Crazy from the heat

Last summer, we had a miserable June that featured 26 days of rain or some sort of drizzle, and after that month, we had a number of beach days that felt like they were few and far between. This summer, it looks like we’re getting 92 days of sun, humidity, and no escape from the heat!

During the past three weekends, I ran in five road races, and all five had one thing in common -- they all took place in temperatures well into the 80s.

Now if I had the choice on whether to run a race in the heat or in the frigid cold of the winter, I’d always choose the heat because I always have a tough time getting going during the winter. But this month has been brutally tough and it’s reflected in my times in these races -- in four races that I’ve done at least once or twice in the past few years (Glocester 5.5M, Little Compton 4.8M, St. Mary’s of Cranston 5.5M, and New Bedford’s Fisherman’s Tribute 5K), I’ve had slower times by at least a minute-and-a-half.

Hopefully the weather gets cooler and soon, because my next two races are very big ones -- the legendary Blessing of the Fleet 10-Miler on Friday, July 23, and the Johnny Kelley Ocean Beach 11.6-Miler 15 days later.

Back on my feet (and on the road) again

It's been more than a blog since I have blogged, but I’m happy to report that I have been slowly picking up my running over the past few weeks. I tinkered with a handful of races near the end of May and I ran in my first Red Rooster Ramble in two months last Thursday night. I’ll be running in two more races this Fourth of July weekend and I’ve already mapped out my race schedule right up into Labor Day weekend. I‘m looking at anywhere from 12-14 races from here until that Monday, so things look pretty good.

Of the races I ran last month, there are two 10Ks I ran (both on Memorial Day weekend) that are worth mentioning -- the new 10K by the Bay in Warwick and the infamous Woodstock 10K in Woodstock, Conn. The 10K by the Bay was very well-organized for a first-time race with a mostly-flat course, tons of volunteers, and a nice barbeque afterwards. It only drew 121 runners, but once word gets around about how great this race was, I’m sure that number will balloon to over 200 next year!

As for the Woodstock 10K, which ranks in my top 10 list for favorite races and most challenging courses, this race again took place on a beautiful day and again gave me a run for my money on Child’s Hill -- the dreadful final mile that is straight uphill and very challenging! Nevertheless, Woodstock is a very beautiful, quaint, country town, and someday, I might check out the Woodstock Fair that takes place there every Labor Day weekend.

Twenty-one days of rain

It’s been a few weeks since I updated my blog, so this afternoon, I opened my blog and found myself gawking at a blank ‘new post’ screen for the past 15-20 minutes. I really don’t know what to write because I haven’t ran or had to urge to run for the past 21 days.

I don’t know if my experience at the Boston Marathon zapped my love for running or because softball season is here and it’s going great -- I’m batting .546 and I think I lead the league in runs scored. I really don’t know.

I tried to map out a schedule for road races this summer and my mind just wandered elsewhere. I haven’t been looking up things at coolrunning.com or seeing what’s up on any other runners’ blogs (I actually check out 13 or 14 of them on occasion -- one of them might be yours!) I have this Thursday night off, and when I usually get this day off, I take off to Warren for the Red Rooster Ramble, but not only don’t I want to run in it, I don’t even want to show up to help out with the run and grab some good pizza afterwards.

A fellow runner told me I’m in just a slump, but how can you have a slump that only consists of one race? Besides, if I was in a slump for softball, all I need to do is take some BP, take a couple of pitches in each at-bat, and I’m right back on my feet again, going 2-for-4 or 3-for-4.

As they say in pro boxing, “You’re only as good as your last fight.” My last ‘fight’ saw me get an embarrassing ass-kicking, so I guess that’s how good I feel.

Boston Massacre II

There’s this one scene in the 2000 remake of the film “Gone in 60 Seconds” when Nicholas Cage’s character, Memphis -- a retired car thief, who under dire circumstances, is forced to steal 50 cars in a span of 72 hours -- scouts a 1967 Mustang Shelby GT 500 he calls “Eleanor” in a parking garage that he plans to steal, but has failed to do so on past occasions.
While Memphis is getting a closer look at the car, his friends began to softly talk among themselves:

Donny: Eleanor is Memphis’s unicorn.
Freb: What's a unicorn?
Donny: Fabled creature, you know, the horse with the horn impossible to capture. It's the one car no matter how many times you try to boost, something always happens. They had a rough history. She almost got him killed a couple a times. Flipped one on the Harbor Freeway.
Kip: He went off the Long Beach Pier once.

After watching this scene in this film last Friday, I realized something -- the Boston Marathon is my unicorn.
For the second straight year, I went to Hopkinton determined to do well and looking to have a good marathon and I ended up in Boston bloodied, beaten down, and staring at a horrid time attached to my name in the final results.
And it sucks. I trained harder this year than I did for last year’s race. Aside from a dismal run at the Stu’s 30K in Clinton, Mass., everything went well in the months leading up to this event. I even ran a 4:12 at the ING Georgia Marathon in Atlanta.
And I bombed -- again. I feel like the Buffalo Bills of the early 1990s who lost four Super Bowls in a row. I get on the biggest stage -- and in running, that stage is the Boston Marathon -- and things come crashing down.
This year, things began to come crashing down for me at the end of Mile 15 when I started cramping up in my right thigh, then my left thigh. A mile or two later, when I was trying to run over and grab a cup of water, I stepped the wrong way on a T track in the middle of the street and twisted my right ankle. Then I was starting to feel cotton-mouth, even though I was taking in fluids every other mile or so. Then my nipples bled. Then came Heartbreak Hill and some increased pain in my ankle. Then came the cramps again.
The next thing you know, my 4:12 in Georgia blew up into a 4:56 in Boston. I saw a picture of me crossing the finish line; my fists weren’t waved in the area and I didn’t look like I wanted to celebrate. I felt like the Russian men’s hockey team when they came home from the 1980 Olympics with a bronze medal after they were upset by the United States in Lake Placid.
I really don’t know what happened, and while the pain and swelling in my ankle have finally subsided from that unmemorable day, I still have been questioning myself 10 days later. I haven’t had the urge to run -- I haven’t gone 10 days in a row without running since the end of December -- and I haven’t looked ahead to running any races in May or June.
Looking back on everything, maybe running four marathons in a span of 6½ months wasn’t a good idea. Maybe I burned myself out and I didn’t know it. Maybe when I jokingly told another runner that I hoped to finish in 4:59:59, I subconsciously set that time for myself. Maybe, maybe, maybe …
Again, the Boston Marathon is, as I heard a runner call it, “The Holy Grail” of marathons. No one really cares about how superb you do in Atlanta, Las Vegas, or Newport or any other marathons. It’s Boston that people associate marathons with, and for good reasons. The history, the tradition, the best of the best running in this race, the streets lined up with fans from the start of the race to the final 0.2 of a mile on Boylston Street. I can go on and on …
I will admit, there have been some very good things to come out of the race. I raised $701 to the American Cancer Society and I had an excellent time at the DetermiNation breakfast the morning before the race and the expo. I ran in front of thousands of fans, and I didn’t get mauled by any crazy Wellesley College girls.
But would I ever do this marathon again? I doubt it. Maybe I’m jinxed when it comes to this race. I really don’t know. But one thing’s for sure, this race is my unicorn, just like the one on the Boston Athletic Association logo -- but a lot whiter and with bigger wings.

I kept my promise

Next week is the almighty Boston Marathon, but this weekend, I decided to have a little bit of fun -- “the calm before the storm” -- and run in two 5Ks, the RIDA Nutrition Fuels Fitness race at Goddard Park in Warwick and the Officer Thomas Giunta 5K in Fall River.

I wasn’t shooting for any big times or fantastic finishes in either race -- just a good run in one of my favorite parks for a 5K and then my old hometown. I did land a much better time at Saturday’s RIDA event (22:36) than I did at Sunday’s Giunta 5K (23:32), but I think I had a good enough excuse for that time.

I wore a running skirt.

Yes, like I promised at the end of January, if I raised $700 for the American Cancer Society, I would run in one of southeastern Massachusetts’s biggest races of the spring in a skirt. So I raised $701and I kept my promise. And it really felt weird, not because it’s every day that you would see a guy running in a skirt, but it was tough to adjust to one.

I wore the leopard-print one that I put in my final January post and matched it with an old Poison concert t-shirt (a member of my running club who will remain nameless offered to double his donation had I wore it). I got a lot of strange looks from some folks and a lot of laughs from others, but I pinned on the back of my t-shirt a sign that reported I was doing it for the American Cancer Society and some people praised me for what I was doing.

As far as the race, right from the start, when the race took runners up a hill for the first three-fourths of a mile, I felt the skirt being really loose around my hips. Was it going to fall? That’s what I asked myself, so I tried to get a bit comfortable by starting to run with a little bend in my hips and I kept my strides a little shorter.

Then halfway through the race, I felt some “freedom” in my skirt and “stuff” starting to “fly” about. But I managed to keep things under control, especially with a lot of fans on each side of the course, and continued to run at a 7½-mile pace.

Meanwhile, the reactions to my skirt continued. I got some long stares from some folks who seemed to try to figure out what was wrong with the picture of me. I freaked out one little boy, who yelled, “Hey mom, that bald man is running with a skirt!” Some old guy on Bedford Street absolutely lost it and started gurgling something in Portuguese.

As for the rest of the afternoon, I put away some chourico and peppers and Fall River chow mein at the post-race buffet and went to the Elks Club on North Main Street for the second post-race party, which included six kegs of beer, some more food (hot dogs and Portuguese soup), a live band, a raffle, and some very, very good company.

And there was some good news that came out of this race. In addition to the record number of runners (somewhere around 1,350) that registered for the race, it was announced that this was NOT going to be the final race, which was advertised as the 16th and final race on the web site and quickly picked up steam around the local running community. It seems like a local police officer is going to carry the torch and take over as race director, so that was very good news to hear! I will be back, but as for the skirt ...

Happy Birthday!

It was supposed to be a training run -- my ‘20-miler’ to help get me prepared ready for the Boston Marathon -- but somehow, thanks to a strong start and a mid-race decision to keep my foot on the gas and go for broke, I ended up celebrating my 40th birthday in style by posting a 4:12:57 time at the ING Georgia Marathon last week in Atlanta.

Two weeks earlier, I had a miserable race at the Stu’s 30K in Clinton, Mass., a challenging course loaded with hills, and completed it in the neighborhood of 3½ hours. Physically, I felt great, but mentally, I was coming off a long night at work and already thinking about what I had to do when I went back to work that night. Plus, I had a rotten meal the night before -- hockey rink food -- and hardly anything for breakfast, and I didn’t drink much liquids before and during the race. So I bonked, vegged out, lost my focus, felt like Cougar at the start of Top Gun -- you name it, I was it, and even though I felt fine from the waist down, nothing else did from the waist up.

It was one of my five worst races I ever run, and I followed it up with one of my five best races. Unreal.

First of all, I got a miserable night of sleep -- three hours top -- and a terrible morning getting myself ready for the race. As has been the case with several marathons and big-time races I’ve run, I just couldn’t fall asleep, and when I finally dozed off, I had one of my infamous running dreams -- I was running on some sandy road with 80s pop star Christopher Cross, he was running faster than me, and I struggled to keep up with him. I can’t explain that one.

When I got up, I found out that there weren’t any pins for my race number in my goodie bag and I didn’t bring any KT Tape for my calves. There was two strikes right there. And when I got to my corral at Centennial Park, the site of the ’96 Summer Olympics, I found out that my Garmin watch, which I charged the night before my flight to Atlanta, had been mysteriously on the whole night and out of juice by the time the race started. I was staring at a recipe for disaster, but I had to remember, this was supposed to be a training run.

When the race started, I made it a point to start off slowly and easily and I kept an eye on the clocks that were lined up almost every other mile on the course. At six miles, I was at 54 minutes -- about half-marathon pace -- and I decided to shoot for a two-hour half marathon before easing back on the reins.

But I never did see a clock for the half-marathon mark when we ran through Decatur, or the timing pad near the sidewalk we were supposed to run over. I was in the middle of the road for most of the race, dipping to the sidewalk now and then to grab a quick drink of water, and when I saw the next clock, it was at the 14-mile mark and it read 2:02.

It was at that point that I said to myself, “You know what? It’s your birthday. You’re running in a big marathon with thousands of other runners in a state you have never ran in before. Why not go for it, try to post a good time, and see what happens?”

So I kept on running, stayed very focused, and battled through some hills in Decatur. There were two tough hills on miles 18 and 19, but I handled them as well as I could, and at mile 20, I had a 2:59 time -- just a minute under three hours and just a 10K to go!

But I was starting to slow down a bit. At mile 22, we did an out-and-back on a flat road through Piedmont Park and went over a three-foot timing pad at the mile marker. I had a 3:19, which meant that I slowed down to 10-minute miles, but I started doing the math and figured that if I could do somewhere in the neighborhood of 9½-minute miles the rest of the way, I could actually hit four hours!

It felt like a no-hit bid in baseball, but like 99 percent of all no-hit bids, they come to an end. And that’s what happened to my race after I ran up a short, steep hill coming out of Piedmont Park and onto a side street. My legs were getting sore, I was fading out a bit mentally, and yes, Mr. Porta-Potty came calling in a big way. Another big hill came calling, and at 24 miles, I was at 3:42.

I was spent. The tank read ‘E’ and it wasn’t for Eric. All I could do was hold on tightly and gut it out the rest of the way, but I picked it up just a bit once we got back to Centennial Park for the final 0.2 miles and came home with a nice finish. The race announcer called out my name and wished me a Happy Birthday and that was cool to hear!

All in all, it was a great week. On Saturday, Bozena and I went to the expo at the Georgia Dome, and while the expo wasn’t as big as the ones in Boston or Las Vegas. I did get to see a lot of cool stuff, talk to Rhode Island’s own Dr. Nancy Clark, and listen to Jeff Galloway talk to a small audience about pre-race preparation.

I also got to meet Danny Dreyer, the author of ChiRunning, and he signed my book that I bought last year, but never really had an opportunity to read because I was still sifting through Born to Run by Christopher McDougal. I did read the first three chapters on the beach later that week when we went to Pensacola, and when I’m done (or halfway done), I promise I will give you all a book report and review, but so far, this book is really, really good.

The night of the race -- after a few hours of ZZZZs and two cold showers -- I met up with a good friend from the Rhode Island Road Runners and his wife who moved to Atlanta last year. We had some very, very good sushi at the Sushi House Hayakawa in Atlanta and good conversation and coffee at a Korean coffee house.

We then went to Pensacola on Monday and stayed there for the next three days. Unfortunately, we only got one good beach day on Tuesday and the water was ice cold, but my beat-up legs really felt great after standing in it for close to a half hour. And I ate nothing but crab legs for the next three nights. I did still feel a bit dehydrated from the race and actually had trouble drinking more than two beers, but I had a nice big bottle of Gatorade that did wonders for me!

Old New Year's Resolutions

I was cleaning out some old files on my laptop when I came across one that said ‘Najarian 5K’. I thought it was something that I wrote about the old David Najarian 5K that until last year, was held every mid-November in Coventry -- this race was best known for its T-shirts that looked almost like the ‘Choose Life’ T-shirts the band Wham! wore in its ’80s video “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go” (that’s the picture on the right) -- but I was wrong.
Instead, it was a list of 10 things I wanted to do running-wise in 2009 -- an early list of New Year’s Resolutions. It was funny to see that I saved it and forgot about it, and I must have been off my rocker when I wrote one or two of them. Anyway, here’s the list and if I succeeded in doing each of these:

1. Stay healthy and injury-free!
-- For the most part, yes. I had an episode at the Boston Marathon when I pulled my right calf, strained a groin muscle, and looked rather sickly, but I managed to bounce back nicely a-week-and-a-half later.

2. In 2008, I totaled 294 miles in road races and Red Rooster Rambles (a 5-mile series in Warren), but I couldn’t squeeze in another 10K or two smaller races to push me over 300 miles. In 2009? Over 300.
-- Yes, I barely squeezed it out (301.6), thanks to the year-ending Christmas Run for Hope/Oncology 10K in Newport. The week before, I ran in the Las Vegas Marathon, and even though I wasn’t 100 percent back from that race, I still ran this 10K for shits and giggles and eked out a 51:40.

3. I want to run at least five half marathons and two or three marathons.
-- Almost. I ran in four half marathons (Hyannis, Colchester, that hot, steaming piece of hippopotamus crap known as Amica in Newport, and the Ghost Air Line Trail Run in East Hampton, Conn.) and three marathons (Boston, Maine, and Las Vegas).

4. Of the 45 races I ran in 2007, I will return to 30 of them. And I want PRs in at least 20 of them.
-- I only came back to 18 of them and tried a lot of new races, but I did PR in two-thirds of them (12). So half a point for this resolution.

5. I want to run a race in a foreign country, even if it means Canada!
-- I didn’t leave the country, but I did go to Las Vegas twice and Hawaii. I never thought that would happen!

6. And I want to run a race in another state. California and Pennsylvania were fun last year -- now where else can I go?
-- Done. Maine Marathon. It was the first time I was in this state for longer than two hours and it was really scenic and nice, a place I'd visit again!

7. I want to dog a family member or a friend into running a race.
-- It never happened. I thought I could lure a couple of friends to one of the Red Rooster Rambles because of the good pizza and the abundance of beer after the run, but no dice here.

8. I want to get a total stranger who never ran a road race before to run one with me. And I will lose to that person.
-- What the hell is this!? I think I got drunk the night I wrote this, watched “Fight Club” for the 134th time, and got inspired by the scene when Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt’s character) gave his fight club a homework assignment to start a fight with a total stranger -- and lose. No, I never challenged anyone to a race, and I don’t think I could just gag a race so someone could finish ahead of me. OK, what’s next?

9. I won raffle prizes at 18 different races last year. Here's hoping my good fortune continues and I "strike it rich" in 20 races!
-- That was a running-wise goal!? I must have been drinking some strong beer! I just took a glance at the list of races I ran, thought really hard, and (this may seem like a surprise to people who know me) came up with 18 again! The top raffle prizes I won last year were four round-trip ferry tickets to Martha’s Vineyard (Fisherman‘s Tribute 5K in New Bedford), a big box of basketball and football cards from the late 1980s/early ‘90s that has to be worth some money (Common Point Fence 5-Miler in Portsmouth), and six fresh lobsters (Mews Tavern 5K in Wakefield, R.I.).

10. Stretch a little better before races and improve my pre-race preparations. That should help give me a better chance at achieving some of the goals I just mentioned!
-- Yoga has clearly helped me with my stretching, and I have learned two or three helpful stretches from my practice. There were times in 2008 when I showed up 10-15 minutes before a race and let the chips fall where the may, but last year, I always tried to show up at least 40 minutes early for a race to stretch out, get in a short run, pick up everything I need, and just pretty much get a little mentally focused. I’ll give myself a full point on this one.

So where does that leave me? Out of a score of a possible 10, everything seems to add up to a 5.4. That kind of stinks, but then again, who really keeps all of their yearly resolutions?
Wow, I just realized that there’s actually a picture of George Michael on my blog. This may be a new low for me. A running blog with a picture from an actual Wham! concert. But It could be worse. I could have put a picture of Michael Bolton or the two guys from Right Said Fred, you know …