A Little Over a Week to Go!

There are just a hand full of days before I leave for the 2010 North Pole Marathon! I leave Friday and have just one more planned run before I jump on a plane. Tonight I had to work late, so I ended up doing thirteen and change miles in the dark with winds blowing in the solid twenties and a moon doing its best midnight sun impression. It was a good run at about an eight and a half min pace (I'm not exactly sure because my wiz-bang gps tracker died on me in the last mile or so). I spent most of the run thinking about the last six months worth of runs and all of the different ways and days that I had run past this and that. As the race gets closer, I'm focusing less on pushing my speed and mostly trying not to hurt myself at the end. I'm finding that has led me to settle into a distance pace that sort of seems to take care of itself. Tonight I didn't really think about the running itself (other than the ever present base coat of "just dont stop"); I was just sort of watching it happen. The change in stride with inclines, careful footfalls on uneven desert, swinging shoulders. Over the last six months I have been trying to find a way to think about this entity that is 'the running' I've tried to think of it as a truck or a ship to be driven and guided through the desert ( on fast days it is a big white lone ranger stallion :) ). I have tried to think of my legs as the close air support of a Normandy beach landing. There are lots of these, most are fairly cocky and none are really true. Tonight I realized that the running is almost a conscious entity that I'm sharing my body with. It's hard to explain why this feels right, but it is. Its like a split personality that I can't ever meet face to face. I can only watch it at work. This is the character that swings the arms and meters breath and times the steps so that the left foot falls just before an old sheep skeleton and the right one falls just after. Its not just legs and feet and lungs, and it is more than hundreds of miles of muscle memory.

Now that I'm all showered and full of post run chocolate milk, sitting comfortably typing, I have to wonder if this runner is in there someplace watching me. Maybe restless over the stillness, maybe wishing I've stretched a little better. I wonder if this runner has any idea what lay in store for it in a week or so.

As the race looms I'm finding myself spending less time running and more time thinking about what I'll be running in. Seems like everyday I'm ordering some piece of gear that I realize that I've forgotten. I think I have most of what I need at this point. I laid it all out on the floor in two groups. One for the run, and one for the time spent hanging out in a frozen wasteland. The running stuff was pretty easy to sort out, the race organizers have a complete list of suggested equipment that was really helpful. The hanging around in the arctic was a little more of a challenge. I have been secretly terrified of not being able to keep my feet warm and have this horrible vision of some ancient Norwegian doctor cutting of frost bitten toes with an old cigar cutter! Lucky for me my Uncle Dan, who has spent all of recent history in Alaska, sent Juls and I army surplus arctic travel Bunny Boots. These things are inflatable, waterproof inside and out, and rated to minus 65F. Awesome. Dan managed to find some of these monsters in my size 14. Clodhopper is an understatement. These things are an absolute life saver. Thanks Uncle Dan! Less exciting, but a lot more colorful; I found a really nice 800 fill down jacket a big discount online. It is bright orange and makes me look like something in between the stay-puff-marshmallow-man and a traffic cone. At least they will be able to find me if I get lost. :)

Thanks and Game On!

Thanks my Dad and Lisa and Uncle Dan and Gina with there last minute help with my race entry fee. As of this morning I am a paid entrant 2010 North Pole Marathon!!!

Check out the website; I've made the entrant list!
http://www.npmarathon.com/html/200324/

Gettin' There

I did my longest run ever yesterday, just shy of 23 miles. I'm not sure of the exact time or distance because I forgot to turn on my trusty run tracker till I was about a mile or so out. Over the rest of my run I managed to average just under a 9 min pace. What that actually means is that I started off at a good clip and finished up at an ungraceful stumble. I'm pretty convinced that anything over 18 or 19 miles is gonna hurt, no matter what you do. The upside is that I was more careful about eating plenty over the morning before the run and giving myself a couple hours between lunch and the start of the run. As a result, the first sixteen miles or so were pretty enjoyable. I have stopped listening to music when I run. I was talking to a buddy about having trouble keeping pace as the tempo of the music changes. He said he had the same problem, and never ran with music. I'm finding that the quiet is a better fit for me. For one, aside from the pace thing, I end up with sweat in my ears when I wear headphones and am always frustrated by the headphone cord bouncing around or getting tight when I turn my head. Also without the music, I find that my mind wanders less and I focus more on the run itself. I think I have about 13 miles of day to day things to think about. On a long run like yesterday there is a sort of magical period between mile 13, when I run out of day to day stuff, and mile 18, when I just want to curl up and die, when I find myself in this almost meditative peace. It is this quiet period before the body starts yelling obscenities at the brain when my mind is clear and there is nothing but appreciating what it means to travel with complete independence. There is no motor, no pedals, no gears, tires or wings...sometimes no road. Just you, your breath, footsteps and the distance. I like that.

I did have some company yesterday. I got chased by several sets of barking dogs on Sierra Highway. Fortunately this is was a common occurrence running back home on East Texas county roads. I find the best way to deal with an aggressively territorial country dog who is chasing you is to turn around and jog backwards while making eye contact with the dog, growling, and harboring thoughts of extreme aggression toward the dog (I figure if they can smell fear, this is like the opposite. it also works on mosquitoes I swear!). This almost always sends them running back home. If this doesn't work, try chasing the dog also while growling. I have only been bitten by a dog once in many years of running. I was able to punch it squarely in the nose (also while growling) and never had a problem with the animal again.

As of tomorrow it is one month to the marathon. I am still a little short on the entry fee but Richard (the awesome race coordinator) is being really patient with me. I'm in the process of ordering all kinds of clothes and kit. Hopefully next weekend I will be able to head north and actually do some running in the cold and snow. YeeHaww!

The begining of the home stretch

Well I'm neck deep in my first week after getting back from Australia. In case you are wondering, no two weeks lounging around some of the prettiest country on the planet does not make you a faster runner, all it does is make you want to live in Australia in a hundred year old hotel in the middle of nowhere flying crop dusters and driving around in your ute with your trusty blue healer. Aside from getting back to the real world, the other thing that is significant about this week is that it marks exactly one month till the 2010 North Pole Marathon! I have sunk my teeth into training pretty solidly this week so far. I put in two sevens mile runs and did a 9.3 tonight. I'm finding that I'm quite a bit slower than I was before I left. Part of me thinks it is all the muscle mass that quietly dissolved watching the sun set on a sail boat ( I came back from vacation 8 pounds lighter than when I left); another part of me thinks that I just need to wrap my head around running again. All this week I have felt a touch of uncertainty setting out for each run. It is amazing how fast you forget what you are capable of. Most of my training has been on the same stretches of desert around the airport and the path has been continuously marked with my tacks. It must have rained a couple of times while I was away because not only is the desert soft and moist, there is no trace that I was ever there. Its amazing how fast that mean old desert can forget. I guess I never realized how much my own tracks meant to me, they were like a flag stuck in a beach proclaiming that I had already conquered that stretch of ground and that it was therefore safe. It reminds me of the first time I landed a taildragger on a dry lakebed with no windsock, centerline, or edges mowed in the grass. Aside from being forgetful, the desert just seems more hostile this week. The ground is soft and each footstep sinks solidly, the wind hasn't been shy and there have been sprinkles of rain. All of that adds up to seeming kind of hostile after sitting on a warm beach so pure that the harvested its sand to make the Hubble telescope mirror!

Long story short, I've got about three weeks to show that ol desert who's boss before the race (I'm planning to take it pretty easy the week before the race).

Aside from running I'm taking care of a bunch of the other details for the race. I finally booked my flights from LA to the UK. I already had tickets from the UK to Spitsbergen, and Richard has promised me a seat on the plane to the Pole (redeemable as soon as I pay my entry fee). I'm looking at the required equipment list and ordering all the bits I'm missing...including, you guessed it! Racing snow shoes! On top of that I'm still sending out sponsorship letters looking for some corporate bucks. I've put just about every penny I have towards the entry fee for the race and I'm still coming up short. (this is your que to click the sponsorspace link over on the side and send me a few bucks, every little bit helps. Thank you in advance ;)

PS Below is my run from tonight. Nothing to write home about, but it does put me back in the saddle.