New Digs

I'm writing again, though I'm taking it to a new location.

They are not letting me link to it, perhaps because its the competition, so I'll spell it out:

seebo.typepad.com (seebo-dot-typepad-dot-com).

Come visit me. See you there.

Lay Off

Haven't written in a bit, and telling you that I'll be taking some time off.

Foot's getting worse and the rest of life is closing in as well, so I'm going to take some time off. A week or two. Part of me hates to do it, but it feels right. Tired of half measures.

So check back once in awhile, and I'll see you then.

Weeds and Cinders

Second time on the track in two days. This time it was Bartram track and back to weeds and cinders. Plan was to do some easy interval work to check out the foot.

Sunny and in the forties this morning, running on borrowed daylight from last weekend's time change. Felt in a good frame of mind running down to 58th St. as this would be, effortwise, an easy workout. Reba gave me her iPod to replace mine, which finally died last week, and I had Fred Eaglesmith on the rotation.

Plan was to do 3x1600 with 400m recovery. The reps would be under 7 minutes. Actual times were 6:51; 6:56; and 6:54. More importantly, my foot seems to be holding up, although we'll see how it feels over the course of the day.

One thing I like about the Bartram track, more than any other I've run on, is that I rarely have a workout there without making some kind of human contact. Words of encouragement, a "how many miles you going?" shout, a nod of recognition upon sharing the track with someone for a second time. This morning a 50-something year old guy who was dutifully jogging around the track synchronized his workout so that he would do 100m bursts down the straightaway with me whenever I came around. On lap 3 of my third rep he hung with me for 200m and then when I finished the rep I stopped a bit and we chatted.

7.5 miles in 60:41.

Tale of 2 Tracks

In DC at a conference, staying with my sister. Beautiful morning, was unmotivated to run.

Had a blister on my heel from wearing shiny shoes yesterday. Tried to turn that into an excuse not to run, but I just couldn't make it fly.

So, decidedly uninspired, I headed out to the track down the street from Annette's house. Having gotten used to running on a cinder track with encroaching weeds made me appreciate the springy polyurethane all the more, and I marveled at the restrooms (i.e., not porta-potties) that were open just by the bleachers. A different world out here.

But that didn't make running around in ovals any more interesting. I did an easy five miles, speeding up a bit towards the end just to get it over with. I'm getting optimistic again that my foot is on the mend, and may head out to my (58th St) track tomorrow for some very mellow reps. We'll see.

And I have a physical therapy appointment next week Wednesday.

Coffee Break

Just like when you don't run for a few days, when you don't write for a few days then it gets harder to get back into things. There just seems to be too much to catch up on, and the inactivity has a momentum all its own.

Fortunately that has not been the case for my running. Today marks the fifth straight day that I have gotten a run in. A little victory, but one that I'll definitely hang on to. It started last Wednesday and Thursday (already blogged), then progressed with a 10.5 miler - out & back to Outley and five miles along Cobbs Creek with the guys on Friday. Saturday it was a rainy 5-miler on a SSB loop variation, and yesterday a 5.5 mile Art Museum loop.

Today I cycled out to Outley and ran 5 miles through Darby and Yeadon with Troy and Derrick. For most of the run we kept in proximity to each other, with the two of them doing their own pace and me staying with them. Our paces were not that different, and it would not have been much of an adjustment for us to run as a tighter group. That's what I'm used to, that doesn't seem to be how things go here. These become taciturn runs, and sticking to someone else's pace anchors me so that the pace remains suitable for my foot. Today's five passed in 40:40, a good pace for me.

Watched the NYC marathon before I went out yesterday. The coverage was awful, as usual, but at least it was on tv. The focus is very much on the men's and women's front packs, which is fine when they are relatively large but then when each of the races whittled down to two, and then one, the camera stayed focused exclusively on them, with little idea what the other 39,998 runners were doing. It's the Ricky Bobby approach to marathon coverage - if you ain't first, you're last. In doing so they missed at least one big story of how US runners not only won the men's race, but scored six out of the top 10 male finishers. So if this were a cross country meet USA would have won.

Speaking of XC, Tony's season is now done. He seemed to like it, and was solidly in the middle of the pack. The team had a good amount of success, unfortunately because of my teaching schedule I was only able to make it to one of his meets, the second to last one last week.

There, caught up again. Now time to get back to work.

Hard Rain

Pitter patter of rain made it hard to get out of bed and even harder to get out the door the last two days. Add a semi-bum foot to the mix and it looks like I won't be atop any championship podiums anytime soon.

I did see a doctor today and got a scrip for Physical Therapy.

And I did run. Easy 4 on my newfound loop under the South St. Bridge. Nice morning to run, wish it could have been more.

I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains,
I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways,
I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests,
I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans,
I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard,

And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Two Trick Pony

My blogging lately has revolved around two topics - my bum foot and my running with BOMF. Don't have much else to talk about today. If I dwell on my foot, I'll whine some more about my half-fast running. Circumstance here haven't changed much.

That leaves BOMF. This is now my second week of getting up earlier to meet in SW Philly at Outley House at 5:45 to run with a group of folks. I don't know much about Outley other than it is a shelter on the magnitude of 200-300 beds with a therapeutic component to it. Somewhere I heard referred to as a "rehab shelter". A group of mostly guys, about 10-15, staying at the shelter and a few "non-residential" runners meet and we go run. I had initially thought of this as a good way to get mileage on my easy days, but recently these "easy" days have become my hard days and I've cut back on my mileage by biking to Outley.

A week in, I've already figured how to time my arrival to avoid most of the stretching that they do before the run (I'm already warmed up when I get down there) but have gotten there in time for a huddle to recite the Serenity Prayer, 12 step style, before heading out to run. I've been running with whoever is in front of the pack, which has worked well in that its been different people on each run. Runs have been anywhere from 3-6 miles.

The running is different than other group running I've done. Some of it is obviously the socioeconomics, but it is also due to most of the people there not having been involved in running that long. Both those factors create an absence of little nuanced running-related things that I only notice in their absence, and make me realize how homogeneous the typical running groups are, and how even the most friendly running groups can be intimidating to the uninitiated. It's hard to pin down, and I'll write more about it in some future post when I can offer more specifics.

But in writing this I realize that is the difference of this group, that it is a running group less socialized to the running "norms" of the masses and leaves me feeling the outsider. The run today was down the Cobbs Creek bikeway to Baltimore Ave, about 2.5 miles, and back. Reese and I started at a steady pace that from his breathing I didn't think he'd maintain. We were joined about a mile and a half by "Cheeks", who caught up to us for a bit and promptly started walking. Following this the pace undulated somewhat between faster and slower, with Cheeks either falling back and catching up or running ahead and walking until we caught up. We'd run as a threesome at times and at other times there would be a good spread between us. The running paralleled the way I was feeling - alternately connected and disjointed. Reese thanked me for slowing down to run with them, something I hate when people do because, I think, I feel their discomfort where I feel there shouldn't be any. If I wanted to run faster I'd have run faster. I started to explain this but couldn't find the words to do so. So I let it drop.

New situations bring out the sociologist in me. I'm very aware that I'm still new to this scene so I largely take it in and try to figure it out and where I belong in things. And I heed some other 12-step advice, to keep coming back.

As a postscript, I ran 5.5 miles around the Art Museum loop yesterday, took Saturday off and ran 6 miles up and down Woodland Ave on Friday. Yesterday's run felt fine but subsequent frisbee tossing and apple picking got my foot worked up again. It didn't feel bad after this morning's five, however. Go figure.