Coming to Grips with My Horrible Past...

Sorry, the title of the post was just to get you read this. It's weird how the dark, emotional posts get tons of traffic. People are crazy!

Since I became a cyclist two weeks ago, my mind is no longer preoccupied with running and running-related tomfuckery. As a result, I've been literally brimming over with extra mind-juice and, friends, let me tell you...it's juicy. I'm about to pour you a fresh glass. 

Ok. Ok.

FREE MILLION DOLLAR IDEAS! (Or, my "thank you" to you, True Believers) 

1.) Pancake Dots Snacks.

- you know when you're making pancakes for people and you're waiting for the griddle to get hot and you flick some batter on there in little dots and you cook'em and eat'em while you wait? What's wilder than a long-legged blonde about this deal here is that those little specks of pancake are BETTER than a full-sized pancake. So, whatimsayin is: BAG THOSE LITTLE BEAUTIES. Million bucks. It's all yours now.

2.) Messages on the bottoms of mugs and/or pint glasses. 

-so, you're drinking your morning coffee (or tea, if you're pitiful) and juuuuust as you're sippin' up that last delicious sip...POW! "Good morning, you bad ass motherfucker, you!" is written on the bottom of your damn mug!!! or maybe something smoove for the womens like "Good morning to YOU, TOO Because you're worth it as hell!" Or something like that. You could do the same thing with beer glasses. So, you're slamming back an ice-cold Cristal and as you're staring through the bottom of the glass 'cause it's so trippy sometimes, you notice: WHAAAA? There's something written on the BOTTOM OF MY BEER GLASS!!!

"You just got exactly 2 times better looking, Stallion." or maybe "Just one more and the secrets of life will be revealed!"  my personal favorite would be "Are you happy now?"  You can basically write out that check to the Ferrari dealership right now, that's how absolutely money that idea is. No, no. Thank YOU! For being YOU, True Believers!!

3.) Marshmallow bread*

-I really debated sharing this one in public, because I've always sort of kept it in my back pocket for a rainy day (where I'm picking myself up out of the gutter, ribs sore from where a cop had been kicking me). However, I've quelled those pesky reservations and I'm ready to lay a heavy on ya'll. 

Marshmallow bread is genius 'cause it's damn simple. These are marshmallows. But in the shape and the size of slices of bread. It would be sold in a "loaf." Here's where it just blows minds: YOU CAN STICK THESE IN THE TOASTER AND HAVE THE MOST PERFECTLY TOASTED MARSHMALLOW IN THE WORLD!!! Stop there? Stop there???@!!! NOT A CHANCE, I'M JUST GETTING WARMED UP!!! Cause then you'd sell a whole line of additional products, like bread-slice-shaped graham crackers and "slices" of chocolate (to make sandwich-sized s'mores), maybe some spreads like caramel, PBJ or chocolate/banana. Everything would have your brand name on it. Huge bank. Huge. I love you. 

If you actually DO end up making millions from one (or more) of my ideas, please just write me in for like 2% of the royalties, OK? I think that seems fair. You're OK with me, too, dude. 

*i don't know why two of these are food related, but it may have something to do with the fact that i'm sort of stoned right now. i'm taking a break from beer. i suppose with the marshmallow bread, you'd have to tinker with the recipe a little to make a more "substantial" marshmallow that wouldn't just turn into liquid in your toaster and then burst into flame. do you know a food chemist? i don't. that's why i'm asking. 

the week before last i rode ze bicicleta about 6 hours and spent 2 hours lifting pesas.

this week ending 4/28/12, i rose tee blike exacttttly 12:45:00 and spent ANUDDER 2 hours lifting stuff into the air with my body. i'm ok with the bike right now. I went out for two, 4-hour rides this weekend wiff HELLA hill climbs, BROHEMIAN!   

Two more weeks of this and I'll see how running feels. No quad pain anymore when I walk and I did some one-legged box jumps the other day and, while my leg felt a little weird, it didn't hurt. So that was rad. Dad. You big and bad. Mean motherfucker don't make me mad. Impaling MC's like my name was Vlad. 

Freestyle rap typing. If you can figure out how to make money on that, feel free to use that idea, also.

This cartoon never made it to TV, which is really horrible for all of us because it's dumb good. 

Stoned Free

Science-y article about runner's high and humans' propensity for exercise addiction. Comes at a bad time for me. I currently walk with a limp and I'm considering the purchase of a cane...which is rad, but not when I actually need to use one, ya know?

http://www.economist.com/node/21552536

Femur stress fracture?

Hmmm.

So, after the marathon, I developed a pain in my left quad. It was sort of nondescript. It didn't hurt when I rubbed the muscle or stretched, just when I ran on it...especially downhill. I wasn't particularly concerned and assumed it would fix itself as my body adjusted to running in the hills again, after focusing on flat pavement for the marathon. The pain definitely got worse over the past two weeks, but was always really weird. It would hurt horribly, then go away completely, then hurt again...very odd stuff.

About two days ago, I went into super-obsessed research mode and began eliminating the possibilities. Ultimately, I landed on several long LetsRun threads concerning femur stress fractures. Short of an MRI, I'm fairly confident that's what I have right now. Literally, every symptom described fits my situation. I did a self-test where I sat on something high enough to let my leg hang freely, with the edge of the seat just behind my knee. I pressed gently downwards on my knee joint. No pain. Inch by inch, I slid my leg further out on the edge of the seat until I got to a point about 8-inches down from my hip. When I pressed on my knee, this spot in my leg twanged with very sharp pain. Supposedly, this is about as good as it gets diagnosis-wise unless I try to get an MRI done. ...I have no health insurance and the hospital down here still has some of its offices in pole-tents and trailers. I think I'll go with the "Push On Knee" test and leave it at that.

In short, I'm self-diagnosing a femoral stress fracture based on the LetsRun message boards and a test that consists of pushing on my knee. No, I'm not drunk (right now).

I'm pretty sure that the cascade of problems began with the right hamstring. I neglected to take care of it aggressively and continued to run on it even though I knew I was overworking the left leg to compensate. I was lucky to have a couple of years of relative good health (other than the, uh, whole drug addiction thing) so I'm not really bummed at all, I just feel sort of dumb for letting this happen.

This week I'm going to spend some quality time staring at wall in front of the stationary bicycles at the university gym. I lied and said I was a student to get a discount on the membership...because faculty pay more, apparently.

I'm trying to get excited about consistently riding my bicycle again for the first time in several years. It needs a little bit of work, but the alternative is just doing nothing, sitting around drinking beer and getting fat. ...which sounds awesome, actually. It'd go great with my hillbilly mustache and U"S"A hat.

I'm least looking forward to catching up on all the blogs over the next few weeks as everyone in the States starts to ramp up their training in preparation for all sorts of cool events. I'm trying to take a cue from this guy and stay positive and take care of what needs taking of, but if this stress fracture deal ends up taking up to a month or longer to heal...well, let's not think about that, eh?

In running news, I had a couple of decent weeks pushing through the leg pain, but it clearly wasn't worth it. Quim has returned to Spain, which is a bummer because now I don't have anyone to train with and it means I'll have to go to the mall to watch Barcelona by myself, getting drunk at the food court and yelling at the TV 60 ft. away.

Ok, well, this has all been very boring for me, I can't imagine how boring it must have been for anyone who tried to read this, BUT, I know I'll find it interesting one day when I look back on it. Maybe .

Also, I'm currently tied for first in the first-ever ultrarunning fantasy something-something? Which is awesome.

To any of you who dare to compete with me in this fantastical thing of online fantasy wildness and dreams, I say unto thee: BRING IT, MOTHERFUCKER.

Reading is pretty all-right.

Welp, I'm not really sure what's going on these days, but I feel like it's a good idea to put two links up to some fiction from Sam Pink that I've been really enjoying lately.

http://muumuuhouse.com/sp.fiction2.html

http://horseghost.info/sam%20pink.html

Get ready for some prepositional/adjectival phrases!

Perhaps, one day, in the future, after stepping down from a golden podium, after warming all those that I gazed upon with the holy tranquility that emanates from the eyes of a winner and then patiently wiping away the literally brilliant sweat covering my humble human husk, I will look back upon these recent blog-diary entries of mine and realize: "Well geez. I certainly could bullshit on about nothing back then. Why wasn't I out running more?"

Santiago Marathon and Two Week Wrap-up 4/1/12

La Maratón de Santiago: Informe de Carrera (Race Report?)

Thousands of us wait in the marathon starting corral, shuffling our feet and anxiously bobbing in place. I need to escape from the electric tentacles of this monstrous tension. I stare up at the sky, wide-eyed, for the early morning rays are but still emerging from their peaceful slumber behind the mighty protection of the Andes. There is no need to squint. I see everything with crystal clarity.

I lift my arms towards the gentle warmth of our Mother Sun and whisper a prayer: "Lord Jesus, I wanna win this motherfucker today. You help me and I'll stab a rapist later this afternoon." I lowered my arms and got my game face securely fixed in the "on" position, already psyched at the prospect of a potential mid-day stabbing.

After some chanting and counting in Spanish, I hear "UNO!" and the deafening bang of a pistol. "Ha!" I think to myself, "I'm not the only one who plays Uno for keeps!" I look around for my card-game-comrade-in-arms, but all the hyphens obscured my vision...plus, at this point, I'm running. I'm running for the win. Jesus is my running shoes. In case you wondering, Our Lord and Savior has a full-synthetic upper, a low-profile stack-height and a very modest drop. The Lamb of God is neither minimal nor gluttonous. He comes in a fairly rocking colorway, too...ah duuh.

This report will now shift to the vantage point of my hamstring:

"I hate Patrick and I want to be very clear: If I could ever manage to detach myself from his body and somehow implant myself into another person's body, I would do that and then I would use that new body to beat the shit and the stupid out of Patrick's fool head. Then I'd sleep for 2 days because I'd be so tired from such a mammoth physical effort."

Now, from the vantage point of my foot:

"Patrick sucks shit through a straw and can go fuck himself. Prick."

My foot is considerably less verbose than my hamstring, apparently.

So, yeah the race went. This lady with asthma passed me. Seriously. I think she finished around 3:05-ish, but still, I saw her using an inhaler.

Eh, I knew that if I could get to the start line without any major aches or pains, that I could get under 3:00 hours. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. I held 6:45 pace for the first 10 miles and felt fine. Breathing easy and just trucking along. At around mile 11 or 12, my legs felt like they locked up. It was fairly painful and they weren't moving right. I decided not to worry about and just jog in. I think I had a couple 8:00 miles in there. We reached the start of a 10K descent to the finish line and my legs opened up a little and I began to hit a few more 6:50 miles. I finished the race while shouting Beatles lyrics along with the post-race cover band. I crossed the line after about 3:11:00. Oh well. It was a good time anyway.

Ran into Markus from the very well written and extremely well photographed runssel.blogspot.com in the marathon VIP lounge afterwards. We tried to meet up for some beers, but somehow couldn't cross paths. It was for the best, however, as I was inclined to start an all day drunk...and would have easily succumbed with slightest encouragement.

Week ending 3/25/12

-42 miles, 6:40:00. 6,000 ft. I didn't run Saturday and Sunday because the World Enduro Championships were being held in Talca. The first ever world championship of any kind in Chile and it was right here in little ol' Talca. I opted to spend those two days furiously hiking around the trails where I run, watching guys flip their motorcycles into trees.

Week ending 4/1/12

- 42 miles, 5:30:00, 1000 ft. ran only twice before the marathon.

I have really felt shitty for about 2 weeks, aside from the hamstring bullshit and this growing pain in my heel, right about where the achilles attached becomes the bottom of my foot. Yeah, in addition to these new pains, I have also felt totally wasted and run-down. We'll see what sort of mysteries this week holds.

Be healthy, ya'll.