Kettle Moraine Dream & Wet Morning Commute

Pacing the Oakland Marathon was fun!  Enough observations worth reading--coming soon. Not sure if the following is too, but I felt the urge to write it down a couple of days ago so...


Looking for my plastic crates I was going to use as drop bags at the Kettle Moraine 100 mile, but they are all over the house, being used to store my kids toys, old clothes, food.  I rapidly empty them of the offending non-running items, stuff them with my race supplies, then carry them out to the race start, tables lining lush wet grass.  Co-RD Timo's wife, Ann Heaslett is out on the table, all smiles,

tells me the race started at 8 so I had 30 minutes.  Then I notice that I didn't have my running shoes.  Where were they?  I start walking out of the crowd to look, then RD Timo (Tim Yanacheck) announces the race is going to start in a few minutes.  Shit!  It's not even 8.  I don't know where my shoes are!  Then my phone rings and one my coworkers informs me that someone called in sick, and I'm on call, so I have to work the 8-5 ED shift.  Fuck me!  I work the shift (only in a dream does it go by so quickly), and ask Timo if I can get credit for starting so late.  He just smiles--not sure what that means.  Whatever, I want to get going.  I'm still barefoot, and am EXTREMELY anxious to start running, given that I am at least 5-6 hours behind the next-to-last runner.  As I do multiple times during my ED shifts, I have to make a quick, crucial decision.  I decide to run the race barefoot-- isn't that the trendy thing to do now?  Luckily, it had been raining for a few days, so the ground is muddy and soft.  Before I'm out of the start area, I see last year's winner and new course record holder Zach Gingerich (with whom I tried to chat two years ago at around mile 70, but he was not having a great day then).  He is heading back in at mile 62.  I ask him if the trail was soft and smotth, or bumpy and hard, but he is in the zone, running too hard, to answer as we pass each other.  Luckily not too many rocks, so no bleeding, but around mile 30 or 40 I get REALLY sleepy, and despite my desire to catch up with the slowest runner, I have to find a place to sleep.  There's a small house in Athens I stayed at while travelling with this random woman I hooked up with in Turkey 18 years ago and I fondly reminisce about our short time together until we parted ways in Greece, while simultaneously feeling stressed about delaying my catch-up with everyone else, but face down in a slightly musty pillow, I soon fall asleep...

only to wake up to my radio alarm at 4:55.  I change into a long sleeve tech race shwag shirt, shorts, use the bathroom, throw on my pack with my work scrubs, lunch, magazine and other supplies (the thing somedays weighs almost 5 pounds.  I head out of the house, noticing a light sprinkle, but soon realize it's not just drizzling, it's raining and I'm soaked, stupid for actually looking at Yahoo weather the night before--has no connection with the real weather forecast.  I had planned on running a 7:40 minutes mile pace as feel for the marathon this Sunday, but I'm too cold to want to hold back.  I'm completely drenched 27 minutes later bounding up the stairs to barely catch the earlier train.  Luckily I don't freeze on the BART.  The 6 a.m. doc was lucky, had only seen one patient, and I jinx the whole place and we are running around working our asses way behind all shift.  I leave 75 minutes late, run home, finally do that 7:40 minute-mile pacing practice run. When I upload the run from my Garmin Forerunner, it mysteriously malfunctions, so like a dream and my fuzzy mental state, I wonder if it ever happened.

Late For San Francisco One Day!

(My dream this morning right before waking up, might be obvious where this is coming from):

The weekend of the PCTR San Francisco One Day has come, but I'm looking at my calendar, and I notice that I'm on call for my internal medicine rotation on Sunday, which is when the race finishes. It's a Q3 rotation (meaning our team takes calls for hospital admissions every third day), and yes, there it is. Call, Sunday. Damn! I'm either an intern / 1st-year resident, or lower yet in the academic hospital pecking order, a medical student. Shirking my duties and being late to arrive will have serious repercussions on the evaluation for this rotation. I'm screwed. How am I going to finish the race and on-time to hospital, not to even mention lucid? My drop bag isn't even prepared yet.

All of sudden, I realize it's Saturday morning, the day of the race. I'm still in the hospital. Shit! The race begins at 9 a.m. If there was any chance of getting someone to cover my patients for rounds, it's too late! I see my attending in the hallway, a burly guy from Iran or Pakistan, who looks at me as if to pimp me in his thick Iranian or Pakistani accent: ("So, Mark, what is the differential diagnosis of our lady with the unexplained lowered creatinine clearance?" I imagine he will ask.) I duck out. Forget my evaluation. Forget my future in medicine. Screw it all. I gotta get to the race.

I run out to the parking garage, there's construction downtown and rush hour traffic. (I know it's supposed to be Saturday, and there large urban downtowns in Marin, but this is a dream...), I have to cross the Golden Gate Bridge to get into the city.

I finally get to where the race is supposed to be, Crissy Field. Instead of an open field, the race loops around a big 12 foot high black wall. Everyone has already started. I see co-RD Sarah Spelt, I'm embarrassed that I'm so late (it's almost 11). She says something to me, but I feel so guilty, like I wasn't taking her race seriously enough, that I don't hear what she says. I'm so disorganized.

I start running, doing calculations in my head for how fast I'll now have to run to both win and set a new course record, which for some reason, I just HAD to do. I can't just kick back and have fun. This is really going to hurt.

Oh, man this is going to suck!

AAAAAAHHHHH!!!!

(Shortly after this, my kids start pounding on my door, awakening me from this nightmare, though cutting my sleep short since I went to bed at 4. Maybe it's lucky that I have to stay up all night tonight, working...)

Running with Mike Tyson

If only to get me in the habit of blogging more often, I thought I'd start blogging my some of my running dreams.

This one after waking up from a late afternoon nap, in between overnight shifts:

I got a friend request from Mike Tyson on facebook. Since I'd never met him, I initially clicked the button to ignore the request. I recently had decided to stop accepting requests from runners I'd never met. (In my real facebook life, I keep getting these requests. Sometimes I wonder why some runners want to be facebook friends with all other runners. I really do find this curious.) But realizing he was really famous, and probably a nice guy, I regretted my initial decision and sent him back a friend request, hoping he hadn't taken offense for my rejecting him earlier.


photos totally reproduced without anyone's permission

As it turned out, Mike wanted to friend me because he was training for his first half marathon. He wanted someone to help him train, someone who could run with him while still having the breath to be his drill sergeant to work him hard as he put in his miles. Soon enough we were pounding the pavement together, he working up a furious sweat as I screamed and cussed at him, like Marine Gunnery Sergeant Emil Foley (Louis Gossett, Jr.) in An Officer and a Gentleman.



Luckily Mr. Tyson never took any of this personally. I would be in a sorry state he got pissed off and took his anger out on me.

Unfortunately, I woke up before we even got close to the race itself. He was going to kick ass.