No matter how many trail races I run, I still balk and complain about getting up early to drive to the race. I really, truly wish I was an early bird, but it’s just not in my nature, so I always stay up too late the night before and then suffer for it race morning. This was the situation I found myself in before the Harding Hustle, when I got up at the runner-unfriendly hour of 3:45 to get everything together, drive down the Orange County, park in the designated lot, then take a 20-minute shuttle to the start. (The start/finish had no available parking for runners.) It was kind of a production. I arrived about 5:55, a few minutes before the scheduled 6 am shuttle, so I was giving myself giant pats on the back for my excellent time management and driving skills as I settled in to wait for the shortly-arriving shuttle.
And waited. And waited. The shuttles were supposed to run every 15 minutes, but 6, then 6:15 came and went, without a shuttle in sight. Of course, my first thought is, “I could have slept in until 4:00! That would have been awesome.” But instead, I killed time taking awkward pictures of myself and my fellow runners:
Instead of actually blogging about things tonight, I thought instead I would blog about what I will be blogging about in the future. Is that meta? Or just annoying? At any rate, here are a few things that have been going on that will soon make an appearance on this here blog:
I made this today! $50 to the first person who guesses what it is.
Apparently there are some rare species of runners who survive—and even thrive!—without listening to music when they run. I haven’t seen too many of these in the wild, but I’ve been assured they exist. I myself most emphatically do NOT belong to this group. When I drowned my ipod in a rainstorm earlier this year, it was all I could do to keep running back to the car and not fling myself into the nearest puddle in solidarity.
Running and music are inextricably linked for me. I first started running when I was living abroad and I had only a cheap walkman (walkman! I’m old) and a half-dozen tapes (tapes!) with me. I just about wore out those tapes running in slow circles around the park. To this day, I get chills when I hear U2’s Elevation album because I so clearly remember those months when I was first teaching myself to run a mile, two miles, three miles, without stopping.
So even though I respect people who run with just their thoughts and the music of their breaths, I don’t think I could ever be one of them. (In fact, I’ve stopped doing the Death Valley Marathon because they have a strict no-earphones policy and I just can’t get behind that.) One of the things I look forward to the most is putting new music or podcasts on my player, and having uninterrupted time to digest the words or songs on my run.
Here are a few music podcasts and collections that I’ve been enjoying, ranked in order from least to most embarrassing.
Argh! Does ANYTHING compare to the agony of writing out a whole blog post, only to have it eaten by computer gremlins before it’s saved or published? Yep, I’m pretty sure lack of auto-saving blog software is the biggest problem facing the world today. You will just have to take my word that I had crafted a beautiful, moving, eloquent blog post all about the upcoming Western States 100 mile race this weekend. There was humor. There was pathos. There were statistics. It was a thing of beauty, and it is lost forever.
Instead, you get this half-hearted, second-rate babble studded with movie links. It’s at least 35% less satisfying. Either create some auto-saving blog software for me, or deal with it.
So long story short, the great-granddaddy of hundred mile races, Western States, is this weekend. I haven’t run a hundred miler and I don’t have the itch…yet…but when I do, you can bet WS will be the one I gun for. Last year’s race was absolutely epic, with the first two finishers both breaking the course record substantially and coming in under 15:30 (and this on a course with 18000 ft elevation gain and 22000 ft loss.) There’s a movie coming out this fall that captures the showdown last year, and I recently saw the trailer and immediately fell in love:
Here’s the video from the 2011 Shadow of the Giants 50k (or in my case, 35k). Trying to decide whether to watch it? I’ll break it down for you. Pros: relatively short, awesome soundtrack song, cameo by a sassy Australian RD, and serious landscape porn. Cons: shaky camera work, I eat a cookie in a very unladylike fashion, and by the end I have a raspy Marge Simpson voice. The choice is yours.
No matter how many trail races I run, I still balk and complain about getting up early to drive to the race. I really, truly wish I was an early bird, but it’s just not in my nature, so I always stay up too late the night before and then suffer for it race morning. This was the situation I found myself in before the Harding Hustle, when I got up at the runner-unfriendly hour of 3:45 to get everything together, drive down the Orange County, park in the designated lot, then take a 20-minute shuttle to the start. (The start/finish had no available parking for runners.) It was kind of a production. I arrived about 5:55, a few minutes before the scheduled 6 am shuttle, so I was giving myself giant pats on the back for my excellent time management and driving skills as I settled in to wait for the shortly-arriving shuttle.
And waited. And waited. The shuttles were supposed to run every 15 minutes, but 6, then 6:15 came and went, without a shuttle in sight. Of course, my first thought is, “I could have slept in until 4:00! That would have been awesome.” But instead, I killed time taking awkward pictures of myself and my fellow runners:
Instead of actually blogging about things tonight, I thought instead I would blog about what I will be blogging about in the future. Is that meta? Or just annoying? At any rate, here are a few things that have been going on that will soon make an appearance on this here blog:
I made this today! $50 to the first person who guesses what it is.
Apparently there are some rare species of runners who survive—and even thrive!—without listening to music when they run. I haven’t seen too many of these in the wild, but I’ve been assured they exist. I myself most emphatically do NOT belong to this group. When I drowned my ipod in a rainstorm earlier this year, it was all I could do to keep running back to the car and not fling myself into the nearest puddle in solidarity.
Running and music are inextricably linked for me. I first started running when I was living abroad and I had only a cheap walkman (walkman! I’m old) and a half-dozen tapes (tapes!) with me. I just about wore out those tapes running in slow circles around the park. To this day, I get chills when I hear U2’s Elevation album because I so clearly remember those months when I was first teaching myself to run a mile, two miles, three miles, without stopping.
So even though I respect people who run with just their thoughts and the music of their breaths, I don’t think I could ever be one of them. (In fact, I’ve stopped doing the Death Valley Marathon because they have a strict no-earphones policy and I just can’t get behind that.) One of the things I look forward to the most is putting new music or podcasts on my player, and having uninterrupted time to digest the words or songs on my run.
Here are a few music podcasts and collections that I’ve been enjoying, ranked in order from least to most embarrassing.
Argh! Does ANYTHING compare to the agony of writing out a whole blog post, only to have it eaten by computer gremlins before it’s saved or published? Yep, I’m pretty sure lack of auto-saving blog software is the biggest problem facing the world today. You will just have to take my word that I had crafted a beautiful, moving, eloquent blog post all about the upcoming Western States 100 mile race this weekend. There was humor. There was pathos. There were statistics. It was a thing of beauty, and it is lost forever.
Instead, you get this half-hearted, second-rate babble studded with movie links. It’s at least 35% less satisfying. Either create some auto-saving blog software for me, or deal with it.
So long story short, the great-granddaddy of hundred mile races, Western States, is this weekend. I haven’t run a hundred miler and I don’t have the itch…yet…but when I do, you can bet WS will be the one I gun for. Last year’s race was absolutely epic, with the first two finishers both breaking the course record substantially and coming in under 15:30 (and this on a course with 18000 ft elevation gain and 22000 ft loss.) There’s a movie coming out this fall that captures the showdown last year, and I recently saw the trailer and immediately fell in love:
Here’s the video from the 2011 Shadow of the Giants 50k (or in my case, 35k). Trying to decide whether to watch it? I’ll break it down for you. Pros: relatively short, awesome soundtrack song, cameo by a sassy Australian RD, and serious landscape porn. Cons: shaky camera work, I eat a cookie in a very unladylike fashion, and by the end I have a raspy Marge Simpson voice. The choice is yours.
