MONDAY 7/26 - a.m. 3 weird miles early in the morning. lots of sprinting. stopping. watching sunrise. sprinting. feeling out of it. sprinting. weird. not productive feeling at all.
p.m. - tour de tuna, fast and fancy free. 10 mile total today.
7/27/10 - ZERO miles today. went for a massage to try and get my hip fixed up. on the way home, i nodded off at the wheel and crashed into one of those digital construction signs at about 75mph. then i hit a highway sign, then a tree, then a crashed into a ditch. i walked away pretty much unscathed and oddly calm and collected. i did, however, ride in the ambulance to the hospital where i was x-rayed and cat scanned (which involved quite a bit of warm fluid pumped into my asshole...hey, it's never too early to party!). they also gave me a medium sized dose of morphine into my IV, which certainly helped with the OC withdrawls i've been having this week. its sad and shocking how little that morphine did for me. at best, i could feel its effect for about 20 minutes maybe? and it was extremely mild.
7/28/10 - extended loops of tour de tuna (9 miles?). i felt really depressed last night and all day today. teaching was really a struggle. i dunno if it's just the post-crash shock, losing the Sword (my buick) or the money i'm sure i'm about to lose on the whole deal...but i really feel rotten. Gabbo tried to be supportive but when i get like this, i really clamp down and don't let anyone near. i went for an evening run and it felt really good. i'm just so glad i didn't hurt my legs other than a little bump and slice on my right knee.
7/29/10 - WildBoar 5k race in Texas, OH with Gabbo and Maresa. Really fun course. lots of mud, cool climbs, grassy flats, twist turns, etc. I scouted the full course with a couple of late 30's-ish guy who were pretty cool. They told me about a race in IN in january called the Chilly Hilly...5 events...with a frozen river crossing...may need to add that to the calendar. Then we raced, I smoked the one dude i had warmed up with and his friend beat me by a 10 seconds or so, which was a bummer. I ran pretty well, though, took time wearing down people in front of me so that when i passed, i knew they couldn't pass me again. Still, i felt like i was lacking a little confidence and wasn't really sure how to push myself really hard. i struggle with feeling too conservative during a 5k, when i should just be like "its 3 fucking miles, dude, just run it so hard you feel like you're going to have a heart attack." ...oh well, maybe next time. could have really used the new Inov-8 X-talon 212's that i ordered...had some insanely steep slippery climbs and one quick river crossing. but the nike's did ok, workhorse shoe that they've become. i ended the race with a two miles of really beautiful barefoot running around some of the flat grass portions of the course. very calming, with the sunset it was beautiful. great times!
oh and maresa (who had, uh, slipped into a higher age bracket won her division as well as Gabby in the 20-24's!....apparently she was the only one? hahhah!) either way they both earned some t-shirts and swag. I myself came in 3rd in my age group...again...and got yet another pair of socks...the bronze medal of running races. i did, however, place 14th overall out of about 120 entrants. so that was cool. TOTAL MILES: 8?
7/30/10- AM- le gran tour de tuna...about 8-9 miles. felt a little woozy and tired. some stomach problems. still, though, it went ok. i'm really really really looking forward to taking the inov-8 shoes to indiana this weekend and running some serious trails and sand dunes in those bad bitches. i want to walk with a cane after this weekend!
headed to indiana today. on my way to meet up with dan dehaven and drive the rest of the way, i rear-ended a kid in my dad's car that i was borrowing. coming off of my recent total smash-a-roo on tuesday...i literally could not believe that i had done this again. my depression has since been fluctuating between "fuck the world," crying and genuinely wanting to die. hey, what fun. i bought a bunch of OC on friday and numbed myself out this weekend in response. very healthy. anyway, got to indiana finally. went to bar.
7/31/10 - stayed up until 4:30am drinking with dan dehaven and brad, got up at 7am and hit the dunes in the x-talon's around 8am. in short, this run was the closest thing to a religious experience i've ever had. it was beautiful. the trails were soft sand, brutally steep and nearly impossible to run and...it was great. you could stare off for miles and see nothing but the weird brontosaurus hump backs of the grass covered dunes with little, itty bitty white stripes along their tops demarcating the barest essential of a trail. so...i'd just run and run. bombing down into the sand bowls and then scrabbling my way back out, find a little trail, run it for a while and breath a bit...then find a hill and either shotgun down it or suffer up it depending on my position on the trail when i came across it. i did the dunes for about 90 minutes and then changed shoes back into road runners and then ran around Ogden Dunes' crazy neighborhood hills. i did loops around the whole town and (being that this is where i grew up as a non-runner) i located some secret murderous hills that no sane road commission engineer would allow to be built except out there in O.D. The run was about 2.5 hours long and it covered something around 20 miles? maybe? i really have no idea, i just wanted to run and feel nothing but the freedom and happiness that comes with being outside and fully intertwined with nature.
8/1/10 - 7 miles. the wedding last night was fine. i was pretty high so i don't remember the ceremony, i left the reception early to go to sleep. woke up and went for a run again. so sore. it was gorgeous. just an hour flirt in the curvaceous bosom of the dunes before i had to drive back to flat-chested michigan. a little sad to leave. gasping for breath depressed at the thought of the life i have to face once i get home. spent a short portion of the car ride confessing my drug addiction to my mother...who i'm sure was just as pleased as punch to hear that her 27 year old, adult son has made the decision to spend every bit of his savings on snorting opiate painkillers, has little to no prospects in life and is in need of at least a $1000 loan to cover the expenses of his multiple car accidents. this has been the worst week i can remember having and i have a feeling that next week may actually just twist the knife around a bit as i really start to deal with the repercussions of all this shit: paying bills, dealing with insurance premiums, agreeing to loans, withdrawals from the OC, fixed income talks, zero lesson plans for work, no money to take the girlfriend out to eat or buy her a birthday present when she turns 21 on tuesday...the thrills just keep on coming... hey, are my running shoes around here somewhere?
WEEK: 62 miles.
