Kris and I went to New York City for our anniversary. The main reason for the trip was to see Wagner’s Ring Cycle performed in its entirety (that is a four-night event if you’re not familiar with it), which is something we’ve wanted to do since, basically, before we got married. Our first date was the first opera in the series, Das Rhinegold. I’m pretty sure that one of the reasons she stuck with me was because I liked it. It was a super cool experience, and we enjoyed the trip a lot.
April was mostly coasting. Mostly.
With no big races coming up soon, a lot of the month was just taking it easy, but Kris and I went out one Saturday and did something at the other end of the spectrum from “easy,” and hiked/climbed Picketpost Mountain.
It’s one of those things that is cool to say that you have done once it’s over, but that you don’t particularly enjoy while you’re doing it. Classic Type Two Fun.
For a lot of reasons, I haven’t been blogging much lately. Over the next few days, I’m going to do a bunch of mini-posts to catch up on some of the notable things I did in 2019. Enjoy!
I started the year by volunteering at the San Tan Scramble with my running club, the San Tan Trail Runners. It was my first time volunteering for a full shift at a race, and it was a lot of fun.
I’m not gonna make too big of a deal about this, but for several years I have been part of a running group that calls San Tan Mountain Regional Park their home, and they recently began spotlighting members on a monthly basis. I was voted the San Tan Trail Runner of the Month for January 2018. It was super cool to get, and many kind words were said about me by the friends I’ve made out there.
This is the little bio about myself that I shared as part of the spotlight. I said some things in there that are important to me and have been on my mind for a while, but I hadn’t previously expressed.
We now interrupt your flow of angsty missed-race agonizing to talk about an entertaining thing I did last Saturday morning: two runs on opposite sides of the valley.
Why? Because I felt like it, and I could!
You know what’s not good for your head? Working on a goal for several months and then not being able to achieve it. You know what’s worse? Not being able to even attempt it.
I’m a patient guy. Not an “I can put up with anything indefinitely” kind of patient, but in a goal-oriented way. I function best when I have something that I am working toward. As long as I feel like I am making progress toward it, I can do it for a long, long time. It doesn’t matter if it’s repetitive, it doesn’t matter if it’s painful, it doesn’t matter if nobody else understands it. If it is moving me closer to achieving the task I’m focused on, I can keep doing it.
The important part of all of that, however, is actually doing the thing at the end. I very rarely get to the end of a road I’ve been on and don’t do the thing, because I choose my goals carefully. I plan. I assess. I put a lot of thought into whether or not achieving the thing is realistic. As such, my track record is pretty good.
This was supposed to be a recap of the training for my first 50 mile race.
It was going to be out at Monument Valley, where several of my friends were running the 50K. I was going to tell the story of how I found it, why I signed up for it, and what I learned training for it. Instead, it’s an announcement of failure.
A week before the race, I came down with the flu. I was laid out for almost three entire days. After that I started improving, but it was slow. I could still hardly move by the end of the week. I’d get up and move around the house, then have to take a nap to recover.
I had to cancel the race.
I just can’t even bring myself to write more about it than that. I’m devastated. I contacted the race organizers, and they gave my a partial rollover toward the event next year, so I’ll still get to do it. I just don’t think it’s going to be the same as it would have been the first time around. Next year, I’ll have at least one 50 miler and maybe two under my belt. It won’t be the adventure into the unknown that it was going to be this year.
I’m still recovering from the flu and probably will be for a while—it really kicked my butt—but all I can think about right now is how I can knock out a 50 before summer sets in and get that monkey off my back. I don’t think it’s going to be pretty, but if I don’t do it, I think I’m going to be real unhappy about it.
I don’t usually post a lot on my Facebook page, but every once in a while I write something that I think is pretty good. I don’t know a) how many people are ever going to look at this blog, and b) how many of them are going to be my Facebook friends, so I’m just going to re-post this here.
Sorry, I just feel like I’ve been seeing this a lot lately.
The word you’re looking for, my friends, is “chafe.” One “f,” not two.
This is just a public service announcement because I see it spelled wrong so often. If you say “chaff,” you are (unintentionally) talking about the husks and shells of grains that get discarded when they are being processed for human consumption, or the anti-missile countermeasures that aircraft employ to avoid being blown up. “Chaffing” is teasing or mocking, or maybe something about cryptography and encryption that I don’t really understand.
Chafe. Not chaff. Chafing, not chaffing.
Banner image by coniferconifer, used under the Creative Commons license. This use does not constitute any endorsement by the photographer of the contents of this post.
The other day, someone I’d never met before and who I had exchanged only a handful of words and grunts with (he was the mover in charge of moving our office to a new location) looked at me and asked if I was a runner. I wasn’t even wearing one of my race shirts.
Is it dumb that I thought that was so awesome that I’m still happy about that almost a week later?