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.

About that triathlon

Today was my fourth assault and third completion of the Richwood (really Greenbrier and Pocahontas County) Scenic Mountain Triathlon. Considering how closely I came to dropping out several times and how long it took me to limp across the finish line, I have only this to say:

*Thanks to some friends who helped pull me through.

*If I do this again, I really need to learn to swim. It felt like the lake hated me and it was mutual.

*The next time a certain friend of mine gets a bright idea, I hope he pitches it to somebody else;

but more to the point:

*Been there, done that, got the tee shirt.

Next up? Probably a 25K trail run. At least it's on solid ground and doesn't involve gear.

Y'all shoulda talked me out of this

I'm about to head to Richwood, WV to make another attempt at the Scenic Mountain Triathlon (1/2 mile swim in a very cold river, 17+ bike mostly uphill, 6.2 mile run). I got talked into it by a much younger friend who incidentally has a functioning heart despite the fact that I'm a terrible swimmer with a busted cardio system and have done laps in a pool exactly once in the last few years.

However, to compensate, I got one of those triathlon wetsuits for warmth and buoyancy. It's hard to put on and take off but it does make me float like a cork. I may croak tomorrow but I probably won't drown. I figure if I make it out of the lake I can finish, although it might take a week or so.

Don't wait up.

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.

An ethical dilemma

El Cabrero is not one to shy away from deep philosophical issues or ethical dilemmas. Especially if they involve profound questions, such as under what conditions is a person allowed to wear a tee shirt from an endurance event, a topic I've blogged about more than once.

To start with, there is the basic proposition that it is an act of arrogance and hubris to wear a tee shirt for an event before one actually completes it. It's like the same point from Herodotus' Histories where he tells the story of Solon's maxim of calling no one happy until you have seen their last hours.

Then there is the proposition that one does not deserve to wear the tee shirt of a race one began but didn't finish. Once, shortly after having heart surgery, I signed up for a triathlon. The water in Summit Lake was ice cold (to me anyway) and I couldn't breathe and didn't finish. I never wore the shirt.

Circumstances have recently forced me to grapple with another tee shirt dilemma. I was planning on running a 15K trail run this weekend but was stranded by the miseries of air travel. In this case, the Spousal Unit picked up my package thinking I'd be there in time.

I'm thinking that since I probably would have finished it if Delta had gotten me home on the right day, even if it meant crawling across the finish line on bloody stumps, I have the ethical right to wear the shirt, as long as I complete a 15K at some point.

Judges?

PAUL RYAN GETS SCHOOLED ON POVERTY here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

What was I thinking?

A week or two back, I signed up to run a 15 mile trail run tomorrow morning for reasons that now escape me. I have two bad knees, one bad foot, and a nearly dead heart. Plus, I haven't run that far since 2003.

 And the best/worst part is the race starts at 7:30, about two hours before my body wakes up on a good day.

In other words, it should be a day of glorious agony.

I take as my (admittedly flawed) patron saint for this adventure Teddy Roosevelt, who said this:

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming, but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory or defeat.

That's my story, anyway, and I'm sticking with it.

ON THE BRIGHT SIDE,  WV Gov. Tomblin signed the Future Fund into law.

A CHICKEN FROM HELL, ANYONE? Click here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

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

Progress as endurance sport

This morning I find myself creaking around as I try to recover from two endurance events. One was a half marathon over mountain trails and the other was the 60 day WV legislative session. I'm not sure which one was more of a challenge.

There were some brutal spots on the trail and there were some really low points in the session, although parts of both were really good.

All this reminds me of an email I got from a friend as we commiserated on a good bill that got away due to the pressure from an unsavory interest group. I now quote it in full:

"Sleezebags always win in the short run. Good thing progress is an endurance sport."

Roger that.

JUST DO IT. Two op-eds recently appeared in the Gazette supporting Medicaid expansion in WV. Here's one that looks at it from a religious perspective and one that looks at it from the standpoint of women's health.

THE 99/1 PERCENT THING. Here's a timely call for tax fairness from a Nobel Prize-winning economist.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

SWIM BIKE RUN

Caption: A good triathlete is something of an amphibian.

El Cabrero has been thinking about endurance in sport and life this week. If this is your first visit, please click on earlier entries.

When most people think about triathlons, they think about the Iron Man, a grueling race of truly epic proportions that began in Hawaii in the 1970s: a 2.4 mile swim, followed by 112 miles on a bike and topped off with a marathon run of 26.2 miles.

A Half Iron Man is the same, divided by two.

No, I can't say I've done either one and won't get there in this lifetime. But it would have been kind of cool.

(Such things are much better to have done than to actually do in the present tense.)

Most triathlons are a good bit shorter, thank God. The Olympic distance (it became an official event in 2000) is 1.5 meter swim, 24.8 bike, and 10K (6.2 mile) run. Shorter ones are called "sprints," although most are a far cry from sprinting.

In El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia, there's a nice one in Nicholas and Greenbrier counties that includes 1/2 mile in the icy waters of Summit Lake, 17 bike miles (mostly uphill) and a 10K at Cranberry Glades.

There's another one each year near Huntington at Beech Fork in Wayne County, which offers an Olympic distance and a "sprint" of 1/2 mile in the late, 24.8 miles on a bike and 3.1 on the hoof. That's the one I'm going to try Sunday.

Assuming one doesn't drown or have a bike wreck, triathlons of a reasonable distance (say Olympic or less) are actually easier on the body than long runs since you're not punishing yourself in the same way all the time.

My problem is that I swim only slightly better than a rock and have the kind of body that water apparently feels no obligation to hold up. My technique is only a little better than a dog paddle. Plus, swimming in a lake is a lot different than doing laps in a pool.

The one time I did an Olympic distance event, I could barely finish the mile in the deep dark waters of Beech Fork. The only thing that saved me was the fact that one of the rescue guys who followed us in a boat was on my fire department and I knew that if he fished me out I'd never hear the end of it.

I've tried one triathlon since having all the heart troubles and didn't finish. The waters of Summit Lake where cold and I couldn't seem to get enough air. Here's hoping for better luck Sunday. I figure if I make it out of the water, I'll be good to go.

MORE ON HIGHER ED. Here's a good editorial from the Bluefield Daily Telegraph about the need to boost WV's educational attainment and make it easier for adults to access higher education. Here's the punchline:

In light of the recent reports, West Virginia must review its programs that promote and assist high school and non-traditional students in getting a college education and, if need be, overhaul them.

If officials are serious about improving the economic environment then educational opportunities and training for adults must become a top priority.

The Mountain State will never be truly “open for business” if we don’t have the qualified manpower to fill the ranks of incoming industry.

GIANT BUGS NOT AN OPTION TODAY. In case you were worrying about this, the current atmosphere of the earth would not support the huge flying insects that used to live here. You can scratch that off your list.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

REJOICE, WE CONQUER

Caption: This is my pace.

Of all endurance events, the marathon is special to El Cabrero. Sacred even.

The event takes its name from the place of a battle between a huge force of invading Persians and a hastily assembled Athenian force in 490 BC.

According to Herodotus, Pheidippides was a professional runner who covered the distance between Athens and Sparta (around 150 miles) in two days in an effort to urge the Spartans to resist the invaders. Along the way, he had an encounter with the god Pan, who pledged friendship to the Athenians.

The Spartans were sympathetic, but for religious reasons could not send an army until the moon was full. So he had to slog back.

A much later legend has it that after the Athenians defeated the numerically superior Persian force, Pheidippides ran the 25+ miles back to Athens to deliver the news. As the story goes, he said something like, "Rejoice, we conquer" and fell dead.

(This is what happens when you overdo it.)

This story was the subject of a poem by Robert Browning. Here's a stanza:

Yes, he fought on the Marathon day:
So, when Persia was dust, all cried "To Akropolis...!
Run, Pheidippides, one race more! the meed is thy due!
'Athens is saved, thank Pan,' go shout!" He flung down his shield,
Ran like fire once more: and the space 'twixt the Fennel-field
And Athens was stubble again, a field which a fire runs through,
Till in he broke: "Rejoice, we conquer!" Like wine thro' clay,
Joy in his blood bursting his heart, he died--the bliss!

Whether it happened or not, it's a good story. And the consequences of the eventual Greek triumph were really great. It permitted the full flowering of Greek science, art, literature, philosophy and democracy. They had plenty of shortcomings--but they also helped to give us the tools with which to criticize them.

When the great tragedian Aeschylus died, his grave marker said nothing about all the prizes he won for drama. Instead, it simply said

Beneath this stone lies Aeschylus, son of Euphorion, the Athenian, who perished in the wheat-bearing land of Gela; of his noble prowess the grove of Marathon can speak, or the long-haired Persian who knows it well.

It was a big deal. No wonder that when the Olympic games were revived in 1896 they included a long run of 40 K (24.8) miles. Now the distance is 26.2.

Running a marathon is kind of a big deal too. Running for more than 25 miles isn't normal. Aside from the obvious, the body tends to run out of readily available fuel after about 20 miles. This is known among marathoners as "hitting the wall." Basically, you just have to gut it through the rest.

Training for one isn't as hard as it might seem. You don't need to run 100 or more miles a week. Three days of hard training, with an easy day between, are enough. One day should be a long run, culminating in one of at least 20 miles around 2 weeks before the race. Another day should include tempo runs, which start slow but include several faster segments.

The day that REALLY builds character is interval training, which often consists of a mile or two warmup followed by repeated hard 800 meter intervals with a brief jog between each. Six, eight, ten, twelve, whatever, striving to finish each in the same time. Pushing yourself over and over. I love it. I hate it. It hurts. It's awesome, even if your interval is a whole lot slower than anyone else's.

Then comes the race. I've done three. One good, one bad, and one ugly. The worst was when my knee blew out halfway through and I had to limp the last 13 miles.

(Note: the line between endurance and idiocy is fine and El Cabrero is not the best judge of where it starts and stops. With my corazon in the shape it's in, I may not have another one in me.)

But here's my best advice: run it one mile at a time and don't worry about who passes you or who you pass.

In the long run, we run against ourselves.

A STEP ON THE HIGH ROAD. This article from the AP stresses the need for making education affordable to more WV adults.

UHHH...THIS DOESN'T SOUND GOOD. The Department of Defense says it can't account for 190,000 firearms intended for Iraqi security forces, not to mention a comparable number of accessories such as helmets and body armor.

READ MORE, LIVE LONGER. I really think there's something to this. Here's a brief item about how better reading skills contributes to a longer life. Which is good, since it gives you more time to read.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

IN THE LONG RUN

Caption: Hummingbirds drink hard but they can go the distance.

We've all heard the cliche that sports build character, a thesis which is highly questionable in light of some of the doings of athletes. Still, I think there's something to be said for the discipline and hardship that come with training.

Especially endurance events, which seem to me to be a good metaphor for life. Most people need (or should have) some kind of training before they run 15 or more miles or do a long mixed event, especially if they want to avoid injury and finish before everybody goes home.

That generally means an extended period of solitary training, an apprenticeship in pain. I do believe that picking a difficult goal, focusing on it, sticking with it, and putting in the time and effort pays dividends to those who do it.

This is even or especially true if it's something you are not and never will be particularly good at (sorry about the preposition thing).

In the Japanese Zen tradition, the jolt or boost that comes from concentration is called joriki. As Zen master Hakuun Yasutani explained it in the context of meditation practice, joriki is

the power or strength which arises when the mind has been unified and brought to one-pointedness in zazen concentration. This is more than the ability to concentrate in the usual sense of the word. It is a dynamic power which, once, mobilized, enables us even in the most sudden and unexpected situations to act instantly, without pausing to collect our wits, and in a manner wholly appropriate to the circumstances.

In the context of ordinary life, the jolt or joriki that comes from endurance events is the tenacity to keep going even when it's hard and it hurts. As Woody Allen once said, "Eighty percent of success is showing up." Over and over.

Here's the other side of it. I've often known people who said they wanted to accomplish certain things, whether it's something physical or something like learning a language or a new skill, but they never get there. Either they never start or, more often, they don't have the literal or metaphorical stamina to keep at it.

In other words, they've never made a practice of interval training.

The results can be even sadder if life is approached as a sprint and if strenuous effort ends with the passing of youth. Barring the unforeseen, life is a long run, not a 100 yard dash.

WE HAVE A WINNER... One would imagine that the competition for the title of "World's Worst Poet" would be fierce indeed, but we may have a winner. This is from the AP:

The land that gave the world Robert Burns also has the dubious honor of producing the "world's worst poet." Now fans of the hapless William McGonagall are campaigning to put him in the pantheon of Scottish literary greats.

The late 19th century poet's work is so bad he carried an umbrella with him at all times as protection from the barrage of rotten tomatoes he faced wherever he recited.

DARK AS A DUNGEON. Here's the latest on the fight for mine safety at the federal level.

THAT UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY... In case you are running short on speculations about the possiblity of immortality, click here.

WHO'S IN CHARGE, ANYWAY? According to the latest research, it may be the unconscious.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

TRI TRI AGAIN

Caption: The swimming is the hardest part.

In a little less than a week, El Cabrero is going to try something stupid. You may well ask, so what else is new? Let me be more specific.

Next Sunday, I'm planning on trying to finish a triathlon, a questionable action under any circumstances, with a (literally) broken heart. How broken? Let me put it this way: when I read an article about Dick Cheney a while back, I learned his heart (or functional equivalent) had an ejection fraction of 35%, which is 5% better than mine.

One of the symptoms for my condition is "sudden cardiac death," which sounds like it could be serious under certain conditions. Earlier this year, I got a shock box installed, which may come in handy when cars need a jump start.

If I had a different heart, I'd use it, but as Donald Rumsfeld, mad poet of destruction, once said, "You have to go to war with the army you've got."

The fact that I wound up with this condition shows that the universe has a sense of humor. I've always been physically active, haven't smoked in years, am not obese, and only drink as much alcohol as is absolutely necessary.

In the three years before I had bypass surgery in 2004, I'd done two marathons, three triathlons, three Charleston Distance Runs (15 milers), two half-marathons, and several smaller races.

Like Dylan said, "They'll stone you when you're trying to be so good."

Paradoxically, though, finding out my heart was almost totally blocked made me feel a lot better. I kept wondering why I was getting slower and slower. The news did wonders for my self esteem. After all, anyone can finish an endurance event with a functioning heart, but it takes a real man (or an idiot) to do it with a crappy one.

NEW NOTES. One blog that is always thought provoking is Jim Lewis' Notes from Under the Fig Tree. Here's the latest.

OTHER VOICES. An interesting development over the last year or so has been the emergence of evangelical voices that have broken with the religious right on issues such as poverty and climate change. This latest example is even more surprising.

STICKING TO THE RELIGION THEME, here's an op-ed on the subject from yesterday's Sunday Gazette-Mail by Perry Mann in which he suggests that churches should do more to deal with the problems of this world.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED