Another boring running report

I’ve really started looking forward to the Monday night group runs out of the Beaverton Portland Running Company. OK, I look forward to all my runs, especially after rest days. (I’m starting to dread rest days a little. But my legs clearly need them.) But it’s a nice friendly group at the PRC and I also enjoy browsing their sale racks looking for cheapo running gear. Today’s run was six miles, with paces ranging from 8:40 to 10:00, or something like that. It was an easy, pleasant run under leaden, overcast skies. Nothing really interesting to report, but I feel great.

I’m the one in the red shirt — have I learned *nothing* from Star Trek?

 Here’s me with the other Red Lizards (mostly) and our kazoos, last Thursday, up at Pittock Mansion.

It looks like a duck to me all right.

After our Portland Fit run Saturday mornings (today’s was seven miles; my calves came into it pretty thrashed from all my extra running this week, so the first few miles were a bit of a trial) we have a seminar. Well, they call it a seminar. I’m not sure a bunch of people standing around in an industrial parking lot listening to someone talk counts as a seminar, but there it is.

The last two seminars have been reasonable — the one on hydration even reflected the more-recent warnings about drinking too much water, instead of focusing only on the dangers of drinking too little. Today’s, though, was a shame.

The purported topic: injury prevention. The real topic: look how great chiropractic massage is! The speaker was a sports physician and chiropractor, who I think is the head doctor at the sports chiropractic clinic associated with Portland Fit.

Look, I think massage might have some therapeutic benefit. Certainly it might reduce tension and lessen pain symptoms. But when I hear a massage therapist say that what they are doing will “realign the muscles” to promote faster healing, I know I’m hearing quackery. Yeah. Your muscles are going to shift around under your skin into whole new alignments, just from a little prodding. And here I was, thinking the muscles probably mostly just run straight between whatever ligaments or tendons are attaching them to your skeletal system. Silly me, I had no idea they just kind of wandered around free in there, until some kind person pushes them into the right place!

As I learn more about running and fitness and the people that dispense medical advice and treatment for it, I am forced to conclude that it’s a whole industry based largely on placebo and false authority. I can see why it happens. And I don’t think any of the care providers have any idea that they’re quacks: they think it works and their patients tell them it works. To the extent that placebos and ceremony always help people hungry for answers, it does work. That doesn’t make it right.

So, back to today’s seminar. It started off reasonably, I guess: warm up before exercise, cool down after, stretching after the cool-down is the best time for stretching. Then, instead of going on to talk about real injury-prevention factors like having the right shoes, ramping up slowly, or getting enough rest, he put on a little sideshow demonstrating the miracles of his healing touch. Well, not quite. But close enough.

He’d rounded up a few volunteers to undergo some sports massage, or whatever he calls it. I didn’t catch how he chose the first person, but apparently she had some pain or stiffness in the lower back and upper legs. He stretched and massaged her a bit, and one point telling us that the technique he was doing was “almost as good as an adjustment.” Oh! Well! Almost as good as an adjustment! That’s really something. Then he declared that her legs were different lengths and told her to come to the clinic to get either x-rayed or cat-scanned to find out… something… that would let them make the right shoe insert to correct it. I’m on the fence about this leg-length thing. Maybe it’s true. But my warning flags went right back up when he told a story about a woman in a previous year’s Portland Fit who was running 9:30 miles, and became upset after she got one of these inserts to correct her leg length. Suddenly she was running 8:30 miles and couldn’t run with her friends anymore! I distrust tales of miracle fixes.

The next volunteer got cherry-picked from the crowd as someone with “hip pain on one side.” First he checked her legs and declared them to be the same length. You can imagine her expression of mixed pride, joy, and relief. Then he started moving her legs around. In seconds he had pinpointed the exact cause for her hip pain: she had overly-free right hip movement, probably because of “deactivated muscle groups” in her glutes. He told her to come see him to get some exercises that could fix that right up.

When I saw this in person, I was nodding along thinking that surely he did detect this overly-free range of motion and that this seemed a reasonable enough diagnosis. Maybe. But as I said, he had specifically asked for a volunteer with hip pain on one side. I think he unknowingly is playing a game of Ouija Board with a patient like this: between the two of them, he’s going to pick up on whatever it is he thinks he should be picking up on. In this case, I bet he’s made this same “diagnosis” hundreds of times and is all too ready to feel the right things when he wiggles the leg around.

And that was it. We were out of time. Even if (big if) everything the doctor-chiropractor did up there was real, I still have no idea what educational value the demonstration was supposed to have. Looked more like advertising, or indoctrination, to me.

Quack quack.

The Goose

“The Goose” is what Team Red Lizard calls their Thursday-evening run. So-named since it starts and ends at the Goose Hollow Inn (Bud Clark’s bar) in the Goose Hollow neighborhood. The run is up to Pittock Mansion and back. Emphasis on ‘up’. Three and a half miles up, mostly on trails. See the elevation profile, above. When I first heard about this run, two weeks ago, my reaction was “That sounds like torture. I don’t want to do it.” A few days later, my attitude had matured (as a fine cheese would) to “That sounds like torture. I want to try it!”

Still, I was nervous showing up, and for once, I wasn’t nervous about meeting people, but about how hard the run would be. Tiffany, someone I’d met on the Monday evening runs, assured me I’d be fine.

“And some of us are turning around at Fairmount, so you don’t have to run the whole thing if you can’t make it.” (Fairmount is the road that crosses the trail at the beginning of the first downhill section.)

“Oh, I’d probably die before I’d quit.” I don’t think I was bragging. Just a simple case of stubbornness.

So on the way up I had to walk to catch my breath maybe four or five times. But I did run (ok, jog) the great majority of it. Coming back down was easy, and I was able to spend a lot more time talking and — wait for it — playing the kazoos that were handed out pre-run. (Special occasion, apparently.) My medley of Beatles hits a la kazoo knocked ‘em dead.

Afterwards, I had a Guiness and a Reuben sandwich at the Inn (thumbs up on their interpretation of the Reuben) and talked to more of the Red Lizards. One of them turned out to be the team coach, Rick, and we had some interesting conversations — especially after I found out he wrote science articles and science fiction short stories for a living. He seemed pretty happy to meet someone into SF, too.

The other people in the group with whom I had a chance to talk were also great. I’m happy to have these running groups as a social as well as training opportunity, and I’m going to start keeping my Thursday evenings free for The Goose.

Bear with my philosophic computer programming question

Why is it that parser code is far harder to write than generator code, yet learning to read a language is generally easier than learning to write it?

Surrounded by greatness

Kelly interviews six-day racer Tim. Kelly’s the leader of the little suburban Monday-night running group. Holy crap, her boyfriend got a belt buckle at the Western States? (Translation: finished a famously brutal mountainous 100 mile race in less than 24 hours?) Now I want to meet him, too.

Stupid arbitrary calendar

Today, April 25th, would have been my eighth wedding anniversary.

Aha, *that’s* what makes my calves hurt

I see the pattern now. I had an OK 35-minute run during lunch just now, but my calves tightened up hard — whenever I’d stop at a traffic light then start running again, it hurt ow ow ow ow. The last time my calves got really tight, a week ago, was also a Tuesday. Aha – Monday and Tuesday are the only days with two consecutive runs. There you go, my calves are tightening up when I run on them without a rest day first. I can live with that for now.

Monday night’s run was a happy run

OK, so Portland Fit’s schedule says it’s to be 35 minutes of running today and 50 tomorrow. But I have a domino game shortly after work tomorrow, and I like running long with the Monday night running group from the Portland Running Company, so I’m swapping the days this week. Oh, and, yeah, running a little longer than 50 minutes. It was seven miles in 63 minutes. I felt great. My legs felt terrific. The weather was beautiful, for the first time in weeks, and a baker’s dozen of people turned out to run. I feel absolutely on top of the world post-run.

Tim was there again. This is the guy who’s running the six-day ultramarathon, starting Sunday. Join me in wishing him luck! He’s hoping to do 12-minute miles. And sleep for eight hours over the whole six days. Let’s see: ((24 hours/day*6 days) -8 hours) * 60 minutes/hour) / 12 minutes/mile = 680 miles. I think he said that he’s going to try for 550 miles or so, actually. Last year’s winner made it 458 miles, so that would be amazing. Equally amazing, on a different level: he promises that he’ll be back with the group run the Monday after it finishes. Yeah: he’s going to run for six days, rest for one day, then join us again. Yeah, he’s crazy. I’m burning with jealousy and admiration.

Bowling AND Scrabble? It’s the dream life, baby

Saturday night was R’s birthday party, which involved some eating, bowling (I rolled a 95, a 191,  and a 165 — consistent, eh?), and drinking. Then some more drinking. I got drunk enough to try to dance, which means I was pretty drunk. My memory is hazy on how much photographic evidence of this there might be. Hopefully not much. The drinking was over by midnight, but the sobering up took until 1:30 or so, so, once again I got home terribly late.

Try as I might the next morning, I wasn’t able to sleep in past 8:30 or so. I stayed in bed and caught up on The Sopranos and Entourage, but still felt sleep-deprived all day. The only productive things I did all day were to drop off some bags of clothing at Goodwill and do some grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s.

Sunday evening I went downtown to play in the MiPL Scrabble tournament. I breezed through my first two games (two seven-letter “bingos” in each), then hit some really bad letters. Early on in the third game, I was down by 50 points or so — and had already passed twice. There was still a lot of game left to play, but my letters never did get any better. Grinding it out and taking advantage of some lucky breaks with challenges (my opponent played QUO which I correctly challenged, then on the next move I turned TORI into TORII, which she incorrectly challenged) I managed to eke out a win.

The championship game was between me and the last tourney’s winner. I had the first play and drew IOORSTU. RIOTOUS jumped out at me and I played it quickly. Anna, much to my astonishment, didn’t even flinch. Turns out she had drawn both blanks and so had no problem counter-bingoing with V__LTERS. We were off to a fun start. We each played reasonably good scoring words the next few turns, then I was left with EFOSTUX. It was her turn, there was a wide-open O on the board, and — yes! — she didn’t take it. OUTFOXES! She never recovered after that, and I kept drawing great tiles, so the game ended up at something like 452-295. My reward for winning the tournament? Some really terrible photos of me on the MiPL site. Whee! The real reward, of course, is enjoying the company of other Scrabble players. Then crushing them. :-)

Good morning Portland Fit

I was feeling the lack of sleep this morning. The seven-course dinner at Genoa is a languorous, drawn-out affair, in a good way, and dinner lasted from 7:30 to a bit after midnight. They will accommodate any dietary restrictions, but in general you only get two choices: one of three entrees and one of six or seven desserts. I had the local sturgeon in lobster saboyon, and a orange-infused cake whose name I can’t recall. And plenty of wine.

So, early this morning I was sleep deprived and perhaps a bit crapulent. But still looking forward to the change of route as we headed up Thurman to Leif Erikson. We ran to the 1.5 mile marker on Leif Erikson, and turned around, for a 6.3 mile there-and-back. It’s uphill all the way out, with an elevation gain of about 500 feet, steepest in mile two, along the upper part of Thurman before it turns into the pedestrian-and-bike-only Leif Erikson.

Running uphill this morning wasn’t all that much fun. I huffed and puffed my way to 9:57, 10:38, and 10:27 miles on the way up, gradually losing touch with the front of the yellow pack. Actually, the third mile wasn’t too unpleasant — but I was nearly falling asleep, hypnotized by the trees and the cadence of running.

Coming down, I leaned forward and let my legs roll along as fast as they liked. The mile splits were 8:33, 7:32 (!), and 8:12. Total time: 6.33 miles in 57:42, averaging a 9:06 pace. Hmm. 9:06. That’s what you need for a four hour marathon….

As predicted in my last post, I went home and went back to sleep after that.

Last night’s running and drinking and eating &etc

Last night was the MiPL mingler, but before that I had to squeeze in a 35-minute run and get some cash. I killed two birds with one stone by running over to Fred Meyer and using the ATM there. This Fred Meyer is about 1.2 miles from my house — it used to be a little further, before a new road through a new division (and over a creek) opened up this month. It’s a hilly, twisty route that used to seem like a long ways to me, so it was kind of funny to me last night when I was able to run there comfortably in just 10 minutes. I hadn’t thought about the distances or times involved too closely, and I was expecting that getting there and back would take up my full 35 minutes, if not more! I took a longer route back to my house and ended up finishing 3.9 miles in 37:30, with some walking up steeper hills along the way.

My calves didn’t tighten up as bad this time, but of course, like a non-scientist, I changed any number of variables, so I don’t know why. It could be I stretched better before the run (I doubt it), stretched after the 10 minutes of running it took to get to the ATM (plausible), tried to stretch my calves on-the-run with higher leg kick-back (plausible), or just the luck of the draw (always plausible).

After the run I gulped down some cereal and soy milk, rehydrated with some water, and headed out for the mingler. It was at RonTom’s, a bar on East Burnside at Sixth. The bar is so “cool” or something that they don’t have a sign. I’m not sure what the goal there is. It doesn’t appear to be an exclusive kind of place. Anyway. I had a few beers, talked to a few people, played a game of chess against someone who turned out to be a beginner (1. e4 h5 2. d4 Rh6 oh dear), then ended up most of the evening at a table with my chess opponent and two awesomely wacky women, first cousins. Mr. 1… h5 had ordered some scalloped potatoes. RonTom’s food menu is a refreshing break from the usual pub grub burger / nachos / hummus platter business, and features retro items to match the furniture there: deviled eggs, grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato soup, Swedish meatballs, that kind of thing. These scalloped potatoes smelled so very good that I ordered a plate for myself. Sinfully good. Oh the buttery happiness. I missed you, butter. *sniff*

I got home after 11:00 and by the time I got to bed, it was around midnight. I had trouble getting to sleep the night before too, so I’m a little concerned about the sleep deficit I’m running. I have a MiPL dinner tonight (OMG Genoa! Here’s the description of the current salad course: “Belgian endive and wild local cress, candied walnuts and crisp duck skin paired with a taste of rhubarb accented with ginger, then dressed with a walnut vinaigrette and wrapped in a lacy crisp bread scarf”) which starts at seven and will probably last three hours or more, then of course early tomorrow morning there’s Portland Fit. I’m guessing I’ll go home right after the run and sleep most of Saturday.

I’ve seen worse pictures

A picture of me from last Saturday’s wedding shower.

Quick Update

Just a quick training update — ran 40 slow minutes with M. at lunchtime yesterday. My calves are still super-tight when I run. Then they go back to normal in an hour or two. This really could become a problem eventually. I don’t believe my calves are particularly weak. I’m wearing shoes with arch support out the nose. I think it’s something with my running form. I hardly feel like I use my upper legs at all. Any and all suggestions welcome.

Then yesterday evening, I did a hills-and-stairs walk with MiPL from 23rd and Burnside up to Pittock Mansion and back. I love the enormous flights of stairs on the hill, and I love being in good enough shape to charge right up them. And I always, always love the view from Pittock Mansion. Looking out over the city from up there, I’m always reminded of how much I love Portland.

Group Run along Fanno Creek

I rushed through a snack and a change of clothes after work to get over to the Beaverton Portland Running Company in time for their 6:00 run. Well, it’s sort of a PRC run, and sort of a Team Red Lizard run. It’s all very confusing. Anyway, the person who usually leads the run was there this week; she was injured the week before. (Last week was the first time I ran with this group.) Kelly, in addition to her TRL work,  writes the Running Blog on OregonLive.com. She knocked my socks off with her friendliness and talkativeness. She also told us about a 5K memorial run taking place on the Fanno Creek trails this Sunday; I’m definitely thinking about it but I do have a birthday party to go to Saturday night (hey, there’s gonna be bowling!) so I’ll have to see how I feel that morning.

Tonight’s run was four miles and very slow (12 minute miles, or close to), since our subgroup was running with someone who hadn’t been running recently. I could have run with the fast pack, but I thought taking it easy was the smart thing to do. Especially since tomorrow I have both the 40 minute run and a MiPL stairways walk up to Pittock Mansion.  It was kind of fun running that slow, with my heart rate around 72% of max. I still feel good, afterwards, too. Rest days suck, I need my running fix!

Weekend wrap-up

After Portland Fit on Saturday, I went home, rested and ate, then headed back to downtown Portland for J & H’s wedding shower. This was a co-ed wedding shower, held in a bar, with pool tables. We had most of the upstairs to ourselves and it was actually a really nice space. I’d heard of a lot of J’s friends there before, but this was my first time meeting many of them.

After that was over, I was still a little tipsy from my two beers in two hours, so I walked around downtown for a while. I went into the downtown Foot Traffic store and bought a “springtime” running cap (a little bit water-resistant, so it isn’t as light an airy as a “summer” cap, I suppose). I don’t think I did much else of interest Saturday.

Sunday I slept in. I think I finally got up around 10 or 10:30, which is wildly late for me nowadays. I went grocery shopping at Fred Meyer’s, and also picked up a new belt there: my old one has been too large for a few weeks now.

At four I was going to a MiPL happy hour at the Ringside, 21st and Burnside, to be followed by dinner there at seven. I know how to get to 21st and Burnside, but I’m such a slave to Google Maps that I checked to see which way it said I should go. The route it picked surprised me. (Warning: the rest of this paragraph is really boring! I’d skip it if I were you.) Up Oleson to the intersection of Oleson, Beaverton-Hillsdale, and Scholl’s Ferry, then following Scholl’s Ferry until it turns into Skyline as it crossed 26. Skyline to Burnside, then east on Burnside through the hills. I wasn’t sure this was the best route, but it sounded interesting and I’d never been on that part of Scholl’s Ferry or Skyline before, so I tried it. It worked pretty well. I have such a running mindset now that I find myself evaluating the shoulders and sidewalks of any new road for runnability. These roads were fun to drive, but would be terrible for running.

The Ringside is an old Portland institution of a steakhouse. It’s in a neighborhood where parking has become almost impossible, especially if you’re going to leave your car there for more than two hours. After driving around fruitlessly for a while, I gave up and used the restaurant’s valet lot. This is what, maybe the second time in my life I’ve used valet parking?

The Ringside bar is small, but makes fine cocktails and has a wonderfully cheap happy-hour menu after 9:45 and four to six on Sundays. The happy hour dishes were $2.25 each, I think,  and they weren’t tiny. But I didn’t get any: I was saving room for a sinful dinner. The MiPL group was crowded around this one tiny table most of the time, which was fine: all the better for talking to each other. The host for the event forgot about it! She had to rush in from Forest Grove or somewhere out there when someone finally reached her on a cell phone.  We all had a lot of good laughs over that.

For dinner, I had (diet? huh?) some of the best onion rings I’ve ever tasted, a pretty good French Onion Soup, a 12-ounce Prime Rib, medium-rare, with some really excellent freshly-grated horseradish, and a baked potato with everything. I didn’t really over-eat — I was up for dessert after but nobody else was, so I passed — but it was a decadent splurge. And a bit of a hit to the wallet. This Friday’s going to be even worse: dinner at Genoa. So expensive, but sooo good.

Portland Fit, week three

The good news is that I kept to my promise and ran in the middle of the yellow pack during this morning’s group five-miler. It was a pretty easy run (averaging around a 9:45 pace maybe) and my legs felt it more than my lungs. My calves started out stiff and never really loosened up. I’d love to get more thigh and less calf action into my stride.

The bad news is that I hardly talked to anybody, before, during, or after the run. I did chat with one woman who had run one marathon before and also grew up in Eugene, but by and large I was feeling shy and grumpy and wishing people would come up and talk to me rather than me having to take any initiative. This is not good.

It sounds like next week coach Lisa is going to lead the yellows who want to up into the hills (Leif Erikson I bet) instead of down to the waterfront. I don’t think I’ll have any trouble staying away from the front of the pack on the way up, but I can’t be held responsible for what might happen on the way down if my legs feel strong!

Eat B12 and die!

What with my current somewhat-less-meat-based diet, I became alarmed when I read here that “vegetarians require a daily vitamin B12 supplement”. I did a little more research, and, not to worry, it’s in dairy and eggs in addition to meat. But I did wonder about how vegan cultures dealt with this. Um, here’s one way:

Bacteria present in the large intestine are able to synthesise B12. In the past, it has been thought that the B12 produced by these colonic bacteria could be absorbed and utilised by humans. However, the bacteria produce B12 too far down the intestine for absorption to occur, B12 not being absorbed through the colon lining.

Human faeces can contain significant B12. A study has shown that a group of Iranian vegans obtained adequate B12 from unwashed vegetables which had been fertilised with human manure. Faecal contamination of vegetables and other plant foods can make a significant contribution to dietary needs, particularly in areas where hygiene standards may be low. This may be responsible for the lack of aneamia due to B12 deficiency in vegan communities in developing countries.

Link.

Improvement happens whether you believe it will or not

When I read about someone running long distances at a faster pace than I can, it doesn’t really occur to me that this is something I can also do if I simply keep training. Deep down, I think I believe that physical improvement — if possible at all — requires brutal workouts and pushing past your limits of endurance and pain with iron mental discipline. The idea that these slow, plodding, controlled heart-rate workouts advocated by Portland Fit can actually make a difference just seems a bit fantastical.

And yet. Running with my heart rate monitor for the first time in quite a while, keeping my rate under 80% of max for the first time in even longer, I ran my first mile in 8:30! True, it was mostly mildly downhill. Even so, I’m astonished.

It was a 25 minute run and the remaining mile and a half had to be quite a bit slower to stay in the heart rate zone.  Around 10:15 for the second mile, and a similar pace for the remainder. This was still a great deal faster than the last time I stayed under 80%; if I recall right, it used to be around 13-minute miles.

Back to basics: tying my own shoelaces

So I don’t think I ever learned to tie shoelaces properly, believe it or not. I have an unorthodox style — my wife would laugh every time she saw “the flip” — that produces an asymmetric and easily untied partial-birth abortion of a knot. So I end up just doing the “double-knot”, tying the loops together after, which keeps it tied, but makes it hard to untie.

No more! I’m going to try to go with this shoelace knot from now on. I’m relearning shoe-tying from the ground up! I’m four years old again! The world is new and exciting. By the way, if you didn’t click the link, you’re missing out. Ian’s Shoelace Site is everything the internet was created to be. It’s a comprehensive and lavishly illustrated treatise on every imaginable shoelace-related topic.

Maybe if I start writing this boring training report I will think of something interesting too

Even though I ran twice as far and probably one and a half times as hard as I was supposed to last night, I had to do my scheduled 35 minute training run this morning. (I’m busy this evening and all my running clothes were too dirty for me to feel ok about running at lunch from work.) Since it was such a short rest, I took it very easy… three miles in 37 minutes. (It was either run an extra two minutes or walk farther than I felt like walking back to the house.) This was on one of the hilly loops around my house, mostly uphill on the way out and downhill on the way back.

Off-topic awesomeness

Awesome. Donkey Kong pixel art from 6400 colored post-it notes.

Running in Circles

I had to go to Target after work tonight to pick up my Zoloft refill, so I thought I’d swing by the nearby Portland Running Company to check out their cap selection, then do my 30 minute run from there. I thought maybe they had a Monday evening running group, too, but I couldn’t remember for sure. The only cap they had in a style I liked was in a color I didn’t, so that was a no-go, but the running group was gathering and almost ready to go, so I joined in. I think it was seven people and one dog, including myself. (I was the dog! Ha! Am I funny?) I was a little worried about whether I could keep up, so I asked what kind of pace they ran, and they guessed 9:00 or 9:15. All right, I could do that for 30 minutes, easy. The group was running further than that, but I planned on turning around after 15 minutes and running back myself.

Uh huh. It’s nice to have plans. I enjoyed the company and my legs and lungs both felt great, so I ran the whole way with the group. Seven miles. At a sub-nine-minute pace. I was talking a lot of the time, and it was actually pretty easy (except for the one hill), so it’s a little ridiculous to note that this pace meant I set an unofficial new 10K PR during this run. I feel absolutely terrific now. My only complaint: I didn’t plan on running so far, so I didn’t take the precautions to prevent nipple chafing. Ouch.

One of the group was a 21-year-old getting ready for his second Self-Transcendence Six Day Ultra Race. I think I’ve heard of this once, but I didn’t know anything about it. I learned that this is six days running (and walking sometimes) around a flat one mile track in Flushing Meadows, Queens, NY. Eating only vegetarian food. (Some competitors drink straight vegetable oil to load up on calories quickly; this guy stuck to canned peaches in heavy syrup for that.) You sleep as little or as much as you want. Last year he slept two hours during every six, for a total of eight hours a day; this year he’s planning on trying to sleep only eight hours for the whole six days.

“You know you’re crazy, right?”

“Yeah. Last year I didn’t know what I was getting into, so you could call me naive. But this year I know what I’m in for.”

“OK. As long as you know you’re crazy, that’s OK then.”

I love it. I don’t think I’d ever want to run around in one circle a few hundred times, but I envy him the ability to do so.

Speaking of cannoli

The vacation’s over, and, worse yet, I haven’t run in… (carry the two…) 54 hours. Sunday was a rest day and I’m doing today’s 30 minute run later this evening. I had a good time with Mom in town over the weekend. We went to Apizza Scholls — I had to get her New Yorker’s opinion — and we devoured all but one and a half slices of a whole pie between the two of us. We got there a little after 5:00 on Saturday, got seated at the bar immediately, and had to wait until 6:00 before our pizza was ready. Worth it! I’m thankful for the wait, really — if it were painless to get Apizza Scholl’s pizza, I’m not sure I’d have the willpower to not go there every other day. I knew their pizza was good, but I was curious about their cannoli.  I had ordered one last time, and enjoyed it, but I’m no cannoli expert and I wasn’t sure it it was authentically good. Mom said it was the best cannoli she had ever had in Oregon, anyway. (Which may not be saying a lot, but it’s saying something.)

Apizza Scholls serves obscure bottled sodas; one called “Moxie Elixir” caught my eye. I asked the waiter what it was. He made a kind of disgusted face and said “to tell you the truth, it kind of tastes like a soda version of Jagermeister.” I didn’t order it.

Speaking of Cannoli, the next day, I saw that Ava Roasteria had mispelled “connoli” in their pastry case. I thought that was probably a bad sign. As a shyness-fighting exercise, I alerted the staff:

“I know you probably don’t care, but you’ve misspelled “cannoli’.”

“I have?”

“Well, someone has.”

“Oh, I’ll make a note.” (Sarcasm? Maybe.) “There are a lot of things misspelled around here. How’s it supposed to be spelled?”

“Cee A En En Oh El I. Not Oh. That spells ‘Coh-Noh-Li’ .”

“Oh.”

Yep, a rewarding conversation all around. I told her I liked her glasses, and that seemed to help a little.

Poor little Rupert

My younger dog Rupert has a painful broken dewclaw. Poor little guy. At first I didn’t know what it was — the appearance of the quick sticking out of the base of the nail was rather strange to me — and I was all ready to run downtown to the emergency 24-hour urgent vet clinic. After some research and talking to M, it appears this is a fairly common problem that doesn’t usually need veterinary care unless if it gets infected. Antibiotics and bandaging are recommended; I should have guessed Rupert would reject the bandaging with extreme prejudice.

Rupert can walk around fine and seemed to sleep ok, but every once in a while the nail area gets bumped and he starts crying. Poor little thing.

Portland Fit, week two

Before today’s pre-run seminar (a brief recap: don’t get run over, please) I said hi to someone I recognized from a MiPL run — hi Sarah — and upon hearing my name and the fact that I was in Meetin, the woman Sarah was talking to introduced herself as Lindsey and asked if I was the one with this blog. It was Zee! It was nice to meet another Portland blogger. Another blue-eyed Portland blogger. Another blue-eyed Portland blogger doing Portland Fit. My god, we’re clones! OK, maybe not.

Then we were off for the four-miler. I went out with the front of the yellow pack and chatted a while with one of their two coaches, Lisa. The first mile was a little slow, a little over 10 minutes, but then the front of the pack kicked it up a notch and did the next three in under nine minutes each. I ran a little harder than I should, I guess. I. Am. Too. Competitive. I know it, but I have a hard time facing that it’s actually something I should change.

I got in line for the free sports massage after the run, mainly to kill time while I waited for my Mom’s train to arrive from Eugene. My calves are always quite tight after running, so that’s what he worked on. Ow! Wow! Ow! I had to go into full masochist mode to enjoy that. Yes, I felt looser after the prodding and poking, but did I mention “ow!”?

I toweled off and changed clothes in my car then drove over to the train station. Well, I drove around and around, to the train station — going down to Front is apparently *not* the way to get there. I did the NYT crossword puzzle while I waited for the train to arrive — which it did, on time, then Mom and I went to have lunch (Cha! Cha! Cha! in Beaumont Village) and some coffee. Or tea, as it turned out, sice the Fremont Coffee House’s espresso machine was kaput. Ah well. Then home.

Two dogs enter, one dog leaves

My boys. That’s Haggis in the rear and Rupert in front.

First time rock climbing

I did a rock climbing event with MiPL last night and it was too much fun. It was at the Portland Rock Gym, which was really cool: I was blown away by how tall the walls were and how many they had. This was the first time I had ever tried rock climbing, and it was a little easier than I expected — as long as I stuck to the big, easy to grip rocks. I tried one 5.10 route and made it up about three feet before falling off. I guess I have to sit around the house trying to crack walnuts with my fingers, or something. I’ve signed up again for next month and M is coming as well.

At last, a decent run

For the first time this week, my run didn’t feel hard or uncomfortable. Which is doubly encouraging after yesterday’s hike. I met up with M for a 25-minute run, on the trails by the Tualatin River at Brown’s Ferry Park. M isn’t in Portland Fit, but at least for now is trying to follow their training schedule. We ran a pretty slow pace, just under 10 minutes a mile. M’s getting over a cold and didn’t eat much all day, so the run was a little easier for me than him. It’s an absolutely beautiful, warm sunny day out there. Actually, a shade hotter than I’d prefer.  After the run, we got some lunch at a Mexican restaurant.

Earlier in the morning, I mowed the lawn. I dread this. I have a big, big yard in pretty bad shape. I even had to go and buy some gas for the mower. At least my mower (a self-propelled Toro mulching mower) started up no problem — I don’t regret paying a few extra hundred dollars for a good one. I used my Camelbak Fastflo while mowing, and it helped a lot — usually I get incredibly tired and thirsty.

Hike

I hiked with a friend up to Indian Point in the Gorge today. About four miles up, to an incredible, and scary rock-strewn little finger of land thrusting out high, high above the Columbia. At the end of this finger is a little further upcropping, climbable by the brave or stupid. I scrambled up it. I could only sit at the top for a few seconds before the seeming vertical drops on all sides of me got to me. But I regret nothing.

Freezing morning

A thirty minute run today, and I decided to do it first thing in the morning. Wow! It was cold out there! What happened to spring? I ran slowly (11 minute pace or so) because my legs were hurting… my calves just feel beat up, and the freezing temperatures probably didn’t help. My legs feel fine now though, so I guess it’s nothing serious.

After, I went to a MiPL Coffeeklatch at the Coffee Plant in John’s Landing. OK coffee, I guess, but very uncozy and, well, uncreative. I like a little quirkiness with my coffee.  Good company, though.

Now I’m cleaning the laundry room. I’ve only been putting this off for six months — not bad.

Crummy Run

In the Portland Fit program (actually in all the USA Fit programs) you run for distance in the group weekend runs and for time, on your own, during the week. Yesterday was a rest day; today was 25 minutes. I left work for another week off around 1:30 and drove down to Duniway track a little later. Duniway track is a public quarter-mile oval at the north end of Barbur Boulevard.

Foolishly, I decided to run one slow warm-up lap, then one fast lap (trying for 1:30 to 1:45), then to do the rest of the 25 minutes at whatever pace felt comfortable. Well, I got through the fast lap in 1:42. After that it was all downhill. I don’t know if it was the fast running or the vestiges of this cold, but my lungs felt stiff and my calves felt like rocks. Not a very enjoyable run, and I felt a little like I was a specimen under a microscope, running on the track.

The only good news? In the end, I ran 2.58 miles in the 25 minutes, so even struggling, I was under 10:00 a mile.