Yes, I am posting from a USCIS waiting room...

...But no, our interview has not yet been re-scheduled. We are just here to see if they can tell us when the damn thing will be re-scheduled for.

In other news, there should be a special word for the kind of contempt I felt driving home from the half-marathon on Saturday morning, around 9am or so, seeing people getting all dressed up in their gym threads, going out for 20 minutes of light cardio or whatever...we'd been awake for 4 hours and had already run more that. 13 miles when these people roll out of bed for their "exercise." Bastards.

How to cheer at a marathon

As we jogged down to M street on Sunday morning to cheer on a friend of Ms. Abstract Citizen’s in the Marine Corps Marathon, we pretty much decided that we would attempt a marathon before the end of 2009. I think it is a decision we will regret.

However, there’s another, bigger decision to be made: being there to cheer on a racer in particular isn’t an exact science. You’ll probably be standing out there for at least 30 minutes, maybe over an hour, waiting for your person to run by. The best way to make use of this time, if you don’t want to be a total prick, is to cheer on other runners.

You start out a little stiffly…sort of like the first song or two on the dance floor: it feels wrong, mechanical. Then things start to click. Your meek “Go runners!” becomes, “Alright people, you’re all looking fabulous out there. Team Asha, keep it up! Big Daddy, you got this! Shirley and Kate, keep it coming!” Of course, this is only made possible when people wear names or team info on their shirts – something I never do. It had never occurred to me that a runner might do this as a courtesy to the spectators – to give them something to do – rather than out of a desire to hear your name screamed out by strangers.

It is funny, though – especially when you can tell people have forgotten that their names are on their shirts, and they are startled to hear their own names being called out by strangers.

So, name on the shirt? Or go anonymous? I feel like this is crossing some sort of line – not as grave as, say, starting a facebook page, but perhaps more akin to using odious abbreviations when sending text messages. Is wearing my name on my shirt in conflict with my insistence on using proper punctuation and spelling out whole words when sending a text? Curse your upwardly contagious narcissism and love of convenience, Gen Y!

Another half-

Ms. Citizen, no doubt encouraged by her strong solo performance at the Army Ten Miler while I was in Montreal, believes we can have another go at a half-marathon. I didn’t want to comment on our previous performance here until I knew whether we would have a chance to redeem it, but the truth is that very few things are as oppressive and disappointing as a bad long run.

We were spoiled, though. We had come out of a 5k looking forward to an 8k. Then a 10k, then a ten-miler. Then, finally, a half-marathon. Up to the half-, we had gotten better and better with every race. Our pace was improving, and we can honestly look back at a few those – like the Cherry Blossom – and feel the exhilaration of wildly outperforming our expectations. Especially because we started out poorly – unfocused, cold, shivering as a result of the awful weather. And at about an 11-minute clip. Around mile 3, we both realized that we desperately needed to pee – which cost us another 2-3 minutes (I timed it – it was a long one.)

We shot out of that restroom along the tidal basin as if out of a cannon, though, and proceeded to knock the crap out of the pavement – probably pacing around 8:30 or so – to finish the race at a 9:50 overall. Almost as thrilling: having a large Irish breakfast and three Guinness after the race. Also almost as thrilling: sleeping for three hours after the breakfast.

But so the Virginia Beach half-marathon was the opposite. We just never clicked into the race. By mile 6, we were already way off our ten-miler time, and it was obvious we wouldn’t be able to make it back. Months of preparation, and there you are, an hour into the race, an hour to go, and you basically know that finishing is not going to be a relief, it’s not going to be invigorating – it’s just going to be a huge disappointment. The panic is a further distraction, a nagging reminder that you are about to underperform, and motivating yourself in the face of that is hard.

We had good excuses - oppressive humidity and heat, for example. People often die at this race, and we saw dozens of runners being helped with oxygen masks, or being carried off to the shoulder. But that wasn't it. I think we just got beaten, psychologically, before the race ever started.

I was a little down on running for a few weeks afterwards, and we basically haven’t gone on a run longer than 6 miles or so since then. But the promise of another half- in the spring is good enough for me. It’ll, weirdly, help get me through the winter – it’ll keep me honest in terms of going to the gym (especially after long nights at Wizards games drinking two-for-one Sierras courtesy of my man Ron) and it’ll offer us a chance to finish the damn thing in just a shade over two hours. I hope.

And if that doesn’t happen, I’m going to be a sorely frustrated runner. Again.

humbling though

Olympic record for the marathon, set this year: 2:06'32.

Our finish time for a HALF marathon, if we keep our target pace: 2:10'00.

Before congratulating us, remember that someone can run twice as fast as we hope to for twice the distance!

closing in

Ominously, the last run before the big one was not good. Slept restlessy, only sneaking a cat nap during the two hours between 4 and 6 on account of stress, whatever else. The weather for the weekend in VA beach looks to include some rain, so I guess it's good that I ran in the rain this morning. I shuffled through thirty minutes and gave up.

A great trick that I learned from E(M)GK is to keep your old running shoes around when you buy a new pair, and wear the old ones out when it's crappy to make sure you'll get your 300-400 miles out of the new pair. Not sure what to do about Sunday thought - it seems really foolish not to wear my newest pair, which have fewer than 15 miles on them, but not at the cost of needing to replace them that much sooner.

Also, maybe I'm in the minority, but I really feel like the DNC has gotten very little mileage in my household. Political inclinations aside, I was just out-tv'd by the Olympics and the knowledge that football season is almost upon us.

So, I need to sleep, but I've found that sometimes fatigue is a nice distraction while running - it actually allows the mind to wander from the body a bit more freely. And with the rain this morning, I was definitely stumbling down some bizarre mental corridors, only to come back and realize that because my glasses were wet and I couldn't see very far ahead of me, I would have no idea where I was. Pleasantly disorienting.

Thinking, running

Thoughts during a ten mile run.


-why do adults who are not engaging in athletic activities wear sporty digital watches?

-god, the mouth waters thinking of sushi nippon, for some reason not very popular with these yelp types in the link above

-ok, so I understand the libertarian position that ANY government involvement in a field results in less freedom. It's a simplistic position - as simplistic as the belief that any government intervention in an industry is a good thing - but let's take it as it's pitched. By the libertarian logic, then, universal health care is a government intrusion that will hamper the consumer driven health care market place, resulting in fewer options, more regulation, etc. However, isn't a society where people are reluctant to leave a job and start their own business, or become consultants, or even just move to a new job because they might not have the same health insurance plan or because their coverage might change - isn't that society a lot less free as a result of the lack of universal health care? Isn't this one of those cases where a government program actually makes individuals in a society more free to pursue their own dreams and livelihoods?

-and, to hit back to the other side, if pay-for-performance in health care reimbursement is a democratic initiative - isn't this applying to health care the same principles that democrats oppose so strongly when it comes to school vouchers? Non-performing hospitals or health providers are the ones who need the funding the most, and under this plan, they will be the first to lose funding.

-ugh, running uphill. Keep all joints lined up. Don't lean forward.

-there are too many people on the rock creek park trails.

Embassy loop in the rain

Saturday Six Miler