April 14th 2007

Comedy, sports (participating), spectating, and no sleep: last weekend was the Yin vacation to the relaxing and laid back Yang of spring break vacation. It started off with a pleasant 2.5 hour drive up to the northside Chicago. The drive was uneventful as travel should be. After checking in at Kate Roin's house I drove into the city to meet up with a buddy from college, Alan Cordova.

Alan was visiting Chicago to present his Williams thesis on economic development in central Asia. Without knowing the name of the conference at which Alan was presenting I managed to find him in the Palmer House in downtown Chicago and find parking for a flat rate of 14 dollars without incident. I was quite pleased with my street-wise-ness (There's got to be a better way to express that). My savvy-ness (also awkward) was not to last through the weekend.

Alan, myself, and a friend of his from high school, Benj (it's phonetic), toured the city until the pangs of hunger directed us to a mexican restaurant. Benj's six months of Chicago experience got us to the top of the John Hancock building to see the view and a fantastic sunset without paying a dime. The viewing area gives a long and wide panorama both over the city and up and down the shore. I could see my entire 85 min lake shore run from my previous visit to Chicago without turning my head.

After the view and the dinner we killed some time in a Borders, closed the place, then moved onto a Starbucks saturated with medical and law students cramming knowledge into their already saturated heads. From there we went to Second City to see the comedy show "Between Barak and a Hard Place". Yes, the presidential hopefuls are already providing ample fodder for comedians. In one of my favorite sketches, unrelated to the presidential race, two members of the Irish Republican Army are frustrated to find their passports readily accepted at the airport. They pine for the good old days when people were afraid of Irish terrorists and they express anger at Arab terrorists for stealing their thunder.

The Second City show began at 11pm and ended around 1:15 am. Having changed time zones this was 2:15 am relative to my biological clock. I said goodbye to Alan and Benj and then headed to Kate's. By the time I returned to her house the time was 2:10. I fell asleep immediately and woke up about five and a half hours later.

Breakfast consisted of the obligatory banana on bread with peanut butter. I thought that this staple breakfast would be ok even though it was only two hours before race time. I made it to the race with only twenty minutes to spare after a wrong turn. Note to self: use your odometer and trust the distance estimates given by map quest.

Despite feeling frazzled by taking a wrong turn and having trouble parking (gee, does this sound like my last race writeup?) I found time to warm up lightly for ten minutes. The temperature had risen up to a perfect 47 degrees and sunny. The wind was a bit strong however.

On the starting line many professional-looking runners stretched and did run outs. I was struck by the way they confidently ran on the race course, traveled back and forth over the chirping chip-detection mat, and all but ignored the calls of "five minutes to the start". Meanwhile, the casual runners politely, perhaps nervously, waited behind the starting line. Well behind the starting line they even left a buffer for the elite runners who busily kept warm fully expecting to have room at the front when they returned to the line at their leisure. It reminded me of dominance in nature, like when the big silverback commands the lesser males through pure force of presence. We went through our various routines as the race director announced that the race would be delayed while the finish line was moved. Apparently there was a problem and none of the times from the youths' or womens' races (run separately) were recorded by the timing chips. Here is the explanation and response, which was emailed to me and I swear I am not making up:

Due to an unusually high level of electromagnetic interference (EMI) at the finish line for the women's and youth races a number of finish times were lost. Fortunately the finish line was reconfigured before the men's race and all times were captured. However that does nothing for the women's and youth times that were not captured.

Anyone whose time is missing and knows their time (either from the finish line clock or their own watch) should please send the following information to our race timer Jim Brimm & Associates at jimbrimm.jba.events@att.net and "cc" reg@oprc.net to help recover missing times. Times will be added and online results reposted on a timely basis.

• “Race That’s Good For Life”
• first name
• last name
• bib number
• city
• event (either “5k" or “youth mile")
• Finish time (followed by either “clock” or “watch”)

Thank you for your understanding and patience.

That same text can be found here, at least until they take it down. It cracks me up. Electromagnetic interference!? What! Oh, and I love the use of the acronym. Unidentified Flying Objects, or UFO's as we professionals call them, sabotaged the timing equipment at the Race for Life on April 15th. I'm sorry. I don't mean to mock the race directors, but honestly, what kind of explanation is Electromagnetic interference? Was it someone's cell phone? Is there radioactive material in the ground? It's alright to admit that you don't know... or that you accidentally deleted your hard drive. I'm not pointing any fingers, I'm just sayin...

Anywho, back to the race. Bam. The gun goes off and I scramble off the line. I know two things very early in the race: 1. it is too slow. and 2. it feels very hard. The general fatigue I felt throughout my body was easy to explain by the fact that I had not tapered before the race. Quite the opposite, I had finally done some speed and even upper body strength work the week before. That's fine, I thought, I can handle it, especially if my opponents aren't capable of moving faster.

The proffesional-looking runners I had spoken of formed the core at the front. Feeling the pace was insubstantial I moved up into position behind the very front of the pack. I decided to let the pace remain for the first mile, then if nothing changed I would take the lead and push through to the finish.

My plan for the race was to run just under my goal 10K pace. My goal 10K is under thirty minutes, but for simplicity I considered thirty my goal. That is 72 second quarters and 4:48 miles. I was pretty sure that such a pace could win easily. The first mile was a little slow, but not as much as I had expected: 4:50. The wind remained significant and the heavy fatigue throughout my body hadn't gone away. I reconsidered whether I should push the pace. I kept hoping for a turn to take us out of the wind, but I never felt it dissipate. Then my decision was made for me as the leader, Jeff Jonaitis at the time, pushed the pace and pushed it hard. I went with him as did one other guy. It was the kind of surge that you either accepted or were rejected by. Every one else began racing for fourth place.

I don't remember much of the course. It was all typical suburbia. I noticed not-entirely-well-kept pavement as it rolled my ankles. For the most part I watched the t-shirt ahead of me. At some point in the middle of the race the other guy, Tim Keller, took the lead. Then I watched the backwards Cub's baseball cap and the backs of the sunglasses sticking out behind his ears. I was surprised that fate was forcing me to take a backwards baseball cap seriously, but it was. The guy eased in to every turn and then accelerated out of them forcing me to play catch up just a bit each time. His steps landed in the road gutter as he took the turns tight. During the third turn I noticed this move on I pulled right up into his shadow then accidentally gave him a little kick when he didn't accelerate as much as I had expected.

As the race progressed Jeff faded. To his great credit he never left my hearing range, but he dropped back out of my mind in a race that I sincerely hoped to win. The miles went by quicker than I expected even while I ached with fatigued and wondered if I could hold on. The last straight-away seemed to arrive so soon after the two mile mark that I seriously debated whether the race could be over so soon in my head. If it was already over as the distant, yet visible, finish line banner indicated, I could win. Despite my fatigue and Tim's surges I felt extra gears waiting to connect with my wheels and take me through. I moved up on Tim so that I would be ready if he kicked early. There was no harm in doing this if it turned out there was an extra lollipop loop or other add-on before the finish, but there wasn't. It was indeed the finish line at the end of a long long straight-away.

Eventually I got the message that this was really the end. I boosted up into my next gear and rode up next to my competitor. He matched my move and we became motionless relative to each other. It felt very much as if the end of the race would be determined by a staring contest. The first one to flinch forwards wins. The first one to flinch backwards loses. I had that extra gear waiting like a fresh battalion in the wings. He committed his reserves and I responded with my own. We hurtled towards the line in complete silence. It was loud as hell, but my memory recorded none of it. There was just one more resource to tap. I would will my legs to pick-up and strike just that little bit faster. I would envision gravity shifting perpendicular to its normal axis and acting only on me to send me plummeting over the finish line, and that's how it happened for a moment. I was in front for a fraction of a second then my legs said "NO".

I stumbled over the tempermental timing mats two seconds after Tim. The mats squawked to let everyone know they had detected my chip. I walked like a zombie. Rows of people waiting to clip off and reclaim my timing chip sat on footstools making no move. Did they understand? "Help?" I muttered. One guy seemed to respond so I stumbled towards him and crossed my arms on his shoulder. He gave me some time then cut my chip off and I moved on. I found helpers who were there at the race solely to help runners. The woman tried to give me gatorade. I waved it away and acquired water. I tried to congratulate the winner. My arm made the right motion, but I can't remember speaking.

Eventually someone gave me gatorade. It felt like swallowing a live electric eel. I put a little more in my mouth, forced myself to, like I was taking medicine. I added water and swished before swallowing. It didn't help much. Within a minute or two the adrenaline wore off and the real pain hit. My legs were tired, but that nuclear waste that was messing up the timers felt like it was being excreted into my stomach. It was the same pain as at the 2006 Indoor Nationals. I knew I was going to puke, knew I'd feel better if I did, but my stomach had to torture me first. It wouldn't expel the horrible pain right away. No, it had to wait for some unseen clock. It had to let me sit in agony for at least fifteen minutes and I think I'm being modestly objective when I make that estimate.

While I'm waiting for a tiny amount of banana and some vile gatorade/water to excuse itself there is a fantastically kind but disturbingly fatalistic doctor attending to me. He listens to my heartbeat and says frightening things such as, "your heart rate should have slowed by now," and, again I swear I'm not making this up, (to a nurse standing by) "go get the defibrilator, I don't want to leave his side."

Let me tell you, if there is anything that will get someone's heart racing it is a doctor telling a nurse to get a defibrilator for them. He keeps telling me to take deep slow breaths. I am, easily. My breathing is back to normal and I have no idea what my heart should be doing or what is normal because I have never bothered with heart rate monitors or even checked my threshhold. I stopped checking my resting heart rate long ago because I was embarrassed that it was never under 60 (other runners reading this will understand).

Long story shorter, I emptied my stomach and felt exponentially improved. My heart rate lowered after that, though not as much as I or the doctor would have liked. At the time of the defibrilator comment, he said it was at 140, after breakfast excused itself, a little over 110. An hour after the race I had it down to 90. It took me about two hours to break 70 seconds, though by that point my blood pressure was so low that I had trouble feeling the beats. Before that time I did a much-improved zombie shuffle to the cafeteria where race advertisers handed out grub on the condition that you took a coupon and a pamphlet on how ______ their food is (insert organic, delicious, protein-packed, etc. here). Feeling much better, I had no trouble raiding each of the food stands, some twice. I would have had a third half-bagel, but the bin was empty when I returned.

I left the race feeling much better and except for the frustration of a wrong turn (note that is the second one this day) on the way back to Kate's my spirits were up. I showered quickly and drove to Kate's Karate test (making my third wrong turn on the way). The test was a routine trial for black, brown, and purple belts of all ages. I got to see a handful of current and former members of the U.S. National Karate Team in action. I was disappointed that I walked in just as Kata ended. Kata is karate's equivalent of the floor routine in gymnastics. However, as if just for me, the test atypically included a Kumite, or sparring, portion.

Any Joe with little or no knowledge of anything in particular can appreciate the sight of professionals doing what they do best and so this is what I did, appreciated. It was awesome to see fast and powerful punches and kicks that stopped just before impact. Imagine two expert killers trying to convince an audience that they could annihilate their opponent at will, but aren't going to because they have so much control. That is what Kumite looks like. Their punches come so close to striking without actually doing so that I could not tell a mistake had been made until one guy apologized to another. Apparently his timing was a bit off and in his eagerness a strike hit the body. They look like they could smother a dove in fists and feet and if the bird were to die the cause of death would be suffocation, not any kind of impact.

It was fun to watch Kate spar. She was the best black belt participating, but not the best one present surprisingly. Lower belts sparred with her for practice. Even I could tell that she had to go easy on them to let them score at all. Her arms rose up giving her opponent a shot at her unguarded abdomen. Her opponent hesitated like an animal testing the air and expecting a trap. Kate practiced with a few opponents before moving in for the kill to earn her own points, which excused her from further sparring.

It was an excellent weekend that had to unfortunately end with two more wrong turns on the way from Chicago to Culver resulting in a grand total of five in one day despite my flawless victory the previous day.

My next race is the Penn Relays, the giant looming in the distance, on April 26th.

Here are the results from the race

THE RACE THAT'S GOOD FOR LIFE
OAK PARK, IL
APRIL 15, 2007
MEN'S RESULTS

Place	No.	Name	Age	Div/Tot	Time	Pace	Town	St
=====	=====	========================	===	========	=====	=====	======================	==
1	1017	TIM KELLER	25	1/38	14:36	4:42	WEST CHICAGO	IL
2	1002	NEAL HOLTSCHULTE	23	1/17	14:38	4:43	CULVER	IN
3	1456	JEFF JONAITIS	26	2/38	14:45	4:45	TINLEY PARK	IL
4	1014	GREG COSTELLO	26	3/38	15:05	4:52	CHICAGO	IL
5	1394	EMISAEL FAVELA	30	1/39	15:13	4:54	CICERO	IL
6	1007	SCOTT HOFFMAN	24	2/17	15:22	4:57	PEORIA	IL

I almost forgot, I got 100 dollars for second. That two seconds between me and first cost 100 dollars.