a little more than halfway through this morning’s ~6m sloggy sprint through the rain, i came upon this old fat bearded guy walking with a cane. that isn’t the funny part. in fact, that isn’t funny at all. the funny part is that the old fat bearded guy was wearing a sky-blue dirndl (like the st pauli girl, without the beer and with the tits). and the funnier part is that he saw me staring at him and screamed, “DON’T YOU DARE FUCKING LAUGH AT ME!”, which is when i lost my shit and laughed in his face.

i kinda felt like a jock asshole bully, but fuck it. dude was wearing a dirndl in the rain and screaming at me for doing nothing. what the shit was i supposed to do?

i woke up a little early this morning so that i could run ~8 hilly miles before work. it was still dark when i left the house but the sun was just about to rise.

running up madison, i got hold of an amazing sunrise. one of those sunrises that makes you feel smug because you’re up and running while the rest of the world is still sleeping.

and that sunrise was the last recognizable picture that my camera took. the rest of them look like this.

i got to work 10 minutes late for my 9am meeting. there were no free bathroom stalls to use for changing, so i ducked into my boss’s unoccupied office to swap clothes. his office doors are filled with obfuscating glass, not unlike a shower door. i figured no one could see me. later on that morning, someone mentioned that i figured wrong.

getting back to my desk after the meeting, i noticed that a bird had shat on my bag. i guess the luck there is that it missed my head.

going home tonight, i went to choose some musical accompaniment for my bike ride and instead got the sad ipod icon, with a helpful message telling me to contact tech support.

i got on my bike and had a quiet ride up the hill. when i reached the ridge, it started raining. i was happy to be only a few minutes from home. that’s when i heard: pfffff, pfffff, pfffff, pfffff. yes, i had flatted.

pushing aside beggars, i found an awning under which i could change my tube. then i realized that there was a 1″ gash all the way through the tire. changing the tube would have meant flatting again, which i didn’t want to risk on a wet descent. so i called mia, asking her to pick me up. she said she’d be there in a few minutes. then she called back to remind me that i was in possession of the only car key and that i had left my bus pass in its stead. good job, patrikios. i very carefully hoofed it home.

tonight i started the winter ritual of running home from work, since it’s too dark when i get home to embark on a run. i ran up a street that i don’t normally take and it was kind of sketchy. i mean, for seattle. this thing probably wouldn’t register in regular cities but dudes were jumping out attempting to startle me. others wouldn’t move, daring me to play chicken with them. at no point did i feel like i was in danger, i just didn’t understand their motives. it was both really confusing and really lame.

once i crested the hill and ran along the ridge toward home — past the house with the two barking pit bulls, past the house with the gaggle of yipping terriers — some kid who must have heard me coming because he turned around, got low, clenched his fists, and put on his hardest look. he looked like he was some kinda martial artist and he didn’t look like he was kidding.

i know it’s wrong for a hippie like me (who is going to start running home with his daily fruit scraps so that he can compost them instead of putting them in the garbage at work) to say but now i get why people drive to work. i don’t think it’s laziness and lack of caring about the planet. i think they just don’t want the hassle.

while running eight miles in the rain this morning (yay seattle), my shoulder hit something that was way too fleshy and firm and forgiving. it felt like i had crushed an infant’s skull. again. upon looking back, it turned out to be one of those land-of-the-lost sized sunflowers on its last autumn legs.

i must have been really deep in thought to have missed a 12″ sunflower hanging over the middle of the sidewalk. i’ve been thinking about this class war stuff pretty hard since the other day. as of now, i have no idea where it comes from. i’m sure i’ll figure out the origins but i have a lot more thinking to do.

as a side note: land of the lost was some fucked up shit.

i ran today for the first time since the portland marathon. knowing that this was going to be a run that didn’t mean anything but recovery, i brought along a camera. i was inspired by pc, who does really great photo essays of his runs in southern california. it’s like he’s the last man and/or only pedestrian in the los angeles.

while he and i think that we’re cut from the same running-is-simultaneous-punishment-and-reward cloth, we differ in our terrain choices: he prefers the concrete of the LA river, and i prefer parks and lakes and trees.

the first few minutes of every pre-run start out the same way.

there’s always a little bit of settling in and taking in how psyched i am to be running instead of doing whatever else.

i’ve always wanted to bring everyone i know running with me.

there’s a lot to see, like this awesome grass-colored toxic sludge fertilizer(?).

and man-made passages from one lake to another that are prettier than they should be.

and all-nude october maples!

i ran the portland marathon this morning. it went pretty well. i ran a personal best of 3:17:07. i know that i’m capable of running faster, but i’m ok with today’s race considering that i was treating it as a training run since i didn’t really do any kind of real buildup or marathon-specific training. my longest pre-marathon run was maybe 17 miles, which is not long. today, i was pretty comfortable until maybe mile 22, when the hurt set in. legs, mostly. some lungs. though my lungs hurt yesterday before the race so maybe i’m battling some kind of respiratory thing? dunno. i went out slow. didn’t get much faster. but the course was nice. i mean, it was fine. a non-event, really. now i’m tired.

i was kind of freaking out the week before the race. i don’t wear deodorant and whenever i’m anxious, i can smell myself. so in the days leading up to the marathon, i was somewhat smelly. after the marathon today, i smelled fine. is there an evolutionary reason for this? or does my nervousness cause my body to release some kind of toxin that i have to sweat out? maybe the latter.

either way. i’m done smelling bad now. and i ran a personal best. whee.

yesterday was rainy in seattle. i know, i know. but it isn’t always. let me start over: yesterday was one of the rare rainy days we have in seattle, so i paid $12 and did 11 miles of treadmill running at the local young men’s christian association. 11 miles on a treadmill is incredibly boring. i lucked out in that there were no tvs. watching sunday-afternoon commercials for beer, deep fried corn chips dusted with flavored toppings, and viagra (yeah, i don’t see the connection either) are depressing but i think that’s a topic for another pulpit.

basically i’m saying that i had 1 hour and 15 minutes to people watch. it was maybe 1 hour and 10 minutes too long. mostly because i feel like i was in people’s homes, watching them in private moments that i really don’t know if i wanted to see. there was a girl who would do a curl or two and then turn around to see if her lumpy butt got any less lumpy (nope). and there was a dude who would do some pullups and then check to see if he got a txt msg (also nope). he looked like a castoff from the cast of entourage.

there were also a lot of lazy workouts going on. nowhere to be. just chilling on the exercise bike. i always thought about gyms the way i thought about bathrooms: go in when it’s time, get down to bidness, and then bail. actually, i think i used to make the same analogy about college. there were a bunch of weirdos there, too. though i guess that they’re not really weirdos. just regular people.

is that the common thread? other people around = no lingering? or that bailing early and not looking back is usually the right move for me? yeah. maybe that.

either way, i’m not going back. if it rains, i’ll get wet. gyms make me sad.

i was on vacation in new england (rhode island and mass.), which consisted of: long porch-swing reading sessions, putting in about 75 miles of running, daily morning yoga, a little surfing in newport (board rentals were $25/hour — ick), and seeing lots of family toward the end of the week (mom’s 60th bday; cousin’s wedding on martha’s vineyard).

something i realized about new england is that it i’m pretty sure it turned into what the people who left old england were trying to escape: excessive judgment. i’d go out running and people would slow down their cars to stare at me, like i was some kinda two-headed calf or like maybe they hadn’t seen a 125lb heavily tattooed distance runner before? it was kinda lame. i always feel like if you’re gonna stare at me for that long, you better be saying hi or trying to fight, because otherwise i just get confused about what the hell you’re doing.

other than the slack-jawed small-town yokels, the trip was great. i feel relaxed and recentered. sitting alone for five days does me a lot of good.

and now i’m back running in my new neighborhood and you can tell that the runners are in a slight panic about the upcoming weather. seattle runners are not unlike squirrels, running extra miles to store them up for winter so that they feel like they don’t have to run in the rainy dark.

i was running the other day and looked up to the sky and was like, oh cool, pterodactyls. and kept running. then i remembered that pterodactyls don’t exist anymore and i got kinda sad. and then yesterday i was running down a hill when the sun was really low in the sky and i saw my 30’ shadow and was like, holy shit i just got really tall! finally! this is so fun!

thinking your daydreams are real is awesome; thinking that this might be an early sign that you’re probably going to lose your marbles is less than awesome.

i told my brother that i saw the magnificent seven last night and who knew that yul brynner was so rad? he then further solidified yul brynner’s radness in my mind by pointing me to this:

best. subtitle. ever.

i just ran ~18 miles. i am tired. and i could probably stand a cold bath. it sucks but it helps, and it’s cheaper than a massage.

i can’t decide if i just wasn’t in the mood to race last weekend or if i chickened out. leaning toward the latter. i can tell myself that it was because i didn’t know the course and showing up to an 18-mile race without knowing the elevation gain/loss is a recipe for disaster and that i didn’t feel like getting in the car to drive to run and that i was in no mood to be around people, but i think i just went chicken. i hope that this doesn’t set a bad precedent.

instead of racing, i put in 18 miles around seattle, which was pretty nice. 2:07 of quality alone time. i ran ok. legs were fine, not great. probably better that i didn’t race.

side note: two posts in a row about chicken. i’ll try not to make it three.

i had a weird run home today. it was hot. i wore a dorky running cap. it makes me look less than tough. however, i reckon that if i refuse to wear sunscreen (chemicals!), i should probably wear the cap.

the weird part of the run came while i was headed up 12th ave. i crossed paths with another running commuter. i waved (because it’s seattle), and his reply was to pound his right fist into his left palm and give me a hard look. i’m not sure if this was a misguided attempt at showing some sort of tough-as-nails running-commuter solidarity or if he was threatening me because of my dorky cap. any guesses?

whenever i sustain an injury, my first impulse is always to take a photo of it. mia keeps asking why i do it but i have no good answer for her. the best i can come up with is that i’m fascinated by what happens after something happens to me.

when you toe a rock trail running, you get to watch the skin that you had to cut from your hands regenerate and the get to witness the deep purple/black bruises that you sustained fade to a luscious blueish/yellow and then back to normal tan/olive/greek. that, to me, is super-fun and worth documenting.

while i’m not particularly squeamish, i don’t always look forward to injuries. that said, i don’t document the cuts i receive when chopping fruits and veggies. it only seems to be about bike/running injuries. maybe i think it makes me look tough? or maybe the chopping injuries bleed so much that i can’t possibly photograph them while i’m losing that much blood. not sure.

either way, in case you’re wondering what happened in the above photograph, the backpack i wear on my running commute home has been chafing my back over the course of the past week and these are the blisters it left. i kind of have a feeling that a really active though not particularly particular medieval sex worker would have these if she didn’t much care about what kind of surface she worked on (cobblestones, etc). that’s not this though. it’s the bag, i swear.

says mia, “this is what happens on your way home from work and you want to run across washington?!”

yep.

12 miles today. got cut. while i didn’t try to, i didn’t try to avoid it either.

yesterday i ran up mt si: 4000′ of gain over 4 miles and then back down the same way. the up was a pretty solid 57min that i ran smartly, i didn’t push too hard. the down was a very fun and fast 30min — moderately technical, pretty crowded. running down that mountain is the closest i’ll ever get to feeling self-sustained flight and i treat every leap like i might take off. bounding over rocks and roots, hurdling dog leashes, brushing against the side of the mountain when whipping around people on their way up who i didn’t see or who didn’t see me. earbuds plugged into my head, shuffle turned up loud drowning out the comments from hikers who are understandably not that into a borderline out-of-control trail runner barreling towards them. getting down mostly unscathed and stuffing my face with bananas and grapefruit and letting the sweat evaporate, leaving salt on my neck.

compared to yesterday, today’s run felt violent and empty. this happens to me from time to time. i’ll go through phases where i run past trees and let the branches lash whatever body part they happen to be near: face, neck, arms, legs. and i won’t think about it. i run faster and faster but it won’t feel fast enough and i’ll be unable to get enough oxygen into my lungs. i’ll get home and eat and eat and eat and not feel sated. it feels like a fight might feel when you drop the other guy with one punch and walk away clean — you’re psyched that you don’t need stitches but that expected punch to your face that never materialized leaves an empty feeling that just sucks. a lot. there’s something going on and i don’t think it’s physical. i’ll need to step back from it, maybe. i’ll let you know what i come up with.