Yeah, sure, whatever

I am not sure what I am still doing up. It’s 20 minutes before 1 am and I won’t let myself go to sleep. I have a headache, I am a little drunk, I feel like going for a run and I am tired. I also took a couple of Excedrin to battle a headache I have coming on, so the caffeine is battling it out with the Ambien I am sucking on. Let’s see which will win. Anyway, I had an excellent week of training up until today… Well now, I mean yesterday, it is past midnight. In summary here is what I did this past week: Monday - 4 mile run, 3000 Yard swim and 40 minutes Strength Train Tuesday – 7.4 mile run Wednesday – 40 minute Spin Class, 3000 yard swim Thursday – 5.5 mile run, 40 minutes strength training Friday – 24 mile bike, 3000 yard swim, 30 minute Core Strength training. Saturday – I bailed out of a run. I drove up to MA for a ski trip and when I arrived at the hotel, figured I’d go on the treadmill. However, the treadmill sucked. It was very narrow, the speed regulator didn’t work, it was in a claustrophobic unventilated room and my shin hurt. It would have been very unpleasant so I said fuck it. I don’t regret it other than my streak of 26 straight training days has now come to an end. Dammit. I would have gone outside, but there is really no place to run around here. Anyway, during the time between xmas and New Year’s, I generally get to take it easy from work, which includes several days off. It’s one of my favorite training times of the year, because I get to act like a fulltime triathlete. I wake up late, do my training, come home, eat and relax feeling all tired and satisfied. It is quite the lifestyle. I was born to it. Too bad you can’t make a living at it. How great would it be to have a job where all you did was train your body all day long? I guess that opportunity passed back when I was a teenager. How I would like to go back armed with the knowledge I now have. I’d be the greatest fucking triathlete there ever was. Well maybe not, desire can only take you so far. Naturally ability has to come into play, and apparently my genetics is playing tricks on me with a bum fucking shin. I think self surgery may be in order in the near future. I just want to cut the fucking nerve that is transmitting the pain up to my brain right out of my body. I’ll do it with a steak knife, I don’t care, I just want to get rid of this nagging pain. So anyway, tomorrow I’ll go skiing. I wonder if that counts at all towards training. I already know the treadmill at this hotel sucks, so if skiing doesn’t count as training, then tomorrow will be another off day. I am not going to run on snow banked encrusted roads with cars whizzing passed me at 60mph. I may be a touch crazy, but I am not stupid. I actually feel like going now, while the traffic is light. Nah, I’ll probably get run over by a drunken Patriot’s fan that was out celebrating his team’s undefeated season. OK, I am going to end this and force myself to go to sleep. I will make myself lie in bed with my eyes closed until sleep overcomes me. I’ll wake up several times, but at least I’ll be in bed. Maybe I will wake up feeling refreshed and relaxed. We will just have to see. Goodnight.

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Xmas Run

As much as my training has been going well lately, I have still been getting distracted. I find myself going to bed way too late each night to effectively get up and do a morning workout. I really need to cut these distractions out of my life as they are not productive. They are entertaining no doubt, but only entertainment. If anything, the distractions only serve as a reminder as to how boring my life can be in other areas. I need to work on the real world areas of my life and not escape into fantasyland. Though I have been distracted, I still have been managing to get in the critical workouts. I even managed to get in a workout yesterday (xmas) late in the evening. I was down in Lakewood, NJ and planned to run the 5 mile Mannasquan reservoir loop. However, it was getting too late in the day to run through the woods and I forgot my headlamp at home. Instead I did a 1 mile loop through the streets of Lakewood. At first I wasn’t thrilled about doing a 1 mile loop in the street, but it turned out to be a very pleasant run. As it became dark there we many houses with xmas lights lighting up the way. The one mile loop was very easy to do and I found myself getting lost in it. It was completely dark save for the occasional street light and my ears were filled with the musical styling’s of Motorhead. I love running while listening to Motorhead. Lemmy and company have such a loud and fast paced beat which makes it so easy to keep a high cadence. The darkness and isolation of sound from the real world put my on another dimension and I was completely immersed in it. Anyway, I intended to go 4, maybe 5 miles. However, I was just feeling so good that I just kept going. I eventually went 7 miles and thought of continuing until someone from my aunt’s house started to get worried about me and they came out to look for me. In the end, what got me to stop was my coach’s admonition to stop training while I still had the desire to do more. And damn could I have done more. I could have run an ultra. It was only with great reluctance and a touch of sadness that I finally decided to call it a night and head back inside. I knew I had xmas dinner waiting for me and I went inside looking forward to that.

Flay the Body, Strengthen the Spirit

It is a little before 2am and I just got back from a loop around Prospect Park. It wasn’t perhaps the smartest run I’ve ever done, but it was one of my better runs, at least for my spirit. I was feeling a little down and a run under the beautiful moon lit sky seemed like just the ticket to brighten my spirits. A little flaying of my body to strengthen my spirit, if you will. What is keeping me going on my training lately is the sheer pleasure of it. I have a nice relaxed feel for it and look forward to it. I want to do more than I am scheduled to do. It’s been bringing me real pleasure. I was just telling a friend this evening over drinks, that for a couple of years my aggressiveness and enthusiasm towards training for Ironman was fueled by anger. Now this worked very well for me and I wouldn’t trade the feelings that pushed me in my training during that time for anything. However, after the anger was worked out of my body, I found myself lacking in desire and unable to push myself towards really training for the Ironman. Just look at what happened to me at this past year’s IMLP. I think I’ve finally developed a healthier attitude towards my training. I’ve finally discovered the pure joy in doing it. I am not saying that I didn’t get joy over the past several years. I got enormous pleasure out of it. There is nothing like the feelings of well being that you get after you push yourself hard and work out your aggressions. It’s just that now, I am not working out aggression, but I am still getting the same pleasure out of my training. No, the training wasn’t working out aggression all the time, but that was a large part of it. And I am sure now I will use my training to work out some anger that I am feeling. These days though it is “more” about doing it for the fun of it. For keeping a healthy lifestyle. For setting an example for my family. And most of all just for me.

Long, Hard and Far

Well, I am definitely over the hump. My fears that I was going to become a couch potato, inactive bum and blow back up to over 200+ pounds have finally begun to subside. I am definitely back into my training and eager to do more. I think part of the reason for my pleasure in training has a bit to do with my reading Christopher Bergland’s book “The Athletes Way” He takes a lot about creating a flow that has its origination from the cerebellum part of the brain. I am badly paraphrasing what he discusses, so you will just have to get the book to find out what he is talking about. Let’s just say that I am trying to think with a different part of my mind or at least in a different way when it comes to training. So far it has been working well. I am viewing each workout as a pleasurable experience and I am leaving myself wanting more. Today I ran a fantastic 7.4 miles in Prospect Park. I was with my friend Larry who wanted to stop after two loops. I wanted to go a third, but I decided that I was going to stop wanting more. This way I remain eager to get out there again. I don’t want to get burned out. I want to keep this feeling of anticipation and wanting more. I like wanting more. I like the feeling of still wanting to go longer, aching to see how far I can take it. I want to work myself back up to the point where I am running for hours and it feels like I’ve only gone for minutes. I want to get back to the point where I come home from a workout, completely spent and satisfied. I love the distance. I love the pain of it. I am not satisfied when I can’t take it long. I feel like I am not doing my best when I am unable to go long. For me it has always been about the endurance and how extreme the event/workout is. Speaking of extreme events, I am happy to report that I have once again won a lottery spot into the Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon. I didn’t think I would get it and doing so, brings with it a measure of sadness. The event falls on the same day as the Eagleman Half Ironman; another event I was greatly looking forward to doing. I am supposed to go to that event with my friend Todd and I really want to go. However, getting into Alcatraz is so damn hard and it is such a unique and challenging race, that I don’t see how I can turn down the opportunity. I’ll have to reconcile this somehow.

In a Good Mood

I’ve been in a pretty good mood lately. Each day I am looking forward to doing my training and breaking a sweat. I am not doing anything too strenuous and perhaps that is good. It is keeping me from burning out and looking forward to more. I’ve been particularly enjoying going to the gym during my lunch hour and doing strength training exercises. I could feel the difference in my strength the other day when I did a swim session. I had worked on my lats the day before and I could feel the muscle fatigue every time I pulled through my stroke. It wasn’t so much a fatigue as it was more of recognition that I had worked the muscles recently. In fact, I felt stronger pulling through the water than I have in a very long time. If felt good. I swam for 3000 yards and wanted to go more. I resisted the urge though and pulled myself out of the water. I want to keep the feeling of wanting to do more. Besides my training, I’ve also been balancing out my life with a fair amount of partying. I’ve gone out with friends or to parties several times in the past week or so. I am drinking as much as I feel like and enjoying myself. It is a pleasure just to live a relaxed life and not be so disciplined with my training, but not ignoring it either. For now I feel as though I’ve reached a balance between work, training, family and play. This morning I opened to a page from my training play book that I haven’t looked at in a long time. I was awake by 4am in the morning and after a quick snack, decided to go out for a run instead of back to bed. It was cold and dark and Prospect Park was completely deserted. I made it around the entire loop without seeing another living soul on it. Just the way I like it. I love being in the park at that hour of the day. I love how desolate it feels, how lonely. I feel like I am a Martian walking on an alien planet. The only thing that marred the run for me was the fact that my bowels decided to no longer be constipated when I was the furthest point from home. I spent two miles of my run praying that I could make it back home without shitting myself. I contemplated ringing the bell to the house of a friend that lived nearby, but I didn’t think he would appreciate being woken at 4:30 in the morning because I wanted to take a shit in his bathroom. I made it back home without completely soiling myself. After doing my business and cleaning up, I went back to bed and woke back up at 8am. I felt completely rested and refreshed and if not for the file stored on my Heart Rate monitor I would have had no proof that I actually went outside at 4am. It was really like the run never happened. I was literally the bear that shat in the woods that no one saw. I was feeling so good today, that I even ducked out of a meeting at work for a while so I could escape to the gym and do a strength training workout. I finally feel like I am getting back in shape.

Still Drinking

So I haven’t exactly learned my lesson regarding drinking since my big Migraine this past Sat/Sunday. I wound up going out for drinks both Tuesday and Wednesday this week. Fortunately, I didn’t drink to excess; that is I didn’t come home completely fucked up. No, I just drank in moderation like an upstanding American male. So far though, I’ve managed to get in all of my workouts except for a swim last night. I’ll give myself a pass on that one though. Last nights occasion to be out drinking was at a “well know search engine company’s” customer appreciation get together at the NikeID Studio at Niketown NYC. They had an open bar, which contained Captain Morgan, Hors D'Oeuvres, pizza, dessert and best of all, you got to design a customized pair of Nike sneakers. By the time I left it was getting to the point where if I didn’t get home, I wouldn’t be able to see my kids off to bed. I decided to forgo a swim workout in order to spend some quality time with them. I was glad I did. I had a lot of fun with my children in the short time I had with them before they went to sleep. Definitely more fun than swimming a lonely 2000 yards in the pool. I can always make up a swim, I can’t recover lost time with my children.

Migraine

So today is a day off. The first one in over a week. I went out with my friend David last night to my annual Triathlon club holiday party and got myself completely toasted. I came home with a migraine headache which only got worse as the morning wore on. I started to beg my wife to take me to the emergency room. I thought I was going to die. Fortunately, my brother is a doctor and he was able to phone in a prescription of Imitrex and some sort of suppository to help control my nausea. I was in total agony, hallucinating and throwing up mouths full of stomach acid. I couldn’t even keep down water. I’ve now been up for over 24 hours. I don’t know what is keeping me awake. At least I am starting to feel hungry again. I should try to eat soon.

Inspiration

So I’ve been sadly lacking for inspiration to train, but perhaps I finally did something inspirational. Before my wife left for Spain in the beginning of the summer, she had sent to my office as a surprise a 3 poster set of the Ironman World Championships in Kona. Well it took me 3.5 months, but I finally got the posters framed and hung in my office. Now when I walk into my office, I am reminded of the athlete I once was and how it would be nice to get back into that sort of shape. On the night that I hung up the posters, I had my first desire in a while to get on my bike. It was only 45 minutes in my basement, but it was a start. I backed that up with another 1 hour ride this morning and then a 4000 yard swim this afternoon. My first double workout day in quite some time. What it is though, is that I need something in my life beyond training. I need a closer and warmer relationship with my wife. The closeness I have with my children is great, but I am left feeling empty and lacking for adult companionship. My training took away that loss for quite some time, but 5 years into my training, I find myself wanting more. I just don’t know how to get it. Maybe as I walk into my office everyday, I’ll see those posters and the fire to be the best triathlete I can possibly be will come back. Training hard makes you too tired to care about anything else or at least makes you forget what you are lacking in other areas for a while. Tomorrow I am going to do the Turkey Trot in Prospect Park with my friend Larry and his family. At least the one thing I have through my training is a network of friends that I can share my experiences with.

Las Vegas Day 2

It is really possible in Las Vegas to go for days at a time without sleep and not know how many days have passed. You stay up so late at night, that your next day begins even before the prior evening has ended. I won’t say that is what I did, but it was almost. When I got in the night before, I was so wired I couldn’t fall asleep. It took two Ambien to knock me out and I didn’t wake up until late. When I checked my email the next morning, I had a message from the CFO asking me to join him for lunch. That is what I did to start the day. After lunch, I attended a real estate conference. It was completely lame. They were talking about how to start a blog. Like who in the technology or marketing field doesn’t know how to start a blog at this point. It was an insult to be in the room; a room which happened to be in dungeon like conditions in the Flamingo Hotel. BTW, the Flamingo is a cesspool and I highly recommend that you don’t stay there. Fortunately, I am not staying there, but my colleague Matt is. He has welts all over his body from the chiggers and bedbugs. At least that is one of his primary complaints. After the conference, Matt and I took a quick change into some casual clothes and to kill some time gambling while we waited for another coworker to join us for dinner. Matt killed the BJ tables again and I churned up and down for a while and eventually settled on a $48 loss for the night. I am just not aggressive enough gambling, otherwise I would be up much more. I just don’t have the stomach for it, I guess that is what happens when you have a mortgage to pay and two kids to send to college at some point in the future. We ate at Joe’s Stone Crab. Needless to say, we had some stone crab and 20oz bone in rib eye steaks with creamed spinach, sweet potato fries and . While eating, we also continued our drinking spree which started several hours earlier. I am back to my old ways of downing Captain Morgan and Coke like it was water. For a change of pace I switched it to Capt. Morgan and Red Bull. I think I like it with Coke better, but Red Bull does give it a better kick. The steak I had was about the best I have ever eaten. There was no way I could get the whole thing down into my stomach. I left a good portion of it over and I felt a little emotional when they took the remainder away. I wanted to take it with me, but I couldn’t see carrying around a hunk of dead cow flesh with me while we hopped around from club to club and casino to casino. The first place we went to after dinner was On top of The Palms Hotel at the Ghost Bar. The Ghost Bar is on the 55th floor and overhangs the building. To make it interesting it has a glass bottom floor. It was freaky taking a step onto it. The view of Las Vegas from there was fantastic. We had a bunch of drinks at this place and admired the hot girls walking around. The place wasn’t exactly hopping though, so we left to try to get into another club in the next building over. There was a big line to get in and the bouncers wanted 50 bucks a person to expedite our entry. We would have paid 50 for the 3 of us, but we just didn’t see the utility of paying so much just to get ahead of the line. So we ditched the place and eventually wound up back at the Bellagio. We gambled some more and then called it an evening. It wasn’t the greatest night, but it sure did beat staying home and watching CSI on TV.

The Last Frontier

Tonight was a great night to be in Las Vegas. Well, nothing was so great about this particular day, I just had a great time. It started out slow with a dinner for the top 200 real estate professionals in the US. Somehow I was invited to be a representative member from my company to help honor the number 1 real estate agent, also from my company. So the whole dinner was a lot of sitting around waiting for them to announce rewards for every ridiculous type of category. It was almost 3 hours of boredom. The worst part was that you couldn’t order hard liquor or beer. The drink selection was limited to two colors of wine or sparkling or still water. Those drinks were not among my alcohol consumption plan for the evening. After this drudgery of a dinner finally ended; I and a couple of other managers escaped over to the Blackjack tables. I quickly hit on a good winning streak bring my up several hundred bucks. Even though I was winning I was a bit annoyed with myself, since I wasn’t following my planned betting pattern. Had I done so I would have been up closer to a grand. As it ending up, I won $150 dollars after giving $100 back to the casino. I said waking a away from the tables with a 150 profit was my bottom line and by gosh I was going to do it. I hung around with my coworkers while they continued to play, occasionally offering them playing/betting advice based on my handy BlackJack Pocket Reference card. The card was right on most occasions and my two colleagues both walked away from the tables winners. As we were wrapping up on the BJ tables, I get a call from my friend Matt who is over at the Wynn hotel with two other coworkers. I walk over to their BJ Table just as Matt is coming off of a couple of thousand dollar win while another was already down for the count. You could see him and my third colleague almost outwardly rooting for Matt to lose as he placed each additional wager. Granted what he was doing was sick. Matt would just walk up to a table drop a 100 bucks, get a double down hand and walk away with 4 stacks for $100 chips. He did this time and time again everywhere he went. I thought it was hysterical while the other guys were getting disgusted. Once Matt cashed out completely, the 4 of us were standing around thinking about where to go and what to do. I wanted to try out a Club called Jet at the Mirage. It was the type of club with velvet ropes blocking off the front entrance and only by being know in the club or armed with a special pass phrase could you get by. Matt and I went to check out Jet while my other coworkers elected to go pursue some other endeavor. Luckily I knew a name I could use, which was good enough to get us through the crowds waiting outside, but not good enough to get us comped entry or drinks. Fortunately, I did run into the person whose name I knew, and once he found out how I knew him, he gladly bought us a round of drinks on the house. Having secured free liquor, we hung around and watched all of the hot young women dance around on poles. Lots of Lecherous and desirous looks were shown their ways. I couldn’t help thinking about the fact that the last time I was in a place like this that the current girls I was looking at would have been in diapers. Girls sure do grow up fast. I felt so completely out of place in the club and was wondering to myself had there ever really been a time when I did. I think the best way for me to enjoy myself at these VIP type clubs is to just sit back, relax, drink and take in the marvelous views. I sure as hell know that no one wants to see me dance. But perhaps, maybe it is not too late for lessons and a better club going look. After Jet, it was a quick pit stop back to our hotels. We needed to get our cameras and warmer clothes in order to hang out and film the Implosion of the Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas. To get a good vantage point for the demolition, we went onto the roof top parking garage of the Wynn Hotel. There were about 1000 likeminded people all waiting to see the building fall. They led up to the final moment with great suspense, by providing a rather long pyrotechnics show before the actual big bang. However, when it came it was definitely worth watching. One moment the hotel was there and the next, it was just a puff of dust. A rather large puff of dust that started to descend onto anyone that was in its path. Once the smoke got on top of you it was just about impossible to breathe. Bits of debris would rain down upon you and coat your hair, skin, clothes and eyeglasses in a smooth sheen of dust. I had to ball up a fleece I was wearing in order to take in some reasonably clean air. Standing in the fallout zone of the implosion was not a good idea; however, we got some fantastic photos of it. I’ll post them latter as I down size them for this blog. After we made it back into the casino in the relative safety of filtered air conditioning, Matt decided to play another couple of hands of Blackjack. In a span of 3 minutes he took another 200 and turned it into 500. You couldn’t stop him. Not even on the walk back to our hotels where he quickly won 40 bucks on a slot machine while I was taking a piss. After I left map, I did manage to get lucky one last time on my own. A particularly attractive woman of color started talking to me and asking how I was doing, where am I going, etc. I told her back to my hotel, to which she explained that she is an Entertainment Girl and would I like to avail her of her services. In light of the fact that this was my only offer from a girl all evening, I considered myself lucky to even get one and a pretty good one at that. Any form of entertaiment I could think of. Ooooh the possibilities. But as it was a late hour after 3:30am, I felt it best that I turn this offer down for now and to think about it for some other day.

Florida

So I am not sure what I am feeling about this recent trip. I had decent time for a couple of nights and managed to get in a couple of swims. I tried to run a couple of times, but my leg was having none of it. The 60K that I have to do to for a NYC Marathon Qualifier is looking doubtful. I’ll try to do it anyway. Not much happened while I was in Palm Beach. The weather was warm, the hotel was fabulous and the meetings ranged from boring to interesting. At one point I had trouble to stay away during the meetings because I was out past 3:30am the night before, getting drunk and acting foolish. I was told that one of the highlights of the trip for everyone was when I put on someone’s high heeled shoes and raced one of my gay colleagues down the hall. Some of the gay guys then started to wonder if perhaps I was bisexual. Fortunately, none of them started to hit on me. A couple of other things happened that I will not recount here, since certain people from work that read my blog should not be exposed to it. My only real disappointment for the trip was not getting in a swim on the last day I was there. I wanted to swim in the ocean at least one time, but I never made it. I thought I would on the last day, since my flight was not until 8pm in the evening, but my last meeting ended early and I was able to make an earlier flight. I decided to give up the swim in order to get home to my children before they went to bed. As it turned out the earlier flight was an hour delayed and the limo service I booked to pick me up from the airport took an hour to make it from the JFK parking lot to the terminal at which I was waiting. But my kids were still awake so all ended well. I got home around 10:35 which didn’t give us much time to stay up, since my son had an 8am soccer game the next morning. This was pretty brutal as it was freezing cold outside in the morning and a stark contrast to the breezy high 70’s I was experiencing just a few hours earlier.

First, but not the First

This is a continuation of a previous blog. All will be explained later.