I haven’t written in over a month so I thought I’d fill in the blanks on what’s been going on. Living in Hastings, that should take one paragraph. In case you haven’t heard, there was a group of us that decided to skip signing up for Lake Placid Ironman next year with Bill, Kim and Gary, but we were gung-ho about signing up for Ironman Wisconsin. In order to do that, you almost have to go to the race site since the races fill up so fast. Well, our gung-ho got up and went somewhere, but it wasn’t to Madison. The race is going on today and none of us are there. Maybe it sounded better at Lake Placid with Ubus still affecting our judgment. I shouldn’t really say none of us are there because Matt Toburen (not a Trilander…yet!) and John Hopkins are doing the race. I hope the weather cooperates for once. Cheer them on!

A group of us did do the Three Rivers Triathlon a couple of weeks ago and all had a decent race. My training partner Bill, who had an excellent race, was the only one to not place in the top three of his age group. His age group was tough and had some “ringers” who ran the run in a 7:30 or so pace! For the first time ever, I was last in my age group. Usually I’m in the middle of the pack, but my small chain ring (a 42 which means nothing to you non bikers) was too hard for the relentless hills. Although I’ve lost some weight, it wasn’t enough, and it was tough pulling that lard over the top of those peaks. Luckily I was going fast enough not to start rolling backward down the hill I had just climbed.

Of course, I’m old and use my brain injuries from Ironman Wisconsin 2003 to excuse doing dumb things. I wore shoes that I thought I always used in the past for short races. They had speed laces so you slide them on like slippers and away you go. They had very little wear so I knew they would be fine. WRONG!!! After the first mile I remembered why I didn’t wear them any more. They have a rub spot on the forward part of my right instep. It was annoying at mile two, quite sore at mile three, and a real pain in the “you know what” from there through mile six. I went through all the stages from a red abrasion, to the beginnings of a blister, to a full blown blister, to a torn open blister, all in less than an hour. Matt (my son) went with me to the race. He had stayed up late the night before, winning a couple of hundred dollars in a poker tournament, so he was quite tired. On the way back, I made him go by the area I used to live in and past the church his Grandfather preached at when I was in grade school. If that wasn’t punishment enough for staying out late, I made him listen to stories about my childhood.

Bill, Diane and Kim are all doing the Grand Rapids half marathon in late October, so they’re into their training mode. Thankfully, I’ll be in Belgium during that race so I don’t have to make any excuses about why I’m not doing it. Matt and I will be visiting breweries and pubs in Belgium and Germany, so I’m training for that. It’s tough work, but I’ve mastered the American twelve ounce right arm curl and I’m starting to set my sights on the half-liter “lift and tilt”. Europe is metric…they all learned it while we in the USA tried but couldn’t…so Judy…how fast is 100 kilometers per hour?

I’ve had several Sundays in a row of  “…those days where you feel like you could run forever”. Today I felt really good, but my legs were a little tired so I ran slow and went 8.26 miles. Yesterday, Jean was having lunch with her high school classmates…no, from the class of 1966…she’s not having to go through high school again. Anyway, I was bored, and the Michigan and Michigan State games were over, so I walked to the Dairy Queen on the new sidewalks our tax dollars just paid for. I walked right along, but not all out as fast as I could go, and it took 47 minutes one way. I figured it was between 2 3/4 and 3 miles. Since I am trying to watch my weight, I counted the calories burned up when a 200 lb. person walks at a 3.5 mile per hour pace for one hour and 34 minutes and came up with 540 calories. I got a medium butterscotch sundae which, in my The Complete Book Of Food Counts, is 400 calories (actually a medium chocolate sundae is 400 calories so they must be close to the same). So I burned 140 more calories than I took in. Great diet, huh??

Just (Bored But Not Looking For A Job Or More Chores) Jack

From the title, you would expect me to report on a whole lot of new things that are happening, but you also know I have no life, so there isn’t anything new. No, the Green Street house hasn’t sold; no, the cottage at Crooked Lake hasn’t sold; no, I haven’t looked for a job…you get the picture.

In my last epistle, I relayed the weather fiasco at The Muncie Endurathon, and how I’ve been a weather “good elf” at the races where I don’t compete. Well, that streak is broken! The weather at Lake Placid was just as rainy as Muncie, but it lasted all day. It was extremely hard on the spectators and I heard a lot of complaining. I had to change clothes three times and all my shoes were “squishy-wet” and still haven’t dried out. I’m sure the participants were bothered a bit too. Congratulations to Diane, Brian and Martin for enduring some tough conditions and finishing the race.

Brian had his usual good race and looked really strong when he finished, although I’m sure he was very tired. Every time I saw him, he looked fresh and upbeat. “Never again Diane” had her usual solid, consistent race until the last few miles of the run. She got Jack Walker-itis, ended up a bit dehydrated, and felt lots better after an IV of fluids and anti-nausea meds. Better living through chemistry. And, yes, she did say “never again”, again. Martin had the race he expected, although I detected a little frustration during the bike. That part of the race is his strong suit and he was frustrated on the downhills where he was continually blocked and couldn’t make use of the speed. He finished with a flair and seemed to feel really good. He did mention wanting a big greasy burger after the race, but by the time we all got back and the racers got cleaned up, there isn’t anything open.

At the hotel, the “boy’s room” looked like a college frat house with clothes drying on all the lamps, and the bathroom looked like a tornado had gone through. We all had our own little space, and could always find our things after looking for a while. The girl’s “kegger room” looked like you would expect with all the beds made all the time, more food than you could possibly eat in a week, and the bathroom smelled like a boutique with scented candles, pot-pourri and everything in its place. Wine and cheese were consumed in the girl’s room, and beer and chips were the fare in the boy’s room. Diane and Jean had the quiet room. I’d like to report on that room, but I wasn’t allowed in. Gary and I went Ubu hunting on Saturday and bagged a dozen between us. On the way home, I tripped and bumped Gary through the open door of a tavern, so we celebrated with a couple of Samuel Smith’s Taddy Porters.

Monday, the girls couldn’t wait for Bill and I to head back, Judy drives much faster than me and it hurts her to drive that slow (the speed limit), so they decided to leave early. So they left fifteen minutes before Bill and I did and got home ten minutes before we did. There are unsubstantiated rumors that they may have taken a wrong turn or two, may have stopped at an ice cream store or two, and I’m told that Judy may have met a new friend in Sarnia. I guess you’ll just have to ask them how things went.

The weekend after the Lake Placid trip, Robert and I played in the Hastings Country Club Member Guest Tournament. Before we teed off on Saturday, I had played two nine-hole rounds and my game showed it. I hit some good shots, but a lot of bad ones and our opponents said they really, really, really enjoyed playing us. I bet they did! You play five nine hole matches and each match is worth ten points. There were only five teams in our flight, so one match was played against “the par dummy”. It’s assumed that the par dummy makes par on every hole, and you have to beat par to get a point, tie par for a half point, and bogey for zero points. Whichever team has the most points after nine holes gets one bonus point. Except for the par dummy, which we beat 6 to 4, we got 3 1/2, 3 1/2, 3 1/2 and 3 1/2. We didn’t get any “closest to the pins”, no “skins”, and didn’t place at all in the Calcuttas.

I did win thirty dollars though and that was nice. There were no gross skins out on the first two nine hole matches so I got my twenty dollars back. And, twice, when we got to the par three number four hole, I didn’t put in five dollars for the closest to the pin contest and I didn’t hit the green either time. In accountant’s logic, I’m up thirty dollars. Robert, un-be-known to me, had a couple of side bets and actually won one of them. The team he won from went to the Margarita Party on Friday night, had a huge party Saturday night, and may have been a little under the weather both Saturday and Sunday.

I’m sure you all went through the same dull couple of weeks as I did.

Just (Recovering From The Ubu Hunting Trip) Jack

I’m sure all of you think that, with my style of self-deprecating humor, I’m stretching the truth about things, and you probably have good reason to doubt some of my stories. But I’m here to tell you that my prior e-mails about me being a “weather pox” in all the races I do are true. Yesterday, at Muncie, was no exception.

I kept checking the weather all week. The predictions started out at 89 degrees with high humidity, not unusual for central Indiana in mid-July. As the week went on, the high temperature started to drop and it looked like it was going to be a high of 82 by the time we finished the race. Since it was going to be a bit cooler, the chances of rain popped up. It was to be partly cloudy until around 10 AM, then a chance of “isolated thunderstorms” until around 1 PM, then a chance of “scattered thunderstorms” the rest of the afternoon.

When we got to Muncie on Friday, the temperature was 92 and it was a little humid, so I really thought the weatherman had slept through all the updates and it would be another hot, steamy race. Well, the weatherman not only slept through the updates, but must have been on drugs (prescription of course) when he put isolated and scattered thunderstorms in the forecast. As we got our transition areas ready on Saturday morning, the race director called us all together to make an announcement. There were some storms on the way and would get to Muncie within two and a half hours, so they were going to accelerate the swim start times to get everyone in and out of the water by the time the storms got there. He also said, and I quote “Once you get out on the bike we’ll have people stretched out over 56 miles of road, so if a storm hits, you’re on your own!”

This time the weatherman must have been on some street drugs ‘cuz I came out of the swim in 42:51, which was 48:51 after the first swimmers hit the water, and that’s when the storms hit, and I do mean storms. We had lightning, thunder, strong winds and everything from torrential rain to a “potato soaker” rain the entire 3:05:44 that my wet body was on that wet bike and for thirty minutes after the lightning started, people that started after my wave were still in the water. At times it was raining so hard, and the drops were so big, they stung when they hit your half covered body. It was so miserable that several people quit before the race ever started, several people got out into the swim, climbed up onto one of the boats that lined the course, and dropped out of the race. And thirty eight people out of the five hundred ninety who made it through the swim dropped out during the bike or the run. The swim was as rough as I’ve seen it in quite a while, but that gave me an advantage. The water was 80 degrees, but very choppy and rough. After growing up in St. Joe on Lake Michigan, I was used to choppy and rough, so I felt at ease. Not so with 99% of the rest of the field.

The ride was miserable and kind of eerie. Most of the people were riding head down, trying to keep as much of the rain off their sunglasses (we didn’t need them but that’s what we brought to protect our eyes) as they could. Every once in a while, as we rode past fields of corn and soybeans, you could hear a sound like there was a monster coming through the corn. It would start out with a dull roar and build to the sound of a freight train. It took me only once to realize that it was a gust of wind and torrential rain hitting the leaves of the corn from across the field and it was headed my way.

Almost everyone who passed me on the bike, and it was almost everyone in the race, made a comment about the weather except a few that commented on my bike jersey. I was wearing my Sierra Nevada Brewing Company bright green jersey, and I heard a lot of the same comments like “I’d rather be sitting in front of the TV drinking one of those than riding in this f&$%#*@ rain”. Libby, one of our “tri-friends” from Grand Rapids passed me a couple of times and made a comment or two. On the one and only time I passed her on the bike, I said “I’ve been looking at those dead animals on the side of the road and can’t help but think you lucky bas%&*$#.” They were getting just as wet as we were but they didn’t care any more.

When I got to the run, I felt good. I started out strong and kept it up for the full 9 miles. Oh, you probably know that the run is 13.1 miles so you can just guess what that last 4.1 miles was like. I was tired, but my legs still had something left. But I got that same puke-sick feeling in my stomach I’ve had in many of my other races. I’d run until I was just about ready to barf, then walk ’til the feeling went away, start running again and repeat all the way to the finish line. It turned what should have been a 2:05 run into a 2:28:16 ordeal. Does that sound familiar? I could replay from my race at Muncie two years ago and the words would be the same. Anyone want to buy an unused post-race meal ticket?

Congratulations to our Trilander racers who survived Muncie. Tom and Kim took third place in their age groups; Corrine and Bill had great races and placed well in their age groups; and Paul would have taken a second in his age group had he not worn his wet suit (when the water temp is above 78, you can wear a wet suit but you are not eligible for prizes); and then there is me. It sounds like I’m disappointed with my race and I’m not! My swim was much better than I expected after only six weeks of training; my bike was slower than it would have been normally, but I rode cautiously due to the weather; and my run was better than I expected for the first nine plus miles and just as I expected the last 4.1 miles.

All in all it was a good day of racing (as one racer put it…at least we’re still on the right side of the grass); we were surrounded by some really fit athletes (what was I doing there?); and we were there with some really good friends; what more can you ask for? Our thanks to Brian, Judy, Marge and Nancy for being our race support and listening to our “war stories”. When you are in conditions like we were in and feel as bad as we felt, you look forward to seeing people you know cheering you on. It’s a testament to how important family and friends are!

So my last few long races have been Ironman Wisconsin 2004…hot and humid; Muncie 2006…hot and humid; Ironman Wisconsin 2006…cold and rainy; Muncie 2008…thunderstorms. The Trilanders are starting to believe me and not enter the races I sign up for. On the other side, the races I go to support have been Ironman Florida 2006…great weather; Muncie 2007…great weather. I overheard Diane, Brian and Martin planning to offer to pay my way to Lake Placid next week just so I would be sure to be there. They know I can’t turn down anything free.

Just (Looking For Volunteers To Put Lotion On My Sore Spots) Jack

It’s one week and counting to the Muncie Endurathon. If you expect me to whine about being undertrained, I won’t. My training is what it is and one week isn’t going to change a thing. Since I haven’t raced in a couple of years, I’ll have to keep my wits (what few I have left) about me to make sure I think myself through the race and not let myself get under-nourished or under-hydrated. Maybe I’ll look at some of my old e-mails and see if any of them detail a food and hydration plan that I can follow. The accountant in me needs that cookbook approach to success, while the practical Jack needs to step up and think on my feet when things don’t go by the book.

This past couple of weeks I’ve been having PVCs while swimming, biking and running. I gave up caffeine a few years ago and haven’t had many problems, but I’ve been drinking some coffee lately and they’re back. If you don’t know what PVCs are, look them up on Google. I’ve already talked to my doctor about them, and they’re not harmful, so don’t tell me to go see him. And he’s told me that PVCs during exercise are not uncommon and they don’t seem to cause problems, so don’t tell me to stop swimming, biking and running and they’ll go away. The following link is from a discussion board on PVC’s during exercise so, Mom, don’t worry.

 www.medhelp.org/forums/cardio/messages/34574.html

I did have them during my bike ride today, but none on my run on Thursday. They started at the corner of M-179 and Yankee Springs Road and didn’t quit until I went by the Dairy Queen in Hastings (eight miles). Maybe they thought if they quit, I’d reward them with a big gob of ice cream covered with nuts and butterscotch topping. I’ll stop by the local DQ and ask Tyler if I can borrow a couple of his advertisement mobiles that hang from the ceiling. I’ll tape them to the front of my bike and the bill of my run cap during the Muncie race. Maybe that will get me through without any problems. The PVCs aren’t dangerous, they really don’t hurt anything, but they are extremely annoying!!! I may have used a couple of bad words when I explained to Bill today why I dropped back so quick on the return ride. Sorry Mom!

I came home after the hour long ride and 1/2 hour run only to begin staining the deck. I started at 1:30 and finished around 6:30, so I’m one tuckered out puppy. On the plus side, Jean told me to wear a hat so I didn’t sunburn my bald head. Thank goodness she suggested that ‘cuz I’m obviously not smart enough to think of it on my own. On the negative side, she waited until I had been in the sun for four hours before she asked if I wanted any sunscreen.

I was being pestered by wasps most of the day, so it was obvious that they had a nest under the deck boards. This evening I looked and there they were. They are usually pretty lethargic in the evening, so I got out the foaming hornet and wasp killer. The can was full and the directions said to shake it thoroughly, which I did. Apparently, the can has the prostatitis that I had last year ‘cuz it would only send the spray a couple of feet and it didn’t foam. If you shot it straight up, it only went a foot. So I climbed up on a chair, got within a foot of the nest, and hit it after 5 seconds of weak spraying. Luckily they didn’t all fly out at once and knock me off the chair. Don’t those home safety posters always say DON”T CLIMB ON A CHAIR INSTEAD OF A LADDER YOU IDIOT (I added that part)—MOST ACCIDENTS HAPPEN FROM CARELESSNESS IN THE HOME.

Do you think I’m looking for anything that will keep me from competing at Muncie next week?

Just (Uninjured And Really Want To Keep It That Way) Jack

As most of you already know, I took last year off from competition in triathlons due to health issues. Don’t ask me to repeat the actual maladies. It would be macho to say it was an old football injury, so let’s just go with that.

So my first race is a half ironman, The Muncie Endurathon. The 1.2 mile swim is in a reservoir. I’d like to say that I’m really going to do well in the swim, but that wouldn’t be true. Most of you know I’ve only been swimming for three weeks, so my training is woefully behind everyone else. I may be able to beat the guy who swam in high school, is fifty plus years old, and is cocky enough to think he can still swim fast with no training, but that’s it.

Before you think I can make it up on the bike, remember that due to my last year’s old football injury (wink, wink), I didn’t ride the bike all last summer and only rode for half an hour at a time on the trainer this past winter until my injury healed. I’ve been out on the bike since the weather broke this spring, but I’ve only done two rides over 56 miles, the length of the bike leg in the race, so I’m not really well trained there either.

After all my whining this past year on my running and sore hip, I don’t need to tell you that I’m also undertrained on the run portion. I’ve run three miles at a time for over a year, but have been able to ramp up the mileage, slowly, these past few weeks. My longest run so far has been 12.5 miles (if you count the three hills I walked up) today and the race distance is 13.1, so I’m not there yet and time is running out. My previous long distance was 11 miles (last week) and the longest before that was 10 miles (the week before last), and…you get the picture.

So why am I doing the race? I DON”T KNOW!!! Maybe it’s because I paid fifty dollars to get a rollover from last year’s race to this year, and I don’t want to waste the money. My friends used to say I was so tight, if I found a cold capsule, I’d go sit in a draft just so it wouldn’t go to waste. Maybe it’s because I have this same dream that lots of other triathletes have, usually first timers. It’s that, somehow, I’ll have my best swim ever, followed by an unbelievably fast bike, followed by a personal best run. When reality sets in, we all realize that your race is a reflection of your training. If you come up short in training, you will come up short in the race.

I guess the reason for doing the race is that I really enjoy the training with my friends. And in order to be a part of the “training group”, you have to be training for something. So, in order for me to fit in, I’m forced to pay the price and do the race. I had a really good way out this past week, but I either thought too fast, or didn’t think fast enough. I was running down the Michigan Avenue hill on one of my five mile, middle of the week runs. I came up on an intersection and a car pulled up coming from the East. I was running South, and I tried to make eye contact with the driver. He never looked my way, and I could see immediately that he was going to pull out in front of me. Instinctively I made a quick (for a geezer of 61) move to the left and went around the back of his car.

It’s confession time, so Mom, don’t listen…I may have yelled that he resembled a part of my “below-the-belt” anatomy that I’ve never seen, but I know is there, and thankfully so. Anyway, as I continued down the hill, a driver slowed, rolled down her window, and said “nice dodge” while shaking her head. If I had been thinking, I could have run into the side of the car, ended up with a race ending, superficial injury, and sued the guy for millions. As I look back on it, the car was at least fifteen years old, hadn’t been washed since the change of the millennium, and seemed to be held together by rust and duct tape. Maybe his estate wouldn’t be worth the legal fees. Oh, well, I probably made the right decision.

Just (Healthy And No Tire Tracks On My Back) Jack

After taking Thursday off from training for the Muncie Endurathon, I spent Friday running five miles, mowing the lawn at the lake, trimming the lawn at the lake, doing three loads of laundry, driving three plus hours to Traverse City for dinner with Becky and her sister Judy, and then driving on another 45 minutes to Torch Lake. When we got to Mike’s cottage, there was no power and the caretaker mouse had died of boredom right in the middle of the living room. I told Jean his brothers were all lined up under her bed, waiting for her to go to sleep, so they could attack. She didn’t sleep well both nights. I wonder why.

After calling Mike and Diane to find out where the breaker box was, looking for matches to light one of the many candles but finding a flashlight that worked instead, we turned on the main switch and we had power. We didn’t have any water either but I found the two switches that started the pump and away it went. After hearing some splashing, which turned out to be a burst pipe, I flipped the switch back off and thought we had better wait for Mike. To make a long story short, Mike fixed the broken pipe and we had water by 8 AM.

The “gang” was going to ride long and I knew I would ride short (50 miles around the lake) so I left about five minutes after they did all by myself. It was actually a nice ride other than missing the first turn and going two miles out of my way. I didn’t feel so bad since I made all the rest of the turns, but the rest didn’t. Tom, Brian and Jean missed the second turn (and all the rest), rode directly to Elk Rapids, and then rode 15 plus miles along a very busy, windy US-31. Diane, Kim and Corrine missed the second turn, but got it back on track only to have a flat tire (Kim) which took them 45 minutes to fix. Thankfully I wasn’t there because it would have been painful to watch.

Since I finished before everyone else (Jean and the boys went 90 miles while the rest of the girls went 83), I showered first. Mike had turned on the water heater and said we had hot water. I could discern maybe five degrees difference between the hot and cold faucets, so I took the shortest shower on record while still washing and rinsing the important areas. When the boys got back I told them of the problem and one of them switched the water heater from “vacation” to heat.

After a while, Brian took his shower and couldn’t feel any heat at all. He would get wet, turn the water off, lather up, and then turn the water back on to rinse. He was visibly cold after he finished (no, not the shrinkage factor…blue lips) so then it was Tom’s turn. He said the water had not heated at all and, just before he finished, he thought he would turn the shower handle to cold. Instant hot water. The hot water handle was on the right, just the opposite of what it would normally be. The girls had very nice warm showers.

After an eight plus mile run Sunday morning (everyone else ran longer), and a great breakfast with the group, Jean and I headed for my Aunt Juanita’s cottage to put in the dock. Without going into great detail, the mosquitoes were worse than I remembered, the dock sections were heavier than I remembered, there was one way to pick up the dock supports that would pinch your fingers and I found that way immediately (sorry Aunt Neat…I may have used a bad word or two), but we got the dock in and it held my weight, so it should hold anybody. All the time we were there I was drifting down memory lane. That’s the cottage my Grandfather built when I was three and we went there every summer when I was growing up.

Today Jean suggested that we go out for “a recovery ride” and I agreed. The wind was blowing 12-15 mph and gusting, we rode 39 miles…not the 25 I expected, we added on eight miles of hills in the middle (THAT’S NOT RECOVERY), and I didn’t take nearly enough fluids. I know Jean, so why would I ever believe that her idea of recovery and my idea of recovery would be the same. While we rode the last couple of blocks she had the audacity to say “That was a pretty good training ride”, to which I responded, “It would have been, had we been doing a training ride instead of the recovery ride you said we would be doing”. Do you think what I said made any difference?

Just (Tuckered Out On The Holiday Weekend) Jack

I’ve been in this training mode for biking and triathlons about eight and a half years. In all that time I’ve learned what works for me and what doesn’t. I can usually quote something a triathlon guru has said about training and I thought it would be second nature for me to put that knowledge into practice. Not so!!

Over this last year, as you all know, I’ve battled a couple of injuries/illnesses that have reduced my running to three miles at a crack and made my bike riding pretty much non-existent in 2007. This year the running is starting to come around, but my progress has been slowed due to a hamstring injury and a pesky sore knee. With no riding in 2007, I’ve been working my way back with some trainer rides this past winter and some short rides (25 miles or less) this spring. Since I didn’t winter in Florida as I have in the previous five years, I have no long ride bike base to start with.

So, yesterday, the wind was blowing at a steady 15-20 miles an hour with gusts of around 35, and I decided to ride with Brian, Diane and Bill. Apparently I thought it would be too easy with tight fitting clothes, so I wore my Trilander wind breaker which turned out to be a wind “catcher”. I missed the light at the M-37/M-43 intersection so I was behind from the start. I would start to catch up and the wind would start blowing. My jacket ballooned behind me and it was like a jet (or a Piper Cub) putting on air brakes. By the time we turned back to the east and had a healthy following wind, my legs were spent and I had hit the wall.

I kept up (sort of) until midway between Middleville and Hastings when my quads gave out and it was all I could do to finish the ride. I’ve told dozens of people dozens of times to increase your mileage, whether it’s biking or running, in small increments or you’ll run into trouble. Do you think I would do that myself? NO!! I went from a long bike of 25 miles to a long bike of 46.3 miles after not riding at all for 10 days. What’s wrong with me? That’s a rhetorical question, so please don’t send me your list.

After my leg burn-out on the bike, I ran this morning, expecting to go eight plus miles. I thought I would do the “around-the-block” seven plus miles and then cap it off with a run around the downtown. With all those hills on Cook, Quimby and Broadway, I thought better of that idea and did a 5.4 mile flat run around town. My legs weren’t sore, but they were completely fatigued. I wonder why that happened. With the Muncie Endurathon Half Ironman eight weeks away, I’m wondering if I’ll be anywhere close to ready. With the weather in Michigan this spring, the water is still too cold to swim in and, with my reaction to chlorine, I haven’t swam since early last fall.

Maybe I’m more athletically suited for chess or backgammon.

Just (Way Out Of Race Condition) Jack

When I look back at this past winter and the weather that has followed, I’m struck by the fact that averages don’t really mean a thing. You would think that the temperatures would usually be at those averages with a few days slightly above and a few days slightly below. The same way with snowfall. Some years you would have a little more snow than average and some years a little less. But that’s not he way it works.

This past winter we had one of the highest snowfall totals on record. Why couldn’t it have been one of the lowest snowfalls on record? Can we expect next year to be one of those way below average years to make up for this one? Is there cause and effect? Was this the worst winter in recent memory because I chose to stay in Michigan for the first time since I retired? You know that I’m a typical accountant that expects everything to be in its place. Every day we should have the average high temperature in the afternoon and the average low temperature at night. We should expect the average number of rain days per year and we should expect the average number of inches of rain too. How can we function not knowing? I have had to change my life plan book (luckily I wrote it in pencil) several times just in the last few weeks. I’ll bet all of you have too.

I went to the U.P. this last weekend for a memorial service for one of our friends. Jean thought she would give me a gift before I left, so she passed on the upper respiratory infection she had been carrying around for a week or two. I told her I didn’t really need anything and gifts were not necessary, but she insisted. She knew it had been at least a month since my last cold and I was running out of things to whine about. I had thought of returning the favor by leaving things I had hacked up lying around in Kleenex all over the house, but then I thought that might send germ warfare to the next level. I’ll keep them to myself for now.

I saw my friend Ernie at the fitness center this morning. He also went to the memorial service and I sat next to him and Barb. At one point in the service, while Jack’s oldest daughter was speaking, she asked us to join hands. Ernie said he expected me to write an e-mail about the hand holding when I got back on Sunday. I hadn’t really thought about it. I wonder why he wanted everyone to know he held hands with a younger man. Was it his way of slowly coming out of the closet? If you know Ernie, it had to be a pretty big closet. And why wait until now? He’s around 70 years old and isn’t that the “who cares any more” age anyway?

After spending time at Jack’s service and time at Tom Strumberger’s father’s visitation, I should be able to come up with something really profound that makes everyone feel better. But that’s not happening. Having lost a father and older brother myself, you can hear all the platitudes of comfort and it still hurts. You can say things like “…he lived a full, rich life…” or “…it must have been his time…” but that doesn’t bring them back and you still miss them. So you “get along OK” by remembering the good times and the bad and how they affected your life. Your story…no one else’s…and you never forget how they made you, maybe a big part and maybe only a small part of you, what you are today…good, bad or otherwise. The only good thing is that you really find out who your friends are, that they’re hurting for you and would do anything to make your pain go away.

Just (Wanting The Weather To Fit The Training Schedule) Jack

I just got back from a few days in San Francisco to visit the kids and tomorrow I’m off to Iron River in the U.P. for a memorial service on Saturday. The trip to San Francisco was lots of fun and the trip to the U.P. will be not so much fun, but it will be nice to visit with old friends and talk about the good memories we all have about our friend, Jack Sorby.

Matt and Anna spent a few days babysitting their father in San Francisco, so I guess turn-about is fair play. I fought with myself about taking running clothes with me. I knew if I took them, I would run and, with the recent injury to my left hamstring, that wouldn’t be smart. I walked a lot, sometimes alone and sometimes with Matt and Anna. The walks seemed to stretch out the offending muscle and it must have done some good ‘cuz I ran five miles Tuesday and this morning with zero pain.

One of the walks was on a trail along Alpine Lake, just north of the city in Marin County. The first two miles of the trail looked flat on the map, but it went up and down due to small ravines and ridges going down to the lake. It reminded me of the trails that some of the Trilanders will be doing this week at the Pinckney Half Marathon. After that two miles, the trail turned up the hill (I suppose it was a mountain, but it was a small one in the coastal range) and continued up for .9 miles gaining 800 feet elevation. It was chilly (mid fifties) and windy, but Matt and I were both sweating profusely by the time we reached the top.

We walked along a ridge on a fire trail for 1.4 miles before we headed straight down, giving back the 800 feet elevation we worked so hard for, to where we started. It was a total of 5.2 miles and we were both bushed by the time we got back. We had lost enough in fluids that we thought it best to head straight for Marin Brewing Company to replace fluids and have a sandwich. As we passed San Quentin prison, I waved to Scott Peterson. For what he did, he doesn’t deserve to have that nice a view.

Sunday evening, Matt, Tonya and I went to a beer dinner. No…it wasn’t a dinner made strictly out of beer…it was some very elegant food paired with some out-of-this-world beers. I hope I didn’t embarrass Matt and Tonya too much when I referred to the Citrus Cured Curraun Blue Sea Trout as raw fish, or when I tasted some of the pate-based appetizers and made an awful face like a little baby that tastes pureed peas for the first time. Actually, the food was excellent and much of it was new to me. I haven’t traveled in the circles of duck breast served rare and caviar that costs more than a good pair of running shoes, but I’m learning. I am slowly acquiring a taste for some of the sour beers and there were quite a few. The alcohol content of the pairings seemed to increase as the night went on with Avery Brewing’s The Beast Grand Cru and Lost Abbey’s Older Viscosity in the 12-14% range. Yes, we took a cab there and back.

Just (Missing The Kids Already) Jack

Sometimes runners refer to their legs as their “wheels”, so keeping that in mind, I’ve had another flat tire. I’ve fought with that hip problem for over a year and I’m finally free from pain. I’ve been ramping up the running mileage, but not so fast that my body can’t take it. I’ve tried to be smart about it and increase the distance by small increments. And I know better than to increase the speed too fast, so I’ve kept things at a slow pace.

I had a meeting Thursday morning at 10 and decided not to get up and run early. I wanted to give my body a chance to wake up and it also gave me a chance to run some errands. The meeting lasted until noon, so by 12:30 I was out on the road. It had just started to lightly sprinkle and the wind was blowing, so it wasn’t a great day, but it was a whole lot warmer than most of the winter runs. I started off slow and didn’t increase the speed since I figured it would take a while to warm up.

About a mile into the run, on a flat stretch of city streets, I felt my left hamstring knot up with a shooting pain just above the back of my knee. I limped to a stop and walked about a dozen steps. I thought it may just be a twinge so I started to jog again. After about ten steps I knew it was injured. I thought I could walk the rest of my run route, but the more I walked the more sore it got. I started directly home and, by the time I got there, I was in pain and I could tell the muscle was knotted up.

I talked to my trainer, Bill Bradley, on Friday and he said to not run on it for a few days and schedule a massage to get the knot released, which I plan to do tomorrow. So this morning, when we met to do our Sunday morning cruise, I wrapped it in an ace bandage (the six inch kind just like Bill prescribed) and started walking. As I watched the entire group go off running, I could see devil jack sitting on one shoulder looking like a huge gargoyle and I could hear him say, “Go ahead and run a while. Bill can’t see you and you’re tough enough to get past the pain”. On the other shoulder was little tiny smart jack, barely visible, and I heard him say, “Don’t be stupid. You’re first race isn’t until July and, even if it takes a while to heal and you miss that race, it isn’t worth aggravating an injury and making it worse”. I went against my instinct and listened to smart jack.

I got back an hour earlier than anyone else and, when they did get back, I didn’t have any stories about how tough the run was or how steep the hills were. There were several of us sitting at the dining room table at Tom and Corrine’s eating the weekly brunch. You all know I don’t hear well when there is background noise, so I was off in my own little world a good share of the time. All of a sudden Becky, who was sitting on my bad ear side, said something about once having a cookie on her behind. I’m not sure why I heard that and, since people were still eating, no one wanted to hear how it got there, but she told us anyway.

That was on the heels of a conversation we had Friday evening after Becky had stopped at Fall Creek to have a couple of drinks with people she worked with. She was crocheting and talking with Jean while having a couple of glasses of wine. Again, out of the blue, she started talking about how she didn’t like the number three because it was an odd number and she only liked even numbers. She went on to say that she also didn’t like the number eight (I always thought eight was even) but did like seven (I always thought seven was odd). Tom Strumberger and I had brewed a batch of Tripel Karmeliet Ale all day and I was thinking the fumes must have gotten to me. It made perfect sense to Jean, so what do I know?

I’m off to San Francisco for a few days. I fly out on Wednesday and fly back the following Monday. I’ll be able to walk a lot and may do some light jogs around the park if it feels better. Jean has been sick with whatever crud has been going around for the past few days. She wasn’t able to go to work on Friday, but Saturday she was able to muster up enough strength to ride her bike trainer two hours followed by a transition run. She said she felt better afterward but started failing again later in the day. This morning she gritted her teeth and was able to do her two hour run in town. She must be consulting with a different trainer than mine or is only listening to devil jean.

Just (On The Mend Again And Getting Tired Of It) Jack