Rain or Shine, Bitches!!

I'm working on a project based in Houston, which means I'm often flying back and forth between California and Texas. For the last three months though I have been fortunate enough to travel to New York every week. NY is a hell of a lot more exciting than Houston. In terms of beauty, Houston doesn't have much going for it. It's a huge sprawl, it's got crappy weather, and there are no mountains, lakes, or really anything of scenic allure. But what Houston has going for it are my friends. And especially my workout crew. Over the last few months we've managed to consistently pull together a group for interval training.

The group dynamic is always so fun when it comes to intervals. There are always a couple guys really pushing to round up a group, then there are the guys that show up for a good workout if a big enough group emerges, and then there are the guys that are peer pressured by everyone else to get their ass to the track! This last set of guys genuinely want to get a good workout, but you first have to refute every argument they come up with for not being able to make it. Once that is out of the way they come out and have a great time.

This evening we somehow rounded up seven guys to head to the track while a storm was hitting. I'm talking streets flooding and lightning. We lost one of the guys due to the "it's raining" excuse. We tried to get him to come around with the argument, "When it isn't raining outside it's 90 degrees with 90% humidity. So you're soaking wet after 10 minutes anyway."

Alas, the argument did not win him over. Oh well...guess who's getting shit from everyone tomorrow? That dude. :)

Mark: 1 vs. Children: 1

There are a number of success factors that I consider when determining if I am happy with my race performance. One of them being the question "Did any children beat me?"

I don't know what children do these days, but I'm pretty sure they shouldn't be crossing the finish line before me. A few months ago I ran in a 10k with 2800 other male runners. During the run I was a bit surprised when at mile 3 I encountered a child in front of me. I passed him. And then after feeling pretty proud of myself I passed another child at mile 4. As I wondered if the kid was just one of those guys that grew a beard at age 11, he coughed. A very high-pitched cough. Like his voice hadn't changed yet...you know...like what happens when you hit puberty.

After the race, a quick search of the results revealed that I got schooled by three children. Two 13-year olds and a 12-year old. The fastest of them beat me by 1 minute 14 seconds. The score at that point in time was Mark: 0 vs. Children: 1.

This last weekend I ran in my first 10k since getting beat by children. And I stand triumphant before you this day as I declare that I kicked their asses. All of them. Mark: 1 vs. Children: 1. Next race I'm pulling ahead. Watch and learn, children.

5k's and Lots of Scathes

I have two things to report. I ran a 5k. And I have bruises all over my body.

I ran a 20:30 in the 5k (6:36 mile pace). It was a small race with 142 people, and I managed to get 5th place with this time. The whole fifth place thing makes me feel good. But the fact that I was able to run a 5k just as fast six months ago makes me feel bad. In the end, I think it averages out a little on the feeling bad side. I've been running, but apparently not enough to get faster. Boo.

And then the bruises... Those make me feel good. I don't watch football, I don't drive a truck, and I don't have cravings for steak and potatoes. Something has to connect me to my fellow man species, right? So why not bruises all over my body to show how tough I am? If you got 'em, flaunt 'em. That's what I say. So last weekend I took my shirt off and hung out at the hotel pool to show everyone what's up. I know what you're thinking. But I earned them fair and square so shut up.

Anyway, I quickly realized that perhaps people thought I was diseased. The circular wounds did look a bit like ring worm. Holy crap?! People think I have ring worm? I put my shirt back on.

The bruises were caused by a fun filled day of playing paintball. Hence, the circular shape. Me and fourteen other guys had bruises everywhere. One guy went running shirtless on a treadmill afterward. The lady next to him at the gym did a double take at his ring worm looking torso and moved machines. Perhaps paintball wounds are contagious. You can never be too cautious.

This week I'm kicking my running up a notch to 20+ miles per week. I've realized it's due time for me to get more aggressive about reaching my goals. I don't think 20 miles/week is a ton, but at least progress.

Lake Tahoe Relay 2010

The Lake Tahoe Relay is a 7 person, 72 mile relay around Lake Tahoe. This year 150 teams signed up, many of them running clubs from around Northern California. Each team drives around the lake during the event, cheering on their runner and making sure that the next runner is waiting for the hand-off at each transition area. My team was organized by employees of the National Children's Study, and I was kindly offered a spot on their team.

One of the memorable teams was "Man Beef," noted for their blue sleeveless shirts that had their team name written on the back. Another was "Hells Bells," which handed off a tutu and a long pink boa to the next runner. I couldn't help loving Hells Bells. They all had cute outfits with little devil horns and long striped socks. Man Beef though was a different story.

From the look of Man Beef, I honestly couldn't tell if they were referring to their special appendage, or if it was a reference to their extra preparation for the long, cold winter. Regardless, I smelt weakness. And I was determined to take them down. And by "take them down" I mean that they would get last place, and we would get second to last place...

After 12 hours of cheering on each runner in our team, hunger and exhaustion must have diverted us from the any sort of competitive nature. For the last hour I was pretty much dreaming of pizza. And dreaming of all the good pizzas I've ever eaten. I guess that dried apricots and peanut clusters don't tide you over for another 6 hours after you run twelve miles. Lesson learned. Anyhow, as we were celebrating our last runner coming in (and celebrating the realization that we would soon be saved from our peanut clusters), in comes Man Beef. Ohhhh snap!! Man Beef just got schooled by the National Children's Study!

I must say that our team did well, regardless of the place we got. We averaged under an 11-minute mile over the entire course, with almost each leg of the course containing climbs of 300-800 feet. For myself, I ran the 4th leg and tracked my run on my GPS device that also auto-tweets my pace and time every mile. I felt fortunate to run a leg where I recognized many of the sites. My girlfriend's aunt/uncle used to own a cabin in this area. So it was a run down memory lane. I passed the yogurt shop, the hidden entrance to the beach, an awesome restaurant called Garwoods where I spent my first $50+ dinner with my girlfriend (soon after college), and finally past the street that takes you to the cabin. Here are my mile splits:

• Mile 1 - 7:02
• Mile 2 - 7:23
• Mile 3 - 7:14
• Mile 4 - 7:14
• Mile 5 - 8:39
• Mile 6 - 7:22
• Mile 7 - 7:13
• Mile 8 - 7:54
• Mile 9 - 7:42
• Mile 10 - 8:07
• Mile 11 - 8:17
• Mile 12 - 7:54
  

For those that followed my run on twitter, you may notice that these times may be +/- a few seconds off the posted tweets. This is because the tweets showed my current pace (averaged over the previous 400 yards) at the time the tweet was sent, while the posted times here are my pace as averaged over the previous mile. Each would show the same result of an average pace of 7:40 over the course of the run.

Ok, now for the fun stuff.

Our friend Renee had one of the two toughest legs. She had a continuous 800 foot climb for the last 3 miles of her run. As she was ascending, some guy pulled up next to her, started chatting with her about how he recently had surgery on a collapsed lung, and then proceeded to pull up his shirt and show her a scar going from his abdomen to his back. Right after explaining this to her, he put it into high gear and ditched her up the hill. She pretty much wanted to wring his neck. "Yeah, I'm dying up this hill and some guy with a collapsed lung passes me at like 50 miles per hour," she would later explain. I'm just wondering...how many people did this guy show his scar to?

I think next year I'm going to put on some of those plastic chicken feet that you can buy for Halloween. And when I pass people I'll say, "Damn, I just had my feet removed to get these new chicken feet." And then I'll ditch their ass. Weird? Yes. As weird as the collapsed lung guy? Hell yeah.

Other highlights...well, Amy got passed by a 70-year old, who I must say was on a team with a bunch of very old, and very awesome runners. But it never feels good to get passed by grandpa. Man Beef, however, got passed by yours truly (that's me). And for the finale, we saw a bear while picking up pizza.



While this bear is half the size of the dumpster, he is only an adolescent. The dumpsters in Tahoe are all bear proof, so the fact that this bear is actually trying to get inside shows that he's a rookie. He was so cute I just wanted to go over and scratch behind his ears. Something tells me he's not as friendly as my old Teddy Ruxpin though.

I'll end with a couple beautiful pictures from our weekend.


View from the back yard of the cabin we rented.



Emerald Bay. View from leg 7.

Death Metal and the Coordinated Head Bang

I first realized that a friend of mine was into death metal when I heard him grumbling what sounded like chants to Satan. In case you're into more wholesome music, I should probably explain that death metal singers grumble and scream. You can't understand a single word that they're saying, which is probably a good thing since they're usually singing about going Freddy Krueger on your ass.

Last week my friend got word that a death metal concert was coming to New York. He invited me and another person, with this poster image displayed in his email invite.



Yes, that is a cloaked figure sacrificing somebody on an alter. And yes, there apparently is a band called "Hate." I hesitatingly accepted the invite, and the other person declined. The other guy is a christian and I think was concerned with his salvation. He asked if he could still go to heaven if he attended. Probably not.

The first band I saw was called Blackguard. Scary as shit. They were all painted up like demons and the two guitarists on each side of the stage had long hair that they would eerily sway around in unison as they head banged. They seriously practice their head bangs. They would do some circular head banging for awhile and then both change to a vertical head bang at the exact same moment. Impressive.

The next two bands were a good time, and appeared to be well known to the crowed. So everyone was really into it. When death metal-ers get "into it" they do a couple things. Let's make a list.

1. Head Bang: people actually exhibit unique styles when head banging. I could write an entire blog entry about head banging styles. Let's just say it's really annoying when the dude's hair in front of you keeps hitting your face. It's especially annoying when you aren't sure if he'll try to kill you for complaining about it.
   
2. Mosh-pit: when death metal-ers get pumped up they like to run around pushing each other really hard. This ends up forming into a congested mass of pushy people. Sometimes the pits can get overly aggressive, but mostly people are just trying to experience what looked like "happy aggression."
   
3. Crowd Surf: this became the ultra-cool thing to do about halfway through the concert. It seems like somebody was crowd surfing at almost every moment. Get a couple big dudes to pick you up and the crowd takes care of the rest. They might take care of your wallet and phone too if you're not careful.
   
4. Put up devil horns: this is that hand gesture where you extend your pinkey and forefinger so they look like horns. People throw these up instead of clapping their hands. I don't know if this is supposed to be the devil salute or what. But all the cool kids were doing it.
   

I'm proud to say that I engaged in all four forms of death metal-ness. With a little encouragement from my friend, I broke into the mosh-pit and started pushing people around while trying not to get injured. And then I did it about six more times throughout the evening. What I learned about the pit is that death metal-ers aren't trying to hurt each other. People are pretty physical, but if somebody fell down, they wouldn't start stomping on you with their goth military boots. They would make sure you got up. I know because I tried to stomp on someone after I pushed them over, and people gave me funny looks. Ok, maybe not.

Crowd surfing. Oh yes I did. I had some big dudes pick me up. And next thing I knew I was being carried over the death metal-er's heads toward the stage. Some security guy grabbed me and helped me down near the front of the stage. Then I ran back and tore up the pit again. This is getting fun.

A note about head banging. It's the cool thing to do. Apparently it's also cool to get in a row, put your arms around each other's waists like a bunch of can-can girls, and head bang in unison. I saw this a couple times...head bang bonding.

I'll finish with a photo of me and my friend with his newly purchased poster. See that hand sign that we're doing? Those are the devil horns. Guess that makes me a cool kid.

Native American Healing Clay

My friend from work recently called in sick for three days. The reason...he was ill from eating a teaspoon of dirt. Yeah, that's right, he purposely ate dirt! Well, clay to be exact. You know, the kind of clay that you find in some regions when you are digging a hole in the…uhhhh…dirt. After becoming ill, he called the woman that sold the clay and explained the reaction his body had to the substance. After explaining that he had a high fever and diarrhea, the woman exclaimed, “Isn’t that just wonderful!!”

Huh?!

Don’t worry, he was just as confused. I mean “wonderful” isn’t exactly the word of choice when you are shitting clay every 10 minutes. Apparently the woman believed that the sick feeling was the result of his body emitting toxins. Either that, or this is just what she tells people after they get sick from eating the dirt she sold them.

Now, the whole toxin thing wasn’t exactly a ball way out in left field, since the reason he ate the clay in the first place was to cleanse his body of toxins. What exactly a “toxin” is, and whether the body effectively discharges toxins via the liver and kidney, is another conversation. This conversation is about my experience with eating clay. Yes, I actually ate clay after my friend got sick doing so. No, I’m not too smart.










Photo of the dirt in question

Before eating dirt, the first thing I wanted to know was whether it was safe. My first piece of information was that this clay is called bentonite. This was a good sign, given that many people, including myself, have used bentonite in winemaking. Bentonite attaches to molecules that make a wine undesirably hazy. Once attached, the particles become heavy and sink to the bottom, where they are left behind when siphoning wine to another container.

It turns out that bentonite is believed to work very similarly in your body. The clay expands as it become saturated, and absorbs/attaches to molecules in your intestinal tract. Lastly, your body excretes the bentonite along with the absorbed molecules. But what exactly bentonite absorbs, and whether these materials are toxins that the body is unable to process through the kidney and liver, is something that you won’t find in most of the marketing materials for "healing clay". Why is this?

Unfortunately for alternative medicine, most claims are anecdotal at best and are not based on good scientific principles. Science would describe exactly what was being removed from the body and how. Science would also explain why these removed molecules are bad for your body. And lastly, science would share this research in peer reviewed journals so that others could critique each assumption and conclusion. Alternative medicine takes a different approach. They usually cite ancient cultures that used the substance for hundreds of years, implying that there must be wisdom in the practice. Unfortunately, last time I tried the rain dance it didn’t work…

Jokes aside, there is a bit of science that would suggest health benefits to eating clay. For example, during the early 20th century, soldiers in the German and Austrian armies used a type of clay called kaolin to combat cholera and dysentery¹. More recently, Arizona State University professors Shelley Haydel and Lynda Williams have shown that some types of clay are able to kill certain undesirable strains of bacteria that cause skin disease and food poisoning. Their research involves the gathering of clays from around the world, testing each clay’s ability to kill or reduce the growth of harmful bacteria, and determining why some clay is more effective than others². I’m sure pharmaceutical companies are lying in wait for the day when they isolate the compounds responsible for killing harmful bacteria.

In the meantime, good hygiene would likely be a better solution than eating a dirt sample in a nicely packaged “healing clay” container. Dirt can sometimes contain harmful minerals like arsenic and mercury. That and the fact that alternative medicines are not regulated by the FDA, it’s probably a good idea to go with a bacteria fighting method that requires a little more regulation on the sales and distribution side…like hand soap for example.

Oh, and my experience with eating healing clay every day for two weeks? Tastes like dirt. Gave me an upset stomach. And I used the restroom a few more times than normal. Perhaps I'm now "toxin" free though...


Works Cited
1. Journal of the American Medical Association, Volume64, Issues 18-26, page 1991
2. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Healing_clays_may_help_fight_diseases/articleshow/2949087.cms

How to Bridge the Gap

Here's the gap. I ran a 3:39 on my last marathon. And I need to break a 3:10. I've finally realized that I need to scratch my entire workout plan and create a new one, which is good because I never had a workout plan.

Up until a few weeks ago, I was just running twice a week up the trail at a comfortable pace for 10 or 15 miles. Problem is that I wasn't getting any faster. After making some changes over the last few weeks, here is what my schedule is evolving toward:

1. Not Running Slow: Yep, simple as that. How do you expect to run a 7:15 pace for 26.2 miles if all your 10-15 mile runs are at an 8-minute pace? My goal is to get my distance runs at a 7-minute pace. This means that a 7-minute pace should feel comfortable, not like I'm about to keel over. My last 10-miler was at a 7:35, so I'm on my way.
   
2. Intervals: Once per week. I only do these if I can round up a couple friends for 40-minutes of pain. Because intervals suck! We do this workout on a high school track, and start with a mile warm-up. During the warmup, we jog the turns and sprint the straightaways. Then we get into the sprints: two 800s, two 400s, and two 200s. We have a two-minute break in between each interval. I've done this workout four times now.
3. Hills: Once per week. These are like speed work in disguise. I run 3.5 miles to a hill I discovered, run up it, walk down it, repeat a number of times, then run home. I've done this workout three times now. Next weekend I'll be bamboozling a friend into doing this workout with me.
4. Tempo Runs: I just read about these in Runner's World, and haven't done one yet. They say this run should be a 15-minute warmup, followed by 20-minutes at the "tempo pace", then finished with a 15-minute cooldown. To figure out my goal for a tempo pace, I checked with the McMillan running calculator. It says that for a 3:10 marathon I should shoot for a tempo pace between 6:36 and 6:53. Holy smokes!! Well, that ain't gonna happen for now, but I'll report back on my progress.

I've also been getting in an extra workout or two throughout the week. So now I'm running 3 or 4 times per week. Hopefully this will slowly bridge the gap for me so I can accomplish my goals.