There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.

So begins Chapter 82 of Moby Dick, a slog of a book about an ultimately futile pursuit, chronicled with spectacularly granular detail, yet with a scale and reverence bordering on religious.

(Sound like anything else?)

5:10 road mile. Not what I wanted, the two climbs, the wind, yada yada. There are always reasons not to have run faster. Anyway, some things.

Swimming teaches this well, but so does fast running: faster ain't harder, faster is faster. Tense and flail and you're not going to have a good time.

A guy ran 4:20, who was close to sub-4 at KU, a couple years ago. That looks really fast, up "close".

I talked to a lot of people. I never need reminded that this is a great running community, but I like to be all the same.

So, it was fun. I'm enjoying running and racing right now. That's a boring sentence, but it's true.

Oh, also: my ankle feels fine. Weirdly, only volume seems to agitate it. I can run for over an hour at any pace, no problem. Close to 90 minutes, though...

2017 Pi Day Half

So I did win, after all. Sometimes you wake up feeling good, and it's all pretty easy. Those are good days, and I'm growing increasingly comfortable with my relative inability to predict them--much less conjure them. Still, Winter in March, a cold wind ripping through the trees, snow falling during the last mile... I'll take all of that, whenever I can get it. In general, I really do just love this race. It's very, very local; virtually the entire field is Lawrence, not even "greater Kansas City", but there's something to be said for intimate, family-reunion type races.

Some things:

My workouts have been road/track exclusive for the past few months, and it will never not be shocking how much slower real trail running actually is. 1:28:35, 6:46 pace, is still conversational--and yet the legs have to navigate banked trail, 180-degree turns, and of course, hills. The course was designed for mountain bike racing, so it really is the turns that stand out. There are a lot of them, and many are quite acute. So, my hips and ankles feel it.

I wore the Nike Zoom Streak XC, which didn't help in the "keep the legs feeling fresh" department. Too little shoe for a half, and I don't really know what I was thinking, since I've never gone past 10K in them. They did allow for this cool picture, though.

Anyway I've got a road mile on Friday, which has only one turn, but it's 180-degrees, right in the middle, which should be horrible but fun in a masochistic sort of way. There will be very fast people who will pull impossibly far away, given the distance, and it will not be conversational. I'll probably find something to say after the fact, though.

Training--more or less--for that and racing this half, I'm still in a place where I can imagine a perfectly fulfilled running life racing only within those margins. I'd expected some lingering disappointment at not having finished my attempt at a 100, but there's nothing. I still don't care what my road marathon PR is, either. But I do care that I can pop my ankle like most people pop their knuckles, right where I sprained it last fall. It gets sore, too, every so often, and I'm beginning to suspect it'll just be one of this "things" most runners eventually get--lingering not-quite injuries that nag perpetually. That anxiety--granted, of course one can get hurt training for and racing shorter distances--combined with my present fondness for harder running means that, while I have nothing like a goal moving forward, I know roughly what I'm going to be doing.

Pi is not endless--though we cannot articulate the border after which the stream of numbers dries up, such a point must exist. Namely, Pi is between 3.1 and 3.2, and there is a point where 3.2 becomes 3.2; so, anything that was something else before that must cease, in order to bring about the immutable reality of 3.2. Perpetuity is not, in this case, possible, though the post-decimal notation is so long as to seem infinite.

Half marathons, though, are a determined distance, and the time it takes one to traverse that mileage is equally measurable. So too is it possible to grant numbers and even values to the order in which one accomplishes this.

So, there is a Pi Day Half Marathon this weekend, and I'm running it for the 5th time, hopefully faster than ever before, and faster than anyone else for the 4th consecutive year. I've run with the guy most likely to threaten this outcome once a week for about 6 years, which is a lot of miles, a lot of time, though I don't count either habitually.

The distance and the terrain are at a(n un)comfortable intersection of our abilities. Me: 5'10, 145 lbs, with a 30 inch inseam and tendency, lately, for short, fast, and hard work. I've really targeted a road mile, which is in another week. Him: 5'11, 125 lbs, with a 34 inch inseam and a tendency to tempo everything everyday. He probably has a couple marathons a month for the next few years, though I don't know for certain. I'd intended that as hyperbole when I typed it, but I have to say it might not be. Taken together: If it were a shorter race, I'd win; if it were longer, he would.

It's gonna be a race, though, and it's going to hurt quite a bit, which is not an easily quantifiable thing.

Other things:

--I've tried to read less training things. Fiction makes for better mental health, which tends to positively impact training anyway. I'm probably going to violate this condition regardless, since I always do.

--I swam 1000 meters last night. I've done this a few times recently. I don't have any interest in doing a triathlon. (Really.) It simply struck me that I'm not very good at it, that I probably couldn't manage a mile if I had to, and that bothered me. Admittedly, this is a bit stupid, but total incompetence in any physical capacity bothers me. I try to maintain a five rep max on the bench of at least my bodyweight, and a (also five-rep) deadlift of 1.5 times it. Neither mark is impressive in any conventional sense, but it feels vaguely and arbitrarily enough. Taken all together, this post could sound very Crossfit-inclined. I'm not, though, promise. I just figure I'm not a good enough runner to justify being awful at everything else. If it sounds like I'm a somewhat unfocused exerciser who mostly focuses on running but is not as dedicated to being a runner as he could be, well, that's probably true, and also ok.

--I was a barista for a long time--this was a reasonably well trafficked coffee blog, years ago, hence the name--and so qualify as a coffee snob by most metrics. For cheap office coffee, though, Dunkin' Donuts and 8 o'clock are perfectly adequate. I'm drinking a lot of cheap office coffee, lately.

--I tried to see if I could make a top 10 list of my favorite albums of 2016. I made it to 35. I don't know how anyone pares it down to such a fine edge. I've basically indulged in old black and death metal since.