Race Report: Bronx Half Marathon

Well, I did it. It was cold. Next!


I was just going to post that, but you know me, I can’t shut up sometimes. Sometimes? Yes, I even know what you’re going to say before you say it. It’s like we’re married, or something.

WELL. Sunday morning I met up with running pals Susie and Denise for a quick ride to a race in the Midwest, a.k.a. The Bronx. It was originally named after a family who lived there named the Broncks, I’m not making that up. Sometimes I wish I had a time machine so I could go back and bring in a family named the Funckes. Which means today we’d have a borough known as The Funx. And you probably thought I’d write something else.

I’m not hating on The Bronx, but for a little while yesterday I was hating on the NYC subway system, which is always easy to do on the weekends. Due to track maintenance (somebody spilled an espresso latte with skim milk on the track, or something), we had to switch trains at 125th St. and join hundreds of anxious runners waiting on the platform to get to the damn race. So at 7:15 we’re standing there, knowing that the race starts at 8 and it would be nice to check bags and go to the bathroom before the race, etc. The train finally came and we made it by then, but my running friends (and many more) found themselves still in port-a-john lines as the starting gun went off. And I was even late, since I had to hit baggage check, too. Oh well, it gave me a chance to see the walkers at the end of the pack, who are usually nicer than the get-out-of-my-way speed freaks wearing headphones up front.

So off I went, weaving and passing and trying not to be one of those assholes running over innocent people, and I wasn’t. The weather forecast was dire, temperatures were due to drop at 10AM, and then the high winds would kick in. Every TV weather forecaster in the tri-state area had predicted end-of-the-world style cold for Sunday, and since it was still a balmy 40 degrees, we were all dying because we were overdressed for arctic temperatures that hadn’t yet arrived.

And then the winds kicked in before 9 o’clock, providing the type of gale force that makes you feel like your moving forward in slow-motion. I swear, it felt like my legs were getting pushed to the side every time I was mid-air. Since the route had a little bit of out-and-back to it, I was comforted knowing the headwind would become a tailwind, but no such luck. Thus the middle finger of fate struck again.

About three miles in I knew it was not National PR Day, and I decided to just keep a reasonable pace and not embarrass myself. So I did, and finished the damn thing. I was three minutes slower than the half I ran two weeks ago, but I’m over it already. The weather did get just a tad colder as predicted, so I got home (after changing trains again, thank you very much) and stayed there and watched the Hammy Awards later.

Speaking of, can we take Alicia Keys, John Legend, and John Mayer and put them on some reality C-list celebrity show and vote them off before they have a chance to open their mouths? Honestly, those camera whores would probably show up to play a Denny’s, all for a $10 buffalo wing gift certificate, f’Chrissakes. And I’m surprised Kanye’s ego could get squeezed into that auditorium, he’s out of control; these people actually make you want to root for Amy Winehouse, and that’s saying something. And while I’m being catty, I think Beyoncé needs to join me on some spinning workouts, her legs are bigger than Godzilla’s.

Now that that’s over, I can get back to discussing myself. Today….

I TOOK THE DAY OFF.

From being mean and sarcastic, no. But from EXERCISE, yes. Normally, I would’ve packed up the gym bag and hit the pool. But I’m still nursing a big old blister caused by the blue flippers I wear while playing junior aquaman amongst the little old ladies (who, incidentally, can kick my ass) in the water. But more importantly, my legs, and quads in particular, are just beat-down tired after a killer spinning workout and then a tempo run and then a wind tunnel half marathon, all in three days. I just didn’t have it in me this morning, and it was time to give my legs a day off for the first time since Christmas. Maybe it was eyeballing Beyoncé’s hams of steel on the HD plasma screen that made me decide on a one-day vacation, since hers seem to get LOTS of vacations. Anyway, today I just sit here and type and eat potato chips straight out of the bag. Nice.

Rest is important, people!

iPod Update 26, Friday Again

If anyone’s checked here lately, there hasn’t been much going on. No post-Super Bowl wrap-ups, no race reports, no snarky comments about somebody else’s bad running habits.

I’ll post more as soon as two things begin to happen: I get a little less busy and start to enjoy training my ass off. It’s swimming/biking/running and running more every day, and often about two hours plus of all that on Monday, Wednesday and Friday (other days have slacker workouts of just an hour and a half). And then a long run or race on the weekend, and now I’m tired just thinking about it, much less writing about it.

So bottom line, no news is good news, it’s just mid-winter fatigue. However, I will make a couple of points that might not be considered news by those who also train their asses off.

Swimming – I have progressed, if you may call it that, from pre-school to kindergarten. And I no longer thrash like a school of piranhas, I just gasp for air at all the wrong times. My comfort level is much higher, though, and I’m making it to the pool three times a week. I’m trying. Anyway, as soon as I get the breathing part down, I’ll feel much better. And stop trying to swim like I’m running, which is way too fast under the circumstances.

Biking – I’m doing 2-3 hour-long spinning workouts a week, and my quads would like to say hello to all of you and ask you to please tell Cranky to stop all this crap. Also, the lake of sweat I generate around the bike is getting embarrassing, but once again, at least I’m trying. And I went to a seminar and workshop on getting the right bike fit, and although I learned a lot, I’ve come to the conclusion I’ll probably have to sell my now-old car just to afford a reasonably good tri-bike with all the fixins. I’m half-joking about that, which implies I’m half-serious, and you guessed it, that part’s not funny.

Running – In preparation for Boston, I’m doing two tempo runs a week on the dreaded treadmill, in addition to the usual ‘easy’ runs, whatever the hell they are. The weather hasn’t been bad here, it’s just I can’t keep an exact tempo pace outdoors, and then I feel like I’m slacking or something. So (today) I start out with two miles easy, followed by four sets of one mile at tempo pace (for me, 6:48) with one-minute rests in between. I had another three miles at tempo pace on the schedule today, but I was still tired from yesterday’s session at Lake Spinning, and had to just keep it at four. Plus, more than an hour on the treadmill makes me quietly insane. As opposed to loudly insane, which describes half the population of New York City.

Add to all this the Bronx Half Marathon this Sunday, and I’m ready for Athletes Anonymous. I bet they serve Gatorade and bagels and gel at THOSE meetings. No coffee and cake? I’d be outta there.

The other day I read about an alarming statistic: 30% of the population of Mississippi is obese. While that’s indeed alarming, whenever I am experiencing self-doubt (as in halfway down the 25-meter pool lane), I compile a brief list of all the folks who probably couldn’t do what I’m doing right then. So that includes a third of Mississippi, half the tourists at Epcot Center right now, and let’s just throw in Britney, too.

More later…

Brit and The O’Jays – Backstab Me One More Time

Go Home Productions… Great Mash-Ups, Cranky-Approved…

iPod Friday 25: Dance Like It’s 1989

So the Super Bowl is Sunday. And Super Tuesday arrives a couple of days later. Some media folks are calling our national primary day ‘Super Duper Tuesday’. Gee whiz, that sounds important!

Paraphrasing something someone once said, ‘we deserve the government we get’.

Getting back to the four hours of marketing on Sunday evening, I have no favorite team, though it would be nice for the hometown to come out on top. Mr. Manning and Mr. Brady seem like nice enough fellows, the type of goofy jocks who sat a couple of rows behind you in 8th grade study hall. Mr. Plaxico Burruss fascinates me only because I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone named Plaxico. Not trying to be mean, but Plaxico sounds like a multinational corporation that sells petroleum-based mouthwash. Anyway, he’s been in the news over the last few days for predicting a rather low-scoring Giants win on Sunday.

And another thing… about New York City sports fans... when their team wins they don’t jump in the car and ride up and down the streets, maniacally honking and screaming like they do in places like Philly. It’s nice to win, but not nice to lose a parking space in New York City. Here, team spirit has its limits, and I like that.

I’m not sure who’s performing at half time, but do I know that Ms. Paula Abdul is threatening to ‘sing’ at some point. Since Miss J. Jackson debuted a single (ahem, cough) once at the Super Bowl, ex-Jackson choreographer Paula will be on her best behavior. And as a way of getting us in the mood, here’s HER new single:

Paula Abdul – Dance Like There’s No Tomorrow

And now an open letter to P.A.:


Dear Ms. Abdul,

Just heard your single. And you know what? It’s not 1989 anymore.

All the Best,

The People of Earth.

Thinking Too Much, Probably

I’m not in the habit of explaining and endorsing somebody’s viewpoints, but I’ll throw this out there and see if it sticks. To be honest, I’m naturally cynical (surprise!) about people who act like they have all the answers, such as self-help writers and motivational speakers. Maybe that works for some of you, but I think anybody who asks me for, say, a donation or something like that is motivated by more than just making me ‘feel’ better. And isn’t taking charge of my life the first step in making me feel better? If so, for me taking charge means not listening to somebody’s tapes or reading somebody’s books on how I should approach life, because I already took charge of all that.

To begin with, I have a weakness for PBS documentaries and educational shows. Not the crowd-pleasers, necessarily, such as what you always see on Nature (‘Lions of the Serengeti at Dinnertime’ or at the other extreme ‘Science Isolates the Canine Gene That Makes Puppies So Damned Cute’), but the stuff you see in the middle of the night before all the pre-school alphabet-shoving programs begin. So lately I’ve been setting my DVR for the tried-and-true, such as The Western Tradition and now, the questionably-titled Philosophy, A Guide to Happiness, a series from a few years back. ‘Philosophy’ is based on a book by British writer Alain de Botton, 'The Consolations of Philosophy'. It’s a half hour series that only runs three total, and that half hour chunk is about all my brain can handle at one time. Anyway, Mr. de Botton identifies and explains particular viewpoints on emotions ranging from anger to happiness and much in-between, all in an easy-going, soothing British accent that makes everything seem painfully obvious (I’m not sure if it’s on most local PBS stations, but you can always check, like I said, it’s been on a while).

So for example, during one of his programs he examined Nietzsche’s philosophy that ‘only through pain, suffering, and hard work do you achieve happiness’. I completed a 10-mile tempo run on a goddamn treadmill this morning, does that count? By the way, that’s a picture of Friederich, a.k.a. Laughing Boy, above.

And there was one question from Schopenhauer: Why is everyone so angry about things they can’t control? What if we approached life more pessimistically, and by assuming that the worst would happen every day, wouldn’t we be better prepared to deal with life’s setbacks since there would be no nasty surprises?

Well, I can’t say that my outlook on optimism or pessimism has been changed by a TV show (or a book I haven’t read yet), but at the same time I’ll take what I can get from dead Western Philosophers. At least they’re not trying to sell me something. In the meantime, you might want to check out the show, or Alain de Botton’s website, or anything of his other written works, maybe they’re at the local library. Anything that gets the brain cells going in the direction of self-awareness may not be such a bad thing. In the meantime, I will someday soon approach a 20-mile training run armed with a Nietzschean outlook. At least that sounds better than being armed with nasty-tasting vanilla-‘flavored’ gu.


Check Out:

Alain de Botton; Video – Nietzsche on Hardship

’The Consolations of Philosophy’ at Amazon

Race Report: Manhattan Half Marathon

After all the fun I’ve been having in the pool and training for Boston, I almost forgot to get stressed out over the first NYC borough half marathon of the year. So yesterday was the Manhattan Half, two 6-mile loops of Central Park plus 1.1 in case you hadn’t had enough. I didn’t take any pictures because I forgot my camera and besides, pictures from races all start to look the same after a while anyway.

It was 31 degrees, cloudy, and crowded. Just under 5000 would finish, and that seemed about right considering the droves of pushy runners around. After finishing a moderately-difficult tempo run on Friday, and an overly-long (10 miles) easy run on Saturday, I went into the race too tired and I should’ve known better. But just having one sport to think about, or obsess about over the course of the day was a welcome change.

Funny thing was, and this used to never happen, I kept running into people I knew, before and after. I’d planned to meet up with running pal Susie before the race, and did, but it was just one acquaintance after another, on the course and past the finish line. Later on, a runner came up to me and said ‘Philly?’, and as it turned out it was someone I didn’t know who had seen me running in my old gym in Philadelphia three years ago, and had remembered me. Small running world.

Well, I could go on about the usual race stuff, people running too slowly who get right up front, nylon pants-wearers making that constant swish-swish noise, hearing ‘Born to be Wild’ blasted out of some runner’s headphones from ten feet away (I’m not trying to be funny, that actually happened)… but I won’t. But I will say the race was tiring, and I pushed myself to the 80-85% threshold, and that got real old on the rolling hills of CP. The last steep-and-unhappy hill was at mile 11, and I was cursing it even though I’ve run it a million times. And I had planned to race with running friend Tim, then I couldn’t get up to the marker where we were supposed to meet before the start, and I spent the whole race running just a little bit faster to find him up ahead. I never did, and later on we met up after the race and it was only then I discovered that he’d been stuck in a port-a-john line at the beginning, started late, and was running behind me the whole time. He still beat my finish/chip time, so I’m going to have to work in a little kick-ass rematch in the spring. He’s a roll-out-of-bed-and-run-a-PR kind of runner, and I just hate that, but then again, so am I sometimes, so I’ll shut the F up.

After finishing at an average pace I shouldn’t have done (7:04), I was definitely fatigued. And as it would turn out, soaking wet under the layers, and despite checking extra clothing and throwing it all on later I still managed to get the shivers and chills that left me more tired than before. I don’t live too far away from these races, but a 20-minute post-race walk in freezing temperatures when you’ve got wet layers on is both difficult and stupid, planning-wise. But I kept running into people, and yakking, and I’ll just have to save that crap for warmer races.

So I acquitted myself well in the race, though no PR, but that’s OK. There’s another half in The Bronx in two weeks, so we’ll see about that one. In the meantime, my swimming coach took pity on me this morning in my pre-dawn workout; my quads were feeling tired as I recreated the first ten minutes of the movie ‘Jaws’, and believe me, I wasn’t playing the shark.

Mad World

Not as in ‘angry’, but ‘mad’ as in batshit crazy.

I’m sure nobody out there needs too much convincing that we live on a planet that’s gone nuts over the wrong things, but honestly…

So this morning I hit the pool, and just as I’m sinking to the bottom I realize that I should have left a note at the front desk asking that if something happens to me, please speed dial Mary-Kate Olsen immediately. If you don’t get what I’m joking about, you haven’t been watching the news much this week. Or rather, the tabloid news that Americans crave by the truckload.

It’s very sad that Mr. Ledger died this week, but this city has just lost all it’s remaining marbles among the five boroughs. I didn’t know the actor, but I saw him with his wife in the village last summer, and he looked like an everyday guy just walking down the street, and in interviews he seemed vaguely embarrassed about being a celebrity. He was his own worst critic, something we can all understand, and if he could see it he’d probably be appalled over the media circus surrounding his death.

And now the cameras are everywhere, all night, in ghoulish delight over the latest tidbit of this week’s edition of ‘too-young-to-die’ theater.

This afternoon it occurred to me that Mr. Ledger had been spending the last couple of nights down the street; since the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Home is six blocks away from Cranky HQ, I decided I would head on down there to take some of my own pictures of celebrity media idiots taking their pictures of the arriving mourners for today's viewing. For those who don’t know, the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Home is where everybody who is anybody in New York City stops before making that final road trip through eternity. Sort of a ‘Last Chance Saloon’ or ‘Last Starbucks Before Boarding Your Flight’ where you get one last stop to check in before the final check… out. I’ve been inside the place for a friend’s mother’s viewing, and it’s small in a New York City overpriced 2-bedroom apartment way. Tiny elevator, too, manned by a kindly, very soft-spoken, understanding guy that’s totally out-of-place in THIS town, let me tell you.

So off I go, and see limos pull up, and nerdy paparazzo with cameras that cost more than any of us will make in a month, and there are dozens of folks out there just waiting for somebody, anybody wearing black to show up. I didn't spend much time at the death watch, but I did get to take pictures of the on-camera bimbos and himbos discussing the early demise of a young actor like it was on par with the Kennedy assassination.

So what’s my point… I just think we need to get a grip on what’s more important, and what passes for news. Sure, the presidential campaign feels like it’s been going on since A.D. 79, but at least that’s news. Stocks taking a dive is news, too. The death of an actor teaches us nothing other than tragedy can happen anytime, even though that's worth remembering. But not worth flogging over and over, every single damn day. Well, at least we’re not hearing about Britney for the moment.

Of course, I will get my wish for the media to move on as a certain football game becomes the next New York City obsession. I can see the headlines now, ‘Eli Manning in Paper Cut Shocker’. So anybody out there want a city? I got one here, and it’s batshit crazy.

iPod Friday 24: Feedback

Thanks to all of you who responded to all the teeth-gnashing and fist-shaking posts I’ve managed to throw out over the last week or so. The feedback is appreciated, I don’t say it often enough, so thank you. The tri-experts all know what I have to do, and know how to do it, and thanks go to them, especially. HOWEVER, Ms. Claire gonna get her ass kicked or hit up side the head with a big iron skillet into next Tuesday if she keeps THAT stuff up. I was going to get all up in a Tyler Perry/Martin Lawrence/Eddie Murphy career move on her and throw on a fat suit and play a large-and-in-charge, take-no-shit black woman stereotype and then get all clocky on her ass, ‘cause that’s what she’s asking for… but then I decided I’d be better off hitting the pool like she says. But Miss E. Girlfriend better watch out unless she want a throwdown! I see you in Boston, baby.

Love, Cranky.

Miss Jackson, If You’re Nasty - Feedback