Hello? Is this thing ON?

Wow!  When was my last post?  During the Reagan Administration?  OK, it wasn't THAT long ago, but it surely feels like it.  Where did the time go?  Last thing I remember, was the Run for the Roses in June, and meeting Stacie and Kim.  Next thing I know, I have just finished the Portland Marathon...slower than my first one.  Wait, is that right?  Yup, nearly 4 minutes SLOWER than my first one.  What the heck?  Did I crash out?  Did I hit the wall harder than last time?  Did I injure myself?  Stop for a beer at the tavern at about mile 19? (no but I did think about it)  And, why on earth would I say I had the BEST time ever?  Welcome back to the ramblings of me...

So, where to pick up?  Well, I should gloss over the summer…  I kinda did a virtual reality crash and burn.  I took myself off-line, and needed some mental recuperation time.  I took the blog off public access and I am very sorry to admit, that I even stopped reading my faves as well.   I did finally get a new gig, it took until just after July, and I have immersed myself into that during the day.  Then when I get home I focus on my girls.  I had some good runs and some not so good runs, and that is fairly normal for all of us isn’t it?  I also did my second Warrior Dash, and buggered my right knee, just three weeks before the marathon.  So I laid off it for a week, then went and did a 10K in Mt. Angel, and at the end of that race, the knee felt great.  Hmm, seems my body thinks of itself as a running machine now.

Now onto the main event.  Portland Marathon, 40^th anniversary edition…theirs not mine.  I had signed up for it AGES ago.  I signed myself and my neighbor up for it with the hopes that she would force me to train hard and be completely ready to own this thing.  Yeah, well, “Hello life, you gonna rain on my parade again?”  Good thing I like rain.  We managed to get a bunch of long runs together, but due to conflicts of schedules, and summer trips, and, and…you all know.  We only managed those few long runs together.  That left me running mostly by myself.  Which is OK, as I use those runs as my meditation time.  Even with music playing in my ears, I am able to just let a lot go when I run.

Our last 20 miler was a complete bust.  D likes to run faster than I do, and I kept trying to reel her back into my pace, but she was goin’ that morning.  I was gassed by mile 10, and was cramping up by 16.  Not really the way I wanted to go into the wind down before the race, but there it was, a cruddy dress rehearsal.  And for all of the drama folks out there, we know that isn’t always a bad thing.  It still makes the mental part of the morning a little harder though.   I ran a couple of short runs after that and made sure the legs were good.  But really my last two months of training were pretty bad.

Saturday we went to the expo and picked up our stuff.  It was a bit like a car show. Do the once around and then mosey back through and get anything you wanted/needed and chat with other runners.  As we were walking in, I met one of my favorite runners in Portland…if you are a loopy person she goes by ghhrfy, if you know her outside of there…well, I don’t know how protective of her name she is, but suffice it to say, I was pumped to FINALLY meet her.  And she is as cute in real life as she seems in her blogs.  I had to actually go and shop at her booth, as they were the only store in Portland that still had NipGuards in stock.  26.2 miles without those little gems and I would be a very unhappy man.  Expo done, and over with…yet again missed Miss RR and her Technicolor wardrobe—I  think she sees me coming and hides—we head for The Old Spaghetti Factory for some much needed good.  I had been working all day and my running partner had put in a shift at the mall as well.  Pasta dinner and a couple of beers later, we were headed home to ready our stuff for Sunday, and it wasn’t even 8:00!

I get home, clean my water bottles, they had been in my car since the failed 20, and needed a little TLC.  Once they were cleaned I filled them with my usual mix of two 10 oz bottle of water for the right side, and two 10 oz bottle of 60/40 Gatoraid.  I buy cases of the 12 oz bottles when they are on sale, and this makes for an easy two bottles from one mixture.  I packed four PowerBar Gels into the pocket of my Nathan’s Speed 4 and four in each of the pockets of my shorts.  I was taking NO chances on running out of fuel this time around.  A Tylenol PM and a second beer, and I was ready to go to sleep.  No way was I going to let anxiety keep me awake this time either.

Sunday morning the alarms went off (three of them) and I was up making frozen waffles and two eggs.  I figured I had time to digest the food and a good amount of protein and some more carbs would be quite welcome.  Out the door, packed bag of clothes to change into, and into the van.  Running partner climbed in as my phone chimed.  It was one of our other friends who was doing the Pikermi telling me that yet another friend couldn’t find his bib.  We stopped at the corner and traded jibes, and then headed into Portland.  We found parking easily enough a few blocks away, paid, parked and then headed to the corals.  It was a perfect day.  There was high clouds and the temp was in the mid-to upper 50’s.  Cool but workable.   I was glad that I had opted for discomfort at the start for creating road-kill with a jacket later.  They were predicting some rain, but we got lucky and it wasn’t much and it waited until we were well under way.

More later...

WHAT?!?!  Did you think after several months off I could just pull off an epic post.  I might strain my muse.  C2, I get that now.