Josh Writes a Blog

Category: betterment

  • Teeth

    Been trying to think of stuff to write about for ye olde newsletter. It all feels lackluster, so here’s a blog about my teeth.

    So I was at the dentist. The dentist is one of those few places where the “Find Out” portion of “Fuck Around and Find Out” reveals itself in a slow, permanent sort of way. Oh, you mean I shouldn’t have drank liters of soda for years as a child and teenager and young adult? At least if you drive drunk without a seat belt and get into a wreck, waking up without a leg the next morning feels earned. The slow, inevitable decay of one’s teeth is a visual representation of the slow, inevitable decay of your own body into eventual wormfeed. Welcome to my newsletter!

    My teeth have been bad forever, and as a child I was terrified of the dentist. There was a dentist a couple blocks from my childhood home and I remember three things about it:

    1. They had a sit down Pac-Man arcade system that I enjoyed playing,
    2. The children’s play area entrance was an archway very low to the ground–the height for a kid to crawl into, basically. The top of the archway had padding so kids wouldn’t bonk their heads. I always thought that was crazy. What if a kid was choking in there? Would a parent have to army crawl into the room?, and
    3. The last(?) time I went there I was so terrified of whatever they were going to do that I had to rush to the bathroom to dry heave and ended up not getting any dentist work done that day.
    Fun fact: the place still exists and is still a dentist!

    My parents took me to this place when they could afford to; when they couldn’t, they took me to Terry Reilly Health Services, which is where poor people got their teeth fixed. You could tell the difference, even as a kid, between the “rich people doctor” and the “poor people doctor.” It’s all in the waiting area: the latter is louder, more chaotic, more children climbing over seats. More ethnic diversity at the poor clinic; lots of poor Latinos in southwest Idaho. Growing up, I always felt a kind of kinship with the Latino community, not because of music or culture or food (though the food is very good), but because we were both broke and just trying to get by, and I guess I saw that more with the Latinos than I did with my white friends and classmates. (Also it was Idaho, there were no Black kids to commiserate with about being poor.)

    As an adult, I could probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve been to the dentist. The breakdown of why I didn’t go very often is simple: I was poor, and mandatory health insurance didn’t exist when I was young. There’s more to it than that–a bit of bad dental genetics mixed with a much worse hygiene regimen–but the simple fact is that I couldn’t go get cleanings and whatnot because I couldn’t afford it. If I could have, I would have, even if I hated it. I distinctly remember a day in college where, over the course of a few hours, an abscess grew in my lower jaw, enough that my girlfriend at the time warned me about it. The type of rock hard fluid trapped in a space it’s not supposed to be in. I think I got it taken care of, likely at Terry Reilly, though I can’t remember, because I’ve also had abscesses that I “took care of” myself because I A) didn’t like the dentist and B) couldn’t afford the dentist. I didn’t poke my gums with a needle, if that’s what you’re wondering about. But if you press against a pressured space enough, it will pop, and you will spend the next few minutes swishing water in your mouth constantly to avoid the taste. I won’t say any more than that, but I will say that if you get an abscessed tooth, please go to the dentist. That shit can get into your bloodstream and seriously harm or even kill you. I do not endorse anything I’ve done, tooth-wise, or also probably just anything in general about my life.

    Then, in my 20s, my wisdom teeth came in. They didn’t hurt so I let them be, until they crowded my mouth so hard that they cracked molars further ahead in my mouth. I remember a very loud cracking sound when one of the molars broke. I didn’t even know that sort of thing was possible, until it happened. I had teeth shards sticking out of my gums until grad school, when I finally attended the dentistry school attached to Portland State University. I went there only because one day I was at the Cheerful Tortoise (PSU’s nearby shitty dive bar) and I took a bite into a cheeseburger and one of my teeth broke. I went to the dentist and told her that and she said, “Yeah, sometimes eating meat can cause a tooth to break.” In hindsight, I think she was being sarcastic. They pulled my teeth shards as well as one of my back wisdom teeth and the tooth in front of it; the wisdom tooth grew in at an angle and basically grew into the tooth ahead of it, ruining it. Lots of fillings in my back teeth, lots of ruin that could’ve been prevented.

    Speaking of hygiene regiment … the 2010s were quiet but also likely the worst for my oral hygiene simply because there were times–weeks, months, years?–where I just didn’t care. I remember Patrick Rothfuss saying once that he has had friends who lost teeth due to depression and I get it. It’s hard to explain, that lack of desire that prevents you from accomplishing even the simplest tasks. Empty the dishwasher. Take a shower. Brush your teeth. And then the cycle of depression and anxiety, where you know you’re supposed to shower but you don’t care, but you know you should and because you’re not it’s making you anxious, which perpetuates the cycle. It’s not that I didn’t brush every day for years, it’s that I brushed more often than not, which was usually once in the morning. Once in the morning, sometimes + Portland’s lack of fluoride in the water = the gradual and continual decay of my mouth.

    Then, the pandemic came, and you can just throw all the rules out the window. Whatever depression sat heavy on my chest starting around 2014 melted into my bloodstream by late 2020. I don’t think I need to go on.

    A couple months ago, I was eating popcorn and one of my teeth broke. I knew it would happen; I knew that popcorn would betray me one day. It wasn’t the microwave kind either, it was the bagged pre-popped stuff. I don’t know why, but pre-popped popcorn always has the most egregiously dangerous kernels. The bottom scraps of the bag are like playing Minesweeper with your teeth, and I eat popcorn like someone in a trance.

    A week after the Popcorn Incident, I was eating almonds and another tooth cracked, this one a fillinged molar. I knew popcorn would betray me, but almonds?! Now where would I get my easy source of protein and magnesium?

    At that point the die had been cast. I had to go to the dentist. My work doesn’t offer a dental plan1, so I bought my own, because you have to have insurance, right? Why else would you get work done without insurance? Well, long story short is that my dental plan is one where you don’t get all the stuff right away. An “incentive” plan which has incentivized me to drive off a cliff. It makes the entire point of getting a dental plan for the purpose of dental repair absolutely fucking worthless. It did pay for my cleaning though, so there’s that. I basically have to have it for a year before it really kicks in, and the big stuff I need to do (crowns, root canals, etc) aren’t covered for at least six months, and then when they are covered they only cover 15% for the first year. Wow! Such luxury!

    Insurance is the capitalist mafia, by the way. The only difference is that while the actual mafia breaks your actual knees if you don’t pay them, the capitalist mafia breaks your financial knees if you don’t pay them.

    So anyway, I’m sitting here now, writing this with a root canal done and likely another one on the way. TV shows and movies really made me nervous about getting a root canal. They always presented it as if it is the worst thing ever, but mine didn’t hurt at all, even after the lidocaine wore off. I’m going to get a couple of crowns placed, but after the root canal my gums were too inflamed so they had to wait to seat the crown. The doc then drilled out the filling from the tooth behind my root canal tooth because of a cavity, which is where he discovered that there was a crack in the tooth and that it needed a crown as well. So currently I have some temporary sealant stuff on my teeth and will be back in a couple of weeks to get it fixed.

    I dunno why I’m writing this. I find the entire experience incredibly embarrassing; it feels like stuff I should’ve dealt with decades ago, but I couldn’t because I was poor, which is also embarrassing. For some reason, writing about embarrassing things is cathartic for me. I guess. Or maybe you’re embarrassed about your teeth and me writing about it allows a bit of kinship in that. Teeth are absurd. We only get two sets and the second set we get until we die, and then we discovered how to basically inject sugar into our gums via the sticky tack that is Swedish Fish. Teeth have been bad since the Egyptians, for fuck’s sake, and probably before that too. We should be commiserating about our fucked up teeth!

    That’s my life right now. Teeth time and car repairs. My car has been repaired, by the way, and I took it in to get some anti-theft thing installed on it the same day I went to the dentist.2 This is how it works for me: I have a whole lot of nothing most days, and then everything suddenly happens on the same day for no reason.

    Anyway. Hi. Welcome to 2024.

    1. Lisa needs braces. ↩︎
    2. They also gave me The Club for free. I’m surprised these still exist but they do and lots of people in Portland use them. ↩︎

  • 52 Days Out #1: The Iron Claw at Cinemagic

    One of my New Years resolutions is to dedicate one night of my week away from my cozy, comfortable apartment, out doing something in the world. Something that, ideally, takes up the entirety of the night, and, also ideally, benefits my local community.

    Luckily, the amazing Cinemagic movie theater here in Portland is within walking distance of my apartment, meaning if I can’t find something to do, I can always fall back on the awesome golden sheen of the theater’s curtain.

    Cinemagic is great for several reasons: the atmosphere is amazing, the prices are decent, the seats are old and squeaky, and their film options range from first runs to old VHS movies they show on the first Friday of the month. We need more spaces like this–small movie theaters that are never packed. I know movie theaters in general are never packed these days, but this space has so much charm and you can tell the people who own it really just want to give moviegoers a proper experience, rather than a gigantic screen with the audio turned up to the point it hurts your ears. Kudos to you, Cinemagic!

    For my first outing, I went to see The Iron Claw, a new film and the reason why Zac Efron looks jacked as hell lately.

    Honestly, Zac looks great in the film. Jacked but not overbearing. This photo makes it look like he’s on HGH (human growth hormone), mainly because of those abs that stick out like that. Probably was, and on steroids too; it’s Hollywood, what can you expect. But you can tell he really worked hard for that physique.

    The film is very good; I talk about it briefly on my Letterboxd, which was more of an immediate reaction. The longer burn is that it is the morning after watching the movie and I am still thinking about Maura Tierney’s face and Zac Efron’s face at the end of the film. Really powerful and moving film about brotherly love and fatherly apprenticeship. I’m still thinking about it and feeling it, which is probably my favorite thing about films, that feeling you have after watching one.

    I have a feeling a lot of my nights out this year will be centered around Cinemagic. They’re showing the 90s Gamera trilogy next week (plus a Q&A with Ayako Fujitani, one of the stars of the film and … Steven Seagal’s daughter?!). Then after that they’re showing Mel Brooks films, and I feel obligated to see Blazing Saddles in a movie theater in honor of one of my father’s favorite films.

    Hell, maybe I’ll spend two weeknights out, who knows?!

  • Sickness & Health

    I’m not getting married. Let’s just get that out of the way right now.

    I had the stomach flu for the first time in a long time. Like, fever and everything. It was a pretty wild 48 hours. My stomach was being kind of weird on Friday but I thought it was just a bug, so I went and got drinks with friends. Ended up staying up way too late, drinking too much, eating too many nachos, etc. I remember being chilly when I went to bed, and then when my alarm woke me up at 6am the next day (or, really, the same day), I felt like a furnace and my heart beat was steady and high.

    Fun TMI fact: I had a dream before waking up that I had to take a shit and was in some kind of cabin or cabin-esque house, with people, including a woman who I knew was my sister but I don’t have a sister in real life. Anyway, the door to the bathroom was basically a ramshackle tavern-style door which didn’t close but I couldn’t hold it so I went in and did my business, and then my sister came in and berated me for making a horrible, smell that everyone could smell in the entire house.

    Then I woke up and realized that my brain was trying to tell me that I had to take a very terrible, no good shit. But I did that and felt okay enough to go buy groceries. Went home, unloaded everything, was like, “Man I feel kind of sleepy,” then proceeded to lie down and take a three hour nap. Woke up feeling furnace-y again, so I finally took my temperature. 100.9°F, plus the body aches that tend to accompany a fever. I promptly took a covid test, my last box with two tests left. Tested negative. Didn’t re-test because none of my symptoms were respiratory; now that I’ve had covid, I know what to expect.

    So I took it easy. I think my body’s overall recovery level was lower than I realized due to lots of running. Apparently you can get sick after running because of cortisol levels or something like that. I think I would’ve been fine, though, if I hadn’t gone out with friends. Oh well.

    I feel alright finally and went for a run this morning. Attempted Garmin’s suggested workout, which was it basically delaying my Sunday long run of 1:09:00 to today. Made it 30 minutes before my gut was like, “Hey bro! Remember how you had the flu?!”

    But I feel better. Then I watched this reel that Brian Jordan Alvarez made:

    Why would you allow embeds IG but not allow embeds IG.

    For context: I took dance classes the last year and a half of undergrad. I was a Theatre Arts major and didn’t feel very “in tune” with my body; where it was in space, how it interacted on stage and with other actors. Stuff like that. So I took dance classes: ballet, jazz, modern, and a repertory dance class where we choreography stuff. During that time, movement and dance were just aspects of life. You’d go to class and do some form of movement. And it would sit with you, in your body.

    Brian’s video just sort of hit me because it is so full of joy and expression and that’s not somewhere I’ve been in a long time. And I miss it. I miss just fucking dancing, you know? Not “Going to a dance class.” Hearing a good song on your playlist and going for it. I haven’t felt like that in probably 20 years. I feel like Peter before he becomes Peter Pan in Hook. I used to go out dancing occasionally once I moved to Portland, and of course the “white guy indie band head bob” I’d do at concerts doesn’t count.

    It feels like as you get older, individual expression just gets beat out of you. This world has no need for it. Capitalism needs you to make car doors and sell needless things. I miss the exploration of college theatre and art classes. Nobody really tells you how quickly that goes away once you’ve left. I got it again for a bit in grad school but it wasn’t exactly the same as being in my 20s and experiencing all of these new and exciting things for the first time. I’ll never experience them for the first time, unless I lose my memory somehow, and I really hope that doesn’t happen.

    This is the “health” portion of the title. The health of self-expression, of finding joy in the world. Dancing in the kitchen, laughing loudly and openly. Sneezing loudly! Stop holding your sneezes in, people. Looking up when you’re outside. Finding compassion in people and for people. Stuff you lose track of over time because life is hard and things are tough.

    I’m gonna try to find it again.

  • Cholesterol

    CW: Definitely going to be some food and weight talk here.

    After I switched over to my new insurance plan (which in itself is just an update to last year’s plan), my insurance said, “Hey, if you go get a blood test, we’ll give you $50.” Didn’t have to tell me twice. The next day I was watching a new hire at Quest Diagnostics stab a needle into my arm. This is what older is: getting stabbed with needles all the time.

    A couple years ago, while still living at my old apartment, I got a lipid test at the behest of my PCP at the time, a woman whose first name was Honey, which meant that I had to call her Dr. Marques because saying “Hi Honey” to a complete stranger felt bad. She isn’t even a doctor, really, she’s a physician’s assistant, but even knowing that I still called her Doctor, because what else do I call her? Ms. Marques?

    Anyway, that first test, in May of 2021, was bad. Mainly in the triglycerides, but it was all pretty bad. A good triglycerides level is below 150 mg/dL.Tangent: Is a blood test the only place where people use a deciliter as a unit of measurement? Mine was over 600. I remember shortly before my grandma, a stubborn-as-hell woman who continued to eat sweets and processed foods long after the diabetes had cost her both of her feet, died, had a reading of around 600, and I don’t remember if that was triglycerides or glucose. Both options are bad.

    This was a year after covid hit and my second year into what I can only describe as Pandemic Panic, where I had exorbitant amounts of DoorDash delivered to my apartment on a regular basis. Here is a picture I took of my feet in June of 2021:

    I took this photo because I thought, “Are my feet super swollen or what?”

    They were. At this point in my life I betrayed myself by doing something I swore I would never do: weigh over 300lbs. See, the problem with being 6’5″ and someone who used to do a lot of weightlifting is that 300lbs kind of sneaks up on you, visually speaking. Nobody really mentions weight anymore, which is good!–a very few people in your life should be allowed to tell you you’re fat, and even then they should be nice about it–but it also meant that I didn’t really see the difference in myself at the time, except in my feet. Or maybe I did notice and just didn’t care. I’ve spoken at length about the constant battles between Lizard Brain and Rational Brain, and I think the pandemic lockdown really threw my entire consciousness off balance, to the point where Lizard Brain felt the need to declare martial law.

    Doctor Honey was a stern woman, the type of PA you find at urgent care–quick with info, quick to get you out of the door. But she was also kind behind that need for speed, and she offered me a statin medication or lifestyle changes, and I opted for the latter. Three months, she said. Come back in three months.

    I went home that day and got my ass in gear. But it was an uphill battle due to my apartment neighbor being a meth-addled psychopath who was maybe one terrible trip away from beating my head in with a crowbar. Gone were my daily walks because I feared running into him. I eventually moved; that was good. I ate better, I walked a bit more around my new apartment neighborhood, I took fish oil supplements.

    In August I went in and got another lipid test. It was good, in the sense that my triglycerides went down by half. Still to high, but not so high that I should fear for my life. I don’t think I talked to Dr. Marques about these results, or maybe I did. I had moved at that point and so had she, from that clinic to who knows where.

    Since then, my weight ballooned back up to over 300 and has gradually come down by then. As we all know because I won’t shut up about it, I run now and I’m getting more exercises these days than I’ve had since covid started.

    So, of course: these results. These new lipid results are essentially the same as from August of 2021. They appear to be slightly better (my cholesterol-to-HDL ratio was 7.6 in May 2021, 6.6 in August 2021, and now 6.0), but it’s all still the same to me. It’s clear that I still have work to do. I may end up getting on a statin if these don’t drop over the summer. Statin or not, I need to watch what I eat and lay off the saturated fats. Most of which I consume as part of breakfast…

    I don’t have a moral or anything to end this post on. My cholesterol is too high; welcome to the United States of America. I was hoping it would be lower because of my exercising but I should’ve remembered that it’s your diet which really influences these numbers. I’m going to give myself another three months of running and exercise and eating better to see where I end up. Hopefully with better results.

  • Vegetarianism(ish)

    18,000 cattle were killed in a dairy farm explosion and subsequent fire in Texas on Monday. That’s … mind boggling, but according to that article, that’s around 20% of the cattle who are slaughtered every day in America.

    Now, I’ve never been huge on the moral quandaries associated with eating meat. I understand that the meat industry is shady as hell. I understand that male babies are often killed because they’re not as useful as females. (I’ve seen the baby chicks being put in the grinder, thanks.) I’m not sure how you can decouple eating meat with knowing how animals are slaughtered. There was that whole thing a few years back about teaching kids where their chicken nuggets come from, but I think most teens and adults understand slaughter. In fact, more often than not, rural communities understand slaughter way more than urban ones, because they deal with it first or secondhand.

    I’ve never lived rurally enough to experience slaughter firsthand, but my family did live relatively close to a now closed slaughterhouse and when I would drive to college every morning I would pass by it and the conveyor belt plopping steaming intestines and other internal parts into a big truck. Man that place stunk.

    Truthfully, I think the consumption of animals is crucial for human development. Specifically, it’s theorized that the cooking of meat is what jump started human brain development, tens of thousands of years ago. Cooking breaks down tough fibers into more easily digestible ones, which meant that prehistoric humans suddenly were getting more nutrients from cooked meat than from raw. Plus it was easier to chew and probably tasted good as hell to homo erectus.

    That said, at some point our brains got big enough that we became self-aware and empathic toward the thing that got us here in the first place. The moral and ethical issues involved with eating meat, to me, are more entwined with cruel-free practices of raising and slaughtering animals than they are with the eating of animal meat itself. Cows are an animal meant to be eaten. If not us, then wolves or other predators. We’re just very good at killing animals, and, more recently, much more interested in consuming as much meat as humanly possible, it seems.

    So, when I see 18,000 cattle dead (and ranchers lamenting about how they’ve lost around $2,000 per cow) due to, arguably, poor living conditions for the animals, it makes me take stock in my own meat, dairy, and byproduct consumption and how possible it could be to make it more ethically and morally appealing in the future. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism, but perhaps I can lessen my impact.

    I’m not here to make any promises, but here are some thoughts on forward progress:

    • Reducing meat consumption.

    This one is a no-brainer, obviously, but is also worrying for me mostly because it was meat (I think) which helped get me out of a depressive slump. More specifically, I think I was lacking iron and/or B vitamins that we can only get from animal consumption, and then one day a coworker left and we went to a Brazilian grill for her last day and I ate all the meats and felt better than I had in months afterward. Another friend of mine was basically prescribed a weekly meat meal by her doctor to combat low iron.I know you can get iron in plants (what up spinach) but heme iron is supposed to be much easier for us to absorb. For me, then, I would prefer to find locally sourced meat once or twice a week, and supplement the B vitamins (B12? Is there another one?) with the multivitamin I already take.

    I expect this will be way more expensive than the meat I buy at Safeway, but if I reduce the amount I consume in the first place, it should even out.

    • Ethically sourcing dairy and animal byproducts.

    Again, this is like the above point. I’m slightly less concerned with some byproducts, like honey, which I don’t think is as unethically collected as, say, eggs and milk. But I like eggs and I like milk and I’d like to get them both from local sources. Especially eggs–factory farmed eggs are so shit compared to fresh, free range farmed eggs. Gotta get that orange yolk. Milk is the same. Honestly I think I can fix this by taking trips to Market of Choice instead of Safeway; their commitment to animal welfare page makes me feel more comfortable with purchasing meat and dairy there.

    • Ethical consumption and/or vegan consumption outside the home.

    This one will be tougher. Portland restaurants are pretty good about letting you know where their meat comes from, depending on the quality of the restaurant. But in the end you just never know. So I think outside of my home I’d like to try to consume less or no meat at all, and maybe go vegan entirely. I don’t know if this will stick; obviously I want my restaurant experience to be better than my home cooking, and for me that includes dairy and/or meat. YES there are excellent vegan foods out there and I will absolutely go that route if I see something I like. But I am not a vegan or vegetarian really so I don’t feel the need to limit myself as much there.

    • Giving back to the community?

    If I’m going to eat another animal I feel like I should at least use that energy to better myself or the community. I don’t know if this will be financial or actual volunteerism (I am terrible at volunteering), but I want to try to put the energy I receive from another living being into bettering the world as a whole.

    Again, I live in Portland so these things should be easy to implement. At the very least though, having a clear concept of the impact I am having on my environment and how I can adjust it to be more ethical and conscious is a good start.

  • Running in March

    My last 5k, the Heart to Start, was on February 18th. I finished with a 38:01 time, which, to this day, I still don’t believe. This is 18 seconds slower than my all time fastest 5k race, the 2016 Shamrock Run, where I finished at 37:43. A 12:08 pace then, but my best pace was in 2013, another Shamrock Run, this time an 8k where I had an 11:44 pace.

    I know it’s not the best idea to compare myself to me ten years ago. After all, these aren’t stupendous times; they’re the times of a big tall guy who prioritized heavy weightlifting over running (and then fell off the wagon, so to speak). But it is very fascinating to see progress in action. I started running again in October 2022; my first 5k race was waaay out of my league and my time was 51:28. I almost don’t want to compare it to now, but that’s where I started. So my time difference between that race and my last race is 13 minutes and 27 seconds. In four months.

    The reason for stating this, I suppose, is to formally state that it is possible to get better at the thing you’re doing.

    So now it’s March, and it’s cold as hell in Portland. We just survived the Snowpocalypse, which was a blessing for me; I have gotten to the point where not going for a run nags at me, and I desperately needed the three days of rest.

    I upgraded my 5k in July, the Foot Traffic Flat, to a 10k. A 10.55k specifically, because it’s a quarter marathon. That’s about 6.5 miles for you apple pie and hot dog eatin’ sons of bitches out there. It’s taking place on Sauvie Island outside Portland and should be a beautiful run. But it also means I need to train. Like, now. I need to up my mileage methodically but gradually, so that I can run past 6 miles, up to maybe 8 or 9, which will make running 6.5 miles feel a little easier.

    I ended up grabbing this 8-week training program from the Runner’s World website, which incorporated training 3 runs 3/week. Originally, I had the 5/week running plan, but it seemed a little daunting, and literally as I was writing this blog decided to downgrade. Right now I’m trying for 4 runs per week, and with the 3/week program I can just add an extra day, which will probably be parkrun.

    That program won’t start until May, which means I have March and April to use for increasing my mileage safely. Enter: March.

    The plan is simple: increase mileage by 10% every week for 4 weeks, and then the 5th week is for deloading, or running a reduced mileage (basically back to week 1). I get two cycles of this before my 10k training begins. The first week is this week, with the goal being 10 miles.

    There largely (as of now) is no real other goal with the particular runs, other than to run them. I’m focusing more on mileage now so that I can have a basis for the 8-week plan, and thus, the 10k race. Last week I ended up running 12 miles total, which is insane, but the week before that was only 9, and before that only 7, and I think about 5-7 miles/week each week before then. So my mileage was creeping up a little faster than 10%, so I want to step back and make sure I do this correctly so I don’t hurt myself.

    I’ve got a few staples in mind though: Mondays are Hard Runs, Thursdays are Easy Runs, Saturdays are Whatever Parkrun Feels Like and/or Race Pace (for when I actually run races), and Sundays are Long (Easy) Runs.

    Monday Hard Runs will be a mix of interval training and tempo/threshold runs. I suspect a lot of intervals on the track, to be honest. It’s kind of fun to run intervals on the track. (Yes, 7th grade me, you heard that right.) Currently my intervals include 1 mile of running at a steady warmup pace, and then half-lap run/walk sessions for the other mile. But instead I’m going to run that first mile and then run for more like 30 seconds, then rest for a bit, and run again, etc, until I just can’t hack it anymore. Then, when I get better at it, I can increase the run time until I’m pushing myself for a minute.

    Thursdays I hope to be dominated by Zone 2 runs. Apparently these are very good for you, as they help keep your heart rate low for longer runs. (And other benefits, I think — look, I’m still a beginner runner, alright?) Zone 2 runs are weird because I’m running slow. Like, real slow. For me, that’s around 13:30-14/mi. Slow enough that even old ladies are passing me by, and babies, and turtles, etc. And since I’m still getting in shape, I’m religiously checking my smartwatch to make sure my heart rate is staying below Zone 3. It’s hard!

    I also think Thursdays will be some hill training, which basically means just running east, away from the river. It’ll be nearly impossible to keep me in Z2 for those, though.

    Saturdays are parkrun and a couple of races. I’m just going to play these by ear. No need to go all out for all of them, especially those in which I have a race the next day. I may use them as a way to keep a steady 5k pace, including keeping my pace lower at the start, because I, like most people, like to start faster than I should. If I can even out my pace over the whole 5k, that would be awesome.

    Sundays are the proverbial Long Run days for most people. I think most of my races are on Sundays so we’ll see if I just keep running once the race is over, or what. I might have to split my runs on race days, and then commit to longer runs on non-race days. We’ll see. But yes, long runs.

    So, two cycles of this and then an 8-week plan to get me ready for a 10k by July. I totally think I can do it. In fact I’m eager to do it. In fact fact, my brain is a little more eager than my body; it feels like Captain Kirk to my legs’ Scotty. But it’ll work. And in 4 months you’ll see me with a 10k medal around my neck, come hell or highwater.

  • SFA (Stop Fucking Around)

    For today’s run, I decided to Stop Fucking Around.

    I ran hard today. Sprintervals, I call them, though I can’t have been the first person to do so. Walking to the track is when I decided that this week would not be a deload week, as I had previously intended. Instead, I ran a full mile with a 11:46 pace, and then the 2nd mile was split into the Sprintervals — half a lap walking, half a lap running as fast as I could.

    This Strava pace chart is interesting to me. (And maybe only to me.) A relatively even pace for that first mile, dipping towards a 12:00/mi pace at the end there, but once I start doing sprints, my pace jumps to around 9:30/mi for the first sprint and then 8:00 and 8:30/mi for the second two. What’s fascinating to me is that people can run faster than that for much, much farther. But what else is fascinating is that the first sprint was hard, but on the second sprint I purposely ran even faster, trying to really bump my heart rate into the anaerobic zone. I’m very good at keeping my heart rate to a max of around 160, which is good, but I do feel like sometimes you gotta push yourself beyond that. So I did, and I felt like I was going to die. But the third sprint, where I purposely tried to get back to the speed I ran on my first sprint, was faster than the first sprint, even though it didn’t feel like it. That is interesting to me.

    So, on the way to my run I decided to Stop Fucking Around. Originally I was going to run a mile at an easy pace because I was worried I overdid it at the last parkrun. But I didn’t overdo it. I was just slow, and being slow means that I’m spending more time running, which means I’m more prone to injury or soreness. I think, instead of pushing myself to get better, I’ve been settling back, out of fear of injury or collapsing or puking or looking like an idiot at parkrun or on the track, I don’t know what.

    But an average 13:30/mi pace is abysmal. It’s slow for me, which is saying something. I think the Race for Warmth made me realize that I’m faster than I give myself credit for. Yes, I’m also out of shape and heavy. But I’ve still got the muscle from years of squatting, just sitting there, deflated, ready to work again. My pace seven years ago was a full minute and change faster than today, but at the Race for Warmth, my pace was 13:07. That means I am well on track to get back to my old pace, and even faster, as long as I keep pushing myself.

    Is every days a SFA day? No, of course not. Next time I run it will be slow and easy, for endurance and to recover a bit before Saturday. Parkruns will always just be whatever I’m capable of. Races I will push myself. But Mondays … Mondays are to Stop Fucking Around and kick my ass into high gear.

  • Race for Warmth

    *sports announcer voice* “And oh what a race for warmth it is today, Todd!”

    “That’s right, Jerry, it’s colder than a witch’s tit out here.”

    “It’s colder than the balls on a brass monkey.”

    “It’s cold as fuck Jerry!”

    This morning I left my apartment at around 8:15 am. The Portland air was crisp and cold. I drove to Vancouver, Washington, which took about 15 minutes. I then parked at a high school parking lot. Upon exiting the vehicle, I discovered that Vancouver was WINDY AS HELL.

    And that was my opening impression of the Race for Warmth, a 5/10k out in the Couv, put on by Clark (County) Public Utilities to benefit Operation Warm Heart which helps low-income families pay their heating bills during the cold months (or just in general, I guess). The race began and ended at the Clark Public Utilities building, which is right off the I-5 bridge, making for an easy trek. The packet pickup the day before was a drive through event, which reminded me a lot of when I got the covid vaccine, except this time I got the vaccine of … future exercise. How about that.

    The “swag bag” (remember when swag was a thing the youths would say?) consisted of some free and discount coupons, two tickets to see a Ridgefield Raptors baseball game in June (hell yeah, why not), and one of those emergency blankets and a hand warmer, which I think people used during or before the race but seems to be more intended for an emergency kit for your car.

    The atmosphere of the event was great. It wasn’t too crowded, everyone was fucking freezing, and there were a couple of tents with free stuff. Relevant Coffee provided the morning bean juice, which was very good. They also gave away a $5 gift card in the swag bag, which I fully intend to use in the future. Meanwhile, a tent for Why Racing Events gave away some stuff, including my favorite free thing, some old PDX carpet sunglasses. They had some other stuff too that I totally forgot to grab.

    “I make this look good.” Remember Men in Black?

    They seem to do a lot of triathlon races but also noticed I was wearing my Shamrock Run hoodie and suggested I run sign up for their version, the Couve Clover Run, which happens a week after the Shamrock Run. Maybe I will, Why Racing Events … maybe I will.

    (Side note: I always thought it was “Couv,” not “Couve.” Both are colloqualisms, so who cares, but maybe I ought to trust the Washingtonians.)

    The tent next to theirs was for NW Personal Training, also based in Vancouver. They gave out INCREDIBLY HELPFUL drawstring bags so I could carry all of my free shit. This was very good. Also, some sunglasses and the Weirdest Free Thing, a license plate frame.

    Lastly, there were Franz cookies, which of course were delicious.

    As for the race itself: I did good! I managed to run the entire first mile without stopping, which was one of my two goals for the race. According to Strava, my first mile was 11:44 and I was a 25:33 for two miles, both of which are current PRs. I knew running the first mile like I did would cause me to lose energy toward the end. My pace dropped pretty significantly during miles two and three, which is not really what I want, but I wanted to go faster overall and I guess I made that sacrifice.

    My other goal was a sub 40 min 5k, which I didn’t hit, but I think I was only about a minute over. My Strava time was 40:54, but that was for 3.07 miles because Strava does that sometimes. I thought I started the app with ample time to hit 3.1 but I guess not! Regardless, I think that’ll be about my chip time. If there was a gun time, it will be about a minute or so slower, because the start was a goddamn choke point, and also because there were a surprising amount of people walking. It was a walk/run event but it seemed like most people around my area were walkers. Ain’t nothing wrong with that, except it was like running through a minefield trying to dodge walkers left and right.

    UPDATE: My chip time was 40:44, 10 sec faster than Strava, which is weird. Gun time was as expected, 42:24.

    There were some slight uphills along the way, which I tried to run every time. You won’t get better at running inclines unless you actually run them. My grandaddy told me that once. (This is untrue.) Also a nice stretch along the Columbia River and this Vancouver Waterfront section that I think is fairly new. I don’t remember the drive into Vancouver being so nice. Is Vancouver nicer than Portland now? That would be wild.

    So, for next time, I think the goal is to actually slow down my first mile pace so that my second and third miles are steadier. Like, if they’re all 13 minutes, that would be great, plus I’d get under 40 minutes. I think the adrenaline of running a race with people made me start out a lot faster. But who knows? Maybe in a month or two from now, 11:44 will be my 5k pace. Here’s hoping.

    After the race there was an after party with a live band (god bless you musicians for playing in the cold), some turkey stew which was alright, cans of Michael Bubly, and more cookies. I had a sit and ate my stew and then promptly left. One of these days I’ll make some runner friends, but today is not that day!

    Overall, a nice race that I would absolutely run again next year.

    See you in a couple weeks for the Providence Heart to Start!

  • parkrun #3

    Last week, at the end of the last parkrun, I, after running for three miles in a steady downpour, said to one of the volunteers, “Well, at least it’s not snowing.”

    “Don’t say that!” she replied. “You’ll curse us for next week.”

    Well … this morning it snowed. In fact, this morning was the only day we’ve had real precipitation in about three or four days, and it is sunny now and will be mostly rain-free until Friday.

    So yes. I did curse this week’s parkrun. My penance, I think, will be to keep running.

    It was cold this morning, too. Does not bode well for the rest of the winter. A couple of degrees above freezing (I’ll let you decide what that means in Celsius or Fahrenheit). The snow was really more like a small, light hail. These were not snowflakes, they were a recon mission for future bombardment.

    I Came, I Ran, I … Did Alright. Shaved a couple seconds off my pace. Today’s interval training was three minutes running, two minutes walking, nine times. I thought that would be grueling, but it actually wasn’t too bad at all. Even the uphill runs were better than I expected.

    Hell, I even made the Local Legend of the Rock Creek Trail parkrun on Strava. What does that mean? Well, it means I’ve logged the run the most in the last 90 days, I think. I’ve logged it three times, which means … the other people must’ve stopped using Strava.

    I’m getting better, and I feel better, and yet … that near 14 minute mile pace is driving me nuts. I had my mouse hovering over the Half-Marathon registration for the July 4th Foot Traffic Flat on Sauvie Island. I was gonna do it. I was very close to doing it. But I did some sort of pace extrapolation thing on another site which told me that at my current pace, it would be a 3 hour half (a 3 hour half) — an over 3 hour half, technically, I just wanted to get that joke in. That’s just too fucking long to be running a half marathon.

    So I signed up for the 5k instead and my 2023 is now hellbent on reducing my pace to under 12 minutes. Twelve was the bane of my existence back in the day, too. My fasted pace was 11:44, on an 8k in 2013, which is weird as it’s the only 8k I’ve ever run. Everything else has been over 12 minutes. I don’t like it. I’m okay with being a slow runner, but, like, a 10 minute mile slow.

    Thus, the training continues…

    Next week I will likely be walking my parkrun as the Race for Warmth is the next day. I’m also hellbent on going to parkrun every week, even if I have races. Sometimes the habit is more important than the impact.

    See you next week, parkrun.

  • January Running Update

    Or, A Running Update on January.

    The problem with running is that it’s hard.

    I’m doing fine. My pace is getting lower with almost each run. I’ve got two parkruns under my belt and about a week and a half from this post will be my first 5k race for 2023, the Run for Warmth in Vancouver, WA (The Couv). Judging by a recent email I received from them, their goodies bag will be very good. You know I’m sucker for a goodies bag. Medals are nice and all, but a bag with goodies in it? Get out of the city!

    But still, running is hard. The motivation is hard. Especially as I hit that part in January where it’s cold and the realization that it’s another year doing all this sinks in. This is going to by my 40th year on this Earth, which doesn’t help. (It sort of helps.)

    Like I said, I have two parkruns left in January. Tomorrow will be normal but the one after I will have to walk, because I am running the Run for Warmth the next day. I’ve been thinking about volunteering that week, but it also feels weird to jump into volunteering so soon. We’ll see.

    I was also feeling a little unsatisfied with my laissez faire run schedule so I grabbed a training … kit? Training schedule? Whatever. I got it from the Runner’s World website.

    This is meant to help boost me up to running 5k without walking. I just started–tomorrow will be the Week 1 Saturday–and it seems like it’s working. I’ve realized that I was cheating myself out of the longer runs, because I had no timer to keep me on track. I would run, think I had run for, what, five minutes?, but really it was like one minute. Timing keeps me honest, which I appreciate. The training will get harder going forward, but I’ve been paying attention to my food intake and making sure I eat enough to fuel me, which is important. I had this problem when I was weightlifting too; I want to lose weight but you actually kind of have to increase your food intake in order to have the energy to exercise in the first place. So my weight loss will be slower than I’d like, but that’s alright.

    I’ll be back here tomorrow with my parkrun #3 update!