i’ve been twittering. twitter is pretty rad. you can find me here.

i’m starting to wonder if my complete and deeply obsessive running habit is covering up for something else that isn’t going so great. i mean, i love running. i crave it. but i think i love and crave it like an addict craves their drug of choice. i consider myself lucky to have found something that i like so much. but i can’t help but feel that because i can put 100% of my focus into running that i’m totally avoiding all the other stuff and hoping that it’ll fix itself. wish the other stuff luck, because i doubt it’s getting attention anytime soon. at least while i’m injury-free. knock wood.

this past weekend, i ran the shit out of the lasse viren 20k. i ran it fast and put in a new pr in the (almost) half-marathon category. i ran so hard that i think i blew out my bronchial muscles (if they exist). i’ve never heard of that before, but i think it can happen when you redline from start to finish. anyone?

the lasse viren 20k isn’t a big race, but it brings a pretty fast field. it’s about eight miles worth of fire roads and 4 miles of asphalt; a decent hill in the middle and pace-threatening/leg-breaking dips throughout. i stayed with the same three or four guys after the people who went out too fast faded away. the scenery seemed nice, though i didn’t see much of it because i was 100% focused on the people in front of me, wondering if i could pull some of them back. this shit is all business.

the hills were hard and i put in some work, trying to shed some people. i did, but they pushed the pace on the downhills, not leaving any time for recovery. the last six miles, though flat or downhill, were as hard as the first six. dudes were pushing hard. at mile eight, i was close to giving up, but then someone else popped and i knew that i couldn’t be that guy.

i passed two guys between miles eight and nine. at mile 10 it got a little easier because i could picture the last two miles of any run back to my house. i settled in and realized that i would be able to hold it, but the guy i was running with found another gear and pulled away. he wound up beating me by 20 seconds. what’s amazing is that he’s 20 years older than i am. dude is in awesome shape.

i love running, but it’s hard to write about it in any kind of meaningful way.

stats
race distance: 12.43m
clock time: 1:21:16
pace: 6:32 min/mile
i came in: 15th

though you can’t add mileage and have it be a meaningful stat, if this were a half marathon (13.1m), i would have run: 1:25ish (pr by 3min). and it’s really hard to think that a 3:05 marathon isn’t within my grasp if i had any kind of intelligence about training.

i woke up early this morning having nightmares about the existence of gravity, which are only slightly less terrifying than my nightmares about the existence of free will. my curiosity about science > my knowledge of science.

i suck at science example 1:
i get that gravity is what keeps water and people in south america from floating into space (they’re on the bottom of the earth). but i still kind of feel like if i’m driving south, i’ll get better gas mileage because i’m headed downhill. fast. i mean, i’ve seen a globe. if i put a matchbox car on it starting in seattle, i get to los angeles really quickly before i go careening into the ether.

i suck at science example 2:
let’s say that i get into the elevator on the 10th floor of my building and the doors close and then the cable snaps, sending me and the elevator car towards earth. fast. just before the elevator car and i crash into the subbasement, i have a well-timed jump straight up in the air. i’ll be ok, right?

i suck at science example 3:
gravity comes from the earth, because the earth has mass (thanks mr wizard). so let’s say that i dig a hole to the exact middle of the earth, which i understand to be 1) hot 2) liquid and 3) containing hitler. so now i’m in the middle of the earth and i drop a coin. which way does it fall? does it just hover because it’s in the exact center of the earth?

this is the dumbest reason ever not to be sleeping.