Some good advice

Today I managed to shuffle across the finish like of the Freedom's Run marathon that ran through Harpers Ferry and the Antietam battlefield after what seemed to be about a week. At the beginning of the race I was almost overcome with emotion thinking about all that happened here.

This was my second time, so I knew what was coming. Mentally, I divided the race into four parts: the start, the grind, the suck and the death march.

The start is about five miles around Harpers Ferry, much of which was downhill. The grind is 10 miles along the Potomac towpath trail, which is mostly flat. The suck is about five miles of nasty hills leading to and through the Antietam battlefield. The death march is the final six mile stretch.

Marathoners often talk about hitting the wall around mile 20, when the body runs out of readily available fuel. One advantage of having a bad heart was that I didn't really hit it then. One disadvantage is that it was all wall all the time.

One bright spot is going through Sharpsburg, MD, where some road angels often post clever signs encouraging flagging runners.

One such sign today really hit home: "Embrace the suck."

For the record, I'm generally opposed to misery, but when misery time rolls around, as it will, and when there's no way out for a while, embracing the suck is pretty good advice.

Hail, Caesar, we who are about to die (or at least be really miserable) salute you!

So like my daughter, yes, that would be the over-educated one who believes a zombie outbreak is possible, told me a year or so ago about this cool train run called The Canary in the Cave. As I recall, she said it involved running down and then up West Virginia's New River Gorge.

I thought that sounded cool, except for the up part. So as a birthday present she signed me up for it. It was only after I was registered that I learned it was a 25K+ course, as in somewhere past 15.5 miles, with the hill coming near the end.

As if that wasn't extreme enough, thanks to a polar inversion, the temperature is going to be in the 20s when we start.

Now, part of the charm of endurance events is the voluntary misery. But this Saturday morning promises to be off the charts.

The Spousal Unit has already requesed that if I die, I not do so at the bottom of the gorge in order to spare others the ordeal of bringing me up.

I'll try to comply, but if it does come to that, someone could just roll me into the New River.

It's as good a way as I can think of to celebrate birthday #56.

On wanting to quit

El Cabrero has been a terribly inconsistent blogger lately. I think I've been running around too much.

Speaking of running around, today was a case in point. I've had a 15K run planned for some months, although I can't say I was looking forward to it. The race in question is the Poca River Run, which touts itself as West Virginia's oldest road running race.

It is a pretty 9.3 mile course along the river, which today was swollen from recent rain storms, including a fresh one that soaked me on the last few miles. I've gone farther on harder courses. For some reason though, running this one brings out the wimp in me. This year as last I wanted to quit just about as soon as I started. Everything seemed to hurt and go wrong for the first mile or two. It didn't get a whole lot better after that.

My back hurt. My lungs hurt. I had a bad pain in one heel from what turned out to be a hole in my sock. It's the kind of thing you can put up with for a good while but it would have really caused problems on a longer run. There were other aches and pains. But misery morphed into plain old discomfort as the miles ticked away.

I think one of the great gifts of endurance sports is just that. You learn to endure. You learn to watch pain and discomfort the way Buddhists do in vipassana or mindfulness meditation. Like everything else, pain is an impermanent thing. If you watch it, it doesn't usually stay the same. Sometimes it gets worse, sometimes better and sometimes it just migrates somewhere else.

You also learn not to obsess about the whole thing but rather take it one mile at a time. There seems to be some evidence for that thesis anyhow.

That reminds me of the statistics classes I took in graduate school, another endurance feat that I only managed to survive by making my teacher laugh and go off on lengthy tangents. On every test, one question persisted and it gave good advice for working through problems:

Q. How do you eat an elephant?
A. One bite at a time.

JUST ONE MORE LINK. It's about former Massey CEO Don Blankenship's long delayed rendezvous with justice.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Learning to be miserable

This weekend I ran another 5K run with my seven year old grandson. Unlike last time around, this Saturday the weather was wet, cold and raw. The kid in question also has asthma, which made breathing in cold weather painful. Then there were foot problems. He was running in new shoes and complained about foot pain.

While a 3.1 mile jog is a piece of cake for an active adult, it is a long way for a little kid to go. I don't think I ran that far until I was in my teens.

In my efforts to keep him going, I explained that one of the real advantages of distance running was that it teaches you how to be miserable and keep on going. Unfortunately, that is a pretty useful life skill.

He finished the run anyhow.

GETTING MEAN. Here's the latest budget gutting I mean cutting proposal from US House Republicans.

NEEDED: a left.

WALL STREET. The protests there are picking up steam and spreading beyond Wall Street. Here's a take on it from a participant and here's the latest from CNN.

KOCH BROTHERS. Here's info about more fun and games from the bankrollers of the American right.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED