Archive for December, 2009

Interesting last couple of days, though not in the scary interesting way that seems to have plagued me recently.

I’ll get the running stuff out of the way quickly, since it’s uneventful and will be for the rest of the month.  Like everywhere else in the US, it was a cold and windy week.  Mon-Sat, I ran 7,9,11,7,off,11 and tomorrow will be 8, giving me 53mi for the week.

Now, on to the subject of Life:  I’ve been offered first dibs on the upstairs apartment.

I thought about it a lot.  On one hand, the idea of living in their space was somewhat disgusting to me and would likely require burning 3 tons of sage to dispel the negativity they’ve left behind.  Additionally, I’d be paranoid about walking around for whomever moves into this place, even with carpet, since Real Estate lady told me you can hear me in the unoccupied apt below (no surprise as I hear it myself when I walk).

On the other hand: it’s the top floor, so I wouldn’t have to deal with another tenant above my head.  Moreover, talk about your ultimate show of one-upmanship, I’d have loved their friends in the apartment below to report that I’d moved into their place, that would have been deliciously fabulous.

But then Real Estate lady told me they want more money for it and when I did the math, it wasn’t worth it, I could get a better place without the crappy floors and even crappier memories.  So now I have a goal for 2010 that doesn’t involve running:

I’m going to increase my income by $500/mo and move into a doorman building when my lease expires. There, I said it.  I’m announcing this like a cigarette smoker announces their intentions to quit, so they have an extra layer of guilt should they not succeed, though in my case, should I not succeed I’ll be stuck in this hellhole.  If that’s not motivating, what is?

The great thing is, it’s completely within my power to make more dough.  My web businesses are beautifully scaleable: do more=make more, so I simply have to do more.  The problem has always been that when it comes to money, I am incredibly lazy, I make just enough for what I need and then I sit on my ass doing nothing.  It’s fun!  Or was, anyway.  Now what would be fun is living in a solid place with an elevator and someone at the desk to accept UPS packages.

I measured my apartment yesterday and it’s under 400 sq ft (my, that was embarrassing to admit).  Turns out those doorman apartments are almost $1 less per sq foot than what I’m paying for this dump!  And they have dishwashers, washing machines & dryers in the apartments, some have swimming pools and gyms, free buses to downtown, the utilities are mostly included…oh god, I’m salivating just thinking about it.

I wouldn’t even need $500/mo to cover the difference, $300 would do it, but because I want to train myself to embrace excess, $500 sounds like a good start.  So here’s to More in 2010 – may it bring more money, more happiness and a whole lot less freaky shit.

An update to the last post.  I heard somebody in the apt above and I was so friggin’ mad about them having the last word that I opened the door to find the girlfriend there.  I stared, she asked “Is there something I can help you with?”…she looked worried.  We had words.  She kept calling me a drug addict and that I burn incense (never) and still smoke pot (not since Sept. 27).  It’s obviously the only bad thing they can think to say about me, and a lie.

Next thing you know, her boyfriend is knocking on my door, so I pretend I’m on the phone, I laugh and repeat stuff he’s saying like I’m talking to a friend about it, I also say I’m going to call the cops.  He has the nerve to say “I’m only doing what you did to me.”

WTF?????

They left but not before ringing the buzzer for 5 minutes, so I’ve disconnected it since I imagine they’ll try that again.  I’ve put a call in with the Realtor lady to see why they still have keys and tell her what happened.  I really hate that their friends still live below me, that could be bad.

Yes, LA Runner, in answer to your comment on the previous post, I did cry and I am scared.

Edit: it’s 30 minutes later, I’m not shaking anymore and will not be scared by this.  “I’m only doing what you did to me” is not the phrase of a dangerous person, just a total idiot.

Wow.  I wrote an entire post about my neighbors finally moving out and was going to post it after I returned from my run, but when I opened the door to leave, I saw two notes stuck on my door which required a full blog rewrite.

Because I have a good amount of new readers (a failed marathon will do that for a blogger), here’s the background:

I moved into this apartment at the beginning of September.  For an entire month, I lived with my upstairs neighbor waking me up every morning.  The ceiling creaks horribly and I hear each and every footfall, plus the guy part of the couple is especially heavy-heeled and is awake at all hours of the night.

So I finally got my gumption up one morning, knocked on their door and spoke to the girlfriend, super apologetically, because it can’t be fun to have someone make a complaint.  I asked if he could just be a bit more mindful in the mornings so I could sleep past 6am.

The girl was pretty nice, said it was her boyfriend and that she’d talk to him.   Also, that I should knock on her door if it happens again, I said it’s daily, but thank you.  And for the next few days, I got sleep!  When I saw the boyfriend on the stairs I smiled hugely at him and said, “I love you! Thank you!” he laughed and that was that.

Until the next week, at 3:30am, he was walking back and forth over where my bed is and running the garbage disposal, making all sorts of noise.  But I’m not a big one on confrontation, so instead of knocking on the door the next morning, I wrote a simple note and slid it under their door.  A couple hours later as the boyfriend leaves, he slides it back under my door with his addition in pink.

What happened next is here. (sorry Nick to bring this up again)

After that, I avoided them and haven’t laid eyes on either one since, though I was woken often and started taking melatonin to get some semblance of solid sleep.  Still, every day I’d hear them clomp back and forth above my head and harbor exorbitant amounts of resentment.  It’s no small thing to feel your life is steered by someone else, to dread hearing them enter the building, to feel you have enemies, to miss something as mundane as the patter of rain putting you to sleep because you have to wear earplugs, which still doesn’t cancel out the sounds from above.

So anyway, this weekend was the big moveout.  It started Saturday night when we all got to bed at 2am (remember, I’m on their clock).  At 4am, we all got up so they could disassemble the remaining furniture with their power drill.   Attempting to go back to sleep was futile, so I got up and calmed myself by saying “they’re leaving now, they’re leaving now, they’re…”    That lasted about an hour until I couldn’t hold it in any longer.  I started slamming kitchen cabinet doors and yelled towards the ceiling “Fuckwads!”  It actually did make me feel better.  At 8am, I saw the moving truck and almost peed my pants with giddiness.

That night I slept like a baby, got 8 solid hours.  It was also the first time in 3 months where I didn’t wear earplugs.  I would have slept longer but the assholes returned in the morning to get more stuff.  I was cool with that knowing it was finally coming to an end.  Almost.

Wouldn’t you know, they came back to the apartment at 1:30am last night and tromped about for the next 2 hours, so I got back to sleep at around 3:30.

One thing you have to know is that throughout these last few months, I thought it might be me overreacting, that I’d built this into something bigger than it was because one of my mother’s main crazy “things” was that she was a highly paranoid person.  This whole bad scene was making me wonder if I was, indeed, becoming genuinely paranoid.

But no, today I was vindicated.   These were stuck to my door.

The “addict” part has to do with our fight in the hallway when they ganged up on me.  The guy said he had to smell my pot (I would blow it out the window, ironically not to bother anyone with it) to which I apologized profusely and said I wish he’d of knocked on my door and told me, I would have happily gone outside to do it.  But this was all moot anyway, because I’d already quit 2 weeks previously and told him so (though the downstairs bitch neighbor insisted I was lying ).  What a goat fuck.

So anyway, when I saw this on my door today, it was a release beyond my wildest dreams.  I hadn’t been angry for no reason, it wasn’t imaginary that I had enemies, they were real.  And now I’m free.

I saw the notes, laughed out loud, brought them inside, then went for my run.  For once in months, I didn’t need or want a warm-up mile, I just went. 7 miles @ 7:53.

Brighter days are ahead – of this, I am certain.

I really don’t enjoy pain, it’s not something I search out, but perhaps I have a closeted need for self-flagellation because I sure kicked my ass painfully yesterday.

The week was going pretty well, I had a couple of fun runs on Wed and Thurs, feeling all recovered and pretty peppy.  Looking at the calendar, I was eyeing a 5k on the 19th and even figured out a little schedule with 4 quality days between now and then; one this week, then a tempo and speed next week and a speed session that following Tuesday, the week of the race.  Sounded like a good plan for ending the year with a PR.

So yesterday, I decided to do some 800s (1/2 miles actually), 6 of them @6:30 w/90sec recoveries.  What a nice change it’d be to do shorter intervals again and it would get me back to seeing what 5K pace is supposed to feel like.

Worst fucking idea ever.

It was the hardest speed session I’ve ever had – the first 3 reps averaged 6:40, I just could not go faster.  By the 4th, I’d basically quit with a 6:55, the 5th was a laggardly 7:08 and I bagged the 6th completely.  Never had such a bad session.

I get home and look at my logs, noting that back in April, I did this exact workout perfectly and with a lower HR.  Anyone within 5 miles of me would have now begun to hear the thwack, thwack of me caning myself full-on. “Oh no I’m regressing, something’s not right here…”

Luckily, I have my Sub 3:20 thread friends who assured me that I was a complete dodo for even attempting such a workout so soon after a marathon.  Then today, my blogging friend Joe Garland confirmed this by sharing his own recovery rule handed down from a 2:14 marathoner friend:  no hard running for 26 days after a marathon.  Thus, a miserable attempt at 5k pace only 12 days out was no surprise to anyone but me.

In my own misguided defense, I thought I could handle it because I didn’t actually run the whole of Philly (having walked probably 3.5 miles worth) and my legs were feeling normal already. But The Body, she is a complicated machine, and legs that feel fine don’t tell the full story.

So forget the 5k, I don’t want to risk a bad race.  I just wish I wasn’t so impatient with myself!  I need to trust that running well takes time and experience and that I can’t push it out like a hard turd just because I want it all NOW!  This is a learning process that requires discovering and respecting limitations, even if I like to pretend I don’t have any.

So…Limits, meet Flo, Flo, these are your limits – now put the cane away.  Masochism is overrated anyway.

And this concludes lesson #46.2 of Know Thy Runner Self.   Perhaps a safe word won’t be necessary, after all.  Thwack. I stand corrected.

Just a quickie to let you all know I added 9 new designs to The Gifted Runner today, so go check ‘em out.  Might be worth a snicker or two.

Also, I’ve been wanting to add a customer photo page to the site, so if you own a Gifted Runner shirt or other Gifted Runner item, email me (email address is on the Customer service page of the shop) with a photo of you wearing it or holding it (for the non-shirt items) and I’ll post it for the world to see.  Thanks!

An uneventful few days but lots of thinking going on.  First, I’ll give a catch-up on the running scene.

I recovered just fine, the calf twinge went away by keeping the mileage in check and now I’m back to my battle axe self.  Runs went: 8 Sat, 9 Sun and 6 on Mon.  The 6 was pretty fun because I never run that short, aside from tapering, so I was able to pick up the pace a bit.

Yesterday, in my quest to dial back before the next marathon cycle (can’t believe it starts in 4 weeks!) I took a rest day.  I figure I’ll take one rest day/week through December, then back to 7 days/week with the rare day off.

Now for some fun.  Exactly a year ago someone posted a thread on MRT asking everyone what their goals for 2009 were and it was bumped back up a couple days ago.  I had completely forgotten ever writing these goals, so what a trip it was seeing them again and comparing how it all panned out:

1. Race more
I did, but only by one race.
2. sub 3:38 Fall marathon on a non-asterisk course.
Even with a miserably long bonk, I managed to surpass my if-everything-goes-right-dream-goal by 5 minutes. Talk about putting things in perspective.
3. Low 21:xx 5K
In June I got 20:25 which I might test again in a couple weeks.
4. Keep around 50mpw avg. but enjoy adding more in the summer to achieve #2 (enjoyment necessary)
Did this to a T, averaged 70s+ by Fall and had a great time doing it.
5. No injuries
I was introduced to my IT Band this year, so I can’t say I had none, but that was it.

I look at this list and realize what a different runner I’ve become within a 12-month span.  And while I still have angst about Philly (not helped by the worst race pictures ever – either walking, looking at my watch or just being god-awful ugly) I have so much to be grateful for.

Speaking of angst, I’ve been thinking a lot about marathons and our future together and have made a decision:  The two marathons I have planned for 2010 will determine whether I will continue marathoning or not – if between the two I can’t pull out a good one, or they don’t approach my shorter races Age-grade-wise, I’m done.

I don’t mean this in an “I’m taking my toys and going home” type of way, but as in “OK, turns out I have more fast twitch fibers in me than slow“ so that’s what I’d rather develop.  My 5K from June nets me an Age-grade of 80.86% (National Class…I’m so fancy) and I’m pretty sure, not having reached the 3-year running mark yet, that I have at least a couple years of faster short races ahead of me.  So while I could keep marathoning until I get it right, I’d rather spend my energy doing what I’m better suited for.

The only sad part about this is, if it works out the way I suspect it might, I’ll have to part with a wonderful group of forum friends since my favorite hangout is Marathon Race Training, but I’ve got a year before I need to worry about that.

The important thing here is to be objective about my skill set and not place a value judgment on myself if I can’t run marathons well.  It doesn’t mean I suck, it means it’s not my race, is all.   Should that be the case, I’ll simply develop my strengths and make a killing winning gift cards, turkeys, travel mugs and a buck or two, while having a huge amount of fun doing it.  So here’s to clarity and seeing how the next year unfolds – not knowing is half the fun.