Squave

Running:
4 miles in 41:00. Avg HR 145-150 (75-78% max) at 6.1 mph (This same run used to be at under 5.5 mph)

15 minutes in the sauna. Death Valley is going to be hot.

I'm amazed at how a child's brain works. If I could have 10% of the learning capacity that my son possesses, I could be so much better at almost anything I do. He can remember words from books we have read, and although, I have read them several times, I wouldn't be able to recite anything from memory. He is a sponge. He picks up on everything. He is at such a fun age. I'll miss it when he wants nothing to do with me.

Before my son could say "Square" he would ask us to draw shapes. Square, came out as "Squave" and Circle was "Kir Kir Kir"

Rain Run

Barrington Run with Tapirs 12.5 miles in 1:55. The run started with a light mist and ended with a steady rain. I came home and did virtually nothing productive.

Fennel a la Kri@#$

Fennel
Olive Oil
Sea Salt
Coarse Black Pepper
Parmesiano Reggiano
Panko
Garlic-one clove

Heat oil with garlic. Add sliced Fennel. Saute with salt and pepper. Take care not to overcook the fennel. It should still have a crispy crunch when bitten into.

Plate the dish and top with Parmesiano Reggiano and Panko to taste.

One Fennel bulb serves two as an appetiser. It serves one of you like to supersize things.

my wife saw Brokeback Mountain today. Review in the future, if i feel like writing what she said.

Fennel

No running, as planned. I'm about 90% so I'm a go for Sunday's 12 miler with Tapir friends.

Parent-Teacher Conference- 30 minutes of overly positive comments about our son. We live in an age of no one losing or winning. No one is below average. The average is superior. The thing is I bet there are parents cause a lot of trouble if their kids are criticized. The world is a hard place. Might as well get used to the fact that everyone can't win. I guess they can learn that when they are 3 or 4.

I went to Whole Foods and bought a (an) fennel. I don't know what I'm going to do with it, but I thought it was about time I bought some. I'm 35, soon to be 36 and have never cooked with fennel.

I then went to Moosejaw to check out things I do not need. I found 2 things that will be handy during my crewing of Badwater. One is for my daily coffee fix (This and this) and the second is in case I need to cut some rope or kill a snake.

Homeopathy

No Running. - Zicam/Cold-EZ seems to be working to either blunt the full fury of this cold or It's just a mild one. I'm back to about 80%, having not dipped really low into a real illness.

Wednesday night, I flew to St. Louis for a quick one day conference/meeting with a company we are contemplating buying some equipment from. We watched a live case from Milan, Italy on Thursday morning and I flew back Thursday afternoon.

I think I'll take off from running until Sunday and run the 12 miler planned in Barrington if I feel better.

Other things for the weekend:
1) Parent teacher conference Saturday , for a 2 year old. Bonus, we get to sit on those small little kid chairs while trying to have an adult conversation with the teachers.
2) Nik get's his hair cut. Picture the crocodile hunter with his mates wrestling a 20 foot croc. That's about what it takes to give Nik a haircut. I wouldn't bother, but his sideburns are giving Spock a run for his money.

Misery in Missouri

Monday - 30 minutes on the bike. core/ab work and 20 minutes in the Sauna.
Tuesday - throat hurt. Feel like I'm coming down witha cold. Zicam and ColdEZ
Wed- leave for St. Louis for a 1 day business trip. Ireally don't want to go. I am feeling worse, but still hopeful that I can shake this before the weekend run on Sunday.

A and N are back in town. Nik is really at a fun age, but there is little free time at nights until he goes to sleep.

I am soooo glad I am married.

More mundane musings

Running:

Saturday

10 miles- treadmill, 1:30-ish. My gym has a 30 minute limit on CV equipment. I stayed on for 1:30. I’m bad. I know it. That was a very boring 10 miles.

Sunday:

5 miles in 54:31 (HR avg 142). 20 minutes in the Sauna.

No kid deserves that

While running, I was listening to CNN present a piece on a town in the mountains of Pakistan that was devastated by an earthquake. The people that live there have not left, due to their poverty and fears of their meager land being taken from them if they do not stay. It happens to be the middle of winter, with no heat and barely any shelter. That’s if you call a small piece of tarp that is falling over from the weight of several inches of snow. Everyone there is suffering with little aid. Children don’t have enough to eat. They are cold. They are sick. There is no medicine for their illness. Mnay have died. It physically makes me hurt to see that. As a parent, the thought of seeing your child hurting or dying with no power to do anything makes me ill. I went through a recent thing with Nik (coffee burn0 that wouldn’t even share the same universe with the suffering these people experience. I feel hypocritical, since this is going on in many places and NOW I’m outraged b/c it was on CNN? Money doesn’t seem enough. Can we all agree that no matter what politics are in play, that these children should have a chance at a better life?

I want a plasma. No Sir, you want a LCD.

I was set to buy a TV today. Plasma. Went to ABT Electronics. This is where I want to go to when I die. They convinced me that LCD is the way to go. Now I have to go back to doing research.

I like being married a lot more than being single. I’m only 24 hours into my bachelor weekend. It’s boring. It’s nice for a short while, but if this was my life 24/7. No Thank you. Saturday night: sitting in a smoky bar with very nice people, but waking up smelling of smoke, dry burning eyes, sore throat. I’m glad I don’t do that much anymore.

Gimme the Damn Pizza

All I wanted was one simple Margherita Pizza.

The Wall Street journal had an article on pizza. In this article, they recommend the new "hot spots" for pizza in several major cities. (They glaringly omitted metropolises in Iowa for some reason) in lieu of the old favorites. I decided to go to this place. I even google mapped this place prior to leaving work.

The weather in Chicago was turning very bad by the hour. When I left work, it was raining fairly hard, but turning to ice/snow during my drive. WE were supposed to get 5-7 inches of snow. Thus, time was of the essence since I normally have a 40 minute commute, and on Friday at 5 pm with snow, almost certainly much more.

I get to the exit, I think is the one I am supposed to take at 5:45pm. I call in the order by phone, and they say it will only be 10 minutes. As I come to the intersection, I realize, I have been mistaking the street I'm on, for the one I needed to be on. I have a vague Idea where I need to go, but since I was in my wife's car (it has the baby seat and I dropped them at the airport this am), I didn't have access to the GPS system that I have in my car. I eventually get to my destination after making an ever widening spiral, at 6:30. I go to the bar to pick up my order, and they look inside their little Dominoes insulated box, and I can see there ain't no pizza!. They huddle together and come back to me with "It'll be ready in a few minutes" to which I gave a death look of Shiva. I said I ordered it 40 minutes ago. The look in the box again. No Pizza. "It'll be ready in a few minutes"

I ask "Do you mean it's already in the oven and it's almost ready, or you haven't made it yet and it will take another 10 minutes"

"We haven't made it yet"
Me: "Forget it. I'm double parked outside and I can't wait"

So, I go to another place, eat dinner, come home just as we really start accumulating snow around 8 15 pm.

I watched Mystic River and had a beer. Pretty exciting start to Bachelor Weekend 2006.

Make me cry, Dammit

I actually have some people reading my blog. I guess, you don't really start a blog without the expectation that someone would read it. It isn't like a personal journal with a lock on it that you hide under your bed like a 15 year old girl. However, it still leads to some apprehension and "performance anxiety" knowing that to some extent, people read your blog for entertainment. I hope it won't be too boring. While it will chronicle my preparations for my marathons and Badwater, those are later in the year and for now, it will be more heavily weighted towards my life and as the summer rolls in, will become more running-centric.

Last night, I finished watching Running on the Sun. I guess it was ok, but I was hoping for more personal and human drama. I was hoping for more storytelling. The overcoming of odds. The sacrifices to get to Badwater. Not just the agony shots of the run and blister popping. I needed some reason to root for these people. While I may know what went into their preparations, most would not. Even for us lowly marathoners, how many of us have colleagues or friends that can't fathom the sacrifices one has to make to train for a marathon. If they saw what we do as our close friends and spouses do, they would have a different perspective. That is what I wanted to see. I wanted a reason to cry when they reached the finish line.

My wife and son left for Boston this morning. I have until Monday by myself in the big city. So many options that I am paralyzed into indecision.

Running on the Sun

Yesterday, I took my son to the "Little Gym". This is a class my wife usually takes him to during the day. Occasionally, we take him to the 6:30pm class, which I can attend. Imagine a huge room with mats, and gymnastic equipment, all padded and 15 2 year olds running around the room, running into each other, bouncing off walls and equipment, screaming, crying, thuds, crashes. The teacher had everyone sit in a circle with their kid. My son doesn't sit for more than 1 second, so fortunately we were first. She goes around and asked my son "What's your name" He answers "My name is Nik"

The teacher goes to the next person. By this time, my son is running circles around this circle. But, each time the teacher asks another child their name, my son comes rushing back in front of the teacher like a laser guided Patriot missile, and says "My name is Nik".. He seemed to think this teacher wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer by having to ask his name 15 times. It was amusing. Yeah, he may need medication some day.

I watched, Running on the Sun. ( 1 hour of it). It chronicles the running of the Badwater Ultramarathon. It gives an inside view of some of what we will be encountering. I don't think that I'll get the full effect, until I get there. But, so far it seems more manageable than my imagination had made it out to be. It's easy for me to say that, since I'm only crewing it.

Another full night of sleep for my son and wife. The leave for Boston tomorrow morning.

Our hospital hired some outside consultants to help "rebuild" cardiology at my institution. I spent from 7-8am with them. They'll probably repackage all the info we gave them into a nice 300 page binder and make it look like they came up with some groundbreaking information that the institution could have gotten by just asking us in the first place.

Selling the Sizzle

Tuesday: 4 miles on the treadmill, abs/core and 15 minutes in the Sauna
Wednesday morning: Upper body weights and Sauna.

Yesterday, we had a photo shoot in our EP Lab for a new brochure, promoting our department's electrophysiology services. We were gowned and gloved and had masks on as we would for a real case. One of our nurses played the role of patient. The photographers put my fellow and I on opposite sides of the table. In addition, the monitors had images from two completely different types of cases that we do. We look totally gay, looking longingly into each others eyes from across the table. Plus, anyone who knows anything about EP would see that the room is set up only for photograph purposes. It looks good though. I guess it's the sizzle that sells.

Bonus- Our son slept through the night. My wife likes sleep, so she should be in a good mood today.

This morning, I knew that my first case wouldn't start until at least 10:00am. So, instead of getting to work by 7:15 as I usually do, I went to the gym and took the train in.

Free At Last. Thank God We're Free At Last

Rest Day.

MLK- what can I say that hasn't already been said. I cannot fathom what it must have been like to be an African American in this country in the 60s. I've lived in Dallas and atlanta and have seen remnants of the old attitudes. The incredible strength to take on a system, while wrong, that was populated by people who were not going to give in to you, no matter what. On top of that, your life was always in danger. When you think of the holidays we celebrate, It's a shame that this one isn't universally treated as a holiday.

At work, I did a case and has some bad veggie sandwiches. My stomach was a little upset for the rest of the day, while I worked on my database. I picked up Thai food on the way home and had a fun evening of playing with Nik. He is at the really fun age where he can talk to you, is learning new words and really engages you in his activities. I really have to watch what I say around him now. A leaves for Boston with Nik on Friday and returns on Monday.

9.5 miles at Waterfall Glen with some friends. Easy relaxed run. The rest of the day was spent watching football:

Colt vs Steelers- Choke artists again. The Colts almost had a gift handed to them. Cowher's bonehead move to go for a touchdown almost backfired. I guess running the bus isn't considered a high risk play. How exactly didn't;t a cornerback outrun or out-juke a quarterback? Vanderjagt? no VanderSux.

Bears vs. Panters. Steve Smith-WOW. If I thought the Bears would score 21 points, I'd have thought they would win. too bad the defense sucked today. Grossman showed me a little bit of what he could become if he actually makes it through a season.

I must save $2

Friday-Saturday Training:
3 miles on the Treadmill
30 minutes on the stationary bike while reading "Microsoft Access for dummies"
15 minutes in the Sauna

Nothing on Saturday

Friday-Saturday, Life
I went to the library to get a few books on Microsoft Access, which they had. I also wanted to get "On the Edge" by Kirk johnson and "Running on the Sun"(A DVD about Badwater). Neither was available. in fact, my attempt to be cheap and not buy these from Amazon has created much more frustration than financial savings. Sometimes, I'll spend inordinate amounts of time to save 3 bucks and other times drop a hundred like I am the US Treasury.

Saturday, my wife woke up and went to the Gym. Nik was fine until about 30 minutes after she left. He keeps saying "Mommy's coming?' I answer in the affirmative and he starts crying. I have no clue what he is asking. It turns out he is running a fever and whenever he is sick, he gets very clingy to my wife. We went to my inlaws and had lunch. Nik napped there while my wife and I went to Barnes and Noble and Whole Foods. Barnes and Noble did not have either the book or DVD, but was able to order the DVD for me. The book, they claim, does not exist. I will have to buy it from Amazon now. Later, I went to REI, since they are having a sale. there was alot of cool stuff, but I already had a lot of it and would have been buying duplcate shirts, jackets, etc, so I left empty handed. I do want to buy a good pocketknife for our Badwater crewing effort. It may come in handy.

My wife (A), was supposed to go to a bachelorette party this evening, but due to Nik's ear infection, she opted to say at home. We make homemade chili and cornbread with cheddar cheese and jalapenos. It was really good.

Football games consumed the remainder of my night. I'm running 10 miles tomorrow morning at 7:30 am, then watching more Football.

Overall weekly reportcard:
Training- B( most mileage since LBCM - 18, with some cross training)
Life- D (Nik is sick)

Joke's on you- I'm not going to write or say anything interesting

Work went well. Did 2 cases and if it weren't for some scheduling issues, I would have been done by noon. We went to a local bar for a going away party for one of our nurses and I didn't get home until 7:30. Just in time to eat and put Nik to bed. A little Dimetapp and Motrin and he made it through the night without waking up. Today the doc confirmed he has an ear infection.

My morning has been consumed by creating a database on Microsoft Access. It will make it much easier for me to advance my agenda with the decision makers if I have data. "Waaaaaah, I deserve more, just doesn't cut it in the real world"

Cheerios at 3am

Yesterday:

5 miles on the treadmill, trying to keep my HR below 145 (Maffetone Formula 180-age). I ran roughly 5.5-6.0mph, slowing it at the end to keep my HR lower. In preparation for Death Valley, I spent 15 minutes in the sauna. It gets hot in there. The chain I wear around my neck almost burned my chin.

Spent much of the evening confirming the lunacy of the Badwater Ultramarathon. It's amazing how much pride I am deriving from this despite not running it.

Not much sleep last night. My son is coming down with a cold. He was cranky and my wife slept with him in our bed. He wanted cheerios at 3 am. I slept in our guest bedroom. Then for some reason, a clock that we never set an alarm on, went off at 6:00 am downstairs. I ran into a door trying to figure out where this was coming from. Fortunately, I needed to get up at 6:10 anyway.

All Journeys begin with a first step

This blog will chronicle my life in 2006. It will be heavily weighted towards my running goals. These goals include:
1) Qualifying for Boston this Fall
2) Crewing a friend at teh Badwater 135 mile Ultramarathon
3) Possibly running 2 other marathons (Indiana Thingy in December adn another one in Oregon in June)
4) Great Midwest Relay
5) Dances with Dirt
6) A few half marathons (Cary Mardh Madness, Chicago Distance Classic)