bad news and back on the pig

First, the bad news: The movie deal is dead. There'll be no Cross-X on Lifetime Network. Not sure why it fell through, but it did, so there you go.

On the good side of things, I'm feeling better in the leg region and back to running. And now I'm thinking I might well do the Flying Pig. I saw my sports med guy and he said it should be alright. Plus I've been talking with some folks at running groups around town and I think I should be able to find running partners who do the walk/run thing at my pace. Some are actually training for the Pig. So that's making me excited.

Still deep into the budget at City Hall. We're down to the wire, and anything could happen in the last week. The City Manager is trying everything he can to get the council to not make cuts and to dig instead into the fund balance. This despite the city getting a serious warning from Moody's, which downgraded our credit outlook from "stable" to "negative." If we wind up actually get a rating downgrade, we'll have a hard time issuing bonds and then we'll really be fucked (pardon my French, Grandma, but it's the most succinct word). All that just to score a win. It's just plain goofy. I mean, it's bad enough that we're not going to add any money to street maintenance, nor fund the 20 new cops that folks were promised when they voted in a public safety sales tax, now the dark forces are pushing for us to keep skating on very thin ice.

All that's probably a little too insidery for you, I know. Suffice it to say we're in bad shape financially, and we've got an unfireable City Manager who's working double time to make it worse. Typical KC, I suppose.

Looks as if spring might be back. For two days in a row now I've forgotten to take my jacket home from work. That's a good sign.

I planted asparagus last weekend. I told grandma and she said, wisely, "So you're planning to stay there a while, huh?"

HBO is running a miniseries on John Adams and it's great! Allie and I are totally into it. (Well, I am; Allie fell asleep last night, which is weird, because I'm usually the one who konks).

What else?

I'm going to get a ball chair for work. Some of my coworkers are a little hinky about the idea, but I believe it just might be the solution to many of my problems.

This weekend I plant peas. Next weekend lettuce, and the inside starters.

Random news. There you go.

update

I know. I need to get more in the habit of posting. It's just I'm so busy with work, when I get home all I want to do is rest.

Allie and I are feverishly planning all sorts of remodeling, with our kitchen being the top priority. A lot of you have seen our kitchen, so you know this is much needed. For those of you who haven't, our kitchen has been half gutted for the last several years after one of our cats climbed up into the drop ceiling and made a home there. We were fine with it until we started to smell the piss she was leaving on top of the cabinets above the sink. So we yanked those out, along with the drop ceiling. Since then, we've been existing with cheap wire shelving and no overhead lighting. Meantime, the crappy old cabinetry that remains is starting to fall apart.

So it's time.

Our current plan is to order hip and affordable cabinets from Ikea and then pay some handyman to install them.

In other news, I am getting ready to try indoor propagation for the first time. No, Allie and I are not backing down on our pact not to have kids. I've ordered tomato and pepper seeds, and I've bought some flourescent light boxes, and I'm going to start the seeds indoors, rather than buy transplants at the nursery come May.

I got bit by the seed catalog fever, though. I wanted pretty much every exotic varietal they had, so I wound up dropping $110 on what is likely way more seeds than I need. Any of you close-by friends want tomato plants? I should have some in a couple months.

Work is going pretty darn good. It's budget time, and this is where pretty much everyone in the city would agree that Funk has what it takes to do the job right. Only problem is we have a council that's nervous about making the tough choices, and a city manager who is actively campaigning them to not make the tough choices. On the other hand, we've got pretty much the entire business community, the neighborhood groups and the chief of police on our side. So we're thinking our odds aren't bad.

But here's the deal. If we don't prevail, and the current budget proposal goes through, the city's going to start running out of money by summer's end. And then we're going to make damn sure the council and city manager own the mess. Again, we'll have all the community powers that be chiming in with us as we say "We told you so."

But, hopefully it won't come down to that.

Lastly, running. I've had some pain in my achilles and have had to back off. I did some research online and found that tendinitis can be quite debilitating. Some folks on forums I've read claim to have been out of commission for many months. Hopefully I will avoid that by stopping running early, and by doing exercises aimed at strengthening the muscles around the achilles. I've also been doing a lot of other strengthening exercises, which are supposed to lessen my chances at injury.

Meantime, I'm going to get a good bike, which I've needed for some time. And it's looking like things might finally warm up around here, so that I can ride fairly regularly.

As a result, the Flying Pig is off. I'd like to run a marathon in the fall, probably New York or Minneapolis, but I'm going to wait and see how this tendon thing plays out. I'm also considering holding off on doing another marathon until next year, and instead building myself up toward one even more slowly, by training for a 5k, then 10k, then half marathon first.

I'll keep you posted, obviously. And I'll try to post more regularly.

flying pig

I so want to run this race:

it band

I'm still having some issues with my IT band. It didn't hurt at all when I was running yesterday. But throughout the day afterward it began hurting.

I did some hunting around on the Internets and I found some stretches and exercises for it. By days end it was feeling fine.

Then...

I sit in my zero-gravity chair for about 20 minutes and it starts hurting again.

I had noticed this before, that the pain would increase after sitting in the chair. But this time the causal relationship seems most obvious.

I'm completely perplexed. How could the so-called "Perfect Chair" be aggravating my knee?

I tried doing a search with iliotibial and zero-gravity chair but got nothing. And a couple of weeks ago I mentioned it to my sports med guy, and he didn't have a clue.

Weird.

I'd hate to give up the chair, because it's perfect for my back.

Oh what a strange thing the human body is.

juno

Allie and I went to see Juno last night. Delightful little film. I haven't seen any of the other films that are up for best picture, but I hope this one wins, because it was heartwarming and uplifting.

If you Indiana folks haven't seen it yet, I think you'd like it.

In other news, work has been up and down. We're working on some things that could really make a difference, but it's up in the air as to weather they'll happen. The first is the budget. The city's finances are completely jacked up, but if we take some strong measures this year, we could begin to turn that around. The problem is that the City Manager has pitted a majority of the City Council against the Mayor and is pushing for a really shitty budget to be adopted, one that would make the city more financially screwed up. From what I understand, he's doing this because he's somewhat delusional about finances, but also because he simply wants to beat the Mayor.

The other thing we're working on getting passed is an ordinance that dramatically reduce the number of metal plates on the city's streets. For those of you who don't live here, Kansas City has an ungodly number of big, bulky metal plates on the streets, to cover utility cuts. They're an inch or so thick, and when you drive over them they jolt your car. They drive people positively nuts. Well, one of the Mayor's campaign promises was to get rid of them. And now that we're pushing to make it happen, we're getting push back from the city water department, which is responsible for a lot of them.

If we can manage to win these two fights, it'll go a long way toward a successful first term, as both issues strike at the very core of what the Mayor ran for. But politics could do them in, and keep Kansas City perpetually screwy.

i did it!

Well, I finished my first marathon since college in 5h:4m:34s. Kind of slow, but I was just aiming to finish this time around. (Actually, I developed a goal midway through this race to beat my 13 year old self; when I was a wee punk I ran a marathon with zero training and finished in 5:10.)

The weather was perfect, sunny and 40s at the start, high 60s at the end. It was great having Allie and the folks out. They were able to drive around and cheer me on at four different spots, including the end. It was a real boost to have them out there cheering for me.

One of the places where they stopped was by mile 20. They said I looked really good compared to the others who were plodding through. I had a smile on my face and everyone else looked like they were going to die.

At that point, I decided to abandon the 3-minute run/one-minute walk plan, and run from water stop to water stop, which were about a mile apart. It went pretty good, until the last mile, that was close to pure hell. It had this itty-bitty hill right before the end that was agonizing. But they also had three hard rock bands playing along that stretch, so it helped. Plus I knew I was almost there, so I just pushed through the pain.

That said, the race was mostly pain free. I felt none of the injuries that were dogging me just a few weeks ago. Just a big old blood blister on one of my toes on my right foot. Today my IT band is a little tender, but my quads feel great, no pain in my calves or hips. In fact, I woke up feeling like I could run three miles.

So... I'm thinking I'm going to go ahead and do the Flying Pig in May. How can I resist a race called the flying pig?! Plus, I gotta break five hours now.

Oh, almost forgot... after the race we got in the hot tub and who was there but the winner! She was drinking champagne and being all happy. Pretty exciting!

away we go!

We're off this morning for Austin. Tomorrow from seven until about noon I'll be running the streets of that city with thousands of other people. Please send me your positive thoughts, especially between the hours of 10 and 12, as that'll likely be when I'll be struggling the most.

It appears as though the weather is going to be good. It's raining in Austin today, but it's supposed to clear up overnight. It'll be sunny, with low 40s at the start and low 60s by the end. That's about perfect for a race like this.

My folks will be meeting us there, and they're renting a car, so they'll be able to cruise around with Allie and catch me at various points to cheer me on. I'm kind of grateful for that. I think it's really going to help.

All in all, I feel pretty good about it. I took a 13 mile run last week that was pretty much pain free. But then my quads felt tight during a 3 miler midweek. So that spooked me a bit. But I think once I get going in the morning, among the crowd, with all the excitement of a new city, and all the bands, I'll be able to cruise along for quite a few miles before pain creeps in.

Stay tunes for the race report...

goofy

Here's another silly thing:

patches

Here is something ridiculous for your viewing pleasure.

austin marathon course

Here are videos of the course I'll be running in Austin week from Sunday. These really show how dang long it is.





I'm going to complete this damn thing, even if it kills me. I haven't been able to train very well since early December. I didn't even run this last weekend, because I caught a cold. Not exactly the way I planned. But such is life.

little updatelets

Allie and I have gotten hooked on another HBO show called In Treatment. It's quite amazing. I can't believe how good the acting and writing is.

It's been a while, quite frankly, since we've watched absolute brain rot on TV. When we have been zoning out to the boob tube, it's been on pretty quality stuff, like this new show, and, of course, this final season of The Wire, which is getting really, really good.

I wish it were warmer out. I'm ready for spring.

I'm angry at my daily newspaper. Like, really angry. Like I can't believe how freaking irresponsible they've been lately.

Not sure what else.

Sorry for the lame post.

My job is quite captivating. For the most part, I've been having a blast. Sometimes I get really pissed and frustrated, like tonight. But for the most part I find it thoroughly invigorating.

But it really cuts into my posting ability.

legless

I've been having a lot of problems with my legs. So today I decided to run without them.

It worked!

I went five miles and I feel great. No real pain to speak of.

I think I'm going to go legless from now on.

Here's how it works: You puff your chest out and lean forward, like you're trying to pull yourself along by the sternum. Then you pump your arms, pushing your elbows back and forth to a nice rhythm. Everything below the waist you try to keep relaxed. And off you go; the legs just sort of following along.

Most of the way, I felt little tinges of tightness in various spots on my legs -- quads, calves, IT band. But the more I focused on my upper body, the more those pains dissolved away. I also tried to concentrate on going real slow, and that worked too (though I finished the loop at about the same pace I would if I'd been laboring more).

So I'm making a little progress.

I'm starting to think I'm going to make it on February 17.

carlsbad half marathon

The race was quite a let down, to be honest with you.

I felt achy and out of sorts for the first seven or eight miles or so. In retrospect it's because I was overcompensating with my form adjustments. It wasn't until the last part that I slipped into a somewhat comfortable stride.

But it was too late. For one, I was spending so much time thinking about the aches and pains in my body that I was sort of oblivious to the beautiful surroundings. Second, and more significantly, I think I might have hurt myself.

My knee has been killing me since Sunday afternoon. I mean really painful. I'm having trouble walking stairs and stuff.

Soooooo.....

I'm pretty worried about Austin.

I think if I lay off for the next four weeks, and maybe just do a couple of real short slow runs, I'll probably heal enough to be able to swing it. But it's gonna be tough regardless.

So what's up with this? Is it because I'm getting old? I'm I just flawed in this area? Or is this correctable?

Don't know right now.

san diego county

I am such an idiot.

For the last year or so, I've been working like crazy, trying to help Mark Funkhouser make Kansas City a better place. And the whole time we've been struggling to do this, there's been this place called California that already did it.

Sheesh. What a beautiful part of the world.

The only bad things about it are the traffic and the lack of Allie.

Damn, I'm such an idiot for not insisting that she come with me. Being without her dulls the experience of discovering a cool new place. It's like I haven't fully experienced it.

I think I'm going to have a good run tomorrow. I'm still a little bummed that I'm not doing the full marathon, but not much. The half covers pretty much all the really beautiful parts of the course. And it won't beat me up as much.

I had a lot of fun at the expo today. I found a pair of the new shoes I bought for just $40. So now I have two pairs, so I can ease the new pair in a few months down the road without risking injury -- just like the pros say you should.

I also bought The Stick. I think it's going to help. And of course I bought a souvenir hat, which I will do at every race for the rest of my life.

For the rest of the day I've been guzzling water and Gatorade and shoveling pasta down my throat. And missing Allie.

chirunner

I went for a run tonight, the first one since Sunday. Went about three miles. Not a big deal ordinarily, but considering that I tried to run last night and I couldn't make it a block, I'd say this was pretty good.

Last night when I tried to run I had pain in my quads. Tonight I figured I wouldn't even try to run, because my quads felt tight all day.

But when I got home I stretched, and then I did my hamstring exercizes, and then I stretched again. And by the end of that, I had this inkling that maybe I could run. Maybe if I started out real slow, with real tiny steps.

So that's what I did. And for the first three minutes, it was quite achy. But then I tried really hard to do some of the techniques described in ChiRunning. And I'll be damned if it didn't work.

Basically what I did was lean forward, so much so that I would have fallen down if I weren't moving my legs. Then I tried to simply lift my feet by bending and unbending my knees. That's it.

It was hard to keep the form. I kept kind of falling in and out of it. But when I was in the rhythm, it felt like I wasn't even running at all, like I was just being pulled along. Or, it was more like the way running is in a dream, like when you're moving but it seems like you're not moving at all.

Throughout the run I felt little aches up and down my legs. But when they came up I tried to relax my leg muscles and let my lean pull me along. It worked.

When I got home I stretched again, iced the quads, and now I feel not the least bit of soreness.

And then on Saturday I'm going to get a private ChiRunning lesson from a certified instructor who lives here in KC.

Who knows, maybe this is the ticket...

downsizing

As per doctor's orders, I have switched my entry for the Calrsbad Marathon to the half marathon.

Ever since the 20 miler, I've had persistant pains in my quads. It reached a zenith on my 23 miler, which I didn't really even run.

So I went to the sports medicine folks. They put me on a treadmill and analyzed my stride.

They discovered that I'm a total tight ass. No rotation in my hips. And I run in a kind of squat, with my knees and head out in front of my lap. As such, my quads are pretty much doing all of the work. My hamstrings are apparently just along for the ride.

So one of the docs did some deep tissue work to flatten out adhesions in my muscles. And then a trainer gave me a routine of exercizes for my hamstrings, abs and butt.

This coupled with copious stretching, icing and heat padding, I should be able to have a comfortable half marathon in two weeks, and (knock wood) a marathon four weeks after that.

So far so good.

My quads seem to be getting better. I'm going to try a run today.

As for the eercize routine -- good god it's hard. My hamstrings and butt cheeks burn like hell fire!

But I feel very hopeful. I think this is the beginning of a redirection in my running that'll pave the way for a long and very fun running life!

the wire

The fifth and final season of The Wire begins this Sunday. It's the best TV show ever made.

The first season told the story of a police wiretap operation on an inner-city drug ring. The theme was about operational power structures. The series brilliantly revealed the similar hierarchies in the drug operation and the police force.

The subsequent seasons have broadened in scope. The second encompassed international smuggling, and it conveyed a message about the death of the working class. The third went into political corruption, and the myth of reform. The fourth examined the education system, both in school and on the streets.

For this final go around, they're taking on journalism.

They have a handful of new characters this year, all employed at the Baltimore Sun, the most amazing of which is the city editor. I am blown away by how realistic this character is. He reminds me of my old city editor in Lawrence, only better (wich is saying a lot).

I mean, this character is so real, Allie and I both felt waves of dread when he stood up from his cube and yelled, "Alright people! It's 2 o'clock. Budget time! There are a million stories in the city of broken dreams. I only need three or four from you mooks!"

I could go on and on about how good this show is. And someday maybe I will. But for now suffice to say that I'm pleased to be in a new season.

train in vain continued

Allie wrote me a note saying that the Hollywood extra guy was the worst pick up artist she'd ever seen. It wasn't news to me. He seemed boring, the way he repeatedly pushed the conversation to the weather.

Then, he asked one of the girls what she was majoring in. She said English. At that moment, a young man with a beard who was sitting nearby said he was an English major too. In an instant, both suiters were invited to join them at their table. The poured the men drinks and instructed them on how to play the card game they were playing.

The bearded English major was really chatting up his scholarly counterpart. They discovered that they both love Virginia Wolf. "Do you think she's a feminist?" The bearded young man asked.

"Oh definitely," the young lady replied.

In time, it was revealed that one of the young ladies was half Jewish, at which point the young bearded fellow said, "Really?! I'm a Jew too."

Either the women were not sufficiently impressed, or they cast him some suspicious glance that neither Allie nor I could detect, because he suddenly began acting like he was on trial, hurriedly offering up details about family tradition. At one point he seemed to be desperately floundering. "I'm trying to think of more Jew stuff," he said.

Allie and I found this young man to be a little snarky. On several occasions he made fun of the Hollywood extra. He refered to him once as "the limo driver."

Despite this, the extra seemed to have a few more skills in the move-making department, though they weren't getting him very far. While the young bearded fellow blathered on and on about things they had in common, hopelessly dooming himself as a mere friend, the extra pushed the boundaries a little. He rested his arm on the seatback behind the young lady he sat next to. He touched her every now and then to emphasize certain points in his stories. He even tickled her a couple of times, which she didn't like at all. "Stop tickling me!" she barked.

Meantime, beard boy kept his hands to himself, which I'll bet he has a lot of practice doing.

In the midst of all this, the longhaired liberal know-it-all returned. The women invited him to join them. But they were four stuffed into a booth and neither of the two men, both sitting on the outsides, were going to make space for more competition. So the longhaired liberal moved on.

A moment later he returned saying he found a spot in the back of the lounge car with five seats. "But there's no place to play cards," he admitted. They just sort of looked at him, and he moved on again.

The four of them poured more drinks. The extra revealed that he was 37. The bearded boy pulled out a notebook and jotted something down. The women asked to see what he wrote. He demured. "I'm shy about my writing," he said.

He changed the subject to music. He asked them what music they like, and he was pleased by the specificness of their replies.

"When people say they like everything," he said, then pausing to add an air of profoundness to the pending closing phrase, "they really mean nothing."

So true, young man. So true.

new shoes

I went to Gary Gribble's today. As soon as I put on a new pair of shoes, a lot of my pain went away. I was actually able to run a hundred yards or so on each brand I tried on -- with little pain. Quite a contrast to my old New Balance, in which I felt pain just walking from the parking lot to the store.

So this is good news. It means that at least part of my pain is due to warn out shoes. And in chatting up the salesperson I learned that running on uneven icy surfaces for long periods of time (like 20 miles) can make you sore. So that's another piece of the puzzle.

The last piece I found when I was trying out the shoes. As I was running along the sidewalk outside the mall, I looked at my reflection in the store windows. I'm clearly landing with my forefoot a little bit in front of my body. That means I'm actually hitting the brakes with each step. And my brakes are my quads. So that's why my quads hurt.

I've got to get it to where my feet land under my body. I've known this for a month or so now, and I thought I had made the proper adjustments. But seeing myself in the window confirmed that I haven't.

At any rate, all of this is encouraging. It means that I'm not hopelessly flawed and therefore incapable of becoming a marathon. Rather, I just need to make some adjustments.

I'm starting to think this Carlsbad race is going to be just fine. So long as I properly take care of myself in the next three weeks...

22.45 miles

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Today my training schedule called for a 23 mile run. I knew that I was ill-prepared because of the holidays. Also, I've been a bit achy on my runs since the 20 miler three weeks ago. So I decided I would walk most of this one.

My plan was to run a quarter mile or so at each mile. Then, for the last five or six miles, I would try to do the 3 minutes running : 1 minute walking ratio I've done for most of my training build up. I figured that would give me a sense of what it'll feel like at the marathon, when I'm fatigued and trying to keep going. Besides, Jeff Galloway, creator of my training program, claims that walking is pretty much just as good training as running.

Still, it didn't quite work out the way I planned. At about mile 15 I decided to try alternating each quarter mile with running and walking because at that point I felt too sore to go with Plan A. With the exception of two half-mile walk breaks, I managed to keep that up until about mile 21, at which point I felt intense pain in my left quad. This pain had been increasing with each running interval, and now it was sharp enough that I knew I'd be an idiot to try again (though I did try again, twice, for about 3 seconds each time). So I walked the last mile and a half.

The journey took a total of 5 hours and 32 minutes. For the most part it was fun. We're having lovely weather here today; brightly sunny and 37 degrees. And my route included just about all of the KC half marathon route, which shows off a lot of the best sights our city has to offer. Freed from the need to hear my stopwatch alarm because I wasn't writing intervals, I listened to a book on tape -- Master of the Senate, which I've listened to before, but is good enough for a second go.

Despite the pleasantness of being outdoors on such a nice day, the pain I felt at the end (and which I still feel as I waddle around the house) has me pretty discouraged. I wouldn't be so disappointed if I'd been running most of the way. But this was really just a long walk, and all I was trying to do was break it up with quarter-mile jogs (which, I should add, were run at a pretty darn slow pace). It would seem that I could do those pretty easily even under the worst conditions.

So I'm wondering now how things will be in three weeks when I'm in Carlsbad. I'm starting to reassess my strategy. Perhaps it would be best if I'd go into the event with a plan kind of like today, though no matter what I'll need to run more because I have to maintain a 12:30 pace.

Interesting process. Not as easy as I thought it would be...

train in vain

Yesterday, Allie and I caught the train from Chicago to Kansas City. It was delayed for four hours because of a derailment. We had to wait in the train at the station for a long time without moving. So we went to the lounge car to play Boggle.

While there, we observed several failed attempts at the human mating ritual.

In the booth next to us sat two young women working on word search puzzles. After a while, a man with long hair and a beard sat down with them. He was a liberal know it all. He lectured the young women in a friendly but patronizing way about what makes good theater and why the bourgeois ruin it. He said this word, bourgeois, several times, drawing out the syllables.

I thought that perhaps the women were high school students, and this guy was a teacher escorting them and several other students on a theater trip to the big city. They looked very young to me. But then, after the guy left, they pulled out a great big bottle of whiskey and started drinking. That threw my theory off.

Not long after the guy left another guy started in on them. He asked them questions. Invariably, he would turn the conversation back to the weather. I wrote a note to Allie in which I deemed him the weather man.

We learned through his inquiry that they were college students from New Mexico who had been in Chicago visiting relatives. The man offered that he is a movie extra who lives in LA. To pay the rent he drives a limo. They told him they thought he looks like Ricky Gervais, star of the British version of The Office. They seemed to not even know that Gervais's latest project is called Extras.

Oh. I have to go eat. More later...

mission acomplished

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Well, it turns out the weatherman was wrong again, this time in the right direction. There were not, as predicted, torrents of freezing rain. So I was able to do the 20 miler out in the beauty of the world rather than the dreeriness of an indoor track.

How was it?

Mostly good. But I reallly bonked on the last two and a half miles. They were almost pure torture. Before that I started bonking pretty bad on the uphills from about mile 15 on. Every time I hit an incline during that stretch I felt like I was going to die.

And now I am sore as can be. Calves. Quads. Lower back. Feet. All aching.

All in all it was a good learning experience. And I feel more than a little studly, having gone 20 miles on one of the worst weather days of the year.

What did I learn?

For one, stick with the walk/run plan, at least for this stage of my running life. I decided at about mile 5 to abandon the 3 minute run/1 minute walk schedule. From mile five to mile fifteen I ran quite a bit farther between walk breaks, in some cases I went more than a mile before taking a break. I also let the pace pick up pretty good a on a couple of stretches.

I think all of this contributed to me bonking so hard at the end.

I took with me three packs of PowerBar gel. I gulped down the first one at mile 10 as planned. The next two I had at 15 and 18. In both instances I felt pretty much completely wiped out, and the calories boost gave me a little bit of energy to press on. I'm definitely going to need to do that again one the marathon.

So, having learned my lessons, I plan to be a lot smarter when I do my 23 miler on December 30. I'm definitely going to stick to the walk/run plan. And I'll be sure to have plenty of calories handy.

Now, for the rest of the day, I'm going to put my feet up andhope that this pain subsides.

20 miles, 2

All week I kept checking the forecast. All week it held steady for Sunday: 25 degrees with 60 percent chance of freezing rain. And all week I clung to the hope that the forecast would be wrong.

Well, it was wrong.

Now the forecast is for 15 degrees and 100 percent chance of freezing rain.

So... About that 20 mile run. I'm still going to do it. But not outdoors.

I think I could handle the temperature. But not the .2 inches of ice they're predicting. Right now there's about .002 inches out there, and it's treacherous enough.

Tomorrow I will be running 200 laps at the North Kansas City Community Center.

What fun!

alex katz

Today I had some time to kill before a dentist appointment, so I explored a series of elevated walkways between buildings in downtown Kansas City. I pleasantly surprised to find an art collection in the middle of it.

The work was all contemporary realism, and most of it I didn't like, except for this painting by Fairfield Porter:



But then I turned around and saw a great big painting that looked like something by Alex Katz. I took a few steps closer and read the title plate. It was!

I couldn't believe it. A huge Katz from 1971. It was of a couple sitting on a couch and another couple sitting across from the min arm chairs. They appeared to be in conversation. One guy was smiling. He looked an awful lot like this guy.

Such a cool discovery. This totally unique, classic work by a contemporary master, just hanging in the middle of mundane office-space downtown Kansas City.

20 miles

The plan is to run 20 miles this Sunday. Never in my life have I gone so far on a training run. Obviously I'm thinking a lot about it. It's a big event looming on my horizon.

As luck would have it, the forecast for Sunday is for "ice pellets" and "likely freezing rain" and 27 degrees.

So obviously I'm thinking A LOT about this run.

My initial plan was to do a tour of the city. But tonight I took a wonderful run in the snow down Cliff Drive and I thought, I could do Cliff Drive three times!.

And then I got to thinking about it, and I realized I could piece together my close-to-home running routes and do them twice or three times and it would add up to 20 miles in a jiffy.

Advantages:

1. A psych boost, because these are all runs I do with no problem all the time, it won't feel like a long run, where I'm super far from home. Seriously, I've run Cliff Drive so many times now, that it almost feels like walking across my living room.

2. Hardly any traffic.

3. No sidewalk running, with uneven ice-chunk surfaces that are bound to be ubiquitous on Sunday, after a snow storm and a couple of days of frozen rain.

4. Cliff Drive is purdy.

5. I'll be close enough to home, that maybe Allie will be able to come out and cheer me on at some point.

Two more days. I'm gonna do this.

six miles

Sorry I haven't been updating much. I swear I've got the worst case of block I've ever had.

I toned back the running just a smidge last week, because I was feeling a few aches in my calves and quads. I've also increased the stretching routines. Today I went back out for my scheduled six miler and it went pretty good. I got a little cramp in my left calf from mile 4 to mile 5, and my quads were still generally tight. But I think I'm back on track. I just need to take it a little easy this next week, probably only running twice, as I gear up for the 20-miler next Sunday. I think if I just keep it real slow, I'll be fine.

Allie and I ate the last of the garden last night -- two bowls of arugala. Can't say it's my favorite green. Certainly not as good as the two bowls of spinach we had earlier this week. For some reason, I can't get that stuff to grow as thick as lettuse. Wish I could, because it's sooooo good.

Work's going pretty good. We're having some inner office personality issues, one of which is about as ugly and unfair as any inner-office conflict I've ever seen. It's frustrating because bits and pieces of it have been leeked to the public, and bloggers are having a field day making convictions. Those of us who really know what's going on are forced to keep our mouthes shut, but suffice to say that things are not at all as they appear in the blogosphere. It's tough, and it really pisses me off sometimes, but I think it's strengthening the resolve of those of us who are committed. At least I'm feeling more committed now than ever.

Allie and I ran together today for the first time (I ran the first two miles of my run with her). That was really cool. She says she thinks she's going to become addicted, which I think is great. Eleven months from now, we'll be running the Portland Marathon together.

Won't be long we'll be hopping a train bound for Indiana for the holidays. Little less than three weeks, in fact. Counting the days...

YouTube Thanksgiving

YouTube etc. is a great addition to holiday family get togethers.

You know when you get to talking about stuff you've seen on TV? Or stuff you watched when you were kids?

Now you can go online and find them.

This weekend we've watched:

The Schoeners:





That leather jacket wearing bad boy Lujack from the guiding light:



(Allie has a thing for leather jackets back in the '80s.)

And my personal favorite, Bill Brasky:

The Road to Boston

I think I've got it all figured out.

Every man needs a Thanksgiving project. Mine was plotting out Allie's training schedule for her first marathon, and mine for qualifying for Boston.

Buckle in folks. This is going to get absurdly intricate. Midway through, you'll likely think I'm nuts and obsessive. And you'll probably be right. But at the end you might well find yourself saying, I think this guy's on to something.

Alright. Enough caveats. Let's begin.

First, Allie. For her plan, I picked two really cool races that are renowned for being great for first timers.

The first is the Gary Bjorklund Half Marathon. It is held in conjunction with the world famous Grandma's Marathon, which I will run. Both are on July 21. We will combine these races with a mid-summer camping and canoeing trip.

The second is The Portland Marathon. By all accounts, this is the best first-timer marathon in the United States. I'll run it with her, and I'll do all the long runs leading up to it with her.

This will all be part of the first two phases of my Road to Boston.

The goal of the first phase is to build a mileage base and to get used to the distance (and to run a few of the really cool marathons!). The first phase ends with the Grandma's Marathon. I won't do any speed work leading up to that one. I'll just keep doing the Galloway run/walk method, and I'll finish three -- Carlsbad, Austin and Grandma's -- without any consideration of time.

As I've mentioned before on this blog, the reason I'm doing Carlsbad and Austin is because the Galloway plan calls for running a marathon before the marathon, so if I'm doing a marathon, I night as well actually do one, and get a shirt, instead of running around KC in the dead of winter. And, like I said, I'm running Grandma's because it looks super cool.

After that, I'm going to do three in the fall: Portland, New York City and Memphis.

I know what you're thinking. Three?!?!

Wait. There's logic to this.

Galloway also has a training plan for folks who have a time goal. In this one, you run a marathon and a 29-mile run before the actual marathon. This is the training plan I'll use in getting ready to qualify for Boston at a marathon in March 2010. So I figure it might be a good idea to try it to get a feel for the mileage, and also to shoot for an in-between time goal.

See, right now I'm running consistently at a pace to finish in about 4:30 or 4:40. To qualify for Boston, I'll need a 3:20. So I figure it'd be good to try to go sub-4:00 first. I'll shoot for that at Memphis.

So... In preparing for Boston, I'll run Portland real slow. Then I'll do New York plus three miles, also slow. Then Memphis.

During the build up to Memphis, I'll start working in some speed work. This will consist of weekly tempo runs, short at first, then building up to 3 miles or so (still pretty short). Along with this, I'll do one day a week of hill sprints and dabble with some short track workouts of 400 at a 3:20 pace (100 seconds). Lastly, I'll start doing mile repeats a couple of Sundays a month, with the miles run at 30 seconds or so faster than the 8:30-min a mile necessary to break 4 hours.

Then I rest for December 2009, running an easy maintenance schedule.

For 2010, it'll be all about training for three specific races.

First, the Hospital Hill Half Marathon. This is a mid-summer classic in Kansas City. My goal for this will be 1:40 -- the exact pace I'll need to go for the marathon.

To acheive this goal, I'll do a modified version of Galloway's schedule for a time-goal marathon. Basically it'll be the same, with the longest run being a 20 miler (no 23, 26 or 29).

After that, I'll take a couple of weeks to recover before embarking on an eight-week 5k training plan. The goal here will be to break 20 minutes. This will consist of shorter long runs and just a little more track work at a good clip. The objective here is to increase speed.

After the 5k, and a couple of weeks recovery, I'll go for one more round on the Galloway time-goal marathon plan, this time picking up the pace on the mile repeats and the tempo runs so that they correlate with the pace necessary to break 3:20 - 7:38 per mile.

As before, this'll have three marathons leading up to the Boston qualifier -- Disney, Surf City and, finally, Napa Valley.

Why Napa Valley?

Ah. Here's the real beauty of it. The part where it starts looking like fate.

For one, early March was the the right conclusion for all the interlocking training plans. Now, there are a number of reputable marathons held at that time of year, most notably Los Angeles and Little Rock. But both of these are quite hilly. So I checked out Napa Valley, thinking I'd find more of the same. But wouldn't you know it? The course is a point-to-point with an overall drop of 340 feet! Perfect Boston qualifier!!

And, to top it off, Allie has wanted to visit wine country for the longest time!!

What's more, it would be my 12th marathon (or 10th on the Road to Boston). Nice even numbers.

So, yeah. Fate.

So there you have it. Still think I'm crazy?

Perhaps I am. Especially if you look at the spread sheet I spent all day making, complete with to-the-second 400-meter repeats to be run on August 28, 2009.

Of course, it's not set in stone. There'll be adjustments along the way. But I think this is a pretty solid outline for a 2.25-year plan to a lofty but reachable (knock wood) goal.

Or at least a fun project for Thanksgiving Day.

You decide.

jamestown

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I'm in Allie's hometown. We drove here, which I'm reluctant to do again. Looooooong. And Ohio is a fascist state, when it comes to highway control. The speed limit is 65, and they pack the borders with troopers so everyone is scared straight when the cross over from Indiana and see fellow fast travelers pulled to the side with flashing lights behind them. For the entire rest of the trip we obediently slow-poked along with everyone else. It felt like being on a conveyer belt in an cloud-covered Orwell world.

Allie's folks are in the process of remodeling. Their new, open-layout kitchen makes it seem like they have a new house. That's good because tomorrow I'll be able to eat the benefits. Right now the women are off at the food museum, ogling the collection.

I went for a little run today, the first after going 17 miles on Sunday. Felt a little tight and heavy-legged, and my heart rate was a little bit higher, so I guess I'm still in recuperation mode.

There's a Turkey Trot tomorrow in Erie, PA, which is about an hour away. Allie and I are thinking of heading over there to check it out. It's on an island on the coast of Lake Erie, so it should be quite pretty. I'm tempted to run the 10k, though I'm not scheduled to run long until Sunday. I think if I go real slow and don't let my pride get the best of me, I'll be OK.

The pictures from the Tulsa race are online. Looks just like the ones from the KC run. Except the first one, where they happened to catch me during a wallk break. In it I look like I'm pretty warn out. But I'll have you know that by the end of the race I completely smoked that perky/chipper woman who's smiling in the picture beside me. I kept trading places with her from mile 6 to 12. But when I decided to kick it in, she was toast!

Tulsa time

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Did a little more than 17 miles in Tulsa today. It felt pretty good. I started feeling a little tightness at about 9 or 10 miles, as we moved into the hillier section, but it was generally pretty easy.

Instead of doing the beginning of the course with the marathoners, who started an hour early, I decided to do my first four miles through downtown Tulsa. It was pretty cool. They've got a lot of art deco buildings mixed in with Chicago-style modernist towers. This church is especially cool.

The race itself was great, very well organized with a terrific spread of food at the end. Tulsa has a real pretty riverfront road, and a lot of the course followed it. We were joined by the marathoners at the 10K mark, so that was kind of cool having the faster runners move by us. Some of them were obviously hitting the wall. They were laboring pretty hard. One guy was moaning loudly as he moved past me at the final mile mark. I decided to try to keep up with him the rest of the way in. He wound up finishing in 3:20, which is what I'll need to hit if I want to qualify for Boston after my 40th birthday and until I'm 44. So by finishing with him I was able to fantasize about qualifying.

Back at the hotel I chatted up a guy who had qualified. It was his first marathon, no less. He seemed pretty pleased with himself.

I feel a little sore right now, but I think that's partly due to jumping into the car right away and driving for four hours. I suspect that I'll feel a little tight again tomorrow. But by Tuesday I should be like new.

All in all I'm pretty pleased. 17 miles is a pretty good distance. Makes the marathon seem within reach now. I've got two more long runs -- 20 miles on December 9 and 23 on December 30. The 20 miler is the one I'm the most nervous about, because I'll be doing that here in KC. I've talked a co-worker into doing 16 of it with me, though. So at least I won't be alone. The 23 will be at this weird eight-loop Marathon down in Springfield. I'll duck out of that after 7 laps.

I'm really starting to look forward to Carlsbad and Austin. It's making for a fun winter.

amazing finish

If you haven't seen it yet, this is amazing.

Tulsa World Route 66 Half Marathon

Tomorrow I'll be heading south for the Tulsa World Route 66 Half Marathon.

The plan is to actually run 17 miles.

This could work out perfectly.

The marathon will begin an hour before the half marathon, and they start along the same course -- which begins with a 3.5 loop that swings back by the starting line. So my plan is to sneak in with the marathoners, run the 3.5, jog for another half mile, and then line up for the half marathon.

Should work, unless they spot my in the marathon crowd and go all fascistic on me. Could happen, but I doubt it.

Regardless, I think it'll be fun -- if painful. This is a fairly large jump in mileage. For the last few months, I've been adding 1.5 to my long run every other week. Now I start adding three miles every third week. I know it'll be painful, because the 14 miler two weeks ago got real tough at the end (in part because it was a hellishly hilly course).

In other news, I've decided to run the Carlsbad California Marathon in January. (This in addition to Austin, because my training program calls for running a marathon before the marathon.) More on that later...

paperback stuff

I'm starting to get a teeny bit of attention for the paperback. Supposedly, the Cleveland Plain Dealer ran something, but I couldn't find it online. And the Washington Post ran a lukewarm review.

Other than that, I've gotten a few decent blog reviews here, here and here.

humbling run

I decided to try running fast last night. And all I did was prove to myself how slow I am.

I was almost completely out of breath two minutes in. I looked down at the Garmin and saw that I was running in the mid nines -- slower than I was running at the end of my long, slow run yesterday. Granted, I was running up a hill and, like an idiot, I didn't warm up at all. But still. Out of breath at 9:30 a mile?

A quarter of the way through I got up to 8:14, and after the halfway point, on a long downhill, I clocked a 7:14 average. But I felt like I was all-out sprinting. Certainly not a pace I could carry for 26.2 miles.

Is this because I'm getting older? Because I had a brief smoking relapse during the campaign? Because I'm still relatively early in a consistent fitness program?

I didn't have my heart monitor on. If I had, I fear it would've been pretty darned high.

When I had it on during the long, slow run on Sunday, I kept hitting 168 during the running parts. According to the standard heart rate formula, it should be at 150 or so when I'm training at that effort level.

The next day I called the physical fitness experts at my gym and asked them if this was too high. They said that there's some flexibility in those numbers. That a better gauge is the conversation test, meaning if you can talk while you run, you're doing OK. I'd say I could definitely talk during my run on Sunday (though I had no one to talk to), so I guess I was doing OK.

They also said that the more I exercize, my heart rate will go down. That over time I'll need to gradually increase my threshold by adding distance or adding intensity.

Well, having tried the intensity last night, in a sloppy, impatient way, I'd say it's best I hold off on that for now and just stick with plan of slowly and carefully adding more miles.

Also, I think I should get a thorough check up. Like other runners across the world, Ryan Shay's death has me feeling uneasy.

geekathoner

I'm geeking out on a new toy. It might well be the geekiest thing I've ever toyed with. I got a Garmin Forerunner this weekend. It's amazing.

I took it out for an eight-mile run today. I could glance at it from time to time and see my pace, distance traveled, heart rate, etc.

When I got back, I plugged it into my computer, and within seconds I was sifting through a database, looking at graphs showing how I stood up against hills, what my maximum pace was, etc. It drew up an elavation profile of my run, and even calculated the precise amount of time I was standing behind a bush, pissing.

I always had a sense that I got faster as I ran, but now I can really see it. At the beginning, I ran about 10- or 11-minute-per-mile pace. Soon I was clicking along at a nine-minute pace. Toward the end, I was in the eights. In fact, I often hit somewhat random peeks of about 7:30.

That's cool for a couple of reasons. For one, it didn't feel like I was going any faster. I didn't feel any extra effort when I was going faster.

The other reason is that 7:30 is just below the pace I'd need to maintain to qualify for Boston.

Knowing this makes it seem very possible now.

Averaged out, my running and walking together put me at a 10:21 pace. Not bad, considering how slow I was going on the walk parts.

boston qualifier

I've been doing my mid-week runs in the evenings. On Tuesday, I didn't get out until after dark. It was a little breezy, and the wind picked up the leaves that were kicked up by my stride and swirled them around, filling the night air with the papery sound of autumn. For the second time, I spotted deer on the Gladstone path. This time they huddled in a dark spot near a bush, with only the tops of their heads sillhouetted against the glow of a street lamp. At first I thought they might be big loose dogs.

Coming home after a run like that, on a chilly night, is so satisfying. The house is warm and warmly lit, and Allie's filled it with the scent of spicy soup.

Yesterday, I got out a little earlier, before the sun went down, and got a fair distance up Cliff Drive before turning around. We're amidst a fabulous autumn here in KC, bright colors everywhere, and it was warm enough yesterday to go in shorts and short sleeves.

I picked up the pace a bit as I moved along. In my mind I was running much faster than I actually was. I imagined moving along at a 7:30 clip, knocking out the final miles of a marathon with strength and determination. I was mere minutes away from qualifying for the Boston Marathon, bolstered by the confident assurance of a the sports medicine doctor I'd visited a couple days earlier, who told me, without a second of hesitation, that he saw no reason why I couldn't qualify for Boston.

When I look at it objectively, it seems a real stretch. I'm running a good three minutes per mile slower than I would need to to qualify. And that's for 26.2 miles, a distance I haven't even hit yet. It's hard to fathom.

On the other hand, it's not. On a cool autumn day, when I have a beautiful road like Cliff Drive all to myself, and I'm deep in the throws of a runner's high, it feels totally possible. It feels like it's actually happening. Like I'm already there.

dumb dems

I haven't been happy with the insiders of the Democratic party for some time now. I thought the choice of Jim Kerry as presidential nominee was a really poor one. He struck me as arrogant, elitist and aloof. I supported him, of course. I probably would've supported anyone over Bush. But I had a sense from the get go that he lacked the sort of charisma and charm it takes to win a nationwide race.

Now I have a sense they're making the same mistake again by propping up Hllary Clinton. Obviously, she's got a tough hurdle to overcome in sexism. And maybe that's subconsciously what's behind my misgivings about her. But I don't think so. I think she's just plain cold, claculating and elitist.

Check out this long TV commercial from the Edwards camp.

Make no mistake, these candidates gravitate to the top of the field because Democratic leaders want them to. And my suspicion is that the reason they want them to is because they know they'll play ball.

That's the way it works locally.

In congressional races and such, the party insiders, the ones who fund the campaigns and doctor the spin, only back people who know and respect the current and long-standing landscape of interlocking feifdoms and patronage arrangements.

No reason not to believe that's how it happens on the national level. Especially when they keep ponying up candidates who are completely out of touch with regular folks.

rock stars

Allie and I caught up with our friends Joel and Jocelyn in Lawrence last night and went to the New Pornographer's concert. Much fun. I can't remember the last time I paid to see a band. They're easily my favorite group right now, have been for months, but it's funny how little I knew about them.

Like, I had no idea one of the singers is an alt-country star. I think my uncles might find her interesting.

And I didn't know that one of the other singers hheads up a totally different band.

The former was explained to me last night by my much hipper friends from Lawrence. The latter we figured out when we watched Kathryn Calder perform in the opening band, and then break down their equipment, and then return to set up equipment and play with the headlining act. (Afterward, Allie wondered if she'd also be driving the bus to the next show.)

Also, I was surprised to see a bearded man stumble out onto stage carrying a beer and proceed to sing some of my favorite songs. I thought they just had one main male singer, A.C. Newman. But no, there's also this beer-guzzling beardy guy who has a totally distinctive voice that I shoulda figured out earlier when I was listening to the records. Beardo kept coming onto stage from near where the sound board was, so I wondered if maybe his main gig is sound guy.

Anyway, the whole deal sort of reminded me of my cousin Jake.

Partly because Jake's voice is kind of like the beardy guy's. But mostly because every time I tell my uncles that Jake's destined for rock stardom, they say, kind of wryly, "Yeah, well, he surrounds himself with talented people."

Well, yeah. Isn't that the point?

Worked for this A.C. Newman cat. He sure earned our 50 bucks.

inspiration

I'm totally on a running-watching kicking. I've been trolling the Internet for footage of races. I found a few that gave me goose pimples.

Check out this trailer for a new documentary about marathoning.

And then check out the finishes in this year's Chicago Marathon for both the men and women's division.

The women's is particularly exciting.

cranky race fan

When I was in junior high and totally hooked on running, my favorite sporting event was the New York City Marathon. They used to broadcast it in its entirety on network TV. This was back at the tail end of the glory days of American distance running, when Alberto Salazar, Dick Beardsley and Greg Meyer were tearing it up.

This morning I want nothing more than to watch the race. But I can't. It's not on TV. There is a webcast available, but the software is incompatable with Macintosh. So I have to wait until 2 p.m. for a one-hour highlight show.

Not fair!

Above all, I can't understand why. Marathons are more popular now than they ever were. All morning our local NBC affiiliate has been showing infomercials and reruns of Matlock. I have a hard time believing they wouldn't have made more money off the marathon.

fiercely competitive also-ran

I ran another half marathon this morning. Actually, I added a little bit to it and ran about 14.5 miles. It was a small race down in Olathe, Kansas, and the course was a killer,with lots of hills.

I stuck pretty religiously to the run/walk plan today. I did it all the way to the end.

It's kind of entertaining. Throughout the whole race I'm catching up with other folks who went out faster than me. Often it takes me quite a few run/walk cycles to catch them. I gain a little on the run, then lose a little on the walk. It's kind of like fighting a big fish on the open sea.

My biggest fish today was The Flag Man. I saw this guy at the KC marathon two weeks ago. He runs the whole course with a flag pole propped on his shoulder and a great big American flag waving behind him.

I can't stand this guy. All I want to do is to beat him.

Today I got him in my sights at about mile five. I didn't catch him until nine. The whole time I'm thinking, You patriotic son of a bitch. I'll show you a thing or two about American pride! (Mind you, we're both running11-minute miles, near the absolute back of the field.)

But as I got closer, my eyes locked on his slow but steady form, the bright colors of Old Glory rippling in the morning sunlight, I found myself feeling some affection for him. If nothing else, he'd given me something of a purpose for the middle four miles of the race.

But when I sidled up beside him, making my big pass, he didn't even look over to give me a friendly "Hi there fellow 'Merican!" nod. He just looked straight ahead at the same spot in the road in front of him, a beed of sweat dangling from the brim of his hat.

What kind of patriot is that?

One about nine miles into a grueling 13.1-mile run, probably. Too tired to bond with a fellow countryman, I suppose.

That's right, Mr. Flag Man.

This 5.5-mile-an-hour lightning bolt of real American pride done passed you by!

Pledge alegience to that, bee-yotch!!

the awesome and the awful

I'm so into running these days that I'm paying attention to the pros. If track events and road races got as much coverage as football and baseball I'd probably be wasting my weekend afternoons in front of the tube.

Today was the Olympic trials for the marathon. NBC showed a half-hour summary of the event.

Quite a story:

One guy set a record. Another dropped dead.

Ryan Shay, who won a national championship in the 10,000 meters for Notre Dame, collapsed early in the race and was pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospital. He had just gotten married in July. His wife was good friends with the wife of the race's champion, Ryan Hall. She was a maid of honor at the Shays' wedding.

Meantime, Ryan Hall broke the record for the event by a minute or so. He was so cool to watch, the way he pumped his fists and pointed skyward as he came in to the finish, high-fiving folks in the crowd and shouting like a he-man. He's definitely the new great American hope for distance running. At just 25, he's already set the American record in the half marathon and the fastest ever debut in the marathon.

America might be bringing home a medal from Beijing next year. When's the last time that happened? LA in '84, when Joan Benoit won?

But still, can you imagine? You run a totally kick ass race, make it to the Olympic team, and find out a good friend and training partner just suddenly died.

Or worse, to be his new wife? You know they had to have arranged their lives in preparation for this day. To have this happen -- sheesh, it boggles the mind.

28 years old.

running pix

If you want to see pictures of me running the KC half marathon, click here and type 3301 in the bib number field.

I look pretty goofy in most of them. In several of them I have the classic Miller unintentional sneer.

wrongful conviction

I think one of the most difficult things to deal with in the world of politics is the way people will believe rumors as if they are absolute truth.

Twice now I have been convicted of doing something I did not do.

First, a council member blamed me for a negative story about her that was published in a newspaper I used to work for her. She believes that I got the reporter to write it and nothing I say or do can convince her otherwise.

Now a reporter for another paper thinks I am going around trying to get people to write negative stories about her. She thinks I'm trying to convince people from her own paper to write these stories. It's absolutely absurd, but she's so convinced it's true that she's going around town saying that I'm running a smear campaign against her.

This also is not true, but nothing I say or do can convince her otherwise.

Again, it's a lot like high school.

But the weirdest thing is that these two individuals are liberals who would be outraged if a murder were convicted without a fair trial. But in this weird, backstabbing, he said/she said world of politics, it's all perfectly normal.

What can you do?

good bye squirrel

Allie and I were walking the dogs last week. Suddenly, Allie started screaming. I looked down and Maddie was about to chomp on a squirrel. I yanked her back.

The squirrel tried to climb up a tree but it couldn't even get past a gnarl of root. It clawed at the bark to get a good grip but it had lost all its strength. It stumbled back onto its haunches and breathed heavily.

I looked at the squirrel and it looked back at me. It seemed to be in shock, and baffled by its inability to do basic squirrel stuff, like climb a tree. I could see it labor with each breath. I knew it was going to die.

Allie told me to take the dogs home so she could examine it. Later she came home and then returned to the squirrel with a box, a soft towel and a hot water bottle. But then she came back a few minutes later. The squirrel was dead, she said.

cool cats

This one is for my aunts...

kc half marathon

I did the half marathon this morning. It was a blast.

The course was very nice, and it was a beautiful day. I liked that it started so early, because we had that really early morning sunlight, where all the folks ahead of me were sillhouetted. It's been a while since I've been in a road race, running amid so many people. There were about 5,500 in the race. It was quite a sight to be going down Grand at dawn amid such a crowd.

For those of you familar with KC, we started at Crown Center, headed toward downtown to 16th and then south on Main, past Union Station, up the hill for a loop by the Liberty Memorial and then back on Main to Westport. We ran through Westport, then south to the Plaza, across the Paza, past the Nelson and Stowers, up north on Troost then Gillham then the Paseo to the 18th and Vine district. We took 18th the last mile or so to a finish in the Crossroads (near where Allie and I got married, for you out of towners).

I didn't see anyone else doing the Jeff Galloway run/walk thing. It was a little odd being the only one, especially in the beginning. To be honest, I felt a little self conscious, like everyone running past me thought I was a pussy or something. But then when I'd start running again, I'd be passing folks left and right.

I wound up getting caught up in the excitement of it, and running the last three miles straight through, with walk breaks at the aid stations at each mile. I wound up coming in at a little under two hours and fifteen minutes.

I probably shouldn't have broken out of the game plan, because I'm feeling a little stiff right now. But I think I'll recover by Tuesday, when I'll be ready to resume my shorter mid-week runs.

Now I think Allie's getting the bug. She's talking about training for a half in the Spring.

racing season

I'm getting all excited gearing up for the Kansas City Half Marathon this weekend. I haven't run in a road race for four or five years. And the last time I did a half marathon was in college, probably 15 years ago. This one will be cool because it's a real pretty course, and it's projected to be a perfect fall day.

I'm doing this one as a training run. I'm going to try to keep it slow, and take the usual one-minute walking breaks for every three minutes of running.

This is the plan for the rest of the spring and winter, as I move into the really long run phase of my marathon training. To keep from getting bored on the long runs, I'm going to run half marathons as part of them. It just so happens that there are races scheduled for all but one of the long-run days penciled in on my calendar. I'm going to do one in Olathe, another in Tulsa, and then this weird one in Springfield, where you can keep running around a 5k loop for as long as you want until you hit a marathon (I'm going to stop at 23 miles).

Also, the training program I'm following calls for me to run 26 miles one month before the Austin Marathon. So I figured, hell, if I'm going to do that, I might as well run a real marathon. So I'm seriously considering doing one in Mobile, Alabama, in January. So I'll actually wind up doing two in a month's time.

Sounds kind of crazy. But fun.

trash tv

I don't know how long Allie and I are going to last with this full-package cable deal we bought into. I'm thinking if we don't get rid of it by winter's end, we're both going to require brain reconstruction surgery.

Last night we watched 101 More Things Removed From the Human Body.

popularity

As some of you know, I had a few tough months this summer with my new job. About a month in, the Mayor appointed a woman to the Parks Board who happened to be a member of the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps, which is this anti-illegal immigration group that's arguably racist against Hispanics. This made the job tough because it seemed as though our administration was spinning toward failure, that this misstep would consume us, and we'd never get anything done, and we'd be the first one-term mayoral administration in Kansas City in a long, long time.

But then a couple of months ago we start hearing that the Mayor's approval ratings have been through the roof. We're talking historic highs -- like 70 percent. In fact, the more the mayor held his ground on the appointment, refusing to buckle to boycott threats, the more his approval ratings went up. These polls were conducted in conjunction with some ballot initiatives that are coming up, and they were paid for by other people, so we didn't own the info. And, for reasons I still don't understand, I was sworn to secrecy about them. But now, finally, the embargo has been lifted. I'm going to be getting copies of the poll results today, and then comes the fun part of figuring out how best to disburse the info.

All this underscores what I wrote about the other day, about in-crowds and politics. If you're immersed in City Hall, and in the circles that orbit City Hall, you would think that the Mayor is really blowing it. But if you go out among the masses, the people we're ostensibly serving, you'll see that he's a huge success.

I'm really curious to see what will happen when the insiders learn this, when they find out that their take on reality is completely wrong. Will they all fall in line with the mayor's agenda? Or will they work all the harder to make their dreams become reality?

I'm guessing a little of both, but that the former will win out.

sports fan

The other day I said I'm not much of a sports fan. But today I wish I was.

I'm kind of jealous of my dad and brothers and all my old friends in Denver who are celebrating the Colorado Rockies pennant win. It's quite a sports story. Probably one of the hottest hot streaks in the history of the game.

For those who haven't been watching, the Rockies have won 21 of their last 22 games. The streak started in the late season, when they came from behind to tie the San Diego Padres, forcing a one-game play-off for a place in the play-offs. Then they swept both series to earn a trip to the World Series, the first time ever for Colorado.

Quite a ride.

Now I might have to watch the World Series.

But then, that would mean I'd actually have to sit through several baseball games, and foresake HBO.

Hmm. I'll have to think about this.

press

I have this friend who works in the mayor's office of a large Midwestern city that we'll call Possum Trot. She shares with me stories about what it's like.

Dan's recent post about Steve Kraske reminded me of some stuff she told me about her experiences with the press. She's particularly tuned in to their rhythms because she used to be a reporter.

She's got lots of stories, and I might share a few here, but the main theme of all of them is that almost all of the reporters and the columnists and the editors are wannabe insiders. Actually, I take that back. She says the folks at the daily paper are in-crowd aspirants. The TV people, with the exception of two real good reporters, are too scattered from covering so much territory, too limited in time, and in some cases, too good looking to care about what the movers and shakers at City Hall think of them. The radio people are too smart. And the alt-weely people have too much freedom.

But the daily people, with the exception of two, according to my friend, they all fancy themselves players in the game.

She tells me that politics is just like high school.

You've got the in-crowd, the proverbial football captain and cheerleader. That's the establishment.

Then you got the in-crowd wannnabes in newspaper and yearbook club. That's the daily paper.

They flit about the quarterback and cheerleader, snapping pictures and jotting down notes, propping the in-crowd up as the standard bearers for high school reality. Oh, they might poke at them a little bit from time to time, like when the jock loses a big game or something. But for the most part they are utterly beholden to the myth of the in-crowd's supremacy. And if anyone tries to challenge this myth, they attack. They have to protect the in-crowd because they want so desperately to be the in-crowd. The in-crowd defines them.

Meantime, there's this vast high school reality that they're utterly clueless about. While they're obsessively focused on the dozen or so so-called poplar people, they're surrounded by hundreds of normal kids who are just slogging their way through adolescence. In my city-power-structure metaphor, these are citizens -- the people who are increasingly disinterested in reading the newspaper and, worse, in voting.

Honestly, sometimes when she tries to explain this stuff to me, I get a little leery. It all seems a bit glib and contrived. But she's adament that she's on to something.

I'll try to parse more of what she has to say in future posts.

chiefs game

Allie and I are not big sports fans. We arrived late to today's game and left early. It was fun, though.

Allie doesn't really know anything about football, so I explained a lot of the rules to her. She was amazed at how complicated it is. I hadn't really thought about it before, but it is kind of amazing. How is it that I know all this stuff, even though I hardly watch the game? I kept thinking that if Americans knew as much about civics as they do about football, the republic would be so much stronger. I couldn't help imagining government events being so popular. Like, wouldn't it be great if city council meetings were in Arrowhead Stadium, and the place was packed with crazed fans who would erupt in applause when a good ordinance passes or a bad one fails?

I've long thought that society would be a lot better if the news section of the morning paper were as lively and interesting as the sports section.

Give them bread and circuses.

Anyway, the highlights for us were Domata Peko's hair and the wave that got going in the fourth quarter. Seriously, Peko's hair is totally wild.

private

Well, I've gone private. We'll see how this works.

I'll try to post more frequently. I think that'll be doable because I won't have to worry about Steve Glorioso reading it. At least not directly. (For you out-of-towners, Steve Glorioso is a generic term for unprincipled political opportunists.)

Ran six miles today. Next Saturday is the KC half marathon.

Today Allie and I are going to a Chiefs game. First one for her, second for me. We've got the Mayor's seats, so it should be pretty classy.

Drop me a line and let me know if the access worked.

clarification

I got an e-mail from one of my relatives today worried that I was cutting them out by making this blog private. That's not the case, so I figure I'd better explain why I'm taking this action. Initially I didn't want to say much because I've suddenly found myself in this weird online stalker situation and I know that addressing it here will probably just intensify it.

There's this guy I was once reluctant friends with who has been weirdly obsessed with me ever since Allie and I didn't invite him to our wedding because he sexually harrassed one of our friends. Almost immediately he started writing all these over-the-top nasty posts about me on his blog. I was taken aback at first, but then I decided to just ignore it. Supposedly his is a joke blog, but I've had the misfortune of hanging around with him in person and I can attest that it's no joke -- especially the misogynist and racist stuff. Mostly he craves attention.

But recently he's started writing really creepy sexual stuff about me and I just have to cut him off. It's unfortunate, but I guess all those Dateline NBC sensationalist reports about the dangers of the Internet were at least partially true.

Anyway, all my friends and family are welcome to keep reading. Send me your e-mail me at gobodog [at] gmail [dot] com and I'll set you up for access. I'll probablly make the switch a week from Saturday.

privacy statement

A week or so from today, I'm going to make this blog private. If you're interested in continuing reading it, e-mail me at gobodog [at] gmail [dot] com, and I'll consider your request.

The way it'll work is that you'll have to get a free Google account, if you don't already have one, and you'll be able to read it as long as you're logged in. The way Google is set up, though, you'll be logged in pretty much anytime you go online.

I know this isn't an ideal set up. But I think it'll be worth it, because now I'll be free to write about things that are actually interesting.

Look forward to hearing from you. I won't be posting anything new until a week or so when I privatize this thing.

paperback writer

They arrived today!

alright, already

I've been getting a lot of complaints because I haven't posted in over two weeks. Sorry, just been sort of busy.

So here's a whirlwind update...

I've been juggling a bunch of stuff at work, one of which was a speech the Mayor delivered on Thursday to the National Conference of Editorial Writers. It got some pretty good attention.

I'm still on track with the marathon training. Last weekend I ran 9 miles. Next weekend I'll run 10.5. And on October 20 I'll run the Kansas City half marathon. It's been going great. I'm actually getting faster, without even trying. Like, I feel like I'm running just as slow as when I started, but I'm moving a good two-minutes-a-mile faster.

The paperback comes out next week.

Allie and I got deluxe digital cable, complete with the full HBO package. We immediately got hooked on Tell Me You Love Me. More on that later...

And this weekend Allie and I finished painting the bedroom. We painted the walls a deep purple a year or so ago, but we painted the ceiling a gross fleshy color that we didn't like, and we never got around to the trim. So we finally knuckled down and redid the ceiling in light blue, and the trim in a really bright blue. Ultimately the room will be filled with all kinds of patterns and colors and knick knacks and such -- what Allie calls "cheap Bohemian hotel." For now, here are some pix, in which the flash ultra-electifies the electric blue.

greg beck

I'm sort of reeling right now after learning that Greg Beck has died. He was one of the best bloggers anywhere, a true testament to the awesome fun of this medium. He was just a regular cat with a treasure trove of crazy stories who started a blog to write whatever the hell he wanted, audience be damned. But he wound up having a pretty good sized following anyway, because he was so authentic and honest -- and a damn good writer. I'll sure miss his voice.

poet

Allie and I went to a poetry reading last night. To be honest, I wasn't eager to go. I generally dislike poetry. Worse, this particular poet is a hot shot young staff writer for the New Yorker (based in Los Angeles, no less) so I knew my jealousy would kick in at least once during the evening. And it did, but I walked away inspired, too.

Allie didn't care for the woman's poems, but I liked them quite a bit. They were sort of like poems I might write -- short pieces that convey a sense of place, mood and just a hint of story. I had an inkling as I listened to her read that some of the blog entries I've written recently might well be beginnings of poems.

So I thought, Maybe I should be writing poetry.

Not a thought I was expecting to have. As I said, I don't really like poetry. Almost never read it.

Also, writing poetry would more than likely mean writing for nobody, except me and Allie and, maybe, the folks who read this blog. That's a challenge, because for me writing is wrapped up, for better or worse, in my capitalistic drive. It's hard for me to write something just for the sake of writing something. Of course, that's what I do with this blog, but this blog is all first draft stuff. You can't write poetry in one draft.

But then, maybe that's all the more reason why I should be writing poetry, precisely because it's worthless. Worthless, that is, within the value scale of my American life.

Maybe the true worth of life is measured in the moments we can steal away from our duties to net worth.

love

My friend Brad rides the bus in Seattle and hears the darnedest things. I ride in Kansas CIty and hear what I choose to hear. Yesterday I was hearing John Coltrane's A Love Supreme.

The bus was not quite full. There was a woman sitting up near the front with a baby in a stroller. The stroller was turned away from her, so the baby faced all of us in the back. A man seated near me made funny faces at the baby. He smiled and giggled, pleased as can be. The woman's wasn't quite twisted in a scowl, but it was a couple shades past indifference. She wore a wifebeater and jeans, and when her cell phone wrang with a hip hop beat she answered it and talked for the rest of the ride.

I listened to Coltrane as I watched the scene. A Love Supreme is one of a handful of jazz albums that push the genre into the realm of high art. Unlike most jazz recordings, it's hard to imagine it being played in a smoky bar where people are talking and maybe only half listening. There's not a note of cliche in it. It's all unique, utterly its own, as if it were some base element of sound that was discovered, not created.

It tells a story of love, of course, in so much as musical notes can tell stories, and the scene on the bus told a story of love, too, and I thought it beutiful and sad the way these two stories -- the one in my ears and the one in my eyes -- didn't connect. I imagined being a young radical in 1965, and listening to this disc and believing in the revolution its handful of tracks foretold. Back then, you'd have to listen to the album in your living room, or in a friend's living room. I think that might have made the vision all the more believable. The same way a painting is more inspiring in a safe gallery space, set against a clean white wall.

But here it is, more than 40 years later, and I'm listening to it on a bus, on a hot day -- a hot Tuesday, no less, maybe the bleakest day of a long work week. And there's this cranky young mom, and this happy man who loves kids, and a baby with a dumb expression and spittle on his short stuck-out tongue, and all these other people sitting all around us staring out the window or at the floor or, like me, at the scene, when Coltrane starts chanting at the end of a blisteringly hot, impassioned solo, a love supreme... a love supreme... a love supreme.

I ran this morning with Gobo. We got out the door at about six, when it was still dark. It was already warm, though, and quite humid. We went slowly.

It's been a while since I've done a dawn run. I used to do them all the time, when I lived alone in an apartment. I found spiritual uplift in the slow shift of light, from the orange of the street lamps to the deep blue of a new today.

It happened that way today, and I was greatly pleased.

Gobo is a reluctant running dog. He would prefer to piss on every tree and writhe against the leash any time he sees another dog or a person he doesn't like. But after a while he starts locking into a rhythm with me.

It takes ten minutes for a run to take hold, for the endorphines to kick in and for it to feel less like a struggle and more like a meditation. Must be the same for our canine bretheren.

Soon I'll be at work and Gobo will be doing whatever he does all day. Sleeping mostly, and rousing ocassionally to bark out the window at various passing threats. I wonder if he'll feel a little better all day, as I do. Is it medicine for him, too?

einstein

I love audiobooks. I listen to them while I garden, do housework, ride the bus, and sometimes when I exercize. Right now I'm listening to a biography of Einstein.

It was a bit hard to follow in the early parts, during the long passages about quantum theory and such. But the stuff about his later life is poignant and compelling.

I didn't realize how political he was.

Today I listened to the section about his involvement in the creation of the atomic bomb. It was a classic human tale: Lifelong pacifist sparks creation of man's most destructive force.

I also like the book's gentle narrative arc showing his transformation from young radical to aging conservative -- at least with regards to his work in science.

So a propos of humanity. Today's reformers are tomorrow's establishment.

Sons become their fathers.

Etc.

I've written and deleted a few things here, hoping to close out the post in some profound way, however small. But I can't find the words. It's too close to bedtime. Time for a bath, and tea. The sun will rise tomorrow. Another day with millions of revolutions that have little chance of taking hold.

long run

Today I ran six miles. When training for a marathon, you run one long run each week, the length of which you gradually increase in the months leading up to the race. The last time I embarked on a marathon training adventure, I got injured when my long run had been built up to six miles. At the end of that long run, two years ago, I felt completely warn out.

Today I feel like I jogged a mere mile. I have no pain in my legs. I'm not tired. I feel as though I could run another six miles right now, despite the heat of the afternoon.

I hate to sound like a spokesman, but it's all because if Jeff Galloway's training program. He calls for low mileage during the week and one long run each weekend. For the long run, he urges you to run two minutes per mile slower than your regualar pace and to take frequent walk breaks.

So I went out yesterday and bought a watch with an interval timer and programmed in to go off after three minutes and then one and then repeating ad ininitum. And today I ran during the three-minute spaces and walked during the ones.

I went the entire length of Cliff Drive and back (actually a little more than six miles). It was very sunny, and there was a hint of fall in the air. Cliff Drive always reminds me of West Virginia, even though I've never been there. It winds under a canopy of trees and dense vines, and every now and then one spots a limestone cliff peaking out through the vegetation. There's even a waterfall back there. All this just a jog away from the 'hood.

I went slower this week than I had in previous weeks, mostly because I ordered some of Galloway's books, and he says, over and over again, RUN SLOWLY! After a while it felt kind of like meditation. My watch seemed to beep every other second, and before I knew it, I was done, and not the least bit haggard.

Between now and February 17 I will gradually boost my Sunday run to 25 miles. Next week, I bump up to 7.5.

It's funny, though. I want to crank up the mileage right now. And I want to run faster. I want to do exactly the things that got me injured on two previous attempts.

This is a real exercize in patience. Which is maybe why I'm doing it, if on a subconcious level. Some of you dear readers likely know that I'm not a paragon of patience.

But it makes sense, I guess, considering where I am in life -- almost forty, newly married, working full-time again, pulling myself out of debt. Must be that this is when you shift the gears, start conserving gas, start working better and smarter. I have to say, it doesn't feel natural. But I like the prospects. From a distance, and even close at hand (Allie), the rewards appear positively transcendent.