The Adventures of Cowboy Hazel

It’s ironic/crazy/sad how quickly a source of happiness can turn into a source of pain. Even more so when you weren’t even expecting the happiness to begin with. How is it that I can miss something so badly now that I never even had? These last couple days have been rough. I keep thinking about what happened and what I should have done differently and why it all went wrong. It doesn’t even seem real, seem possible. And, to make things worse, yesterday was my short recovery day and today was my rest day and so at the exact time when I need running as a mental release most, it was unavailable to me. I went to the pool down on 114th Street and was going to try swimming laps, but it was too crowded and chaotic for me to deal with. I went across the street instead and read a book (The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, in case you’re curious) that I had brought with me for a while, then went back to my house and did an enormous amount of push-ups. Of course, I quit doing any sort of upper body work about a month ago in an attempt to lose unnecessary weight before my marathon so I’m now unbelievably sore. And, after that, as I always do when I’m depressed, I compulsively cleaned my apartment, I shaved my head and face (yes, even the recent mustache) and a fair amount of my body, paced back and forth from the living room to my bedroom for a couple hours, became extremely productive at work while trying to distract myself, and finally, now, started drinking red wine and writing.

I turned on the Olympics a bit ago but it was boring me so I switched over to the Light Classical Music channel. In fact, I haven’t been watching nearly as much of the Olympics this week as I was last week. I think I reached my saturation point. There’s a few key events that I still am planning to watch — the women’s beach volleyball final on Thursday (Wednesday for us) as Sunday’s men’s marathon (Saturday evening for us) — but other than those, I’m pretty much over it. I think I just watched too much last week. I’m not used to sitting in front of the television that much and it was really starting to get to me.

Let’s see, what else is there to write about? Oh, this is interesting — I ordered a custom pair of running shoes today through NikeID. As I mentioned a couple weeks back, I switched over to the dark side and got a pair of Air Zoom Vomero 3’s. So far, I’ve been extremely happy with them. They’ve actually been better than the New Balance’s that I was running in before, plus now I get to use my Nike+. Anyway, I needed to get a second pair for my marathon training and Niketown on 57th was out of my size, so I went online and found that they have the Air Zoom Vomero 2 available on NikeID. I tried doing some research but couldn’t find anything relating to the difference between the 2 and the 3. I’m hoping that it’s negligible. I customized a pair of Nike Shox back when they first came out and loved those shoes. The ones I created today are equally as cool — They are all black and dark silver (to help them from looking so dirty — my shoes never stay clean), with dark blue swooshes and red text on the tongues: Philly on the right and 11.23.08 on the left. How cool is that? Or dorky? Pick your word. Either works. Of course, when I went to checkout I found that shipping was free for orders over $175 (awesome online sales move there) and so I went back and created a customized long-sleeve, red shirt that says eastcoastrunners on the front with a running shoe and has the number 13 on the back. Assuming that it fits well, that’s what I’ll be wearing to the big race.

I also decided that I’m going to run the half marathon in Queens on September 14th. It coincides with my training schedule almost perfectly, so I figure the early wakeup and $15 entry fee are well worth it to get some more quality long-distance race experience under my belt before November. I’m also considering the Fifth Avenue Mile, but haven’t decided for sure yet. It sounds like so much fun — I love running the mile, especially as a road race (the Pearl Street Mile in Boulder is one of my fondest memories, and my best mile time ever: 5:37) and I’m curious as to how fast I could run a mile now as it’s something I haven’t tried doing in a long time. The downside is that on the previous day, I have a 20 miler scheduled. So, my time on the mile would be understandably low, plus I’d run the risk of injuring myself by trying to do a near-sprint when I’ve been focusing on distance. I’ll know better after this upcoming Saturday’s 18 miler what to expect from my long runs.

How have I not talked about that 18 miler yet? It has been on the fore-front of my imagination (well, not quite the fore-front, but right behind that whole drama that I was so elusive about earlier) for quite some time. I am scared and excited all at the same time. It will be the longest run I’ve ever done and I have pretty much the same feelings going into it that I had about the NYC half — It’s like Christmas morning when you’re a little kid, except you know that you’re going to be in a lot of pain too. I’m excited that it’s going to be NYC Summer Streets again this weekend. That’s definitely an added bonus. This Saturday’s 12 miler with Antonio went really well. We ran slow (because of me, not him — I was totally slowing him down) but I finished stronger than I was expecting. I felt like I could have kept going if necessary. I would have definitely felt better, though, if I had some carbs somewhere around mile 10. That’s where I really felt myself running out of fuel. I’m going to look into getting some of those gel packs before this weekend. Running down Park Avenue was amazing. The Brooklyn Bridge was too crowded to be enjoyable, but the rest of the route was simply wonderful. I love the fact that the city took the initiative to make this happen. And, I wish they would take it even further by closing off more of the cross-streets so we wouldn’t have to stop so frequently.

That run made me decide to (for real now, even though I said I was doing so before) abandon all thoughts of qualifying for Boston this fall. I just want to finish the marathon running. Even if I run a 3:20 or a 3:30, I’ll still be happy. It will still be the goal that I set out to hit in 2001 and never accomplished. And, the added benefit of not qualifying for Boston is that I won’t have to run Boston — I really don’t plan on becoming a multi-marathoner. I just want to get Philly out of the way to satisfy some lingering ambitions that I’ve had. But after that’s, I’d rather go back and focus on 10K’s and 5K’s, and even the mile than continuing on with the distance running.

I’ve noticed that this is really turning into a running blog. I didn’t set out for it to be that, it’s just that running has been the most important part of my life lately. So, for any of you out there who are reading this and are bored by all the running crap, I apologize. It’s just something that you’re going to have to deal with until November, at least.

But, there have certainly been other things going on in my life. As I mentioned before, I’ve been diverting myself by staying as busy as possible. Yesterday, that included going out to dinner at the backyard garden of El Paso Taqueria with Parag. I love talking with doctors (and lawyers too, although he’s not one) and listening to all the shit that they have to go through on a daily basis and how little they get paid for it. Parag is in his second year of residency (which is like 10 years post high school) and is still being worked like a slave and getting paid about half what I make. Of course, it’s always good to just hang out and chat with Parag regardless of the fact that he’s a doctor. We shot the shit for a while and then I got on a rant about politics and economics (which I delivered surprisingly well — thank you, The Economist) and we considered going to go see a movie but decided not to instead.

Tomorrow, I am going out to Queens to see the Braves play the Mets with my old neighbor and her family. I wanted to take them up to a Yankees game but my ticket plan only has two seats and every set of 4 tickets we could find on StubHub was outlandishly expensive, so we decided to just go out and see the Mets instead. She’s always been a big Braves fan, so we decided to go while they’re up here so we can all root for the same team — her for the Braves, and me for whoever is playing the Mets.

Work’s about the same as always — just a little lighter than in months past. The fewer hours are a welcome relief. I was getting a bit burnt out there. The Flopalongs project is finally appearing to be near completion. And, I’m pretty much just doing small maintenance work on Mirabella now. Both the site and the ad campaign are set up and running smoothly. I have a mile long checklist on my own properties as always, but most of that is too fun to be called work.

My wrist has been killing me lately. It got so bad that I switched over to using the mouse with my left hand on Friday. I’m getting more and more skilled with moving the pointer around left-handed, but my left wrist is already starting to hurt too and my right is not really improving. I think some of it may be because I’m working on my dining room table (which is round) rather than a normal desk. Also, it could be because I am at my computer for ridiculously long amounts of time each day. And, with that in mind, let me call this quits.