onward

This will be the last post to this blog for a while. I am taking the time to heal a micro-fracture in my hip due to pushing it to limits in the final stretch of the marathon. If you'd like to follow my acrobatic and yogi training in the interim, go on and:

visit playflow.blogspot.com >>>

harder faster better stronger

Comrades, you are in my sights.

THE DAYS FOLLOWING YOUR FIRST RACE are their own brand of happy insanity. Like doing a run for the feeling you get hours later, you do your first race for the feeling you get in the days that follow. It doesn't matter the distance or how fast or slow you went. Cross your first finish line, and you'll have weeks of unexplained strength, unreasonable optimism, unbridled genius, and the hail of really good ideas around every corner. Within hours of finishing comes your first eureka: Can. Run. Ultra. That afternoon, you attempt a handstand push-up against the living room wall and seriously consider a second career as a world class circus performer. By the evening, you want to call the White House and see if anyone wants to come over for beer and poker. And of course, you want to run. More. Further. Longer. Faster.

In the weeks following my first race, my exaggerated enthusiasm for life in general expressed itself mainly in the form of mileage. I ran like crazy. Finishing a marathon race with more than 20,000 other participants in the nation's capital got me excited about running in a way I never was before. After a forced 18 hours of recovery, I leapt out the door, returning to the roads and fields again to visit my new favorite activity. My usual 6 miler with the occasional weekend 15 miler became my usual 10 miler with the regular weekend 20 miler. I began to keep track of 7 day totals — something I'd attributed previously to only fitness freaks and geeks. I ran twice in one day. I went as fast as I could. I began vigorous hill training. I ran like a giant child, happily sprinting across miles of dirt and pavement without a single dark thought. Final stretch sprints became mandatory.

During the latter half of my runs, I constantly recall the pivotal scene from the movie Gattaca, where the loser asks the winner of an extreme ocean swimming race: "How did you do it? How did you have the energy to make it back to shore?" and the winner responds calmly: "I never thought about making it back." Right On.

— liberally adapted from an article by Marc Parent,

Runners World, November 2010

of beer and burn

Rather than getting stored as fat, the main fate of alcohol is conversion into a substance called acetate.

A car engine typically uses only one source of fuel. Your body, on the other hand, draws from a number of different energy sources, such as carbohydrate, fat, and protein. To a certain extent, the source of fuel your body uses is dictated by its availability.

In other words, your body tends to use whatever you feed it. Consequently, when acetate levels rise, your body simply burns more acetate, and less fat.

The New Pornographers

Runners World is my new porn. 

For years I've read Yoga Journal and wanted to love it, wanted to want to read it, wanted to grok the articles... but they all seemed a little wishy washy. It is, after all, a magazine for women.

Now, I am actually compelled to read Runner's World, and the stories of hardships and victories, both physical and psychological, make me shed tears of empathy and joy.

How to Train for an UltraMarathon

ULTRA!

The Race of his Life

What he didn't understand was that the pain of running was beginning to replace the pain of being ignored and unloved. What he didn't understand was that he had developed an enormous capacity for enduring emotional distress, and that somehow that had translated into an equally capacious tolerance for grueling corporeal hardship. What he didn't understand was that he would spend the next decades seeking out more and more punishing physical challenges, and that those challenges would change him in ways he could never imagine -- and still doesn't totally comprehend.

— Runners World, Nov 2010

meaning of marathon: inner game

"The marathon is about being in contention over the last 10k. You have run all the strength, all the superficial fitness out of yourself, and it comes down to what you really have inside of you. To be able to draw deep and really bring something out of yourself is one of the most tremendous things about the marathon." 

—Rob deCastella