Pale, Chubby and Slow v. Nasty, Brutish and Short

I've been a city kid all of my life, and growing up on the mean streets of L.A. meant that what outdoors-time I had was limited to concrete and asphalt, and the occasional roll through the prickly grass on the hill of the George C. Page museum, hoping I wouldn't get up with dog poo on my shirt.  My race was pale, personality chubby, and the environment I grew up in was Hobbesian.  Couple my urban upbringing with a love for our local public library and you guessed it, I was the last pick when it came time to choose teams.

As I may have mentioned before, I joined the high school football team for a couple of years on a lark but then discovered that I was slow and not very big, and since the movie "Rudy" hadn't been made yet I decided to quit after my sophomore year of getting concussed.  And although I'd always tried to exercise in some fashion (calisthenics, light jogging) into my adulthood, let's just say that people compliment me on my quick wit and natural beauty rather than my athleticism.

When I started running in earnest this year I even did that indoors, at the gym on a treadmill (ah, climate control) since a big part of my development as a nerd was an aversion to perspiration and getting dirty.  I managed to start getting outdoors this past summer to start running around our local cities and in the process developed a beautiful farmer's tan (my wife likes to say that my face and arms are like Obama, and my torso's like Biden - "Obama, Biden, Obama, Biden" - you could say my wife's a funny lady, or you can say that there's not much excitement going on at our house).  But lately, I've discovered a nascent fondness for trail running.

Frankly, I live in a suburban/urban area (north Orange County) and it's not exactly the great outdoors, but I've found a couple of trails that wind through the local parks.  They're not exactly the Appalachian Trail, unless the Appalachian Trail passes by brightly colored jungle gyms on a frequent basis, but they suffice.

There are trees of varying heights and kinds, grasses, insects, horse and dog poos, perhaps the coyote variant as well, but they're all dirt, and they're all away from the fantastically inattentive drivers who keep forgetting to look for pedestrians.  I've found myself gravitating to them more and more, even the abandoned train tracks by my house that are much more runnable now that the trains have stopped traversing them but even before they've fully been converted to trails, peopled by the occasional huddles of day laborers reading the paper and also escaping the din of motorized traffic.  And it's not that I endorse some absurdist Luddite worldview with a romanticization of preindustrial agrarianism, hells to the no, I love cities 'cause that's where the rock and roll and the museums and the bars are, but when I run, I'm beginning to like running on dirt.

Which is why my current choice of running shoe is a little funny.  The minimalist movement in running endorses less supportive (or perhaps less restrictive) shoes, which was one of the reasons I bought these, the Nike Free Run+:

They're pretty good looking shoes, no?  By the way, the "+" in their name is because of the following:

That grey oval in the footbed is where the Nike footpod of the "Nike+" line of products is supposed to go.  Anyway, those grooves in the sole you saw in the picture above this one are sipes, cuts made into the sole in order to make them more flexible:

And they do the job - the soles are very flexible indeed.  Now, you may be wondering, isn't the point of wearing shoes to be inflexible so you have some support?  Well, the minimalist response is that greater flexibility is important because it forces the arch of your foot to work, which ultimately strengthens it.  By the way, I've always had flat feet.  My childhood summers at the city pool were spent wistfully looking at the elegant wet footprints that other kids left behind, with their curved soles and the toes perfectly arranged above them, whereas since I had no arch I left what looked like a potato crowned by five circles.  But the idea being that more flexibility and less support encourages the bones and ligaments of your feet to do what's natural and thereby strengthening them.

The unintended consequence of using what are essentially urban running shoes on trails is that now, every time I get home I've got approximately a metric ton of pebbles stuck in the sipes.  The shoes themselves are serving their purpose very well, i.e. keeping my Obama-Biden farmer's tan wicked awesome, and I've been very pleased with them, but when I finally wear them out I'll have to start looking in to trail-friendlier alternatives.

And then I'll start looking in to ways to get rid of this crazy farmer's tan.

Train Tracks Trail Run
2.48 mi.  21 min.  8:18 pace.

Born to Blog, or, Speling and Grammars

So this here is a blog about running, meaning that the whole raison d'etre* of the endeavor is writing, no?

And as anyone in earshot will often hear me loudly and proudly, maybe even a little flamboyantly, proclaim, I Was an English Major.  As such I'd like to devote a little cyber-space to me waxing rhapsodaisically about my favorite of all languages, English!

It's the poor bastard child of many parents, the linguistic equivalent of growing up FLDS.  It has just under four times as many words as does French, and while francophones go on and on about how idiomatic their tongue is, English not only buries them, it takes them over preemptively.  There are expressions in English that are used in microcultures, ones that you may never hear until they somehow float into your awareness through books, papers, broadcasts, along with their mutations, some of which make sense, some of which clearly don't.  "Like a kid in a candy shop."  "Dumb as a brick."  "Hit with the ugly stick."  "Hit every branch falling off the ugly tree."  "Kitty-corner", "katty-corner", and "cater-corner", all meaning diagonally situated.  Or "cater-wumped", meaning turned-about.  "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth."  One of my new favorites is to describe moments of weakness by telling someone, "you folded faster than Superman on laundry day."

This sort of richness may explain why foreigners, ESL'ers like Joseph Conrad, Vladimir Nabokov, and Andre Codrescu chose to write in a tongue not their mothers', a palette of colors available to them in English that wasn't in their native languages.  Hmmm, maybe that's the reason why Samuel Beckett decided to write in French, an intriguing thought.

Of course, students of English have to get by the beguiling spelling problems the language has, which, like traffic in Bombay, obeys no rules... usually.  Like, how do you pronounce "cough", "bough", "though", "tough", and "through"?  Who would have thought?  No rules.  Or most of the time, you'd say the "tw" the same way, as in "twill", "twine", "twain" and "twee", but poor old "two" gets second place pronunciation and nothing but trouble.  You'd like "lead by example" but not be "rigid as a lead pipe."  Nor do you want to read what you've already read.  Of course, any time anyone tries to teach you a rule, like "I before E except after C," some sleight of hand introduces another exception.

Politicians give us neologisms like "normalcy", "misunderestimate" and "refudiate", as well as new uses for old words that seem wrong but lack robust grounds for objection, like "growing our economy."  Speling is, of course, important - you want to shoot ordnance and write ordinances (although perhaps you'd want to use ordnance on an ordinance), eat a kernel and salute a colonel, and know if you're there, it's theirs, if the fowl is foul, if you've got caulk or... never mind.  And don't get me started on grammars, because, look, pardon my French, but as failbook has taught us, there's a pretty important distinction between "f*ckin' a, dude!" and "f*ckin' a dude!"

Toss into the mix English's globality - it's a Language Without Borders (N.B.:  Doctors Without Borders = good.  Doctors Without Boundaries = bad.) - and you get England and America, two countries separated by a common language, and the celebratory confusion which may-in-fact-be-purposeful-but-likely-isn't of Engrish, and you get a neo-Babel ziggurat that is the perfect reflection of and monument to the befuddling of diplomacy, commerce, and fiendships - ahem, friendships - that characterize our postmodern world.

Ingliche iz phun!

*So, I refuse to italicize "foreign" words and phrases like "raison d'etre" if they're in common use in English.  My rationale is that if they're in common use, they're ours now, dammit - I drink your linguistic milkshake!


DOCTORS WHO WRITE AND DO NOT SUCK:
Stephen Bergman, AKA Samuel Shem (The House of God)
Ethan Canin
Abraham Verghese
Anton Chekhov
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Khaled Hosseini
John Keats
Stanislaw Lem
W. Somerset Maugham

DOCTORS WHO WRITE AND PUBLISH THEMSELVES LIKE TOTALLY FOR FREE ON BLOGSPOT:
You can thank me later.

Dam Hilly Run:
Who knew there was a dam in Fullerton?

7.07 mi.  1 hr:02 min:06 sec.  8:42 pace.

Running Revue

So, looking at some other (more successful) running blogs, it appears that a lot of them involve the reviewing of gear.

That makes sense;  you review stuff which then directs people to the advertising on your site which then encourages people to buy stuff which then expands the Chinese economy (which should probably have been Guns 'N Roses' album name instead, really).

Given that I can only make so many absurdist observations over a period of time (I'm contractually limited) (okay, who am I kidding, I'd kill even to have a contract that might limit me) (actually, my contract at work might limit me - better check), I'm beginning to think that perhaps I also should review running related stuff on my site, which would with any luck result in endorsements, book deals, and the naming of products and children after me.

If you have any ideas as to what you'd like for me to review, there're a couple of criteria to meet:
1)  Given that I'm stretched for cash (school loans+mortgage+my wife and I subscribe to 30 magazines = cotton, rather than silk, boxers) (okay, if anyone else was grossed out by that image, let me just throw in that I was too), it has to be free, something you can lend me, something that a manufacturer would be willing to send to me, or something I already have.
2)  Nothing illegal.

And that's it!  Now, let the reviewing begin:

CHOCOLATE LACTAID
For those of you who've read this previous post you know about my deep, soul-connection with chocolate milk and why it was so gratifying to discover that I might need it now that I'm a (albeit sloooow) runner.  Well, what I've actually been imbibing has been Chocolate Lactaid.  Now, unlike a lot of Asians, I'm actually not all that lactose intolerant, and I can really clog my arteries with all manner of cheeses and ice cream (and unlike a lot of Asians, whiskey et al does not make me red in the face;  my tolerance for cheese and booze borders on alarming) (but mostly for my weight), but for some reason regular ol' chocolate milk gave me some gastric distress.  Chocolate Lactaid pretty much solved that problem while still providing all of the sugars, fats, proteins, sodium, etc. etc. that's a benefit of drinking chocolate milk as a recovery beverage.  Without all of that uncomfortable shifting around in one's seat trying to avoid the opposite of a gas shortage.  You all know what I'm talking about.

Anyway:

The Run During Which I Discover a Mushroom Village:

Where're the Smurfs?

6.81 mi.  1 hr.  8:49 pace.

The World Looks Different on Foot

Even though I've only started running in earnest this year, I've spent a lot of time with my boots on the ground in a lot of... different places in this old world, and I've accumulated some photos which I've posted here.
All that time and only 97 pics!?

Music (cont'd)

So since I'm not listening to music when I run, I've noticed that at times my thoughts start to race.  This hill is steep.  Those are nice houses.  I wonder how much they are?  I wonder how much my house is?  Why do they call it "underwater"?  It should be something like, "in deep something"... oh, that explains the water part.  I should cut my hair tonight.  Dog poo!  Smile and wave.  Those clouds are pretty.  That cloud looks like Jack Lemmon.  Actually, it looks like Martha Raye.  Did that truck have "F.U. Obama" painted on the window?  No, F.U., man!  Go, America!  Waitaminute, "You" starts with "Y", not "U" - maybe that didn't mean what I thought it meant.  Go, English majors!  Wow, a cemetery.  Look at those kids.  Are they laughing at me?  I wonder if this Fuel Belt makes me look fat.  This hill is hilly.

Nobody Told Me That There Were These Trails in Fullerton, Upon Which I Took the Following Photos:
9.57 mi.  1 hr:27 min:29 sec.  9:08 pace.

Music

Do you listen to music when you run?  I don't.

It's not because I'm a crazy-intense runner or some kinda purist;  the amount of gear I have on me each time I go out for a trot (reminder:  GPS watch, heart rate monitor, Fuel Belt with gels and varying number of water bottles, water bottle in hand, harmonica) (okay, not the harmonica) should remind you that if anything, I'm a bit of a maximalist when it comes to running gear.

And it's not that I corollarily think that listening to music while you run is a bad idea.  It's just that I don't want to be distracted from running, in a couple of ways.  In the most practical sense I want to have some situational awareness so I don't accidentally walk into traffic or something.  But also in the sense that needing to be distracted while one runs makes it seem a bit like needing to be distracted when you're at the dentist (hmm, I politely decline the offer of headphones when I'm at the dentist's as well), which suggests that running is somehow a painful thing from which we need diversion, rather than an activity we need to engage in entirely.

Don't get me wrong, I love music, and it's not that music isn't kinda playing in my head - you see, when I love, Love, LOVE a song I'll play it over and over until I've memorized each little scratchy, off tune bits (most of my beloved music came before Autotune), to the point that I can satisfactorily reproduce a song in my head;  if I'm going to listen to music, I'm gonna listen the hell out of it.  So often, when I'm running, I'll have a loop of music playing through my head.

What I've noticed is that the tune isn't necessarily an inspiring one, e.g. the Rocky theme over and over again.  The thing that I've observed is that the music I replay in my head is something I can set my cadence (that is, the rhythm and tempo of my footfalls) to.  For example, I've had many people tell me that Elliott Smith's music is so somber that it makes them want to stab themselves in the heart twice, but to me songs like Speed Trials and Alameda are perfectly timed for an ideal cadence;  I wonder if their tempos are multiples of 90, which apparently is the ideal cadence for runners.  It's the same idea behind using the tempo of "Stayin' Alive" to maintain an ideal rate of chest compressions during CPR, the thought that a song can set the rate at which we do something;  even though he may not have been a runner, perhaps Elliott Smith was tapping in to our universal need to run when he wrote his music with the speed that he had in mind, and even though I don't listen to music when I'm running, perhaps one of the first things music did to us as humans was set the pace by which we ran.

By the way, one of the songs that also often plays in my head when I run is the Young Chuck Norris.

No Run Today Because I Spent the Entire Day at Work After a Vacation During Which I Took Pictures Like This:

And This:

Ultrarunning is Biblical

Did you know that ultrarunning is in the bible?  Check out the prophet Elijah in 1 Kings, Ch. 18, vv. 42, 46:  "Elijah went up to the top of Mt. Carmel....  And the hand of the LORD was on Elijah, and he gathered up his garment and ran before Ahab to the entrance of Jezreel."  The dude outraced a chariot and a wicked king by the power of God - holy s#!t - literally!  (Literally holy, not literal s#!t.)

Okay, so there's some dispute as to whether Elijah actually outpaced Ahab's chariot or if the passage means something else, and the actual distance was only 17 miles and not an ultra distance or even a full marathon, but I still like the idea that running is all over the bible.

On Treadmills, You Don't Outrun Anything, Except Perhaps Cardiovascular Disease:
3.37 mi.  30 min.  8:54 pace.