Smacking you in the face with my glove

I propose a new contest:

He who dies with the most T-Shirts, wins

free t shirts from athletic events, of course. I had this idea when I went to the pool to soak my legs because of running, a nice, easy, 20 minute cool down. But the girl working there says I get a free t shirt if I swim 233 laps, in honor of the Marine Corps' 233 birthday. I'm a sucker for t shirts, girls, and absurd and impromptu athletic challenges, so I signed up and set a modest goal of 50 laps for the day. This was a mere 5 times the most laps I had done since...senior year of high school. But who cares, I did it in just over an hour(This, after running 10 miles an hour earlier, and then playing 1 hour of intense basketball, at which I dominated(gangly arms are a plus)) Since then I've done 100 more, I plan to finish tomorrow and get my t shirt, and then sport it all over base.

So do everything and everything to get t shirts, medals of course have the 'bling' factor, but I don't like to do laundry so many shirts comes in handy.

Moto Run

With the marathon 3 weeks out, it was time to pull in some serious miles. I skipped my long run on sunday, because A) I went to mass (with a chick, no less) and B) we had PT that day. I have run before PT a few times now, 4 or 5 miles and it actually makes me better at basketball and soccer which were the PT for those days. But Sunday's run was, naturally, long. The longest in fact-20 miles. And there was no way I was even going to be able to stand up for PT after a run like that. So I put it off for today (Monday) I woke up early, ate a bagel with peanut butter, and headed out. The longest course I have here is 8 miles, so the plan was to run this course twice, and then half of it once. It's a very nice course, a paved path, flat grass on the side if that's your pleasure, and water fountains every 3/4 of a mile or so. So I went out, had my goo around mile 6, turned around and did it all again, more goo around 12, turned around a third time (by now the landscaping crew recognized me fairly well) and when i headed for home with just 2.5 miles left, I began to feel...odd. I would feel lightheaded, but with a headache, and violently physically ill, all at once, in the snap of your fingers. It was brief, but so intense I thought I would hurl in front of the roving pack of weed-whackers, or simply pass out next to the path. My head felt fresh, my eyes and mind were alert, my form perfect. I kept a steady 7:20-7:40 pace the entire time, despite hip pain, but I could feel that the disparity between my outward appearance and my inner workings was growing at an alrming rate. I practically staggered in to my room, somehow I had managed to make it up 3 flights of stairs. I fell into my chair and was too overcome with exhaustion to eat the hamburgers I had prepared for just such an occasion. after 30 minutes in the chair, not moving, I got up, showered and went to chow.

Some of you reading this may think I'm a little sissy, 20 miles is practically nothing after all. Consider though, that I have been training seriously for only about 3 weeks, and, not one to do things in half measures, I jumped right into the schedule as if I had been running steadily for months. I upped my mileage by 6 miles from last week, 3 times what is recommended on a week to week basis. Quite simply, I had overstepped my bounds, and my body hated me for it. I'm either to stubborn or too stupid to ever quit anything I do, so I just kept plugging away. The odd thing is, now that I have sufficiently stuffed my face with swiss steak, mashed potatoes, and 3 helpings of italian pasta and veggies, I feel...fine. My leg hurts, but I'm not limping, I'm tired but no more so than after a 5 miler. All this leads me to the quite natural and frankly obvious assumption that I AM THE GREATEST HUMAN BEING ALIVE. Of course, this statement is entirely false, but if my mouth keeps saying it maybe one day my body will believe it.

The 20 mile run has always been a morale booster. I have told myself 5 times now that if I can run 20, what's another (paltry) 6.2? I even told myself once that if I can run 20, whats another 11 (turns out another 11 is a big deal) But we runners have an odd way of rationalizing things, especially during a long run when your brain doesn't work well enough to realize that 2+2 is NOT 22.

Pain is an affirmation of life.

Pointless Poll

I realized the other day how much music affects my running. The chill, more relaxing, thoughful songs that drive me at night only bring me down when I run during the day. So I throw on Flogging Molly, Yellowcard and Rise Against, and suddenly I run with perfect form, I feel immensely happy, and every run becomes an impromptu tempo run. So, what are everyone's favorite running songs/genres?

Pain in the ass

I have confirmation of my suspicions. I have thought for a few weeks now that I have an aggravated piriformis muscle. My suspicions arose when I logged onto runnersworld.com and looked through their injury prevention page. The piriformis stuff was usually titled "pain in the butt" so that was a bit of a giveaway. I've been struggling through it for about 3 weeks now. I started in pensacola, but was bareable, I thought it was from constantly running on hard surfaces. It got to the point however, where I couldn't bend at the waist, because the pain spread to my back. I stopped running, I biked and used the elliptical, but this only made it worse. I was waking up in pain, and got so pissed off that I went through the internet looking for solutions. They all said stop running.
I wasn't going to stop running.
If necessary, I could make city of oaks a "exercise in pain management" as ALow once put it. I can deal with that kind of pain, I don't want to...but I could if I had to. But aside from the same stretches I had been doing to no effect, one site said to ice it. DUH! how come I didn't think of that? So I walked (painfully) to the commissary about a mile away and bought some mixed veggies. I sat on them for 20 minutes of so and felt great afterwards. I can bend over to tie my boots! But this brings me to a subtopic:
We runners are a curious lot.
I'm sitting on bags of frozen vegetables. Lacking a foam roller, I used a broom stick to iron out my hamstrings. My roommates looked on with wonderment. They thought I had lost my mind. I do odd stretches at odd hours of the day(and night). But until they feel the pain that I do, the desire and drive that compels me to endure so that I can punish my body, they will fail to understand my love affair and ever increasing mastery of bipedal motion.