Mmmmm...Pizza.

...Author's note, this first section was written yesterday on my phone and I don't care to change the date references and such...

This here was arguably the best pizza I've ever made.  Dinner last night, couldn't help but gloat.

I'm currently stuck in Santa Cruz awaiting the magic hour of 2:30 at which time I'll be able to pick up a piece of paper which I needed renewed. Then I'll go wait in another line and hopefully, finally get my residency paperwork finished and off to La Paz.

My run today is a sacrifice to the gods of bureaucracy.  Yesterday though I got a number of running things done.  One thing I've never done is to really work on my form. So I Googled about and found some form drills for barefoot runners. The first link had a bunch of good stuff which isn't terribly surprising considering the author.  While I'm not a fan of his shoes, I am a fan of his philosophy...

The drills consist of things like running in place with a focus on high cadence or knee lift,  butt kicks and jumping rope.  So I spent quite some time chasing and/or being chased by Deneb around the house all the while doing these silly drills (except the rope jumping). He thought it a good time.

I also set up a track consisting of thirty bricks in an oval which I then proceeded to do laps around barefoot. I had thought Deneb would dig this too, but I was mistaken, he rather quickly decided I was working in the (author's note - end of stuff written yesterday) yard and complained "No Ayu-u-da"...

Speed work done, I put on my vffs and got out and ran another 5.5 miles slowly while I thought about picking up my foot rather than pushing off with it.  I actually got in a mile more than I had anticipated because, even though I was tired from the previous 2 days efforts, it just felt good to be running.  I didn't really want to stop.

This photo was taken about 2.5 miles into my run, and the one below is at about mile 3.

Much of my running here is on sandy dirt roads.  Depending on what the weather has been like, the sand can be pretty deep.  Makes for an interesting workout.

Yesterday (really), I finally got my paperwork approved and off to La Paz.  In 3 weeks I'll have a sticker which says I can stay in Bolivia unmolested for a full year.  I was done with that finally around 6PM.  When I called Nataly to hopefully have her pick me up, instead she said, "I've got a few more things to do could you come over here?"

I ran.

Pretty nice spectacle too.  Tan dress slacks, blue cotton button down short sleeve wide open, dress shoes.  More than one person actually laughed at me.  Whatever.  I got 31 minutes running on a day I thought a run would be sacrificed to the gods of bureaucracy - should that be the name of a band?

thanks for reading

J

Space Coast Marathon

That's the one.  Maximum elevation on the course is something like 35 feet asl and now I've got 2 more weeks.

I think I'll even go to the pre-race dinner.

Run: 10.01 miles

Got out again yesterday and it was the only thing remotely constructive I did all day yesterday.

This week, I've been trying to get my Bolivian residency status squared away and I was driving into Santa Cruz when I got into a fender bender.  Remarkable it hasn't happened before, but there it is.  Nobody was hurt, but our car has a new ding in the side.

A cop was actually riding in the passenger seat of other vehicle and he said it was the other driver's fault.  I honestly have no idea, the place where we were in the accident is an absolute cluster.  Whatever...

My run yesterday required a bit of willpower to undertake.  I was (am) sore from the run and the raking I did on Tuesday (we've got a big yard).  Eventually though I did get out and 97 minutes later I got back.  Heart rate was high again on the run yesterday, and toward the end of the run I actually gave it a bit of a kick just to see 200 on the tachometer.  I think it's kind of cool to be staring down the commencement of my 41st trip around the sun and still able to hit 200 BPM and not have a heart attack.

Nothing else particularly remarkable about yesterday, today I won't be driving anywhere that's for sure.
Thanks for reading.
J

First run in 3 weeks.

I've had a brutal couple of weeks trying to get my wheels on. I've been thinking about running every day, but the final spur never quite arrived.

Part of the problem is that I haven't had a goal for several months.  The last two Septembers, I've had motivation in the form of Imogene.  I knew I'd be running Imogene in 2009 in September of 2008. I knew I'd be running Imogene in 2010 somewhere in the middle of mile 6 of Imogene in 2009.  I had Imogene on my calendar, for the remainder of 2010, but somewhere in February that turned into wishful thinking.  It's back on the schedule for 2012, but this year - nope.

What finally got me out the gate today?  I believe I've got a race to train for.

• Round trips from Santa Cruz to Miami aren't too unreasonable.  So this past Sunday, I was looking for a marathon in Florida to get something on the schedule.  
• Pensacola to the rescue.  November 13.  
• A perfect 23 week training cycle too, 3 months of base training, 2 months to build intensity, 2 weeks to peak, and 1 week to race.  
• I'm going to try to shatter my "PR".  

I ran the Steamboat Marathon in 3:33.06.  That race is run at elevation and is more often downhill than up, but there is quite the lump at mile 23 which absolutely killed me.  It took 5 (or more) minutes out of my time had the road merely stayed flat.

Since I've been in Bolivia, a litany of things have resulted in my dropping a very large chunk of my gut.  I think I have lost 30 lbs relative to what I weighed when I ran Steamboat.  Unfortunately I don't have a scale so that's just a guess at this point.  With the weight loss, good preparation and me going down instead of up to race, I think I can take 20+ minutes out of my time.  Can I go under 3 hours?  There's a question to monitor...

Anyway today was the first day of my training program.  Since I haven't run in weeks I decided to peg the speedometer at 8:30 and not pay attention to my HR.  I did wear my monitor and saw 198 BPM at one point but with 3 weeks off that's really not surprising.  I ran for 45 minutes and averaged 8:34/mile total distance?  You do the math, I don't want to turn on my Garmin.  Next week I'll start being a slave to it again and in 2 more weeks I'll check the number I'm using to estimate my lactate threshold.

Anyway, I'll soon have a financial incentive to head out the door every day.  That's a powerful motivator.
Thanks for reading.
J

Holy Customer Service Batman!

A bit of background.  Brandon penned this piece about the Minimus and he tipped me over the edge from wanting to lusting.  I've been wanting a shoe with a bit more to it than the 4 pairs of VFF's I've been rocking since January for my longer runs.  But, I didn't want to go all the way back to my Cascadias.

Go CU!

Before I left for Bolivia in January I was on something of a quest for the New Balance MT101, but nowhere did I find a size 14.  I ordered a pair through a local store, but when they finally came in, I had other things I had to do with my money.  I knew this shoe was coming out but hadn't parsed the timing of it's release properly.

Once I started seeing chatter about the shoe, I realized that I could possibly have a pair brought down to me when my Mom comes to visit at the end of this month.  I couldn't take it anymore and pulled the trigger on the unnecessary expense last Thursday when I also bought some gear for the kitchen (also coming in my Mom's luggage).

The scale shipped on Friday (the same day I expected the shoes to ship), but come Monday I hadn't gotten a shipping advice, so I penned this note to New Balance Customer Service - online:

Subject: Customer Care - Help with My Order

I'm curious if my order:
6251856
Has shipped or will ship prior to the 23rd of March.
I am having the shoes brought to Bolivia by someone who is coming to visit me.  They leave on the 30th of March.
Thanks.

Yesterday I got a shipping advice and I thought, "Ok, that works.  It'll be close, but the shoes should arrive in VT before Mom leaves on the 31st."  Later in the day, I looked at my phone and saw this reply to my note in my inbox:

Dear Jay,

The shoes are shipping today, 03-22-11, with a scheduled delivery for tomorrow, 03-23-11.

If you have any other questions or concerns, please feel free to send us another e-mail.  Have a nice day, Jay.


Joe S.
Customer Care

That's just remarkable.  The shoes will arrive today in Vermont alongside of the scale.  Seriously above and beyond - and via a web contact form too.  Thanks New Balance.

Thanks for reading,
Jay

D'oh! Dengue...

So last Saturday I was out for a run.  It was remarkable for a couple of reasons:

• I was starting to really feel like I was getting my flow on and into the rhythm of regular running. 
• It was freaking hot out (93 or 94 degrees with high humidity).

It's the second bullet which was the killer.  I ran 3 laps of my usual loop, but somewhere in the second half of my second lap I started feeling really iffy - worse than heat and dehydration, but that's what I wrote off my feelings to at the time.  Then toward the end of my 3rd lap, I was blithely reading a sign "Hemos de azúcar" and suddenly I was no longer earthbound.

My typical loop has some "obstacles" in it.  It isn't a full on parkours track, but one must be constantly paying attention.  In this particular portion of my loop the sidewalk is kind of terraced, with regular down steps which must be attended to...Well much to the amusement of the family of 6 who I yard-saled in front of, I was not attending.  Fortunately I wasn't hurt worse than a bit of a scratch on my arm and very dirty back, but this set up a couple of days of misdiagnosis.

Punk A$$ Bitch!

Were it not for the heat during the run, I may not even have gotten sick, but as it was I felt progressively worse throughout the afternoon and into the evening, but both Nataly and I wrote off my feelings as resulting from the trauma of the fall.  Nataly was feeling ill herself - Friday she went to the doctor in, what she termed, the worst pain she'd experienced since having Deneb.  The doctor proscribed some injectable antibiotics based off of some bloodwork and suggested that she hope it's a bacterial infection because the alternatives weren't very pretty.

Saturday evening I started thinking I had a fever.  Nataly didn't think so, and neither did her aunt, but I was pretty convinced.  Saturday was the first day of carnival and were visiting Nataly's aunt and eating some fried chicken, and I found it everything I could do just to keep my head up.  Eventually I went upstairs and lay down with Deneb and tried to watch a movie.

The movie was called "Up!" which I've seen the second half of, but not the first.  The second half features a goofy golden retreiver, lots of dogs and a zany quest but the first part is fantastically sad.  Deneb picked up on the emotion in the first part and we couldn't watch until the movie got funny.  Oh well.

When we got home I took my temperature and sure enough it was over 100.  Not much of a fever, but enough to justify me thinking I had one.  Whatever...  The next morning I woke feeling like I'd been hit by a truck.  We still didn't know what we had, but whatever it was it sucked.  Nataly's fever topped out at 102.7 mine at 102.3.  The symptoms were identical to the "common cold" with the exception that the pain in the joints was truly remarkable.  Without chemical support there was no way for me to find a comfortable position.

Regarding:  chemical support.  It's really a good thing there's Google.  Some time on Tuesday I started suspecting I had dengue.  It started with folks joking about it, but upon googling I realized that they weren't really joking.  I had all of the classic symptoms:  horrible joint pain, headache focused in the eyes, fever and a rash which really popped on Tuesday.  Dengue is known not so much because of what I've experienced, but because in certain circumstances it can get really bad and turn into a hemorrhagic version of the disease.  You know, blood oozing out of your nose and eyes kind of bad.

So far, I haven't gotten to experience that.  In fact, I'm thinking I'm almost out of the woods.  The rash is almost gone and I haven't had a fever in a couple of days.  The rash was pretty special though...

I haven't run since last Saturday, and think I'll hold off until after I have a follow up blood test on Monday, but I'm starting to really jones.  Great news is:  I expect to get my inaugural run in at my new house within a week.  Can't freaking wait.  Who has 3 tangerine trees in their yard?  That's right: ME!

If the trade is Dengue for tangerines, so be it.
thanks for reading
J

Retrospect Piece #3. Drive: Vermont - Florida.

So I left Vermont on Friday the 21st.  I had a bit of a deadline to make (meet mom at the Ft Lauderdale airport at 1PM on Sunday) making me fairly motivated to make it from VT to VA in one day.  Barriers in the way of my goal:  I had to stop in the place of my birth to pick up a certified copy of my birth certificate and my car wasn't packed yet.

There's more after the jump if you want to read it...