i told you the planet isn't safe

Sardonic post title aside, please pray or do whatever positive imaging you can for the folks in Japan. With modern communications and videography equipment (i.e., anyone that has a smartphone with video can make a video), its pretty easy to snap good pictures and video of a natural disaster, and some of the shots of the tsunami running rampant over farmland... this isn't cheesy CGI in a cheesy Emmerich movie, its the real thing, and its pretty damned scary - amazing to see from an overhead shot. The destruction and just the *inevitability* of the waves ruthlessly chewing up everything in their path is jaw dropping to watch.

We'll probably never know the total death toll, but I'm going to be very surprised if the estimates are much < 10,000 and probably will go higher. Japan is like the 98 pound weakling that just got sucker punched without warning by Alex Karras Blazing Saddles style. Except Alex Karras is the size of Godzilla in this case. Watching the carnage, you start to truly understand why Godzilla and Mothra are still so popular in Japan; being on the Pacific Rim these folks truly are living on the edge every day.

So let's do what we can for Japan... and don't forget New Zealand. Even here in California some of the waves flipped boats over in Santa Cruz and up near the Oregon Coast.

What has got me worried at a lower level is this...

"Um, OK, now you've had a quake in NZ, and Japan, and if the quakes are moving in a clockwise pattern, that puts the next quake, um, near Alaska or the US west coast..." Add in the superstition of bad news coming in threes (although in Charlie Sheen's case, he's the entire Raman spaceship *fleet*), yeah, I'm a little twitchy. LA or San Francisco are nice juicy little targets for earthquakes (as are Portland, Seattle, and points north, etc.). Sacramento does get quakes but our local geology is such that we've never really had a "bad one" - you usually get the pictures rattling for a few seconds and you're done.

The larger question that's invoked by disasters on the scale of Haiti, NZ and Japan (not to mention other places that have been wacked recently by giant quakes or powerful storms) is just how, um, inhospitable our planet can be at times for those of us who live on its surface. There's the giant caldera in Yellowstone, for example, that blows up and throws a lot of ash into the planetary atmosphere roughly every 250,000 years or so, and the last eruption was ... um, about 250,000 years ago.

And here we are about to retire the only space transport (except for that secret stuff that our military has GOT to have - I do not believe for a second that we don't have a manned space capability or a plane that can fly to orbit. I can't see us giving up that capability when we have no shuttle) we've had for the last 30 years, courtesy of Nixon, who canceled several Apollo missions for cavorting in LEO in a giant space truck and an obscenely expensive orbiting studio apartment.

Yes, yes, we've got Virgin Galactic, and the creator of the DOOM game and some other dot-com and otherwise millionbillionaires who are underwriting private rocketry into LEO, but we still have failed - since the astonishing achievement of landing men on that hunk of rock in the sky 40+ years ago - to move the human presence in this solar system farther than 200 or so miles from the surface of what is probably (unless you're a Von Daniken fan) our planetary home of origin.

The Kepler space telescope already has confirmed what we've known for several years now, that exoplanets are plentiful and as the detection techniques get better, we'll find candidate Earths... and as space hardware gets smaller and smaller, and lasers more powerful, we should be able to orbit lasers that have the capability to push tiny probes pushed by photons to high enough velocities to fly to other star systems and take pictures... but that's not getting people off of Earth where either the combination of some stupid series of natural disasters or flesh eating zombies could do our species a serious turn to extinction.

We *could* do the one-way Mars missions that are proposed with the rockets we have now - its just a matter of throwing sufficient money at the project... anyway, it seems a shame that 40 years have passed and the space program still is struggling to get more than 200 miles from the launch pad.

We need to leave this solar system, and get at least a few hundred light years away from the stars capable of going supernova to ensure the human races' survival for the not so distant future...

In the meantime, though, we need to help Japan rebuild, because there just might be some young genius, or geniuses, huddling in the cold and dark right now, scared half to death through the aftershocks, who figures out how to build stargates or warp drive...

ephiphany of love

I do not believe that my father ever really loved me.

An epiphany (from the ancient Greek ἐπιφάνεια, epiphaneia, "manifestation, striking appearance") is the sudden realization or comprehension of the (larger) essence or meaning of something. The term is used in either a philosophical or literal sense to signify that the claimant has "found the last piece of the puzzle and now sees the whole picture," or has new information or experience, often insignificant by itself, that illuminates a deeper or numinous foundational frame of reference.

Sudden tears, a little while ago. It just hit me. I am a very passionate person, and sometimes I don't know when to let go of that passion, and talking with my little girl (and boy, when he wasn't busying wasting some poor avatar in the video game he was playing), and seeing just how much she, in particularly, fervently loves her Daddy... typing me little messages of love and endearment in the chat box while looking in the camera with such intensity and jabbering away in the manner of 9 year old girls.

It blows me away. She's not manipulating me for anything, she simply wants to be loved.

Up until the day my Dad had his final stroke that took away his power of speech and dying a week later, I spoke with him on the phone, every day, trying to make a connection with him, and feeling like I was always failing. He was listening, but I always felt like the "message" I was trying to make never really got through. Sometimes over the years, my mother would mention she was never really entirely sure that my Dad wanted a child, as they had difficulties having me (she lost a set of twins before I was born) and her pregnancy with me was difficult.

Anyway, the inability of me to establish a deep connection with my father, and my mother allowing him to run her life to such a great extent for their entire life together has made it difficult for me to form lasting long-term relationships. I always feel like I need to be "on the run" as I remember my Dad stuck in that recliner on 44th Street, never going anywhere and seeming to be angry at the entire world... I am agitated all the time, probably because I never got that warm security of knowing that somewhere, my parents loved me (and I do believe my Mom did, but she was always apologizing for Dad's distance but would say "he loves you". I think what she was really saying is "I love you and I think your father does but he isn't really able to show it.")

But if you truly love someone, sportsfans, you show it.

I know that my Mom, wherever she is, still loves me. And she's around; because I'll suddenly smell the strong perfumes she favored, or sometimes - as she knew how much I hated that she smoked - the distinctive smell of a person that's just come in from a cold side porch with unfiltered Pall Malls on their clothing. 

Dad... is just gone. It is his loss. I dearly miss him, but damn you for not loving me enough. The greatest gift any parent can give their child(ren) is for you to know that you are loved, in that warm snuggly blanket way, long after they are dust.

abusing other schools' fans in the offseason

There are a lot of transplanted Midwesterners out here in California. I run a lot of "fun" runs (well, it seems like a fun idea when I'm initially signing up, when I'm out there dying and cursing the aging process during the race, I seriously question my sanity) and was participating in the 5K portion of the Davis Stampede yesterday morning.

As usual, I wore some Iowa gear (a black Nike 1/4 zip storm pullover, same thing the football coaches wear on the sidelines) to run in (I also had an Iowa football tee on underneath) to race in, and I almost always get a comment or two "are you from/did you go to Iowa?" and often, I meet other exiles from home in this fashion, or, I hear "GO HAWKS!" screamed as I run by.

Anyway, the Stampede is a pretty big event - over 3800 signed up for the 5K/10K/half marathon this year (900+ in the 5K), and while I was walking around at the start, I saw a woman who looked to be in her 20s/early 30s wearing a Minnesota hat. Didn't say anything, but, to my surprise, after the 5K started (and I ran like total crap, but that's another story) she passed me at the 1.6 mile mark (I'm obnoxiously geeky and I usually have either my Garmin Forerunner 205 or 305 on in a race)... I let her go, I was feeling like warmed over death and often you'll end up catching some of the people that pass you in a short race like this because they go out too fast near the end.

With about a 1/4 mile left, I look up, and there she is, now looking even more trashed than I certainly felt, and somehow, I found the strength to pick up my pace, and I passed her, but I could resist myself ... I said "GO HAWKS!" as I ran past, and I kept looking back over my shoulder the rest of the way, wondering if I'd have the strength to hold off a late pissed off Minnesota fan charge, but I finished strong with no sign of her, and my reward was a couple of minutes of dry heaves at the finish. Totally worth it. I hate the Gophers. :D

I did say "GO HAWKS!" with a smile. I think... (I always see people in Michigan gear around here too; there was an older guy before the race - probably pushing 60 - that was wearing a Michigan hat and I was so tempted to say "Brady Hoke is a joke!")...

various christmas 2010 thoughts

First, Merry Christmas to all of you. That's about all I got in terms of enthusiasm for the holidays this year. 

I know that I should not feel sorry for myself. I don't really. But I feel, well, if not sad ... blah. I'm not, at the core, a Bah Humbug guy. I like seeing the Christmas lights, I like seeing the decorations that other people put up, and I enjoy seeing so many people genuinely happy and infused with holiday spirit. I'm healthy, I'm employed, I have a fun hobby of attempting to play guitar, and I can run again for the first time in two years. There are billions less fortunate than I. I have close family friends who are struggling with illness and cancer. Yet I simply can't get into the spirit of the holidays this year, for perhaps what are silly reasons.

First, we have had so many people leaving our office for promotions in the last three months its been one goodbye party after another, and it seemed like there was a never ending number of holiday celebrations following. It gets *old*. Yes, I'm glad that people are moving on to bigger and better things, but after a while the forced cheer for people that you really didn't work with in an office gets old. I've already made it clear to my present office if and when I leave, I want *no* going away party. It hasn't been all that fun living out here, separated from my children for coming up on four years. I don't need to have people tell me how much they're going to miss me, because, they're *not* to miss me. Why make such a game of it? I've said if they want to have a party, do so, but I'm not going to be attending. I haven't felt this way in other offices that I've worked in, but I've been through so much personally over the past few years... 

I was taking stock driving to work this morning, thinking about this will be my first Christmas with both of my parents gone. Gift giving had gone away many years ago, but I won't be able to call Saturday morning, and have Mom pick up the phone and hear the happiness in her voice when I wish her Merry Christmas. She loved Christmas, the decorations, just all of it. She made a point to send out cards to people she barely knew. It was important to her. And oddly, I always got a Christmas card with $20 tucked in it that Mom had snuck past Dad. This year, the only Christmas cards I've gotten are the ones that were forwarded from Mom's house from people that did not know she'd passed. I've sent out letters to those cards explaining what has happened. That was hard.

I thought when I had children, that that was it. That I wouldn't be getting divorced and/or married again, and seeing my kids' faces on Christmas morning was great. Well, that's shot to hell. The last Christmas was during 2006 that we woke up in the same house. It is so acrimonious with their mother that I highly doubt they'll be waking up on Christmas with me until they're adults (and then it will be of their choice). It is really hard to explain just how acrimonious the situation is... and that they only way to "win" (and not harm the children) is to not participate. I could fly to CT, but I don't see anyway that my presence would not end up degenerating in a fight. Christmas doesn't need to be spoiled for the kids that way. They've seen us argue enough.

I'm coming more to accept that moving near my children is not in the cards, at least for the near future. It *could* happen, but the window of opportunity is closing in the sense that they'll turn 11 and 9 early next year, and before long, the young children excitement kind of Christmas thing is gone. Then I'll just have surly teens who are unhappy about everything... pfffftttt.

I think its fairly obvious from the post so far that this time of the year has little religious significance for me. At this point in my life, I don't denigrate other for their beliefs - regardless of what those are - and I do believe that God speaks to people in different ways.  I'm somewhere between pagan and agnostic now (LOL), and I don't see that changing.  And I do not want others forcing their beliefs down my throat telling me that "if you believe this, you'll feel better." I've tried, and all I've ever gotten out of it has been silence. Just the way it is, not stated to be depressing, because I'm not depressed about it, I'm not going to waste my time attempting to believe in something that does not exist for me. I'm just skeptical, I guess.

Hmmm... proofing the above, this is pretty depressing. LOL. I am grateful for the good things in my life, but going back to driving in this morning, I'm trying to put my finger on why I'm so sour on the season this year, and I realized "Hmmm. You got divorced two years ago after an acrimonious process that dragged out a year and a half, then your parents died shortly after that."

They say these kinds of life events are extremely hard on people. I'm not whining. It could be worse. I have a person in our office whom, within the time space of a month, had his wife die suddenly on a Friday night and then his father die. I don't see how he's making it from day to day. We've had other people lose their parents or friends. Two weeks ago, one my co-workers fell on a rainy morning on his bike, commuting to work,  and fractured his hip in three places. Another friend is recovering from a bout with necrotic fasciitis - that's your friendly "flesh eating disease." She'll be recovering for months. One of my parents' best friends is battling brain cancer and actually beating it much better than anyone, including the doctors, expected but takes two steps backward for every one forward.

So I guess my Christmas message is pretty simple ... be grateful for what you have *before* Christmas morning.

davis turkey trot 5K - 11/20/10

Davis, being a UC town, has a reputation, along with Boulder, as being a bike crazy - er friendly, town, to the point of maybe being more than a little wacky about it. Which means that finding a parking space near downtown Davis is almost always problematic when school is in, which it still is since it wasn't Thanksgiving week on top of it all.

In addition, this 20something edition of the Turkey Trot would be unique in that it had never rained on a Turkey Trot before, and it *poured* on Friday night. When I got up to dress and head over to Davis, it had stopped raining and there were minor breaks in the clouds, but the weather radar showed spotty showers here and there... the hourly forecast claimed the real rain would hold off into the afternoon.

It was also colder than Apple Hill two weeks before. Temps in the lower 40s, damp, but the trick would be to not overdress - so you'd roast while running - but to put on enough that you wouldn't be freezing off any vital parts while waiting to start.

Anyway, I went ahead and put two loose wicking shirts on, and used the new "water resistant" Iowa Nike storm 1/4 zip pullover on top of it, with its very handy double sided zip-shut kangaroo pocket (threw my car key and ID+cash etc. in a ziplock bag in there when I got to Davis). ANYHOW, I was very surprised to find, once I got off I-80 (actually 113) and took Russell towards downtown/campus that I was able to park less than two blocks from the starting point. Of course, the bulk of people that do this race LIVE in Davis, and a lot of the racers are students, so you're not going to have a lot of cars pulling up. Still, this was the closest I've ever been able to park at any race that I've done, and my total is somewhere up near 40 events since 2004 at this point. In other words, way cool that I didn't have to walk far and I arrived relatively late (less than 40 minutes before the 5K start).

The baby stroller 5K went before we did. Looking at the start and the course, and previous year's registrations, I knew that this would not be a fast run because the streets are narrow and I wasn't going to get in the front, take off at warp speed and die after about 10 blocks and then go through the head messing up stage of having lots of people pass me, so I wedged myself into the front third of the start crush and resigned myself to probably losing at least a half-minute on my time weaving through the crowd vs. a cleaner start. That's one of  the things I don't like about big 5Ks, if you want the psycho advantage of being with a group that's near your goal pace, its difficult to get lined up properly for that to happen (even with signs noting where pace groups should form in the start queue). For 10Ks on up, at least in anything that I've entered that has more than 1,000 runners, where you are in the queue really doesn't matter (at least as slow as I am) because with a 6.2 mile race there's plenty of distance for the runners to sort themselves out without it too negatively impacting your start time. For half-marathons on up, it really doesn't fucking matter at all if you're a 9:00 pace runner anyway.... you put yourself wherever you want to be in the scrum because after the first mile you're going to settle into your race pace and for the longer distances its not a puke-fest its a pacing exercise.

But hey, NOT having the strollers mixed in with us was great, because there were some walkers in the group and even though we started 20 minutes after they did, I caught a few of the strollers, which, while totally meaningless, was nice, because I really fucking hate getting passed by a baby stroller. Yes, you have to make some effort to push it, but having pushed my own kids around in one, especially if you spend the $$$ for a nice jogging stroller, the weight of the kid+their diaper bag/etc. will actually pull you along (unless you're pushing the thing uphill - but in a place like Davis, which is built in the middle of a former fruit orchard in the Valley and is flat as a pancake, there is very little uphill except on ped overpasses) and allows you to conserve energy because you can lean on the stroller as you run. Ergo, IMHO, pushing a stroller is a form of cheating. OTOH, I like to see people running in 5Ks and 10Ks with a stroller, because it means they're out getting exercise and letting their kid(s) get some fresh air at the same time. Its all good... except when you pass me. Then you suck, OK?

Since it decided to lightly rain on us before the start, and the wind kicked up a bit, the race organizers thought it'd be a wonderful idea to have some overtly peppy woman (who sounded rather young) that heads those bikini boot camp sort of workouts to urge us, through the PA system, to do various workout/warmup exercises. I was a wee bit grumpy and mumbled something about "taking that microphone away" which got a chuckle or two from other runners that were standing near me (it was decidedly more colorful than I just described it, in terms of what I actually said). She was telling us not to knock over fellow runners, I personally felt we should just pretend we were in a rugby scrum, grab someone's head and start biting them. That would have been cool.

So, we shuffled off at the start, and I put my head down and pretended that I actually have some kind of football ability (which I don't, but I regularly fantasize about it and man, did I kick ass, there were so many hapless tacklers and none of those bastards came even close to taking me down) and eventually got into a clear enough area that I started picking off slower runners. For some silly reason I run more efficiently with my head down without increasing my pace - I go forward more quickly, but its hard to run for very long semi-hunched over...

While I waited to start, I saw my fellow jazz bander from a zillion years ago - yes, Pam, who I played in jazz band with for three years in high school, lives in Davis - on the sides, said Hi, and she also was at the finish chute and yelled encouragement as I trudged by looking not too far off from The Dead Thing The Cat Just Brought In To Impress You - thanks for the props - her husband and son were running and I hope they all had a good race. 

I ran another OK pace, I could tell, though, that my body was tired with this being my 3rd race three weekends in a row, although being not really in race shape - I don't honestly know if I'll get back to my 2007 form - I have been treating these races more like a hard workout than an actual race... we will see if I can actually get any better in the coming months, or if the ravages of the aging process have taken their toll. When I saw the finish chute with about a quarter mile left, and knew I would finish in my goal time (i.e. under 30:00) I let up a little more than I should have, but its all good. I've chopped two minutes off of my 5K time with maybe 4-6 weeks of semi serious training since September 1, and my Disneyland trip was in the middle of that and disrupted the training cycle... one of the harder core runners/salespeople at Fleet Feet on J Street has told me to not be too hard on myself on trying to come back from injury/layoff, just to keep doing the training runs ... the same advice my BFF Kent has told me.

I did have a little fun at the water stations, which looked to be entirely staffed by UC students, by complaining (with a smile) that beer would be a much better drink than water (and it really would) but, alas, they had no beer...

No more races until my return to Davis on 2/6/11... for the 10K Davis Stampede. And I threw caution to the wind, and assumed that my body will allow me to get ready for the Shamrock'n' Half Marathon here in March and registered... this early, you get a custom bib name and I went with "bird cult"...

clarksburg country run 5K race report 11/14/10

Well, 1st race at Age 49 in the bag... I signed up for this at the last minute. Since I moved here in 2007, I've toyed with running one of the distances. The race has been held for years at Delta High School in Clarksburg, this was the 45th rendition. There's a 20 miler, half-marathon and 5K. Many people use the 20 miler as their last long training run before the California International Marathon the first weekend in December. The course(s) are out in the Sacramento River Delta, west and south of town, and up on the levee, you can see downtown Sacramento in the distance as well as the coastal ranges. Very cool.

Really pretty day to run and just about perfect temperature of around 50F. They start the 5K late, but since I hadn't been to the race before, I left early so I'd be able to find parking. That turned out to not be a problem, so if I do this next year I'm not going to rush to get over there. Or maybe I can car pool with someone...

This race attracts a lot of serious runners as its certified and fast (because its damn flat) and since it isn't really all that close to Sacramento, the more casual runners aren't likely to show up (I don't see why, but I'm closer to Clarksburg in Tahoe Park than say, someone who lives in Folsom or Roseville (would add a half hour to the drive easily). Of course, along with the serious runners you get the high maintenance people too, but the running world doesn't have as high a proportion of those as triathlon or cycling does. It always amazes me to see people running in expensive running clothes and makeup. Oh well...

I really get a kick out of the kids' races. Neither the half mile or the 1 mile had that many participants, though, compared to Urban Cow or Apple Hill and that kind of surprised me - then again, this event attracts more serious runners and I'm guessing they tend to leave their kids home if they don't have someone to watch them in the endless pursuit of the next PR before the get too old to PR LOL

So, there's really not a lot to report, other than I should have put my car key in the zippered pocket of my running pullover rather than attempt to attach it to one of the strings on the bib # holder on my race belt (oh, another stupid comment heard before the race "You can tell who the triathletes are because they all have race belts"- um, no, I don't do triathlons anymore and I do have a race belt because of that but that's so my expensive running shirts don't get pinholes in them that don't 'heal' like putting holes in a cotton t-shirt does with a pin. You pay $60 for a high quality The North Face running shirt, you're not going to mess it up by jamming pins though it. I'll abuse running shorts that way but not a shirt).

I again broke < 30:00 but man this process of coming back from almost 2 1/2 years off from running is so sloooooow. I feel fucking *old* (wait, I am fucking old). I would have probably run about 20 seconds faster if I'd not been screwing with moving the key from the belt to the pocket (and it did disrupt my rhythm, I know I slowed down  but hey, its no big deal), but I kept this run simple. The course was a simple triangle, it had a slight hill in the first mile and oh I love running up hills because I run past other people on hills, especially when said hills are at sea level rather than 3000+' up.

It was nice to run past vineyards, there's still some leaves on the trees but we are about to embark on our ironically "green" California winter. The rains will start soon, and everything turns green for a couple of months - usually until mid-April - and then the rains stop for six months and everything turns brown in the meantime LOL.

I did encourage a 12 (or maybe he was 13) year old boy who was initially in front of me to "outrun me, I'm old dude" but I dropped him about halfway through. I think I picked off a half dozen people on the way to the finish, but I should have run into the finish chute a little harder because a woman I thought I'd dropped way back pushed like hell to the end and actually wacked into my elbow at the finish line - it was cool.

I didn't beat my Urban Cow time, but, I did run < 30:00, and I know I ran hard because I felt like there Might Be A Hurling Moment after the finish and it did pass, so I put forth a good effort. I can also blame a mild upper respiratory infection perhaps, or my body adjusting to the 1/2 of a 25 mg pill of blood pressure meds I started this week. On the more upside, I've run since October 3rd four decent races considering how out of race shape I am in the first place, and Apple Hill was last weekend and very hard. That's a lot of racing for a 5-6 week period. :)

One nice thing about this race, you can take a shower in the gym afterwards. But I grabbed some pasta first, then showered, changed, and drove home. Another 5K knocked off and now I can concentrate on gradually increasing volume the next six weeks and decide whether I want to attempt the Davis half - or not (they do have a 5K and 10K as well) in February.

P.S. I am tempted to do the Davis Turkey Trot 5K next Saturday but it is supposed to be pouring rain at the end of the week... hmmm... excuse to go buy rain gear...

2010 apple hill harvest run race report - 11/7/10

What do the words "run" and "rain" have in common besides the letter R? Well, sometimes, it rains when you're running in California. I've been incredibly lucky in the years that I've been active racing - during college, and then after the long break, resuming racing in 2006 - that it has hardly ever rained on any race that I've participated in - and this covers not only running, but the duathlons, triathlons and cycling events I've done as well. In fact, some of those rec rides were so hot I was wishing it *would* rain.

2007 was my best year running, I trained hard, I cracked my '06 5k PR by over a minute (to 24:57), and at the end I dragged my tired ass to the finish line at the California International Marathon and sulked for weeks because I was a stupid, spoiled brat who was whining by missing his target time of 4:30 (for a first marathon) by 9 minutes and 59 seconds, which is not that much of a percentage miss considering the distance and the overall time.

I wasn't sure what I wanted to do running wise in '08, I toyed with it being the Year of the Half Marathon but after doing the Davis Half in February and running the Shamrock'n' 5K in March, I hit burnout and thought I'd get back on the bike, in particular, the single speed I had, and I managed to do a real number on my left hip, knee, back and left IT band by pushing a gear on that single speed that was simply too much for me. I did a couple of 5Ks in there - Doggy Dash and something else that I can't remember now - both of them were in William Land Park, I think - but I'd already started to lose run fitness because, well, my knee hurt and running wasn't much fun.

Running had started to hurt, because the IT band hurt. I had signed up for Buffalo Stampede but skipped it because my leg hurt, and skipped the Cowntown Half in '08 because my leg hurt... and it got worse, and worse. Two rounds of PT, and in '09 I was able to run the Cowtown 5K - not well, but I ran it, and the IT band got slowwwwly better but not much. Finally, I went and started acupuncture a couple of months ago, and things are *much* better. Not 100% - and along with decline in run fitness, I've gained some weight (although I've lost some) and acquired the dreaded "PF" - plantar fasciitis - in *both* feet.

I actually "discovered" the acupuncture therapist at Race for the Arts, she had a clinic at the post-race expo, and thought "why not"? I'd run that 5K OK, I felt better than I had in a long time but the IT band still was tight at the finish... and when I took on Urban Cow (formerly Cowtown - blame the race in Houston of the same name for threatening to sue the Sacramento Race over "name infringement" or something equally moronic) after doing some acupuncture - the difference - I feel my racing form coming back although fitness is going to take a while to come back - IF it comes back at all with 49 starting me in the face on Friday...

Apple Hill is an area of orchards and wineries located in El Dorado County, CA just east of Placerville and west of Pollock Pines in the Sierra foothills. There are two race distances - an 8.5 mile loop and a 3.5 mile loop. In '07 I did the 3.5 mile loop and picked the same distance for this year.

The race benefits Camino School, and is advertised as a "relaxed family race" but for those not used to running steep hills and who live at sea level - like me - the combination of hills+3000+ feet in altitude makes it, well, a challenge. Now, in '07 I was tapering for the CIM marathon and this was a tapering race (or whatever you want to call it) so I'd be sharp the first weekend in December when CIM is held. So I had great run fitness. I figured I would not run nearly as well today but having run the course before, I thought it would give me a good gauge on how "out of shape" I've gotten compared to 2007.

It was pouring when I got up at 5:30. Now, I'm not going to bitch about running in the rain; I don't mind the rain at all, but I did leave my Garmin - even though its water resistant - and iPod at home because I really didn't want to screw with either in the rain. I figured I'd get to the race site about an hour before start, walk the almost half-mile from the parking area to the start line, do the race, and then immediately walk back because the radar looked like it was going to pour all morning up in the foothills.

Its about a 45 minute drive from my door to the field by Camino School where you park, and the rain wasn't bad until I got up around Shingle Springs, then it really started to come down on US 50, then the fog set in as I climbed out of Placerville up to the Cedar Grove exit off of 50. Winter in Sacramento is mild, but you go just 40 miles over into the Sierras and it becomes rather serious business quickly. Can you say "Donner Party?" I knew you could (Wikipedia it). Its not that much farther east from Apple Hill where you get into the part of the Sierras that during the winter Caltrans requires chains (yes, I have a set in my trunk Just In Case). Sometimes, if its is cold enough, the snow level comes down to 1500' in places like Cameron Park, which is only 30 minutes from my door.

As I pulled into the parking lot across from the school, I was a little concerned as its just a big grass field, its raining, and I've had lovely experiences having trucks and cars pulled out of mud due to my 2nd ex's horse craziness. So I made up my mind to immediately head back to my car after the finish, and get the hell out of that meadow before the cars leaving turned it into a mud quagmire. It doesn't rain that often on this race - although once you get into November here, its essentially the Winter Rainy Season and it can rain at any time, but we don't get the days of grayness and raininess this early - those come in January, February and March.

I stuck my hand out the window after parking and figured that it was cold enough that I might want to go ahead and put on an underarmour shirt on underneath the wicking t-shirt that I had on with my North Face running 1/4" zip over it. I had a mini-umbrella in the trunk that I got out and used to keep my upper body dry until the start. I thought about tossing it, but folded it up and ran with it in my hand; its a perfectly OK umbrella and those things are $10 a pop, too.

People were complaining about the weather but thinking about one of my friends, who is an extremely good runner and is very ill (but recovering slowly) in the hospital right now - and who had planned to be at this race but became suddenly very ill a couple of weeks ago - I instead thought about how lucky I was to be in good enough shape that I would be able to run this distance without too much difficulty, and how cool it was to run in a counterclockwise triangle past wineries, the Jack Russell brewery, and apple sellers in the beautiful fall colors of the Northern Sierra foothills.

While we were waiting for the start, had the fun of watching the kids' races, and I helped a young man (who ended up coming in 2nd - I think - overall - of the 8.5 mile runners) stay dry with my umbrella as he changed into his racing flats. I chatted briefly with some spectators who confirmed my suspicion that a lot of people bailed on the race today (and the field was much smaller for both distances than in 2007) - I had picked up my packet on Saturday knowing that it was supposed to be pouring in the morning. The queues for the 8.5 mile race and mine were much shorter and we weren't packed in nearly as densely as we were in 2007.

If you want to take the time to look up Apple Hill, the race start, which as at the Para VI winery, starts and finishes going uphill, making this a unique little torture test if you don't regularly train in hills and altitude. The first half-mile or so is all uphill, along some very narrow roads, so you are packed in with a lot of grunting, gasping persons, including yourself, until the race turns onto Cable Road and you have room to run, and before you know it, you've run the first mile. Miles 1-3 go up and down but nothing like that first half mile, but when you get to the 3 mile marker, its *all* uphill and its a long, slow, torturous uphill on Larsen - and if you can keep running - no matter how slowly - you'll drop a bunch of people who are walking at that point and looking like they're going to throw up. Making this even worse this morning was we ran past an apple vendor that had DONUTS going and the smell... makes you want to quit running, stumble in, and start stuffing fresh hot bad for you goodies into your mouth.

Anyway, I digress. I could tell that I was not going to run this - even w/o the garmin - anywhere near my 2007 pace but the rain also slowed the pack down a lot on going up that first hill. Footing was a little treacherous and I was holding back a little because I did not want to fall and bust my ass (and get trampled in the process). I looked at my Timex at the Mile 1 marker and groaned at the time, but at that point the pack had thinned out and I started dropping people who had gone out too fast... on the way to Mile 1 I heard a *lot* of complaints about the course - a lot more than in '07 - in fact, when I parked, two young women - 20somethings - pulled up in a new Beetle next to me, and after scurrying around in the rain, bailed on the race, I think - or tried parking closer, who knows. Anyway, I pointed out "you know, this is not easy, but it beats getting poked in the eye with sharp stick!" and back behind me I heard someone mutter "lets find a sharp stick..."

Then my fucking shoes started coming untied, even though I'd double-tied them. This happened three times. I *hate* rolled laces, I don't understand why they put them in running shoes. Good old-fashioned flat laces - such as those found on Chuck Taylors - stay tied if you knot them a couple of times, even when soaked in the rain. Yes, I could get some Yankz - actually, I have a set, I'm just too damn lazy to figure them out and put them in my favorite pair of shoes for races - but you should be able to double tie the laces that come with your Asics and those bastards should stay tied.

So, the people that I'd dropped went trotting by every time I re-tied the laces, although I caught most of them even after the third time. I wished during the long downhills in between 1-3 that it wasn't so quite wet (felt myself slip on the road a few times) because I would've gone faster, but again, I did not want to fall and I did see a few people fall.

It will be interesting to see how I look on The Official Race Photos, which were taken just before the last hill and right before the ODOR OF EVIL, DELICIOUS DONUTS hit us in the face. I imagine I'm going to look extremely dorky carrying the umbrella in my left hand. In fact, I figure between being soaked to the bone at that point, tired, and not in my '07 run shape I'm pretty much going to look like shit, but I'll probably buy a race photo anyway LOL

As I said, I wasn't going to hang around because I didn't want to get my car stuck in the mud, but as I approached the finish, I kept looking around, extremely paranoid that someone behind me was going to streak by at the last second and make me look bad, but I had 50 yards of open space between me and the runner behind me. I still pushed (although I felt dead at that point) to have a strong finish. I was kind of dazed in the finish chute - we didn't need to cut off timing tags as Capital Road Race Management has switched over to the disposable tags now - and stood around until some kids from Camino school told me to move to the food and water to my left.

I grabbed a couple of granola/cereal/chocolate chip bars, some water, stuffed the bars in my face as I never eat breakfast for these short races - my stomach feels too crowded - and walked back up the hill, got to my car... as I'm walking to my car, I chatted with a guy pushing a baby stroller who remarked that it was harder with the hills - this was the first time he'd done the race - and I said "you live down in Sacramento, right?"

"Right."

"Well, that's near sea level - yes, the hills make this harder but we are also up around 3000+ feet up here. Oxygen isn't quite as plentiful - high altitude cooking rules start applying around 3500 feet."

"It is?"

Hmmm. You can kind of TELL driving up here that you're driving into the mountains...

I had fun. I hope that my IT band continues to improve, because even though this was hard, its great to be able to run again, and I was only 1:00 per mile slower than in 2007... and I'm not nearly in the run shape as I was then - and I'm three years older.