Hi former Substack besties. I posted on my blog today and then I got an email of my post, which makes me concerned that the rest of you also got an email of my post. It is NOT my intention to send every single post on my blog as an email! I even toggled a toggle to make it a “post only” and not send an email, but apparently that didn’t work. So I’m not sure what’s going on there. It’s supposed to only send an email for a specific category of posts, the “newsletter” category, so I’m not sure why it’s just not doing that.
Anyway, I don’t know how to fix this, or if it’s even fixable, so if it keeps sending out all my blog posts as emails by default, I suggest you unsubscribe. If you scroll down to the end of the post, you’ll see a link to manage your email settings or unsubscribe. I would unsub all of you myself, but I’d rather leave the power in your hands, He-Man style.
Again, it’s not my intention to shove every single post of mine down your throats. If you’re into that (you kinky devil), then feel free to stay subscribed. But I will not be offended if you unsub, because honestly, if I were in your shoes, I totally would.
Well, this month went slightly differently than I had expected. On the first of the month, I woke up to my car window smashed and the whole thing nearly stolen. Since then I’ve been working to get it fixed, but since I own a Hyundai, one of the cars that has been targeted in “TikTok thefts,” getting parts has taken some time. More annoying, however, is that I had to drive out of my way to find a auto body shop that didn’t require me to drug test my car. Yes, that’s right, my car. Apparently so many people have been doing drugs inside of stolen cars that if any drug use is detected in a car, it’s … bad. Not entirely sure how it’s bad, considering none of this is my fucking fault in the first place, but them’s the breaks.
What a life.
This means I haven’t been to parkrun for a few weeks. The window has a plastic drop cloth over it, so it’s protected from the rain, but driving with a broken window is frustrating. I’ve had a lot of back and forth with my Progressive rep and the auto shop and it’s been … slow going, to say the least.
My only race this month was the Holiday Half, which didn’t go as I expected. With a week or two of hindsight now I think it was fine, I was just frustrated by my lack of progress. A year of running after years of not means that my body is still trying to process what’s been going on, and I think running a second half marathon in December was just too much for it. That plus the stress of the car debacle. I’m proud of myself for getting out there though, even if the day was miserably rainy and cold.
Post-half marathon reaction selfie.
Since the half I’ve been taking it easy. Like, really easy. Turned off my daily suggestions and just ran a few 5ks at easy paces. My right leg is giving me a little bit of trouble, likely some soreness from the half, and I want to let it heal up before I try to work my way back up to proper mileage. This week (the last week of 2023) I’m likely not going to run at all, in fact. Strava is telling me that I’ve got 6 miles until I hit the 100km badge for December. We’ll see if I make it.
If I’ve learned anything this year, and especially this last month, it’s that I get to decide how I want this to work. In other words, I don’t need to go fast, or far, to be a runner. Garmin Coach was trying to push my pace up, which might be good for a long term benefit or progression, but it’s also fine to just run at a slow, easy pace. I’m never going to be an elite runner, never going to run a sub-5 minute mile (probably never going to run a sub-8 minute mile). I’m just here to get my cardio in and see the sights.
So, that’s it for 2023. Last year, 2022, my total mileage, running and walking, was 450 miles. I ran a grand total of 26 times. This year, I ran–just ran–800 miles, over 244 activities. I ran two half marathons, one quarter marathon, one 10k, one 4 miler, and 20 5ks. I ran 34 parkruns and met a whole new group of people. I pushed myself more than I have in a decade, woke up countless times before the sunrise to lace up and head out the door. I have enough running kit to last me another decade.
I wish I could give some grand advice about how I turned this corner; the truth is, I just did it. Nike was right. You just go do it. But, you know, what “it” is isn’t what you think. It’s not 0-60mph in 2.6 seconds. It’s 30-35 for the rest of your life.
So, who knows what 2024 will bring. I have another half marathon lined up–the Shamrock Run, which was supposed to be my first half marathon ever, but now will be my 3rd. I also am technically signed up for the 2024 Portland Marathon, the full thing, the whole kit and kaboodle, but we’ll see if I feel up to actually running for 5 hours. 2023 was a jumpstart kind of year in terms of my fitness; 2024 is more like brushing my teeth, but for my … feet. I really need to work on my analogies.
Anyway. That’s my 2023. My 40th year of life. Eleven months that went pretty well, and then December. 😆
TL;DR: Nazis.Also I wrote this originally on Substack.
The older I get, the more I realize that “principleism,” i.e. doing something “on principle,”1 is a tricky road. More often than not, either the principle is flawed, or the principle is trivial, like a non-lethal version of the Trolley Problem that we all know and love:
For example, I play a lot of video games. Too many, one might say. I have a Steam account and an Epic Games account. Sometimes, games are released “exclusively” on Epic Games, meaning you can’t purchase it on your Steam account. But Epic Games also has a free game that you can download every Thursday.
I have a friend who refuses to use Epic Games “on principle” because of the exclusivity. I, on the other hand, don’t give a shit, because I currently have 133 games on that app and I think 98% of them were given to me for free.
In this instance, is refusing to use a gaming service “on principle” worth it? I don’t think so. This is the Trolley Problem, but one track is Steam and the other is Epic Games. I guess. It feels trivial and arbitrary, and likely a symptom of a larger issue (coughcoughcapitalismcough). But if you gave me a slice of Pizza Hut pizza and a slice of Dominoes pizza, I’d eat both.
My point is this: some principles are not worth the effort, and some are.
One of my principles that I feel strongly about and feel is worth the effort it: I don’t think Nazis are good people. There, I’ve said it, real weight off my chest. Substack, on the other hand, seems to disagree: Substack says it will not remove or demonetize Nazi content on their site.
Their argument is basically as follows: If we censor Nazi voices (including demonetizing them), then they’ll find another way to spread their vile ideology. I think that’s the gist of it.2 And yeah that sounds bad, I guess, except that Substack and all other websites on the internet are hosted on professional, high-end servers, which require exorbitant funds to operate, and UX/UI designers to create, etc etc. What Substack, then, is offering to Nazi and other far-right voices is a clean, easy-to-use place to disseminate their dangerous opinions.
In other words—imagine if it was, say, 1942, and the New York Times printed opinion articles by Nazis,3 and those articles were then sent through their fancy, enormous printing press to millions of subscribers across the United States.
Now, imagine if the NYT and all other publications were like, “Fuck that,” and banned printing Nazi articles, and the Nazis were forced to find their own way of printing their opinions. Instead of the big, fancy NYT printing presses, they instead printed on mimeographed pamphlets that they had to hand out on street corners.
Which of these two options would disseminate Nazi voices faster?
In short: banning Nazi opinions from Substack would, yes, force them “underground,” where they would struggle to find server space and designers, thus crippling their ability to disseminate information.
Instead, Substack not only allows Nazi/far-right voices, they allow them to profit from their newsletters.
That’s why I’m leaving Substack, and why I’m highly encouraging you to leave as well.
But I understand if you don’t. Truly! It’s hard to find an audience, and it’s hard to get and keep a subscriber base, if you’re trying to make money. I don’t begrudge artists from staying on X/Twitter either. Like I said, some principles aren’t worth the effort, and there is an argument to be made for smaller creators/writers/artists in maintaining their space in order to succeed.
For me, it’s the principle of the thing. This is just a life update blog, it’s ephemeral, it’s nothing. And it’s free. So, I’m outta here. Don’t worry, you’ll hear from me via WordPress soon enough. I’m just posting this here until … Christmas? Sure, Christmas. Merry Christmas.
I just made this term up and I refuse to google to see if it’s already a thing. ↩︎
There is also some nonsense about giving “space” for online discourse, aka “we need as much money as we can possibly stuff into our pockets.” ↩︎
I think they actually did this in the 30s, but … just go with me here. ↩︎
I have a love/hate relationship with Mastodon. On one hand, I love that’s it’s open and free and there are no ads inherently. I love that it’s easy to find groups of people with similar likes and hobbies through hashtags. I love that it’s boring–truly, a website that isn’t trying to be flashy and branded and desperate for your money is awesome.
What I hate about Mastodon isn’t really Masto related, it’s just a realization that it’s hard to meet people you truly like and want to hang out with. Social media isn’t set up like real life; in real life, you might go to a function, meet some new people, and decide that one or two of those people are cool enough to hang out with again in the future. On the internet, you shout into a void and a variety of voices respond back, and there really is no choice. You follow people, sure, but then it’s like you’re in their living room 24/7; you hear everything they have to say. You can stop that, by muting words, or by muting their profile, even–but then what’s the point of following them in the first place?
And this isn’t even scratching the surface of malicious actors within the social media world. The “reply guys,” the spambots, the people who can’t take a joke. You might meet these people at a party, but you don’t have to talk to them. You can go somewhere else. Online, they’re everywhere and you’ll be spending much of your time blocking and reporting people and accounts. In real life, you can just leave the party!
When I was a teenager, we had AOL chat rooms, we had forums, and we had messaging programs like AIM and ICQ. I’m confident that if these existed now, they would be just as corrupt as they were then, but back when the internet was new and unknown, chatting in these spaces felt pioneering. People were even more anonymous back then, too; chat rooms were less like a cesspool and more like a tide pool, filled with the bad and the good; filled with creatures attempting to thrive in an environment. And when those environments failed, you moved to proto-social media–AIM, a place where you could directly talk to your friends.
But it’s 2023 now. Everything is a Brand and/or a Monetization. Nobody scrolls through social media attempting to socialize. Imagine the “social” part in tiny font and the “media” part in giant font, emblazoned with a ™ symbol at the end, to remind you to watch what you say, you don’t want to infringe on copyrights and trademarks, okay? We’ll see you in court!
Mastodon changed that, but for how long? And can a post-Twitter social media site ever work the same way? Twitter was a, pardon the term, zeitgeist. It was a sociological petrie dish, and we were the bacteria, squiggling around, trying to figure out what this thing was. And then the Arab Spring happened, and people suddenly realized that Twitter was an excellent place for news. News news news. And thus the site had A Purpose™, a direction. This, in a way, killed the site for those of us who liked to tweet stupid, silly things. But it drew visitors which meant eyeballs with pocketbooks for advertisers. It was only a matter of time before it became Brand and Monetization.
So when people fled to new social media sites after Elon Musk displayed his flagrant stupidity like a hippo flicking its shit all willy nilly with its tail, we didn’t do so with a sense of exploration of something new, we did so already “knowing what Twitter was supposed to be.” This infection of knowledge ultimately soured Mastodon for me.
For example, look at this post, which was on the Explore page of Mastodon, a page that showcases some of the more popular posts on the site:
Now, before you’re like “Josh hates gay people,” my point with this example is not specifically that I hate gay people (I don’t), it’s generally that this post is self-righteous and annoying. But apparently it’s the kind of discourse people like, a real “preaching to the choir” type of post that is easy to like, because it’s funny and it’s pertinent to the LGBTQ crowd. It’s not just LGBTQ though, it’s politics in general, and money, and, in Mastodon’s case, an excessive amount of software engineering and programming/
I just find this kind of stuff boring and uninspired. It’s why I muted George Takei, a popular social media figure both on Twitter and on Mastodon. Or Robert Reich (father of College Humor/Dropout founder Sam Reich, by the way). If you like “old men writing pithy statements about politics,” then those two are perfect for you. But I just, desperately at this point in my life, want to use a social media site where we don’t talk about politics. Not because I hate politics or because I am apolitical, but because there is no site where we just have fun and enjoy life anymore. In order to make that experience happen, we have to curate it. We have to mute and block and craft our social media experience, as if social media were a bonsai tree. If I owned a house where all the rooms except one had toilets in them, you’d bet your ass I’d seek solace in the toilet-free room.
In real life, you can easily enjoy time without politics, without ads, without brands (well, maybe not this one). Online, every. single. site is trying to pull you in one direction or another, trying to anger you or make you cry. Yes, there are some terrible things going on in the world right now, which is why it’s even more important that there are places you can go where you don’t have to look at it. I don’t think the men, women, and children in Gaza right now would want to force you into their world everywhere you look.
We don’t have to sit and simmer in the boiling pot just because someone else is in there already. The problem with social media is–it’s all a boiling pot, because the investors, the venture capitalists, the billionaires, want it to boil. They need it to boil, because it’s easier to extract money when the humans have boiled for a few hours.
I don’t have an answer to this. I don’t think the majority of us can answer this, really, except to stop using social media sites. To put our eyes and our money somewhere else. Maybe I haven’t found the right crowd. Maybe I’m just sick of constantly pruning the bonsai tree. But this is my primary reason for getting away from social media for 2024, to escape the constant boiling, to let the bonsai tree grow, to take a breather from the constant churning of Brands and Monetization.
I recommend you do the same. And turn off your notifications! You don’t need to be notified of everything all the time.
The turkeys have been slain. Their reign of terror ends for another year, and we feast upon their flesh to remind them never to return. And yet … they do. Like the Devil himself, the turkeys appear. No matter how many we kill. No matter how long we stay up, they are there, just beyond your periphery, waiting, watching …
gobbling.
News
I temporarily have moved my site to a blog.joshbelville.com/ site: https://joshwritesablog.wordpress.com/
There’s no drama about why this happened. I just didn’t want all the bells and whistles of having a full-blown website, but wanted to have a blog, and this felt like the best solution. At first I tried to find non-corporate owned blogging sites, but it’s impossible. Auttomatic, which owns WordPress and Tumblr, two of the best blogging sites out there, is just too much of a juggernaut to dismiss. Blah blah blah.
I do plan on buying a Plan so that I can have some bells and some whistles on the site. But right now I am broke because of teeth and car troubles. In your 40s, the Triangle of Troubles is Teeth, Car, and Bowel.
As you may have seen in my previous post, I am moving my newsletter stuff to my site rather than Substack. It’s really just for ease, but also because Substack lets Nazis talk about Nazi stuff on their platform, and I don’t like that either. So you’ll eventually see these posts from a wordpress site, rather than Substack. Don’t freak out.
Dreams
Merry Christmas: I have uploaded a new podcast episode as my present to you. This one is a few of the dreams I’ve recounted into my phone after waking up. Topics include Demi Adejuyigbe, peeing, beef jerky, and peeing again. That’s it. Does that appeal to you? If so, have a listen. It should appear in your email shortly after this one. If it doesn’t, just head on over to my Substack and listen to it there.
NaNoWriMo Debrief
Final stats: 95,186/50,000 words. I was on a real tear this November, writing the most I’ve ever written for a NaNoWriMo. I’ve technically written two books, although both need to be expanded upon greatly, and edited, and made a lot better overall. Let me give you a little elevator pitch of them.
Book 1 is called re:human. It has two plots. Plot A is about Six, the first human created by AI 10,000 years after humanity has gone extinct. They have a somewhat oppressive “mother,” a sub-sentient proto-AI called Zero, who keeps Six alive within a building called the Facility, which has everything Six needs, but little of what Six wants. The story is about Six leaving the Facility and taking a trip to the City, and what they find there.
Plot B is about Dr. Tamara Vandayar, a researcher in the 2070s who helped developed Zero. Her story is about how she inadvertently created the first fully-sentient AI, known as One.
Book 2 has no current title, and is about Tamara’s descendant, Adelphi Vandayar. The story splits between him in the 2300s, sneaking aboard a generation ship, Pioneer, which was hastily constructed to escape Earth and travel to Proxima Centauri (the nearest possibly habitable star system), as sentient AIs eradicate humanity, and then to Adelphi in Six’s time (many decades later than Book 1) as Pioneer returns from Proxima Centauri b for … reasons. Don’t want to give too much away. I don’t want to say it’s aliens, but…
Does that sound cool? Let me know because I have no idea. I just thought the philosophical concept of a robot creating and rearing a human was interesting and now it’s all spiraling out of control. In a good way.
Race Report: Holiday Half
Here’s the blog about it. In short: it kinda sucked! It was rainy and miserable and I am just not a very good runner, haha. Not for distance races at least. Oh well. Plus the paint peeled off the damn medals because of the rain. Wild stuff.
A Year of Running
26 races. Twenty 5ks, one 3 miler, one 4 miler, one quarter marathon, one 10k, and 2 half marathons. A total of 108.15 miles raced.
37 parkruns. 185 kilometers, or about 115 miles run.
4/5 Portland Parks & Rec ribbons. (Damn you stomach flu!)
Distance ran & walked total in 2022: 450.44 miles
Distance ran & walked total in 2023 (as of this newsletter): 1220.03.
I made up my mind this year and I’m glad I did. I’m glad I started this on my 40th year around the sun too. It feels a little “midlife crisis” but it’s also me acknowledging that the past three years were a bit of a downfall for me, mentally and physically, and now I feel better than I have in a long time.
No plans to run that many races in 2024 though. I honestly can’t afford it, plus they can take your toll on you, and I’d rather just run a lot of easy mileage with some speed and hill sessions thrown in the mix. A lot of this year was me trying to prove that I could do these things, but what I really proved is that I can do them my way, as in, I’m no elite athlete, I don’t think I’ll ever run a sub-20 5k race, or a sub-3 hour marathon, but I can get them done. And for the vast majority of people, that’s enough. It’s enough for me.
Resolutions Roundup
For 2023:
Run a half marathon (and/or a 5k every month). ✓ [WAY overachieved on this one]
Bench 225 for reps. [I don’t have a gym membership so this was impossible.]
For January, eat 100-150g carbs and no artificial or added sugars. [This was a bad concept to begin with and I’m glad I didn’t adhere to it at all.]
No social media except Instagram, BeReal, Strava, and D&D Reddit (for battle maps). [I added Mastodon, tried to get back into Facebook, and dabbled in the stupid ones (Threads, Bluesky).]
Meditate every day I am healthy. [Sometimes running is meditative!]
Complete a project. ✓[This is NaNoWriMo.]
Start a new hobby. ✓[This was my short-lived but fun jaunt into personal genealogy.]
Make a new friend. ✓[Lots of new parkrun friends!]
Workout 30 min every day I am healthy except Sunday. [This was also kind of a ridiculous desire, because I love rest days.]
Take a trip out of state to somewhere I’ve never been before. ✓[Long Beach, WA]
So, 50/50. But like I said, I’m glad I didn’t follow a couple of them.
2024! A tentative list:
Social media purge: no apps on phone, block all but Insta on desktop, only post on Instagram once at the end of the month.
Hidden NYR, very personal, hush hush.
Run a sub-25 minute 5k.
Run a marathon! [This is very tentative.]
Do something outside of my house once a week. See a movie, hang out with friends, go to a museum, see a band, etc.
Get laid in England. [Look. We all have our bucket lists, okay? I just want to have a bit of how’s your father with an English bird, awwright?]
Buy local in store whenever possible.
Finalize a first draft of my book.
Run 100 miles every month.
Take lots of photos with my goddamn camera that I bought!
The End (of the friggin year!)
The craziest thing about 2023 is that I have been fairly regular in posting newsletters. Honestly, my life is too boring for this level of competency. Thank you for reading. In honor of a year of writing and living, here is an AI image I generated that was going to be in the email I sent to my office about our White Elephant gift exchange next week:
Hi friends. Happy Christmas, as they say in Britain. The long and short of this little post is that I am planning on moving my Substack newsletter to WordPress, in an effort to consolidate my internet shenanigans. I’m also not a huge fan of Substack’s policies regarding who gets to use their service. But really, WordPress has a suitable newsletter option and I don’t see why I wouldn’t use it. This means I can just use my website as a blog and then have a “newsletter” category set up to send just those posts out to your email. No fuss, no muss.
Of course, if you want to read my blog in general, you can do that too. It’s currently at joshwritesablog.wordpress.com, but you can also go to joshbelville.com and it will forward to that site. Eventually, I will fix that as well. I don’t think that really means anything to you, but maybe you know enough about domain names and stuff to know that right now, jb.com is a forwarding address rather than the actual address. Even though all domain names are technically forwarding addresses to IP addresses … look, you don’t care about this, I know, I can see your eyes glazing over from this post. That’s how bored you are right now.
Anyway. I felt it important to let you know that I am moving your email addresses on file to WordPress. One of these days you’ll get an email from me from WordPress and you’ll be confused, and I’m trying to mitigate that, but to be honest we all have the memory span of half a hummingbird these days, so I won’t blame you if you’re like “WTF JOSH” in a few weeks.
That’s really it. I hope you’re having a good holiday season! I should have a new post coming soon, either here or on WordPress, we’ll see!
did cross the weary wandering with all the tithe in old frail pockets she sang like glass on guitar strings danced on sand like skillet hot did you hear the wailing though? caught in calliope's grasp a newt in a spider's web did you hear the wailing though?
poseidon set deluge upon the world & we moved like pauper nomads & she sank & sat beneath the waves to cool her ever-fiery feet did you hear the wailing though? brought up in constant bubbles popped apace in dying lands did you hear the wailing though?
soon she fades in piles of fog all supple bounding 'cross the ocean reborn in green & verdant fields the cresting of the lon garram did you hear the wailing though? no span of years could quell her voice anointed by the mother so-- did you hear the wailing though?
The islands comprising Lon Garram are the cradle of civilization. Those who grew from the ground in ages past, raised with the sweet guidance of Mother Ninti, The One Who Was, set north in the 1,000 Rains to escape the ire of Poseidon, who looked down at his dead world and wept until he was no more.
And so they crossed north, at first on foot, and then on great ships built by the Mages in Milawa, as the sea grew and swelled. The Mages rent the steel from the tall buildings and shaped them, scuttling the great windowed beasts of the ancients, and north the nomads sailed, pressed forward by the Word of Winds.
They ran aground on Sikirsan, where they remained, as the seas remained still, and built the great empire of Lon Garram, to stretch across the northern isles and protect the Lon Agusera from the Mountain Dwellers.
But they left her behind. The Castelina, the God-Child Anastasia, for she betrayed them in service to the Dead Gods. She sank with Poseidon and rules the Great Sea, and is only seen by the All-Mother, Ninmah.
Well. This was a rough one. My last race of 2023, the finale of my mission to run run run run run, and this one was … not it.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m proud that I finished it. I just thought I had more in me.
Pre-Race
There was a lot going on in my life prior to running this thing. The most egregious being my car, which was broken into about a week prior. A lot more stress than usual. And then, my company’s holiday party was the night before the run. I had planned to go, not drink, sing a karaoke song, and then leave. I didn’t want to go. Turnover at my office is so bad that I don’t know who is who anymore. I don’t remember anyone’s names, because I only see them in emails. So I can’t put names to faces. I guess this is partially my fault for working at home, but still.
I ended up bailing because I just wasn’t feeling it. I also hung out with friends at an arcade in Vancouver a few days prior, and then one of my friends revealed later that he had gotten covid after we hung out, which didn’t help matters. The first time I got covid, it was last year, at the company holiday party. The last thing I wanted to do was GIVE people covid the next year! (Note: I don’t have covid. I tested and all that.)
Anyway, a lot going on, but I ended up staying home and getting to bed at a good hour. Slept fine, woke up, got all my stuff together. It was super rainy so I did something Incredibly Smart: I put big band-aids over my nipples. This was the best idea I’ve ever had (that I stole from someone on YouTube, I’m sure). Had plenty of layers on so no one was like, “Hey, look at that guy over there! He clearly has band-aids over his nipples! Let’s get him!”
I wore three layers (short sleeve, long sleeve, pullover, all athletic of course) and that was a bad idea, but it wasn’t terrible. I also wore a beanie–the pullover and beanie were both Boise State apparel, and at one aid station some kid was like, “Go Broncos” and I made phonemes that may have sounded like words but were really just me attempting to speak while my body was actively fighting me.
I had three Clif bars and I ate one in the morning. My pre-run fueling isn’t great generally so I was trying to fix that. I think it helped, but not as much as I had hoped. More on that later.
Drove to the spot where the shuttle buses were. I’m glad I got on a bus (they were free) but it did not help at all, because traffic was still bad. I think we spent 30-40 minutes trying to get to a place that was 5 minutes away, but if I had driven there it would’ve been even longer. I realized on the bus that I had forgotten A) my water bottle, and B) my gloves. The latter was fine, but the former made me nervous, because I had no hydration now other than fueling stations. Foot Traffic is trying to go cupless for their events, too, so I felt bad grabbing cups every aid station.
Pre-race face.
Atmosphere
The area was very well set up. Everyone was soaked because it was raining like crazy. There were TWO different coffee vendors. Two! Probably a genius move so people don’t get stuck in long lines, but it also felt like a double booking. Two big tents, one for food and one for beer. Tents in these things always feel so weird. It’s like, you walk in, there’s food, there’s sponsor tables with the gaudiest kitsch splayed out that you’ll grab and then throw away a week later (c.f. my first few months this year). Then, standing tables. I don’t know, it just seems so … I don’t know. I wish I was a better writer so I could make a witty comparison.
Speaking of food, there were a couple of options. A lot of few options, if that makes sense. They had like five big plates full of bagels, but no cream cheese, and the bagels weren’t even cut. Naturally, nobody ate the bagels. We know how bagels work, and this is not how they work, so we avoided them. No bananas, either. I was surprised by that. No fruit at all from what I could tell. A little disappointing, I love eating an orange wedge after a run.
The Race
So, right up front, I was disappointed in my performance for this race. I think you can see why from the pace graph above. From about the halfway point onward, I could not get my shit together. I started out in the 2:15 pacer group, and honestly thought I could keep up with them, or at least still have them in my sights by the end. But boy was I wrong.
At the start of the run, there was a big puddle. A street-sized puddle. Most people ran around it, I ran through it. I had one of those “oh shit” moments where I remembered the rule to never drive through standing water, cause you don’t know how deep it is. I was worried that I would step through a sinkhole and break my leg. I didn’t. But I could have!
The first 3 miles were business as usual. The course started with a pretty big incline, but I powered through it. Then, as you can see, the rest of the first half of the course was a gradual decline. Easy peasy. But, since I had forgotten my water bottle, I had to use aid stations for water. This meant stopping to drink, because while I wanted to go fast, I also thought it would be fine to walk for a few seconds while drinking water. This wasn’t my downfall, by the way, it’s just an annoyance.
You can see that basically by the halfway point, my tolerance for running was coming to an end. I walked a lot. I didn’t realize at the time that the course was now going uphill. (I didn’t notice the elevation change that much other than the big incline/decline at the start, really.) So a lot of my fatigue could be attributed to that.
Regardless, I hit some kind of wall pretty damn hard around mile 9. That was the mile where I thought, “I’m never doing this again.” I had run all these races over the past year, grew so much as a runner, but in the end, I think 10k is my upper in terms of pushing myself. I could be wrong–I’ll probably completely flip on this in a couple of months–but it just doesn’t seem worth it. You ultrarunners and marathoners can keep it. I’ll stick around here, in the 30-60 minute running range.
So, mile 9 through to the end is a blur of running and walking. A lot of do-si-dos with other runners who are doing run/walk cycles. I feel like this would be a great time to get to know people, if we weren’t all actively dying.
Then, thankfully, gracefully, the end of the course was downhill. I had absolutely nothing left in the tank, but I was able to push myself a bit heading downhill. You can see my pace pick up. I was also running by the Adidas store and I didn’t want it to judge me. Sorry I’m running in Saucony’s, Adidas! But even the downhill wasn’t enough, and I kept slowing to a walk. I did manage to push myself through the final 10th of a mile though.
So: disappointed. My time was 11 minutes slower than I wanted. I just couldn’t hang on to my energy levels, which were dipping faster than I could replenish them. I’m proud of myself for finishing and for only being a couple of minutes slower than my previous half, but I still wish I was better than the last one, you know? It felt like my progress has dwindled a bit lately.
Post-race face.
Post-Race
Standing tables and uncut bagels. Delicious hot cider. A Rogue pilsner I drank too fast. A lot of those heat radiator things, like you see outside restaurants, but none of them worked. People handing out Celsius energy drinks. Do people even buy those things? I’ve only ever gotten them for free.
The wildest thing was that nobody was handing out medals. Instead, the medals were just on a table, all the different course lengths, and people were rummaging through them like a bargain bin at Goodwill. It was a very strange sight, all these exhausted people pawing through metals and lanyards. Oh, and the paint on the medals was peeling. That seemed like a bigger faux pas to me.
I went through the lines, got the drinks, got the foods (except the bagels, which were Incorrect), then got on the shuttle bus and went home.
And that’s 2023 folks. That’s the end of my race year. Started absolutely freezing, ended absolutely drenched. What a wild New Years resolution.
My itinerary next year has FAR fewer races planned, mostly because I would go bankrupt if I did this a second year in a row. But there will be some surprises, I’m sure.
Well, we’ve made it. Tomorrow, December 10th, I will be running my last official race: the Holiday Half. This will cap my 2023, which began well, went well, and then ended shittily. Is this the default for my life? Perhaps, but them’s the breaks.
I’ll be honest: I really don’t want to run this. My patience with this year had quickly run out, and the forecast for the 10th is rainy. And not just a light drizzle, it’s supposed to rain pretty flagrantly for the two+ hours I’ll be out there plodding along. What’s worse, the forecast for the days after are sunny. This is following days upon days of rain in Portland.
But I’m going to do it because I paid for it, goddammit. I paid a lot of money to run this half marathon and I’ll do it even if I walk most of it.
My training plan has been abandoned and I guess I’m “playing it by ear,” or really “running it by feet.” Here are my goals:
G Goal: 2:12:25 / 10:06/mi A Goal: 2:15:00 / 10:18/mi B Goal: 2:20:00 / 10:41/mi C Goal: Just do the damn thing. *G Goal is my Garmin Goal, aka the time Garmin predicts I can do.
These are all within my ability, I believe. 10:06 I know I can maintain for a few miles at least. Maybe even 13! I suspect my Garmin Coach training helped bolster my pace a bit. My stomach has been weird lately due to stress and poor eating because I’m broke because of my car getting broken into. Lots of stuff happening recently which has soured my overall life experience.
So, no real pace plan other than to try and keep a good one. I’m going to try, try, try my damnedest to start slow, but we all know how these things go. I’d love a negative split but I don’t know if my body is capable of it yet.
For fuel I have Clif bars and Powerade. Breakfast of champions. Honestly not sure if they will be adequate or not. They certainly didn’t feel adequate on my 10 mile run, but they settled a lot better than gels.
I appreciate that I’ve been at this long enough that I’m approaching a second half marathon with a bit of a blase attitude. It’s still so surprising that it’s December already. I’ve tipped over the 1,200 mile club for ORRC, and am well on course to hit 800 miles running for the year. Overall, huge success. Learned a lot about myself, about my ability to persevere even when I don’t wanna.
I’ll have a race report tomorrow. My last one of 2023. Until then.
