This hasn’t been the best week of training for me and I am feeling out of sorts. Honestly, I feel like I am hardly doing anything ever since I started to train for the VT100. I am following my coaches training plan, but the schedule is light compared to what I was doing when I was training for Ironman. I think I am going to have to tell him to give me some more workouts just so I can keep my body in even balance. I am craving the workload and don’t feel right without it. To top it off, I haven’t been able to get to the gym at lunch to do strength training. I can feel my muscles atrophying and withering away. I keep bringing my workout clothes to work in the hopes that I will be able to go.

I suppose it doesn’t help that I took a day off from training this week. I decided on Wednesday that I was going to blow off my swim workout. I kind of felt like I needed a mental break. Usually when I feel like this, I call my coach who almost always tells me to go ahead and try to do something, even though I don’t feel like it. This time though he told me not to worry about it, since it was just a swim workout which is being used strictly for recovery. At that moment I was relieved and glad to be able to just go home. As it turned out however, I got a phone call at exactly 5:30pm which caused me to stay late. I would have missed my swim workout anyway. Call it providence that this workout wasn’t meant to be.

Since I took a day off I Wednesday, I was hoping for a good run Thursday morning. This was not to be. My shins were very achy and my body just didn’t feel like running. I absolutely hate when that happens. As usual I was the further distance into my run away from home when I knew I was going to have to slow down and walk. I know that sometimes this just happens. I try not to get upset over it as there is nothing I can really do. Sometimes my body just doesn’t want to run. I consoled myself with the fact that later that morning I was going to see a doctor that would give me cortisone shots in my painful shins. I looked forward to getting some relief to this nasty chronic condition and trying for another run in the evening.

The cortisone shots are painless. I took a couple of pictures of the needle being inserted into my leg for your viewing pleasure. As I left the office, I could feel the warmth of the cortisone spreading along the tissues. I looked forward to running later that evening.

I got home from work early for a change, relaxed a bit and then got dressed in my running clothes. I was eager to try out my new cortisone filled legs. While the pain wasn’t completely gone, the discomfit was greatly diminished. I ran a decent 4 miles around Prospect Park, so that combined with the mileage from this morning gave me 8 miles on the day. I didn’t feel like I ran 8 miles and I was tempted to do 8 alone in the evening, but I tempered myself and listened to my coach who told me not to push it too hard. It wasn’t just the cortisone that made this runs better, it’s just that sometimes I don’t have it in the morning, but I do later in the day. I guess it’s my body warming up and waking up as the day moved on.

Today was another light workout day as far as I am concerned. Just a one hour spin on my bike which I did in my basement while watching TV. It was nothing special and really not even worth writing about; so I won’t.

This weekend will be a real test to see how my legs are doing. I am running 6 on Saturday, but on Sunday I am doing the Manhattan Half Marathon, which I will warm up for by running to Central Park from my house in Brooklyn. This should give me around 20 miles for the day. If I am going to have any shot at the VT100, I am going to need to start banging out 20 milers like they are a walk in the park.

Despite the fact that I work out as much as I can, I think of myself as a lazy person. I don’t do things I should do or maybe I just procrastinate a very long time. It has been my philosophy that if you wait long enough, the things you are supposed to do that don’t get done will eventually not matter anymore anyway. If that’s the case, why waste your time on things that don’t need a good getting done? Well, that’s not really true. Many things matter, the key is just deciding on what those things really are.

This morning I considered myself to be very lazy. I woke up around 2am with a headache, took a couple of Excedrin and then couldn’t fall back to sleep. I chatted online for a while and debated going out for a run right then and there. I even went so far as to getting dressed; two layers of tights, several winter running shirts and socks. I debated whether or not I should go out then or go back to bed. I eventually decided to be lazy and went back to sleep. I would have been much better off going out for the run.

When I went back to bed, I slept with all the slumber of a soldier catching some z’s on the battlefield. Basically, I didn’t sleep at all. I just lay in bed until 5am when I finally had enough and went outside. At least I was already dressed for the run. I went out with the intention of running 8 miles, but bumped into a friend just as I was coming onto my 7th mile. I decided to hang with him for a while, as I hadn’t seen him in quite some time and wound up doing 10 miles. That’s when I got lazy again – around my 10th mile…

As I exited the park I was coming onto 9.5 miles and I couldn’t leave it at that. I needed to round off the number at 10. However, I also needed to go to the store to pick up some soy milk and I didn’t want to finish the 10 and then have to walk back to the store. So rather than walking back there, I just bought a half gallon of milk and ran with it like a football for the last half mile, timing the ending to be right at my doorstep. It was better to carry it, than have to walk around the corner after I finished running.

So anyway after I walked in the door and refueled, the only thing in the world I wanted to do was to go back to sleep. Had I not been lazy and went at 2am, I would have been back in plenty of time to get a few more hours of sleep; sleep that would have been a lot more sound than the 3 hours I managed to get between 2-5am. I won’t make that mistake again. Next time I wake up and feel like running, I am going to go.

I really couldn’t sleep Saturday night. I finally feel asleep around 12:30am after sucking on an Ambien, but I woke up again at around 3:30am. So I went downstairs and had a bowl of cereal and decided that I may as well go for a run. My moving around woke up my wife so I told her my plans of going outside for a run. She thought I was insane and didn’t want me to go outside for fear that something would happen to me. I told her to make me a better offer than a middle of the night run. She offered up our basement treadmill as a viable alternative; that was not the offer I was hoping to hear so my middle of the night outdoor run became even more appealing.

I wasn’t sure where I was going to run. I thought maybe I’d stick to the sidewalks so at least I could be seen from the streets. I ran down to Grand Army Plaza and stopped to take a photo and make an Utterz to memorialize this event. I decided from there to go into Prospect Park. I’ve never had trouble at this time of night and figured I’d be better able to see someone coming from afar. It would be more deserted, but I felt safer inside the park.

I think I enjoyed this run more than any other run so far this year. I love the feeling of being outdoors in the middle of a January winter’s night, with the wind howling, leaves rustling and strange sounds emanating from everywhere. I felt like I was walking on the moon. It doesn’t matter how slowly or fast I run when I achieve this sort of feeling. I just love being outside with the world seemingly all to myself. The only company I had for the hour and ten minutes I was outside were rustling leaves and a solitary rat.

Normally when I am outdoors at times like this, I have music pumping into my ears. Unfortunately, the battery on my Ipod Shuffle decided to die soon once I entered the park. I normally like to seal off my senses from as much of the environment as possible to complete that spaceman on the moon feeling, but with the battery dead, I entertained myself to the sounds of the world instead. It at times got a little creepy. I would suddenly hear something rustling right next to me and I would get a start that it was some nefarious person out to do me harm. You hear so many different sounds at night when the world is still; sounds that are masked during the day.

My running felt very sublime. I was tired, but awake, running, but moving slow and I felt completely at peace with the world. Doing this run on so little sleep was a big confidence booster that I will be able to make it through the night at the VT100. I think I could have run all night long, but I knew I needed to get back home and try to get some sleep before the day began. I wanted to be awake to watch the football games later on TV.

I settled on doing just 6 miles. I let my course through the park meander a bit and I exited at a place that I don’t normally exit and enter the park. Doing so was divine providence. I had a clear view down a long street with the most fantastic full moon I’ve ever seen in my life. The moon was at the extreme western edge of the horizon and the sun which was still well below the eastern horizon was shining on it with a brilliant orange glow. It was the biggest full moon disk I’ve ever seen and I stopped me in my tracks. I stood in the middle of the road and stared in awe at this fiery looking orb for about 10 minutes. I am lucky the police didn’t come by or I would have been carted off to Bellevue Hospital. I tried in vain to get a good picture of it with my camera phone, but the street lamps would sort have wash out the effect of the moon. I felt like going into my house and waking everyone up so they could see it – for some reason though I didn’t think my wife would be amenable to getting up for that considering our earlier conversation.

So after completely cooling off while staring at the moon, I finally went inside, grabbed a quick bite and then iced down my shins. My house was very cold and between cooling down and icing; I became completely chilled to the bone. Fortunately, my wife was nice and warm when I got into bed. Heh hee.

Once again I did the Two Bridges run. While last week I focused my run in pictures around the Brooklyn Bridge, today I decided to pay more attention to the Manhattan Bridge. First up, is a picture of me climbing the north side of the bridge. The picture can’t show it, but the Manhattan Bridge is pretty noisy. There are trains constantly crossing it and it can get really loud.

About a third of the way up the span, you get a great view of the Williamsburg Bridge. I’ll be running on that bridge soon enough as my runs get longer.

I continued off the Manhattan Bridge and was greeted with the delicious smells emanating out of all the kitchens preparing the days lunches and dinners. I was tempted to stop at this particular restaurant serving Peking Duck – Yummy!

I then ran down to the water and snapped this great shot of the Manhattan Bridge. I am very happy with how it came out on my camera phone.

After that it was back to Brooklyn by way of the first bridge to span the East River.

Where I finish my run in my usual stomping ground Prospect Park. I am pretty sure the Peking Ducks from my previous picture are related to the ducks you see here swimming on the lake.

Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, nothing changes. Which is part of the definition of insanity. And what is the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. But I am not trying the same thing over and over again, but still nothing changes. Maybe the thing I am trying to change is just unchangable. So in the end I am still insane.

I woke up this morning to find another gray chest hair. I thought I eliminated this problem a couple of months ago when I first discovered one of those bad boys and plucked it off my chest. It was much to my dismay this morning that I found another. I mean, how does this happen? It wasn’t there yesterday. Did a 1 inch strand of hair suddenly sprout out of my chest overnight? Did something happen to this hair follicle that caused it to suddenly turn gray? I haven’t been under any particular stress for such a dramatic event to occur so the whole thing is deeply puzzling. It’s enough to make me want to start shaving my chest again.

So anyway, I was discussing my gray hair with some friends over twitter, which led to the inevitable discussion over age. I started to ask if my friend Darkgracie understood why time seems to pass faster as we get older. She feels that it is a state of mind. That as we get older we are busier so perhaps don’t notice how fast time is passing by us. No doubt that this possibility is a contributing factor. However, what I truly believe causes this phenomena of the years passing by faster has to do with fractions.

You see, as we get older, each year becomes a smaller fraction of our lives. A year in the life of a 40 year old is not as significant as a year in the life of an 8 year old. To an 8 year old, 1 year represents a relatively large portion of his life; whereas to a 40 year old it’s a much smaller fraction. The interval of time we are measuring is the same, but as a total portion of one’s life, it becomes less significant as the years go on.

A 1 year interval to a child seems to be a huge amount of time, that’s because proportionally to their lives it is a large amount of time. As we age, each year is in proportion smaller amounts of your entire life which in turn makes the time seem to go faster. A 40 year old may have trouble remember which year something happened in since they tend to blend together after a while. One year ago for an 8 year old would seem like a very long time ago. At 40, you need to have many years pass before it seems like a long time ago.

You can read other people’s theories about why this phenomenon occurs here.

In a way I am glad I am doing the Vermont 100 miler instead of Ironman Lake Placid this year, just for the change of pace. As you start doing the same race over and over again, one year just begins to bleed into the next year. I was discussing this with my friend Larry who has streaked to 25 consecutive New York City Marathons. I asked him if he can remember something specific from each of the Marathons. He didn’t think he could; they all become the same after a while. Sure there were a few marathons at which he could remember specific things, but overall they all became the same. It begins to become like it was just yesterday when you were doing the previous year’s marathon. You are doing the same thing year after year only the number on the calendar has changed.

I guess you can also think of it as life starts to become easier as you gain more experience. When you were a young child it would take you a while to read through a book when you were first starting to learn to read. As you get older and got more practice at reading, the pages would turn ever faster and faster. It is easier to pass the time as you get more experienced with age. It just slips by.

Well, that is enough philosophy for one day. It is time for me to get out and do a run. I can’t miss days. Yes, one day in and of itself is insignificant, but they add up. July 19th will be here very soon. Before I know it, my first Vermont 100 Miler will have been several years ago. I know that too soon, I will be looking back at this event rather than looking forward to it. I want to look back at it knowing I made a good showing. In order to be able to have that piece of mind, I need to put in the work now while I still have the time. The day will be here soon enough.

Wednesday, 1/16, 6pm on F train heading towards Brooklyn

Today is a non-running day, which means I am heading to the pool. I really wish I did my swim in the morning, but as usual I slept too late to make it to the pool on time. I really need to get to bed earlier. I just don’t want to go to sleep so early. I just want entertainment at night, whether it is watching TV, chatting online or perhaps best of all, having sex with my wife. But even after all that is done I don’t feel like going to sleep. It’s like I’ve suddenly become afraid that I am going to miss something. If only we didn’t have to sleep.

I am really not in the mood to go to the pool. The whole point of the pool workout is to give my legs a rest, serve as active recovery and to keep my cardiovascular fitness improving. That is looking at it negatively though. I need to change that line of thinking. Swimming will give me a much needed upper body workout, balance out my body and for vanity’s sake and keep me looking good. I look back at my IMLP photos, especially from 2005/2006 and I see how cut I looked. I love the way I looked in those pictures and do want to get back there. Swimming is one way to do it. I just got to start swimming in the morning so it doesn’t seem like such a chore as when I do it at night.

Anyway, so I am on the way to the pool. Hopefully it won’t be crowded, or even better it will be closed because someone puked in it. Hey, that’s not good… Did I really just say that?

Thursday, 1/17, 9am on F train heading into Manhattan

I felt really good after my swim last night. As I stood in the locker room feeling the warmth in the muscles of my upper body I began to feel like a triathlete again. I guess in my heart I will always want to be a triathlete and not just an ultrarunner. Suddenly, I was feeling like increasing my schedule to incorporate more swim and bike training. However, that is not what I am supposed to do. I am an ultrarunner now and that’s what I have to focus on.

I ran 9 miles this morning. It was supposed to be 8, but I took a new course and misjudged how far I would go. I kind of knew if would go over, but I didn’t really care. I figured a little extra distance won’t hurt me and besides I was enjoying the run. My legs were a little sore from the previous days strength training session, but it was a good soreness. The weather was beautiful outside and I just wanted to run. I would have gone longer had time permitted.

Friday 1/18 6pm

I am sitting in my office drinking a Bud Light waiting for the poker game with my staff to begin. I am kind of out of sorts today. I woke up around 4am and decided to get out of bed. I had a bowl of Total Whole Grain Cereal and then decided to get on my bike for an hour instead of going back to sleep. I didn’t want to take a chance that I would go back to bed, oversleep and miss the workout. So I headed to my trainer in the basement, put on the season finale of Dexter on Showtime on Demand and spun easily for 60 minutes. I finished by 5:30am which left me 2.5 hours to go back to sleep before I had to get back up for work.

By the time I woke up again, I wondered if the workout had ever really happened. I had to check my HR monitor to see if I actually recorded a workout. I did, but I still felt as though I did nothing for the day. I called my coach later on and asked him if I did a workout in the middle of the night, went back to bed and then woke up feeling like I didn’t work out, will I have actually have done it. He said yes, so I didn’t worry about doing another one even though I still feel the need to get in some exercise.