R-E-S-P- [oh, c,mon ... you know the rest]

"Respect" is a very important word in New Jersey. Just look how many times it’s used in The Godfather – which takes place in Sicily, New York, Long Island, Las Vegas, Havana, Miami, LA, Washington DC and Rome [I’m stitching them all together as one, here]. Look at The Sopranos, who actually ARE from Jersey. Goodfellas??? My Blue Heaven???

In NJ respect is currency. It is more valuable than your credit rating; if it starts to rise, it can generate its own wealth. Should it fall, no amount of refinancing can fix it.

This Winter, the Weather has decided to disrespect the Calendar.

Our Thanksgiving TurkeyMan Duathlon was just a warm-up [pun: sorry]. We’ve had Thanksgivings in the 40’s and 50’s before. I even remember driving over to South Street with my buddy Don Krnse with the top down a day or two after Xmas back in the early 80'.

This December's average high temperature for the DelVal Area was about 42° … the average is 36°. The only truly cold day in New Jersey In December was Dec. 8. The high temperature in Trenton that day was 32 degrees. Newark was 31 degrees and Atlantic City topped out at 34 degrees.

Today, it was 72°.

At 6:30 AM it was 55°. I did my morning run in a T-shirt and shorts. It took considerable resolve NOT to cut my grass. I washed my car.

I did NOT take down my Christmas lights. I did however put a Hawaiian shirt and lei on my angel on the lawn … just because.

I had a cigar. On the porch. After dinner.

What is this ... June-uary???

This disrespect is shameful.

If Weather were a carnate being, it could be fatal.

Tales of the Pre-Construction

Rebuilding the Monster

I need to rebuild my Monster.
He’s in need of some repair.
His belly’s gotten a little soft.
He’s lost a little hair.
I haven’t used him much lately;
I haven’t had anyone to scare.

Annabelle and I [mostly she] did a lot of work over the Spring and Summer of 2006 to get The Monster back into shape. On the one hand, we were successful. We were able to get "The Beast" to the start and over the finish line on time and without much serious damage to himself or others on two high profile occasions.

As we enter the "pre-season" [because 'real runners' don't have 'off seasons'] I realize a potentially fatal mistake Annie and I made.

We "re-built" an old Monster, sure, that was a pretty amazing feat in itself ... we jolted the corpse, brought him back to life, pretty much put him back the way he was back in 2002.

Unfortunately, the way he was in 2002 ... sucked.

We didn't shoot high enough. We should have aimed for 1996. Or 1986.

If you watch the old Frankenstein sequels [Bride of ..., Son of ..., House of ...] they ALWAYS bring the monster back BEFORE fixing the MAIN problem - the bad brain in there!!!

The bad brain couldn't forget about doing bad things. But no one ever thought about taking a bit of time [there was really no rush, because the monster was usually 'dead', there was no deadline] and fixing the brain FIRST and THEN waking him up.

This Body has always been “right about there” - it remembers how to move at an 8-minute mile or better; how to breathe; how to hydrate; how to kick in the last 400m - it has moments of excellence. It can pop them out at will on the track at Bally's. The strength is there.

The force … The Brain ... can't decide.

He knows one thing ... he tasted success in May; he did not in September.

But the Body felt good ... and when the Body feels good, it doesn't want to feel bad. It will do anything to avoid feeling bad; but will also do anything to continue feeling good.

In the days of the Monster, days coming back to me now, there was a gathering of the tribes every morning. A “roll call” surveying the previous evening’s damage, incurred during my 7x7x7 … 7 miles at a 7 minute pace at 7:00.

Feet: Two, good so far
Ankles: Flex-y
Calves: Good
Knees: Fine
Thighs: Thunder
Hips: No complaints
Back: Stiff, but for good reason
All Critical Systems: GO!!!

The upper body had been relegated to “support system” of the “running machine”, responsible for the care, feeding and maintenance of the “transport vehicle.”

The first duty of the day was making coffee. The rest of the day was structured to get in a successful evening run; the right lunch at the right time, proper hydration throughout the day and a light snack on the train ride home. After the run; dinner, a couple of beers [at most] and some reading or drawing before bed.

There was a purpose, a dedication, then; that’s not back quite yet. The day revolved around the run, the enjoyment and the challenge of the run.

It doesn’t help that my daily routine has been flipped on its head, but at the beginning of my journey as a runner, I was a Pre-Dawn Patroller out for a morning jog with the 40-Something Dads. I began thinking and training as they did; nice easy 3-4 mile runs every morning. I t didn't take long before the Mileage Monster was out ther doing 6-7 miles every day with another 8-12 on the weekend ... and no days off.

So, upon reflection, The Monster began with the brain of a 40-Something Dad ... and I just happen to have one handy!!!

Televison is Toxic

Highlights of my 2006 reading list as compiled by the Camden County Library System

Wish you were here : the official biography of Douglas Adams / Nick Webb.

Eats, shoots & leaves : the zero tolerance approach to punctuation / Lynne Truss.

The island of the colorblind / Oliver Sacks.

The secret life of lobsters : how fishermen and scientists are unraveling the mysteries of our favorite crustacean / Trevor Corson.

The devil's teeth : a true story of survival and obsession among America's great white sharks / Susan Casey.

Travels with barley : a journey through beer culture in America / Ken Wells.

Top of the class : how Asian parents raise high achievers-- and how you can too / Soo Kim Abboud and Jane Kim.

Driving blind / Ray Bradbury.

Duck on a bike / by David Shannon.

Son of a witch : a novel / Gregory Maguire.

I, Crocodile / Fred Marcellino.

Early bird : a memoir / Rodney Rothman.

Blue Rabbit and friends / Christopher Wormell.

A giraffe and a half / by Shel Silverstein.

Tomatoes from Mars / [story by Arthur Yorinks ; pictures by Mort Drucker].

Science verse / Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith.

3rd Annual Slowtwitch Turkeyman Virtual Triathlon/Duathlon

It began with an innocuous posting on Slowtwitch's Triathlon Forum:

Ok all, the Third Annual Slowtwitch
Turkeyman will be from 11/23 to 11/26.

Distances are:
Tri: 500m swim, 20k bike 5k run.
Du: 5k / 20k / 5k.

Divisions are: Men’s Tri, Mens Du, Women’s Tri, Women’s Du

Easy to enter: No entry required except posting your times by the cut off.

No entry fee: that’s right absolutely free (beat that IMNA)

Awards: will consist of bragging rights only, given the cost of entry that seems fair.

The rules: (note anyone caught breaking the rules will be banished to the Lavender Room)

1) Have fun.

2) Race may be completed anytime between 12am 11/23/04 and 11:59pm 11/26/04, in other words anytime during the Thanksgiving weekend.

3) Rule change from previous years, events may be completed in any order and at anytime as long as they happen during the holiday weekend.

4) Swim leg, 500m please keep accurate track of your laps, I suggest having someone count for you or using some device to record laps. Immediately after you complete 500m STOP!!!

6) The bike, 20k, try to be as accurate as possible. If using a trainer you may set the tension as light as you like but the wheel must touch the tension device. Remember that your computer will not register if the magnet is on the front wheel. If you stop or get off the bike the clock keeps running.

7) The run, 5k, either treadmill or outside. try to be as accurate as possible. I will open a separate thread to be used to post times only, use this thread for comments. That way I don't have to wade through the comments to get everyone’s times. If you have your splits post them, if not overall time is fine include gender, and whether you did the tri or du.

8) Transition times should not be included in any way.

9) Drafting on the bike will not be tolerated; drafters will be forced to view every picture Tom D has ever posted on this forum

10) Above all see rule #1

The above bears no responsibility in any way shape or form for any injuring to person or property suffered during this event. Triathlon is a dangerous sport, any risk of injury or death is solely the responsibility of the participant. Slowtwitch.com is in no way affiliated with this production.

***
D’wife had to work Saturday morning. We had a full day planned so if a workout was to be done, it had to be done early. As was my custom, I woke up, did my stretching / punk-yoga and was up, out and back, just before she had to leave at 8AM. The rest of my morning was consigned to baby-sitting … Or, as other call it: “parenting.” Parenting, plus running the Laundry Train.

She got home from the bank just about 1:30. D’Kid’s godmother came by at two o’clock to take her to the movies. They went to see “Happy Feet” … something about penguins.

I know what you’re thinking … Home alone for a couple of hours, D’Kids at the movies, what are we to do???

“Wanna fuck for a little while???”

No, see we plan things a bit better than that, our daughter’s a sound sleeper, so we don’t have to struggle and scramble for time to get “nekkid” [Tuesday and/or Thursday, and Saturday and/or Sunday]

So, with a couple hours to spare, we went for a bike ride.

The original plan was to go to the gym together, but that’s not really a “together” activity … when I go to Bally’s I run on the track then ride the bike … D’Wife prefers a workout on the elliptical trainer, some time on the recumbent bike, then a swim. We’re not really be at the gym together, just at the same time.

With the temperature pushing into the mid sixties and a sky of calm high clouds, we departed on our mountain bikes [a cruel joke of a name for people who live in mostly flat South Jersey].

I pretty much knew where she wanted to ride - she’s not the one to say “where does this go?” – I took the lead out of the development. After traveling only a few hundred yards I realized something very important … while I want to get as many miles in as quickly as possible [some may say “race”], she wants to take a more leisurely ride. This will require me to go slower, look back often to see how far behind me she is, and, in extreme cases, circle back behind her for her to take the lead for a while.

All of which, flies in the face of the “I’ll meet you at the bottom of the hill” mentality that I usually adopt once I strap on my helmet. She knows that and is pretty tolerant. It usually only takes me a couple of miles to remember we’re riding together. This is not a wedding and you are not the bride … no showing off [or extreme hats].

The ride out was pretty simple; this was basically the first couple miles of my commute, with a little detour back out to the main road; a detour which I had driven once, and run twice during my failed ½ marathon training. If she was taking out where I thought she might, we were looking at an eight or nine miler … no sweat for D’Wife, who completed 45 of 60 miles on the American Cancer Society Ride in July on training that would have translated to 5-10 miles a week for a marathoner [i.e., ridiculously little, yet successful just the same].

Getting up on wheels, I noticed that there were a lot more exits off the main road into the woods; the sweet New Jersey sugar sand called me to explore.

“Hey, where does this road go?” I asked, popping over a stack of railroad ties. “Look, deer tracks!!!”

“I don’t know! Come back here. Stop playing around.”

Well, that was fun.

For a minute. She wasn’t in a playful mood … well, not in an X-Games dirt-jump sense anyway.

After exiting the fully-built / ¾-inhabited development, we were back to the main road and the newly installed bike path. After 3 miles traveled, the end of the path was only one and a half down the road. There were plenty of hunting and ATV trails, but she wasn’t having any of those … I couldn’t blame her anyway … anyone who thinks “Locals Only” is ONLY refers to beaches and surfers need to live in the woods for a while. EVERYTHING is “locals only” … bike paths, fire roads, gas stations, convenience stores, bars, churches, schools.

Heck, my neighbors [Mark and Nicole] moved out of our development seven years ago, but #9 is still “Mark and Nicole’s House” three owners later.

Even though she had a dual-suspension MTB [killing me with thoughts of “what could be done”] she wanted to stay on the bike path.

Then out of the blue …

“Let’s go down here.”

Granted, it wasn’t a soggy trail or a sandy fire road, but it was a departure from the known that I was looking for. Of course, it was also up to me to know where we were at all times.

“Um. Honey. I don’t have that GPS on my piece-of-shit built from trash bike I’m riding today. I also forgot to print up a Google map of where we were going today. Can you forgive me?”

Fortunately, I knew enough to realize that the street she chose would either:
a) Lead us to another road I know from my daily drive, or
b) Circle around and bring us out the same way we came in

Hoping for “A” [with a nice lakeside ride back] it, turned out to be “B”

Oh, well.

[It is important to mention that D”Wife was calling out mile markers every 0.4 miles or so … just because. We were at about 6.4 at this point]

We left the lollipop development [a street in, a circle, and back out … on a map, it looks like a lollipop] and back to main road.

“How far?” I shouted back to our “navigator”

“Seven and change,” she called back.

It felt like more, but that could have been because we usually cruise much faster on open road. We weren’t really rushing and would have covered much more ground if we hadn’t been “sightseeing” … after all this WAS the first Saturday after Thanksgiving, it was 60 degrees, and many of the McMansions were already in decoration mode.

“Ooh, look at what they’ve done!!!”
“Such pretty bows. Can you make those?”
“Blue and white? Must be Jewish. But still, very nice.”

“Is this where we go?” She tooled off to the left.
“I don’t think so.”
“It says ‘Georgia O’Keefe Way’. That’s one of our streets.”
“Yeah, but … I don’t …”
”I remember it … She’s the one who painted the shells, right?”
“Flowers mostly, but yeah.”

Only a couple hundred yards off the main bike path and the development had a much less than lived in look about it. There were many unmarked lots, some even un-cleared. It definitely had a “Phase II” feel, a Phase II that may not even happen, judging by the new home market. As we got further down the road, the road became less road-like. Many of the courts and cross streets were still sandy truck paths, with little use for curbs, driveways or pavement since there was no place to drive to yet.

After a couple missteps trying to get back to “Phase One” (an unmarked road would have taken us through the woods, over a bridge and back, but we [meaning: she] didn’t trust our [her] trail riding skills) we stumbled out and back to our familiar bike path.

We had ridden just slightly more than nine miles and were looking at about six more to get back. D’wife was getting concerned about the time – it was past 3 o’clock and the sun was creeping down into the trees.

“I don’t want to be out here in the woods at dark,” she panicked.
“We have plenty of time,” I assured her, “It’s not going to take an hour to ride five miles. We can walk faster than that.”

We rolled through the McMansions again, noticing some work had been done in the past hour, reindeers and Santas had been erected, lights had been clipped in, and so on.

As we passed the trail where I saw the deer tracks, we saw the deer who those tracks belonged to. That's the great thing about being outside. You're not going to find THAT at Bally's.

We proceeded past the farms and fields, past the cottages and bungalows of our old town and home.

Without even breathing hard we had covered 15 miles, in about an hour and a half.

As I hung Blackie up in the garage it occurred to me that I had completed two thirds of the Turkeyman, without trying (pun: sorry).

I maintained my momentum, and changed out of my bike gear and into my shorts and running shoes.

“Where are you going?” D’Wife asked.

“My legs aren’t thrashed yet so I’m going for a run. I’ll be back in half an hour.”

“Really? Well, good for you!”

It was the first time I’d run off the bike in … well, a really long time.

It took a few minutes to get the feet turning over properly, but I got the three miles done.

5K: 26 min
20K MTB: 1H 10min*
5K: 28 min

That was fun.




* I had done more than the 12 mile bike, so I “normalized” the time for that – i.e., I guessed.

********

See the bike route: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=602726
The results thread: http://forum.slowtwitch.com/gforum.cgi?post=1085640
[Only three posted, so I finished third]

Re-[ …] Day

I think everyone has a day, every year, where they reset the clock, turn the page, do some karmic housecleaning, tidy up the garage of Zen, power-wash the spirit, resort the psychic sock drawer, and so on and on. The metaphors flow freely.

For most it’s a birthday – especially if that birthday ends in a “0”. Many more find January 1st [New Year’s Day] more convenient. Others follow their Lenten abstinences and observances with a year-long commitment to better living; whether it’s less chocolate or more prayer.

For me that day is November 19th – my daughter’s birthday; a day I’ve referenced many times in these pages and others.

It's celebration comes in many forms.

Rejuvenation Day
I’m not getting any younger. But spending an afternoon being with, and acting like, a kid does wonders. This year I painted a ceramic monkey purple to the amazement and amusement to a dozen first graders. Last year I was a rodeo clown on skates at the Philadelphia Flyers’ practice facility. I don’t have a plan for next year yet.

Recalibration Day
Check the weight, check the BP, check the fluids. This year the cholesterol – although 6 points lower than last year – got me a good talking to. This is followed by …

Realignment Day
Appointment with chiropractor; bring a non-wrapped toy and get a free adjustment. Works for me.

Re-imagination Day
This is the most self-indulgent part of the day. It’s all about appearance. Is there some part of my personality / image that could use some ‘refinement’? Perhaps a make-over?

With the addition of Vicki to the family, I am no longer that little geek in the broken-down squirrel-powered skateboard that was Sally.

I’m getting looks … nice ones.

Revisitation Day
Simply, picking up projects and hobbies that have fallen by the wayside; prioritizing them and starting over. A new journal/sketchbook was purchased.

Reconnection Day
I call, write or email someone I haven’t spoken to in a while.

When all is said and done, Re-Something-Something Day is simply a correction of course and speed on a long journey.