June 19th, 2009
Dude walks into a bar and says “Gimmie a bottle of tequila and a shot of loneliness.” The next morning he wakes up cursing a huge hangover and bitches about how he’s sick of his job on a no-name blog that’s about nothing but his job.
Later that day afterthe acute pain has left his poor shrinking brain, the guy goes for a 30 minute workout and ends up in the mountains for hours chewing on the uncertainty of the future and the nature of happiness.
The next day he wakes up after 10.5 hours of sleep to an inbox is full of raging positive feedback, and it keeps rolling in. His whippy bitch sesh gets listed on some huge “what’s happening now” website thing and the whole deal explodes into a world-wide discussion about “going out there and gettin’ it.”
Nerd.
Reality must have a finite value. Dreams, on the other hand, are obviously utterly invaluable.
Continuous Combustion and More Continuous Combustion
Acute Pain
I rolled the nuts off my ankle last week on Mount Marathon and I haven’t been able to train for like five days (until yesterday). It takes all of my energy just to keep from rolling it when I go on runs and stuff, and I have to walk gingerly like a two year old whenever the slope gets steep. Yesterday on O’Malley I rolled the other ankle twice and both times it scared the [crap] out of me.
That along with having a very tight right patella tending is sending me some very strong signals about the overall strength of my body. If a little rock or something so much as taps the swollen spot it hurts like hell for half an hour. This is BS – your body should not be working like this. It should be resilient and should bounce back laughing in the face of injury.
I can run on flats just fine, but that’s not where my heart is. I can’t even run for five minutes on that bike path out my door cause I’ve been using it for years. Bogus. My season is kind of bunk, I think, but when you can’t do anything about it that’s OK. I think I’m still set to run about as fast as I did last year, which still does NOT suck.
I realized that since January I’ve sort of naturally slid into a state of athletic vacation. Hiatus, I like that. I still have to get outside every day and can hardly go hiking without cranking it up super hard because some things never change. But that doesn’t mean you have to think about racing and schedules and crap.
And now injury feels great. Woah.
Dust
Here’s a scary excerpt from an informational I was reading from my asthma doctor about Dust Mites (I have an allergic reaction to them):
“House dust is a mixture of many kinds of waste materials. A speck of dust may contain fabric fibers, human skin particles, animal dander, microscopic creatures called mites, bacteria, parts of cockroaches, mold spores, food particles and other debris.”
Sweet. I’ll get the duster, dear.
Nordic Skiing Blogs
Here is a list of blogs from people that like nordic skiing on blogspot: Click here and here.
Ruben Gonzalez
If you like Cuban music, then this guy is for you. The recording environment was very live-room, and I like to turn it up a little with the windows and doors open when I listen to it.
June 20th, 2009 at 9:52 pm
Wild Eyed Nature Boy,
W Mountain, Gothic to Crested Butte, Mt. Marathon?????
Been there, done that!
Uhhh…”dude” if you are rolling your ankle on that scree coming down Mt. Marathon, you weren’t getting after it rather you second guessed going for it, as in tentative. To smoke it down this scree filled Mtn., like a big mtn skier, you have to commit, land, plant it, slide… and push off for the next sequence. It helps to have panache and dance down this stuff rather than locking it up. It also helps to have a little alpine ski racing experience to run down a mtn with complete reckless abandon. Scree is easy compared to say running as fast as you can down a mtn. through a big boulder field.
Kind’ve an irony for the “Wild Eyed Nature Boy” eh?
June 20th, 2009 at 10:36 pm
Actually my ankle buckled hopping on the last 5 foot jump on the clif. The reason it’s so bad is because I rolled it hard a month before on a trail run. I need to do more balance exercising
June 22nd, 2009 at 3:22 am
Actually Dave I forgot to finish that reply. I like your idea of cruising like an alpine skier down the scree. I can really move down that stuff, but over the more technical and rocky parts I have this mild fear of heights that kicks in and makes me wobbly.
“Complete Reckless Abandon,” I like that. When I was in high school that’s exactly what I had and I could BLAST downhills! After a couple of rolled ankles and shoulder dislocations and maybe a little maturity I’ve slowed down to this pathetic grandma pace. WTF?
But yeah, there’s something about thinking like an alpine skier that helps the flow a bit. Braun Kopsack made 500 feet on every 100 of mine coming down Matanuska Peak last year. That was a wake-up call.
June 22nd, 2009 at 11:31 am
For some reason that I can’t remember, I walked away from
college track and cross country for about 2 years, you can ask Vandenbusch about that. Skied CB everyday with my alpine racer buddies skiing the Mtn. (I think North Face?) long before it had a lift. Next year decided to transfer to CU/Boulder and walk on the to Alpine ski team under Marolt. First order of business, dispense with the Norwegian’s on the first team time trial of 5 miles out at Boulder Reservoir. Rumor buzzed that campus pretty good the next week, i.e. “an alpiner just wasted on the blond square heads, etc…”
Made the alpiners proud! Next they taught me how to scream down a mtn at mach using alpiner technique of hip flexion, quad compression and anticepated the next move two steps ahead, (pick your line) and definately push the clutch in LET IT GO! Steep single track or down an open field it did not matter accelerate to the edge!!!! Mt. Marathon is definately a race that can be won by adopting this technique.
Fast forward decades later to 2003, overweight out of shape mid 40’s I decide to have a go at the Sun Valley Back Country Run, a race I used to own the course record on too many decades ago. I am killing myself hauling my baggage up the trail. Some SVSEF kiddies are dogging me pretty good. One of them a very young Mikey Sinnot. Once up top, time to push the clutch in, auf weidersein das kinder!
Finnished covered in dirt as I took a digger halfway down but those kids were no where to be found as I cruised in 5th place overall.
Mikey can kill me now on this run as he is the defending champ and no longer a young tad pole. But I do smile at how age and experience overcame youthful exhuberence on that day.
Cheers!
June 22nd, 2009 at 11:35 am
Oh btw, dude, in alpine ski racing we “pre jumped” rather than went for big air. Just slowed us down hurtling down the mtn. So absorb energy rather than pushing off hard as you go off the ledge and anticepate the landing.
June 22nd, 2009 at 2:26 pm
I had no idea you ran at Western! Maybe you wrote that at one point and I forgot, but I ran the 98 cross season and got kicked off after getting overtrained and injured and being too bored to bike and swim. What year did you run for him?
June 22nd, 2009 at 7:07 pm
I was there ‘76/77. We were the first W team to qualify for NAIA Nationals. As a freshman I was amazed at 100 plus mile weeks and intervals almost every afternoon. We got very fast and yup we got overtrained bigtime, the implosion was spectacular. Western went on to win many consecutive National Championships in the 80’s I recall.
Adams State dominated back in the 70’s they had a guy by the name of Pat Porter who became World Cross Country Champion. Kerry Lynch was on the XC ski team at Western back then.
As a kid I spent my summers living in Tin Cup, Colo.
I pulled a tour of living in a tree working at Seward Fisheries, Seward, Alaska, unloading boats 12 to 16 hours a day and running Mt. Marathon circa 78? or 79? on the random off day.
On another note it is devastating and it has troubled me all day to think of the pain Willie Neal’s family is suffering and what was such a bright, live life to the fullest young man. It strikes a rather personal cord with me.
He will not be forgotten!
June 22nd, 2009 at 8:55 pm
Which Willie Neal? What happened?