Lil' Peepee's Week in Ambivalence! Yes!

The best things always happen when you aren't worrying like a sucker about what's going to happen.

At any rate, I ran this week. I don't know how far at all, nor do I how quickly any of that distance was covered. For all I know, I walked it. For all I know, I did every mile seated. In a chair. Who knows? Who cares? They were great feet. Maybe the two best I ever ran.

Gabbo and I have (I'm pretty sure), patched things up. Hallelujah. With a capital "H." Which stands for "How." As in, "How did I take a decade's worth of accrued luck and compact into the shape of a young woman?"

No one knows.

Today I did NOT run. Not even a step. Fuck that nasty business. It's horrible. I went to church instead. I went to Sunday School. Praise be.

I went to volunteer for a few hours with the owner of Detroit's first-ever hostel. It turned out, upon meeting her, that she's actually a roommate of an old friend of mine. I remember two years ago, she was this fairly bonkers redhead who was talking at literally 1,000 mph about anything and everything...and was also really geeked on the idea of a hostel in Detroit.

Thank you, "ruinporn!" At last, there is a serious market for a hostel in Detroit.

Anyway, she's now a fully bonkers redhead who is also the proud director (perhaps a more accurate term given the status of the building) of the Hostel Detroit and she needed some beds.

So, short on wood but long on love for abandoned buildings: she asked to meet up and steal the wood from an old church. Genius!

To be fair, it has been closed for...30 years or so. The chapel's masonry is crumbling. Everything is destroyed. Anything that hadn't rusted out back in the 80's has been ripped away and sold.

Think of all the heroin that bought! Yeah, Catholicism!

Anyway, we got the wood. Next weekend: how to make bunk beds for your kids out of "repurposed" church wood. This blog is officially OFF of running and is now a full-time carpentry how-to website!

Next week, "How to Please the Lord and Please the Misses with Nothing but a Hammer, a Saw and Some Immaculately Conceived Cupboard Plans!"

workouts: mon- 8 miles, snow slog. 60:00 cardio at gym. weights.

tues- 7 miles. tempo at 6:45/mile

wed- gym wackiness 90 min workout

thus- more gym. 120 min workout

fri - snow shoe 60 min

saturday - 10 miler at about 11pm.

sun- no workout. heavy lifting in detroit? i'm not counting that, but it was tiring. i don't hang as well as i used to on the manual labor front. it's a completely different sort of endurance and strength.

total: 25 miles. but a lot of workout time. i'm floundering around just trying to keep engaged, interested and "on task" regarding fitness.

NOTE:

This weekend was the DN World's held in...uhhhggg...Green Bay.

Meanwhile back on Lake Erie, my iceboating has really taken a turn for the...well, it's taken a turn.

Lil' Peepee's Week in Running.

i ran 53 miles this week. strictly for purposes of staying true to the original intent of the re-start of this blog, i am posting this. there were a couple very very fast 12 mile runs this week. there was the now anticipated frozen shuffle on monday with trainee Jill, who is progressing steadily. there was plenty of strength training. there was a brutal massage session with a german giantess who worked me over like a loaf of bread dough. there was also some pretty bad shit that went down, too.

here's a clip of my strength-training/cool-down/warm-up routine. this is a guaranteed olympic time trials top-10 finisher. my coach told me so. His Name is Hay-soos. He lives in the sky or something. It's all about altitude. or attitude. i couldn't understand exactly what he was saying he was so high. up. in the air.

Ice boat.

the only thing that makes the winter around here tolerable (aside from alcohol) is ice boating. if you aren't familiar with apparent wind, you can certainly google it and have a nice read on wikipedia. i'm so lazy i'm not even going to include a link, but suffice to say: you can go really really fast on an ice boat. like 100+ mph no problem. yesterday was a decent evening for it. hopefully this video loads well. nice shot of my crotch. give you something to think about when you're lonely.

gabbo is riding on the runner and i'm at the helm/trim.

this video is also of key importance because it's likely the last time gabbo and i will do much of anything together, as i've really fucked up and she is going to certainly end things between us. why do i destroy good things in my life? it often feels like all i do with any capability.

i'm really a bad person. i mean, that's the category i fit in best. no bullshit.

you can catch the neighbor also out on his DN yesterday at the end of this clip. i wish i could have gotten some clips of me flying a...hull? runner? you can ride it for like a mile if the wind holds. it feels amazing. the whole thing with ice boating is the sheer stupid danger of it. so good. the fucking thing is like a balsa wood car, vibrating like hell, threatening to shred apart with every tack. it's the greatest.

learning curve

so, a new app on my phone will allow me to upload photos straight to the blog? how does that work exactly...

ah.

oops.

Ice ice, maybe. No, certainly. Certainly, ice.

Once a winter, when the conditions are right, I go for a run on the lake. As the high temp of the past month has been about 20F and currently it's sunny and about 7F, the ice is thick. I included that shot of a fissure to show how thick it is: that's car-driving thick, boys! plus, that's about 800m out from shore. I ran to the next neighborhood down the beach, then out in front of the channel that heads into the marina. It isn't especially fun running, but it's novel enough to do once a winter. I mean, it's even flatter than normal midwest running. Sometimes it's cool when you're way out (like a mile from shore) and you're running along and you hear "thwack!...thwack!" and then this "sproing!" kind of noise followed by lazer beam sounds that start under your feet and then race away from you off towards the horizon...that's the ice cracking underneath you. You made a seam in the ice that is now, potentially, miles in length. It's almost as neat as the dynamite bangs that the ice makes when the wind shifts and the weather warms up.

Anyway, you can see how Antarctic it gets around here in the winter. Very cold. Very windy. Very cabin-feverish at times. Many of the homes you see in the photo behind me are empty right now, their owners are down south.

Yeah, my winter running eye wear is fucking fabulous.

When my electronic music jones is hittin', stuff like this totally flies. Plus, it really does compliment the stark, bleak beauty of the ice on a sunny day. Or an asshole as he quits typing.

Running Form

As one can plainly see from this scientific research, a "heel-strike" running gait ultimately produces negative effects on the body, namely, being on fire. Which sucks.

Inspiration Information

this makes me want to dust off my skateboard, so badly. at least the hair and pants do, i guess.

do i even run anymore?

Mon 1/10/11- 50 minutes of slogging around with Jill, my trainee. i shivered off more calories than i ran. i was shaking so badly i could barely drive home. maybe 4 miles?

tues- 3 miles in between last class and tutoring session. it was a full blown blizzard at this point. fun running. poorly dressed.

wed- snow day. no classes. 1 mile with dog. i don't want to talk about it.

thurs- maybe 6 miles around munson. slogging through snow. strength training class afterwards, 60 minutes. good 2:15 workout. i like those.

friday- 10 miles at wildwood, microspiked. this was a haul. the trails are smoosh and the spikes were only sort of helpful. i worked too hard for these 10 miles. my hip is bothering me from last sundays concrete pounding.

saturday- 4 miles at wildwood. i just quit on this one.

sunday- weird gym workout. 3 miles on t-mill doing uphill stuff. then i ran over to the squat machine, did 220lbs (about 14 reps) then jumped back on the t-mill, did 400 w/u, 400 at 12% and 9:45/mile, 400 down and then another 400 up. then back to squat machine for more of the same. then back to t-mill for a repeat performance, finished it off with about 22 reps at 220lbs on squat machine. fried. but THEN, jumped on stairmaster and finished with a pretty vigorous 15 minutes of rapidly taking the steps two-at-a-time for some BIG step ups. my hams/glutes/calves were very pleased about this whole deal. finished with about 6 total miles ran and a lot of sweat left all over the gym. wrapped up with a core routine that i like. i would call this a LT threshold/ass-beating work out. but i've been pretty displeased with myself this week so i feel like deserved some beat down.

TOTAL: 34 miles. i'm not even going to try to justify this one. i really need a kick in the ass or some kind of spark to get me back on track. i mean, i'm not just trying to chase miles (or really yeah i am) but i mean, more important to me is that i FELT LAZY this week. i felt totally fucking out of it and disinterested in everything. i know this sort of depression well and i'm really not in the mood to deal with it right now. the problem is: what do you do? patience rarely pays off, especially when races are looming. i gotta get my head straight and quick.

Dear Diary, My Head Looks like a Dick.

drawing courtesy of colognefactory.blogspot.com

WARNING: don't read this. it's boring.

this has been the most uninspired week i've had amongst a wobbly grey pile of uninspired weeks.

i resolve to either give a fuck more or give a fuck less...

but this in-between business has got to go.

there is no question that some tiny chunk of my brain, responsible for pleasure, has long since been fried into a useless little chicken nugget via biology, chance and after-market chemical additions.

i have been supposedly "fixing" this thing for my entire adult life...say, age 19 when my family suggested counseling, age 22 when friends suggested i ease off my alcohol intake, to therapists who told me to sober up, to psychiatrists who suggested medications, to me, who ultimately told all of that to go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut and decided to take matters into my own hands...and wound up a drug addict, making less than 15K a year (although now i'm actually in a "professional" job...using my college degree, no less...what a waste that was, by the way).

i started running to quit smoking when i was 22. i started running ultras to try and quit opiates.

it's all the same thing. my brain is a wilted lump of goo and without huge kicks, it will just wheeze miserably on its side, tongue hanging out. that's my brain, yeah.

if i look at all this through the lens of running: i am low on stamina at this point. i've gone through some hard times. some wildly fun times. all times that fit in between those other times and all this took place in an absurdly short number of years. none of it served much purpose, other than to continue to overcook my already mostly dried up and useless self. none of it has settled into "lessons learned" or helped to give my life "direction."

i'm not trying to boo-hoo or woe-is-me, here, at all. don't misunderstand. but as i reread my posts (my first ever attempt at keeping a steady diary), a common theme emerges: A) my outlook on life swings wildly between upbeat and hopeful and completely depressed (old news) and B) regardless of my mood during a particular post and i am, without a doubt, running out of steam. i mean, in life. this is something I just can't figure out. I can't figure out what to do. I can't figure out what it means.

i'm tired of adventures that leave me broke. i'm tired of working hard for no reason. i'm tired of floating from job to job, told that i'm doing great, that i'm an assest, a God-send, best worker ever, etc. but never making enough money to support myself. i'm tired of being told that i have potential. that's the same shit i've heard since i was 10. i'm 27. hey, let's face facts. "potential" is a word that has real significance for physicists and...uh...that's it. "potential" is nonsense. how can you be more valuable than the sum total of the things you do? that is to say, if you don't "produce" something than how can you have value? (whether it's something tangible like a cure for cancer or something more abstract like love and support for another person) how can you say, "well, you don't have an exact value currently, but things look good that you could have value, i.e. you have Potential!"

that's ridiculous. everyone without a severe mental deficiency has an equal amount of potential then. we can all be whatever we want to be, etc. and THAT is something i don't believe. you cannot be whatever you want to be. you can do only a very specific (although unknown) number of things that are possible given your exact situation.

this is starting to ramble, the point becoming less clear.

Am i supposed to take interest in chasing down that "unknown" number of possible things i can do? i did that. i've tried that. i am trying that.

it isn't interesting anymore. i'm not sure it was ever actually that interesting.

my most cherished moments in life have been when i've embraced self-destruction and death. drinking for months on end, wandering from bed to bed, doing a drug just because i was told it was a drug. climbing things i can't climb down. doing little to nothing in the way of goodness or love. just selfishness and momentary pleasure. running fits into this, too, somehow, i'm confident.

i sure do like to talk about myself, though. geez.

i guess what it boils down to: i'm an asshole.

if i don't move out of the midwest in 2011, mark my words, i will be dead before i'm 30.

why haven't i, already? what's stopping me? fear? laziness? inertia? it's probably a lot of the latter two and a bit of the first. i don't know. i no longer feel like thinking about it, right now. i don't feel like running. why did i sign up for a bunch of races, when i don't want to run? great question.

should i put a music video on this one? yeah, why not. it's easy. i like easy, apparently. (any girl i've slept with can tell you THAT! ha!)

Bel Monte 50

I registered for the Bel Monte 50 mile race in Charlottesville, VA towards the end of march. i had this vague plan for the winter/spring to just stay steady regarding running and slowly build up as the weather improved...which is still probably going to be how things go BUT...

i kinda knew sooner or later i'd need to go ahead and commit to another ultra. it's cheap(ish), has 11K of vertical and gabbo and i can stay with her sister and her boyfriend for the weekend (cutting cost is requisite).

does anyone have 11,000 spare feet of "Up" or "Down" that i can borrow for a few weeks of practice?

ADDED: i also registered for the Pinckney, MI Road Ends Trail Marathon. I had really wanted to run this last year, as it covers the best trails within two hours of my house and in a mere 26ish miles. the spring schedule is coming together, apparently. i may try for a fast road marathon in april, but i don't know why yet.

Um, I'm a coach?

For my work's annual auction, I put up 5 hours of "running coaching." Two days ago, the lady who "won" it called me up and was ready to get down. She wants her first 5k by march, her first half by april and her first full marathon by october.

After a few minutes of shuffle-jogging, her HR was 187. I received my initial full first-aid course during my junior year of high school and have re-up'd ever since. Hell, I worked a double stint after Katrina for the goddamn American Red Cross! Over the summer, I commandeered a fuckin' boat by leaping from another boat, during a storm after the captain had been knocked unconscious and then docked the damn thing with a broken steering line!

This was the first time I was really prepared to save a life. I thought, "Holy shit, dude, you're gonna kill your first client athlete." Luckily, we walked that 187 down to sub-160 and had a good long chat about using our heart-rate monitors.

Honestly, she's a mother of 3 (youngest is an infant, oldest is 5!), workaholic with a workaholic husband and now she just wants to get back into shape for the first time in years. She's currently hitting two hours a week of pilates, an hour of yoga and getting in three run/walks per week. I need to step up my fucking game!

So, the whole thing was cool. I was very encouraging, gave her some ideas, talked a little about the warning signs of burn-out and we're set to run again on saturday. Whoa. I need a beer.

Dave's Running Store 10 Miler Race

1:07:??

what's that, like 6:40/mile? something around there.

it was a good race. cold today, but cloudless. some wind, but it seemed to hurt other people worse than it did me, so that was a plus in the competition column. i dunno. i mean, i'm not that fast, so what the fuck, right?

it was a smart race, though. i think. i knew i could run it in under 70 minutes and that if i watched my HR for the first 5 miles, i'd be ok with second 5. i never went above 172 the whole time and on long flat stretches (essentially the entire race, as this is the midwest), i could "relax" my HR back down to the mid 160's without slacking on my pace. we passed over the highway 4 or 5 times and each time i was pleased to use the modest ascent/descent to pass people handily. my time in the gym is paying off on the uphills and my time doing 20 downhill repeats at wildwood park are paying off on the downhills.

being that this is january in the midwest and the race was a 10-miler and not the much beloved half-marathon, i had a feeling it would be a straight up kind of race...and it was. all the fast guys in the region were there, with the exception of the african guys who work at the store during the school year. they were probably off racing somewhere for cash. i would be.

but yeah, it was fun. this was the first "real" race i've run since last july's 5k. the 5o-miler i just wanted to finish and everything else i've run has been with someone who i'm "keeping company" and just having a nice time.

this was also the first race i've done in a while completely sober. which is nice, too. in a norman rockwell kind of way, i think. all smiles and pies over here, boys.

bottom line: i got single-chicked. i passed #2 with about 400m to go.

double bottom line: i accurately assessed my fitness before the race and things played out as expected. that, to me, is the biggest accomplishment.

58 miles on the week. creeping. creeping. back up.

garbage can for a garbage man

i've now consumed 4 green monsters. i might have spilt a bit of baby shit into one of them, but there is literally no way to know that. such is life.

Old Music

my creative output for 2010 was nearly zilch. which is insane. i've been writing and recording songs since i was 13.

my friend and frequent collaborator Eric, created a Bandcamp page for a batch of songs we recorded during a bender over labor day weekend of 2009.

it's here: sundownersfuckoff.bandcamp.com

hopefully this will inspire me to finish a few works in progress and get back on my shit regarding music. i was at least proficient at about 10 different instruments, the other day i could barely play guitar anymore. i remember standing in my dorm room, during the summer with the window open and playing along with jimmy smith's root down album and seriously killing it. i had been playing guitar for less than a year. i started playing classical guitar about a year later. 6 hours/day of practice one summer while working 50 hours a week doing construction. you can imagine the comments at work about my fingernails.

there's a lesson here to be learned, but my useless tarpit of a brain can't internalize and make use of it.

while i'm at it. this is the link to the last batch of songs i recorded in early 2009.

Cold Blooded Old Times

That's the whole equation! So simple it's genius! You get the hose clamp, undo it. Lay it flat. Grind down the OC (after you dissolve off the coating in your mouth for second). Finally, you have ONE awesomely giant line (not several lines like the picture).

THEN, you take either a rolled up bill like you're PeeWee Herman or you get real and use about half a chopped down piece of a pen's cylindrical casing. LASTLY, oh at long last, you snort that beast of a line and every single problem you have ever had will disappear. You will be like the Buddha but with a swagger like James Dean. Plus, if you run, you can run forever and it feels like floating. I mean, 20 miles. Floating. It's nice.

Anyway, I'm jonesing super hard and it's the weekend and I don't know. These things happen.

green monster #1

it took longer than anticipated for my new blender to arrive. $30.00 dollars later...

-spinach

-celery

-chia

-anti-oxidant supplement

-protein supplement (chocolate, thank god)

-banana

-strawberry greek yogurt (it was past due)

-soy milk

i should start calling these Oscars. 'cause he was green. and he was all about garbage.

Dear God, thanks!

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/05/does-exercising-make-you-drink-more-alcohol/

year end catch-up and reflection

Karen Dalton - Something On Your Mind from Phil Bebbington on Vimeo.

week of monday 12/13/10

-56 miles

week of monday 12/20/10

-55 miles i think. i might done track stuff on tuesday, but i can't remember so i'm just leaving it at zero.

week of monday 12/27/10

-34 (unless i run today...sunday the 2nd)

well...in summary, i'd say i basically took about 5 weeks "off." i had been holding steady for a few months around 70 mpw, and around thanksgiving just nose-dived into the 50's (at best). in trying to put a positive spin on this, i'd say it gave my lingering calf pains time to heal up, my plantar fascia issues have almost disappeared and i've begun doing a lot more speedwork during the week. in addition to all of these past weeks, i'd add about 5 hours/week of strength training. overall physical strength has always been a strong suit for me, this summer i let it go in lieu of running and trying to lose a little muscle weight up top that i felt was unnecessary for my running goals. additionally, i had to stop core training for over two months in july/august/sept because of the car accident. my abs and ribs just would not allow even a single sit-up. now, however, i'm back and very interested in getting strong again. at heart, i am a laborer and i frequently miss the feeling of being on my feet 8 hours a day, doing very hard physical work and still coming home to run/bike/swim or whatever. nothing is as unhealthy as a job that uses only your brain. it is a dangerous organ that needs a strong body to tire it into submission lest it run wild and uncontrolled. it's 9p.m., do you know where your idiot brain is?

considering these things, i am not unhappy with the downturn in my running and feel pretty compelled to begin the new year fresh and focused. ironically, as i type this i have literally zero interest in getting out for a run today, despite not running yesterday either. i also squandered our two day thaw and did not get out for a solid 20+ miles effort...which would have been really ideal.

Main Point...i think:

this whole xmas/new year's break has really been about finally quitting methadone treatment and getting really and truly Clean. it has been really hard. very difficult to sleep at times still, despite the non-narcotic sleep-aids my doc gave me. even a long, solid night of sleep is weird, filled with bizarre and disrupting dreams and does not leave me feeling "rested." my heart rate has yet to come back down to what i had considered "normal." my blood pressure is also very high, but i can take a med to help that, too, if needed/wanted.

still, though, i consider this whole break a success. i mean, i'm done. like, really done. i don't have to go to the clinic every morning at 5am, feeling twitchy and sick, wait in line with some seriously fucked up characters (and some nice people, too) and wait for a nurse behind bullletproof glass to pour me a tiny cup of red syrup that gets me through the day and (hopefully) through the night. i don't have to get scared and freaked out when i miss a dose, because as the day wears on, i don't have to go through withdrawals anymore.

it should feel more like an accomplishment, but really...it just feels like fixing something i broke. you're happy to have it fixed, but the bottom line is...you broke it. you're back to square one. that's all. you didn't make something new. create something meaningful. there was no net gain. you were not productive. that's how i feel right now anyway.

i look forward to getting back to work and out of this meandering vacation drift. i look forward to running harder than ever before. i have tremendous doubt about my life. about my prospects. about whether i can make tangible, practical improvements to my quality of life. ...that is not a good feeling, but what can i do but proceed as best i can and hope?

i guess that's my outlook on the new year: tired, skeptical, slightly disinterested hope.

but not to end on a negative note. 2011...ain't nobody blockin' this shine. or something...