The Mileage Awakens

It’s late at night now, and I am still recovering from this week’s 18 mile run. As soon as I got back to my apartment, I went straight to bed and slept for several hours. By the time I woke up it was already 5 pm and dark outside (thanks a lot daylight savings time). I had to work to do but I was totally unmotivated to do anything other than rest. You all know that I have trained for the Los Angeles Marathon for several years now, but all that experience doesn’t keep me from feeling completely winded after pounding the asphalt, and at times the pavement, through Burbank and Glendale.

For once I got to Griffith Park before any announcements by the coaches were made, and that felt like a tremendous accomplishment considering how I like to sleep in most days. Coach JC told us once again to take it easy on this run and reminded us that this was not about being fast but completing all 18 miles. Knowing the impact that all these miles were going to have on us, he made it clear that if we wanted to do maintenance walks or other cardio exercises instead of runs through next week that would be fine. Having been through this marathon training before, I came into this particular run with an alarming amount of confidence. I’ve ran 18 miles before, but I seem to have forgotten the effect that has had on my body. I treated this run as if it was no big deal, but it sure was.

This run comes just after “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” finally arrived in theaters everywhere, so us runners tried to talk about it without spoiling any important plot details. This proved to be even more challenging than the run itself as those of us who had seen the most anticipated movie of 2015 were ever so eager to talk about its most pivotal moments in extensive detail. As for myself, I was curious what people thought about Jar Jar Binks’ sex scene with an ewok as it raised a few eyebrows… Okay, that didn’t happen in “The Force Awakens.” I just wanted to make sure I had your attention.

For the record I did do my two maintenance runs before this 18 miler, so I was certain that I would keep up with my fellow pace group runners throughout this run. For the most part I did, but just like in any LA Marathon I eventually got separated from the rest of the pack and found myself once again experiencing the loneliness of the long distance Kenber. Fortunately I did have a map of the course, one that I did not lose for once, so I wasn’t about to go in the wrong direction. Have I done that in the past? I’ll plead the fifth on that.

We were not inundated with hills even though we had to run part way up Grandview Avenue, but we did have to watch ourselves more than usual as we ran downhill more often than not. I did my best to run on the asphalt as much as possible, but there were times I was forced to run on concrete which did not do my joints much in the way of favors. During the LA Marathon we spend most of our time running on asphalt, so it’s important that we run on it now so that we can fully prepare for what’s coming up in two months.

Despite the fact that I ran by my lonesome, I found myself running at just the right pace even as the temperature rose from a frigid 49 degrees to a temperature that just had to be unseasonably warm. I had more layers of clothing on than usual, but it was no surprise that I shed some of them way before the halfway point.

I did have a few packs of gel blocks handy in case I needed more of an energy boost, and it didn’t take long for me to need them as I could tell when I was low on fuel. Coach JC told us that this 18 mile run would be the first one in our training that would have us hitting “the wall.” Now hitting the wall means we’ve reached the point where we feel like we can’t go any further and we go into some sort of collapse. Getting up from there and forcing yourself to get to the finish line back can be a mighty challenge, and I’ve been there several times before.

Towards the end I found myself slowing to a crawl, and I knew my fellow pace group members, who had long since left me in their vapor trails, would not be waiting for me back at Griffith Park. Not that I’m holding it against them; I wouldn’t even wait for me. Just as I started running again, I found myself losing speed to where my feet were telling me, “Fuck this!”

But crossed the finish line I did, and the coaches were on hand to greet with applause and endless praise. As you can imagine, I was one sore mother fucker and eager to stretch my legs for all of eternity. What was really bothering me, however, was my back which felt a lot more sore than usual. 

Throughout this run it felt like I was slouching a lot and I kept trying to stay in the present moment so that I could keep my back straight, but my mind always wanders. If anyone knows any good back exercises or stretches, please let me know.

So, I survived another 18 mile run and now have a 10 mile recovery run to look forward to next week. I will be out of town for Christmas but I do plan on continuing my marathon training. In the meantime I got a lot of resting to do. Seriously, I was too tired to even get a bag of ice from Ralphs Supermarket so that I could have an ice bath. I got to the store and even then I was ready to pass out.

FUNDRAISING UPDATE: To date I haveraised $697 for AIDS Project Los Angeles, and that puts me at 63% towards mygoal of $1,100. I have also gotten an extension, so now my deadline will be inmid-January. There’s still plenty of time to make a donation, but also lesstime to make one before the end of 2015. Keep in mind, these donations are taxdeductible so you can stick it to the IRS with pleasure. Click here to see howyou can help.

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Kenber

For once it was a cool October morning as I made my way to Griffith Park for another Team to End AIDS run, getting my boogie on to Charles Bernstein’s unforgettable score to “A Nightmare on Elm Street” (I just got the box set from VareseSarabande). But as soon as I arrived, Coach Jennifer informed us that it was not going to stay that way. Even as autumn continues to show its true colors, summer keeps butting its head in any chance it gets. What is this, Hawaii?

Coach JC started off with his usual list of important things to remember, and then hegot a buttercream pie made out of pickle juice and relish smashed in his face. This was part of his challenge to get those runners who haven’t started fundraising yet to get their first donation by the end of the week. Those runners did come through for APLA and Coach JC, so he took one for the team. This is very significant as Coach JC loves pickles as much as I loved “TheHuman Centipede 3,” which is to say not at all. We’ve seen him struggle to eat one of those peanut butter and pickle covered Ritz crackers in the past and it didn’t work out the way we hoped, so it was understandable that he came to this challenge with a lot of hesitation and anxiety. But never let it be said that he doesn’t give everything he has to support APLA. He hates pickles and yet he faces them head on.

Our 10 mile run took us out of Griffith Park and onto the streets of Burbank; the same streets I have run up and down several times before. As usual, I found myself trailing my fellow pace group runners despite my best efforts to keep up with them. Once they faded from my sight, the movie “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner” started playing in my head. It’s a movie from 1962 which starred Tom Courtenay of “Billy Liar” fame as Colin Smith, a rebellious youth who is sent to a reformatory school after robbing a bakery. While there, he manages to gain a lot of positive attention thanks to his prowess as a long distance runner. The school’s Governor comes to believe that Colin’s running could be his salvation to a better life, and he begins to cultivate the young man’s talent so that he can compete in the school’s inaugural track meet against a rival school. The Governor wants to prove to everyone that he can turn these boys’ lives around to where they can be functioning members of society, but Colin eventually uses his love of running to show what he considers his ultimate act of freedom.

My dad gave me a VHS copy of this movie years ago, and it took me way too long to appreciate its ending (which I won’t reveal here) and what it really meant. As a result, I’ve been meaning to revisit it for a long time. While running up and down the streets of Burbank, I was reminded of Courtenay’s opening voiceover in which discusses how running is his family’s way of dealing with the world’s troubles as well as escaping from the police. But he also adds that the runner is always alone and cut off from spectators, left to deal with life on his own. I can certainly relate to that as running continually leaves me to deal with the craziness that goes on in my head as I am forced to deal with emotional scars from the past that I continue to relive and beat down on a regular basis. As much as I want to connect with others while running, there’s always something keeping me separate from the world around me.

Anyway, I didn’t have a map of the course on me so I just kept following the signs the Team to End AIDS coaches left out for us and made a left turn at a park we typically pass by. As I continued down the street, I started to wonder why I didn’t see my fellow pace group runners coming in the opposite direction. Surely they reached the turnaround point by now, I thought. Fortunately I had my Runkeeper app running on my phone, so once it read 5 miles I turned around and went back the way I came.

Now usually when something like this happens, I go into a fury over how big an idiot I am and start doing something along the lines of self-flagellation. But even though I went left when I should have gone straight, I knew that I was still going to get my full 10 miles in, so this run was in no way an unmitigated failure. It was salvageable, and realizing that made me feel good and not like some IQ challenged dummy.

Of course, once I got back to the T2EA stationed rest stops, everybody wondered where I had gone. Coach JC was on the verge of putting together a search team to keep me from running all the way to Van Nuys. Basically I told everyone that I had decided to take the scenic route. That seemed to be a reasonable excuse.

I had a whole pack of black cherry energy blocks which served to power me up when I needed a boost. Usually I take one every 45 minutes, but I found that was never enough. When I had two instead of one, I suddenly felt like Popeye after he ate a can of spinach. Yeah, I could take on Bluto… in a cartoon that is.

As expected, the temperature did rise to the 80’s but that did not take away from my determination to finish this run. A special thanks goes out to all the volunteers and the Boliver family not just for providing us with all the water and Gatorade and all the other treats a runner needs, but for keeping the water and Gatorade so wonderfully cold. The cooler the liquids are, the more refreshing they are. Having a cold drink while dealing with such unseasonably warm weather feels like a salvation of some kind, and it makes you feel grateful to be alive. Okay I might be pushing it a bit there, but you get what I mean.

While taking a shortcut on my way back to Griffith Park, I noticed a sign attached to a tree which said that the West Nile virus has been confirmed in this area. According to the CDC, this virus can cause febrile illness, encephalitis (inflammation of the brain) or meningitis (inflammation of the lining of the brain and spinal cord). It is spread by infected mosquitoes, so you can sure as hell bet that I will be investing in a lot of insect repellent for future runs. There’s no excuse for not being properly prepared. No mosquito is gonna take me down!

I did manage to cross the finish line and met with Coach JC who wanted to know how many miles I inadvertently added to my 10 mile run. According to my Runkeeper app, I ran almost 10.5 miles so I didn’t go too far off the reservation and still managed to go the distance even while getting lost.

For the most part I felt really good about this run, and I don’t just chalk that up to the energy blocks. I’m really starting to hit my stride and can feel all this training paying off in a lot of different ways. I just need to keep up with the maintenance runs during the week. I started to treat a number of activities like maintenance runs such as when I had to move my car which was parked several blocks away from my apartment or when I took a package to the post office to be mailed. Everything is a workout these days it seems.

Next week is Halloween which means we will be having a costume run. Hopefully I will find an affordable costume worth wearing. If not, I can always dress up in my Jason Voorhees costume or just tell everyone that I’m a homicidal maniac; they look like everybody else.

FUNDRAISING UPDATE: I have now raised$580 to date, and that puts me at 53% towards my fundraising goal of $1,100 forAPLA. Let’s see if we can get to 75% before the end of October. Click here tofind out how you can make a tax deductible donation.

All She Wants To Do Is Beat The Heat!

We’ve been running 5 miles these past few weeks, but this week we Team to End AIDS runners headed into new territory – we ran 6 miles. That extra mile is not a huge jump, but it’s worth noting because we are still dealing with the scorching summer weather which wreaked havoc on us Los Angelinos far more than usual. Yes, fall has arrived, but you wouldn’t know it from this weather. Summer always extends its stay in Southern California, sometimes all the way into November, and many of us have had more than enough of the heat (not that Mother Nature gives a shit).

I didn’t get much sleep the night before as I went to The Forum in Inglewood to see Don Henley in concert. A K-Earth 101 employee was kind enough to give me a couple of complimentary tickets to the concert, and I went with the hope that he would perform “Dirty Laundry” live as it is one of the most timeless songs ever composed, and he did. He also dedicated a song to Donald Trump entitled “Too Much Pride” and then followed it up with what he called the sequel to that song, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” I was about to exit the concert early as I wanted to escape The Forum parking lot in less than an hour, but I couldn’t resist Henley performing one of my favorite songs of his, “All She Wants to Do is Dance.” That’s a seriously bitchin’ song even after all these years.

Despite me not getting a full eight hours of sleep, assuming such a thing is possible in this day and age, I managed to drag myself to Griffith Park in time for Coach JC’s opening lecture. This also marked the first time in this year’s training where we did warm up stretches. There’s always this ongoing debate about whether or not we should do stretches before a run. One school of thought is that stretching before a run may result in us pulling a muscle or two which would be quite painful to put it mildly, and the other school says that it is imperative that we do stretch before a run because our bodies will hates us later in life if we don’t. Whatever school of thought you belong to, the one thing we all agree on is that we do need to stretch after our run. To not do so would be, as Arnold Schwarzenegger would say, a “big mistake.”

I got off to a good start, but I once again found myself trailing the rest of my pace group which frustrated me. I kept saying to myself that I’m faster than this. Perhaps this is my legs way of saying that they refuse to go any wider for me. My knees have all but given up trying to reason with me, so now both my legs as a whole have essentially told me to go fuck myself. They want me to jog more than run, and I’m hoping I can convince them to do the opposite in the future.

Well, despite the ridiculous heat that still follows us into the holiday season, I did make it across the finish line even though I lagged behind my fellow runners by quite a distance. For the record, I did do my maintenance runs during the week, but now I feel like I need to do more cardio exercises in addition to those runs. I want to come out of these T2EA runs feeling like a god… Okay, that’s obviously exaggerating a little. I just want to come out of them feeling like I accomplished something truly fulfilling. This is not to say that I didn’t this particular morning, but I came out of it feeling like I could have done better. Then again, I have a reputation for being too hard on myself.

Next week we will be running 8 miles, so I better be sure to bring my A game to it. Regardless of my misgivings over this run, I still believe that I have nowhere to go from here but up.

FUNDRAISING UPDATE: I have now raised$480, and that puts me at 44% towards my fundraising goal of $1,100. All themoney goes towards AIDS Project Los Angeles which has done an incredible job of assisting those afflicted with this terrible disease, and your donation will be tax-deductible which will give you the great satisfaction of sticking it to the man. Click here to learn how you can make a donation.

Faster than a 13 minute pace group?

Okay, in my last marathon blog I said I was going to do cardio exercises all throughout the week. I even packed up my gym bag in a way I haven’t in the last few months, determined to make myself go through with this important and much-needed mission. Well, things did not go as planned as I ended up being a victim of check fraud which depleted my checking and savings accounts, and I had to spend a ridiculous number of hours getting an oil change, getting my rear brakes replaced and a new tire put on my car. It also didn’t help that the guys at the tire shop kind of forgot about me and my car for at least an hour.

Oh yeah, Ben Stein was also at the tire shop too if anyone is interested to know…

Anyway, this week’s Team to End AIDS run was the “Bring a Friend” run, so naturally I brought Bubba Eeyore with me. This is the same Eeyore that accompanied me on my 23 mile run when I trained for the LA Marathon in 2014. Hey, they said bring a friend!

Bubba ended up staying behind to guard the car keys of those running the Honolulu Marathon to where Coach Jennifer was convinced  he wanted to come to Honolulu as well (I’m sure he would jump at the chance).

We had a choice today of running either three or five miles. I decided to run five. Since all my fellow marathon buddies were running in the 12 minute pace group, I stuck with them. I guess there are times where I can’t help but be a follower. To say that it was relatively cool that morning in Griffith Park would have people staring right at you with their jaws dropped as if to say, “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!!” Let’s just say that we’re all really glad to run early in the morning. It sucks not to sleep in on a Saturday, but at least we got the run out of the way before the temperature reached an unbearable level.

This run took us outside of Griffith Park and into parts of Burbank many of us have traversed before. It also allowed us to catch up with the Bolivars who were at a local park serving us with all the treats any runner could ever need any day (especially on one as hot as this). And of course, this marked the return of those peanut butter pickle covered Ritz crackers which remain as addictive as ever. Coach JC may be repelled by them, but for everyone else they are insatiable.

Having trained time and time again for the LA Marathon, I usually come into a run like this saying, “It’s only five miles.” It drives those who don’t run nuts, but it makes perfect sense to those who have long since been bitten by the running bug. But this run definitely felt longer than usual, and it wasn’t just because of the heat. Having missed my opportunity to do those two maintenance runs during the week, the strain showed to where I didn’t even try to hide it. I didn’t falter or give up, but my form was definitely off this time around. I need to keep up with training during the week and to get myself to doing all those cardio exercises I promised myself I would do throughout the week. Also, a decrease in junk food would be helpful too (don’t ask why).

As the group made their way back to where we started, I had to stop at one point to “drop the kids in the pool.” I thought I could make it to the end before having to go to the bathroom, but then I remembered that there’s not much in the way of portable toilets near our running site. I wasn’t sure if anyone heard I was going to give a shit and not wait up for me… I know the correct term is to “take a shit,” but who really takes one? You don’t take a shit, you give a shit. Granted, the term “giving a shit” may have multiple meanings, but when it comes to going to the bathroom that term makes a hell of a lot more sense.

Thankfully I didn’t have to spend too long at the bathroom and the finish line was not all that far away. As I made my way back to Griffith Park, Winston (who ran the 2015 LA Marathon with me) came running my way to make sure I was okay. I was fine, and even he admitted there was no way I would drop dead during a run.

As we approached the finish line, it was getting hotter and hotter. When you literally yards away from the end, the run begins to feel a lot longer than it has any right to. I always kind of resent that about running in general. Maybe it’s because I keep getting Vietnam-like flashbacks of when I ran cross country in high school and feeling like I would die a painful death before I even crossed the finish line. Either that or the sun was shining so brightly that I couldn’t stop thinking about that cup of ice cold water waiting for me  at the end and of how I wanted it sooner than later. This was especially the case when we did runs in 80 degree heat without any shade.

Well, considering that I am writing about this run, it’s safe to say that I completed it and am still breathing. Coach JC, however, was concerned that me and several others were in the wrong pace group. He said he understood how runners always try to push themselves to another level, but considering the time we finished in, it made more sense for us to run in the 13 minute pace group. This should show you just how much JC is looking out for us as a marathon coach. Do not doubt his dedication to making sure we cross the finish line next February.

So hopefully I will get those maintenance runs and cardio exercises in during the week week as I have a lot of catching up to do. Not to worry though. We are still in the beginning stages of marathon training and have plenty of time to improve.

FUNDRAISING UPDATE: Hi folks! I amstill at 9% towards my fundraising goal of $1,100 for AIDS Project Los Angeles.I am challenging 40 people out there to donate just $5 to my efforts and tohelp those afflicted by this terrible disease. Trust me, every little bithelps! Click here to learn how you can help.