The Merry Month of Mostly Maine

I think I’ve forgotten how to blog. No, seriously, three weeks have passed, I’ve lost the list of topics and ideas that’s always haunting my desk, reminding me of the articles I’ve yet to write, and each day ends without my having found time to write. Well, whatever. Get on with it. It’s ketchup time, so let’s catch up.

It’s early June and I find myself in Portland, Maine for a conference speaking engagement, so that means a jaunt around Back Cove, rapidly elected Best Spot to Run while in Portland. Ever the social running animal, I am tickled when someone pulls a u-turn to catch up and join me as a potential compatible training partner. Cullen and I burn a fast lap around the cove before he peels off and I head for the conference. The day starts with one great social running connection, and hours later finishes with another as kindred running spirits find each other at the post-conference reception and make the normal types around us roll their eyes. One of these days I’ll get a chance to read Paul’s wife’s running blog and will then provide a link here.

It’s a mere few days later in June and again I find myself in Maine, Augusta this time, and it’s a cool sixty eight degrees at three in the afternoon. Post customer meeting I find a remote parking lot, change from Network Man costume to Racing Man costume, and head south to join my club-mates for the Mr. Bean race back home in Worcester, a small event among the best crowd in town. Sadly, between Augusta and Worcester, sixty eight becomes eighty eight, and the prospect of a cool evening race becomes a steamer. A fortunate delay to the start due to some crossed signals gets us down to the mid-eighties and we race, popping in a third place finish and top master in a race with no master’s division. Or awards, for that matter, because it’s that kind of race. Run, have a beer, have a great evening. It’s all good.

Poetically, I should start this next paragraph by saying that once again, I find myself in Maine, because I did, however not just yet.

First, I find myself across town for our club’s Third Annual Running With the Wolves 10K. Perhaps we can tie this to the theme by calling it a Main(e) Event? Gloriously, I am not the race director this year. My sole worry is scoring. Back office stuff. Spreadsheet weenie stuff. My kind of stuff, made even better working in partnership with Oh-So-Capable Wife. What a team! Heading out the door to the race, I spy a string of Christmas lights oddly sitting out in the basement in June. They make for a festive night,

which becomes more festive when our Bruins take game seven during our after-race party. Nothing like a big win while amongst friends. A night that can’t be beat.

And now I return to that theme, so incongruously interrupted.

Not two weeks since my last foray, I again find myself in Maine. Each incursion is deeper than the past, first Portland, then Augusta, and now my clan’s home-away-from-home, Mt. Desert Island. For Father’s Day, I give the kids an extra two hours to find a rock on the beach for me (forecast celebration mode based on past experience, actual results did vary) and head to the other side of the island to meet the local club, Crow Athletics (Why the name? Because crows are tough, found everywhere, and refuse to get out of the road, so sayeth their web site. Well done.) …for their Sunday morning run on Acadia’s carriage roads. One guy shows up. But that’s all I needed, he’s my age, runs my pace, and has a twenty-miler in mind, more than enough to accompany me on the eleven-mile circuit of the Around the Mountain carriage road I’ve got targeted. Steve and I fight a stiff north wind climbing along the west side of Parkman and Bald Mountains to reach the open vistas afforded from the north side of Sargent Mountain. Spectacular is a lame word to describe the scene. A few hours later, Father’s Day givings received, I return to the same mountain with the clan and accomplish a first: around the mountain and then over the (same) mountain on the same day. The wind is even stiffer, the views are even spectacular-er, and the day is capped by Darling Daughter the Youngest getting me out for a second run of the day, a practice we continue throughout the week and beyond. She’s been bitten by the bug. What a Dad’s day!

A few days later in Maine, having run around a mountain, I get the bug to run up a mountain. Beech Mountain is a mere eight hundred and forty feet, pretty much starting at sea level at Long Pond, so it's no Everest but it's a pretty good climb. Better, it is only a few miles from the cottage, though getting there involves a pretty significant climb and drop all its own. Running the trail turns out to be more or less impossible, and I quickly drop to a power walk until the trail levels out near the top, but in sixteen minutes I’m on top of this family favorite. Daughters ask me later what I did next, and are amused when I tell them I spent twenty six seconds on top, then ran back down via the south ridge, tripping only once on the way down in a spot where God conveniently provided a very large tree exactly where my arm flew out to catch myself.

Four days of glorious weather in Acadia in June is really cause to buy a lottery ticket, and indeed our luck runs out. For the latter half of our week’s vacation the wind blows hard onshore and turns the air to the temperature of the North Atlantic. Wicked cold, but really quite nice for running, other than the wicked wind. Maine turns into a sixty mile week. And the skies open on the last day, so we bag our hoped-for hike and high-tail it south. Needing to stretch our legs, we find ourselves in Portland, and being in Portland, we come full circle from whence this article started and take a family walking lap around Back Cove.

Thus endeth the Month of Maine, which would have been even more poetic had it happened in May, but it didn’t. Life’s puns are not perfect.

And now, caught up more or less, I make the final note that I had the pleasure of joining my partner in insanity Chris today as she completed her version of the Run Marlborough quest. For me, I’ve somehow accidentally been running for fifty-two days straight, an unintentional streak that started a few days before I finished that quest back in May. The circle closes again, and so will I.

Vindication!

Time flies so rapidly when you’re swamped. Truly timely topics upon which to opine stack up, but I’m big into chronology, so first in, first out, let’s get to the bottom of the stack (assuming you pile things on from the top). And that would be… Vindication!

Let’s go back in time, my golly, almost three weeks have passed since that Any Given Sunday in Buffalo (and no, I’m not a big NFL fan, I just like the phrase, though yes, I do watch the Patriots if they’re winning, and yes, dear reader, I do owe you the honor of catching up on your writing as well, but I digress…). Right, where was I? Yes, Vindication! It’s a wonderful thing.

Yes, it was a hot day in Buffalo. Yes, it was a humid day in Buffalo. And yes, I largely blamed said conditions for what could only be described as a horribly executed race, a race with splits so entirely not negative that, well, you couldn’t write a script for collapse much better than what I turned in that morning.

The firm that did the chip timing was kind enough to set up mats every 10K, which only served to remind me just how bad it was. First 10K, under forty one minutes, six and a half per mile. Good start. Second? Nearly forty three, approaching sevens. Crashing already. Third? Pushing forty six, up to seven and a half pace. Leaning toward the Death Shuffle with a quarter yet to go. And the fourth? Don’t even talk about it. Fifty minutes. Eights. Booyah. My pace chart would have been beautiful had it been a progress chart for summiting a major peak.

Blame it on the heat. Everyone was feeling it. I noted that it was my perception that despite the crash, few passed me in the second half. But I really wasn’t sure. Perception is pretty lousy in the high miles of a marathon, especially one as rough as that one.

Ah, but that scoring firm took splits every 10K, and reported them for everyone, making for a truly huge results document. Eagerly I attacked said tome seeking that vindication. And I found… bafflement. At 10K, they spotted me in 41st place. But for the next 10K, they again reported 41st, then again 41st for the third, 38th for the 4th, and 37th for the last leftover 2K. Lovely to be sure, except that I finished 32nd. Go figure.

Puzzled, I sought out truth and justice. And to their credit, the fine folks at Score This! (I love that name) replied very quickly. After some give and take, push and pull, yin and yang, what emerged was that they reported each runner’s relative performance for each 10K. So for that 3rd 10K from 20K to 30K, I ran the 41st fastest for that leg. Someone who may have been twenty minutes behind me but bolted for a few miles from twelve to eighteen would have affected that number.

Interesting, but useless. I really don’t care about that guy who left it all on the course and sprinted the last two kilometers to record the tenth fastest final 2K en-route to his 200th place finish. What I really care about is what place I was in at 20K compared to what place I was in at 30K.

Again to their credit, after some more push and pull, said scorers absolutely agreed. And decreed that they’d change their reporting for races going forward. A small victory for the forces of truth, justice, and useful data. Better, they sent me the raw data from their mats, and I was able to do my own analysis to answer that question of, “Was it the heat, or was I a wimp?”

And the answer, to paraphrase Dick Nixon, “I am not a wimp.”

Vindication.

As it turned out, at 10K I was in 41st place, but eight of those in front of me would not finish (DNF). You can argue this either way. Finishing the race by definition means beating a DNF. But it’s nice to consider your performance against those who ran the whole race.

At 20K, four of those eventual DNFs had already DNF’d, but I was in 39th place, so I’d lost two places to the survivors. So sad. But this was before the calamity began at the half. That’s where I really, really, wanted to know what happened. And…

By 30K, up to 35th place. Three more of the DNFs dropped in that leg, accounting for three of the four places I picked up, which meant even when my pace dropped to seven and a halfs, I still picked one off. Woo hoo!

And at 40K, the eighth DNF was gone, and I’d moved up exactly one place to 34th. It wasn’t that simple as I know there was a little passing and being passed going on, but the net was even.

Finally, in that last 2K, I nailed two more to close it out in 32nd place.

OK, that’s a lot of numbers, so if you’re still reading, you’re either resilient or bored with time on your hands. The point? From start to finish, eight dropped and I picked up another net spot, but in that ugly second half, even excluding the DNFs, I gained ground. In other words, it really did hit everyone. In other words, it really wasn’t just me. This doesn’t change the fact that it wasn’t exactly a great race. But it does tell me that given the conditions, I’ve got nothing to complain about.

Vindication. Sweet.

See it Live! My friend Mike, who calls himself the Why Guy, has created a motivational web site with video interviews of marathoners known as WhyMarathon.com. He’s done some great work, even after you give him some leeway for allowing my worn-out voice to grace his pages. Check out the video interview he conducted with me right after the race in Buffalo by clicking here, and consider pulling him in for some motivation at your next gathering!

Any Given Sunday in Buffalo

The old saying in the NFL is that on any given Sunday, anything can happen. Into Buffalo I went, sailing off a strong Boston, enjoying a strong training streak – indeed, today, just a week later, I hit one thousand miles for the year, well ahead of expectations – and just plain feeling strong. And found myself anything but strong, mired in a struggle-fest. Never before have the wheels come off so early in a marathon. Any given Sunday.

There’s really no mystery to it. It was hot. Not hot as in the average Joe flocks to the beach hot, the electric utility makes their capacity fears public hot, or there are air-conditioned shelters open for the elderly hot, but marathon hot, which means much warmer than you want. As in, it probably hit eighty by the end hot. They didn’t give out space blankets afterward hot. And you didn’t care hot. Because once you weren’t running, it felt wonderful hot. But when you were running…

To think, my concern had been that the forecast showers would have made things wet, soddened the feet to blisters, and chafed the pointy bits. But the overcast that would have generated such wetness would be oh so welcome, since a rise into the seventies was predicted. And things were going so well, too. The cloud cover didn't disappoint,

making for a pleasant morning on my arrival downtown at six AM. Hope abounded…

But no, it’s never that simple. Half an hour later the clouds didn’t just part, they vanished, just like that. Looked up, no trace of them. Hello? Throughout the race the sun would be so strong as to give me a trace of snow-blindness at one point. It multiplied the impact of the humid warmth, broken only by the predictable breeze on the last six miles southbound, which was, of course, in our faces. Not that we were going fast enough at that point to care.

I can point to the word hot and lay waste to any blame. The fact is, the wheels were already loose at the half. They fell off only a few miles later. But despite the crumble, few people passed me in the second half – and for the few that did, I probably took about an equal number back. Yes, it was hot, and it affected us all, and even the Kenyans up front (with whom I got a good mug pre-race) were a little slower than usual. All of this is true, and all of it contributed to the result. But I have to take some personal responsibility, too.

I made a pretty foolish mistake. I can’t say whether it really made a difference or not, but it was still pretty foolish. I forgot to take into account that since I last ran this race in 2008, they’ve re-engineered the start so that the full and half marathons now start together. In the past, they started in parallel, a block apart, which was fun as you’d see the other pack briefly as you passed the cross streets, like watching a race in strobe effect. There they again! And again! And a few blocks later the packs would meet up and head on their merry way.

The downside of that coolness was that the two groups were offset by a tenth of a mile or so, which made the mile markers rather confusing. Whether that was the reason or not, now the races start together on their first-half journey. But this never occurred to me when the gun sounded, as I tried to place myself roughly where I was used to being in this race vis-à-vis the starting pack. And I couldn’t figure why the ignition burners failed to ignite. The body seemed to be dragging, refused to get into gear, and this was only at the half mile! It was looking like it was going to be a long day, (which, it turned out, would be accurate).

Then we hit the mile in six-oh-two. Yeah, six-oh-two, as in 5-k pace. Oh, criminy. No wonder it felt so hard. Emergency dial-it-back time.

By the time I stabilized back to sanity pace, we’d burned through the brief few miles along the waters of Erie which that morning had a wonderful watery scent, the only cool stretch of the run. Once we turned inland, the heat was on. Who’d have thought I’d notice the supposed hills of this course, really just a series of overpasses in the second ten kilometers? By about the third one, alarm bells were ringing. When a large looming building cast a long shadow over Exchange Street around the ten mile mark – and I noticed and appreciated it – it was all hands on deck, she’s going down, mates.

Probably the toughest bit was not taking the out. It was right there. It was so easy. Coming up on thirteen, because of the combined courses, the half marathon finish loomed a mere couple hundred yards away. It was like Jesus being tempted in the desert. Just cross the line. Be done with it. You know you want to.

I could claim it was marathoner’s perseverance, but in large part it was the fact that my uncle, gracious provider of local lodging and hospitality as well as race support services, was stationed at mile seventeen with fresh bottles of rocket fuel, and I didn’t know his cell phone number to let him know I wouldn’t be showing up. Sometimes I’m so ludicrously practical. Soldier on.

I’ve written previously how the perfect marathon is recorded with a blissfully level splits chart, while the nightmare is the constantly upward sloping highway to hell. You already know where this one went. By the half, the trend was already set, and when mile thirteen topped seven minutes (already? awww…), there was no denying it was already seriously unattractive, and rapidly progressing past one-, two-, and three-bag status directly to coyote-ugly. The coyote in me motored on, taking a few walk breaks at the water stops, and actually putting on a little burst at the end.

When I’ve told this story over the past week, this is the part that annoys people. OK, all this drama for a three-oh-nine and change. You battled the heat? You tanked? And you nailed the twenty-minute-below-Boston-quali

fier that lets you sign up on the first day come September? Well, yeah, but let’s not forget the three-flat at Boston, and that Buffalo’s course usually wins me a few minutes back. Was it fast by my standards? No. But am I OK with it? You bet I am. No complaints. In fact, I find it kind of ironic

, since my goal for Boston was three-oh-anything and I nailed the low end on that day whereas here I squeaked the high end.

The day’s toll on the field was pretty grim. A thousand started the full marathon and then the flies started dropping. Sixty seven souls succumbed to the temptation and called it a day at the half. A full dozen who were ahead of me at the 10-K and plenty more behind vanished from the final results. In the end, only eight hundred seventy one crossed the line, an attrition rate of about a seventh. Of those survivors, I landed in thirty-second place, and fourth in my age group, but once they peeled two off for the overall masters’ awards (warm hard cash, it was a hot day, remember?), they handed me an attractive second place trophy complete with a little spinning thing on top that’s provided hours of mindless fun. All in all, not bad for a thousand-mile odyssey.

Tidbits: In the, “Don’t think you can do something embarrassing just because you’re far from home,” department, the day served up a number of small world incidents in rapid succession. Amidst five thousand

runners in the half, full, and relay, what are the chances that the first person I see after parking the car at six AM is the young gent, Cody, with whom I shared pasta the night before (and who, I note, destroyed his goal time in the half – you go!). We shared a warm-up jog, came to a stop, and the next person we encountered was Raj with whom I’d chatted extensively at the expo the day before. Off for a second jog, and we hadn’t gotten a block before running into former co-worker Kevin. And of course there was my friend Mike who snapped the fine race pictures herein (thanks!) and recorded an interview at the finish for his cool motivational web site, but at least I knew he’d be in town.

Questum Completum

Let’s cover the important stuff first. Chris, my counterpart in the lunacy of Run Marlborough 2011, has signed on as a follower of my blog. Not that it really means anything, but it’s symbolic, because that makes ten. DOUBLE DIGITS BABY! I can smell that book deal in the works… If I could figure out how to do same to hers, I would, but I don’t think she counts kills the same way – at least those that are not squirrels.

Now, about that Run Marlborough 2011 quest? Finite. Completum. El Dunno (La Dunna?). With family, a few friends, and Mayor Stevens on hand to greet and congratulate us, plus the

lion’s share of Marlborough’s press corps, we sauntered into downtown, cameras whizzing, much to the confusion of motorists blatantly obstructed. OK, no police escort. No worries. After two hundred and eight – point six – unique miles amidst over nine hundred miles logged to date this year, I can handle a little traffic.

And it was a perfect day to wrap it up. The rains, the cold, the misery of recent days magically parted, replaced by a glorious spring day. After trotting carefully on mildly wounded ankle to our designated meeting spot (to which Chris drove! ..the horror…OK, she’d already done her workout), we found ourselves ahead of our designated schedule and thus wandered a bit, checking off a few roads still left on Chris’s shrinking list. From there, it was all downhill to the last half unrun block, that block I’d worked so hard to avoid the last five months, to our ceremonial finish in front of City Hall.

Goofy? You bet. Media mongers? Maybe we were. But was it fun? Absolutely. It was something we’ll look back on and blubber about to our grand-offspring, if they’ll stop texting long enough to listen. Now, I think this is where I say I’d like to thank my wife, my family, all the members of the academy, and so on…

Mayor Stevens lamented that had she known of the beforehand, we would have been deputized as a road survey crew. Truth is, I told her, the city does a pretty good job on the roads. Truth is, I’m of the view that she’s done a pretty good job on the city, and I’m sad to see her leave at the end of her term. But time moves on, and so must we, so the natural question was of course, where to run the next day?

For the record, I ran to the bank to deposit the only money I’ve ever made running, the small stipend paid for being part of that cool Boston Marathon study. I guess this means that after our moment of triumph, I turned pro. Sold out. Went commercial. Yeah, I can only wish, I don’t hear the phone ringing with sponsorship deals.

The media? Front page on the Metro West Daily News (yawn, again?) in another masterfully crafted piece by fellow runner reporter Paul. And a feature on local cable TV channel WMCT, watch the video here. When you know these things are coming, there’s a big cringe factor, hoping they won’t latch onto something stupid you said. Both pieces, I’m pleased and relieved to say, made me smile cringelessly. And let’s not forget Chris’ blog post, also worth a read.

Next up, the gun fires in a mere fifteen hours on the Buffalo Marathon, as I write from uncle’s back porch on what would be a lovely day for almost everything but running a marathon. What a difference a few hours make! Traveling westward yesterday, the trusty Prius temperature thingy recorded NINETY ONE DEGREES passing Albany, and FIFTY TWO DEGREES passing Rochester a few hours later. This morning dawned cool and foggy, ideal for an endurance event, but said event wasn’t this morning. Already today it’s turned summer. And tomorrow? Too warm, too humid, and probably rainy enough to wet and chaff the toes and pointy bits. Probably not a day for hammering it out the gate, but once we’re off, so are all bets.

It’s Called A RUNway, DOH!

The quest nears its conclusion. In fact, late tomorrow the mayor of our fine city will be waiting on the steps of City Hall as Chris and I roll down Main Street. For me, covering the final half-block leading up to City Hall which I intentionally left untrodden will complete Run Marlborough 2011. For Chris, it’s a ceremonial finish, as she’s got a few roads left, but she is kind enough to put up with my wish to put an exclamation point on this endeavor now.

But first, some silliness is in order.

We determined to run every road in Marlborough. We struggled with the definition of what constitutes a road. We each answered that question in our own way that made each of us happy. We both made goo-goo eyes at the Forbidden Interstates, and Chris is determined to find a way to make them happen, and when she does, I will be there. And then we eyed the last big road-like expanse of pavement in the city that clearly wasn’t a parking lot.

Yes, the airport.

Now, we’re not talking Logan (more accurately, General Edward Lawrence Logan Boston International Airport, if you’re into naming trivia, but you’re probably not). We’re talking Marlborough Airport (sadly, spelled without the ‘ugh’ on its sign, but again, I wander into naming trivia).

Marlborough Airport is the oldest continually operating commercial airport in Massachusetts (take that, Logan!). It’s tucked in between the local favorite garden, ice cream, and mini-golf center (yes, all rolled into one) and the U-Haul rental agent. It has one runway, pegged by Wikipedia at 1659 feet, with a fence right at the end, and a STOP sign on the fence, for good measure (and one at the other end, too). As if, when you come in too hot, and you have no fuel, so you can’t make another pass, and you’re desperately trying to get ‘er down, but you’re running out of pavement, and you see that sign and say, “Gee, I’d better stop before I take out that passing Verizon truck!”. But hey, I appreciate the humor, and it does make it easier to see the fence I suppose.

So it’s not big, but it’s ours, and we're proud of it. And it was just too sweet to resist.

One phone call to owner Bob Stetson and we were invited as honored guests. Apparently a few people do read the local paper, and he had seen our article and knew of our depravity. We thanked him then, and we thank him now again for his hospitality in allowing us to have this bit of fun.

Bob met us on arrival a couple of mornings back, arrival via a circuitous route of course so Chris could pick up a few missing roads on her list (and departure later via another tortured twisted path, where we actually found a road neither of us knew had a name). Chris’ mom also popped in to act as Designated Photographer, along with Bob and his friend, the Other Bob, who also snapped a few pics. So first we snapped off a few mug shots…

Chris, Bob the Airport Owner, and Designate Photog Chris’ Mom

Chris and Gary Preparing to Fly

…And it was time to taxi to the runway! Yes, that’s a house in the background, but look carefully and you will see runway markings.

Lined up, we really didn’t need tower clearance. With a ceiling of low hazy clouds, the chances of getting buzzed like an Alfred Hitchcock movie were effectively zero…

And we’re off! I carried my mini-camera and took plenty of bad shots, mercifully filtered out. Here’s a decent one of Chris revving up the engines as we sprint the runway…

Our Designated Photog captured the takeoff roll…

But mysteriously we didn’t gain enough lift to get airborne, so it was time to spin it around and head back on heading 320…

Perhaps some new techniques were in order to get aloft?

Lest you think it’s only me who’s entirely daft, no, we both flew. OK, I goaded her into it…

First flight successful, time for a last posed mug shot!

As I then commented to Bob, he may have owned the airport for many years, but only now does he finally have a RUNway!

A Second Lap - For Real

The results arrived about two weeks ago, and I just haven’t managed to squeeze them into the story line until now. They were, in a word, wicked cool (in New England, that’s one word). And in a way, they relate well to a Second Lap blog namesake story for the week.

The results of which I speak are my results from the medical study I participated in for the Boston Marathon. I’ve yet to see the aggregated results of all us guinea pigs, but that will take some time. Meanwhile, I’m happy with mine.

Said study sought to explore whether cholesterol meds, known in the med biz as statins, might have any impact on certain blood enzymes synthesized during heavy exertion. These enzymes happen to be markers of injury to both general muscles and cardiac muscles, so an impact on the enzymes could imply an impact on cardiac response to the heavy exertion of a marathon. Or in other words, what better way to gain some ammunition to respond to those naysayers who love to point out that someone collapsed and died in last week’s Lower Slobovia Marathon, so why would you do that do yourself?

Oh, and as a bonus, I needed to get my cholesterol checked anyway, and this way I got it done for free. What’s not to love?

So first the easy part: my cholesterol hasn’t looked so good in several years. The total was down, but better, the HDL, or good cholesterol – the one that you can boost through exercise – read, running – hit an all time record high. And not only are both of these good news, but the ratio between them, which is really the important bit, was just plain beautiful. One word: Booyah!

Now the complicated part: the enzyme du jour is called creatine kinase, or CK for short. Your muscles spit it out when they are, well, in a word, pissed at you. You beat them up, they spit it out. You beat them up a lot, they spit out a lot. The lab finds it in your blood, they know you’ve done something mean, nasty, and ugly.

But there’s more. There are several flavors of CK. Without getting into the actual names, which I can’t, because I don’t know them, there’s MM (M&M? Plain or peanut?) and MB (Melon Balls?). Most of your muscles spit out MM – in fact, almost all of their CK spit is MM save about 1% MB. Your heart, on the other hand, spits out 30% MB when it’s mad at you. That’s how they tell you that you had a heart attack when you thought it was just bad fish – your elevated CK-MB percentage is a dead giveaway. Do you see where this is going?

Run a marathon, and your muscles are going to spit out CK. If it’s CK-MM, you beat up your body. If it’s CK-MB, you beat up your heart. The latter option, of course, being bad, scary, a mean thing you’d rather not see. And that’s what the study is looking at. Did we guinea pigs beat up our hearts? And if we did, was there a difference between those of us drugged up on statins versus those healthy dudes who score 125 on their cholesterol tests without even studying? It would be sweet justice, now, wouldn’t it, if we druggies were to win that battle. But I don’t know the answer to that. All I know at this point is my own numbers, which gave me the second big smile of the day, after reading the cholesterol report.

Before the beating, my CK rang in at a leisurely 143, in the normal range of 44 to 196, all MM. That alone is cool enough considering that we runners’ constant level of workouts would probably make the average Joe’s CK take flight. But whatever. Immediately after the beating, when tested right at the finish line in the med tent, it doubled to 303, still all MM. Muscles still trying to figure out what just hit them. Starting to spit.

The next morning’s draw, cha-CHING, 980. More than six times the starting level, and over triple the post-race traumatic reading. (And I’ll bet it rose higher the following day, the day of ‘max burn’ muscle pain, but I know not…). So the machine works, it spits as prescribed. Cool enough. But the wicked awesome (like wicked cool, that’s one word) part is this: 99% M&Ms, 1% Melon Balls.

Verdict: I beat the crap out of my body, but my heart just plain didn’t care. Or, in practical terms, the next time someone reminds me of the guy who collapsed at mile twenty five or something like that, I will blind them with science. And run away smiling.

I can’t wait to see the results of the whole study!

Now, what about that namesake story?

Last week found me in Cambridge, over the river from Boston, for a seminar slated to run till just past noon. Having no further meetings booked, you know that of course I planned a mid-day run in place of lunch (which was consummated as a PowerBar wolfed down on the drive home). Said run, besides taking advantage of a perfect spring day, was engineered to remedy a gap of horrid dimension in my running life. Despite living a mere marathon from Boston, despite running into Boston five times now in the high miles of a certain rather well-known race, I’d never run Boston’s most famous and beautiful run-o-drome, the paths around the Charles River basin.

I headed out from Kendall Square toward the river, not entirely certain how to find the best paths, and was thus thankful to link up with a Native Guide as I hit the road, Todd from Belmont, who worked in Kendall. His pace was a bit slower than mine, so I gladly slowed to a social ramble while trying not to drift back to the quicker zone; it’s simply not polite to kill your guide. I probably talked his ears off, which is hard to avoid when your partner is breathing a lot harder than you, but other than the guilt of burdening him with my ramblings, it was a truly lovely circuit, pretty much all that I’d expected it would be. On the Boston side, he led me the quickest way off the streets and onto the paths along the Esplanade. On the Cambridge side, we skirted mere feet from the water along worn unpaved paths. We made the turn at the BU Bridge, one bridge earlier than I’d planned, but probably a better choice based on traffic. With about six miles under our belts, we approached the spot where a hard turn to port would take us back to Kendall, at which point he announced he’d stop there and walk it in as a warm-down.

Feeling that I’d already overloaded his chat receptors, I decided I’d leave him in peace for his warm down, and I’d continue just a bit further, making the turn where the basin angles northward, then head back into Kendall from the east. But plans change…

Around the turn, the broad sidewalk narrowed to squeeze under the Longfellow Bridge, and it was at just that point I needed to squeak past a lady I’d been catching up with for the past quarter mile. “Excuse me, coming by on your left,” brought the unexpected response of, “I’ll have to try to keep up with you,”, and somehow in the half block between there and the spot I intended to peel off, we were chatting. OK, I figured I’d take the next turn instead, and, well, next thing you know, yes, I ran the second lap. Just like the name of the blog. Another pass through Science Park back to the Boston side, another meander through the Esplanade. Another lovely conversation companion, Mary from Charlestown, with compatible views on kids, education, faith, heck, bring your husband over, my wife would love this, we’ll sit on the deck and chat for hours, the world’s a mess but we’re sane, that kind of meeting of the minds. Serendipitous. On top of a perfect day, a wonderful venue, why not go around again just to enjoy the moment?

She peeled off on the Boston side where she’d parked, and I took the Harvard Bridge this time instead, adding another four for a leisurely ten mile ramble on a perfect day. And in the last solo mile back to Kendall, I reminded myself how lucky I was that I’ve been blessed with the health and fitness (now you see the connection with the first half of this posting, right?) that grants me the freedom to just say, what the heck, let’s not waste a wonderful opportunity, let’s just go for a second lap, because I can. Count your blessings.

Watery Adventures

This week’s blather, which was supposed to arrive in your hot little hands early this week rather than at the tail end, was supposed to be of the back-to-back races bookending the previous week: a local 5K on Sunday to kick off the week, and a local 5 miler Saturday to close it. Sadly my prepaid registration to the latter went down the drain, somewhat literally, when circumstances removed me from Saturday’s expected Wicked Hills of Clinton and instead deposited me three hundred miles asunder in mom’s Wicked Flood of Basement for what can only be described as a sucky weekend. As in suck, suck, suck up that water… Hey, at least I got in some upper body work hauling furniture up the stairs…

And I did get in that week-opening 5K and laid down a start-of-the-season benchmark time to suck, suck, suck me to the track this summer to chisel it down. The Westborough Spring Fair 5K was the kind of event so casual that oddly, the starting line was perpendicular to the direction of the race. Not as in, start, run fifty feet and bang a left, but as in, here, line up right at the edge of this driveway, and trample the guy on your left when the gun goes off. Really. Yeah, I thought it weird, too, but whatever. Out the gate a local ringer ran away, never to be seen up close and personal again, so I focused on holding a reasonably strong but more importantly steady clip on the simply-themed course: halfway all uphill, halfway all downhill. Unlike the Tri-Valley a few weeks back, a persistent set of trailing footsteps kept my motivation turned on, and while I couldn’t hold back the youngster lady in the final stretch, I’ve no complaints over taking third at just a hair under 6-minute pace.

But as Arlo Guthrie famously noted, that’s not what I came here to talk about. I came with a tale of a watery adventure, or at least water-related, and a water-logged basement seemed a good lead-in.

You regulars of course know of my Run Marlborough 2011 quest – technically our quest since linking up with Chris (new visitors are encouraged to review chapters 5 through 8, there will be a quiz later, or just read this). You know that I’m getting very close to finishing up. And you know that along the way there have been those places that have been hard to judge between being a road or not, whether they are accessible or off limits.

Which brings us to the fine facilities of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, or MWRA in local lingo. These are the folks that supply a good chunk of the Bay State with tap water that, at least here in Marlborough where we tap them for about a third of our supply, is simply superb stuff. And why is it so good? One part of the puzzle lies at the southwest corner of Our Fair City, straddling the borders of two adjoining towns. To the casual observer, it’s the Taj Mahal, a uniquely attractive industrial facility. To the discerning eye, it’s the John J. Carroll Water Treatment Plant. To me, it’s a location within Marlborough that has roads. A mile and a quarter of roads. But roads that I determined were off limits to the quest, based on the fact that there is a manned gatehouse at the main entrance. And water is pretty tense stuff in the post-9/11 age. So these roads which defined the southernmost limits of the city remained visible only on Internet satellite photos, and had acquired that sad brown color on my progress map indicating, “Not gonna’ happen.”

But one of those serendipitous moments arose a few weeks back at the Tri-Valley 15K. Chatting with a total stranger runner, somehow the topic came up, (how? I cannot say…) and said total stranger runner noted he’d previously worked in Marlborough and had hiked the area around the plant, including on the roads, and that nobody cared. Hmm… A little cross checking confirmed an old memory that the Sudbury Valley Trustees maintains the Crane Swamp property abutting the MWRA, and indeed one of their trails coincides with the MWRA access road, so apparently they really don’t care. And a little more cross-checking using methods that shall remain classified seemed to confirm this. Bingo. We’re in.

Since the front gate was indeed, as noted, manned, the back gate would be the target. I knew from running past it previously that it was a simple vehicle gate, clearly not built to prevent footed creatures’ passage; indeed, nicely landscaped and wide open to stroll around. OK, so they man the front gate to only allow in trucks that have been blessed, and beyond that, no worries. Made sense.

Still, best to be low key. The place operates twenty-four-seven, but you can guess that the weekend would carry only a skeleton staff. And not just any weekend. I chose Easter Sunday. After our church activities were completed, we had no plans, so what better day to penetrate the lair? There’d be nobody around. Heck, there was nobody even on the roads.

Having not hit the gym since before Boston, I had Darling Wife drop me there, only to find that they are bold enough to recognize a religious holiday and had closed early. Bad for my upper body, but good for them. So no lifting, but I set off on my mission to penetrate the lair of Fort MWRA.

Now it’s worth noting here that it was only six days after Boston. While I was over the immediate muscle burn, I most certainly was not recovered. After last year’s Parade of Injuries, I had no intention of overdoing it and restarting that cycle. And this route would require roughly a ten miler, pretty much the outer limits of what I’d subject my body to at that point. I hit the road with a fair dose of guilt about even planning ten, but the lure of the lair was too much to ignore.

It’s times like this when a fun story looms that I find myself unable to avoid slipping into the present tense…

I head for the south edge of town. I locate the back (west) driveway into the MWRA Lair, not as simple as you might think, since there are no identifying signs. There’s a simple vehicle gate that one can simply walk around on landscaped ground. Clearly not an intended impediment to pedestrian traffic. No worries. I swing around the gate and penetrate the outer limits. Level 1.

A short way in is a sign, “WARNING, DANGER, CONSTRUCTION ZONE, NO THIS, NO THAT, and… NO JOGGERS”. OK, so, first they didn’t say NO because it’s the MWRA, they said NO because of construction, and a quick glance confirms there is clearly no construction going on. Second, I’m a runner, not a jogger. They clearly weren’t talking about me. I penetrate deeper.

Scanning for Evil Eye Video Surveillance cameras and seeing none, I press on. I’m across the railroad tracks and past the first little building. To me, it’s like attaining Penetration Level 2. I won’t say the hairs on the back of my neck prickled, but it was mildly anxiety producing. Still, no klaxons, no copters, no SWAT team screaming, “Take OFF your running shoes and walk out slowly!”

But then, when Level 3, the Inner Sanctum, the Prime Directive – the loop around the filtration plant itself – is in reach, I am foiled! What I never noticed on the satellite photos was an item that looks like a shadow (see inside the red circle). Guess what? It’s a fence. A good old American eight-foot-high locked chain link fence. And a mighty fine one at that. None of the cheap zinc-coated steel, no sir, this is the MWRA, and this is the finest black enamel finish chain link that money can buy. A beautiful fence. But locked just the same.

So now I have a quandary. I really don’t want to backtrack all the way out the way I came. It’s a full half-mile in, so a backtrack will add a mile, and this run is as noted already planned as too long for only six days after Boston. So I decide I’ll skirt the outside of the fence, heading eastward along the north side of the plant, and make a hasty retreat out the main east entrance. Yes, the manned, gated one. I’d planned to brazenly run out there anyway. Hey, I’d be leaving, not going in, right? Just smile and wave…

And so I skirt, but it’s a struggle, as immediately outside the fence, the ground slopes steeply down to a canal. The footing is tough, and my feet are slipping nastily sideways in my shoes. I’m grabbing trees, clinging to the fence, wondering if this is setting off alarms someplace. But I make my way all the way along the north side of the plant…

…to the bridge over the canal to the east exit. Where I discover a bigger problem. You see, the fence is connected to the bridge. You can’t get on the bridge unless you climb the fence, which is clearly something I won’t do as that would pretty clearly constitute a level of active penetration (nice word for trespassing) that I won’t cross. Nor can you scurry up the bridge abutment and over the concrete rail, as (a) this is almost physically impossible, and (b) it would constitute hopping the fence….

So now I’ve got a bigger problem. Whereas I didn’t want to backtrack before when I was still on the west entrance road, now to backtrack would be even worse, as I’d have to navigate the steep slope scramble again, back along the fence, and add the road mileage. But I can’t escape, either, since I can’t get onto the bridge. So I scramble down the rock scree to the canal, duck under the bridge, and start running east along the canal. I’m feeling pretty tense about the whole fence-clinging thing, and I’d really like to get away from the property before I start hearing the baying of the hounds. But the canal is MWRA property as well, and I am, as you might guess, on the wrong side of it. It isn’t big, but it isn’t crossable either without getting very wet, and seeing as this is the MWRA and it’s their holy water, they’d probably frown upon anyone wading across. So I’m now running away from the plant as quick as reasonable on a trail along the south side of the canal, wondering how to get to the north side, back into Marlborough.

Around a bend, in about a third to a half mile, I come upon a sort of dam-like structure with a tiny zig-zag plank bridge on top and a rickety pipe rail to hold onto. It’s my only hope, so I tiptoe across it. Nervously.

But I’m still not out of the woods, as even though there are lovely jeep roads to run, there’s a rail grade and impassible brush between me and the road to the north. No way out, except to continue east, under the interstate, which turns out to be a real construction zone which I must navigate through, then find my way on a construction path to Northborough Road near the structure in the upper right of the photo below. At which point, it turns out, after all this, I am now completely fenced IN, and therefore despite my rule of never hopping a fence in this quest, I have to do so to escape. Fortunately, it’s a low fence. I am free!

To say this is not how I had planned the afternoon is an understatement. But I didn’t get chased, I didn’t get arrested, I saw no reports in the local paper of a suspected terrorist trying to penetrate Massachusetts’ water supply, and you can bet that I re-colored the half mile west access road from brown to blue on the Run Marlborough 2011 Official Quest Tracking Map.

And after all, what’s the quest all about other than to avoid the boredom of the same old runs?