02/04/08 - 02/10/08 Mr. Potato Salad (350 minutes, 2 track workouts, 3000m race)

Sunday, February 10 (60 minutes)
Epic NFTC run, including Kiesz, Ian, Megumi, Katherine, and in the weight room Peter and Kangway. I totally blasted my something or other up there. Whatever part of me looks really impressive and hard core, that's what I blasted.

Saturday, February 9 (3000m race)
I raced for the first time in nine or ten months, so it was good to get back to that. 8:58 for 3000m, see above. Afterwards I allowed myself to participate in the alumni 4x400 of Tim, Stu, Scotty, and yours truly as anchor. It was an awful embarrassment because Tim somehow ran a 50xx lead off leg, and we were holding our own until the last two legs, when Scott and I showed what it means to be pathetic.

Friday, February 8 (30 minutes)
Easy pre-race jogging, and some lifting. Running 3000m tomorrow, hopefully against some good competition from the CMS guys. I think I'm in PR shape (8:54), so my plan is to hold steady at 71/72 and give it a big push at the end.
My goal is to run a steady race, see how I fare, and give myself a good target time for a fast race next week against a bigger field at the PP All-Comers.

Thursday, February 7 (descending ladder)
2000: 6:27 (77)
1600: 4:53 (73)
1200: 3:33 (71)
800: 2:17 (68)
400: 63

I had forgotten. The physicality, the immediacy. How very little exists but it exists more intensely. The lightness in my arms, swinging strongly by my sides, their way made smooth by sweat. The way the dead-still air whistles through my ears, humming incomprehensible tunes of an alien land. The backstretch, the far turn, the homestretch, and the first curve. Each as separate entities as separate siblings, or separate lovers.
The way the slanting sun shoots bold orange rays into my eyes as I round the first curve, brush past Scott into the backstretch.
Sound, the split, sinking in from the outside. Registered and assimilated without a conscious effort, absorbed whole into my body and my purpose. The swallowing of the sun by row of dark mirrors, and the pit gaping empty on the inside of the rail. Hugging the curve, watching each knee rise up beneath me and return hungrily to Tartan. Each foot falling just inside the last until the curve straightens out beneath me.
The homestretch - its impossible length displayed before me. The doldrums. The featureless nothing that seeks somehow to destroy, to kill the focus and the flow, to snap the mind and the body asunder. It must be fought not with effort but with its own nonexistence. Body and mind disappear to become only motion, distance, and stride.
And at last the final curve, the gateway. From the old lap to the new, a split beckoning up ahead and companions pushing from behind.
Lacing its way through all this is the pain. Engulfing meters and seconds. Turning time in crazy ways so that trees and lines and people flash past instantly but distant objects never move but just bob quickly up and down. The pain defines the workout, compactifies it, brings it meaning and ineffable beauty. I find that I have no choice but to fall in love with it.
It had been a long time, but I'm beginning to remember speed again.

Wednesday, February 6 (90 minutes)
A good, solid long run with a strong finish.
Afterwards KB and I tested some bread I made using the same algorithm we use to make the Tech: take whatever ingredients you can get your hands on and throw them in together. Hope for the best.
It came out all right, surprisingly.

Monday, February 4 (4 x 1600)
I planned 6 x 1600 starting at 5:20 and cutting off 5 seconds per repeat. I started off fine with 5:16, 5:12, 5:08. At that point I had worked pretty hard on the third mile. Wind was gusting strongly, and the direction of the wind seemed to be changing just enough to make each lap unpredictable.

Without someone else there to share the load with me, I found it very difficult to stay steady and even. Going into the fourth, I decided to cut the workout short because I had no chance of completing three more intervals at a faster pace than I had already done. Still the last one came out to 4:58, which is fine. I'm not totally satisfied with the workout, and in retrospect I think it would have been a better idea to stay at 5:15 and finish the six than to run just 4 at a faster pace. Run and learn.

Also, here's a story about the 2008 commencement speaker, Robert Krulwich.

And, for your viewing pleasure, one more comic that didn't make the cut with the paper:

Ah, well I guess it's not actually funny. It was in my head though. It's kind of the logical conclusion. If "only you can prevent forest fires," and there's still a forest fire, then you must not have done your job preventing it. Hence, all your fault. There, any semblance of humor that possibly once painted a dull patina over that comic is now completely washed away in a sea of inanity. Is that even a word?