Do some good this weekend

It's time for the Chicago Marathon!

I've run in three of them, and it's an amazing experience. Two of my friends are running this year to raise money for charity, and if you have a moment check out their donation sites and throw them a couple dollars. Honestly, donating online is incredibly easy, and how many chances do you get in this life to do a little good while you're still sitting around in your bathrobe eating cheetos?

Many of you already know Amy Guth through Bigmouth Indeed Strikes Again or her literary blog Chicago Subtext at Chicago Now. She does volunteer disaster response work for the Red Cross, and she's running to raise money for them.

Please check out her fundraising page here.

I ran my very first marathon with Patrick Sheehan, and I slowed him down horribly. I owe him. He's a detective in a nearby department. He's a good guy from a good family, and he and his sister are running with Team in Training, to raise money for leukemia and lymphoma research.

Please check out his fundraising page here.

Enjoy family life

The other day, right around noon, I went out for a run and the eldest rode along on her bike to keep me company. The sky was blue and the sun was shining, and it was a good time. We talked as I wheezed and flopped along for 3 miles.

We got done and walked back. As we turned the corner and could see the front of our house, I saw what I thought were two fat gypsy women approaching my front door. My heart started beating faster again as I looked around for a vehicle, but I didn't see one. What the f*ck are they doing at my house, I thought--does our house look so run down and unkempt that it looks like a feeble old person who'd make a good target for a gypsy scam lives there?

I told the eldest to slow up, but before I could figure out how to approach, the suspects walked off my front porch and toward the neighbor's house. I got a better look and saw that they weren't gypsies after all.

Aha, I told my daughter, they're not scam artists, they're bible thumpers going door to door. Nothing to fear. We still went in through the back door so we wouldn't have to deal with them if they saw us from the neighbor's front porch.

I found that they'd left a pamphlet for our spiritual uplift, which was thoughtful of them. To tell you the truth, I haven't even read the pamphlet yet because I've been so fascinated by the picture on its cover:

Where do I start with this? My first question was, is this meant to look like a formal family portrait, or just a snapshot taken by a kind stranger on a family outing in the park? Is the essence of the happy family conveyed by their whiteness and one son/one daughter perfection? Are pleated khaki trousers and a moderately short, but not so short it's intimidating haircut essential to being a good dad?

The family does look happy, no doubt about that. And why wouldn't they be happy--they have an enormous macaw! An enormous macaw that looks poised to crap all over mom's head. And let me tell you something--a bird that size produces some truly impressive droppings.

Maybe the bird is empty and mom's not worried. I'm still somewhat concerned by the use of a large bird to symbolize happiness. The bird is even blue--the blue bird of happiness? I don't know. What I do know is that when I see someone holding a bird like this I think someone's about to get bitten, hard, in the face. We have experience with this.

Junior is clearly pleased, excited and fascinated by the macaw. Mom is smiling the smile of the medicated and is either looking blankly (but pleasantly) at junior, or thinking of undoing dad's belt with her teeth. I'm not sure. The dogs appear oblivious to the presence of the bird, which I'm telling you, as the owner of small dogs, is not likely. The dog in the center of the frame looks off into the middle distance, somewhere past the girl. The girl seems pleased to be in charge of the dogs. The little dog in the right corner stares straight at the camera. I can't read that dog's expression. He's inscrutable.

None of the people in this picture appear to be interacting with any of the other people around them: dad's looking at the bird, junior's looking at the bird, or at some point vaguely between the bird and dad's face, mom--well, I mentioned her already--and the girl has the dogs.

Maybe a happy family is a symmetrical family. You get the whole nuclear family and their prop animals and set them up in a balanced way, and from that balance comes harmony, and from the harmony, happiness:

Left, looking right:

Dad
Junior
Dog #1

Right, looking left:

Macaw
Mom
Daughter

Looking straight at the camera:

Dog #2

Maybe I should actually read the pamphlet and see what this is all about. Well, I hope y'all enjoy your own family life, or at least enjoy your weekend.

Las Vegas Slideshow

I just put together a little slide show from our Las Vegas Marathon trip.

You can check it out here:

Las Vegas and Hoover Dam

and here:

Las Vegas Marathon Running Elvi

Hope you like it.

Thank you. Thank you very much...

Well, I'm back. Whew.

I have had a peak life experience. From the Wikipedia entry:

"Peak experience is a term used to describe certain transpersonal and ecstatic states, particularly ones tinged with themes of unification, harmonization and interconnectedness. Participants characterize these experiences, and the revelations imparted therein, as possessing an ineffably mystical (or overtly religious) quality or essence."

Words can't describe it. But since I'm a talker, I'm sure I'll try. I have a few themes I plan to expound on in the coming days:

• Good casino smell
• The changing nature of food and alcohol in Las Vegas
• Mega casino theme confusion
• Who is this "Elvis", and what does he mean to us?
• The Hoover Dam is really, really big
• "Progress", very often, sucks

In addition, the brave new science of narcozoology might be about to expand. More on that later this week.

Thanks, everyone, for all the nice comments and good wishes. I wish you all could have been there Sunday. It was a blast.

Now, a few pictures.

This is me on stage at the Elvis pep rally Saturday afternoon at the race expo. The media director for the race got me up there with all the Elvettes (female running Elvi). Being one of the only non-jumpsuit Elvi paid off.

Here's a bunch of the Elvi mingling at the race expo:

This is the Elvismobile. It's a cart with loudspeakers powered by a car battery that plays Elvis tunes. Loudly. And it's got some horns, and a cooler with beer. A big contingent of the Elvi run along behind the Elvismobile.

That's all for tonight folks. Time for sleep.

The countdown continues...

I just finished my last training run, a quick 3 miler. The starting temperature was 29, and what kind of Chicagoan would I be if I didn't throw in the wind chill factor, huh? That made it feel like 19.

It felt good. For some reason this felt like a particularly powerful run. And why, I wondered, was that?
Was it the power of the Elvis hair (even if it was suppressed by a cap during the run)

Was it the powerful new tights?


Or, more likely, was it my good luck mutt, Duffy, who was waiting to see me when I got home?

Now it's time for laundry, some housecleaning and packing before the youngest gets home from school and MizBubs gets home from work. Then it's time to try on the full Elvis suit. I'm not sure if I'm ready for it yet.

TCB!

Counting down

Ok, so we didn't solve the murder we were working on yet...but we're going to. These things take time. Damn you, videotaped statements. I had hoped to be celebrating clearing that case before I headed for Las Vegas, but real life lately has frequently refused to adjust to my timetable. But that will not stop me from having a good time. No sir. Today is the first of 11 days away from work, and I aim to enjoy them all.

Middle age male vanity is a powerful and ridiculous force. Part of tonight was spent dying my hair in order to achieve the proper Elvis color for Sunday's run. MizBubs, girl dynamo, altered my gold lame jacket and got the sleeves to the proper length. I picked up some extra Body Glide at the running store this afternoon, and solved the pants problem. Pants problem? Yeah, it turns out that the gold lame pants that came with the jacket really aren't suited to running. MizBubs, girl genius, suggested that I hit the thrift shops and find some black pants to run in--turns out Elvis only wore the full lame suit a couple of times before ripping the pants, and most of the times he performed in the gold lame jacket he wore black pants as a result. I hit the jackpot--I found two pairs of black pants at the Wings resale shop! One is a comfortable loose-fitting old pair of shiny black dress pants, high-wasted and pleated, and the other is actually a pair of Nike black running pants. I have all day tomorrow to decide.

I went to the library and got some Elvis material for inspiration. While my hair turned color and MizBubs sewed her pretty fingers to the bone we watched the first two disks of Elvis--The Great Performances, which was chock-full of very cool early footage of the King.

And now it's time for bed.

TCB!

The 2007 LaSalle Bank Chicago Clusterf*ck

I am a lucky man. Not lucky in the sense of being one of those guys who always wins stuff in raffles or Las Vegas, but lucky in a bunch of ways that I think are more important. I'm lucky to have MizBubs and my beautiful children, and lucky to have a cool job that, in spite of all my bitching, I still love. I'm especially lucky in the sense that I've been in a lot of situations that could have gone really badly, and I've come out ok. Like yesterday's Chicago Marathon.

Be prepared folks, I'm about to bore the bejeebus out of you with a bunch of running talk.

Where do I start? Here, let me start by thanking people:

• MizBubs, for deciding at the last minute to drive me downtown and sticking around. Just knowing she was down there ready to pick me up if I fell out helped keep me going. She also rode with me on a bunch of training runs, and put up with my bullshit.
  
• My daughters, who rode bikes with me while I ran, and who got me wonderful foot care products from Lush.
  
• Friends and family who monitored my progress and called or emailed to check up on me afterward.
• The members of the Alpine Runners with whom I trained over the summer. Their company and advice went a long way toward getting me through healthy. Our training group leader, Julie, did a fine job of shepherding everyone through the program.
  
• The Chicago Police Department and the Chicago Fire Department. Their response to yesterday's crisis was amazing. I saw so many cops assisting fallen runners, and countless firefighters and paramedics providing medical assistance. My brothers and sisters on the street yesterday should be very proud of themselves for their service.
  
• The people of Chicago. My God, the people. I've always found Chicagoans to be some of the friendliest, most helpful folks of any big city I've ever visited. They proved me right yesterday. More on this later.

_____________________

I ran my first marathon in 1999. I had run, off and on, never seriously, for several years. I trained to run a 10 minute per mile pace, and after some knee problems (found out I had an arthritic knee at the age of 37) my doctor told me to stop running for a couple of weeks and put me on Vioxx for 10 days. On the day of the race I felt great; the toughest thing was staying warm while waiting for the start, with temperatures in the low 30's. I started out fine, but my knee got progressively stiffer and more swollen, and while I finished the race "running" it was a slow trot. My final time was 5:06.

In 2004 I did a better job with my training, and incorporated more rest into the program. Instead of training at 10 minutes, I did my training runs at an 11 minute per mile pace. The starting temperature was in the upper 40's or low 50's, and it was a beautiful day. I stayed almost exactly on my pace, and finished in 4:48.

Along the way I've run a few other races. My best half-marathon time was 2:02, a 9:21 pace for 13.1 miles. My best 5k time was 25:14, an 8:08 pace for 3.1 miles. So I'm not fast compared to real runners, but I'm not a walker either. I've run in hot weather before (my favorite being a 9 or 10 mile training run in New Orleans, at the end of which MizBubs saw me and the first words out of her mouth were "my God are you ok?") and I know how to stay hydrated. I've never cramped up or dropped out of a race for any reason.

Training for a marathon is an emotional roller coaster. Some days you have a great run and think you're ready for anything, and at other times a simple run causes you aches and fatigue that you can't explain. MizBubs has been saintly in her ability to put up with my bullshit, the mood swings from depressed "I'm a sad achy middle-aged man who probably shouldn't even be running" to "hot DAMN I'm good at this I ought to try running an ULTRA MARATHON." I had a mid-week training run earlier this year, what should have been a routine 8-miler through Busse Woods. About halfway through I heard a voice in my head say "fuck it, that's enough" and I started walking, without consciously deciding to do so. It was around 1 in the afternoon, hot and sunny. I walked for maybe 5 minutes and then finished the run, with a final pace of close to 11 minutes per mile. I felt totally rattled and demoralized when I finished. Contrast that with my last long training run, a 20 miler that I did 3 weeks ago. We finished it in 3:25, with an approximate pace of 10:15 per mile, and it felt good. No aches, no pains, no problems.

What I'm saying is, while I'm no athlete, I know how to train to my own limits. This year I trained at a 10:30 pace, and did some training runs at paces as fast as 9:45, and I had every expectation of running at least 15 or 20 minutes faster than in 2004, maybe even breaking the 4:30 mark to finish. Oh well.

_____________________

This brings us to the 2007 LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon, which I am now referring to as:

The 2007 LaSalle Bank Chicago Clusterfuck

I made the decision to run in January, and I've written about the training and preparation a few times since then. I was ready. Generally I love hot weather, the hotter the better, and while I knew it would slow me down I wasn't overly worried about it. I spent the week hydrating and eating well and resting. Without a doubt I felt better on Sunday morning than I have ever felt before any race I have ever run. Ever.

MizBubs dropped me off at the Chicago Hilton so I could meet some of my training buddies. Good race omens continued as I got to use a very-well appointed flush toilet, a single seater no less, off the main lobby of the hotel. Thank you, Chicago Hilton. I met the group leader, Julie, and then when we couldn't find any other runners we walked over to the start. While it seemed a little humid, there was a nice breeze and I thought it was the most pleasant start I've experienced. The temperature at the start was 72, with 86% humidity.

The race started just before 8 am, and I crossed the starting line about 15 minutes later. It ultimately took about 30 minutes to get everyone across the starting line, and I think this made a huge difference to runners who started toward the end.

The first mile of the race is always a surreal experience--the runners are packed in, there's music blaring and people cheering and screaming. Your heart is pumping in your throat and so much adrenaline is running through your system that you have to fight the urge to take off as fast as you can. One thing that helps stop you from doing this are the vast numbers of boneheads in front of you. Each year that I've run this has gotten worse: the numbers of people who plan to walk the marathon route, yet line up with people planning to run the marathon in 4 hours. The biggest challenge in the first mile is not running into someone, or tripping because someone steps in front of you or bumps into you. Aggravating the obstructive walker situation are the speed freaks who, only a few hundred yards out, are hauling ass, cutting in and out like they're trying to catch up with the elites up front. What's satisfying is when you pass some jagoff like that about 10 miles later, burned out because he started off too fast. Even consciously trying to slow down, my first mile pace was 9:48. Too fast.

I knew that this would be a tough day by the time I got to the second aid station just past the 3 mile mark. Normally the first three miles of a long run for me is like a warm-up. This time I was drenched in sweat by 3 or 4 miles in, as were almost all of the people around me.

Let me take a moment and explain how the aid stations work. They are placed at regular intervals along the route; each aid station runs for approximately 1-2 blocks on each side of the street. The first half is for Gatorade, the second half is for water. Elite runners have their own support crews to keep them hydrated and don't even use the official aid stations; after that come the better amateur athletes, people running a sub-three hour marathon, and then the rest of us. Novice and slower runners (4 + hour finishers) are encouraged to walk through water stops to ensure taking in enough fluids. One of the risks on race day is slipping on the discarded paper cups and gel packets as you go by. In the previous two Chicago Marathons that I've run, the aid stations have been run with amazing efficiency.

Not this Sunday.

The first two aid stations were a mess when I got to them, 45 minutes after the race had started. Remember, I crossed the starting line 15 minutes after the official start, and I'd say about 50-60% of the field was behind me. There were piles of empty cups indicating that at some point in the recent past there had been water or Gatorade, but now there were only race volunteers directing runners to continue another half block to the remaining supplies. There I found too few volunteers trying to keep up with demand, and knots forming of dozens of runners trying to get fluids. Runners were bumping into each other and slipping on the debris. I saw plenty of runners go past the first two stops trying to avoid being slowed down by the chaos, expecting to get water later on when the field was less crowded. Unfortunately for those runners, the situation was just as bad at nearly every water stop after that. I found out today that for runners starting 10 or 15 minutes behind me, some of those stops were completely out of fluids by the time they got there.

Most runners have a carefully developed plan for fueling during the race. Over 18 weeks of training they work out a regime of taking in water, Gatorade and sport gels to keep them going. For a runner who plans on drinking water for the first x miles, and then switching to Gatorade, or alternating between the two, to arrive at an aid station and find his/her beverage missing is a real setback. I can't tell you how fundamentally demoralizing it is, especially to a first-time marathoner on an unexpectedly hot day, to run up on an abandoned water stop. It's like scene from a zombie movie--all those people going where they've been told to go, doing what they've been told to do, only to find the authorities are not in control. I lost my training run leader Julie at one of these water stops when she doubled back to get more fluids as more were put out by volunteers.

At some stops you could see the fluids stocked behind the stations, but the volunteers seemed unable to get the stuff poured and distributed to runners. In many cases they seemed simply unprepared and overwhelmed by the demand of the runners, which is doubly frustrating because for the past week we'd been getting email alerts from the organizers outlining all the extra preparations they'd made to deal with the heat. Preparations like making sure every runner had access to plenty of water and Gatorade.

But I was ok. I'd prepared, and I felt good. I slowed my pace, and at the 10k mark my pace was 10:38/mile, not bad given the congestion at the water stops. I ran into another running friend around 6 miles and we ran together for a while. I passed a guy dressed as a giant set of testicles who was raising money for a testicular cancer charity, and at some point Johnny Yen shouted words of encouragement which I heard, but thought maybe it was my mind playing tricks on me. Just before that I ran for a while with a guy dressed as Spiderman. I noticed some good tee shirts early on in the day. Like the one that said "Sometimes I like to run around in my underroos for no reason."

Around the same time I saw a guy wearing a shirt that said "I paid money for this?" I'm sure that after passing several chaotic and under-supplied water stops, lots of runners were asking themselves the same question.

Let me go on the record as saying I love gay people! I especially love all the residents of Boys Town who came out, so to speak, to cheer us on between mile 7 and 8. There were cheerleaders, a rifle drill team, a drag show and lord knows what else. There were a couple of guys on an apartment balcony holding up a big mirror so runners could see themselves, and they were yelling encouragement. I'm sure I missed more goodness as I ran by. The only problem was, at 8 miles I was just hitting my stride, and didn't need the inspiration yet. I think that next year, race organizers should try and get the members of the gay community to set up at the 22-25 mile mark, where we could really use their enthusiasm. Maybe organize gay buses or something to get them in the right place.

Going south from mile 8 things started grinding down a little. My pace slowed to 10:45 by the 15k mark, which I put down mostly to the delays at the water stops. In colder weather I could have skipped some of the stops, but I wasn't about to do that in this weather. So I stood in line, got my fuel, and lost a minute or so at each stop.

Some time around the 10 mile mark I started noticing more and more runners walking; not the "walkers" I mentioned earlier, no. These were people wearing pace bibs indicating that they were 9 and 10 minute milers, some of whom looked quite fit. I started wondering where all the shade went. And I started to notice the ambulances.

Around 10 miles I started to see an increasing number of runners dropping out. I saw my first person on a stretcher between mile 11 and 12 I think. And you could hear a lot of sirens, more as the day went on.

At the halfway mark I had slowed to a 10:50 pace, which I was happy with given the weather. My legs felt great, my breathing was good, but it almost felt like someone was pressing down on my shoulders as I ran. I told myself that I'd run 20 miles, no problems, and just thought happy thoughts. Those happy thoughts got harder to hold on to as the number of people leaving the course, vomiting, and collapsing increased through mile16. The run west of the Loop was brutal. No trees, not a lot of entertainment or spectators, and one badly-run aid station after the next.

Just before the 16 mile mark I grabbed extra fluids and walked through the water stop. I was starting to get chills up and down my back and my hearing was getting fuzzy--basically everything sounded like my heartbeat. I walked for about 5 minutes and took my own pulse (130) and then, thank God, Iggy and the Stooges came to my rescue.

I don't know what freak was allowed to choose the music at the Power Gel zone on Taylor Street, but THANK YOU. Roused by the inspiring strains of "Search and Destroy", I grabbed some kind of extra-caffeine gel, took more water and kept on running.

Let me go on record as saying I love Mexicans! Especially the residents of Pilsen, who came out along 18th street between mile 19 and 20 to cheer us on. Dozens of residents along 18th Street brought out their garden hoses and took it upon themselves to help cool and hydrate passing runners. I grabbed a big chunk of ice from a gent standing on the sidewalk with a big bag of ice. After rubbing the ice on the sides of my neck and wrists to cool off, I placed the chunk under my hat and let it melt there as I ran. There were beautiful girls in Mexican folk costumes. There was awesome Mexican disco music blasting from a loudspeaker, and then, best of all, a few blocks down there was a guy playing US Marine Corps running cadences from a loudspeaker in front of his 2-flat. I got my second wind and picked up my pace as the caffeine gel kicked in.

Around mile 21 I heard a Chicago Police officer talking over his squad car PA system, saying the race was canceled. I found another officer standing nearby, stopped and asked if I'd heard correctly, and he said I had. We were told to walk to the next aid station and find buses to take us back to the finish in Grant Park. We walked for a while, and didn't see any sign of any buses or aid stations, and the spectators were still cheering, so we started running again through Chinatown. At the 35k mark there were more police and more race officials telling everyone that the race was over, and to stop running. At one point several officers stood in the street, arms in front of them, ordering runners to stop running. I heard one officer say over a squad car loudspeaker "Please stop running, the race is over...several hundred runners have been taken to the hospital because of the heat, please do not continue to run." I figured I'd stop at that point; while I could take the first officer's order as a suggestion, to ignore the second order would be kind of ignorant.

At this point I was looking south along Wentworth. The scene reminded me of Hurricane Katrina: thousands of bedraggled, soaking wet, smelly people shambling along a street littered with trash, onto an overpass, with sirens wailing in the background and helicopters thumping overhead. There were no buses. Evidently, the buses were for the people who were stopped before they got to the halfway mark. The rest of us had to walk the rest of the way, another 4 miles or so. Runners continued dropping out even as we walked north along Michigan Avenue for the last 2 miles. You'd see people just sitting or lying on the sidewalks as you went by, some talking on cell phones, some rubbing cramped legs, some puking. I lost count of how many people I saw taken out on stretchers.

It was bizarre. So many of the spectators and volunteers along the route apparently didn't know that the race had been officially ended, and continued to cheer wildly, encouraging everyone to keep going. At one point I turned to someone at one of the water stations and asked "you do know that the race has been called off, don't you? That's why everyone is walking now." They looked confused and somewhat hurt, and I felt like an asshole.

The fire department had set up a huge fan and water source at the intersection of Michigan and Roosevelt, that sprayed a fine mist over everyone approaching the finish line. It was refreshing. Oh, did I mention the blisters? After running two marathons, and 21 miles of this one, without any injuries, I developed a wicked blister after being ordered to walk. Why? Because my shoes were soaking wet by mile 26 from all the hoses and fire hydrants that were used to cool us off the last few miles.

The last few hundred yards I walked with a man who looked pretty fit, and said he'd run 30 marathons. He said this was, without a doubt the most miserable event he'd ever participated in. I finally walked and half-trotted, as the crowd allowed, over the finish line at 5:08:31, a final pace of 11:46. Only 2 minutes slower than I did in 1999, so I got that going for me. Which is something. As I walked away from the finish area I heard someone yelling "runner down!" behind me near where runners were getting the timing chips removed from their shoes. I walked over to the Field Museum, met the sweet and comforting MizBubs, and drove home.

On the way home we stopped and picked up some Shiner Bock beer. I made a banana berry smoothie loaded with whey protein to aid my muscle recovery, took a steamy shower, and flopped out, useless, on the couch for the next several hours. I had lost 4 pounds during the race. MizBubs roused me briefly to feed me some delicious Japanese food that she made, and then I returned to my torpor.

_____________________

I started writing this morning. Since then I've had a nice lunch with MizBubs and our eldest, done some stretching, handled some appointments and even ran a mile to loosen up before dinner. That blister is doing better, and I feel pretty good. I'm starting to think about the Las Vegas marathon in 8 weeks.

Watching the news has been interesting. The "deadly marathon" led the evening news, and it was on CNN off and on all day, competing with a killing spree in northern Wisconsin. Now, of course, lots of people are looking for someone to blame. All I can say is, this event was nothing like the other two Chicago Marathons I've run. Face it, the human body is not meant to run a marathon. The first guy to do it died, and Pheidippides was the best runner the Greeks had. Since 1998, five runners have died in the Chicago Marathon:

• One case of hyponatremia
  
• Cardiac arrest
• One runner collapsed with a body temperature of 107
• Two cases of mitral valve prolapse

The Chicago Marathon is widely promoted as a great event for first-time runners. It's popular with runners wanting to raise money for charity. The race has grown from 25,000 runners in 1999 to 45,000 runners registered for 2007. So yesterday we had a race, the second biggest marathon in the nation, marketed heavily to novice runners, starting on an unusually, freakishly hot day. If there was such a thing as a perfect storm for bad marathons, yesterday might have been it.

The race director, Carey Pinkowski, hit a sour note by first denying that there was a problem with the availability of fluids even though multitudes of runners were saying that aid stations were out of water or Gatorade; then he conceded that there might have been a problem with distribution. I'll bet there was an attorney telling him not to admit any fault or apologize. Here's a choice quote from Mr. Pinkowski:

"Is there anything we could have done better? No. We anticipated the weather. I'm very proud of the way things went."

He later sounded like he was blaming runners for the shortages by saying that race organizers could not anticipate runners dumping water over their heads to cool off. I'll tell you this--for whatever reason, the aid stations were terribly run. I have never seen water stations run so badly in any race I've ever participated in, and I felt bad for all the first-time marathoners who had to deal with that.

There's plenty of anger in the messages being posted on the Chicago Marathon forums. Check out a few of them here, here and here.

The website www.marathonguide.com is a good source of news and information about marathons all over the world. Here's a link to runner comments on the 2007 LaSalle Bank Chicago Clusterfuck. 497 comments so far, and it's not happy.

The Chicago Tribune has some excellent photos here, and a decent article here. There are now 130 comments following the article, and they provide a good example of the disappointment and frustration of many of the runners. Others are notable for the downright nasty, blame-the-victim tone they take. Evidently a significant number of commenters view runners who take longer than 4 hours to finish as overweight slobs who have no business running a marathon.

To me the most remarkable aspect of this event was the response of non-running Chicagoans to the crisis. I can't count the number of people who took the initiative to do something to make the event more bearable for the runners. I got a Jolly Rancher from a family on Taylor Street who were giving away hard candies. A lady somewhere along Wells Street had a bunch of kids lined up with spray bottles offering a shpritz of cold water to anyone who wanted it. People in Lakeview who woke up early after a night spent partying in fabulous clubs to provide entertainment for us. The unbelievable kindness shown by all the police, firefighters, medical personnel and volunteers along the way who helped fallen runners. Race organizers claimed to have ice along the way, but the only ice I saw was from the Mexican guy in Pilsen. I don't know if I have any readers in Pilsen, but boy, if I did I'd hope they told everyone in their neighborhood how grateful I was for their help and encouragement.

Like I said at the start of this marathon-length blog post, I'm a lucky man.

Why am I doing this?

Getting up at 5:30 in the morning to run 16 miles on my day off...

Waking up, lying there staring at the ceiling for a few minutes taking a silent inventory of every ache and pain, every stiff muscle and sore joint, thinking about the relative virtues of more sleep versus rolling my ass out of bed and JUST DOING IT.

Only 50 days left until the Chicago Marathon. The hardest part of the training is coming up now, increasing mileage every week peaking with a 20 mile run on September 15. Then, not a a moment too soon, comes three weeks of tapering off before race day on October 7. Really I only have about 4 weeks of difficult training left, then 3 weeks of coasting.

I'm really not built for this. I know I have arthritis in my knees (which knock wood hasn't manifested itself this year) and I'm about 20 pounds overweight. I run like I'm carrying a refrigerator up a flight of stairs; probably the only thing that would make it worse would be if I took up smoking as I ran.

Thing is, though, I crave that endorphin rush, and I keep reminding myself of that. Hopefully, by the time I finish today, I'll be carried away by a giddy megalomania, making huge plans for future running adventures, my achy pre-dawn angst swept away in a rush of good brain chemicals. I'll eat better, starting today. I'll do those stretches religiously. At least 5 pounds will melt from my frame between now and October. I'll finish faster and stronger than I did in 2004.

Yeah. And maybe I'm a Chinese jet pilot.

Did I mention that I've gone totally around the bend? I'm going to be running a second marathon in December: the Las Vegas Marathon, 8 weeks after Chicago. I'm proving something to myself; I don't know what, but I'm proving something. I meant to mention this on Thursday-- I think I might be running in an Elvis costume, helping to set a world record for most running Elvii in a single event. Oh yes.

It's time to get going.

Sunday morning coffee

Well, here we are again. 8:00 am Sunday morning, just me and my youngest catching up on things during the most quiet and civilized time of the day. Youngest is sitting next to me updating her MySpace page. Just one more week of school...

Training for the Chicago Marathon kicks off next week, for those folks following Hal Higdon's 18-week program. I've been going to Lake Zurich and running with the Alpine Runners--in my opinion the best running club around. Yesterday was my longest run yet this year, 8 miles, and it felt good. Hopefully the body holds up over the next few months.

The last few days have been a blur of yard work, grilling and movie rentals. We managed to watch:

The Departed (What's the deal with this movie? It's like Scorcese suddenly realized he had 10 minutes left and needed to wrap things up in a hurry: there's a series of killings and a typical poignant Hollywood police funeral, and more killings. The end.

16 Blocks (Bruce Willis was good as the alcoholic detective trying to do the right thing, and Mos Def was brilliant as the talkative jailbird witness)

Jet Li's Fearless

Turistas (forget waking up in a tub full of ice with your kidney missing--head for sunny Brazil and lose ALL your organs!)

Night at the Museum (a pleasant little family film. Entertaining mostly, and only a little cloying. It's fun to watch Mickey Rooney as a hateful old security guard.)

Smokin' Aces (Ah, Hollywood...will you never tire of trying to replicate the successes of Quentin Tarantino and the bizarre caper films of Guy Ritchie? The highlight of the movie, for me, was the antics of a trio known as the Tremor Brothers. Then I realized that they reminded me of methed-up versions of the trappers from Cannibal The Musical.)

_________________________________

While scanning the news this morning I found this item from Canada: another freak on a bicycle, only this time he's grabbing ass instead of asking to be kicked in the nuts. Is it possible the Ontario Nut Buster worked out whatever self-esteem issues he had and then frantically pedalled east to start grabbing ass? I need answers.

Rent a cop

OK, I promise that one of these days I'll sit down and actually write something, and maybe look up some interesting stories to try and entertain you.

The thing is, I took advantage of the last two "days off" to pick up some corporate security work. I ended up spending 9 hours in a parking lot making sure an executive who'd just been fired didn't come back to the office. Turns out the guy was a total fraud and a nutcase. So, now that I'm done fattening my wallet by taking a break from representing the armed might of the state, and instead representing the armed might of corporate America, I can return to blogging. I started by letting the pod in the basement open up, and I switched over to new Blogger, promptly dehumanizing several commenters and rendering them anonymous. Sorry.

I know there's lots of newsworthy events out there that need my attention. Newsworthy stories like this:

People getting arrested in stolen cars because their girlfriends like to stand up through the sunroof, topless

and this:

Middle-aged Cialis freaks going wild in Myrtle Beach.

The Bears won their first playoff game. I was going to write tons of thoughtful sports commentary. Really.

I was near apoplectic after watching Bush's speech on his "new" plan for Iraq. Fortunately, Johnny Yen said most of what I would've said, only better, here, here, and here. Briefly, here's what really pisses me off about the Iraq "surge": according to the US Army's own Counterinsurgency Field Manual, (written by Lt Gen David Petraeus, newly-appointed Iraq commander) the desirable ratio of soldiers to civilians in a counterinsurgency campaign should be about 20 per 1,000. According to the CIA World Factbook, the population of Iraq is approximately 26,700,000. The population of Baghdad is approximately 5,700,000. By those numbers, then, an ideal counterinsurgency campaign in Baghdad would require about 114,000 soldiers. The ideal figure for the entire nation of Iraq would be about 534,000 soldiers. And Eric Shinseki got shit-canned for having the nerve to suggest as much to a Senate committee before the war started. For any of you military history buffs out there, here's an interesting article on "Force Requirements for Stability Operations" from the US Army War College.

So, in a nutshell, Bush's 20,000-soldier "surge" is just more bullshit.

Ok, what else. I got tagged by Katie Schwartz and I'm terrified that I'll look like a poor sport for not responding. Is it ok to wait a week or so before doing one of those things, or is there some expiration date?

Speaking of not responding, my procrastination seems to get worse lately. I have boxes of documents that I need to get rid of (one box of documents from a failed union organizing drive and another of old travel brochures and law enforcement magazines) and two other boxes of documents I desperately need to sort out. SOON. Because a lot of my 2006 tax records are in there, and got thrown in and mixed up with a lot of other crap during a round of frantic pre-holiday-let's-get-the-house-ready-for-company housecleaning. I plan on running in the Chicago Marathon again this year, but I haven't run since Thanksgiving and I'm now tipping the scales at 215 pounds. Did you know that the Chicago Area Runners Association has a category for runners like me? They call us Clydesdales.

I'm chock-full of vaguely formed big plans, yes indeed. Maybe I'll start working on them tomorrow.