I need a kick in the ass.  I am having a lot of trouble getting myself back into training mode after my long layoff to recover from my stress fractures.  I’ve been running intermittently, but it is just not feeling good.  Most likely it’s because I’ve lost all of my cardiovascular fitness.  However, a major part of my lack of desire to train is just plain mental.  Something inside me is telling me to forget about it and just relax for a while.

I think I’ve finally reached the tipping point where after a long period of intense physical activity my mind and body just want to quit on me.  However another something in me doesn’t want to let that happen.  I am getting too old to keep going from in shape to out of shape and back again.  As happened in the past, I would let myself get out of shape, have several years go by and then something would happen, that would inspire me to get back in shape.  Usually this something was a comment that was said to me.  One time the kick in the ass came from the form of my girlfriend telling me that should couldn’t stand the feel of my stomach resting on her while I had sex with her.  I need a good kick in the ass like that right now.

This weekend I am feeling particularly depressed.  Ironman Lake Placid is tomorrow and several of my friends are up there to participate in it.  This will be the first time in 5 years that I won’t be going.  My friend Todd sent me a nice email, telling me that he is missing me and that I should send him good thoughts as he competes.  I will do so and wish him nothing but the best.  I replied that I expect him to break 11 hours and to qualify for Kona.

Instead of competing this weekend I decided that if I can’t be an athlete, I may as well help another one by volunteering.  Sunday is also the NYC Triathlon and I signed up to assist a challenged athlete compete.  This means I will most likely be helping someone who is missing an arm or a leg through all of their transitions.  It should be interesting even though this means I have to be on the Upper West Side of Manhattan at 5am in the morning come Sunday.

I think my reasons for volunteering are mostly selfish.  I don’t have any particular desire to volunteer and the whole thing will be highly inconvenient.  I figure that by doing this I will earn some good karma points and perhaps in the future it will come back to me.  If this is my motivation then are my reasons for volunteering pure?  Do I get these karma points since my motivation is that I hope it comes back to me in the future?  Do you only get good karma when you help someone else without any expectation in return?  I am not expecting anything from the athlete I am helping mind you, I am just talking about a return in general. 

My mother once told me how offered to get something from the store for someone even though she had no particular desire to do so.  She knew it was the right thing to do.  So maybe you just do things for others just because it is right, not because you want to.  Anyway, I am due to pay some back as many a volunteer has helped me compete and I remember how grateful I was for their assistance.  I am especially grateful to those volunteers in Lake Placid who rubbed suntan lotion all over my sweating and grimy skin while I was getting ready to go out and do the marathon.

So after all of this is said and done, I still need my kick in the ass.  I don’t know what form this will be in or where it will come from.  I just hope that it arrives soon.  I am unhappy with the way I’ve been feeling about myself, but I am helpless to do something about it.  Maybe helping tomorrow will be the kick in the ass I need.

Perhaps there is no such thing as Karma. I used to believe that everyone gets what they deserve eventually, but lately I just do not see that happening. I keep seeing bad people getting away with wicked stuff and there never seems to be any consequences. Something is wrong with the world and I don’t know what it is going to take to get it back on track. Perhaps having the Yankees win the World Series will put the normal order back in the universe. However that does not seem to be happening anytime soon. I am just going to have to take things into my own hands and right the things that are going wrong in my world.

I think g-d tests you from time to time to check your resolve and to force you to make it through various trials and tribulations. If so, I am going through some sort of big test right now. My job has been a pain in the ass and I am still not able to run. So I am making it official. I am not doing the Vermont 100 Mile Endurance Run this year. My right leg is still injured and I don’t have a chance of healing and getting back in shape in time for the race. So it looks like my racing schedule will be very light this year. Perhaps I’ll heal enough in time to do the NYC Marathon and the JFK 50 miler. I’ll just have to wait and see.

Fortunately things at home have been pretty good. With my inability to run, I’ve been taking it very easy training wise. I am spending most of my new found free time with my kids going to baseball games, to the beach and practicing a lot of baseball with my son and even sometimes with my daughter. I am missing his game this weekend because I am going TweetupLA this weekend. I am staying with my friend @gregbarnett and helping him to get ready for the party. However, my father went to my son’s game and he was able to give me the play by play over the phone. I understand that my son made a diving catch at first base on a line drive ball headed out to right field. Everyone erupted and cheered for him and even the coaches from the other team came over to congratulate him. I do wish I was able to see it. I am so proud of him and I feel very lucky to have him for a son.

It’s been several weeks since I last posted a blog entry and for that I am most remiss. I guess I have been preoccupied and feeling a bit sorry for myself due to the fact that my exercise routine has been completely thrown off. In fact I have no reason to feel this way as I’ve had a couple of good weeks, if I don’t let the crap that floats around my mind spoil it for me. This will be a quick attempt to catch up from where I last left off to my current day status.

I went on vacation to Costa Rica with my family. We spent 8 days away from home, but discounting the two days worth of travel to get to and from our destination we has a total of 6 days to enjoy the country. Costa Rica is a very pleasant country and the people are very nice. Things are inexpensive, unrushed and everyone has a mellow pace about them.

The first place we went to was the Arenal Observatory Hotel. This is a hotel that overlooks the Arenal volcano, one of Costa Rica’s two active volcanos. We were lucky enough on one night to see the volcano partially erupt and spew molten chunks of lava down the side of it. We also went on several tours of the rain forest in this area and saw a beautiful waterfall and wild life of all sorts. We also went to a place called Baldi Hot Springs resort, which had a bunch of pools that were naturally heated from hot springs below the surface. We spent two nights in Arenal and on the third day left for Monteverdi, but not before stopping by the hanging bridges in Arenal. These are a series of suspension bridges, the type that swing and sway as you make your way across. It was scary but exciting to cross these bridges.

As we were driving to Monteverdi, we discovered the meaning of a Costa Rican massage. The roads in Costa Rica are largely unpaved and driving across the country can be considered a bit arduous at best. It was very hard to make good time due to the slow speeds you had to maintain of the rocky and rut filled roads. I will say that the smartest thing I did during the trip was to get the GPS option with my rental car as the roads were very poorly marked and you really had no idea how far away you were from place to place without it.

When we got to Monteverdi we took a tour of the rainforest at night. We were hoping to see a Sloth, but that was not to be, but did see plenty of tarantulas, birds, bats, moths and even an armadillo. The next day we went to the cloud forest where we saw lots of various birds and finally did see a Sloth. Sloths are such interesting creatures.

We didn’t stay in Monteverdi for long and headed the next day to a resort hotel in Quepos. We stayed in a beautiful hotel that overlooked Manuel Antonio National Park. On our first day in Quepos, we took a tour of the park and saw several sloths as well as many monkeys. We even came upon a deer that was friendlier than any pet dog you are likely to meet. After the tour through the park, we hung out on the beach and just played in the sand and surf until the sun started to set, whereupon we went back to our hotel to have a few drinks on the veranda bar and await for the daily arrival of the monkeys that are known to visit. By this time our children were very tired and they both fell asleep by around 6:30pm at night, so my wife and I just stayed in and brought in dinner from the hotel restaurant. This was just as well, since we got up early once again to go back to Manuel Antonio Park to take a day of relaxing on the beach. We relaxed on the sand and watched as dozens of monkeys and lizards scurried about amusing all of the tourists.

On our last full day in Quepos, we went on a Canopy Tour. This is where you ride along zip lines through the trees, swing on a Tarzan Swing a Rappel down from the top of tall trees. We all had a blast doing this and since it was just the four of us, plus just one other New Yorker, got through the canopy tour in about an hour. We were back at our hotel around noon, found a place to have lunch and then discovered a small, but beautiful beach outside of Quepos that only the locals visit. We spent out last several hours there playing in the sand and riding the waves until the sun set.

This is a very abbreviated version of our trip to Costa Rica, but I must say we had a good time. I would definitely recommend that you visit it at some point in your life, especially before it becomes all built up, thereby losing some of its rustic charm.

This weekend I spent being a dad, rather than being an athlete. It was in the back of my head the entire weekend that I needed to do some workouts, but I really didn’t have the time to fit them in. The fact that I wasn’t going to be able to get in acceptable workouts only bothered me in the most primal level. I knew deep down I really needed to exercise, but my duties as a father really came first.

Truth though, in the past I would have woken up very early in the morning to fit my workouts in when I had family obligations during the day. As my kids have gotten older, this has become harder to do. Perhaps my own aging has something to do with that fact as well. Maybe I am just burnt out. Maybe I just really want to run and don’t feel like biking or swimming anymore.

On Saturday, my son had a baseball game at 11am. My wife had a field trip from school, so I was home alone with the kids in the morning and on pancake patrol. I suppose I could have woken up around 6am and rode in my basement for a couple of hours, but after the long week, all I felt like doing was sleeping a little late. A perfectly normal feeling I know, but not the feeling of an athlete. No matter though, what’s done is done and I made the most of it.

After the pancakes, I got my kids dressed to go to my son’s baseball game. I am happy to report that my son led off for the season and got the team’s first hit (a double) and scored the first run. My son went on to go 3 for 3, with 3 runs scored and made a nice play at second base during the middle innings and his team won the first game of the year. I was very proud of him and we were both very happy. Even his sister was smiling for him.

He wanted to hang around after the game to practice some more, but I had to take my kids to their to his cousin’s birthday party across town. We made it there a few minutes late, but I didn’t want to take my son out of his game early. The party was at an ice cream shop and I am afraid to say I partook in some of the ice cream eating even though I hadn’t yet gotten in a workout and it didn’t look like I was going to this day. After the party we went back to their cousins’ house and I was able to leave them there, while I went to the Time Warner Cable Service Center to switch out my cable modem for a faster device and my cable box for the DVR kind. I made it back from the Cable place just a few minutes after my in-laws brought my children home and then it was out to dinner with my parents.

When we finally got home, I connected the new cable equipment. I am happy to report that my Internet connection is faster than ever, but the Cable Box was a big disappointment. It is not working properly and I need a service technician to come by this week to repair/replace it. By now I was too tired for a workout, but unable to fall asleep, so I vegged out in front of the TV trying to get the cable box to work and being completely unsuccessful.

I finally fell asleep around 3am, but had to wake up early on Sunday to take my daughter to her soccer game. I thought I would be able to sit down, relax and watch the game, but her coach tagged me to be the line judge. I couldn’t really say no, so I spent the game running up and down the side line trying to keep my eye on the ball and the last player it touched before it went out of bounds. It was a big struggle to remember to point the flag in the opposite direction of the team that kicked the ball out of bounds. At least I really concentrated on the game, which turned out to be a very good contest, with my daughter’s team winning 3-0. While being the line judge I did have to run up and down the sideline, which technically is the first running I’ve done in a month. Fortunately, my legs felt ok. I am hoping this is a good sign or running to come when I begin again in May.

After the game and a quick trip to the playground it was back to home for lunch. I also arranged to take my son out to the ball fields for some practice with one of his friends. We spent an hour or so hitting and fielding, but for a change my son wasn’t so into playing. Turns out when we got home he started to feel very sick and started to run a fever. I took a nap while he rested and then finally roused myself to get up and spend an hour on my bike in the basement. My heart wasn’t into it, but I knew I had to do something. I just couldn’t bare to sit in the saddle spinning away indoors. I think it is time I took my bike outside.

I hate Spring. It always makes me feel bad for some reason. Probably something from my youth that brings back bad memories. But I’ve talked about this before and I am not going to get into it again. So anyway, I’ve decided to make the switch from evening workouts back to morning workouts. I’ve only been partially successful. I took off Tuesday night from working out, so I could get to bed early, with the intention of going to the pool. Well, I didn’t make it to the pool on Wednesday morning, but I did manage to get up and ride my bike, albeit indoors. It wasn’t what I was planning for, but at least it was a morning workout.

Today, once again, I intended to get up early and go to the pool. I abysmally failed. I didn’t get out of bed until after 7am. I’ll just have to go to the pool tonight as this is the only opportunity I have to get in a swim before the week is out. Tomorrow I’ll have to get in a morning workout, because I have my son’s baseball practice in the evening. Somehow, some way, I have going to have to reset my exercise clock.

My shins are feeling good, but that is because I am still not running. It is very tempting to go out for a run, but I think I am better off giving my shins a couple of more weeks to heal. It’s very frustrating not being able to run. I think I still have time to get ready for the VT100. I don’t think I have any chance in hell of getting ready for Ironman Lake Placid. I don’t have that in me this year. Perhaps I just need a break for a while. A break… funny words to be using, considering the state of my shins.

There is really not much to report. I am still doing between an hour to two hours a day on my bike, albeit indoors on my trainer while watching TV. I am getting a decent cardio workout in so I am not too worried about not going outside with my bike. Besides, if I am going to ride outdoors, I need to do it in the morning and I’ve been much of a wuss lately, in as much as I can’t get myself up early enough, nor do I feel like dealing with the chilly Spring weather.

This past weekend was mostly about baseball with my son. I knew this would be happening years ago. I knew the time would come when my son would start playing little league baseball and that I would be committed to taking him to practice and his games. Little did I know then how much he would love to play the game. He never wants to stop practicing. We stay in the park long after his team’s practice is over to continue catching and batting the ball. The same goes for after his games. He wants to be the best and perhaps one day the next Derek Jeter.

This just confirms my thoughts that it would be very hard to train for Ironman once my son got to little league age. I got away with it through last year, but I don’t see how I could have done it this year, even if I really wanted to. It makes me sad to know that I am not in Ironman shape, the way I used to be, but I guess that is the tradeoff. Ironman will have to wait for a couple of years before I attempt to do it again.

I only wish I was able to run right now. I found that training for the Vermont 100 Endurance Run is a lot easier than training for an Ironman. All I needed to do on a given day was run for a few hours. I was easily able to fit that in. Ironman training would have required many more hours and besides not really being able to fit it in, I really don’t have it in me to do right now. I was completely invested in training for the VT100 and I can’t focus on anything else. Hopefully come May, I’ll be able to run again and still be able to get ready for the race. In the meantime, I’ll just have to be satisfied with running in my dreams.

I do not have much to talk about in regards to my training.  All I have been doing is an irregular 1 hour bike ride as a way to pay lip service towards staying in shape.  My coach is telling me that I need to increase this time to 2 hours per session, but I’ll have to see about that.  I think 2 hours per night in the saddle is much more than I can “stand” at this point.

Actually, I can’t even stand when riding my bike.  I finally spoke to my doctor after my bone scan and the sad news is that I have 3 stress fractures.  Two in my right leg and a nasty one in my left leg.  What concerned him was the fact that I took the bone scan 3.5 weeks since I stopped running and the stress fractures looked like they were nice and fresh.  I guess I have quite a bit of healing to do.  So it looks like I won’t be running for a minimum of 8 weeks and possibly even 12 weeks.  I don’t know what this means for the VT 100, but it is still my intention to give it a shot.  I may not be able to do the race in the timeframe I was hoping for, but I am thinking that I could gut it out.  I even got my twitter friends @jacklhasa and @scarab to come to Vermont with me to be my crew.  I am sure with some encouragement and the appropriate moments that I can get through the race.  I just need my legs to heal.

So what else is new… Obviously my blog.  I’ve finally made the move to my own domain name at the prompting of my friend Greg Barnett.  Greg owns his own web design company Rock’n Motion Design and was good enough to set it up for me.  I think it looks pretty fancy.  Thanks Greg!

I also secured my entry into this year’s ING NYC Marathon.  Normally I would just call it the NYC Marathon, but I must give attribution to ING, since my entry is courtesy of them.  ING is the plan administrator for my company’s 401(k) plan and they reserve a couple of spots for their clients.  I am the happy beneficiary of one of these spots, so thank you very much ING! 

Getting back to my inability to run, I must say that I am not angry or depressed over it.  I am depressed for other reasons, but my inability to run right now is not one of them.   I am at peace with myself over this turn of events because I now know I pushed myself as far as I could go before I stopped running.  I didn’t stop because of the pain.  I stopped because the stress fractures were affecting my ability to walk.  In other words I am somewhat proud of myself for the fact that I was able to push myself to the point where I was virtually crippled.  Yes this is probably a pretty stupid way to look at it, but that is just me.  I didn’t let a little pain stop me, even though logically I know this was my body signaling to me that something is going seriously wrong and that I ought to stop.  It gives me confidence to know that I can push myself further than is reasonably possible and that I can deal with difficult circumstances.  It was a good fact for me to learn about myself, because I am going to use that knowledge to help me in other areas of my life.

I need to keep pushing and to keep trying.  I can’t let things get me down no matter how much they weigh on me.  I somehow have to figure out how to deal with my pain and continue on until I know that I will be irreparably harmed and then make adjustments or simply figure out how to deal with it.  Sometimes the only way is to step back and let yourself heal. 

It’s been 3 weeks and a day since the last time I’ve run. In that time a couple of things have happened to me. The good news is that my legs no longer hurt as much. It is no longer excruciatingly painful to walk down a flight of stairs and I can walk without feeling like I am hobbling along. On the negative side, I’ve become morbidly depressed. It’s not depression over not being able to run; it is more the fact that running for me somehow kept my depression from hitting me so hard. There is a simple ease in running and the longer I ran the better I felt. I could lose myself in running and all my pressures and worries just seemed to disappear. Having that taken away from me was like the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

Yes I can go bike riding or swimming, but they are just not giving me the same pleasure that running gave me. I feel good after I get in a swim or a bike, but the effort that goes into doing those activities just seems to be too much for me at times. All I had to do for running was slap on a pair of sneakers and go. My mind could wander aimlessly as the miles passed by and I didn’t have to think of anything more complicated other than what my next turn should be. Swimming and biking take a higher level of concentration and doesn’t give me that Zen feeling. When I get on my bike or go to the pool, I am forcing myself to do so. It is not something I want to do. I don’t know what this means. My nickname of Beast came from the days that I would be up at 4am every morning to do mega workouts. I’d do this right through the dead of winter when not another living soul would dare to go outside. I am so far away from that person right now and that makes me sad. I wish I could recapture it. My inner Beast has escaped leaving me a shell of who I once was.

I’ve written about this before how in the past I would be heavily into training, but after a while I would burn out and return to slovenly ways. Normally a training cycle would last about 3 years. I’ve been going since June 18, 2001 and have made a very good run of it this time. I have no desire to return to being a fat bastard that is completely out of shape. I am not getting younger and it gets harder and harder to whip a body into shape. I know this in my heart and I feel much stress and pressure for me to continue to keep myself in shape. I need a catalyst to spark my interest in getting back into shape. The Vermont 100 Mile race was that catalyst for me this year, but that has been taken away by my sudden inability to run.

I am supposed to wait 6 – 8 weeks before I begin to run again. It’s going to be hard to maintain some sort of fitness during this time. I’ve been managing to work out around 4 times per week. Hopefully I can continue to do so. Also hopefully, I won’t lose interest in pursuing the Vermont 100 Miler by the time I can run again. It’s happened to me in the past, where I’ve been denied something that I wanted for a long time, but ultimately getting it at a later date. However by the time I got it I no longer cared about it. I hope that’s not the case with the Vermont 100.

Last week I was in New Orleans for a company convention. I had big plans to explore the city by running around it. New Orleans is a very beautiful place and as I explored it by trolley and foot, I felt an anger rising inside me that I couldn’t be outside running. I distracted myself from these thoughts by partying and drinking with my colleagues from work as much as possible. I will say I did succeed in distracting myself. I have some pictures to prove it, which I will not post here, lest one of them come back to haunt me in the future. Those who followed my Tweets on Twitter know somewhat what I was doing while in Nawlins and I am going to let that serve as my record of my adventures.

I need to find something that is going to give me pleasure in life and make me happy. Or perhaps more accurately, I am going to need to learn how to be happy. I feel like it’s a lost emotion and I don’t know how to find it. There are things that give me pleasure and make me happy (such as my children), but those are at time moment circumstances. It doesn’t stay with me. I am looking for it and just can’t find it. I am a blind man in the desert searching for water. All I seem to be able to find is dust.

Well, I haven’t been running for the past 3 weeks in order to let my shins heal. I’ve reached the point where it became too painful to run and in fact believe I finally have a stress fracture. I have a Bone Scan scheduled next week which will tell me definitively one way or another. In essence though, it really doesn’t matter, because either way, I probably need 6-8 weeks off from running to let my legs properly heal. In the 3 weeks since I’ve run, I could tell my legs have gotten somewhat better as it is no longer excruciatingly painful to walk down stairs.

My lack of running someone accounts for my lack of blog postings. However, I do have a couple of things to write about. One is about my trip to New Orleans for which I’ve already posted several pictures and this post which I would like to dedicate to my friend Jack Lhasa.

Jack is going to be doing something I’ve only dreamed about doing; and that is roaming around the United States; sort of like Caine from Kung Fu. Jack [@jacklhasa] and his friend [@scarab] are going to hit the road (USA) in search of work, home and enlightenment. They are young and will probably never have this chance to experience this country as traveling writers. They will also be looking for writing work along the way if you can utilize them. Did I mention these two are highly entertaining?

I ask that you reblog this and even contribute to their travels. Any amount is better than none. You can at least email them encouragement if you do not have the money or would like to offer a place to stay for a night or two.

Thanks!

Donations made through: [PayPal]
email address is: jackstravelfund at Yahoo dot com
blog: [Loki Listens] & [the entropy report]