Swampy weather and late sunsets for the next sixty days. Some new stuff and some old stuff. Some rock, some hip hop and some ambient. This playlist is appropriate for listening poolside, at the beach, or just sweating through your clothes on the subway platform. Here we go–
Left: waiving at Britt after a rare evening race. Right: looking behind me before an early morning race.
This post is just an accountability update from my report at the end of March, where I announced to the innanetz my running goal to hit 1000 miles this year. Unfortunately, I got sick of running midway through April and gave up on that goal. I’m totally kidding about the ‘giving up’ stuff. To date, I have not fallen short of my 25m/week goal, nor have I had a month wherein I did not exceed the 100m/month goal. I have all of these mini goals to thank for keeping me on track for the 1000 mile goal.
For this quarter, I decided to do some races. I have kept them all short and sweet. The shortest has been 5k, and the longest, 10k. Running these distances in a competitive setting a couple weekends per month has proven to be incredibly fun. Since I don’t really have expectations, or (for the most part) anyone waiting at the finish line, the pressure to do well has been incredibly low. I have always loved the energy of road racing. To be honest, the NY and Chicago marathons are tied for the time I experiences the most euphoric ‘runner’s high.’ The beauty of running these shorties (esp the Central Park ones), is that I’m generally done, showered and, home ready for the rest of the day by 10 AM. And I mean, since I’m doing a few races, may as well do the 9+1 next year’s NY Marathon, right? I thought so, too. Two races to go.
What I have learned about myself and running in the past 90 days:
If I was perfectly on track with my goal right now, I would be at 500 miles for the year. As it stands, I broke the 700 mile mark last weekend. I’m feeling okay about the whole situation and enjoying running as much as I ever have. Crossing my fingers and toes that I’m not somehow jinxing myself by publishing any of this nonsense. Knock on wood that I can stay healthy and injury free for the rest of the year (and the rest of my life, haha). Hey, shoot for the moon, land in the starts, right?
Left: the most brutal foam roller I have ever used. Right: pre-run selfie in summer gear, 17 lbs lighter than Jan 1.
Hadn’t shot anything for Snob in a while. When I saw that “Beyond the Streets” was coming to my neighborhood, I raised my hand. I was able to get in the Thursday before it opened to the public, and it was mostly empty. There is a lot of good stuff from some of my favorite contemporary artists, many of them local. I would highly recommend checking it out, if you are into this sort of thing (or even if you are just dying to see what it looks like inside of that gorgeous new building at 25 Kent). Here are a few of the snaps.
Faile
The shark is by RISK. It is nicely juxtaposed with a tribute to the late great NEKST.
RISK
CR Styek III
Parla
Futura 2000
Bill Barminski
KATSU
Craig Costello
Bill Barminski
Takashi Murakami
Futura 2000
My left hand (and part of my left arm at 5 to 7 PM) with a time piece that I endorse.
I stated the case for a summer wristwatch a few years ago. I’ll admit that these little guys don’t usually last that long. But, that is part of the point, right? It is the watch that you put on when you are doing some sort of activity where there is a (high-ish) possibility that it gets smacked against something, or massively scratched while doing some manual work on something. No? Just me? Anyway, I was reading a certain website the other day and saw a deal that I could not refuse. This Japanese built, solar powered gem is the summer watch of my dreams. It comes with a chronograph and a sub-4 hundo pricetag. To be clear, this is not sponcon in any respect. In further honesty, I used to have an aversion to non-swiss watches with chrono. But, dude, I have had this thing for a few days now in gross NYC summer weather, and I fully endorse this piece. That’s all.
‘The Greater Journey’ by David McCullough, contains two of my favorite elements; history and Paris. Admittedly, I have read just about every book this guy has written. I like the way that he is able to take such a massive amount of historical information and present it in a way that reads like a novel rather than a text book. Acknowledging that this type of book is not for everyone, here is my take, in case it sounds interesting–
In the decades preceding the civil war, and up until WWI, scores of prominent Americans traveled to, and lived in Paris during a time that became an era of cultural cross pollination between French and American culture. This book details the experiences of several such Americans during their time in Paris. One (un)surprising takeaway from the book is that descriptions of Paris written by the Americans of yore, heavily overlap with my present day sentiments about the city. Bread and butter fa’ life!
Summer is all uponz. Enjoy these jams-
This album changed my life. I can’t believe that is has been 25 years. Amazon Music made a short video where Mike D, Ad Rock, and Mario Caldato Jr. describe the journey from Paul’s Boutique to Ill Communication. If you are a Beastie Boys fan, it is definitely worth the watch.
Hard to believe that we are already into month number 5 this year. Here are some May jams for your aural pleasure–
Some Jams. Enjoy-
Excerpted selfies from some garbage social media app circa Jan 2019
Guys, it seems like I might have become serious about running again. I have always been such a fair weather runner that there is at least one occasion in the last 18 months where I skipped a destination marathon (having already arrived at the destination) because of crappy weather. Around October of last year, I told myself that I was going to go ahead and try to run through the winter this time. This was not because I had delusions of grandeur that my middle aged self was about to unleash the record breaking runner that cold weather had always been stifling. It was more a result of the fact that I had finally joined a gym that was very close to my office and also very close to Central Park.
Prior to joining the gym (for my first time ever) my biggest obstacle to winter running was the fact that I was relegated to running either before or after work. This is no problem in the summer months. It gets light at 5:30 AM and dark at 9:30. Run at 5:30 AM and you can get those cooler 70 degree temps, then still have a few mins after the shower to stop sweating before putting on office attire. After work in the summer, also awesome. No sun equals no problem when the temps are headed back into the comfort zone from the oppressively hot zone. But in the winter…. forget about it. I’m not going to wake up extra early and get out of bed when it is pitch black and 15 degrees outside to run in the howling wind. Kudos to those who can do that. I know plenty of people who think that I’m a weakling with no self control for admitting as much. To those people I say, “you are probably right, and I wish I was more like you.”
Okay, so back to the subject. Running through winter was a daunting idea that I was really wary of. I had basically accepted the fact that after autumn races, I would stop running, put on excess body mass all winter and sort it out in the spring. The latter part of the aforementioned task becomes increasingly difficult as my age number ticks northward. So there I was last fall, already uncomfortable with the amount of body blah I was dealing with. For the record, last year was the first time in a while that I had not been training for a fall race. I don’t doubt that the lack of summer/fall training miles fueled my desire to get fit over the winter months.
As 2019 was approaching, I thought long and hard about what my fitness goals would be. I mean, dude, I’m getting slower not faster. I wasn’t about to set a goal to get a PR marathon (or any distance) or some other plausibly unrealistic goal. So instead, I decided that I was going to log 1000 miles in 2019. The last time I did this was exactly 10 years ago in 2009. The decade of separation was another reason that I felt like it was an appropriate time to bring back the 1 year/1k goal. I wanted to focus on logging miles, not being fast, or training for races, or any of that other stuff.
Doing basic math, a person only has to run 3ish miles per day to log 1k miles in a year. As a person whose schedule rarely allows me run every day of the week, thinking about it in those terms sounded daunting. Once I broke it down to weekly increments, much less so. 21 miles in seven days? No problem. Realistically, in the winter I’m not going to run less than 5 miles if I’m going to go through the trouble of putting on all of the gear. I mean, Shakespeare and his men didn’t put on tights for a 20 minute dip out-and-back. Another helpful fact is that one loop around central park is about 6.25 miles counting the entry and exit from 59th Street.
When thinking about a weekly goal, I also wanted to account for the inevitable fact that I will most likely have a sick day or two, as well as the possibility of injury. Further, there is bound to be some occasions when I’m traveling, etc., when running will just not be practical (like I said, not hardcore). In order to account for those days, I pegged my weekly level at 25 miles per week. Breaking that down, if I could get 4 laps in CP during the work week…. done. And if I can’t, I have the weekend make up the difference.
Also selfies of me: 11 lbs lighter and a minute per mile faster than in the photos above. Circa March 2019
I’m happy to report that at the end of the first quarter, I’m ahead of my mileage goal, and I have experienced some peripheral benefits along the way. First: my pace per mile has dropped roughly one minute since last Nov. This is without even doing any speed work at all, or really even pushing myself on runs. I’m still nowhere close to where I was in 2009. But it feels like I’m not completely sucking at running! Second: I have managed to drop bit of that body blah. Knocking on wood that I can keep the drive alive and have an equally positive Q2 update to post on July 1.
Here is where my next level nerditude comes out. Embedded below is my mile tracker (updated daily)–