I am totally infatuated with this song.
My Wife Thinks You’re Dead by Junior Brown

Team Tankenwillow finished #54 in our division (of 124).  That puts us at the 43 percentile.

I’m always happy if I finish in the top half.  Although, I think my wife could do a lot better if she got a faster partner.

Here’s some pix:

Sunday morning was our 3rd annual Muddy Buddy at Pocahontas State Park in Richmond.  Team Tankenwillow started in the 5th (blue) wave.  The weather was hot, but manageable. 

This year, I ran first, while my wife biked.  It’s always a bit of a let down starting the Muddy Buddy.  There is so much excitement, followed by a slow 15 minute run.  Running isn’t always exciting.  But the first wave is always a bit of a shakedown, with the faster people getting ahead, and the slower people getting behind.  I ran pretty well, passing lots of people.  I passed 2 of the Fantastic Four, a guy in overalls, and somebody with horns on his helmet.  The first obstacle was a rock wall.  Pretty easy.  I was glad there was a cargo net on the other side.

I found the bike pretty easy.  (We decorated it with easy-to-spot green paper, some multi-colored garland, and a pinwheel).  The first few minutes were scary, riding my wife’s old mountain bike on loose gravel.  But, I gained confidence surprisingly quickly.  I flew at a decent pace.  There was a long uphill, where at least half the people were walking their bikes.  I smugly rode up past them.  I kept flying by runners with blue numbers, expecting any one of them to be my wife.  But she was nowhere to be found.  Finally, I got to the second obstacle, where she was waiting for my bike.  She must have been moving fast!  The second obstacle was a balance beam (piece of cake!).  I grabbed some water, and ran on.

I was amazed at how quick the race was going.  I was already on leg #3!  Running was a nice respite for my bike-weary muscles.  But toward the end of leg 3, there was a newly cut trail, full of roots.  One stuck up and grabbed my sneaker, sending me face-first into the dirt.  I opened a would I got ripsticking in Wisconsin.  At least 3 people stopped to help me up.  (What a friendly race!)  To be honest, I was just surprised that I took a spill, and it wasn’t on the bike!  The 3rd obstacle was an over-and-under obstacle.  It wasn’t until I was climbing down that I noticed the river of blood flowing down my leg.  “Whoa!” the guy next to me said.  “Hardcore!”

Once again, the green bike stuck out and was easy to find.   I was lucky that this leg seemed mostly downhill.  After biking so hard on leg #2 and still not catching my wife, I was sure she’d be waiting again.  But I was getting real good on the bike, and had excellent trail to ride on.  As I turned the corner to find obstacle #4, I saw my wife just ahead of me.  Yes, I was almost keeping up!  I yelled to her, dropped the bike, and pointed it out to her.  Then I climbed the cargo net, and slid down the giant slide.  Wheeee!

The last leg started with a big-time stream crossing.  The stream was way over my knees (what a way to cleanse my open wound!).  Then it was a long uphill back to the mud pit.  I ran as hard as my tired body could go.  It got a little easier when the trail reached the road, but the long hill still seemed endless.  Since the last leg was me running and my wife biking, I knew she’d be waiting for a while.  But she was always very nice about that.

I spotted my wife in a crowd of people waiting for their partners.  We ran through, and under the cargo net into the mud pit.  The mud was really thick this year.  In previous years it was just a big puddle, but this year it was big clumps.  I was careful not to get mud in my eyes this year.  I heard a few spectators yelling that I was on my hands and knees, and not muddy enough.  So before I got to the final line of flags, I did a belly-flop directly into the mud.  I think the crowd liked that. 

Out of the mud pit, we ran up to the finish line.  We finished!  Our final time was 61 minutes (4 minutes faster than last year).   This comes out to roughly at 9:20 mile, which, in this race, means absolutely nothing.  I felt really good about this race, and was surprised at how smoothly it all flowed.  The Muddy Buddy is always our favorite race every year.  It’s a little sad that we now have to wait a whole year until the 2009 race.  Next year, we break one hour!

Let’s just say, hypothetically, that someone was going to make a joggling tee shirt, sticker, or other media. Which of these images (or combination of these images) do you like?

NUMBER 1:

NUMBER 2:

NUMBER 3:

NUMBER 4:

NUMBER 5:

So, I just finished up a short but exhausting vacation, followed by a long and exhausting drive home.  When I got home, I sorted through all my mail, and found Runner’s World, the sole standout in a handful of junk mail and bills.  I landed on the couch, opened up my magazine, and found… jogglers!  Yes, Runner’s World did a half page on jogglers!  Of course, it was fun to see Perry in the middle of the article.

I am sad that I will miss the World Joggling Championships next week.  This is the #1 casualty of an over-booked summer.  Based on last year’s results, I probably wouldn’t do well enough to place.  But I would certainly be competitive.  Next year they will be in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.  Hopefully I will be there.  And maybe with some training, I will do well.

Speaking of which, my joggling has been almost non-existent lately.  My gym at work is quite cramped, and I don’t think the person on the elliptical next to me would appreciate bumping elbows while I joggle.  And it’s just too hot to do anything outside.  So, I am hoping this fall to really pick up my joggling.

Maybe I’ll make a I’d Rather Be Joggling bumper sticker and tee shirt.  That might motivate me.

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We have reached the halfway point of 2008.  Time to take inventory of my miles.

• I have run 455.3 miles.  Projected onto the Appalachian Trail, that puts me exactly 1 mile short of the Virginia border.  I have run for 6 months, and I haven’t even reached Virginia yet.  Oh, well.  At this rate, I should be in Damascus in 2 days.
• My original goal was to run 701 miles this year.  But I am on pace to run 910.  On a daily basis, I am running on pace for 1000 miles, but injury slowed me down.  If I were to up my mileage a little, I could probably still hit 1000.  But that may be pushing it.
• I am in a very good pattern right now of running 5K every day at work.  However, I have an office-mate who contantly expects me to go out to lunch buffets with him.  It’s hard enough to force myself into our ratty little gym every day at noon.  It’s so much harder when I am tempted with all-you-can-eat Chinese food.

I just finished reading Generation Loss by Elizabeth Hand.  I always enjoy reading books set in Maine because it reminds me of my childhood.  But this book had many eerie similarities.  If the main character wasn’t female, bisexual, and a junkie from New York City, this could totally be me.

It was weird reading the book.  I felt a little like I was one of those crazy people in the movies who creates their own life out of things they see around them.  If I am indeed crazy and created my own reality (Silencio!), then I sure borrowed a lot from Generation Loss.

Anyway, here are a few of the odd similarities:

• In Chapter 7, the main character checks into the Lighthouse motel.  The  description of this motel is strikingly similar to the motel my parents owned in rural Maine, where I grew up.  From the fake wood paneling, to the lack of phones in each room.
• The main character is checked into the motel by a girl with the same name as my niece.  The girl is a kind hearted, free spirit, which also reminds me of my niece.  Also, a boy in town has the same name as my nephew.
• Chapter 11: “Half the guys in Maine look like Charles Manson.  You can’t go arresting them every time someone wanders off the Appalachian Trail.”
• There are at least 4 references to the awful taste of Moxie.  My favorite is from chapter 20: 
  “This is disgusting!  What is it?”
  “Moxie”
  “It tastes like Dr. Pepper laced with rat poison.”
  “That’s the gentian root.”
• Chapter 28 (the last chapter) makes a reference to Tombstone Every Mile.  When my parents moved to Maine from New York City, my dad wanted to ensconce himself in local culture.  So, he got an 8-track of local truck driver songs by Dick Curless.  My favorite was Tombstone Every Mile.

Today was our first group run of the summer.  In our pep talk, our coach told us excuses about the heat and the hills were “like nails on a chalkboard”.  So, I’m not allowed to talk about how hot it is any more.  Or about how hilly it is.  So, what can I talk about?

For some reason, in our CTC training program this summer, we have a few time trials.  Last year it was just show up and run.  This year there is more strategy involved.  I wasn’t sure I wanted to put much thought into it, but I was forced to when today’s training run included a 5K time trial on Ridge Road.

It was not ideal circumstances for a timed run.  First of all, it was on Ridge Road, which is not at all flat.  But our coach set up a 5K course that as in the middle sections of the road, which are the flattest (which is not saying much).  Also, the timed 5K started after a 1.5 mile warm-up, then a 20 minute wait. 

Our coach was very into making us hit our split times.  He was insistent that our first half mile be the slowest of the run.  Just seconds before the start, I snuck a peak at someone’s conversion sheet, and saw that my first half mile should be at 4:15.  I realize now that my brain is still stuck back in 3-years-ago jogging-for-beginners mode, because I immediately thought, I can’t run a half mile just over 4 minutes!

I ran off, flustered by thinking about time.  I’ve always been about miles, not speed.  The coach was at the half mile mark, yelling out times.  As I passed him, he yelled out 4:07.  Hmmm.  It was faster than he wanted me running.  After that, I was supposed to check my time at each mile marker.  If I did, I forgot my time.  It was just really weird to be thinking about my speed.  But I guess that’s what runners do.

It was a pretty tough 5K.  It was hot and hilly (don’t tell my coach I said that).  But when I crossed the finish line, he yelled out my time as 24:49.   As I said, I don’t usually record my time, but I think that was my fastest non-treadmill 5K.  I’ll take it. 

Then it was just a 1 mile cool-down back to the car.  I was home, cleaned up, and back in bed by 8:45AM.  It always feels good to have my exercise done about the time most people are staggering out of bed.

According to Wordle, it looks like this: