice. Sitting at a desolate airport, waiting for weather to clear or a plane to arrive, for several days can, well, be pretty damn boring. Lots of folks watched movies or caught up on their reading — I tried to go run.
But those were flat miles, in a dry heat. Looking back now at my Garmin records from the 16 mile run I did two weeks ago, it was a total of about 700 feet of elevation change — for the whole thing. There’s nothing flat about where I live — if you’re not on the beach, it’s not flat.
After I got back home last Sunday, after the day was done and the kids were in bed, I took off and did a 12 mile run. My training plan told me I was suppose to be having an easy week — thus 12 and not 17 miles — but 12 miles seemed pretty boring. I figured I could spice it up by heading to the hills. Ugh — it had over 1000 feet of ascent. When it was over, I was smoked — it part because I had just flown half way around the world, but in part because it was 6 miles up and then 6 miles back down. I slept pretty well that night.
This week, though, I have mixed it up — some loops through the neighborhood (still not flat) and some runs through the pineapple fields. And I gotta say — the runs have been a lifesaver. I’ve been able to self-medicate, getting healthy doses of endorphins, as I’ve tried to adjust to being home and as the family has put up with my crap.
If that sounds odd, well, it shouldn’t. The Army says that the #1 thing we as soldiers can do, post deployment, to help deal with the stress of reintegration, is physical exercise (cardio, specifically). It’s no joke — those endorphins are magical when it comes to dealing with stress. When I had first approached my wife about training up for this marathon, it was just this that as I cited as the #1 reason for wanting to do this — endorphins during redeployment and reintegration, since I know it’s always stressful not just for me but for us, when I come home.
And so, I’ve spent the week trying to find the balance — miles, vs. hills. The miles are good for me, but the hills are helping me build strength in my legs (and with how much they ache, I have no doubt it’s working). They were pretty uneventful runs during the week, but the long run today was noteworthy: I ran my our neighborhood not just to the Army base, by across it to my new office.
K and the kids had gone to see a performance of Annie last night, and I….. went to sleep. I was very tired. And by tired, I mean I went to bed before 7 pm. Yeah, tired. But I slept 7 and a half hours, getting up at 0230 and hitting the road just after 3. It was almost 6 miles through the fields, and then a little over three up to post and then across post to the office. I stopped, on the way back, at a 24 hour convenience store, to buy a 64 ounce Gatorade — most of which went into my camelback, to restock it since I had drained it on the way, but the rest went right into my belly. No food, no gel packs.
I had hoped to do the run in about 3 hours. Last weekend, I finished reading the book Born to Run, which at one point talks about slowing down slow runs, to burn fat and not what’s in your stomach. Since my stomach was empty, well, I was committed to trying this (and it totally worked). It was 18 miles in 3:05:40, a hair more than I had set as my goal. But there was the whole 2200+-feet-of-ascent aspect, too, so I’m okay with the time. My thighs are seriously smoked — even my hips hurt — but I feel pretty good. I’ll be drinking water all day, and I did eat that Buick when I was done running.
If you’re curious as to how the running has been going, here‘s the updated spreadsheet for my running and training. Pretty nerdy and geeky, but it does show what I’ve been up to. I have a Google Earth file, too, that I can email you – just ask, and I’ll send it.
About 6 weeks ago, my blog crapped out on me. One day, poof, all by itself, it lost a bunch of data without explanation. I run everything from my own server, and I’d set WordPress to email me regular backups of the database, so I wasn’t too worried about it — other than not having the time to go in and fix it, and wanting better bandwidth to use in fixing it. Well, I had both tonight. Welcome back, Mr. Blog.
I am home in HI. Iraq is done. It was nice, but I so much prefer to be at home. I had the honor of being in charge of getting 94 soldiers home, which was an adventure. After some initial delays in Tikrit, due to rain of all things, we rushed from there to Kuwait, through Customs, and onto a North American Airlines charter flight. Similar to when I came home (covertly) this summer, we went through Leipzig to Bangor, Maine, before stopping in Sacramento on the way to Oahu. It was a long, long 36 hours. For me, the saving grace was that, as the guy in charge, I got to sit in the comfy sets at the front of the plane. Still, though — that’s a lot of miles to cover. And really, when the wife and kids are waiting on the other end, the miles seem to take that much longer.
Now that I’m home, I’m really doing three things:
1. Hanging out with the wife and kids.
2. Working on the honey-do list.
3. Running.
The hanging out part is pretty easy. My temperament seems to be a lot better than it has been after other deployments. I am much slower to be irked – which was not always the case after other trips.
I’m doing my best with the honey-do’s. Today, I spent a good amount of time tinkering with our TiVo. With Galleon, VisualHub, and websites like this, I figured out how to add video to our TiVo (when normally it just has the things that it records). Now, I can add programs to it, for us to watch — I can go someplace like this, download a movie like the original Street Fighter, when load it on the TiVo for us to watch later. Not have to do, just nice to do.
And yes, running. Always with the running, even while in the process of staging to move from Iraq to Hawai’i. At the airport in Tikrit, while we waiting for the weather to improve, I did three runs that totaled almost 18 miles. On Sunday, about 14 hours after I got home, I did a 12 mile run through the pineapple fields. Iraq was flat; I am having to adjust both to the lack of flat running, as well as the humidity. This weekend, I am suppose to run something around 18 miles for my long run — I’ll need a plan for water and maybe food along the way.
I made it through another week, injury free. That, though, is getting tougher as the lunar month comes to a close this week and the moon goes away. Running it darkness can be awesome, but it can be tough on ankles.
After five weeks of running, I am .29 miles ahead of the training plan. Not too bad. It’s always give and take with me — lots of little days of just a pinch more than required, and then the one or two days where I come up short a mile or two. My shortfall was the other week when I had rolled an ankle and done only 3.5 of 5 — that’s a bunch of pinches to make up.
Very uneventful week in running. I was suppose to close out with 10 on Saturday, but I wanted to loop the airfield. That hasn’t changed — it’s still 11+ to do that. Which is fine. I wasn’t setting any time records on that run, just enjoying the darkness and the exercise.
Running this week is accelerated. I normally run late Saturday night and then pick back up late Tuesday night, but this week has the Army 10-Miler on Friday morning, almost 2 days ahead in my training week. So, I ran 11+ last night, and I went back out and hit my 3 tonight to start the new running week. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday night, and then Friday morning I’ll do the 10. I’m only scheduled for 7 this week, but 10 won’t kill me. I’ll probably run it with Rob or something.
Running is serving as a very good distraction these days. This week, I closed out my crazy sleep cycle, and am going to a 0300-1500ish work shift, probably for the rest of my time here in Iraq. Not that it hasn’t been nice to be awake 18 hours of the day, throughout the day and the night — it’s just that it’ll be a little different to sleep, you know, more regular hours.
On the 19th, I had rolled my ankle off of the side of the road when running. I was less than 2 miles into a 3 mile run, but did 4 to make sure it wasn’t broken. I figured it was just sprained.
On the 22nd, I did it again, this time rolling it so far I fell to the desert floor and drew blood. I was a mere .25 into my planned 7 mile run and yes, I ran the 7 miles that night.
On the 29th, I rolled it a third time. Same left ankle — I run against traffic, on the side of the road, after midnight and in the dark, so these things happen. I made it about 3.66 miles of my planned 5, but had to stop. It hurt, and in one of those, “Uh, oh” kinds of ways.
But I have kept running. I knocked out four runs this week, for 19 miles. Saturday night was 9 miles, and I dragged Rob out to run with me (he’s also a zombie) which slowed the pace (talking always does that) but made it a very enjoyable run. 19 miles for the week, average pace of 9:12 per mile, running in the dark with a sprained ankle. 4 runs, averaging almost 45 minutes per run. When I’m back past 10 miles, and over 45 minutes average run time per run, I’ll say I’m again a distance runner. And I’d probably return to regular ice cream, too.
I think it was an OK week. Good running. This coming week, I’ve got new Nikes to work into the running. I’ll start with small runs, to see how they are. I can do 3 or 4 miles under the worst conditions, so even if the shoes are horrible I’d still make my run — vs. trying new shoes first on a long run, which could be a nightmare.
I’m still running. Believe it or now, what with everything that is going on, I am still hitting the road for miles in hoping for being ready for Honolulu in December.
It’s going only OK. I am running at night, almost exclusively at or after midnight. And I am trying along the side of the roads — and once a week, at least, stepping on the edge, rolling my ankle, and hurting it. My ankles are in pretty bad shape right now. I can still lace up and running straight on ‘em, but rotational stuff hurts some. They’ll bounce back. I just need more moonlight.
But it does sort of kill the pace. Week 2, which included a 7 mile run in which I rolled my ankle in the first quarter mile, had me averaging 9 minute miles for the week. This week, when I again rolled my ankle, my weekly average pace was 8:42. I need to stop rolling my ankles.
Anyway, it’s good to run. It’s good to have a training plan. It’s good to be out on the open roads again. This coming week will close with a 9 mile run — the distances are getting respectable again. Maybe by then my sleep pattern will return to something considered more normal, too.
Rough week, with a lot of work, maybe not enough sleep, a lot of emails about the side project and, oh yeah, some running.
Good running. At night, too, which helps with the heat. 3 x 3 miles, 1 x 6 miles. The 6 mile run (last night) featured some pretty strong winds, which killed my pace. But I ran, which is good enough.
I wanted to post a link to a file I whipped up, for training for a marathon. It’s an Excel file (here) and it’s all geek. It’s built on the Hal Higdon novice marathon training plan, which I swear by for anyone just wanting to run and survive a marathon (it’s fool proof).
On the first sheet, you’d enter the date for the Monday before your planned marathon. On sheet 2, you’d record distances and times for the various runs. And then, behind the scenes, it does a ton of math – pace per run, pace per week, and all kinds of other eye candy stuff, to include charts and graphs.
Oh, and I almost forgot. Week One, Day One of training for the Honolulu Marathon was Tuesday. Tuesday was also the day my boss told me to go back to bi-phasic sleep, until further notice. Could life be more complicated? Yep. So be it!
I’m running again. When the Doc told me recently that my foot would be ok — no broken bones, no bone spur, likely just a soft tissue injury — I told him I was itching to get back to running.
Stay off of it for two weeks, he said. Take these, he said.
Well, one for two ain’t too bad. I’d not run in about ten days by that point, so I waited a few more and got back to running. After all, this is week 0.
I’ve got my eye on the Honolulu Marathon. And I’m not alone. More than a few soldiers from my unit are eyeballing it. I am not alone.
Now, getting ready for a marathon isn’t a simple thing, and it’s not an overnight thing. So, I am planning to again use the Hal Higdon training plan to use the next 18 weeks to get ready.
18 weeks. Starting, while I am in deployed, in northern Iraq, in the summer, and working nights. 18 weeks, that will include us going at full throttle at work, prepping to and handing over out mission to someone else, flying half way around the world, taking weeks of vacation, traveling to the continental US, and, oh yeah, reuniting with my family.
That, and the little issue of 435 miles to run, between here and the start of the marathon. Yeah — 435. That’s what it takes to train up for a marathon.
So, this was week 0. I have not registered for the marathon yet; I want and need to get a few more miles on these feet of mine before I lay out the cold, hard cash. I did 15+ miles this week, over the week and with 5 runs. It’s a start – nothing broke.
My little experiment is over. It’s Sunday afternoon, and I just woke up from a 13 and a half hour sleep. I am feeling almost human.
My little bi-phasic sleepexperiment drew out of a need to be in the office a whole lot. I was left with the choice of getting maybe 4 hours of sleep a night, or breaking it up into chunks. So, I went with chunks. (more…)
– damaged the muscle on the underside of my foot, or
– pinched a nerve there, or
– developed a bone spur in a most-unfortunate spot under my foot, or
– just plain broken something there.
I could be in for anti-inflammatory drugs and / or steroids, or surgery, or who knows what they do for a break there.
But, apparently, all involve less running. Which sucks, because in two weeks, I want to start training for a marathon. Who knows – I might just do it any way.
So, the scorecard reads something like this:
– I sleep twice a day, for 3 hours at a stretch;
– I eat breakfast and dinner, and some cookies in between;
– I have a pretty damn stressful job right now which, oh by the way, is the greatest job on the entire planet;
– I’ve messed up my foot;
– and I may ease up on the running, or I may start training for a December marathon.
Please feel free to leave comments below, about what am idiot I am. It’s OK — I’ll understand.
Just hearing someone say that strikes me on a profound level. It hurts. It’s hard to breath. For all the evil and violence that crosses my sensors every day, those words sink in the deepest.
Cab bomb sucks. They take suck to a whole new level. Their sucking goes to 11.
I hate them because they are so full of violence. The news from yesterday was of 6 killed and 67 injured. I don’t remember what the killed / wounded numbers were from the other day, but I am sure it was high when combined with the suicide vests (yes, with an “S”) that also were used in Ninewa, the province in which Mosul is the center. They destroy people. Not just kill then, but destroy people. The bombs don’t care what’s there, they destroy it all — homes, schools, kids, shops, cars, memories. They are rage, in the worst public way.
And they also represent profound frustration. I am so fed up with things, I need to lash out. Like a 6 year old, who can’t find words for the firestorm of emotions inside. I see no answer, things aren’t going my way, I’m going to go slam the door / fill a truck with explosives and set it off in a neighborhood.
Because really, who responds to a VBIED by giving in? When would a society, a people, a government decide that, after a car bomb, the answer is to abandon their society, their ways, their values and their dreams, in order to make the changes wanted by the guy on the detonator. Didn’t happen when it was the Red Army Faction, and it’s not happening now.
Put down your rifles, put down your det chord. Pick up your ballot, your books, your newspaper, and pull your kids in closer. All this is, of course, my Judeo-Christin view of things, that solutions can come within and through progressive change; what makes sense to me won’t make sense to the VBIED makers. However, I just want them to end.
OK, that’s not entirely true. But my sleep has changed.
When I got back from Hawaii, my work changed. Suddenly, I was on nights, learning what my day counterpart was doing so that with time I could do both — as he had been doing. I was easing into changing jobs and taking over his.
Well, he definitely does not sleep. Long, long hours, often being in the office until after midnight and coming back in at 4 or 5.
I don’t know about you, but I only do so well for so long under those conditions. So, I broke the mold.
I wanted and needed to come into the office by 3 am. There’s some key work that is done before the start of the regular work day, work I think is important. But the work day really doesn’t end until 10 pm / 2200 on a regular basis, and yes, sometimes as late as midnight when things are crazy. That leaves little time — and the problem. (more…)
This was the view of my world, an hour before the start of 30 June. Dark, quite, not much moon. Alone. Many people, I suspect, fear darkness because of the great unknown. I have come to embrace it, for all the potential it holds. It’s fitting, then, that this was my image heading into 30 June. (more…)
First off, big shout out to my room dawg. He totally saved my bacon last night, when he ventured back to our room in the middle of the worst sand storm of this deployment, shut down my computer, and covered up most of my stuff. Horrible sand storm, just nasty. We literally hand sand drifts inside the building last night, it was so bad. People got lost walking home. One van of our guys, coming back just from dinner, had to put two people out into the storm with their flash lights, just to make sure the van stayed on the road — you couldn’t tell where it was.
So, thanks man. You rule.
Post-Sandstorm
Ok, enough of the drama. Yes, I’m back in Iraq. No, I’m really not blogging. There’s a reason. (more…)
In about 48 hours, I went from my living room on Oahu, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, to sitting at a picnic table in Kuwait City, just inland from the northern tip of the Persian Gulf.
Is it just me, or do others think that this is truly amazing?
In 1932, my grandmother went to LA to go to the Olympics. Reading her account, it sounds as if that trip took more effort than the American effort to put someone on the moon. But today, in less than 2 days, I can move clear around the world, from an island in the Pacific to the Middle East.
This morning, my son and I got up early and slipped out of the house. We headed up to Tantalus (more), above Waikiki, to take some photos for the 24Hour World project. My guess had been that I’d be able to get a good photo of Diamond Head and Waikiki, but low and behold, the best photo of the day was this one, that he took.
At Tantalus, overlooking Diamondhead
That’s Diamond Head in the background, and beyond it is the Pacific. I could not be further from Iraq, even if I tried — physically, emotionally, or mentally. If this is what turning 40 is suppose to feel like, I can say that it’s a good thing.
I think I have done very well in not doing much on my two weeks of R&R. I sleep well, I am eating very well, I am soaking up time with my wife and the kids, and can’t really imagine this ending. It’s been a period of great rest and then more rest.
We have done a few things.
This past Saturday, we went to the 17th Annual British Car Show, held down in Waikiki near the zoo. The local British car club invites the Hawaiian Mini Motoring Club (of which I am a member), as they view the Mini — even the new ones, made by BMW in England — as being true British cars. Well, who am I to pass on a chance to go to a car show?
Naturally, I put my Germany badge on the front of the car. The kids and I had a great time of it all — from the pre-meet at the mall downtown, to the slow procession through downtown and Waikiki (honking and waving the whole way), to parking in the shade and swapping stories all morning.
And while there were some exotics there, this car below is the one that caught my eye. I could not stop staring. Lovely Austin-Healey — just lovely.
I also loved the wide range of MG’s that were there — quite a few of which were adamantly described as daily drivers (which has to be easier to do here in paradise).
I was surprised, though, to see a fleet of Cobras and even a GT40 roll in as part of this group. I had expected the MG’s and the AH’s, even the Jags and the Land Rovers and the Rolls’, but these ones caught my eye.
I had to go do some reading, to learn that yes, the GT40 was designed and built on UK soil. And the Cobras? Yeah, I’m a dumbass for forgetting that it’s an AC Cobra — which is most definitely British. Nice and loud, too. Great crew of owners, very nice people.
The other thing I’ve been doing while here is running. Well, running and shoe shopping, as I’ve purchased a new pair of running shoes, a new pair of Five Fingers, and now a new pair of combat boots (that feel like running shoes).
How much running? Try 45 miles. I’ve been doing 4 runs a week, using the Hal Higdon running formula (though not adding miles) — short runs on Tuesday & Thursday, medium run on Wednesday, and a long run on the weekend that about equals what I ran during the week. 45 miles seems like a lot, though.
Today, I had a wild hair and I ended up doing 10 miles. I pushed through the fields on a route I had scoped out via Google Earth. I’ve been trying to find a semi-legal way to get from my house, to Schofield Barracks where I will work post-Iraq. There’s a road that drives there, but it’s certainly not running friendly. That leaves the pineapple fields — which are all adorned with NO TRESPASSING signs. Leaving at 6 AM this morning, I moved with people going to work in the fields — all of whom waved and seemed OK with my being there, which is all I needed to keep going.
I had no intention of doing ten miles today, but the sun was low, the clouds blocking the sun very well, and I was on a roll. Here is a Google Earth file from today — I think this might be my new favorite route, though I do worry about the work area in the middle (I think it’s part of the Dharma Initiative).
Why am I running so much on R&R? I have no idea. Running & More Running. It feels great, though. Last week, I was still dealing with jet lag, so running early — between dawn and sunrise — was working out ideally. Now that I am sleeping well, I should — should — lay off the miles some. Maybe. We’ll see; I am very excited about finding this new route, and may need to go back there once more before I turn into a pumpkin.
I would encurage you to spend some of your summer free time following the tale of Jack. He lives and runs south of our old place in Heidelberg, and this year he’s running big.
Running big. As in he did a 50km / 30 mile run this week. He ran for — are you ready for this? — 5 and a half hours. I don’t even like to watch TV for that long.
And did I mention that he blogs in German and in English, or that from time to time he runs with his camera in order to share photos from along the way, or that he, too, is a Garmin user?
Or that on 12 June, he’s going to tackle a 100 km / 60+ mile race?
So, yeah. Follow along. Running with Jack — it’s the new black this summer.
