Cowboy Hazel

It is so ridiculously hot, I can’t stand it. I met with Antonio at 7:30 this morning to go for a run along the East River, trying to beat the heat, but it was already 86 degrees and 61% humidity. By the time I finished stretching and walking the block-and-a-half to the FDR from my house, I was sweating like a greased pig. We started slowly, figuring that the heat would take its toll, but that wasn’t enough. We didn’t hit the halfway turn-around point until 14:44, (Usually I get there around 13:55) and then coming back I completely lost all my steam. He was doing better than me and ran ahead. I had to slow down considerably, but somehow found managed to get back to 116th Street on fumes. I finished the 4.1 miles in 29:31 which was 7 minute 11 second pace. That doesn’t sound too bad, but this is my almost daily run, it has only one small hill, and I have been running it near 6 minute, 40 second miles lately. So, dropping a full half minute per mile on the one route that I always do well on seemed like a big step backwards.

But, then, as I was back home standing in my shower, hoping that the frigid water would at some point cause me to stop sweating, it hit me — there’s actually more positive to take out of this morning’s run than anything. First of all, I kept running for two miles after I felt that it was no longer humanly possible for me to keep running. I didn’t quit. I know that running is as much mental as physical and one of my biggest worries about my upcoming marathon is that I’m not mentally prepared to deal with the pain. Today’s run was a good sign that I’m moving in the right direction. My second thought was that, running just over 7 minute miles really isn’t bad at all. I went back through my running log and found that I was running slower than today at the beginning of March. Today’s horrible pace was early March’s average. I went back a little further to September ‘07, and the first time that I ran these 4.1 miles along the East River. The time? 33:20, a 8:07 pace. I’ve dropped almost a minute-and-a-half of my pace in 9 months! True, I was in horrible shape back in September, but still, that’s an insane improvement.

Thinking of all that helps reaffirm in my mind my training method — run as hard as you can every time you run. Every time I do these 4.1 miles along the East River, or a loop of Park Drive, I’m looking to break my personal record for that route. I know there are a lot of people out there who will say that that’s not the proper way to train, but I am sticking to my guns, so to speak. I mean, it’s working, so why change it? (Plus, I’m obsessed by stats, so intentionally easing up on the pace is out of the question…)

Well, this past week, they held the lotteries for the NYC Marathon and Half-Marathon. I got picked for the half, but not the full marathon. That half is on July 27th and should be a good race (as long as it’s not so fucking hot that day). It’ll be the longest timed race I’ve ever ran, but I’m confident going into it that I’ll be able to do well. The course is great: a loop of Central Park then down towards Battery Park on city streets. I was super disappointed that I didn’t get picked to run the marathon though. I had really wanted to run my first marathon here in the city. I contemplated just waiting and re-entering the lottery next year, but after thinking it over, I feel like I need to just get this whole first marathon thing out of the way now that I have momentum on my side. So, I registered for Philadelphia. It’s two weeks after NYC, so I’ll be on a similar training schedule as all those runners, and it’s close enough that I can take the train instead of having to fly. So, now, the countdown begins: 167 days until my first marathon…

They asked me while registering what my projected time was. I took a minute to mull that one over, but finally just went ahead and put down the 3 hours and 10 minute goal that I’m setting for myself. And, yes, that’s the magic number that would get me qualified for Boston next April. It seems almost greedy to be trying to qualify for Boston on my first marathon, but nobody ever said, “Go little or go home,” right? I know that there’s a huge amount of ground to cover (both literally and figuratively) between now and November to get myself into good enough shape to sustain a 7:15 pace for an entire 26.2 miles, but I plan on somehow making it happen. Wish me luck!

Wow, what a great way to come back to NYC! After two weeks of being away, enduring the difficulties of altitude and longing to be back running in the city, I finally got a chance to run in Central Park today — at 5:30 this morning with 2,000 other runners as part of the NYRR 50th Anniversary Run. Today’s race is very high on my list of all-time favorites. Both the crazy early start time and the steadily falling rain kept all but the most dedicated of runners away. There was an energy at the starting line that I haven’t felt in a really long time. In fact, that energy carried me to too quick of a start. I forgot my stopwatch in my bag so I don’t know the exact times, but I do know that I was running fast the first couple of miles. Then, right after the mile 3 marker, there was a downhill stretch and I was feeling great, so I began to just haul ass. I dramatically underestimated the hill coming back down the west side of the park, though, and it killed me. I completely ran out of gas and barely made it to the top. I recovered a bit, but miles 4 and 5 were considerably slower that then first 3. Still, I managed to finish in 33:49, which is a 6:45 per mile pace and is almost a minute better than my previous best 5 miler. I regret not pacing myself better during that stretch in the middle because I think I could have finished with an even better time if I had. But, all I can do is learn from yet another pacing mistake and try harder to not start these races so quick.

Getting down to the race was not nearly as fun as the race itself. I woke up at the ungodly hour of 4:00 in the morning, threw on my running clothes, ate a PB&J, and headed out the door around 4:20. I jogged the half mile to Lex, but when I got down to the 6, the attendant announced that no trains would be running until 5:00 and that we had to go up to 125th and then come back down. That happened to me yesterday and it took forever so I decided to just jog over to 116th & Malcolm X and catch the 1 there. I get down into the station (by the way, this is the dirtiest subway station I have ever seen in my life — there were packs of rats roaming all over, not just on the tracks but on the platforms too) and see another runner waiting for the train. We start talking (Why is it that runners are so much friendlier than everyone else in the city?) and she tells me that she’s been waiting for a long time already and is about to give up and get a cab, then asks if I want to split one, but I have no cash and say no. She leaves and a train finally shows up, I take it down to 66th, then run from there to the baggage check (it’s pouring rain at this point), drop off my backpack and hurry into my corral right as they’re moving everyone up closer to the starting line. We’re packed in solid and I never even get a chance to stretch (I should have on the subway, but didn’t think of it.) Anyway, even though it took me over an hour, I did make it to the start in time (barely) so I feel relatively lucky. I would have been so bummed if I hadn’t made it.

All in all, it was a great morning. I was very glad that I dragged myself out of bed to go run in the rain. I always feel sluggish in these morning races, but I’m thinking that might be because I never run in the mornings. So, I am going to try doing more early morning training runs. I’m meeting up with another runner tomorrow at 5:45am. Two days of pre six o’clock runs back to back for Robert Reese, who would have thought it?

I was going to start with the quote, “What a long strange trip it’s been,” but then I realized that that would be a poor decision on two levels: the album name has been so completely over-used as an ironic quote that it has almost become kitschy, and secondly, my trip hasn’t been all that long or strange. Actually, it was just about the perfect length — I had enough time to have a nice, relaxing with my parents and see my old stomping grounds, but now I’m definitely ready to get back to NYC — and as for the strange part, the trip went pretty much exactly as I had imagined it would…

I’ll start with the Bolder Boulder (photos). As I predicted, I came nowhere near my 10K personal record. I finished in 44:53, which was however, my best Bolder Boulder time ever (keep in mind that the only other year I ran it while in decent running shape, 2001, I had a pretty nasty case of the stomach flu and threw up 10 minutes before starting the race — still I only beat that time by about a minute). The elevation was a lot of the problem, or maybe all of it, I’m not sure, but I just had absolutely no energy. I came close to quitting a couple times but didn’t because I figured it would be as much of a hassle to walk to the finish as to just keep running. When I did finish, the temperature was in the low fifties and it had started to rain. Because of the difference in wave start times and my dad’s pace, I ended up waiting for him in the cold (still in running shorts) for almost an hour and a half. I took advantage of the time to go wonder around the campus of my alma mater — It was the first time I had been back since I graduated. It looked pretty much the same as I remembered it except that they were putting up a few new buildings. I had expected some emotion on being back there, but there was none. After my little walking tour of the campus, I headed back over to Folsom Field and found a partially-indoor seat in the stands and waited for my dad to finish. After that we went to my grandma’s house and took her to Chili’s. All in all, it was a good day, even if the race didn’t go as well as I’d hoped.

The night before the Bolder Boulder, I met up with Stoltz and his girlfriend at the Rock Bottom back by my parents’ old house for a couple beers. We had a good visit, discussing a wide range of topics including, but not limited to: his brother’s wedding the previous day, our old shenanigans, how strange Coloradans seem when you’ve been out of the state for a while, literary criticism, plans for the future, and of course, the upcoming election, rising gas prices, and the ailing environment.

Tuesday through Friday I worked 8-9 hour days for Precision. It was good to have something to keep busy on. I think that’s part of why I was able to take such a long trip without going stir crazy; I usually don’t do well with long vacations because I get bored. It was also good to be able to keep working on that while being out here from a financial standpoint; there’s no way that I could have afforded to just take a week-and-a-half off of work.

My sister, who lives in Fort Collins now, came down last weekend, then again for a couple days midweek, and is coming back down for the afternoon today. We played tennis on Wednesday and Thursday and are going to again today. That has been one of the best parts of the trip. It’s crazy how much simpler playing tennis is here than it is back in New York. Here, we decided we wanted to play tennis, got our stuff, drove around until we found a court, then played. In NYC last year, I had to pay $100 for a tennis permit, buy tennis shoes (casual athletic shoes weren’t good enough — they actually checked the soles), register for a time-slot on the Central Park courts, wait until that exact time (when a buzzer would go off), and play for exactly 60 minutes before another buzzer went off signaling that we had to leave the courts.

Sometimes, things like this make me wonder why the hell I’m paying such a ridiculous amount of money to live in my crowded corner of Manhattan. I’ve actually been having quite a few similar thoughts all week. It’s the little things that I’m realizing I miss most — like being able to sit on the back porch and enjoy the evening breeze, only having to go as far as the basement to do laundry, not hearing the neighbors upstairs walking around at weird hours of the night. I mean, sure, there are million great reasons to live in NYC — it is, after all, the greatest city in the world — but I’m beginning to think that I might not belong in a city at all. This trip has re-instated a dormant longing inside of me to move outside the city limits somewhere and begin living life as a country-boy.

So the next question becomes, Where? Back to Colorado? No. I feel like crap every time I’m out here. The elevation has completely kicked my ass. Plus, the air is so dry that my lips are chapped and my hands are peeling despite the fact that I’ve been drinking what seems like gallons of water a day and repeatedly applying chapstick and lotion. And then, there’s the hayfever. My eye was secreting some sort of nastyness so thick and disgusting yesterday after my run that I could hardly see anything out of it. I’ve been using boxes of Kleenex despite taking Claritin everyday. So, no, Colorado is not the place for me.

I’ve been thinking about upstate New York instead. Maybe something in the Catskills. But I really haven’t looked into it in that much detail yet because none of this will be right away, as I just re-signed my lease and will be in Harlem now at least until September 2009. But it is something that I’m definitely going to start thinking about.

In the midst of everything else, I managed to finish the month of May with over 100 miles of running logged (101.6 to be exact). Although I was running only an average 7:09 pace while out here in Colorado, I did manage to get in almost 27 miles which was enough to get me to my monthly goal that I had set back in February. It was good to finally be back to hundred mile months after a seven year hiatus, but the run itself that put me over the top yesterday just hurt — like all the others that I’ve had since I’ve been here. I am so looking forward to being back near sea level and actually being able to enjoy running.

My running here in Colorado hasn’t gone exactly as planned. I took Thursday off, but was feeling good on Friday and wanted to see if the elevation would really hinder my running as much as everyone said it would. It did. I ran just over four miles at an appalling 7:20 pace and felt like I was about to die the whole time. My throat was so sore and dry and my body just wanted to quit. I went back to the same lake (I found a beautiful lake with a 1.02 mile path around it in Broomfield) yesterday, but the wind was fierce and I only finished three laps because I was completely out of steam. I did, however, improve my pace at least to 7:08 miles. Any thoughts that I had of breaking my P.R. at the Bolder Boulder have disappeared. I’m just hoping to be able to finish the race in a somewhat respectable time. Regardless of how I finish, though, I know the race will be fun. This is going to be the first time I’ve been back to Boulder in almost two years and it will be the fourth time I’ve ran the race (2000, 2001, and 2003 were the other years). My dad is going to jog/walk the race too, so it will be fun to see him come across the finish line.

Other than the elevation kicking my ass, the trip back home has gone very well so far. I’ve been to two Rockies games and am going to a third today. Coors Field is such a great ballpark — I love being out there. Then, after the game today, I’m meeting up with my friend Stoltz who I haven’t seen in a couple years. The rest of this week is going to be pretty much filled with work. Even though I’m out here, I’m definitely not on vacation. I have a long list of stuff to get done both for Precision and for the Flopalongs project. Next weekend, though, I’ll be able to take a break and we’re hopefully going to go up to the mountains for a bit. I should finally get a chance to play tennis with my sister too (something which never quite happened this weekend). All in all, it’s very nice to be out of the city for a bit.

I’m writing this from 30,000 feet in the air, somewhere over New Jersey, I believe. This is the first time I’ve been on a flight since I got this laptop and I have to admit, I was overly excited to be able to use it in flight. Now, as I’m doing so, however, I realize that it’s not nearly as cool as it seems. These seats are horribly small and the person in front of me is reclining, so my keyboard is pretty much two inches away from my stomach. Eh…

Anyway, I’m flying back to Colorado to spend some time at my parents’ house. It should be a good trip, even though I wasn’t really able to take any time off of work. I’m going to be working from there and the time zone difference means that I have to wake up really early every day. That sucks. My flight doesn’t get in until one o’clock tonight, then we have to drive to my parents house, and I have to be up for work at 6:30.

I was planning on doing a long run tomorrow to see how the elevation affects me, but I’m not going to be able to because of some serious soreness in my legs. I’ve run each of the last five days at a sub-seven minute pace and it’s taking its toll on my muscles. My right calf was cramping up today and I was having some troubles with my left knee too. I think I’ll take tomorrow and Friday off to give them a little recovery time and then get a long run on Saturday. Of course, the Bolder Boulder is Monday, so I’ll probably take Sunday off as well.

I had a couple beers back at the airport bar and now I have to pee, but I’m in the window seat and the guy next to me is asleep (and snoring.) I’ll have to wake him up in a bit, I’m sure.

Flying sucks. I really don’t like this whole being on a plane thing. That probably has a lot to do with the fact that this is my first flight since last October. In fact, other than a quick trip to Atlantic City on New Year’s, this is my first time leaving NYC in nine months. Crazy.

Not much else to report. My fingers hurt so I’m going to quit this nonsense. Good night.

What a great name for a race. I am, of course, referring to the Healthy Kidney 10K that I ran this morning in Central Park. If only my performance was as good as the name. I finished with a time of 42 minutes, 25 seconds (a pace of 6:50 miles), which is considerably better than what I ran the Scotland Run 10K in March but still wasn’t what I was hoping for. I hit the second mile marker at under 13 minutes, but ran out of steam going up the Great Hill. I finished the first 5K in 20:35, but slowed to 21:50 for the second. So, clearly, pacing is still something I need to work on. Another thing that’s bugging me off about this was that I was hoping to break my personal record set back at the Evergreen Town Run in August 2001. I missed it by over half a minute though. I’ll have another chance coming up in just over a week though… Bolder Boulder 2008. I cannot believe that it is already Memorial Day. Where has this year gone?

Not much else has been going on around here. I’m just working a lot. I’ve been creating tools to format, rearrange, and FTP post csv lead files for Precision, doing more preliminary layout work for the Flopalongs site (I need to get working on that in earnest in this weekend), implemented a completely new style and several new features on Fair Trade South America, and created a whole new messaging system on Plant Ink. I’m not including a link to that one yet because it’s still in beta mode. Josh and I have been testing it out and working out the bugs. I have just been really unhappy with the changes that Facebook is making lately and I’d like to have a good alternative to their messaging system. Enter my new Conversations platform. I’ll keep you posted. June and July are going to be very busy months for me on the development front. I’m going to be making some huge improvements and additions across the Lantenengo Network in an effort to achieve my goal of 1,000,000 hits a month by the end of the year. Look for a dramatically reinvented Plant Ink, some major improvements to East Coast Runners, and even a couple new sites.

Well, I should get to work for real now, so we’ll call that enough for today.  Enjoy the weekend.

I finally ran two laps of the Central Park Drive loop yesterday morning! It was something I had been trying (unsuccessfully) to do for almost a month. Crossing it off my list of things I need to accomplish definitely felt good. My body, however, did not feel good. I basically lost all of yesterday to this run. I woke up at 9:00, ate a peanut butter & jelly sandwich (my favorite pre-run meal), stretched, showered, and headed out the door to meet the guys at the top of Central Park.There were six of us doing the run (a huge turnout — 3 had been the previous record for our running group) and we made all the introductions to the new guys, stretched, and walked over to the start. We decided to get the Great Hill out of the way early, so headed counter-clockwise. My friend Justin from Boston was running with us and he and I were out in front talking and not really paying attention to pace and ended up running the whole way down the park way too fast. We both paid for it when we started coming back up the other side. Everyone passed us and he fell behind me a bit. I hung back behind everyone else for a while, seriously struggling with the hills, but finally found the energy for a big push and caught up with everyone just before getting to the straight-away by the Reservoir. So, the remaining five of us finished our first loop without any further troubles. The Great Hill the second time around was killer, though. We were all struggling at the top. Two of the guys quit there and another about a half mile past it. Antonio and I were the only ones still running and he asked me how I was doing and I said, “I’m running on fumes. I’m going to try to quit, don’t let me.” I was worrying about the long hill coming back up the park, but when we got to it, it actually wasn’t as bad as I expected. It was definitely a struggle to keep going those last couple miles, but I just focused on the the ground in front of me, repeating “left foot, right foot” in my head over and over, trying not to think about how far was left to go. We ended up finishing the 12.1 mile run in 1:25:20, which is 7 minute, 3 second miles — the same pace as my fastest ever single lap run of Central Park. I know it wasn’t a race or anything, but finishing this run was a big deal for me. It is great to know that I can go out there and set a goal and achieve it (even if not on the first attempt). I am feeling much more confident about getting myself into marathon shape. I definitely have a long way to go, though. After the run, I was dead. Antonio and I got Gatorade and walked back to East Harlem and then when I got home, I showered, stretched, and plopped down in my recliner to watch a movie. I was planning on working after that, but about a half hour in front of my computer and I realized that I had no energy at all. I went back to the recliner for another movie and then off to bed at 8:30. I didn’t wake up this morning until almost 10. That’s the first time I’ve slept 13 hours in a while — I guess I needed it. But, now, I have a ton of work to do (that I was planning on doing yesterday) and so I really should get to it.

As my monthly running approaches that elusive hundred-mile mark, I have been not-so-subtly reminded of a few of the less than pleasant side-effects of distance running. Exhibit A: Chafing. Holy crap. I went for a not-so-far run today, just 4 miles, but it was warmer than normal and I was wearing a thick, stiff cotton shirt and I had run 5+ miles each of the previous four days… wait, three days. Anyway, point is, when I got home and took my shirt off, I couldn’t believe that my nipples weren’t spraying out blood. They hurt so bad that that was what I was expecting. It was pretty much the worst pain you could imagine.

That got me thinking, why the hell do men have nipples anyway? Yes, they provided a great deal of humor in Meet the Parents — “I have nipples, Greg, could you milk me?” But, other than that, why?

The ends of my toes are taking a beating too. I’ve been putting lotion on them and bought the fancy socks, but they’re still blistering and getting pretty damn sore. I hate to think of what they’re going to be like after Saturday’s run.  I am going to finally tackle the 12 miler in the Park Saturday morning.  This is the last weekend I’ll have the opportunity for a while — next week I’m doing the Healthy Kidney 10K and then the Bolder Boulder 10K the week behind that, so it would be 3 weeks before I get another chance.  So, wish me (and my toes) luck.

I can’t be all negative about these aches and pains, though.  In a way, they are somewhat comforting. They remind me that after this far too long hiatus, I am finally back on track, moving towards my first marathon. It’ll be almost seven years late, but that’s better than never.

I was craving pizza today so I decided to head up to the Patsy’s on 117th. As soon as I walked outside, I heard yelling. I didn’t think that much of it, though, because you hear a fair amount of yelling up here in el barrio. But, as soon as I got to the corner I realized this was more intense than the typical. There was a big Mexican guy standing there in front of Dunkin Donuts holding a baseball bat, looking real pissed off and about to swing the bat at this high school kid. The kid is like two inches away from the Mexican’s face and yelling, “Get the fuck outta here! Just get the fuck outta here!,” over and over. People stop and watch until finally one of the kid’s friends stepped between him and the Mexican and forced them apart from each other. The Mexican got back into his car and drove off and the kids started walking up First Avenue.

Summer has arrived.

A quandary has arisen. To keep the cell phone number or abandon it? This question is one that has been lying beneath the surface for quite some time now. You may not know this (I usually try to keep it as hushed up as possible (Oh shit, why am I posting it on my blog?)) but I lived in Brooklyn for two and a half months in early 2007. (Did I just use double parentheses? That was awesome!) And, during that time (actually a couple months before that time — I paid an extra fee to have T-Mobile switch my number while I was still in Boston), I traded in my 617 number for a 347 number because I was anxious to cut all ties with the bean town. Before moving to New York, I had an overly fond view of the boroughs (especially Brooklyn) and was happy to take an area code that implied that I was not from Manhattan. I’m the first to admit that I have been wrong in my life. The whole moving to Boston thing and liking the Red Sox thing (please can we just get over this — Sareeka, especially, it kills me when you bring this up) was obviously a huge, huge mistake. Yes, I’m embarrassed and I wish I could take it back, but I can’t. But, we’re getting side-tracked here. The point is, in the aftermath of that gargantuan folly, another smaller preposterousness occurred. I (yes, me, Robert James Reese, I am sad to admit) thought that Brooklyn was a more honorable place than Manhattan and accordingly aligned myself with the secondary borough as much as possible. As a result, my phone number is 347-853-5200. I would worry about posting that here, but it is already posted on my business site and if it hasn’t been spammed from there, it probably won’t be spammed from here. So, I have an awesome cell number that ends in double zeros, but it is from a lame area code. 347 is a secondary area code for all boroughs except Manhattan. It’s not even the 718 (which is the primary area code for those same areas). A rerun of the episode of Seinfield where Elaine gets a 646 number because of Kramer’s fax machine happened to be on last night and that made me think of this a bit. Also, my cell phone crashed on me three times today, which made me start to seriously consider getting a new carrier and/or cell phone. I was originally planning to wait for the first launch of Google’s Android platform, but I am worried that the first edition of that is not going to be that stable. And , AT&T is supposedly offering a $200 rebate on the iPhone with a two year contract and that’s better than anything that will be offered with the brand new Android Platform so I’m thinking that looks pretty good. I definitely want to get a browser capable phone so that I can expand my own network into mobile web content and test it, but I don’t want to have to lay down serious cash to do so. Maybe switching to AT&T with this new promotion is the answer? But, if so, what do I do with my mobile number? Thanks to recent legislation, I have the right to move my T-Mobile number to AT&T. But, do I want to? The pros for keeping the 347 number: It ends in double zeros — How cool is that? Also, I have a thousand businesses cards printed with that number on it. If I change the phone number, I’ll have to get new ones. Cons: I don’t want people to think I’m from the boroughs and some people don’t even know 347 is a NYC Area Code — Diana thought it was Florida. What do I do?