Since I am running a straight blog.joshbelville.com/ site now, I backed up my old site but forgot to make a proper .xml export of my WordPress posts there. So I have them … in strange, obscure SQL format that I don't want to spent time trying to extract.
That means I’ve got a couple of race reports that are lost, so I figured I’d just do a recap of the month in general.
Mileage
Running: 100.31 miles Walking: 25.40 miles
Happy to surpass the 100 mile mark. I don’t know if I’ll be doing that again anytime soon, to be honest, unless the Holiday Half pushes me over the line. I’m also fine with fewer walking miles. I really only got to 25 because I was logging every time I went to the store.
Turkey Trots
I only ran two races in November, and both were turkey trots. The first was a rematch at Portland International Raceway with the Hood to Coast 5k there. That was at night and was very cold. It felt colder than last year.
My chip time was 32:33 but that was for 3.34 miles, which the course absolutely is, because I double checked on Google maps. Regardless I really felt good on this run and was going at a nice clip for the first two miles.
The second one was the next morning and was the ORRC Turkey Trot. This was a four mile run at the Oregon Zoo. It started rather abruptly, which was very fun, and the first half was very downhill, with the second half running up that hill (cue Kate Bush here). It was tough, especially after running fast the night before. But we did get to see some mountain goats chilling out at the entrance. My time was 50:31 but it was a fun run and I was dying going back up the hills.
parkruns
Three parkruns this month, #s 31-33. Nothing spectacular about any of them, really. I was running them slowly due to my Garmin Coach half marathon training. 11/18 was college themed for gameday or something like that, I don’t know, but I repped Boise State because A) I had some BSU clothing and B) I don’t have any Portland State gear.
Garmin Coach
Lastly, I signed up for a half marathon training plan through Garmin Coach, using Coach Amy. This was more or less a bad idea. It wasn’t terrible, but she did bump my “easy” pace to a 10:55/mi average, making all of my runs a little more difficult and basically preventing any of them from falling into my actual Zone 2 easy run heart rate. I’ve since stopped the training plan, but that happened in December so I technically can’t talk about it on this post.
That was it for November! The only race I have in December is the Holiday Half, which I will of course recap here in ye olde blog. Until then!
This won't seem like much to you, but I have transferred my website to blog.joshbelville.com/ and I plan to figure out how to transfer my Substack posts here as well.
The reasons are the ones I give every time I bring this shit up: I’m consolidating. It seems insane to have a Substack AND a blog site. So I thought I’d just do a Substack. But I do like blogging from time to time–so I am here. The domain name will transfer in a few days.
It appears that WordPress has functionality for a newsletter function, and if I can get it to send only certain posts as newsletters, then I may do that and just move all my subscriptions to here, from Substack. We’ll see!
I hunted around for blogging site options and WordPress is just the best one, no contest. I’m trying to avoid Google as much as possible, so no Blogger. WordPress is owned by a corporation too, but at least the site itself is sleek and cool and the subscription options are reasonable.
take my haaaand, we’re off to ending daylight saving time
Just me, sitting here, eating some discount candy corn, listening to my cat snore, thinking about how 2023 is almost over. This truly is what November is all about. Mostly the discount candy corn part.
Random Thoughts
https://youtu.be/wAS45XwU1Rg
Family reality TV (that is, reality TV that centers around a family) peaked with The Osbournes and will never regain that level of greatness. The reason behind this is that Ozzy Osbourne was a direct antithetical concept to reality TV, and thus, watching Ozzy be “family man Ozzy”—this man who bit the head off a live bat in 1982—was an amazing juxtaposition, especially because he was still very “Ozzy” even in the context of the show (and by that I mean his brain was addled after decades of heavy drug and alcohol use). Compare this with Keeping Up with the Kardashians, a reality show that is fundamentally fake and full of fundamentally fake people doing dumb fake things. Kim Kardashian will never be as funny or fun to watch as Ozzy Osbourne.
The amount of waste individuals generate pales in comparison to the amount of waste corporations generate, and yet I am still mad at myself for letting a bell pepper wither away in my fridge. It looks so sad! Just sitting there, deflating slowly, the green of its skin turning darker and darker. How do I tell it that I’ve already eaten the onion? That I ate the onion while it desiccated in the crisper drawer? O WOE TO THE GREEN BELL PEPPER
Random thing I learned the other day: the word “handiwork” is not a play on “handy work” but is rather two words, “hand” and “iwork,” the latter of which is the Old English past participle of “work,” made by adding the i- prefix. So “handiwork” more literally means “hand worked,” aka “hand made.” This is more or less what the current meaning is too, but it’s still neat. (Also the i- prefix still exists in Germanic languages as ge-. This all makes sense as Old English is Germanic in origin.)
I’m Going to England (in May)
I have booked my first ever international trip across Ye Olde Ponde to my ancestor’s stomping grounds: London, England. Yes, from what I understand King Charles himself will be at my airport gate waiting to tip a ladle of Heinz baked beans right down my goddamned gullet. (Queen Elizabeth didn’t perform this ceremony because it was thought “unbecoming of a woman.” That’s why you didn’t know about it before now.)
The trip is two weeks in London. The only thing I have planned is to run my 50th parkrun at the original spot, Bushy Park, on May 11th, which is the day before my birthday. Other than that I have NOTHING planned but I’m sure I’ll visit the museums and eat an English Breakfast and a Turkish Delight and a Jammy Dodger and then Greg Davies will see me walking down Trafalgar Square and shout, “You! Boy! You would be perfect for the next series of Taskmaster!” and then I’d do that and become famous and well-known as “The Best Taskmaster Contestant.”
Honestly though I think I’m just gonna bum around London for two weeks, maybe take a bus up to Scotland, maybe figure out how to get to Ireland and try to erase the “London” from the “Londonderry” signs. If anyone has any suggestions, let me know!
NaNoWriMo 2023
I am doing National Novel Writing Month once again. This is my 21st outing, which is impressive, but on the other hand, I’ve only “won” NaNoWriMo three times. So, whatever.
This year I’m expanding on an idea I’ve had for a few years now, about a human created by robots long after humanity has been extinct. The current title is re:human (see, cause it’s re(garding) humanity, and it’s also re(making) humans, you get it? eh? eh?). I thought it would be interesting to try and make the cover art using Dall-e 2:
The prompt is a person in a vat surrounded by machinery. I don’t know how people get such good AI art cause mine always looks like this shit.
If this ever becomes an actual book I won’t actually use AI for the cover, even though it would be kind of ironic because the book is about AI creating humans, and then I use AI to make the book cover … but AI is just thievery right now, so unless that gets better, forget about it, bub. I’d rather pay an artist.
I’m writing this newsletter on Nov 10th, and I’m already at 30,000 words, so … I must really like this idea. In fact, I’m at a point now where I know where the series goes, if it ever becomes a book series. Who knows right now, but it’s a fun thought.
If anyone’s interested, I may post a snippet of the novel in a future post. Just something to wet the ol’ whistle. If you’ve ever wondered how the sausage is made. Is that how the saying goes? Wetting whistles and sausages sounds like a pornographic combination.
Running
Ah, who cares. I’m doing it. Since last newsletter, I’ve run three races:
ORRC Dual Duel 10k – Running 25 laps on a track is hard. Run Like Hell 5k – Got 3rd place in my age group! Weird but cool. Mt. Tabor Tar n Trail 5k – Everyone missed a whole .30 of the 5k because of a poorly marked sign, and then the event organizers never followed up on that so I’m not gonna run that one again.
Oh, and we have a new parkrun in Oregon! It’s in West Linn; that Run Like Hell blog link above will talk about it too. It’s nice to have two options now, even if both are far away from where I live.
November’s only got two races, the Hood to Coast Turkey Trot 5k at Portland International Raceway, which is at night and lets you get to run around the raceway track and look at the Christmas lights before anyone else, and the very next morning is the ORRC Turkey Trot at the Zoo, which is a 4 miler. So that’ll be interesting.
After that is my LAST OFFICIAL race for 2023, the Foot Traffic Holiday Half. I am running the half marathon and it will be cold as balls, I’m sure.
I’ll have a more thorough analysis of my Year in Running next month, but suffice it to say: it was quite a year.
Reviews
Movie: Saw X
The Saw series is over …? X was honestly pretty good and had one of the only torture porn scenes that actually made me look away. Plus there was a lot of Tobin Bell and I love that guy. He’s genuinely talented and makes a great “gray area” villain (even if his philosophy isn’t very gray area). Here’s my slightly longer Letterboxd review.
TV: Shoresy Season 2
Very good. Somehow they’ve made a Letterkenny/sports movie hybrid and it’s quick and fun and quippy and all of the characters have their own quirks. Also, for Jared Keeso to make a joke character in Letterkenny and transition him into a full-fledged person that I care about in Shoresy is amazing.
Also, Keilani Rose (Miig in the show) was SHOT IN THE CHEST in LA prior to filming, and recovered and is in the show and I am glad she is okay! She only had a fractured rib and punctured lung. Not great, but could’ve been a LOT worse.
Book: Shift (#2 in Silo Series)
The first book, Wool, was uneven and kind of slow to start. It didn’t help that the first half of the book is the first season of Silo, the Apple TV show, and that the TV show is better than the book. Shift, thankfully, is a lot more interesting, acting as a prequel/sidequel? to Wool and delving into some of the machinations of the silo. Hugh Howey still refuses to write a scene between more than two people, but at least the scenes here are more interesting.
YouTube Share’ems
I don’t think “Now and Then” is the best of the Beatles “post-John” songs (that would be, IMO, “Real Love”), but the story of the two living Beatles making a song with the two dead Beatles using state of the art technology, creating a music video that is, if nothing else, a memorial for The Beatles, is pretty incredible. My only issue is that the song is clearly and painfully an unfinished demo, even from John’s standards. But he’s been dead for over 40 years so there’s not much you can do on that front.
Because this novel I’m working on is science fiction, I’ve found myself down a rabbit hole of science fictiony concepts. PBS Space Time is always interesting to me but I especially enjoyed them breaking down why building a foundation for thinking of time on an atomic level is important.
The End
Well that’s it, see you next month, when Santa Claus descends from the North Pole to terrorize us all with capitalism. Until then!
this is a byline, where one would put a witty comment if they could think of one
I feel like 2024 is going to have some big changes for me. “Josh you just ran a half marathon—” no but I mean, like, other changes. And I’m not a big change guy. Personal change, I mean; I love quarters and nickels and dimes. But getting my trajectory from ΔA to ΔB takes a lot of fuel.1 It’s always been this way; ask me to get a new hairstyle and I will, maybe, two years from now. But there’s just something about my current situation which feels untenable, bristly, at odds with some innate desire.
I think what I’m trying to say is: I’m gonna buy a boat.
Just kidding. You think I can afford a boat?
Portland (Half) Marathon Report
First of all, if you wanted a race report on the Portland (Half) Marathon, click ye olde link to ye olde blogge and have a read with your eyeballs. If you want a TL;DR: it went good, I made it, huzzah. There is a more philosophical treatise on the impact running long distances can have on your brain and your body, but I ain’t the type to write all that shit down. If anything, I need to not think about it so I can do it. You know how sometimes you’ll be having sex and suddenly you’ll think of George Washington’s wooden teeth, which weren’t actually wooden but were all sorts of teeth—holy shit, imagine having walrus teeth in your mouth—and then suddenly you look down and your partner isn’t even in the room anymore, they somehow just crawled out from under your frozen body as you ponder our first president’s dentures and now they’re on the couch eating Wheat Thins and watching an episode of Maury from 1994? Yeah it’s like that. No think, just sex running.
I’m running a 10k track race on Sunday the 15th with the Oregon Road Runners Club. My first track race and I can’t wait to look completely like I don’t belong there.
I’ve told this story a million times but when I was a kid, my class went to the local roller rink to skate. I had never skated before so I was hugging the walls and falling on my ass. At some point they declared that there was going to be a race around the rink with all of the boys. Despite me never skating before, I was put in the race. When they shouted “Go!” the boys all roared down the skating rink … and then there was me, at the end, shuffling like an old man. I guess my point is, sometimes you just gotta be shit at something, even if it’s embarrassing. Usually people are like “Nobody’s paying attention to you” but I guarantee you people were looking at me. Ah well. I was a kid!
Cleaning Up & Clearing Out, Digitally
I’ve been contemplating social media again. Wait, don’t go! I brought cookies. They’re just for me but you can smell one if you keep reading
My disgusting inky ichorous tendrils have been rooted within the World Wide Web practically my entire life. I made websites back in 1996, when I was 13. That was 27 years ago. And for a while, being present on the internet was great. Having a username and forums and AIM and early Facebook, it was all cool. Instagram filters that nobody uses anymore. If the internet of mid and late 90s was the wild west, then the internet of the early 2000s felt like the industrial age, and me and my online friends were the coal miners.
Now, the internet sucks ass. And by that I mean social media, which is a festering wound that could be cleaned out if capitalism wasn’t a drug-resistant flesh eating bacteria. Twitter, obviously, was demolished by the world’s dumbest richest man. Facebook has become a nightmare miasma of absolutely everything I don’t care about. Mastodon is good, but boring. Threads, stupid pandering. The only thing that continues to barely resemble its former self is Instagram, and that’s owned by the world’s fastest richest man! It’s all self imploding in the service of the All Ighty Ollar?
All this is to say, I’m pulling the tendrils out as much as I can. I’m trying to reduce my internet footprint. I want other Josh Belville’s to show up on google search results. I’m sick of posting a thing and then having to post that thing on multiple other things to ensure that the vast majority of people—my friends and family—can find it, even if they never read it or even think about it for one second. It’s absolutely absurd.
We have a device that fits in our pocket and can tell us where the nearest hot dog is in .0000005 milliseconds and yet in order for you to watch the YouTube video I made, I have to post it to Facebook and then also to Instagram oh and you better write a tweet about it too, have you thought about posting a thought-provoking post on LinkedIn about how nice it is to lick billionaire’s boots in order to buy groceries?—etc etc etc.
I hate it! It’s stupid and bad, and in the last few years it has even fractured relationships between family and friends because social media (or the Russians, or both) took our middling opinions and polarized them so much that I can’t look at my extended family online anymore without tagging them as Trump supporters in my head. In real life, this would never be a problem. I know they’re conservative and Republican, but if they asked me to their house for dinner, I would go and have a great time, because they are, at heart, good people. But online, everyone is a Something, and that Something is usually Bad.
In order to get the engagement they need to satisfy advertisers enough to pay them money, social media sites have to make you want to come back. I hate it. It’s basically addiction on a mass scale. It’s that fucking game from that Star Trek: The Next Generation episode. It’s stupid that this TV show accurately predicted our addiction to smartphones back in 1991.
So, what does this really mean? It just means that I’m going to try to either delete, or stop using, as many social media apps as possible, and to delete accounts to things that I don’t really need. I thought for a long time about just using this newsletter to post things, but honestly the engagement here isn’t very good either. Maybe I just suck! That’s totally possible.
For 2024 I want to use social media as minimally as I can, with a few exceptions. Like, I want to post only on Instagram, and only at the end of the month with a photo dump of what I’ve been up to. And then maybe go outside more and actually meet people and shit. Who knows.
Just thought I’d bring it up in case you’re wondering why you haven’t seen me around in a while. I’m out there, in the Real World, picking up Chicks.
Stuff
Great TDC with Caroline Polachek that really showcases her voice, which is beautiful. She does have that ethereal air of a woman whose parents are rich.
Somebody reminded me of Square One the other day. Amazing show on PBS about math and they had great music videos, like this one.
Conan’s interview with Arnie is very good. I forget that he’s a Republican and loves Ronald Reagan, which I will forgive, I suppose.
The End
I’ve always been bad at wrapping things up. In that vein: bye.
This is an astronaut joke, and I don’t even know exactly what it means. ↩︎
Well, it finally happened. On January 1 of this year I decided to write out a list of New Years resolutions, a last ditch sort of thing as I oftentimes find resolutions to be difficult to keep and so what’s the point of writing them. But I did, and the very first resolution I wrote was “Run a half marathon (and/or a 5k every month).” The first half was a pipe dream, really; I wrote it because I knew it was a great challenge, but also a challenge that was a little out of my wheelhouse. But these are resolutions, not the Ten Commandments; you write stuff down, some of it doesn’t stick, and that’s okay.
Then, I started running 5ks and got into parkrun and my running life spiraled out of control. In a good way, I mean. If you count parkrun, by April I had run 14 different events, including four 5ks (or three 5ks and one 3 miler, stupid Couve Clover Run). It was somewhere in April that I got an email from the Portland Marathon stating that their prices were about to go up. I was feeling confident and decided to sign up.
Now, I’ve run the damn thing, finally, four months later. How did it go?
Well … good. And bad. But mostly good!
Pre-Race
The night before I packed my drop bag with all the necessities. Anti-chafe? Check. Towel for my sweaty face afterward? Check. Change of clothes? Check.
Then, it was off to bed at 9pm for a fitful night of sleep. I thought I slept like shit but Garmin says I did fine. Agree to disagree.
In the morning I got up, did the prerequisite toilet time, ate half a PB & honey sandwich, and started the trek to the venue. It’s always weird to walk through the industrial district (inner eastside Portland) in the dark. What was weirder though is that as I was getting closer to the Hawthorne Bridge, I could hear some thumping EDM music coming from a building, and for a moment I wondered if it was some club that was having an all night rave party or something. But I think it was just people setting up to cheer for the race. I think.
Got to the place. A ton of porta potties. A Lollapalooza-level of toilets. Did the Pre-Race Poop, took off my warm clothes, put all my gels in the pockets of my running shorts, gave the poor harried women in the drop bag tent my bag, and then headed to the race starting point. Marathoners were on the south side of Salmon St, half marathoners were on the north side.
Didn’t do any running warmup, just some dynamic stretches and stuff like that. I wanted to save my energy for the run itself.
Atmosphere
The energy of the crowd was pretty great. Weirdly enough, there were fewer registrants for this race than for the Shamrock Run. Only 6,680 finishers and I think a hundred or so DNFs. I’m pretty sure Shamrock had over 10,000 runners. (Which is also low for Shamrock, historically.) I know everyone’s leaving Portland because we’re full of drug users and Crime™, but apparently the people who left were all runners.
The vibe of this run was somewhat formal. It felt like a proper running event, as opposed to the Foot Traffic Flat, which felt like some runners getting together to have a good time. My quarter marathon at the Flat ended in front of somebody’s big farm house. However, the vibe between the west side of Portland and the east side for this run couldn’t be more different. West side we ran through downtown a bit and then down Naito Parkway, a big fancy street. Then it was Macadam, which is also a big street for lots of cars and such. There were homes but they were over there.
Then we crossed the Sellwood Bridge, which was beautiful and I wish I had taken a photo of the view. We were then in east Portland, running through neighborhood, with houses and people! It was very nice. Lastly, we ran through the inner eastside industrial district I mentioned earlier, which was pretty bleh except for the small bit we ran on the eastside Esplanade, by OMSI. I’ve run that route a bunch and it’s nice, though I do kind of wish we had kept going up the Esplanade cause it runs right on the water.
Then we were back downtown with the big tall buildings. Lots of different Portland vibes!
The Race
Not sure how to talk about distance races like these yet. As you can see from the above image, my pace was fairly stable through the first eight miles. Coincidentally, eight miles is the longest distance I had run before the half. Are those two things related? Probably.
What’s more the culprit of the second half of the … half, is fueling. I’ve read and watched a bunch on proper fueling for a long run but one thing nobody tells you about it is how much it sucks. It really sucks to ingest food while you are running, even if it’s energy gels.
Basically my fueling plan was what it says on the Gu energy gel packet: take one five minutes before the start, and then every 45 minutes afterward. I was also drinking LIV hydration lemon lime flavor powder stuff. This was mixed into my handheld water bottle. The powder packet says to mix it with 16 oz of water. My water bottle was only 12 oz, so the hydration was a little more concentrated than it should’ve been. Also, 12 oz is too small for me for this distance. I didn’t finish my water in the bottle but I would’ve preferred to have 16oz that was better diluted.
So, the fuel was the hydration powder + 3 Gu energy gels. Strawberry banana and 2x raspberry lemonade. Took one before the race started and it was fine. Took another 45 min in and it was okay. Took my 3rd one at 1:30 and basically started feeling nauseous from that point onward. It felt like I had a bunch of blobs of goo in my stomach, which was true, and my stomach was like “What the fuck is this? What am I supposed to do with this?”
In hindsight, I think I took too many gels. I just feel like nutrition advice with these types of things is geared toward skinny, fitter athletes. Like, maybe you need a Gu every 30-45 minutes if you’re running a 7 minute mile and you weigh 130lbs. For me, it just felt like too much. Plus the sloshing of hydration water … it was all too much.
As you can tell from the above diagram, I walked a lot from mile 8 onward. Way more than I wanted to, but every time I started running my stomach would feel a little … lurchy. I listened to my body and settled down a bit, which helped, but which also wrecked my A Goal time and even my sub-2:20 time goal. Ah well.
The east side of the run also had some surprise hills, including one fairly steep “fuck off” hill that I feel like most of us walked. It was also around that hill that I saw Jenny Conlee, the keyboardist of the Decemberists, playing an accordion for the crowd. That was nice!
So, the big takeaway of this is nutrition and fueling during the run. Something I could’ve trained for months ago but decided to eat M&Ms and drink Powerade instead. Which wasn’t bad! But running long distance at a tempo pace makes it nearly impossible for me to chew food. Could’ve walked; didn’t. But then I did. A lot. So I don’t fuckin’ know, folks.
Once I hit 13 miles, the marathon app told me that I was right about at 2:29 and that I was projected to finish at like 2:29:56. So I hauled ass to the finish line, or at least it felt like I did. I saw a video a friend of mine took close to the finish line and I look like I am running to the bathroom. C’est la vie!
One more thing: anti-chafe. It did me good. My nipples are fine, my inner thighs are fine. The only thing that hurts are my legs and the middle of my upper back, which is weird.
Post-Race
the banan kiss my medal
Just a shit-ton of goodies. Food and drinks and a free Voodoo doughnut and a beer. Ran into friends and chatted. There was an alpaca that I forgot to pet. Really great stuff. I (thankfully) didn’t feel too damaged from the run. My legs hurt, yes, but not too bad. Maybe I will change my tune tomorrow morning.
Also just wanted to mention that the Portland Marathon had the best safety pins I’ve ever used. They were quality! Probably brand new, which, okay, bad for the environment, but man they were nice.
I walked home after chatting with friends, which was an adventure on its own. Nothing like running a long distance and then walking some more. Though I did meet a guy while traversing the Hawthorne Bridge who had run the full marathon and was straight up hobbling. Guy looked wrecked. In good spirits though. Such is the way with marathons, I guess.
And that’s that. My first half marathon. Would I do it again? … Well …
I signed up for the Holiday Half in December. Did that a while ago, but always with the intention of downgrading it to a 5 or 10k if this half really sucked.
Right now, I don’t have an answer. This was tough, and while I do like to push myself, I don’t feel a need to do it with distance. The idea of running a full marathon sounds like shit right now. To run another half?…
We’ll see. Give me a week.
The next race is the ORRC Dual Duel, which is supposed to be a relay run but they have a 10k solo option which is what I’m doing. In two weeks! It’s just doing laps around a track as far as I know. I think, perhaps, that I’ve gone insane.
Beautiful temperatures and clear sky for parkrun this morning. My official time was 35:11; being one second off on my Strava is pretty impressive. I’m usually a few seconds off one way or another.
This wasn’t a very flashy parkrun for me. Garmin’s suggested workout was 33 minutes base, which I did plus the extra to make it 5k. Tomorrow’s the half marathon so I can’t go all out … but I did sprint the last .11 of a mile this morning. You gotta! The parkrun crew felt extra lively today too, not sure why. Maybe we’re all just excited for Spooky Season.
After getting home and showered and changed, I took a walk over to the Oregon Convention Center and the Portland Marathon Expo, picking up my bib and swag and then spending too much money on merch. I can’t help it; I was a broke kid who grew up into a broke adult, and I’ve gone to a lot of events where I couldn’t afford to buy any merch. Now I’ve got a bit of money so I’m gonna buy some merch dammit!
So this is it, my last run before I run 13.1 miles tomorrow morning. I wish I had some words of wisdom but I don’t. I’m just eager to get it going and see how my body responds to this level of pushing myself. Hopefully, well!
Time to relax for the rest of the day, get some more carbs in, and go to bed early.
First off, let’s get some time goals down, shall we? Set in stone for posterity.
S Goal: Whatever Garmin says. Right now it says 2:13:34, or a 10:12/mi pace. Typically you only do an A/B/C goal, but I add this one because the Garmin predictor seems insane to me. Maybe Garmin is right, maybe I can hold a 10:12/mi pace for 13 miles, but it also suggests my 5k race time is 27:08, which is an 8:44/mi pace. I tried that at the CVIM 5k and could only get one mile in before I had to stop. Really, I think the issue is less my biomechanical ability and more my mental ability. Reminds me of when I was trying to bench two plates. Took me forever because I had a mental block.
In any case, I’m not aiming for that goal.
A Goal: 2:18:30, or 10:34/mi pace. I know, 22 seconds between S Goal and A Goal. Doesn’t seem like that much, does it? I would’ve said the same thing a few months ago. Now, I know that those 22 seconds are the difference between a threshold run and a tempo run. This might be easier for me to hang onto for 13 miles, especially if I can start slow. I’ve got this one set up in Garmin’s PacePro plan for negative splits; hopefully the slow start will aid me in a faster finish.
B Goal: 2:30:00, or 11:27/mi. I really don’t want to be slower than 2:30, and I’m fairly confident I can keep this one up. My Foot Traffic Flat quarter marathon pace was 11:32/mi and my run/walk pace during the CVIM 5k was still around 10:00/mi so even if I have to walk sometimes, I’m sure I can keep my time below 2:30. Unless I have to take a big poop or my calves cramp up or something.
C Goal: C goal is always to just complete the damn thing. The race has a time limit (cause cars, bleh) which equates to a 30:00/mi pace for the half. So ultimately there is no way I will not finish this thing.
This morning I ran a 10k with an average 11:25/mi pace, and that was a tempo interval workout with recovery in between. I think the training over the past couple of months has me perfectly set up for anywhere between 10:00 and 11:30/mi pace. Now let’s just RUN THE DAMN THING ALREADY.
Fueling: I’ve done too little fuel training and the other night I realized I’m going to be running in shorts that only have little pockets for gels. I’ve been eating M&Ms. So we’ll have to figure this out.
This morning I trained with LIV hydration powder, lemon lime flavor (generously gifted to me at the CVIM 5k) and M&Ms. The powder was mixed into my Nathan handheld water bottle. It says to mix it with 16oz of water but I think the bottle only holds 10 or 12 ounces. In any case, that shit is tart. In a good way! Tart like wake me up tart. Seemed to hydrate me as well. I didn’t drink a ton because I’m trying to figure out how much to drink while I’m running. Water is easy but I don’t want to overload on electrolytes.
The M&Ms … well, I took them out of their usual packaging and put them in a sandwich bag. I did this because my plan was to put them in one of the side pockets of my running belt, and the bag is too long. But this backfired because the sandwich bag is too big and loose and the M&Ms were a pain in the ass to get. Also, a pain in the ass to chew and swallow. Gels are probably better. Also! About 3/4ths of the way through my run I stuffed the bag into my belt pocket but I actually put them in between my belt strap and my body, which meant they fell out and I lost them. 🙁
The good news is that M&Ms don’t mess with my stomach, and the hydration seemed to work fine. I did buy a Powerade as a backup.
Lastly, I decided to buy a Garmin heart rate chest strap, which I hopefully will get today and can test out tomorrow. My watch seems to have difficulty finding my heart rate sometimes, which is fine day-to-day but during a run I’d like it to be a little more precise. Plus I like gadgets, and I like data. I feel like I’m weirdly obsessed with my heartbeat. Like, the other night I was going to bed and I thought about how weird it is that right before your heart beats, some cavities in there fill up with blood. Isn’t that weird? Our entire body has this liquid coursing through it every day. And that liquid is made up in part by blood cells, which are made in the middle of your BONES. What?! You’d think there would be an organ or something, a blood organ, that makes all your red blood cells. Nope, it’s your god damn bones. The things that keep you upright!
Anyway, I’ll finish this thing no problem. The only real question is, how fast will I do it? Which … I guess is a question everyone asks because it’s running and not, like, painting a picture.
sponsored by pepsi, pepi, bebsi, pesu, pepcid, pespi, pepis, joe piscopo, and pepsi
I’m writing this during a brief bit of non-rain on Portland’s first real rainy day of the season. The first day of Fall was on the 23rd and we had a bit of rain almost immediately, but this morning was the type of insistent-yet-polite deluge that Portland is famous for, the kind of rain Fred Armisen would make fun of, maybe for a minute longer than he needs to. We don’t often get the sudden torrent that ends as quickly as it started, like on the east coast. Instead, our rain shuffles in with the quiet expectation of being known and seen and heard and smelled. Much like the hipsters of this city.
It’s September 25th, is what day it is. Yes, I am going to talk about running again. Yes, colloquially when I say “talking” I mean writing, but the sentence, “Yes, I am going to write about running again,” feels disconnected between me the writer and you the reader. If I say that I’m talking to you, it hits different than if I said I was writing to you. “I am writing you this letter” is something you’d hear at the beginning of a voiceover in a Ken Burns documentary. “I am writing you this letter to inform you that your dear nephew Ansel has pneumonia and is currently stretching his hands up to Heaven for God’s embrace.” People back then were depressed.
There’s a little over five days until I run 13.1 miles for a shiny medal and a beer before 10am. Yes, I bought a sticker. No, it’s not going on the back of my car. I told you, running is for me, not for you, which is why I’m writing to you ab—which is why I’m talking to you about it now. The sticker goes somewhere that I see most of the time. That’s the plan at least.
One of the interesting things about this whole process is that it is eerily reminiscent of rehearsing for a play. Training regularly, doing repetitive things over and over. Getting sick of it all and then, on another day, having an epiphany that makes the whole thing better. Currently I’m in the, “We just gotta get this in front of an audience,” part of rehearsal, when you’ve run the entire play so many times to no one that it’s almost frustrating. The director keeps giving you passive-aggressive notes like “Stand over there” and “Be better at acting.”
Hell, you’re even doing it with other people. With plays, everyone knows their parts and when you rehearse you become a cohesive whole capable of telling a two-hour story. With running, for me at least, we runners still all know our individual parts, but we’re separate, rehearsing for a play where we all do our own thing for an hour or two.
The wearing down is what helps negate the nervous energy. People still get nervous when they do a show, of course, but if you’ve rehearsed enough, then your nervousness slowly gets replaced with irritation. “I just want to do the show already!” you think as you make the same cross from downstage left to upstage right, where you then look at the flower pot poignantly as you say your line about how much you hate doors. In this example you’re doing a farce.
With running, the nervousness is about failure, about injury, about diarrhea. That sounds like a joke but it’s true. Every runner out there is worried they’re going to poop their pants on the run. Such camaraderie in that. Every runner knows that every other runner has worried about pooping their pants. It’s humanizing! If only we lived in a world where we knew that everyone was worried they were going to poop their pants, nuclear war would never have been invented. Oppenheimer would have been distracted, watching his scientists as they watched each other, all terrified of the Fart That Wasn’t.
But if you run, and you have a good routine set up, and you work hard, and build mileage, and maybe get a fiber supplement in every day but not on race day because if you get too much fiber it’s like the political horseshoe concept except both ends of the horseshoe are diarrhea—if you put in the work, then by the time you get to half marathon morning, you won’t be thinking, “I hope I don’t poop myself during the run.” Instead, you’ll be thinking, “I’m so sick of training for a half marathon, who cares if I shit myself, in fact I’m going to shit myself deliberately because I’m sick of training, I’ll be the goddamned GG Allin of this half marathon.”
And then before you know it you’ve already run the damn thing.
Thank you for reading The Belville Baguette. This post is public so feel free to share it.
I suspect there are mats at every mile of the course, so it won’t be real time tracking; instead, it’ll just let you know when I’ve reached various mileposts and at what time. I could set up LiveTrack on my Garmin watch but I don’t know how it works and I don’t really want to. There will be photographers on the course as well but my track record for getting a good photo of me during a race is pretty bad, so we’ll see if I end up looking majestic of majornstic.
Runs
Just a couple of races since last post. Blog entries if you wish to read them.
Nothing too exciting on this front, other than the half on Sunday, but that’s not in the past, that’s in the future! I’m a-gettin’ faster, little by little.
Punkins
I went to the Pumpkin Patch’s corn maze with my longtime friend and occasional argument-participant Missy last weekend. I got a free pass when I ran the Foot Traffic Flat in July, which started at the Pumpkin Patch. We saw the following:
punkins
corn
small animals
some other stuff
If you’re wondering if we got through the maze: we did. We ate pumpkin pie and two alright burgers and an apple cider float and two pumpkin spice beers and elote1 and then wandered in a corn maze for an hour and then on the drive home I was a little concerned that I would poop my pants. See, I told you runners think about this all the time!
We tried to take creepy photos of ourselves in the corn:
I think Missy wins this one.
Glasses
In other news, I have decided, after six long years, that perhaps it is time to get a new pair of glasses. I am going through Warby Parker (#NotAnAd); the try-ons are in the mail. Here’s the thing, folks: I’m a big tall dude with a big tall head. I don’t dislike the idea of wandering through an eyeglass store trying on pairs, but the truth of the matter is, my head too big. My head too big and it’s just easier to get Big Head Stuff online. Even my current glasses, which I like a lot, were the biggest pair they had available at America’s Best back in 2017, and they still look slightly narrow on my face.
The problem with Warby Parker is that I hate the phrase Warby Parker. It’s the Lollapalooza of eyewear names. Warby? If I was a newborn infant and you said out loud, “Your name is Warby,” I would immediately grow several trillion brain neurons with which to articulate the word, “No.” Apparently the name is taken from two names from a Jack Kerouac journal, not even an actual novel. It’s a venture capitalist brand started by venture capitalists and I’ll let you guess if they were all rich white men or not. I’ll give you a hint: they all started the company with seed money from Wharton School of Business.
But what can you do. Nobody’s hand-crafting glasses out of reclaimed beachwood and coke bottles ground into lenses, you know what I mean? Or maybe they are. But it’s easier for my big head to shop online. That’s where it’s easiest to get tall sized shirts, for example. It’s impossible to do this at the store. Last time I went to the Target at Mall 205 the men’s section looked like a rabid wolverine went on a rampage in there. I couldn’t find anything. The only section that looked decent were the Hadrian’s Wall of jeans.
So anyway, expect a future post with possible pictures of future eyewear candidates.
50/90
The 50/90 challenge ends this week and I think I’m tapped out on songs. I got 25, 25 lo-fi demos for potential cultivation. Here’s another if you’d like to listen. It’s called “it ends all lonesome.”
it ends all lonesome
you think you should care
drop all your worries
cut off your hair
they tell you it's hard
the wine chilled in ice
it ends all lonesome
but it feels rather nice
you fight this feeling
all dark in your gut
the days escape you
you're stuck in a rut
but it's not all bad
walks through your neighborhood
you fight this feeling
but it feels pretty good
of course there's closure
a door's gotta close
peel out in the driveway
in those last little throes
you can cry all day
almost as if by design
of course there's closure
and it feels pretty fine
The End
When next we meet, I will have a shiny new Portland (Half) Marathon finisher’s medal. I may have also ground my two legs into bloody pulps. We’ll see!
I could’ve sworn elote was spelled élote, but I can’t find proof of this online. I did however see a recipe for elote (aka Mexican street corn) which said it uses a “creamy mayo and sour cream mixture,” unlike the chunky mayo and sour cream mixtures I’ve seen … nowhere. Ever. ↩︎
Busy weekend! Just a quick parkrun overview: official time was 31:03. Didn’t really have a plan per se, but decided to giveit a good ol’ college try. My ultimate goal was to run kind of hard but not hard enough to completely destroy my body for the Sunday 5k. And in the end it worked out; my average pace was 10:00/mi and I actually achieved negative splits due to the first half being uphill. Once I hit the turnaround I decided to really hoof it and see what I could do going downhill. So 10:19, 10:01, and 9:50 were my mile paces, and once I hit the last bench (my little milestone post which also happens to be about .10 of a mile to the end I think), I pushed myself hard. 8:11 was my pace at the end. Pushing but not too much.
Then, I went to the corn maze at the Pumpkin Patch with my friend Missy. I got in for free because of my pass that I got for running the Foot Traffic Flat! Huzzah!
In case you were wondering if I was in love with pumpkin pie: I am, and we are very happy together.
We successfully navigated the corn maze and then I went home and then I went out for a friend’s birthday party. Had a couple of drinks, which I don’t recommend doing the night before a race. Thankfully I paced myself and didn’t stay out all night.
CVIM stands for Clackamas Volunteers in Medicine, by the way. I know you were wondering about that. The race benefits free healthcare to low income individuals in Clackamas County, Oregon, which is a great cause! I hope more people show up in the future.
This is the second time this race has been put on and so it was a very small crowd. Only 86 participants, most of them walking or running slowly, because I managed to get 19th place, which is … wild.
Pre-Race
After parkrun I drove to Oregon City, which I had never been to before. It is a lovely little town, and the Singer Hill Cafe, where I got my bib, was equally as lovely.
This is the library, with some type of religious building in the background. I sat and ate my breakfast from the cafe here–a bacon, egg, and cheese bagel, very tasty–and looked through my bag o’ swag.
Then, the next morning I … drove back to Oregon City. Sorry, this pre-race rundown isn’t that exciting. I did wear one of my pairs of running shorts, which I think is the first time I’ve done that for a race. They are pretty great, as long as I remember to put the anti-chafe stuff on my inner thighs. Which I did.
Swaaaag
One of the most surprising things was a hat! A baseball cap which, of course, does not fit me at all. No hats do. My head is the size of a small planet. But they also gave us some LIV hydration powder which I’ve never used before, and some lip balm. I appreciate when we get lip balm. All in a Clackamas Community College tote bag. I am flush with tote bags now.
After the race there were free Bombas socks and Vaseline moisturizer and cocoa butter lip balm. Two lip balms now! I am flush with lip balm. No medals for this one which made sense. Natural Grocers was there and gave out bags with some random stuff, mostly literature on how great they are. There was also a kiosk with a woman from United Healthcare to get people insurance if they need it I guess. She looked very bored to be there.
Atmosphere
When I arrived it almost looked like I was the only person there. A very small crowd of people, mostly much older people too. And a lot of groups of people who seemed to know each other. This is kind of a blessing and a curse for me; on one hand, it’s nice to have a smaller group race because it feels more personal (and often the gifts are better) but on the other hand, because so many people knew each other, I felt like an odd man out. But I wasn’t alone; there were some guys who were clearly good runners who also showed up and seemed like they were on their own. I think there are a lot of “lone wolf” runners out there; when I finished the Beaverton 5k and had to rush to get to parkrun right after, I noticed a lot of the singular people who were leaving early. People like me who show up, run, get medal and food, and leave.
It’s kind of a weird thing.
The Race
I’m around 90% sure that my time was ultimately determined by the amount of beers and lack of sleep I had last night, but the fact that I almost got sub-30 even after walking four or five times is a testament to my fitness progress. I started off strong–too strong, perhaps, as I was attempting to get a new PR. My mile 1 pace was 8:52, a new mile PR for me at least (and sub-9:00, woo), but I went off too fast and slowed down by a minute for the next two miles. However, the paces on those were 10:10 and 10:09, which is kind of surprising to me! I thought they would be more in the 11 minute range. Every time I started running after a short walk, my pace was well above 10 minutes.
I’m also getting good at sprinting to the finish. Not a proper sprint, mind you, but more of a … good hustle. So my extra .10 of a mile (.13 to be exact) was in the 8:21 range. Not too bad.
Like I said earlier, I think I could’ve done better if I hadn’t stayed out the night before. But I’m happy with my results, because it shows a higher fitness level overall.
After the race I went home! The end.
NEXT RACE REPORT WILL BE ON THE PORTLAND (HALF) MARATHON! Until then.
Upon arriving at Gabriel Park in the morning of the final Portland Parks & Rec 5k of the year, I immediately realized something: this was going to be a hilly course.
And it was! A total elevation gain of 384ft according to Garmin. This was the most difficult of the four P&R courses I’ve run, but it also happened to be the most beautiful. The start sloped downhill for about 3/4ths of a mile before cutting right into the forest. Seriously, it felt like I went from civilization into a wooded area. Turns out the entire center section of Gabriel Park is split by what I believe one could call a copse of trees. We ran through it fairly quickly but on the loop back (aka the uphill part) again we ran into the forest. It was lovely. I really appreciated the juxtaposition of the park with its sports centers and playgrounds and the peaceful serene trail in the woods.
Ultimately, I was shooting for a 33 minute 5k today but the hills got me good. I’ll settle for my time though, considering I’m still running on tired legs as I train for the Portland (Half) Marathon.
As far as a park goes, boy this one has everything. It’s got baseball diamonds, it’s got basketball courts, it’s got tennis courts, it’s got a friggen skatepark and volleyball it’s got two very interesting and fun looking playgrounds. It’s got a dog park. It’s got a community garden and an apple orchard. And cutting through it all is the aforementioned copse. Of the four parks I’ve ran this series, I think this one is the best. Which makes sense because it’s in the rich part of town. I can see why they saved this one for last.
Aesthetics: Gorgeous. Just gorgeous all around. Lots of levels and trees. 10/10
Function: Probably the most functional park I’ve ever seen. Sports AND little wooded trails AND a community garden? It’s got everything! 10/10
Sketchiness: The only sketchy thing I saw was an older lady fainted or something just before the run started and the EMTs came to check up on her. This place is pristine. 10/10
