Runku: Super Cold Speed work, 5M 1/16

Trying to go fast, 
when the wind and cold thinks different, 
is part of the fun. 

Runku: Date Run, 8+ miles, Easy, 1/16

One long week, spent idle apart, in a cube. Meet on the bridge. In moonlight. #Runku

Runku: Speed Work, Red Hook Track 5 miles 1/15

Even with sunshine
can be hard to start a run.
Yet, harder to stop.

Runku: Rockies Run 15+ miles, 1/13

Cold, dense fog surrounds. 
Speaking for me and the geese, 
"Not sure it's winter"

How I Became a Vegetarian

It was the kind of careless thing that gets said when you think the said thing will never amount anything. Like election campaign gusto, no one is going to fact check so you might as well sound self-assured as possible. This was idle conversation at a bar and would never be remembered if it wasn’t so hard for me to forget.

 

It was my birthday and we had just finished another day long drink fest following an evening of same. Today’s event was a fundraiser, something called Beers for Beasts, held by a local craft brewery. Brewed were dozens of special-batch beers and you’d have access to them for a price. The proceeds went to a charity protecting abused or neglected animals.  At mid-thirty this is how I have been reduced to caring about and caring for the world.  Paying a small sum that comes paired with small gratification (see: beer, craft).    

We were carrying on when we came to discussion of my wife’s family.  It was a sorting of who was who, how many sisters, how we spend holidays, an accounting of where people lived.  I’ve known my wife’s younger sister since she was nine.  In a lot of ways we are as close as siblings by blood (my own sister is just two years my junior). I am certainly more protective of my youngest sister-in-law.  We mentioned that her youngest sister had a boyfriend named Ravi and when asked if I liked him I said, “Yes of course. He’s a little naïve though.”

+++

Ravi and I probably spent a cumulative 100 hours together.  He is a fantastic listener, which is an odd thing for a man his age.  When we lost him to the sea in Costa Rica he was a long 19 years, and had the sort of intelligence and confidence you would expect to translate into mouth-running.  Not so. During our too few conversations the role of motor mouthed know-it-all was left to me.  Desperately seeking to prove my age, experience, and tout-le-monde savvy that comes with being a happy well-adjusted adult.

Ravi reminded me of myself at that age, or rather, what I wish I was at that age.  He worked hard at foreign language.  He was an EMT at school, and at home.  He didn’t just want to be a doctor. He wanted to be a doctor that helped the poorest of the poor.  He wanted to re-invent medicine by understanding every aspect of it.

While he was with us I found his ambition and hope exhausting, and this completely embarrasses me.  Ravi looked for opportunities to stand up for what he wanted and believed in; I spend almost all my time now looking for a place to sit down.

And I think I keep a pretty good pace for a person my age.  I work 50 hours a week reshaping energy consumption to what I sincerely believe the only way forward.  I fight heart disease and alcoholism -- in myself -- by exercising 15 hours a week.  I sit on three boards, two clean energy industry boards and the board of our local triathlon club.  I am a member of the Park Slope Food Coop; but only because my wife forces me.

And all of this makes me tired.  I rarely make calls to family and friends unless circumstance forces me.  I am not one for visits and I check email and twitter too much.  I chalk up my 50 hours of clean energy work, volunteer positions, and 60 miles of running a week to, “Enough. I’m tired. Fuck off.”

How could one, anyone, keep this pace up? All this goddamned thinking and doing.

+++

The last thing I remember Ravi sharing on facebook was “Can’t believe I am officially a junior. Time goes by so fast.”  In fact it does.  The distance between yesterday and tomorrow has shrunk. How do we find a way to capture this time?  To slow it down and draw meaning from our time, before saying next?  How do we get all the things done to make ourselves be the person we hope to be, without missing the point of becoming that person?

I have been a vegetarian off and on, but mostly off, since I was old enough to make the choice for myself.  The problem I have had in the last few years is how dang hard it seems. How do you explain this to your family? What about thanksgiving? What about protein? Isn’t it hard and inconvenient?  All this is bull shit, of course. We have so much food that this, the having of the too much food, is now our number one health problem.  Think about this.  Over all history we – humans – have struggled to find enough food.  I mean, really struggled.  Entire tribes, whipped out from famine. Rwanda was a particular kind of evil, but at its core it was about a bunch of people having resources, and another bunch not.  Yet, the crisis we face today, in America at least, is that we eat too much food, and too much terrible food.  Cancer and heart disease, number two and number one can be directly linked to our diets. 

And yet, nearly all people wonder about my health when I disclose that I am vegetarian.  And this is the real reason I have had trouble sticking to this commitment.  I hate making other people feel uncomfortable, and never more so than when they are uncomfortable with me.

+++

Ravi was lost vigorously trying to save a friend caught in a current.  You could make the argument that, if he thought about himself just a little bit more then he might be with us today.  But then, he wouldn’t really be with us, would he?  Something like him would be physically represented, sure, but him. Not the guy who made me think at mid-thirty, “Am I doing this right?”

The real tragedy of losing someone so young, with so much promise, is that there is a sense of hope unfulfilled.  What would their kids have been? How would his profession turned out? What a fine wedding that would be!

And these are all tremendously sad in the case of Ravi.  He was a beloved friend, who many, many, many people counted on for advice, and laughter, and love.  But what we gain from a life lived as well as Ravi -- at a third of the way to 100 years I feel pretty safe in saying he lived a fuller life than many people I know -- is the ability to make ourselves better by spreading pieces of him across the planet and across time. 

And this is how I came to be a vegetarian for good.  Ravi was a committed vegetarian who ate some fish and was careful to state that’d he’d eat some meat for invited meals when there was no other option.  This meant that at every meal he had a chance to think about what he was eating and what that food meant to the people and place around him.  He never backed away.  He explained it without making you feel bad about yourself, and without compromising his choice. 

Yes, it can be exhausting to think forward, with so much hope and gusto as Ravi did.  But having this personal monument, the choice of vegetarianism, helps me. I am vegetarian for all the very good reasons I tried to be one before.  And Ravi showed me how to get there.

I’ve never been healthier. I think it is making me and the planet stronger.  Feel free to call me a little naïve.  

meet the news goals: same as the old goals

Just seconds ago, my 2011 triathlon season came to an end.  I did not cross a physical finish line.  In fact, this came three weeks sooner than I had planned and budgeted for.  Yet, it came to an end nonetheless and came to an end the way it should, with joy for what I have accomplished, reflection upon the things I have yet to achieve, and excitement for what is next.

Here is how we got here, exactly.

+++

Three weeks ago I put together one of the best bike run combos of my training period.  Recovered with a decent run the next day.  Commented to my wife later that night that I felt better than I have ever felt.

A week later I couldn't walk.

In a way, its funny (but mostly just infuriating) how vulnerable we can be when we feel the strongest.  I did not do enough of some basic precautionary things that I [ EVERYONE!!! ] should do when preparing for such a massive event.  More stretching, more resting, more, um, core-ing?   My body fooled my mind.  And in turn my mind screwed my body.

I blame my mind.  I didn't let myself relax, enjoy the process, and be proud of the things I did / have done / was doing.  And so.  My mind and body were completely out of sync.

Thus the giant knot of nerves sitting somewhere in my right ass.  When life sets out to teach you a lesson, irony is it's best tool.

+++

By many measurements, I've had a ridiculously great year.  I am extremely sad about how this one ended.  But I have a lot to look forward too.

I have a newly learned love for yoga.  A reinvigorated passion for swimming, and swimming well.  I am committed to getting rid of one full day of biking/running/swimming in my training plans in the future for a day of yoga, stretching, core and mind health.  I won my first age group, then did it again.  I knocked 30 mins off my half-iron time -- and had enough in my training to knock another 15.  I've lost another 10 lbs.

My goal when I started the endurance event lifestyle was to lose weight and have fun.  The weight is gone.  Time to bring back the fun. If that means hot yoga and green tea, then judge me all you want.  I'll be too motherfuckin' zen to notice. Bitches*.

*That may or may not be how zen works.  I still got a lot of shit to learn.

Just for you: Clarity from Red Sox Nation, where ever that may be

Just for you -- internet curiosities that make the world a better place.

Here is word from Michael Schur, the voice behind Ken Tremendous of Partridge, KS.  It is clear.  It is sound. It's what we have come to expect, and it makes me feel small.

The Collapse of the Red Sox: The Bad Old Days are Here Again

Here's the opening greatness.  After going through a few questions as to what this whole scene looks like if the Red Sox win just two more games, he arrives at --

We know the answer, actually. Bob Hohler's Boston Globe article probably isn't written, or if it is, it's one-fifth as long and entirely ignored, because: Who cares? 

Damn fucking straight, who cares.  I'll tell you who fucking care, the Ghostfaces who want their ghosts back.  Fuck WAR and VORP, y'all. GHOSTS!  That's the shit that kept us from winning.

Sigh.

Here is some evidence that the bad old days are here again.  People in and around Boston are calling for the trade of Jon Lester.

Jon. Lester.  Let's forget, for the moment, that trading this guy runs counter to the popular narrative  (he beat cancer, he's a hero vs. trade him, he likes video games. You can't have it both ways, folks).

Jon Lester is signed through 2013 at 5 years $30M, with a 2014 club option.  The next 3yrs years look like this:

12:$7.625M, 13:$11.625M, 14:$13M club option 

Cliff Lee is signed at 5/$120M, his next 3 yrs:


 12:$21.5M, 13:$25M, 14:$25M

You can wander over fangraphs and see that Lee has been worth about a win or two more a year since 2008, and that is no small thing.  But he is also 6 years older than Jon Lester.

My point? Stop being assholes!