Josh Writes a Blog

A Life Blog about My Life, Dawg

  • 40

    40

    lordy, lordy, look who is one year older than he was before

    Sorry this is a little late. I straight up forgot!

    I’m 40

    I’ve done it. Forty revolutions around the sun. Fun fact: the year I was born, 1983, was the year the military began the split from ARPANET (the proto-internet), making their own network and leaving ARPANET for educational and public use. 1983 was also the first year the TCP/IP protocol was standardized within ARPANET, creating what is essentially the internet. What I’m trying to say is: if I was never born there would be no internet. I know that doesn’t sound true, but just think about it for a bit. Just … take some time with it, okay?

    I never thought I’d be 40. I don’t mean I was planning on dying before 40, I just mean that my brain has yet to truly comprehend what it means to spend four decades with consciousness. Before 1983 there was no me. And now not only is there me, there’s four decades of me! Yikes! I have memories and shit! Memories of stuff—and things!

    My 30s were definitely the hardest decade. Living in Portland, away from the majority of my family (and then, eventually, away from all of my family when my brother moved away), has been tough. There are countless videos from people in their 30s who will tell you that your 30s suck so I won’t belabor the point. What I will say is this: I am privileged to be in a position where I was able to have a lifejacket, so to speak, keeping me afloat for the past ten+ years. Therapy, meditation, and exercise helped in the early years, but it’s only within the past couple of years that I realized that a lot of my mental health is in my gut. This isn’t me telling you to go vegan or to do a detox,1 this is me telling you to maybe take a multivitamin or an iron supplement or vitamin D,2 or just get some healthier foods in your gut, if you can. I had a brain fog for years that would not let up and then one day I had a bunch of good quality meats at a Brazilian grill and I felt better almost instantly. I don’t think the meats were curing me, I think that I was getting some nutrient(s) that I wasn’t getting before. That’s all I’m saying.

    Also, like, eat an orange. Oranges are so good!

    Anyway, I’m 40 and I feel basically the same. The only thing that’s really weird about it is that sometimes I remember something from high school and it feels like it was two or three years ago but no, it was 22-26 years ago. Also I am like 50x more invested in my bowel movements than I was ten years ago.

    Instagram is Just Sex Now

    Is anyone else’s IG explore feed just 95% hot people? Look, I know I’m single and I enjoy a good attractive woman ogle every once in a while but it feels like IG is trying to mainline hot women into my veins lately.

    It almost makes me miss TikTok. At least with TikTok I would get some educational and informational videos among the women. My explore feed is this:

    • muscle girls being hot

    • hot girls being hot

    • POWER RANGERS (I don’t know why!)

    • clips of the lead singer from Paramore even though I’ve never listened to Paramore or really even looked up this girl

    • clips from podcasts with porn stars where the porn star is talking about sex work and/or a disgusting thing, which can be interesting but the hosts are usually these 20 year old dudes and it feels like they’re 30 seconds away from jerking off right then and there

    • star wars shit, obviously

    • legos, occasionally

    • swimming girls being hot, apparently IG thinks I’m really into that

      3

    • like, people with star wars opinions, not about the series as a whole but you know, water cooler type shit about what type of Crocs Moff Gideon would wear

    • memes of course

    • medical infograph-esque posts that I very much did not ask for

    • fan pages for stuff that i like but don’t like enough to want to look at a fan page for (coughcriticalrolecough)

    • oh and also running stuff, remember, that thing I talk about incessantly?

    Thankfully it is no longer suggesting dental videos, popping/surgical videos, or videos of guys from India getting shaves. I get it, it’s promoting stuff that I’m more likely to tap on, but knowing that I’m more likely to tap on these things is kind of depressing? I certainly don’t feel great tapping on the nth video of a scantily clad woman gyrating her hips to a sped up version of “Semi-Charmed Life” by Third Eye Blind.

    Don’t get me wrong, I’m not objecting to people being hot, but there’s just so much of it these days. Everyone’s hot! Everyone has an OnlyFans! It’s just a lot of hotness. I feel like 400 years ago you were lucky if you saw one hot person your entire life, and it was Helen of Troy, and a war was fought over her. Now I see 50 hot women in six seconds of scrolling. We’re not evolved enough for this!

    Oh Christ I Ran a Bunch Again

    Ha, bet you thought this would be a birthday extravaganza issue, but no, I did THREE 5ks since last we met. I don’t even care about my birthday anymore, all I care about is Run.

    The theme of these 5ks is “Josh Needs to Stop Running for A Bit and Heal Up.”

    Cinco de Mayo

    Blog post. Ran on May 6th, which still aggravates me. Time was 36:20. Ran slower because my achilles tendon was hurting [note: this is foreshadowing], but this was a nice race at a lovely section of Milwaukie, OR, which I had never really been to before. It’s nice!

    P&R: Fernhill Park

    Blog post. Walked on May 7th. Portland Parks & Rec puts on a 5k every month from May to September. So I signed up for all of ‘em and got a dang ol’ t-shirt too. This was the day after the Cinco de Mayo run, so I ended up walking it instead of running to spare my achilles [note: this is also foreshadowing]. Fernhill Park is lovely.

    Pacific Coast

    Blog post. Ran/hobbled on May 14th. This one was kind of shit. Which sucks because it was my little birthday weekend getaway! Long Beach is a cute coastal town and the event was fine, and I got some salt water taffy and saw the ocean, but I was way more dehydrated than I realized on race day and I got a bit off track and then pulled my achilles in the final sprint to the finish, which boy oh boy hurt a lot. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Scared me that I might’ve torn something (maybe I did) but the pain subsided a lot after I stopped, and now it feels kind of like when a charley horse subsides and your muscle is just sore as hell. So it could just be a muscle strain instead, I dunno.

    My next race isn’t for another three weeks. It’s the Starlight Run, which is a fun run so I will be taking it VERY easy. Then it’s the Redmond Run and then, trumpet fanfare, it’s my Foot Traffic Flat 10k. The thing I’ve been training for this entire time. So, I really ought to let my achilles heal up first.

    A Thing for You

    So, I think said last issue that I’m big into vlogs now, and I’ve been watching Caroline Winkler’s YouTube channel recently. I think I enjoy her channel because she used to be an actress and so I dig the vibe. She’s also one of those people who’s like “I’m not rich” but I’m looking at her family and she just feels rich, you know? It’s that east coast money thing. Anyway, I’m not one of those people who feels the need to dive into past videos for a channel, but my YT feed has been just awful lately and it kept bumping this video and so I watched it and I really enjoyed it! It’s just Caroline talking about life, really, and explaining what feels like a more nuanced take on “fake it til you make it.” Was an inspiring watch, to say the least.

    The End

    When next we meet, I won’t have any 5ks to talk about. Aren’t you excited? Instead I will probably talk too much about the new Zelda game. Until then!

    1. Please do NOT do a detox, they do nothing for you. Your liver and kidneys do the detoxing folks! That is their job! ↩︎
    2. vitamin diiiiiiiiiick ↩︎
    3. i probably am ↩︎

  • Pacific Coast Running Festival

    Location: Long Beach, Washington
    Distance: 5k
    Chip(?) Time: 37:32
    Garmin Time: 37:08
    Pace: 12:05/mi or 11:30/mi

    The medal’s a little busy, but it’s still pretty cool.

    Well, if you were looking for a race report where it “all went wrong,” this is the one. Let’s just dig in shall we?

    Pre-Race

    Since this was my first real “getaway” race, I had to get all my ducks in a row before I left. I failed at this in a fun way that I’ll explain in a bit. I also had to make sure my cat, Jowers, had enough food for when I was gone. I was a little worried about leaving her but I’m back now and of course she’s fine. It’s almost like nothing changed. I did forget to fill her water dish when I left so she was out of water when I got back, which I am disappointed in myself about.

    This race is part of the Pacific Coast Running Festival, which hosts a lot of runs including a “sand marathon,” which is apparently the longest sand marathon in the U.S. and maybe the world? I don’t know. It’s along the coast of Long Beach, which has at least 20 miles of unbroken coastline. There’s gotta be longer coastlines in California though, right? Whatever.

    I chose to drive in on Saturday afternoon and leave Sunday morning. I got a hotel room which was WAY too big; I wanted to splurge since it was my birthday weekend, and ended up getting the “family suite,” which was basically a single story room with two beds and a whole kitchen and everything. ENTIRELY too much for me. If anything it made me feel super self-conscious about being there on my own. The city was full of tourists, which were mostly big families, and I felt like the only singular people I saw were locals. I don’t mind getting away on my own for trips and such, but there was something about this trip that made me feel like it would have been better experienced with a significant other.

    Also, I splurged on this hotel room which looked nice from a distance but the closer you got, the shittier everything was. Just little aesthetic details, mostly, like the place got built or renovated quick. There was also a door in the kitchen that was locked from the other side, which was unnerving. I suspect it was just full of cleaning supplies, or murdering supplies. Or both!

    I walked around and bought stuff, like you do. Kitschy souvenirs and such.

    You laugh but I’ve always wanted a Swiss army knife. This one has my name on it!

    One crucial thing I forgot to do all Saturday was take in some amount of caffeine. Yeah, I’m not one of those people who is a slave to coffee, but I do have a cup every morning, and not having a cup on Saturday coupled with a long day of driving and looking at stuff gave me a nasty headache while I slept. Awesome!

    Swag & Atmosphere

    (I didn’t get any photos of the event itself because I didn’t have my phone with me because … of reasons I will explain in the next segment.)

    I’m lumping these together because there wasn’t a lot of swag and there wasn’t a lot of atmosphere. T-shirt, sure, and a couple of little things, SmarTea and some hydrating mix powders. Another issue of Vancouver Family Magazine, taunting me for my lack of children.

    The morning of was kind of … lacking, in a way. People just kind of showed up, 20 minutes before the gun went off. It was very casual, which is nice! I prefer casual to the juggernaut of stuff like the Shamrock Run. The 10/5k was the last race event though so the event crew was probably ready to wrap it up. Not a lot of 5k runners, just 83. The 10k had 61, the half had 88, and the Sunset Sand 5k (a 5k ran on the beach) had 84. The results site doesn’t have anything for the marathon or any of the bike rides, I guess they didn’t time those? Anyway, doesn’t seem like a lot of people overall, and some of those people probably signed up for more than one event because you get a special “beast” medal if you do.

    I will say that they had a “kids dash” right before the 5/10k time and it was so dang cute watching the little kids run to the finish line. One of the last kids (maybe the last) was running as we were setting up at the start line, and a bunch of people made a little path with their arms tented above for her as she passed the finish. It was great.

    The Race

    Alright so let’s talk about everything that went wrong first.

    First: Slept terribly.

    Hotel was cool but not that cool and the only AC was a standing fan because it’s the beach and it never gets regularly hot enough for AC. I had a headache from caffeine withdrawal. Also, someone who had rented the room before me set the clock alarm for 4:09am. So I was rudely awoken by that. Just bad sleep all around.

    I took ibuprofen the morning of (side note: I am so thankful to remember to take ibuprofen with me) and it subsided pretty much before the race began, but it still sucked.

    Second: Forgot my running shorts.

    This one makes me so mad. I triple checked all of the gear I was going to take with me the morning of and completely forgot about my running shorts. So I had to run in the shorts I drove in on, which are very definitely not made for running. I clearly looked like “guy who forgot running shorts” too, everyone else was wearing suitable kit but I looked like a dunce. This is like if you were a ballet dancer and forgot your ballet shoes for your opening night of … Ballet Show. I can’t think of a popular ballet right now. Swan Lake? I think Swan Lake.

    Third: I took a wrong turn at Albuquerque.

    Okay so the first half of this 5k I was doing really well. I was able to fully run the first half and my pace was even pretty good: my average for mile 1 was 10:44. The race itself was a kind of grueling I can only explain as a warm morning coupled with sand particulates in the air. My mouth felt like the Sahara in more ways than one. This all coupled with my lack of quality sleep and just the whole thing in general made me do a very stupid thing.

    So to preface this I need to explain: there is a boardwalk next to the big arch that is the entrance to the beach. It is a big, obvious boardwalk and goes on for some time. It is a walk, made of boards.

    Okay so after running on the road path for around 2.5 miles, we are dropped off onto a little section of the street. There is a sign with a left arrow for half marathon runners and a right arrow for 10/5k runners. There is also a man there. The man says, “10k and 5k runners use the boardwalk!” He says this very clearly. However, my brain sees an arrow pointing right and, rather than heading toward the obvious boardwalk, I turn right and start walking up the street. My brain is like, “The boardwalk must be up that way.” I run this for like, well, for as long as the picture above before I’m like, Where is everyone? and then turn around and see all the people I lapped, now lapping me. So I hustle back, wasting precious time and, more importantly, running faster to get there, which I think hurt me in the long run.

    Speaking of hurting me…

    Fourth: I fuckin’ hurt myself dude.

    Everyone sprints towards the finish line and I am no exception. The boardwalk declines a bit to the road and I pick up the pace, literally: my pace goes from about 11:00/mi to under 7. Pretty cool, and Garmin is like “Yeah this is the good stuff” but then as I am running to the finish I feel a sudden pain in my right achilles tendon. Yep, the one that’s been bothering me. I manage to run to the finish but barely, and I’m hobbling for the last few steps.

    This felt worse than my usual tendon hurt and will probably lay me up for the next week to heal. I’d rather abandon my Coach Jeff training for a week or two than get seriously injured. Thankfully the pain subsided after I stopped running, so it’s likely not something serious but … it hurts, and I want it to stop.

    Also, I’m not 100% on the chip time on this race. The the timing results website says my gun time was 37:32. It doesn’t mention my chip time at all. (Gun time is the start of the race from the moment the guy says “Go,” basically [or when the starter pistol goes off {they get it josh} okay sorry].) Garmin, meanwhile, says my time, which I started as I crossed the start, was 37:08, and I would argue the difference in time as the amount of time it took me to get to the start line from the back of the pack. But our bibs had chip tags on them, so I’m not sure what that’s about.

    I checked the other runners and they all have gun times, and I even checked the race timer’s website, which has live results for the half marathon and shows gun time and chip times as the same. I feel like I was shorted some seconds there, and I would complain about GPS but it was literally a clear day at the beach, one of the most open spots around. Obviously GPS isn’t 100% accurate but still, I feel like something is off.

    Post-Race

    After the race I got to the hotel, showered, got my stuff, and got the hell out of dodge. I didn’t even use my snack or beer ticket. Partially I was worried about Jowers, but moreover I was just annoyed with all the mishaps coupled me just being there on my own, feeling alone among all of these couples and families and whatnot. Makes me feel like I’m an alien or something.

    I’m not sure I’ll do this again next year alone.

    The drive home was lovely, especially the early bit to Astoria, with the sun glinting off the Columbia River. Also the Megler Bridge is such a cool bridge. I ate a homemade Moon Pie from a candy shop while I drove. It was … too much. Good, but too much. Then when I got home I quickly went to Burgerville for some incredibly disappointing chicken tenders. I just wanted some quick protein! The whole meal was kind of disappointing–they have deep fried asparagus which was kind of gross. Just give me regular asparagus please.

    Anyway now I’m here typing this and so thankful that my next race isn’t for three whole weeks and it’s just a fun run.

    Until next time…

  • parkrun #13

    No photos because I didn’t bring my phone with me.

    Nice warm and sunny morning with a TON of runners, 67, which I think is a new record for Rock Creek Trail. I intentionally ran this one slow, to try and keep my heart rate in Zone 3. My new Forerunner 265, aside from being very cool and shiny, has a Load Focus feature which was telling me that I wasn’t getting enough Low Aerobic runs in, so I focused on that. Did it help? Probably, yeah, in the long run, but at the time I just felt like I was running really slow. I will say, when I finished I felt like I could keep going, which is a good sign. Lots of walking and running mixes.

    I’m not sure that I will keep doing weekly logs of parkruns. It feels weird to do it unless I’m getting a PR or a milestone. We’ll see!

  • Parks & Rec 5k/EPIP: Fernhill

    NE 37th Avenue and Ainsworth Street
    Neighborhood: Concordia
    Portland Parks & Rec Page

    Ladies & gentlemen & everyone in between, we’ve got a rare crossover episode, a mashup of Every Park in Portland and a running recap! (Sort of.)

    In researching new potential 5k races to sign up for recently, I discovered that Portland Parks & Recreation hosts five 5k races over the spring and summer, from May until September. They only cost $5 per event and you can buy a t-shirt for the season for only $8. So, for the cost of less than one 5k event, you can run five and get a t-shirt! Sign me up! (I did. I signed up for all of them.)

    The first of these five events took place in Fernhill Park, way up in Northeast Portland, a couple of blocks north of the Kennedy School McMenamins. (Which is famous for being a school that was turned into a restaurant/hotel campus that also has lounging pools because why not.) I ended up walking this 5k because of tendonitis in my achilles that I absolutely did not want to aggravate. Hence, no time listed. But even if it was timed, I probably wouldn’t list it for reasons I’ll get to in a second.

    It was a fun little event, extremely casual and family friendly. They had a timing clock (no chips or anything though), but the clock itself wasn’t working, so you had to rely on your watch, or on the host guy who hyped everyone up and was very exuberant about it, which I appreciated. He also called out your time when you crossed the finish line, which was nice! They gave out ribbons instead of medals, a first for my running career.

    After and during the race there were a couple of booths, one for raffles and one for general Parks & Rec info. Foot Traffic was surprisingly there as well, though I never got close enough to that booth to figure out if they were giving stuff away. Apparently there were bananas for finishers but by the time I finished, there were no bananas. I’m find with this, we all know I hate Post-Race Bananas.

    The park itself is gorgeous. Huge and picturesque, with a track, two baseball diamonds (baseball and softball), a tennis court, soccer field horseshoe pit, and huge open fields for running your dogs around. There’s even a little Nature Patch garden among the park itself, a lovely addition. There’s even a splash pad for splashing around! I don’t think that section in the south of the map is part of the park, and it looked like they might be building something there. There were Portland Community College buildings being built across the street, so who knows.

    The whole neighborhood reeks of “There is a Catholic high school nearby,” which is so say: wealthy. But unlike other wealthy parts of Portland, this place felt a lot more “within our means” wealthy, if that makes sense. Narrower streets than Irvington, a little more salt of the earth-y rather than trust fund/stock trader-y, if you get my drift. Apparently the park used to be an old stripping parts spot for car thieves back in the day.

    Aesthetics: Beautiful, open, very nice. 10/10

    Function: Sports haven. Track! I wish Buckman Field’s track was like this track. Plus you can run your dog around and get a decent run around the park itself. I’m really not sure what else you would want. 10/10

    Sketchiness: There were a couple of tent homes or maybe storage at the fringes of the park, but I didn’t see any sketchy behavior at all and this just doesn’t seem like the spot to engage in that kind of behavior. It’s close to Killingsworth, which can feel a little sketchy in parts, but honestly, I’d be surprised if stuff went down in this park. 10/10

    (Also, I’m changing my Sketchiness rating so that lower sketchiness results in a higher score.)

    Lovely park and lovely little 5k race! Check it out if you get the chance.

  • Cinco de Mayo

    Distance: 5k
    Time: 36:20
    Pace: 11:34/mi

    “Mm, made of pancakes, I am. Eat me, you will. Eat me … you will.”

    Well, this was a rough one. All of my additional mileage over the past couple of weeks has led to a sore achilles tendon, which I honestly haven’t paid as much attention to as I should have. My goal was to try and get a sub-35 minute 5k but it just wasn’t in the cards. I’m honestly surprised I was able to get the time that I did.

    Pre-Race

    Not much to say about this one. I ate a small breakfast of oatmeal, almonds, and coffee, waited until I felt like pooping, then did that and then waited until it was time to go. This race took place in Milwaukie, Oregon, at the Elks Lodge, which reminded me of all the times my dad’s band would play at the Moose Lodge back in Nampa, including that one time they played and when I came to help them unload their equipment afterward (at like 11pm), a shootout happened just down the street. My van was parked in the direction of the shootout, which was fun. Here’s a tangential diagram:

    The Elks Lodge was waaaaay less sketchy.

    Swag

    Bib pickup was a hoodie which is a little too tight already and probably will shrink in the wash and a can of caffeine seltzer or something that I haven’t tried yet. This was also one of those races where they give you the medal at bib pickup, which I kind of hate, mostly because at the end of the race, nobody had their medals on because it’s not like they’re going to run with them. I ran with mine in my pocket though, mostly because I forgot about it.

    After the race were pancakes, beer/cider/yerba mate drink (which is what I got, and it was good). There were a couple of tents for local businesses, like usual, but they were SO FAR AWAY from the general camaraderie that it almost felt like they didn’t exist. I don’t even know if they were giving away anything, because I didn’t walk over there.

    Honestly not a lot of swag. The hoodie is very nice though, if a little cheaply made, and I hope it does not shrink in the wash.

    Atmosphere

    Pre-race of the post-race space. That peach-ish colored tent toward the left of this photo was a sponsor/vendor tent. See how far away that is?!

    Suitably festive for Cinco de Mayo, which is, like St. Patrick’s Day, one of those holidays that Americans have completely stripped the meaning from (or did know the meaning of in the first place). We’re good at that. We like to party and culturally appropriate things but god forbid we know why. You could probably just say that Cinco de Mayo is a Christian celebration of the five times Jesus ate bread and most Americans would love it and shoot an AR-15 in the air.

    I do appreciate that since it’s a Cinco de Mayo race, the DJ was only playing Mexican music. Also, I forgot to get a picture of it but there were banners hung up that read “This way to the fiesta” and those banners were hung in front of the entrances to the toilets. BIG fan of that.

    The Race

    Eugh. This was a bad one. I still ran well, but my right achilles tendon hurt nearly the entire time. Basically, my right leg is a mess overall. It’s the black sheep of the family.

    That said, I did get a 1 mile PR of 10:12, and the first mile honestly felt pretty good. My pace was all over the place for that mile though, which I think was just a desperate attempt to slow down, something I ended up not doing. I really didn’t feel too bad (other than my achilles) and managed to eke out 1.2 miles before I had my first walk. The rest was just me battling my achilles and my breathing. My perpetual battle with my VO2 max, which feels a lot more like a VO2 min.

    This was also a race that went across active streets, which I am not a fan of. At one point running back from the loop I saw a car waiting to turn left and it looked like there was a gap between the runners, so I slowed down and gestured for him to (quickly) pull in. But I guess some guy behind me was going faster than I realized because he ran by me and just said “NO” as he did. I was honestly kind of mad at him for sounding like a dick at the time but thankfully I had about 20 minutes of running time to think about how the guy probably was running at threshold and literally couldn’t say more than “NO” at that point. Ah well.

    Oh, the elevation of this run was mostly downhill, then mostly uphill, which killed whatever momentum I had. By the end I was just clinging onto getting as close to 36 minutes as possible. Overall, not my best race but the fact that I still got the time that I got means that my run training and mileage is working.

    I placed 102nd out of 295, slowly but surely creeping past being completely average into slightly above average. My gender place was 49th out of 100–completely average. And my age place was 11th out of 18. So below average there. However, if I was in the 40-44 age bracket, I would’ve been 8th out of 14. Completely average. So there you go.

    The guy who won the half marathon is 42, which means that I too could one day win a half marathon at 42. Why are you laughing?

    Post-Race

    Pancakes! From the same people who worked the Lilac Run. Yerba mate-adjacent drink called Vida Mate, blackberry lemonade flavor. Was pretty good. And that was it. Said hi to some friends there and then drove to Burgerville to get a 1/2lb burger for protein to start healing my damn achilles tendon.

    Tomorrow I’m supposed to run the first of four (five? something like that) 5ks put on by Portland Parks & Recreation. But it’s a walk/run so I am going to walk it, for sure. Then, next week is MY BIRTHDAY and also the Pacific Coast 5k in Long Beach, WA. Until then!

  • The First (Real) Long Run

    On Sunday I had my first actual long run. Seven miles. That’s 11.26 kilometers for everyone else. Coach/Grandfather Jeff Galloway marked it as an “Easy Long Run,” and boy did I treat it as such.

    Obviously the Garmin text is white on a mostly white background and I can’t change it at all, of course. The text below reads: 7.54mi distance, 1:49:50 time, 14:34/mi pace.

    I’ve wanted to run this loop around the river for a long time, from the Steel Bridge in the north to the Tilikum Bridge in the south. I’ve walked portions of it many times over, but never done the whole thing.

    According to Coach Jeff, the pace on this is meant to be 3-4 minutes below race pace. That is delving into walking territory for me, and I didn’t want to walk the entire thing. And I didn’t walk the entire thing, but I did run as slow as felt comfortable. In fact, about 3/4ths of my time on this run was running, which is wild to me because I certainly felt like I was walking a lot. But I expected to walk a lot; it is an easy run, after all, and walking is the easiest running you can do.

    So, I woke up and made some oats for breakfast. Basically the day before I went out for a smashburger and ended up eating too much or eating something that didn’t sit right and my stomach was killing me the rest of the day. I also think I sort of crashed for the day in general–after parkrun and burger, I was toast. This all made me nervous Sunday morning, as I wasn’t sure if I was physically ready to take on such a long run. Was my stomach going to betray me?

    After consuming oats I sat around for about 45 minutes to let them digest a bit. I used the bathroom. I also made a l’il sports drink by adding a teaspoon of sugar to my water bottle. I had researched this the night before because I was just curious. Water good; sugar good. Sugar water good? Turns out it is, more or less. Funny thing though is that lightly sugared water does not taste very good. Maybe add some lemon juice next time, make a lemonade.

    Then, I was off. My stomach was a little iffy at the start, but once I got into it my stomach settled and I was fine for the rest of the entire run. I had to stop a couple of times to stretch my feet out because they were going numb early on. Not sure why that’s happening or how I can fix it before running. Other than that, it was a mix of running and walking, with a light drizzle rain at first and nice, cool weather throughout.

    I wore a cotton shirt for the run and yes my nipples hurt when I got home, thank you for asking. It’s funny how they don’t hurt when you’re running but once you’re done, boy howdy. I guess it’s time to start putting band aids on my nipples for longer runs.

    The only real thing of interest I saw as I was running was a photo shoot with a very scantily clad woman next to OMSI. There was a homeless guy pushing a shopping cart a few feet away getting a good show.

    My mile splits were shockingly regular:

    Those numbers by Run are laps, not mile markers. 1st lap was the 5min warmup.

    I think mile 3 has an extra minute because that’s when I stopped a bunch to get my feet unnumbed. Otherwise, steady pace, which is so surreal considering I wasn’t actively checking pace other than when I felt like I should slow down, and I was walking a bunch.

    The most important part, perhaps, for my future 10k training is that my time for my 10k on this run, according to Strava, was 1:28:43, which is a little more than a minute faster than my B Goal time for my 10k, which is 1:30. Now, according to Garmin, my fasted 10k time was my first training session of the week (Goal Pace Repeats), which ended up being 1:21:53. That wasn’t as much of a “slow” run however and included a mile where I just ran all out.

    Garmin Coach has a “Confidence” rating based on your progress and mine is creeping dangerously into “lets bump up your goal time” territory.

    “It’s me, Coach Jeff! I love you Josh, you are my favorite grandson.”

    I have a feeling this week will be a bump up, maybe to 1:10. 1:15 to 1:10 is a difference between a 12:04/mi pace and an 11:16/mi pace, which is insane to me. But I’ll take it, Jeff Daddy!

    This week in training are hills, speeds, and goal pace. Speed has been bumped up from 6x 800m to 8x800m, which feels very much like they are testing my pace for a potential bump up. I guess we’ll know by the end of the week!

    Oh and I have another 5k, the Cinco de Mayo, on Saturday. At least I won’t have two long runs this week!

  • April Showers: Good Bond Girl Name?

    April Showers: Good Bond Girl Name?

    or good porn star name?

    Before We Begin: I Made a “Day in the Life” Video

    Hi so I have been watching a lot of day in the life vlogs and just thought it would be fun to make one. Most of the vlogs I’ve seen are from women and the few men’s vlogs I’ve seen feel less like a daily life and more like they’re trying to prove to you that they practice Buddhism. I think my vlog is somewhere in between that. Why did I do this? I have no idea. Something to do? I think it turned out pretty well.

    Sorry for all the technical issues, I basically never edit video and I filmed this in 4k for some stupid reason. Some of the video is jittery and I have no idea why, and the sound volume is all over the place. But it’s fun! I swear. If you like it please give it a thumbs up so I don’t feel like I’ve wasted my life. Okay back to the newsletter…

    It’s my birth day month starting tomorrow. This year is the big 4 0. That’s right, I am turning 40 years old on May 12th. The funny thing about getting older for me is that I don’t feel like I’m 40, but I also totally feel like I’m 40. That’s the thing about aging—nobody knows personally what it feels like until they get there, you know? When I was 20 I didn’t know what 30 would feel like. I had ideas, because of memes and stories and pictures and videos of other people complaining about how terrible it is to be in your 30s, but I personally did not know what my body or mind would feel like at this point in my life. So now I’m about to enter my 40th year and I’m like … is this it?

    Fun fact: I haven’t heard this song in years and yet the bass line is still embedded in my brain. I saw the Strokes play … Musicfest NW? I think? Years and years ago and I oh no wait I’m thinking of Interpol. Anyway I saw Interpol play years and years ago and the thing I remember about it the most is that the guitar player would stick his cigarette in between the strings of the headstock. At the time, I thought that was very cool.

    Remember when you could smoke inside a building? As terrible as it was for everyone’s lungs, there was just something about it that you can’t replicate. Like, back when I lived in Idaho and we would drive over to Merritt’s Country Cafe on State St. in Boise. They made “scones” there but they were basically elephant ears, but they were tasty, and there was a non-smoking section and a smoking section, separated by … nothing, basically, I think a latticed wooden partition. And that’s nostalgic for me for god knows why.

    God I miss Merritt’s. A hole in the wall diner still existing in 2023. God bless ‘em.

    Anyway, lordy lordy, look who’s (turning) 40 (on May 12).

    News & Updates

    Lord help me, I signed up for the Portland (Half) Marathon this October.

    I’ve probably already mentioned that I signed up for the Shamrock Run half marathon next March. At the time, I thought, “Well, this is a year from now so it’ll give me plenty of time to train.”

    And then … look, I’m not sure what’s gotten into me. I’ve never run more than 5 miles at any one time, and that one time I did was the 2013 Shamrock Run. But thanks to Garmin Coach I ran nearly 7 miles on the 25th (which I talk about in the Day in the Life video) and the day this newsletter drops I’m scheduled to run a 7 mile long run. I’ve gone insane, is what’s happened. Running has suffused my brain with so many endorphins that I am now constantly chasing that high, man. Doesn’t it remember how much I loved sitting on the couch, eating an entire bag of Spicy Nacho Doritos in roughly 10 minutes? Where’s the nostalgia for marathon 12 hour video game sessions where I eat an entire frozen pizza AND an entire bag of Spicy Nacho Doritos?

    (This is not to dissuade people’s eating habits, by the way. I still eat entire frozen pizzas from time to time. They’re good!)

    Hell, I don’t even know why I like running. I have ideas, but whenever websites are like “Why do you do this?” and there’s a multiple choice answer I just pick “health” because I guess it’s health. I know exercise is good and makes you feel good but why running? I used to love weight lifting—why no more? There’s something about pushing yourself in running that’s different than weight lifting. I don’t know how to explain it, other than to say that physically getting from Point A to Point B in a certain amount of time feels more of an accomplishment to me than lifting a big heavy thing.

    I decided on the half marathon because A) ain’t no way I’m running a full marathon this year, and B) it’s a logical extension of the 10k I’m running in July. (In fact, that 10k is technically a quarter marathon.) It’s twice that. A half, for those who don’t know, is 13.1 miles. So now when you see someone with an oval bumper sticker that reads “13.1” you know what that’s all about.

    For reference, 13.1 miles is the distance from the east side of the Burnside Bridge here in Portland to Troutdale. Imagine me running from the bridge to Edgefield, more or less.

    For my friends from Idaho, it’s the distance between the Danny Peterson Theatre in the Morrison Center at Boise State to Kuna.

    Some people run TWICE this distance! In two hours! (Fun fact: 145 people at the latest Boston Marathon ran the 26.2 distance in under 2 hours and 30 minutes. That means they ran under an average of 5 minutes and 44 seconds per mile, for 26 miles. I don’t think I could run a 5:44 mile for one mile!)

    I’m thinking about doing a video journal of my experience on YouTube. Not my experience on YouTube the platform, my experience of training for and running a half marathon. Would people be interested in that? Let me know in the comments and don’t forget to like this post and SMASH that subscribe button. (I’m practicing for YouTube.)

    In other news, I got my lipid test results back finally from Quest Diagnostics, who took well over a week and an email from me to send them. They aren’t very good. Slightly better than when I checked almost two years ago (and I mean slightly), but still high and low when they should be low and high. Like, I’m not actively dying but I’m probably dying, you know what I mean?

    I was a little bummed at the results because I thought all the running I’ve been doing lately would help more than it did. Our damn bodies are just very, very good at keeping stuff like fats. We looooove them fats. And the good news, I suppose, is that it isn’t worse.

    Also, my dad had to go back in the hospital because his gallbladder keeps making gallstones, and gallstones can be made from high cholesterol, which means … I really gotta get my cholesterol in order so I don’t get gallstones when I’m 80. (He’s fine, they cut out his gallbladder and he feels a lot better!)

    So, I’m trying to eat less meat and processed stuff. You know, the same thing everyone else is trying to do. I think my health trend is getting better though. Nothing apocalyptic for me, but high cholesterol is a cause for concern, and if my running etc doesn’t help drop it by, say, the end of summer, then I’m going to look into taking statins. I could just have the kind of high cholesterol that doesn’t go away with diet and exercise. We’ll see!

    Five Fifty Fifty & Lilac Run

    Two 5k races in the same WEEK? What is wrong with me?

    Here’s the blog for Five Fifty Fifty. Here’s the blog for Lilac Run.

    In short: the Five Fifty Fifty is a race for mental health that this guy in Wisconsin put together around six years ago. It’s a 5k in 50 states in 50 days. But there are only fifteen states on my shirt. I guess the rest are virtual? It’s probably fine, but it also felt very slightly like I gave my money to a scam artist. Probably not though! It was fine! To be fair, every race is just money spent on a t-shirt and medal, really, which if you think about it is kind of a scam. I get a shiny thing and clothes but I have to run for it? Anyway, it was a VERY small group, 50 runners total, and was rainy and cold as hell. Took place in Laurelhurst Park which is a nice park, but very hilly. My time was 36:39, surprisingly fast considering the rain and hills. The whole thing was alright, but probably not a race I will run in the future. Sorry, mental health.

    The Lilac Run was a much more normal run in Gresham, out and back down the Springwater Corridor, which is just a long paved trail that stretches from southeast Portland to god-knows-where. I didn’t even know it went all the way to Gresham! My time was 35:41, a new personal best and the first time I’ve gotten my 5k time below 36 minutes. This means I have officially beaten 2013 me’s pace! It only took me ten years! Take that, 30-year-old me! Honestly, this run felt very good and I tried refueling as I was running, which had mixed results. Also there was a little Japanese garden island next to the venue! Neat!

    This week was supposed to be a recovery week, but then I “unlocked” actual workouts on Garmin Coach, and have been running like a madman ever since. You can read more about that here, or watch the vlog I made!

    parkrun #12

    I did a parkrun again. It was a hot one! Like seven inches from the midday sun, almost!

    Side note: Gen Z is never ever going to know how fucking big this song was in 1999. This album, really.1

    It was a gorgeous day out at Rock Creek Trail and we all did a parkrun. My time was 37:16, which is not bad considering I’ve been running like crazy this week, but it’s also pretty slow, comparatively. It’s cool, the sun was out and it was my first real time running on a sunny morning with temps around 65°F. Which is hot, for me, when I am running okay!

    A Video for You

    They’ve been releasing series 13 of Taskmaster on a weekly basis on YouTube, but I’ve finally gotten to the final episode. This was definitely one of the best casts this season. Taskmaster is great. Please watch it, it’s very fun and funny. But I guess start with episode one, even though this episode is very, very funny.

    I knew nothing about this channel but it came up because of The Algorithm and I love Benny Schwaz. The host of this channel is also named Josh and honestly could maybe play my stunt double in a movie or something. He’s a little annoying to me, not a personality type I like to watch on YouTube, but thankfully he and Ben are a delight together. Ben is almost too good of an improviser. He’s so quick and funny in a way you just don’t see with a lot of people. I really wish we could’ve seen him in a movie or anything with Robin Williams.

    The End

    When next we meet, I will be … 40. I’ll also have another two 5ks in my belt, because I’m a madman. Until then.

    1. Sometimes when it’s cold outside I will say, in a Rodney Dangerfield voice, “Boy, it’s a cold one! Like seven million miles from the midday sun!” This is still much too close for the sun to be, however. ↩︎

  • parkrun #12

    This was my first real warm sunny run of the year and boy did I feel it. My official time is 37:16, slower than usual but an overall pace of around 12:00/mi, which, if you think about my pacing runs for my 10k, seems like I was unintentionally running slower for that. Muscle memory and whatnot. Also my sleep has been a little worse lately due to the warmer nights.

    I always pop off a little too fast at these which ends up screwing with me later on, but this time I was still in the 10-10:30/mi range, which is about a minute slower than I start usually. Usually I am bolting out of there almost, a stupid move, and going slower this week meant that I took fewer walk breaks overall–only 8 this go around, all :30 except for two which were both a little over a minute. I’m fine with that.

    More good news is that my knees feel alright. My calves are surprisingly sore though, which I attribute more to a weakness somewhere else in my legs (my hamstrings, probably), than to overuse. My calves are beasts, they will not be tamed. Other good news is that I ran all of the hills, which is my one requirement for this course. It has good hills and I use them to help strengthen up the ol’ legs.

    Oh, also, this morning was my first time using the Albertson’s bathroom nearby. Good bathroom!

    I am still woefully terrible at social interactions though, which makes the end of every parkrun feel awkward. What do you say to a bunch of people after you’ve run with them? “What’s your favorite dinosaur?”

  • A Running Update on Running #6

    Why the hell am I numbering these?

    Last night right when I was about to go to bed, I made a change on my phone that changed my life forever.

    Is that clickbaity enough?

    In short, I’ve had Garmin Coach up with a training plan for my 10k in July. When you set up a training plan, it gives you a “goal” with two basic options: Completion, or Goal Time. Completion is what you think it is. Actually, Goal Time is too now that I think about it.

    When I signed up, I opted for Completion because I wasn’t sure how I’d do at running 6.2 miles. In return, GC and my grandpappy Coach Jeff Galloway set me up with a very simple workout routine, consisting of two cadence and “Acceleration-Glider” drills (aka strides) a week plus the trademarked Run Walk Run®, which was never more than 2.5 miles.

    This was … fine. Boring, but fine. But I’ve done it for a couple of weeks now and it didn’t seem to want to get any harder, which I was desperately seeking.

    “Just fine, Josh? Is that right? Is my training plan just fine to you? Listen here you little whelp, I won the Honolulu Marathon in 1974, before you even a glint in your daddy’s eye. I went to the Olympics. Have you ever been the Olympics, Joshua? I didn’t think so.”

    So last night, laying in bed, about to go to sleep, I futzed around with GC and decided to enter my Goal Time for my 10k, because I have one now, and it’s slow as hell: Goal A (or ideal goal) is 1:15, which is a 12:04/mi, abysmally slow but something I’m capable of doing. Goal B is 1:30, and Goal C is just to complete it. I’m at a point now where I’m pretty sure I can complete it. So I look up the goal times on GC and discover that my Goal A is the absolute last goal you can pick on the app. So I picked it.

    Folks, the app comPLETELY changed my workouts to actual god damn workouts. Look at this:

    This is what I did this morning! Cadence drills, strides, plus the “magic mile” for pacing purposes and 6x 800m runs at goal pace with 3 minute recovery periods. An actual workout! With distance!

    I feel great. This is my long run, technically (more on that in a second), and being able to run/walk over the 10k distance without feeling it too much is awesome. Plus, according to Garmin, my 10k time for this workout alone was 1:21:53, which means I’ve got 1:15 in the bag and will likely have to move my Goal Time up a bit. We’ll see how the rest of the week progresses.

    Meanwhile, I tried to reschedule my long runs to Sunday, the proper day, and ended up fucking up my entire training plan for the next two weeks. Now I have four workouts this week instead of three, and it added another long run this Sunday that’s ELEVEN MILES. And then the next week is all rest days, and I can’t change it and I don’t know why. It’s a mess and I’ll probably have to skip a workout or add unscheduled workouts to my phone or something. I have no idea how I’m going to do 11 miles this week. It’s honestly too much and I’ll likely have to skip it and try to move it to the week after. It’s much more than a 10% leap and I don’t want to injure myself.

    Update: GC now shows the long run as 7 miles, not 11. That might be a little more manageable. We’ll see.

    In other news, I’ve begun filming a “day in the life” video for YouTube. Why? I have no idea. Just seemed like something to do. My life is pretty boring but I felt like maybe it would be neat to see what I do on a regular day. I have no idea when it will be edited and uploaded to YouTube.

    So: This week is going to be intense. Lots of running and significant drills for hills and speed practice. Like, actually training me for stuff. I’m hoping my legs can carry me through it.

    This weekend’s just a parkrun and then in a couple of weeks I’m 40. I haven’t dwelled on it at all…

  • Lactose

    Last night I went a little nuts on the food. This is typical of post-race me, and I think of most runners: you run far or fast and then when you get home you eat everything in the house. Yesterday was kind of strange for me after the Lilac Run, namely in that my stomach was feeling weird for most of the afternoon, plus I had a headache. So I took a nap. But I’ve been craving ice cream lately. Specifically the soft serve ice cream they serve at Cheese & Crack, a little cheese snack shop here in Portland. Aside from the soft serve being the perfect consistency, they also dust it with stuff like chocolate malt or matcha. And you can get a chocolate cowboy hat.

    I want to eat this.

    So, I want that, really badly. (I also want the cheese boxes they make, but that’s a different story.)

    But I didn’t get it. Instead I went to Safeway and bought Ben & Jerry’s. But I didn’t buy my typical B&J–no, this time I bought a non-dairy flavor, the Colin Kaepernick flavor, which was very tasty but a little Too Woke™ for my tastes! (That was a joke, in case you thought maybe I had suddenly turned into a MAGA hat wearing weirdo.) It’s made with sunflower milk. Hell, I didn’t even know sunflowers had nipples!

    Side note: I’m sharing this particular gif because they called him Craig even though his name in the movie is Greg. I just find it funny that whoever made this gif didn’t take the extra five seconds required to learn the name of the main character in this movie which actually has two movies. Two movies to learn the guy’s name is Greg!

    As you have learned by now, I am more focused on my diet than ever because running sometimes makes you poop. And the last time I had significant stomach trouble wasn’t actually during a run, but it was during an intentionally fast walk, which, ironically, is what you do when you have significant stomach trouble. I went for the walk right after eating a bowl of cereal (raisin bran) and long story short … I think I’m lactose intolerant.

    Or, rather, I think eating dairy prior to exercise makes me more lactose intolerant. If anything, having a big bowl of fiber and milk probably isn’t a good idea. So when I went to get this INCREDIBLY WOKE Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, I thought I’d go for non-dairy just to see how it affected my guts. And the result is that I felt fine. I was definitely full when I went to bed, but that was likely from the bunch of other stuff I ate, including Kettle Chips brand air-fried chips which, I must say again are excellent and so much better than their normal chips. Less greasy, taste better. (I’ve found that most food tastes better with less salt in it. Not all! [Pasta sauce.] But most.)

    But this morning I woke up feeling fine and I even went out for my morning run without using the bathroom beforehand and felt fine. It makes sense that I’m a little lactose intolerant, inasmuch as we’re all probably a little lactose intolerant because we’re not supposed to be eating lactose this late in life. Can you imagine like 10,000 years ago when ancient humans first discovered cheese curdling inside the mammoth’s stomach they used to keep some other animal’s milk? And then they ATE it and were like “Oh, this is pretty good?” Man, ancient humans must’ve been desperate for food to eat all the things they ate.

    Anyway, I think my intention for this week is to drastically reduce my dairy intake and see how I feel. I still have some cheese around and will add it to things, but will try to keep it to a minimum. I also bought reduced fat cheddar slices which are fine. I don’t think I’m at a point where eating dairy causes me to shit explosively or anything, unless I’m exercising after I eat it. So let’s not do that as well.

    Let’s see if I remember to talk about this a week from now!