Art La Flamme

Uh, oh.

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.

I have either:

– 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.

Figured it out yet?
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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.

So, what do you do when you’re on R&R from Iraq? After a week at home (almost), I can tell you — the short answer is, whatever you want.

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Two days ago, I got up, went for a six mile run, skipped breakfast, and went to work. I had a light lunch, but had a horrible afternoon, not really looking up from the chaos of it all until just after 9 pm — when I realized that I had missed dinner. I made it back to the room, to find a missed call on Skype from the wife. Her WordPress, she said, was acting up.

Tired, and a bit hungry, I tapped it. She and I were on Skype, and I ended up on chat with the guys running the server. Not a WordPress issue, after all, but a change in the settings on the server itself (mod_security was somehow activated). Once again, my powers of Boolean saved the day. Exhausted, I crawled into bed.

I got up yesterday, ran just over 4 miles, and skipped breakfast (and told everyone to avoid getting between me and lunch, just to be on the safe side). I made it through the work day decent enough, and I made it to dinner and got home in time to try and blog for the 24h World project (see below). Low and behold, my WordPress and my blog were acting up — I had lost data (Earth Day post was gone), and I could not add some (but not all) new types of posts. 1st Tech Support guy via chat said it was not the same thing, but my troubleshooting indicated it really, really was the same thing. Half an hour later, #2 tech support guy found that yes, it was the same thing. Great. All seems right in the world. I posted a couple of entries, and crawled into bed.

I get up this morning, and did not run. I fired up my page, to make sure things were still ok. Um, no. The two new entries are gone, but I got back the Earth Day post that had vanished yesterday. Great – FML. I’m hammering out this post, hoping it’ll take — and am saving it to a text file, in case it doesn’t. Ah, the joys of technology. Suddenly, pen to paper has a new appeal.

[UPDATE: Well, it posts. And I lost the Earth Day post, but got back the two posts from last night. Odd.]

These battered feet of mine

5 days, 4 runs, 30 miles. My soles are like alligator skin. I managed to get a blister on the arch of my foot. My pi?ce de r?sistance is a blister on a blister, on a blister that has now popped.

But these aren’t complaints; this is my reality. I’m a runner, and these things won’t stop me.

5 days, 4 runs, 30 miles. My soles are like alligator skin. I managed to get a blister on the arch of my foot. My pi?ce de r?sistance is a blister on a blister, on a blister that has now popped.

But these aren’t complaints; this is my reality. I’m a runner, and these things won’t stop me.

Sunrise in Tikrit

What was old is new again.

I am running. I doubt I’ve mentioned this to many, but it’s true. Last week was about 15 miles total, including an awesome 8 miles on Saturday. This week, I should push pass the 20 mile mark, with a 10 miler scheduled for Sunday, once this storm and the dust passes.

I am trying to get back to the point of regularly running half marathon distance runs. Yes, 13.1 miles. I want back the strength, I want back the solitude, I want back the peaceful bliss of running for a couple of hours here and there.

In 2005, I did not run. I could not run. The year ended with a Doc telling me he’d fixed me, and that I could maybe run 2 or 3 miles, but never, you know, a 10km or anything like that.

2006 was the year I took flight, and started running. I ran, really to see if I could break something — which I didn’t.

By 2007, I was a running fool. I ran all kinds of crazy distances, and did all kinds of crazy things people don’t normally do — like going to Luxembourg to run a nighttime marathon, and finding a favorite run that happened to be seven (yes, 7) miles up the K?nigstuhl to the mountaintop, and then back down again. I closed out the year leading 23 others half-way across Romania to run full and half marathons.

And then poof, I ran very little in 2008. I closed out 2007 with Achilles tendon problems, and I really had to get off of them for good. I made a couple of tries to return to running, always too soon, and always with the same painful results. I ran some when I was in Georgia (the state, not the country), but damn if that heat wasn’t a killer.

I’d written off running in 2009, figuring the workload or the heat would be the death of me. But I’ve needed something, and I finally realized that I needed to hit the road again. It probably helped that I’ve spent the winter reading the tale of Jack, a runner and blogger from SW Germany who ran through the worst of the winter months in order to hit the marathon circuit early and hard this year. Very inspiring, that Jack character.

I could have returned to running more and harder earlier, I suppose. This is, after all, just my third week of hard, disciplined running. I had started to get up and run — sometimes. I had started to arrange to run at lunchtime — sometimes. The problem always was the rhythm; I have had such a varied schedule that I could not go the same mornings, or the same time of day. And with the weather here, even if I did find the right day and time to go, there could well be horrid weather outside. In other words, it wasn’t going to be easy.

There’s too much work, too much stress. There’s too much food too easily available, that is too bad for me. There’s too many projects, too much pressure. Too many snacks and cookies and waaaay too much chocolate. And though an Army may march on its stomach, our days too often begin and end with coffee. Strong, strong coffee.

And all of these things – all of them — do not bode well for a guy who wrestles with the demons of PTSD.

So, easy stopped being an excuse. I returned to where I belong, the open roads of the early morning, waiting for the sun to creep up past the horizon and start to warm the land. And it feels great.

I have to run in my Army exercise gear, and not my preferred civilian running attire – I might not like it, but I can live with it. I have to run through some pretty marginal conditions sometimes, to include strong winds carrying silt and dirt – I might not like it, but I can live with it. And invariably every time I run, I then am rushed to get cleaned up and get on to something for work – I might not like it, but I can live with it.

I am running. And it feels good to be alive again.

So, yeah. Bird Day.

Three things:

1) I am thankful for my wife. Wow, she puts up with a ton of crap, just because I choose to be in the Army. I could make decent money, if I wasn’t in the Army. I could come home at a decent hour, if I wasn’t in the Army. I’d be home right now, if I wasn’t in the Army. I’ve come dangerously close, time and time again, to putting the needs of the Army ahead of the needs of my wife and my family. Time and time again, the Army has called, and I have dropped everything to answer the call, always knowing that my wife will hold down the fort, raise the kids, pay the bills, and fight the good fight while I go off and do whatever it is that I do. She rules. Every damn day I am thankful she’s in my life.

2) I am thankful to be right here, right now. I am thankful just for the chance to serve our nation. Today, the Iraqi parliament voted to approve the draft of the Status of Forces Agreement (here). This is awesomely cool, for about 45 different reasons. We’re all moving beyond the days of a UN-mandated American presence, into an era of American troops being here under terms agreed upon by two sovereign nations. Wow — that just blows my mind. In the coming weeks, the Iraqis will have their next round of provincial elections — the second time the Iraqis have done this. Consider this: Iraq became a nation at the end of WWI, and it was a monarchy until 1958 when a coalition of groups overthrew the king. After ten years, Saddam emerged to grab control of the country, and ushered in his era of totalitarian Ba’athism. After the 2003 invasion, Iraq had the one round of elections in 2005, but that really was done with a lot of hand holding. So, here we are — the Iraqis are about to do it again, and I expect that they will do it all on their own. Wow. I find that to be incredible. I am thankful to be here, and to have even the smallest of roles in this amazing period of Iraqi history.

The Descent into Baghdad

3) I am thankful to be able to run. I was going to say that I was thank for my run today, but really, it’s more than that. Some of you may know that I don’t run just for exercise; I run because I have PTSD. Yep, post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s like being an alcoholic — I will always have to deal with it, and I will deal with it, one day at a time. When I started showing signs, back in 2003, I was such a physical wreck that running wasn’t an option. A two mile run would kill me for a week. Two years later, when I admitted defeat and decided to do something about the PTSD, I had found a new doctor / physical therapist who had patched me up enough to run again. He, of course, thought I’d be good for a couple of miles, tops, but that sounded like crap and I set out to prove my wrong. And the running helped the PTSD. It helped a LOT. Folks with PTSD are often treated with all kinds of drugs, none of which I wanted. None of which I thought I would need, if I could get my body to produce the same ones naturally. To produce the same ones, by running. And so I ran. A little here, a little there, and then poof, I ran a marathon. Injuries aside, I’ve been running ever since, through good times and bad. Today, I took off and ran 10km — 6.2 miles. And yes, I was in pain every step of the way. Which is fine — with this broken body, I will be in pain every day of the rest of my life. No need for it to keep me from doing what I want and need to do. I ran today for no reason other than it was a Thursday and Thanksgiving and I could sneak out to do it. And it felt great. I don’t ever want to go back to being so broken and such a mess that I can’t take off and run like I can now. Running is such a positive part of my life, that I can’t see living without it. I’ll likely run for the rest of my life. And to have found running, and learned the positive role it has in my life, it priceless.

So, there you have it. A guy in Iraq, who could easily be wallowing in the misery of being away from my family and all that crap, and I have three great reasons to be thankful just to wake up and start another day.

Lavatory

I’m going to head back to my hooch now, and maybe watch a movie or something. Enjoy your bird day. Be good.

Off from work, I headed out for a short run today. After loading my iPod and Garmin, I opted at the last minute to grab a camera as I headed out the door.

And I’m glad I did. I ended up taking close to a hundred photos over the 50 or so minutes it took to run the 5.25 miles.

Photos are on Flickr, here — only a couple of them are restricted to family / friends. I also fired up Google Earth and made a file about the run — and embedded links to some of the photos. That file is here.

In actuality, I like the Google Earth file better. I think it’s a neat, neat way to show photos and tell a story. For me, I run with my Garmin Forerunner 305, and then load the record of the run into my Mac. The Garmin software gets the data from the GPS, but then I use Trail Runner to convert it quickly to the Google Earth format. (Trail Runner is nice, but the repeated requests to donate ($35!) is annoying). After I’ve uploaded the photos to Flickr, I then go back into Google Earth and manually add in icons for the photos. In the comments section for each icon, I add <> and between those img src=”", with the URL for the actual image (not the page) from Flickr where I have the photos. Works like a charm.

The run was just a couple of minutes short of the length of the American Edit album I was listening to. Perfect timing. American Edit — fantastic album. I’ve got the 2008 version loaded these days (torrent), and I told iTunes to play it as a gapless album, which works ideally.

When I run, I really benefit form music with some energy. Lately, it’s been Feed the Animals by Girl Talk — which is awesome, but entirely not appropriate for kids. It, too, is best listened to in a gapless form, which you can get by downloading the whole album as a single track. I ran across Girl Talk when I saw the movie Good Copy Bad Copy, but it’s really in a style similar to stuff I already like — Go Home Productions, DJ Riko, Miss Frenchie, McSleazy, etc.

For a run that lasts an hour, I can deal with music. I’m not sure about you, but at some point, music isn’t enough. I think this is one of the reasons why I favor 6 or 7 mile runs — after that, I need something more. I need audio books after that. And that means longer runs more often, to get through the book — like two or three a week. And I’m not ready to go back to that level of running. I loved the time in Germany when was running the K?nigstuhl all the time. That was awesome. But you need something special to do that, that often. If I can find a way to run west, across the Kunia Highway, I could go back to that.

Without music, my mind wanders. Shoot, with music my mind wanders. Today I was listening to music and working through the hardware and software configuration options for a touch-screen music server for Iraq, while comparing a Windows solution to a Unix solution. Not planned — my mind just wandered there. Later I caught myself debating the merits of a strong court system in Iraq, vs. autonomy for the Kurds. I wonder what I could get accomplished if I could run and take notes / make sketches.

Two last comments about the run today.

1. There is nothing flat on this island. It was always up or down. Which can be great, and which can suck. Sometimes, at the same time.

2. This place is glorious. I could retire here, and spend every day watching just the clouds.

I’ll run when in Iraq — of that I have no doubt. I really, really doubt the scenery will compare.

I ran yesterday.? First time since the half marathon.? Ran the same route this AM — and found out that it’s a hair under 4 miles.? I was shooting for 3.? Yesterday, I had three kids on bikes with me.? Today, I had rain.? I think I prefer the rain, but not by much.
I thought I’d hit a bunch of small runs, and see how the heels hold up.? So far, so good.

I’m also running slow — 9 minute miles.? And yes, it’s killing me to run just 4 miles.? I’d just as soon do a 10k run than anything else.? An hour seems like the right amount of running.

While running, I thought of:

– what to do with my iPod this summer.? I’ll be away from home for a number of months, and without a computer, I think.? I’ll probably need to preselect some good stuff, and see what happens.? It’s an iPod, so it’s not easy to add music unless it’s through iTunes.

– BSG.? We’ve started in on Season 1, and it’s pretty good.? But it seemed to just jump right into it.? When I got back from the run and, sure enough, learned that there was a mini series first.? So, we’ll go back and watch that tonight and see if it all makes more sense now.? I have a buddy at work who is all into BSG, and it’s good that the show is as good as he says.

– my failing drive, and my Popcorn drive.? I have an external HD that makes some cliking sounds sometimes, and has some files that can no longer be read.? Ugh.? Nothing critical, but annoying.? And the external drive I am using with my Popcorn media player seems to like to go to sleep when no one is looking, and Popcorn can’t wake it up.? Annoying.? Need to figure that one out.? A power strip might be a cheap solution, since both power up quick enough.