VO2 h4x!!!

Bikes are Evil

2010-09-24T13:01:00.005-04:00

This one is for Julie, who asked what happened, and for Stef, who is way too amused by stories about me crashing. Not funny, Stef. :(

I really like bikes. I always have. From when I was six years old trying (and failing) to wheelie up the road in front of my house to when I was in college and my friends and I used them to get to cross country practice to when I started mountain biking post-college, I've liked bikes. However, bikes have not always liked me back. Aside from falling off my bike and running into stuff when I was trying to learn to ride, my first real bike trauma was in sixth grade. That year, I was invited to one of the cool kids' parties. Naturally, I just had to go. It was my chance to get in with the "in" crowd, right? Well, at the party, a couple of the popular girls decided to take some bikes out for a ride and asked me if I wanted to come. Of course I accepted, and grabbed the only bike left...a skinny tired road bike with drop bars that was way too big for me. I had never ridden drops before and could just barely reach the pedals, but it was just a bike. How hard could it be? We took off down the path in front of her house. As not quite a popular girl, I got stuck in the awkward out the back position, while everyone else was riding side by side in doubles. Seeking to rectify this, I moved up to the group in front of me. Unfortunately, the path was too narrow to accommodate three bikes, and I dropped off the side of the path into the grass. This probably would have been alright, except that in trying to get back up onto the path, I scraped the sidewall of my tire against the side of the path, which of course sent me flying off the bike and skidding across the path. I tried to play it off, but the popular girls just stared at me like I was some kind of uncoordinated idiot who couldn't ride a bike (which I guess was sort of right, in retrospect). So much for getting in with the popular crowd.

Now of course I've done similar things since, like when I did the same thing on Boulder Creek Path and skidded across the bike path, nearly hitting a screaming mother and her baby stroller as I left a trail of skin in my wake, but the next "Me + Bikes = Disaster" situation happened on a trail. By this point, I had taken up mountain biking (not that I was any good at it, but that's besides the point). I finally cleaned the ascent portion of this one trail with no dabs or falls or anything, and man, was I stoked. So stoked that I let my guard down to fly down the nontechnical descent. I picked up a bunch of speed, leaned the bike to carve a turn, and felt the bike start to skid. The next thing I knew, the bike was gone and I was flying through the air towards a big, pointy rock. The next part seemed to happen in slow motion, giving myself just enough time to think "How can I make this hurt the least?" but not enough time to actually do anything about it. Then I landed, belly first, on the rock. Initially I thought I just knocked the wind out of myself, but after a failed attempt to get back on the bike, a failed attempt to walk the bike back to my car, an MRI, and a night in the ICU, I realized I had actually smashed my spleen into a bunch of little pieces. "Like a bowl of jello that you threw on the ground," according to my doctor. And as if that's not a gross enough comparison, the hospital tried to feed me jello for all my meals.

A smart person would have given up on bikes by now. Or at least decided to stick to cruiser bikes where you can flatfoot the ground while still sitting on the saddle. Not me. I decided to go to the Team Luna Chix mountain bike clinic at the short track. Which I guess would have been okay if I had gone with the beginner group who was learning to turn and climb and descend, which, based on previous experience, I clearly did not know how to do. But no, I decided to go with the advanced group, and when the Luna Chix asked what we wanted to work on, I suggested pumping and jumping terrain. Pumping went well, really it did. And that's what most of the people decided to stick with, especially since the Luna Chix themselves neglected to work on jumping. But I really wanted to work jumping, and for a while, that went okay too. Not "well," since I wasn't getting much air, but not badly either. Until I got to a roller that I started to jump, but realized it was kind of high and decided to pump instead...while part of the way up the face. I ended up over the bars with a bar end to my adductor magnus. No big deal though, right? I rode for a little while longer, then packed up and drove home. On the drive home, it started to stiffen up, and before long, the entire inside of my thigh was deep purple...with the small exception of a normal colored circle where I took the bar end. You'd think a contusion wouldn't be that noteworthy, but for some reason my entire upper leg was useless for a week.

So by now I should have learned my lesson, right? And the last thing in the world I should be doing is riding a BMX bike, right? But I discovered a track a couple miles from my house, and I suddenly became helpless to resist. I only had a freestyle bike, but whatever, a 20" is a 20" at the level I'm riding. So, most of the people at the track pump the rollers. Pumping is fast, and for the most part, less risky. But jumping is so much more fun. Again, I am helpless to resist. Well, a couple days ago, a TV crew showed up for a news spot. I knew the news guy from high school, so we talked for a while, and when he went back to his car to get some equipment, I shot down the starting hill and aired off the first roller. And for some reason, I got a lot more air than usual. Slightly freaked out by the air, I pumped the tabletop instead of jumping it, momentarily forgetting that while a bike in the air loses speed, a bike being pumped gains speed. This sent me into the step up with way too much speed. Now, you cannot go into a jump and not either pump or jump, or you'll end up bucked off the bike, so I had to do something. Split second decision...jump! And I jumped, but immediately realized I was not going to make the step up, nor was I going to land is the "safe" spot I usually land in when I have less speed. Instead, I was going to crash directly into the face of the "up" part of the step up. I immediately decided to abort bike, and threw the bike away from me. The bike crashed into the face, and I shot over the step up and rolled down the backside. It was a pretty nice roll, and I rolled onto my feet, and initially I thought I had only ripped up my elbow a bit. I brought bike bike back to the start hill, laughed about it with my high school friend, and tried again. This time, the bike was really squirrelly in the air, like the headset or stem was loose or something. I pumped the rest of the track, though it was squirrelly doing that too. I checked the bike, but everything seemed dialed. It was almost like something was wrong with me. I rode back to the start ramp, but by now my thumb was starting to tingle. Weird. I declined an interview (really, what was I going to say? "I fall a lot.") and drove home. By the time I got home, I had no range of motion in my wrist. By the next morning, I couldn't move my fingers either. Moral of the story is you guys better love me because typing this with one hand took forever.

It's What's For Dinner...

2010-09-12T20:48:00.005-04:00

I was eating beets today, when I realized that they don't really look very appetizing. They taste alright, otherwise I wouldn't be eating them, but they look gross.

Beets
As I said, beets are gross. Obama wants nothing to do with them, and I doubt it's because he's afraid of Iron poisoning. So what are beets exactly? Well, first off, they're a root vegetable. So they're not something you pick off a tree like an apple. Instead, you pull them out of the ground, covered in dirt. So now you're holding this dirt covered, hard as a rock thing that kind of looks like an alien. Oh yeah, and when you cut it, it bleeds. Or at least leaks dark red juice that stains your hands. Still want to eat that, Lady Macbeth? Awesome, it's supposed to be pretty good for you. And make you look really hardcore when you pee what looks like blood after your next workout.

Yogurt
A long time ago, someone thought it would be a good idea to grab a cow's udder, squeeze it, and drink what comes out. If someone tried to do that to my boobs...well, I better like him a lot. Though hopefully I'm not lactating, and if I am for some reason, that's a very big problem, but that's besides the point. Anyway, you're probably grossed out by the idea of drinking people milk, right? But we drink cow milk all the time, and no one reading this blog is a baby cow (at least I don't think so). Well, as if that's not weird enough, now we're taking milk, purposely introducing bacteria so it goes sour and chunky, and then eating it! I think this is how they make cheese too...let the milk spoil and eat the chunky part.

Push-Up Ice Cream
Push-Up ice creams are long cylinders that have ice cream that comes out the top. Then you lick and suck on the tip of the ice cream. They're kind of messy, so in the end, you usually end up a little sticky. These are marketed towards little kids. WTF?!

Rocky Mountain Oysters
Ever hear that joke about the guy who goes to the restaurant after the bullfight and finds out that their house special is the bull's testicles? And he gets on the waiting list, and when it's finally his turn, the matador loses and he gets served some poor guy's jewels? Either way, do you really want balls for dinner?

Black Pudding
I know that Twilight is all the rage with the kiddies today. And that being a vampire is the cool thing to do. Which means that drinking blood automatically makes you awesome...or something like that. Well, since biting someone's jugular isn't exactly politically correct, the Brits have come up with another solution that involves letting blood congeal in meats and grains until you get something that looks kind of like sausage. Sausage made for vampires. That looks like something a dog left behind. I think I'll stick with Count Chocula.

Soylent Green
Soylent Green is people! But honestly, compared to these other things, does it really sound that horrible?

Cupcakes are Stupid

2010-08-24T12:10:00.005-04:00

This post is dedicated to my friend Molly, who doesn't like cupcakes either.

Not that long ago, the trendy food of the culinary world was bacon. People were putting bacon on and in everything. Bacon of the month clubs, bacon pizza, bacon pancakes, chicken fried bacon, bacon salt, bacon vodka, bacon soap, bacon candles, and one of my friends even made bacon brownies, which she described as disgusting (to be fair, it was a deterrent to stop people from stealing her food). Actually, disgusting is a word I would use to describe bacon in general. It's either flaccid and tastes like grease or crunchy and tastes like burnt. Ew.

Well, if bacon covers the manly side of the spectrum (I think bacon is the manly side? I don't think women are interested in things that can be described as flaccid), cupcakes cover the womanly side. The cupcake revolution supposedly started when Carrie Bradshaw of Sex and the City ate cupcakes. This is confusing, since I'm pretty sure Carrie ate a lot of things on that show, only some of which were G-rated, and only one of which was a cupcake, yet cupcakes and cosmopolitans are the only things that got trendy. Why not a sandwich?

"But cupcakes are so bite size and cute!" I'm not much of a desserts person, but if I were, why would I want something bite size? Cupcakes might be a good size for little children, but little children are usually only interested in the frosting and will end up throwing out the cake part anyway. There are adults who are only interested in the frosting too, and for them, the frosting off of a single cupcake is definitely not enough. I'd say to make cupcakes bigger, but then it's just a regular cake. And don't get me started on cute. Ryan Hall is cute. Puppies are cute. A spongey lump of cake with a plop of frosting on top is not cute. A swirl of pastel pink frosting with sparkley sprinkles doesn't help either. If bakers want to go all out and make it artistic and pretty, more power to them, as long as they realize that their artwork is going to be mashed between someone's molars, churned into chyme with digestive enzymes, and ultimately end up in the toilet. I guess that goes for any artistic presentation of food, but as someone who has drained pasta, thrown it into the pot with sauce, and eaten it out of the pot, I obviously don't get it.

"Your opinion on cupcakes is ruined by your indifference towards sweets in general! If you liked cake it would be a different story!" Except as I said before, cupcakes are just too small. If I liked cake, I would want a large piece of cake, not two bites worth of food. I've heard of people making savory foods in cupcake form, which almost sounds appealing. Macaroni and cheese baked in cupcake cups, lasagna in cupcake form, etc. But what good is two bites of macaroni and cheese? That's certainly not going to satisfy my appetite. Plus bite size macaroni and cheese is not a cupcake, since there's no cake involved. It's just a too small serving of macaroni and cheese that probably took more effort to put in little bite size cups than it would take to make a casserole anyway.

Advertisement is Everything

2010-08-22T08:05:00.002-04:00

Have you ever bought something and soon after, asked yourself exactly what you paid for? Sometimes it's just good marketing. Case in point:

Bottled Water
Water is the most plentiful compound on Earth. Now, granted the majority of it is salt water, and a lot of the fresh water is groundwater, so it's not like it's all ready and waiting for immediate consumption. However, it costs pennies out of a tap. Bottled water, on the other hand, is fairly expensive. At $1.25 for a 20oz bottle, you're looking at $8 a gallon. All of a sudden, gas doesn't sound all that bad. "But it's so easy and convenient!" you say. Let me ask you this. If I pointed to a stack of bottles and a faucet and said I'd pay you $1.25 for every bottle you filled, would you fill up a couple of them? That's what I thought.

"Barefoot" Shoes
The latest running craze seems to be barefoot running. People covering the spectrum from neutral pronators with perfect biomechanics to overpronators with collapsed arches have embraced the revolution and decided that running sans shoes was the key to all their injury problems. After all, we've evolved to run barefoot (or at least we did until those with bad biomechanics stopped being eaten for lunch by sabretooth tigers and humans started to adapt to wearing shoes). But that's besides the point. Somewhere along the way, someone thought it would be a great idea to take a shoe and market it as being a "barefoot" shoe. You'd think this oxymoron would never sell, but it took off. The shoes aren't all bad shoes. The Nike Free is a flexible and lightweight performance trainer with a seamless upper. The Saucony Kinvara is a fairly well-cushioned shoe for its weight with a low heel-toe differential that bridges the gap between marathon flat and performance trainer. The Vibram Five Finger is uh...probably what you'd get if a Walmart watershoe had sex with a frog. Maybe if Brooks marketed the Beast as a barefoot shoe with motion control features for overpronators, we could finally get people to buy the shoes that they should actually be wearing.

Netbooks
The laptop was a great idea. Everything you love (and hate) about a desktop PC, now in portable form. Yeah, it's a little less powerful and a lot more expensive, but you can't very well lug your desktop back and forth from work, or bring it to class, or take it in the car, or carry it on an airplane. So, if small is good, smaller must be better, right? So we'll just take out some more processing power and RAM until it's really only good for internet browsing and word processing, we'll take out the optical disc drive because DVDs are so yesterday, we'll shrink the keyboard (don't worry, you'll get used to it eventually), and now, we have a very small computer. Or maybe a very large Blackberry that folds in half (or doesn't, in the case of the iPad). They're also oftentimes more expensive than a more powerful but slightly larger ultraportable laptop. Too small to fit processing power under the hood, but too large to fit in your pocket, netbooks are pretty much the red-headed stepchild of the computer industry.

Deckle Edge
Recently, I bought a book only to discovered that it looked like something chewed on the sides of the pages. I had bought it secondhand off of Amazon, so I figured maybe someone didn't take very good care of it and left it out in the rain or in their hamster's cage or something. Or that it was a one off that the manufacturer screwed up. You never know with secondhand books, right? Well, I later discovered that this was actually something that people do on purpose and call "deckle edge." Who thought of this? And for what reason? So all of the pages already look dog-eared so no one can tell if the publisher wanted it to look like that or if I read it a few too many times? If I wanted my books to look like that, I'd just take a scissors to the edge and cut it myself. File this one under "Why does this exist and if I really wanted that, couldn't I do it myself?" alongside ripped jeans and frayed brim hats.

Who needs a bucket list?

2010-07-14T21:52:00.002-04:00

Recently, I've been hearing a lot of people refer to their "bucket list," aka their list of things to do before they kick the bucket. At first, I thought this was a pretty cool idea. Make a list of things that you want to do before you die. And since for all you know, you can die tomorrow, well, you better get on that. So I decided I was going to make a bucket list too! It looked something like this:

1) Run really fast.
2) Learn to drive a motorcycle.

Hm. That wasn't a very good bucket list. I vaguely remember the rules of goal setting are to have a definite timeline and a tangible goal. Obviously the timeline is "before I die," and for the first one, I have to do it before I get too old. However, that first goal isn't very tangible, so I added some times to it to make it a good first goal. But then I realized my enemies are death, old age, and genetics. Against that unholy trinity, I'd probably have better luck going up against a Tyrannosaurus Rex with rabies. I decided to go back to that one later and turn my attention to the second goal. Motorcycles! I've always loved motorcycles. I had like a million toy motorcycles as a little kid. And I've scored two different first dates by begging a boy to take me for a ride on his motorcycle (though now that I think about it, I wonder if I got the dates because he thought there was innuendo where there was actually just a fascination with a bike). For that one, my only enemy is death. Really though, I think this one made the list because the day before I tried to make my bucket list, my mom's friend's husband bought himself a little Honda Rebel. And given my mountain biking experiences, death may be a powerful enemy. Maybe this bucket list thing wasn't such a great idea. However, not wanting to be completely left out of the fun, I decided to make...

THE ANTI-BUCKET LIST!

Simply, a list of things that I have no plans to do before I die. Instead of failing if I die before accomplishing the goals, I fail if I check something off the list by mistake.

1) Go vegetarian
Back in college, my friend offered me what I thought was a hot dog. But NOOO! It was actually a tofu pup! It tasted like death and sadness. Only not really death because no animals died to make it, unless rubber is an animal. It was probably a condom stuffed with tofu that she tricked me into eating. I did everything in my power to block this memory from my mind, something that unfortunately turned against me (always remember your mistakes, kids!). A few years later, I was living in Boulder, hippie capital of the United States (no offense, Boulderites, I love Boulder! Just not tofu), and everyone was talking about how much more energy and how much healthier they felt after eliminating meat from their diet. I wanted to be healthy and energetic too! But I ate a lot of turkey sandwiches, and turkey apparently did not mean healthy and energetic. So I went out and bought myself a package of Tofurkey. That ended up being not only a waste of money, but a waste of a sandwich that I threw out and a waste of taste buds that spontaneously died upon tasting the vile tofu. Since then, I've decided that I like eating animals. And I like not being anemic too.

2) Watch every season of Lost
One summer, back before Hulu got popular, my friend and I found seasons and seasons of TV shows online. I remembered hearing lots of people rave about how amazing Lost was, and that happened to be one of the shows available, so I decided to try it. Plane crashes! A dangerous island! People with cryptic pasts! Mysterious number patterns! A monster that ate the pilot! What's in the hatch? And where did that polar bear come from?! I blew through season 1. Then I started season 2. And it began with a weird man living in the hatch who listened to bad music and constantly reset a bomb that may or may not blow up island if he forgot to reset it. Then they found more people and the cast size spun out of control faster than an X-Men vs. Avengers supersize team-up. Sound bad? Well, it just went downhill from there and started making even less sense than it did before (HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE???). I'm pretty sure the writers' strike didn't happen until later, so I'm not sure what even happened. And really, I don't care to find out either.

3) Complete an Ironman Triathlon
This race starts with a 2.4 mile swim. 2.4 miles. I can't even get my head around that. Then you go right into a 112 mile bike. Hope your saddle and chamois are really good...that might trick you into thinking you might still be able to have kids for the first 50 miles anyway. Then, just when you think you're almost done, you get hit with a marathon. 26.2 miles is really far. And that's a 26.2 mile run where all you do preceding it is eating breakfast and doing a short warm up. This one you have to do with your arms and quads about to explode and feeling like someone took a belt grinder to your girly bits (or man parts). And then there's the gear. Carbon fiber shoes that have the latest foam for cushioning and posts to correct pronation but still swear to be as minimalist as running barefoot, compression sleeves to keep your blood flowing just in case your circulation system decides it's not really interested in this Ironman stuff, $500 sunglasses made of unobtainium, a visor that wicks away sweat before it even comes out of your pores, a waterproof GPS watch the size of a netbook, a helmet the size of Texas that makes you look like an extra from a George Lucas movie, a bike that disappears when you look at it head on and has carbon fiber wheels that make whooshing sounds to let everyone know you're coming, a wetsuit that is engineered to act like shark skin so you speed through the water and eat any athletes who cross your path, etc. It should probably be renamed the Six Million Dollar Man Triathlon. Also, I'm all for rocking the name of a few companies that I like, and if someone is giving me gear/discounts, I'm more than happy to do some advertising for them. But sometimes I look at those guys and wonder if they're just competing to see who can get more logos on their clothes (though if they're getting paid by all of them, by all means, more power to them!)

I'm sure I could go on, but that's probably enough for now. Don't want to set those standards too ~~low~~ high.

Rock Repeats

2010-07-09T20:07:00.002-04:00

I just read an article on a push to rename the half-marathon a Pikermi. The logic behind the movement is that a half-marathon is a legitimate race in its own right. It doesn't involve half the effort of a marathon. Nor does it involve half the training of a marathon. And they have a point. A half is a legit distance that requires real effort and real training.

But oh wait, its distance is half of a marathon.

The Pikermi motto is 13.1 miles should not be considered half of anything. But...13.1 miles is half of 26.2 miles. That's a fact that's kind of hard to get around. Just like 26.2 is half of 52.4, and if the race that had the legend surrounding it was a 52.4 mile race, the modern-day marathon would likely be called a half-something-or-other.

So what about the name "Pikermi?" Sort of sounds like the name of a Pokemon.

Well, the word marathon comes from the name of the city involved in the Battle of Marathon. According to legend, Pheidippides was sent to run to Athens to bring word of Greek victory. So our intrepid hero ran the 40k from Marathon to Athens and was able to deliver the message just before collapsing of exhaustion and dying. Now, this is kind of screwed up for a couple reasons. First, because we thought it would be a good idea to get lots of people to try something where the first person who did it died. Second, because the British royal family thought it would be a good idea to make it even longer and harder so it could start closer to the castle. Well, it turns out that Pikermi is the name of a town halfway (whoops, there's that evil "half" word again!) through Pheidippides' route from Marathon to Athens.

So that would give us the marathon and the pikermi. But what about the other distances? The 10k used to be called the mini-marathon, which sounds kind of cool, but maybe that's even more demeaning than "half-marathon," since now we're not even going by the mathematical definition. There's probably a tree or something 10k outside of Athens, so maybe that can be the tree race. 5k already sounds legendary, since racing a 5k is practically everyone's first goal, so that one can stay. Mile is stupid, since the mile is hardly even contested outside of indoor track meets anymore, and it's really either a 1500 or 1600. And explaining 1500 PR vs 1600 PR vs mile PR is always a pain in the butt, so we should pick a distance and find some landmark that far outside of Athens. Like a rock, so I can say my workout was rock repeats. That sounds so cool I think I'm going to explode with awesomeness next time I do that workout. Either that or exhaustion.

Lauren Fleshman is my hero

2010-06-26T22:52:00.000-04:00

I'd make a real post, but nothing I post will ever beat this.

The race itself was even better. F the World Cup, this is far more exciting. Sorry Landon, but Lauren Fleshman has bigger balls than you. Jen Rhines was equally impressive, as it takes far more guts to surge and open a ridiculous gap with 5(!) laps to go than it does to walk eight baseball players in order to get your no-hitter (screw you, ESPN).

Did I really not write anything in a month? Update soon, I promise.

Back to Reality

2010-05-20T00:06:00.000-04:00

I always take some time off from running after a peak race to let myself recover (both physically and mentally). Downtime is sort of like summer break in college...you spend a good portion of the second half of the year looking forward to it, and then when it comes, it's fun for a day and then you realize how much you miss being at school, and you're jealous of all your friends who found on-campus jobs and are still having fun together and working out together while you're by yourself at home on Facebook reading about how much fun they're having, and now you want to go back. Luckily my downtime only lasts for two weeks, but that's still about 10 days longer than I really want to take off. It's one of those necessary things if you want to be any good though, and since racing and competing might just be the aspect of running I'm enjoying the most currently, I do it. Two weeks isn't really enough time to lose much actual fitness, and if I could find my copy of Daniels' Running Formula, I would know exactly what tiny fraction of my VDOT I lost, but honestly, it's a really insignificant number. But while I may not have gotten out of shape in those two weeks, my body always seems to have forgotten how to run. Nevermind that I've been running for years, and that this is an action that humans have evolved to perform, and that two weeks ago I was running for miles and miles every day. In that short period of time, I unlearned how to run.
While flailing down the street looking like a geriatric while I figure out how to run again is sort of embarrassing, I always try to take this time to teach myself how to run properly. You see, when I run, my arms awkwardly cross my chest, particularly when the effort gets harder. Mid-race, you'd be hard pressed to figure out if I was a runner with bad form or a mixed martial artist throwing uppercuts. My high school coach used to tell me to practice swinging my arms while I was sitting around watching TV (I tried this for all of 30 seconds before deciding it wasn't applicable to running). My college coach used to yell at me to drop my arms during practically every race (and I did for a couple meters, and then I forgot again). And one time, I actually had a friend tell me I should try running while holding dumbbells because then I'd be forced to pay attention to my arms (yeah right, because running without dumbbells isn't hard enough). They'd all tell me how much energy I was wasting, and how much time I could cut off if I just learned how to swing my arms.
So about twice a year, I try to teach myself how to run properly. And it usually succeeds for the first couple weeks, because I'm only running a couple miles per day and it's all slow and easy. Then I start doing high mileage and speedwork, and at some point along the line, I revert back to my uppercutting ways. However, I've decided this time will be different. This time, I will learn. Because instead of trying to transform my punches into a smooth armswing, I'm going to learn how to aim my punches better. I might not run any faster, but this way, no one is going to outkick me if I have anything to say about it.

I am a bit of an attention whore...

2010-05-18T19:14:00.000-04:00

Last graduation post, I promise!

By the time my college graduation came around, I was very much one of those people who wanted to be anywhere but at graduation and may or may not have been asleep for portions of it (I don't actually remember being asleep, but I don't remember one thing about graduation either). High school graduation was slightly more exciting though. Maybe because it was still a new and novel thing, maybe because I was beyond stoked to be done with the hell that was high school, I don't know. I don't think I fell asleep during commencement, I went to graduation parties, and I even threw my stupid hat in the air when I was supposed to. I did walk into the auditorium with my tassel on the wrong side of my hat, but that was because I had decided I was already done with high school even before graduation, so really it was still my being graduation-festive. However, when I haven't totally checked out of something, I get all competitive. And that competitive streak happened to come out during high school graduation.

Before graduation, a couple of the smart kids were talking about the awards they received for being smart. Not about their National Honor Society sashes or their cords they got for good grades, because lots of people had them. No, they were talking about the medals they got and how they were supposed to wear them for commencement. They were also talking about class rank, but they had been talking about that since freshman year (how they knew where they were graduating freshman year, I have no clue), and all class rank affected was the order in which they'd get their diploma. The exact same diploma everyone who didn't kill themselves studying got. No one cares about that. But medals? That was kind of cool. I wanted a medal! But alas, I wasn't smart enough.

Normally, in a day I would have forgotten all about this and not cared anymore, but the smart people continued to talk about their medals. And they continued to the point I really wanted to steal their medals and streak across the stage during the valediction wearing nothing but the stolen goods. But I'm pretty sure that would have resulted in my parents never speaking to me again. I needed something more subtle, yet would still satisfy my inner thunder-stealing attention whore. Then I got an idea. I had a bunch of cross-country medals, right? I could wear all them! I would show those smart kids with their one or two medals who was boss! I'd be like Michael Phelps! And since it was before the world knew who Michael Phelps was, I'd be like the Michael Phelps trendsetter! Everyone would hear me coming because of the noise my medals made when I walked! I could make snarky comments about my neck cramping up from all the weight! I would be so full of win that those smart kids would have no idea what hit them!

Well commencement came, and the smart kids got mad at me for wearing running medals and said I wasn't allowed to do that, but no one actually said anything and no controversy actually happened, so in reality, the entire thing was pretty boring. So I guess this isn't a very good story, but I didn't realize it until now, and since it's typed up already, I may as well post it. Sorry if you read all the way to here hoping for a better ending...I got nothing.

Well I guess this is dressing up

2010-05-18T01:33:00.000-04:00

So as I said in my last post, my brother's graduation was yesterday. That meant I had to look halfway presentable. Anyone who knows me is aware that I have trouble doing this, and my definition of "presentable" sometimes involves a fitted tech tee instead of a ratty cotton t-shirt. But sometimes I think they're presentable because I pull it out a drawer and decide it looks good without actually paying any attention, and then at some point during the night I realize that I have a race logo on my back. So the night before graduation, my mom wants to know what I plan on wearing. I probably should get angry that my mom doesn't think I can pick out my own clothes and feels the need to treat me like I'm 16, but I don't have a very good track record so she doesn't have much reason to trust me.

Mom: "What are you wearing tomorrow?"
Me: "I don't know, I'll figure it out tomorrow morning."
Mom: "You will not. Go pick out an outfit and show me. I need to make sure it doesn't need to be ironed."

Ironed? I'm pretty sure my iron has wax on it from waxing my snowboard. Oh well, that means if she wants it ironed, she has to iron it herself. I went to go find clothes. I figure this will be pretty easy since I don't do much clothes shopping, so I won't have much stuff to pick from. That will make my decision easy. I find a shirt and skirt that look nice and put them on. Unfortunately, they're both black.

Me: "Mom, I'm going to be goth tomorrow."
Mom: *Looks at outfit* "Don't you have anything colorful?"

Apparently the death of my brother's college career doesn't count as a funeral. I decide to hold on to the skirt for now because I'm pretty sure that's the only one I have that actually fits me, and I go to look for a more colorful shirt. I find a tank top with spaghetti straps that I decide looks classy.

Me: "Look Mom! I'm classy!"
Mom: "Oh that looks nice! Turn around."
Me: *Turns around* "I am so classy right now! I'm wearing this!"
Mom: "No. I can see your tattoo. You're not wearing that."
Me: "Why? I look classy!"
Mom: "What does that even mean? You're not wearing that! Wear something that covers the tattoo."

Apparently my mom didn't realize that was part of the point of wanting to wear that shirt. I return to my closet and try on a bunch of shirts that I bought a long time ago. None of them fit and my shoulders are bursting out of all of them like I'm the Incredible Hulk.

Me: "Mom, nothing fits. I'm wearing that tank top."
Mom: "You are not. Let me see your wardrobe." *Looks at clothes. Pulls out a GoLite tech tee* "What's this?"
Me: "That's a running shirt that I decided looked presentable so I made it into a work shirt. I don't run in it unless I really need to do laundry though, so it's just a work shirt now."

And that's how I ended up wearing running clothes to my brother's graduation. There were no race logos on that shirt though (I double checked), so I think I was at least semi-presentable. And it didn't even need to be ironed!

Graduation!

2010-05-17T00:15:00.000-04:00

My brother's graduation was today. The speaker's speech was shorter than the speech at my graduation, it was a much smaller graduating class, and the graduates were hustled on and off stage much more quickly, so all in all, it was a much better commencement than mine. Or maybe it was that I had my phone with me for this one, and I was able to go online and pull up people's running logs, which is infinitely more exciting than listening to someone tell students to go off, seize the day, and grab life by the horns. (Is that a commencement speaker or a Dodge commercial, by the way?) The food at my graduation was much better though, but I'm not sure whether that's saying something good about the food at my graduation or something bad about the food at my brother's graduation. Anyway, I have a few comments, as always:

This picture belongs to whoever owns A Clockwork Orange, not me

1) The graduating class HATES graduation. It's long, boring, you have to wear a hot robe and stupid hat, there are a million flashbulbs going off in your face, you had to wake up early, you're missing your workout, and maybe you're even hung over. Not to mention, graduation means that college is over, you're leaving your friends, and now you have to deal with real world responsibility. Even the kids who are stoked to get out of there don't want to be there. Honestly, if they're so excited to get away from that school, do you think they want to sit around for a couple of hours with people they're sick of seeing and listen to academics talk about how valuable their ~~degree~~ education is?

2) Parents! Your child is graduating! Enjoy it! Years from now, when you're sitting in your rocker thinking back on the times you had with your son or daughter, you'll want to remember their graduation, not you desperately fighting a million other parents with cameras to try to get the best picture of junior. Graduation is for you, not your kid (as demonstrated in the first point). Don't ruin it on yourself by spending the entire time looking through a viewfinder and stressing about whether you got the right angle. There are professional photographers there who are standing in the perfect spot with a more expensive camera than yours. They don't care to see what's actually happening. They just want your money. And let's face it, you'll buy their pictures even if you do take your own pictures, because theirs will be better. So put your camera away and enjoy the day, because all you're going to get is a shot of your kid's back that's partially obscured by the person standing next to them anyway. And in the midst of fighting to get that picture, you're going to miss commencement itself. And while we're at it, your kid does not want a million pictures in front of classroom buildings, by random signs with the school's name on it, next to the abstract sculpture near the quad, or on the stairs of their freshman dorm. They don't want to remember some of those things (particularly those classroom buildings).
3) Guys, please wear long pants. I know it's May and it's hot, but do you have any idea how weird this looks? When every other guy is wearing pants and shoes, and all you can see poking out from the bottom of your robe is bare legs and sandals? Everyone else sporting that look is a girl, although hopefully their legs are less hairy. And if you're a cyclist guy standing next to a hippie girl, we're all going to be very confused. I like well defined man calves just as much as the next girl, but...this is just weird looking.

Teammates

2010-05-07T11:15:00.000-04:00

I've been part of organized school sports teams for 14 years. That's a lot of time to run into a lot of different people. However, I've noticed that there are certain types of people that keep popping up. I'll join a new team, and it's like, "Hey, I know you! Oh wait, no I don't. I just know someone who acts the same way."

Team Power!
Team Power is all about the team. All of her friends are on the team, she only dates guys on the men's team, all of her socializing is done with the team, and NO WAY CAN ONE OF MY TEAMMATES TALK TO THAT PERSON, THEY'RE NOT EVEN ON THE TEAM! Team Power's entire wardrobe is made up of team issued logo-wear that proudly displays the name of her family (they're not just a team, they're a family, and don't you forget it). Team Power is also at the forefront of any team functions, whether they're creating team cheers, setting up team meetings, or organizing team parties. Maybe Team Power really meant to join a sorority. Or maybe she isn't quite good enough to contribute to the team athletically, and decided this is the next best way. Or maybe she just really, really loves the team. Whatever the case, Team Power is the glue that binds the team together, whether or not the rest of her teammates want to be stuck together.

The Lone Wolf
The Lone Wolf is the opposite of Team Power. This loner wants nothing to do with the team. He doesn't attend any team social functions and goes out of his way to avoid any team building activities. During practice, he usually goes off to work out on his own, and during competitions, he finds a spot in the corner with no other people and listens to his iPod until it's time to compete. A lot of his teammates aren't really sure why Lone Wolf is even on the team (and even fewer know that he's even part of the roster).

Rebel Without a Cause
Rebel Without a Cause isn't to be confused with Lone Wolf. In contrast to Lone Wolf's apathy, Rebel actively states her disgust. Rather than skipping team functions, Rebel will try to get one or two other teammates to join her rebellion, citing the pointlessness of these team activities and claiming that she is above such childishness. Sometimes Rebel has a legitimate gripe. Sometimes Rebel read too much Ayn Rand. Sometimes Rebel doesn't even have a reason to hate on the team, but just likes the act of rebellion. And once in a while, Rebel actually likes the team, but can't show her soft side in fear that it will destroy her image. Don't tell her I said that though.

High School Holdout
We all know that freshman who hasn't bought into their new coach's program yet, the one who's terrified because it's different than what he did in high school. HS Holdout is the one who's constantly emailing his high school coach, sending logs and asking his old coach if his current training is alright or if he should be doing things differently. This is often a result of freshmen performing slightly worse than they had the year before. Obviously things like their body getting used to an increased training load or the adjustment to college have nothing to do with it.

Team Mother
Team Mother does everything in her power to take care of her team. She checks to see that they're not training too hard, she monitors their injuries, she makes sure they're eating right, and she keeps track of their classes and grades. If anyone needs to talk, she's there for them. She's pretty much their stand-in mother while they're away at college. However, generally mothers don't have to deal with 30 children all their own age, so no one's too surprised if they happen to find that Team Mother has gone deadbeat, and is passed out outside the gym with a handle of vodka.

Party Hardy
Work hard, party harder! Party Hardy is in it for the booze, women, and loud music. He may (or may not) be a hard worker, but when practice is done and the weekend comes around, he breaks out the liquor and gets the party started. Party Hardy's black book is just as long as his training log, and he's better known for his kegstand than his athletic performance. Yet despite all his partying, he always manages to show up at practice the next day, only slightly hungover and sort of ready to go.

The Cripple
The Cripple got injured early in her career. Then she came back too fast and got reinjured. The pattern continued, and no one can remember the last time Cripple actually competed. She still remembers though, and she dreams of reliving that glory, so she still goes to every practice and every competition, cross-trains for hours every day, and does everything the coach asks her to do, even if it pretty much means acting as manager. She still hangs out with the team, even though it's depressing for her to listen to them talk about their sport (which basically dominates 90% of the conversation), while all she has to share is that yet another doctor can't figure out what's wrong with her and that she doesn't feel the effects of Ibuprofin anymore. Always remember, Cripple, the team couldn't function without you. They'd be short a lap counter.

Nth Year Senior
No one's sure whether Nth Year Senior graduated and never left, dropped out and still spends all his time on campus, or is still working on his degree. No one remembers his real senior year or when he was supposed to graduate. All anyone knows is he's pretty much a mainstay now. He sometimes comes to practice and occasionally competes, though his eligibility is long gone, so he has to enter unattached. He mostly just sticks around for the social scene, and never misses a team party. Freshman girls love the older men, right?

Unenthusiastic Scholarship
Unenthusiastic scholarship doesn't want to be on the team. She doesn't like the sport, she doesn't like the team, she has a million other things she'd rather be doing, and maybe she's even on the perpetual injury list, but her coach threatens to take away her scholarship if she quits. So instead, she grudgingly goes through the motions. Whenever her coach confronts her, she pretends to listen, but is really thinking about how she's going to get out of tomorrow's practice. Unenthusiastic Scholarship will celebrate at graduation, not because of what she's accomplished, but because she'll never have to play that godforsaken sport again.

The Star
Whatever the reason, the coach loves the Star. Sometimes a Star is developed under the coach, and for that reason, he will be loved. Sometimes a Star was born during recruiting, and even if that athlete never materializes, he will continue to be the star. And sometimes there's no real rhyme or reason that a Star comes about. The Star can do no wrong, and he is the son (Or the sun? He is a star, after all) that the coach never had. Good thing the coach doesn't hear his Star talk about him.
Solo Wonder
Solo Wonder isn't even on the team. The coach may have tried to recruit her in the past, yet failed for whatever reason, whether it's conflict of interests, personal issues, just the wrong distance, or something completely different. However, the team still catches glimpses of her, since she's the only person not on the team who they can't seem to outrun. Sometimes, in the dead of winter, the team will see footprints in the snow on their 15 mile route, evidence that there's someone else on campus who thinks running in subzero temperatures is a good idea.

Don't take candy from strange computers

2010-05-04T17:27:00.001-04:00

So I'm sure you're wondering why I have a blog named "VO2 h4x!!!" yet have the world's most boring layout. Well, it's because computers are evil. Computers are pretty sneaky creatures, and start out by luring you in with pretty graphics and promises of happiness.
Okay, so I guess that's a little sketchy, but to a naive, trusting, young girl who didn't see the daemon lurking within, well, I fell for its trap.

We were friends for a while. In the beginning, I couldn't understand how anyone could possibly hate computers. We played video games together, I learned its language, I wrote it programs, the works. Soon though, patterns of abuse started for form. It kept me up at night, rejecting the programs I so painstakingly wrote for it. It verbally abused me, snarling insults like "SYNTAX ERROR" or "SEGMENTATION FAULT." If it didn't get its way, it would tell me that Windows (surely the other woman in its life) has encountered a problem and now it needed to close. Sometimes it would even just crash and give me the silent treatment. My "friend" had transformed into a monster.
I saw no choice but to break off the relationship. Unfortunately, I soon found I had learned to rely on my computer, and I still needed it. So I let it back into my life, but I have to be careful not to give it too much, lest I fall back into its evil clutches. So until I'm sure that I'm safe from the computer, and that I dominate it and not the other way around, the boring template remains.

Marathon weekend

2010-05-04T00:04:00.000-04:00

I spend a lot of time running. Unfortunately, that pretty much automatically makes me an awkward distance runner, so sometimes a well-meaning non-runner tries to engage me in conversation by asking about running. It usually goes something like this:

Non-runner: "So, have you run many marathons?"
Me: "No, I was a steeplechaser and 5K runner in college. I did a couple halves after that though."
Non-runner: "Well have you run Boston?"
Me: "Nope, you need a qualifying time for Boston, which means you have to run another marathon first."
Non-runner: "Well if you don't run marathons, what do you do? My friend (insert name here) is a serious runner. She's done lots of marathons. She runs almost every day and the other day she ran 20 miles all at once! She must run like 40 miles a week! How many miles do you run?"

I usually try to change the subject right around there before I get myself in trouble, because they already think 40 miles per week is nigh impossible, and I'm not sure whether continuing the conversation would make me look like I'm bragging or lying or both. However, after this weekend, I will no longer have to explain to people why I haven't run a marathon anymore! I'll just have to explain why I haven't run Boston, but I digress. I'm won't bore you with details about the race itself, because that's what Athleticore is for. Instead, I'll (hopefully) amuse you with the rest of my weekend!

My marathon adventure began at the race expo (assuming we don't count the drive down, which isn't a very good story). Most medium to large races have race expos in the days leading up to the race, so people can pick up their race packet early to minimize race day chaos and to give vendors a chance to sell stuff. The race packet usually includes your race number and timing chip, a shirt or whatever else they decide to give you, and advertisements and schwag from sponsors. My friend Molly, who had a long workout this weekend and decided to use the half for motivation, dug into her packet and pulled out this:
Molly: "What is this? It looks like a dildo."
Me: "I don't know?" *Pulls mine out of my packet* "I think it's a flashlight."
Molly: *Presses the button. On the second press, the flashlight handle begins to blink* "It lights up. It's a dildo."

I'm not sure what this particular sponsor thinks we're doing with our Body Glide, but they gave us a a very phallic flashlight. And there's a whistle on the dildo end. Some industrial designer had a lot of fun with that one. Apparently the sight of two girls poking each other with phallic objects (not that we'd do anything like that) attracts the attention of men, because the guy from the P90X booth ran up to us and asked if we needed a coach. However, Molly "refuses to be coached by someone whose body isn't as good as [hers]," so she scared him off with some weekly mileage totals.

The rest of the night was mostly uneventful (or at least not funny to anyone who isn't Molly or me), but the next morning was interesting. We decided to set our alarms for 4:44, which we decided was a more lucky number than 4:45. The gun wasn't until 6:30, and since I didn't need much more than a mile warmup for marathon pace and Molly was only doing a workout anyway, we figured that would give us plenty of time to eat breakfast and drive 9 miles to the start.

Wrong.

About a mile from the exit, we hit bumper to bumper standstill traffic. It's like 5:20 though, so we have plenty of time. We move a tiny bit. Now it's 5:45. I throw the car in park while I slip on my racing flats (and in my stress, forget to put BodyGlide on my arches). The car in front of us keeps letting in other cars (the annoying people who ride the left lane as long as they can). Molly tries to call Kyle to see if we can take a different exit. No answer. She starts swearing at her phone, going on about how he's doing the marathon relay so he has nothing to do until his leg at around 8:00, then looks at the clock and announces we're not going to make the start. At 6:10, we get to the exit, and slowly start making our way down to the light, but there's still around a mile of traffic to get through. We get to the light itself at 6:18, make the turn, and see it. It's a construction site! With a dirt road! And a big mound of dirt that's begging to be parked next to! I turn to Molly.

Me: "You're going to win today, right?"
Molly: "I hope so."
Me: "Good. Between the two of us, we have to make enough money to get my car back if I get towed."

I pull onto the road, and the two of us burst out of the car and start running towards the start. We line up just as they're starting the national anthem. Nicely timed warmup actually, much better than we did at our last race, where we both stood at the start for 20 minutes freezing our butts off. Not that we were going to freeze our butts off today, since it was already 70 something degrees and humid at the start.

So the race goes off, it gets hot, Molly gets mistaken for Shalane Flanagan, I realize my ideal marathon pace is only my ideal marathon pace when it's not 85 degrees, yada yada, this isn't very interesting for anyone but me, and it's all up on Athleticore anyway.

After the race, someone asked me if I think I'll ever run another marathon. I told them I have to forget how this one felt first. My short term memory must be pretty bad though, because in the shower that evening, I decided that the torn off blisters on my feet and the chafing from my gel packets and from the drawstring on my shorts was more painful than the race itself, and I'm pretty sure that's not right.

For the record, I did not get towed, and I later learned that a lot of people ended up parking similarly since there wasn't actually enough parking space to accommodate all of the cars.

So I've run a marathon now. Now I just have to run faster. And think of a response to the people who want to know why I haven't run Boston.

Introduction

2010-05-03T23:59:00.001-04:00

Julie asked me if I had a blog. I told her I had a training log. She didn't respond. I guess that was a bad answer.

VO2 h4x!!! is a stupid name. I'll change it later when I'm in a more creative mood.