It’s been a while since I’ve updated about life in the Wild World of Greg. Well, aside from talking about photos or nasty sugar-substitutes.

My work computer bit the dust big time last week. Now I’m on a replacement Lenovo, which has some things which are better than my old HP (for starters, shutting the laptop doesn’t turn it off, and since I use a large monitor at work this is a good thing), other things which drive me crazy (it’s a bit slower and is most noticeable by the 3-second pause before it will open a new browser window).

Artomatic seems to be going well. I set up a guestbook after the first weekend and there are a couple of comments in it that made me smile. No sales, alas, but hope springs eternal. I do think I’m going to run out of business cards before the end, so I decided to give Zazzle’s cards a whirl and printed some out. They should be here at the start of next week, which is good.

Charlie and I saw the Israeli movie Jellyfish last night and both loved it. It’s co-directed by the husband-and-wife team of Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen, and written by Geffen. If I didn’t know better, though, I’d have thought it was written by Keret. I first discovered him through his graphic novel Jetlag (drawn by the Actus comic collective in Israel), and love his short stories—and while the film adaptation of his story “Kneller’s Happy Campers” (which he had nothing to do with) is reportedly awful, I think Asaf Hanuka’s graphic novel adapation of it into Pizzeria Kamikaze is great. Anyway, it’s a good, solid movie that doesn’t overstay its welcome; I was impressed with not only the script that alternates between dreamy tableaus and harsh reality, but with the visual stylings of Keret/Geffen. I’ll keep an eye out for their next film project.

The Capitol Hill Classic 10K last weekend was a blast, both for running it (I’d missed it last year thanks to an injury) as well as seeing old friends. It made me really appreciate both the work I’d put into exercise and running since mid-April, as well as all the people I’ve met through the sport over the years. Good times, good times. Even if I am starting to look like Paula Radcliffe and her hideously bad form when it comes to running, it seems.

Remember how I said I had three things I would think about buying if I sold things at Artomatic? Somehow I’ve ended up with two of them. Thanks to a gift card for my birthday back in March, I picked up Mario Kart Wii, which is so much fun it’s mind-boggling. I even got Charlie to play it and he, too, is all over it. Super, super fun, I cannot recommend this highly enough. (Also on the Wii front is Wii Fit, which I set up this morning and used for half an hour. I got it primarily for the balance and yoga exercises, and I love how well it analyzes my form. I think Fred will be delighted with the end results of me using this on a regular basis.)

Also, I was looking at the laser printer that I’ve been eyeing and the price had suddenly dropped $60 due to an instant rebate. Well, clearly it was a sign that I should buy it now. So it arrived today and I will set it up this weekend. I’m also quite pleased that it’s wireless, so I can set it up across the room and have it out of the way. I haven’t had a home printer in over a decade. What a strange feeling!

Last but not least, it is a super-small world. A week ago, on my way home from work I got trapped on the GW Parkway for 2 1/2 hours due to an accident in the southbound lanes that made the police completely shut down the entire parkway. Eventually everyone shut off their cars and walked around a bit, talked, and so forth. (I took the opportunity to read almost all of Tithe by Holly Black, which is also this month’s book club selection.) The entire time, though, I kept looking at the guy in the car behind me because he looked so very familiar. It wasn’t until afterwards that it finally clicked, though. It was my good friend Jon’s cousin David, whom I haven’t seen in a decade. Bizarrely, he looks completely unchanged. (No doubt there is a portrait aging away in his attic.) Meanwhile, I look pretty radically different than I did in the late ’90s (much less weight and much less hair) so it didn’t surprise me that I didn’t look at all the same. But still, how funny is that?

This weekend, I am looking forward to not having to go away for Memorial Day weekend in, well, quite a while. Perhaps I can finally photograph some of Rolling Thunder? That’d be nice.

Friday night, I didn’t get much sleep—I’m not sure why, to be honest. I got to bed at a decent hour (and I’d gotten up early to hit the gym Friday morning) but it was well after 1am when I finally fell asleep. I know it wasn’t any earlier than that because I stopped looking at the clock after that point, but I’m sure it was much later. Then, I woke up around 6am and much to my surprise was wide awake. No more falling back asleep no matter how much I tried.

Needless to say, I was feeling a little run down when Charlie and I went to Crystal City so I could pick up my Cherry Blossom 10-miler number and timing chip, but I was hoping all I needed was some brunch to pick me back up. After some food, though, things didn’t seem to get any better, and it was about an hour later in the National Building Museum that at the end of the first exhibit, I said I really just wanted to go home. (The NBM continues to elude me, alas.) I was feeling exhausted and a little shaky, and all I could think about was a nap.

I laid down for about three hours (sleeping for one of them) and that seemed to help a bit. But I was still a little iffy at this point on if I should run the Cherry Blossom or not. I figured I’d play it by ear in the morning. I did go to bed and fall asleep at a reasonable time, so all seemed ok.

Except it wasn’t. I felt like I was struggling from the moment I started running, much worse than I had during the National Half Marathon last weekend. (Which you may have noticed I’ve been a little quiet about. That’s why.) By the time I hit the 5K point, I was thinking to myself that it was a shame the new course was so good because I wasn’t enjoying it at all. And when I hit the 5-mile point, I did something for the first time in eight years of racing. I dropped out.

I quietly walked off the course, turned off my watch, unpinned my number from my shirt and stuck it in my pocket, and pulled the timing chip off my shoe. I was only about a quarter mile from the finish and it felt like another five miles. Half of my head was screaming at me, calling me a quitter and pathetic, the other half protesting that it was the right decision to make. I was feeling exhausted and my pace had been starting to crash, my shoulder was hurting, it was just bad all around. But I trudged back to the start—it was too late to go back now—and turned in my chip and went home.

When I got in the shower, I couldn’t help but note that I should’ve still been running at that exact moment. And I felt like crap about it. There was a guy holding a sign at the race last week saying, “NOBODY LIKES A QUITTER” (presumably some phrase he shared with a friend of his who was racing) and that’s all I could think about.

Part of me says it was the right decision. Most of me thinks there had been smarter, better options: kept running but slowed down and didn’t worry about a finishing time; stayed home in the first place; e-mailed the race officials this time a week ago when Laura had switched over to the 5K and done the same thing as well.

I saw Rick and Emma both run by in the half of the race I was in, and they looked great and strong. I’m envious. On the side of the road I saw Joe and Sonia from Pacers cheering people on, and it made me want to go back to their group and start running with them and try and get back into running shape. All things to keep in mind.

Right now, I’m going to take a week or two off of running and just do some other forms of cross-training and such at the gym. Start fresh when training kicks back up on the 19th.

But at the moment, I’m removing any other small races off of my agenda. (Battle of the Boulevard 10K or Capital Hill Classic 10K.) I don’t think I could take the disappointment yet again. I’m done with racing for at least a little bit.

As some of you may have already figured out by now, I plan out my longer races in advance. Far in advance. And one thing I’ve been thinking about for a while now is tackling the Walt Disney World Marathon’s Goofy’s Race and a Half Challenge, in which you run the Half Marathon on Saturday and the full Marathon on Sunday.

Now obviously, were I to do such a thing I wouldn’t be going for a PR. Or even close. I’d be doing it for the experience and fun of it, and taking it slower. But it would be a neat thing to do, and my original thought was that I’d run it in January 2009.

However, this morning it hit me that doing so would make it my ninth full marathon. And perhaps a better idea might be to postpone it until January 2010 and make it the big 10th marathon extravaganza. (Before anyone gets any bright ideas: whatever I run this fall will be #8. I am not going to squeeze another marathon into 2008 so that I can make January 2009 the big 1-0.)

Of course, doing so means that I run the risk of not doing it at all, that perhaps by then I will have decided my time would be better spent doing things like playing Legend of Zelda and Trauma Center and Cooking Mama on the Wii. And I was looking forward to the idea of running it next January. But perhaps postponing would not be such a bad idea.

(Meanwhile, I still need to figure out a fall marathon. I’m probably going to try the NYC Marathon lottery again, but cannot count on that happening. And Julie and Laura have requested that we all run the same marathon this year, which makes NYC even more difficult. Philadelphia and Richmond are on the radar, so far. Hmmmmm.)

Decisions, decisions! Really, I should be worrying about the three races I’ve signed up for this spring (an 8K, a 10-miler, and a half-marathon) but that would be far too easy. Let’s not get silly, now.

If there’s one thing that somehow takes me by surprise every year around this time, it’s my lack of willpower to exercise once it gets dark out. My plan for this evening was to run a quick 4-miler on the lit portion of the W&OD Trail (or if I was feeling really ambitious, finally go run with Pacers in Old Town Alexandria again) as soon as I got off from work. And until about an hour ago, I was firmly on board with this decision.

But as it’s started to get dim outside, my energy level has been dropping rapidly. With it, my excitement level abot going running. And this is hardly the first time this has happened this month. There’s just something about gearing up to go running after dark that saps my motivation, big time. If it was dark but warm, that’s somehow doable. But dark and cold? Forget it. So plans to knock out 4-to-6 miles tonight are rapidly falling by the wayside. (I would’ve run this morning but schedule-wise, it just wasn’t in the cards for a variety of reasons.) It doesn’t help that my gym has an indoor track instead of a treadmill; as much as I am not a fan of a treadmill, an eighth-of-a-mile track means anything more than five miles or so runs the risk of me getting dizzy and throwing up all over the place. (Not that this has happened yet. And I have knocked out six miles on it just last week. But that doesn’t mean I will like it.)

I’m not going to say it’s some sort of seasonal mood disorder, but I can’t help but note that come spring this little motivation problem will be mostly gone. Of course, by that point three months of eating with minimal exercise may have also taken their toll. *sigh* We’ll see if I can rev up a bit of energy in the next hour or so to get myself moving or not.

(Maybe I’ll just hang pictures of fat that’s been liposuctioned off of people all over my office with a note, “Do you want this all over your belly?” written underneath it. Fear as a motivator is a strong one.)

If I don’t go running tonight, though, I will make myself get up early tomorrow to hit the gym then. Honest.

Well, we sure aren’t going to talk about the government. (Sorry, iTunes randomly kicked up Pop Song ‘89 from R.E.M. a minute ago and its lyrics are jumping through my head.)

Anyway, this has been a nice weekend. It was off to a bad start—really bad stomach cramps kept me up most of Thursday night/Friday morning, which was unpleasant and exhausting. I ended up staying home from work, although I did polish off some revisions to a course for Julie before going back to sleep for a couple of hours. Had a nice night on the town out with a bunch of the guys; saw some old friends I haven’t run into for ages, made some new ones as well. My pretty bad alcohol tolerance (which has been getting worse and worse since mid-2001 when marathon training started and I stopped drinking on Friday nights, and then even moreso after dropping all that weight in 2004) wasn’t helped by having almost no food in my stomach thanks to the earlier-mentioned cramps, and I can only imagine that I made a blithering fool of myself. Still, if you’re going to do so, being in a bar with friends who are also drinking is absolutely the way to do it.

(When the dust settled, I walked over to Charlie’s to see how painting an accent wall in his condo was coming along; he drove me home although by that point it’d been long enough I was stone-cold sober, but why risk an accident?)

Saturday was primarily a couple of errands in the morning (the Home Depot paint counter at 11am can best be described as chaos, hold the theory) and Chip’s tree-decorating party in the evening, which was fun. It also reminds me that I need to get my own Christmas tree, now that everything is re-arranged so I have room once more. Hopefully later this week.

Then today was the start of my winter running program, which is using “explosive running” (sounds like a different kind of stomach ailment if you ask me) and focuses on shorter distances. It was a low-key but good start to the program; I’m really excited about future weekend installments. (And in the future I will make sure to remember that it starts at 8:30am and not 8:00am. Oops.) Add in a brunch, and finally carting the old bookcases out of my place, and life is pretty good.

It is, however, clearly winter in the DC area. This morning for my running program I had on long running pants (which I bought at the OBX Marathon expo and are fantastic; they’re tapered so they stay much closer to the legs and keep you warmer, while not ever turning into tights), a short-sleeved shirt, a long-sleeved shirt over it, and then a jacket over that. (Plus gloves and a hat.) The jacket came off once we got warmed up, but towards the end of our cool-down stretching it had to come back on. It’s just the right kind of winter weather, too; cold but not frigid, just that sort of snap on your face that lets you know you’re alive and the seasons have shifted again.

(If I need an extra barometer of the weather changing, it would be my calves itching this morning. If I have to start applying the lotion to the arms and legs, it is definitely winter.)

Oh, last but not least? Apparently, you better all lock up your Christmas tree stands if you have them, because otherwise I will come in and steal them out of your houses. Even if the stand is in fact mine and has my name on it. I learn something new every day, myself. Christmas tree stands, here I come!

Before you run a race, there will at some point come that moment where (despite the amount of nervousness before and after), you believe you can do anything. Climb Mount Everest? No problem. Bench press 3000 pounds? Piece of cake. Fortunately, said moment passes pretty quickly. The problem, I’ve discovered, is when you are given something much more sane but still slightly nuts, because then later on you might still want to do it. Like, oh, run two Thanksgiving Trot races the morning of Thanksgiving, two hours apart, a mere 11 days after your marathon.

8:00am brought the first race, the Arlington Turkey Trot 5K. This is a new race, in its second year, that runs through the neighborhood streets of Clarendon. The combination of it being Arlington (we love our running) and a gorgeous, 70-degree day meant a huge turn-out, probably over 800 people (last year was around 400) and general chaos. I got to walk to the start from my apartment, and the area was festive and exciting. Of course, what I was forgetting was that since this race is in Clarendon, that means it is a race full of hills.

I’d set out to beat my 5K PR from two years ago (a 26:23), which was on a nice flat course and where I was much more rested. Still, anything was possible. I actually ran into my cousin Ann about a mile into the race; she’d caught up with me, but then quickly dropped back. When two miles in I was at 16:15 total, I knew that barring disaster it wouldn’t be a problem to PR. About half a mile later, I also knew that I was suddenly and without warning out of energy. This was a problem. Gasping and dying on those hills, I did the only thing I could; much to my shame, I walked for about 30 seconds until I got to the top of another colossal hill before I carried on. I finished in a 25:40 (meaning the last 1.1 miles were at an 8:34 average), which while not the finishing time I was hoping for (heck, I ran my 3-mile training run in May at a 23:46) was still good enough.

Afterwards I hung out with Ann, ran into no less than two different acquaintances through running (Ted and then Deborah), and decided that running the other Turkey Trot was crazy. Completely ludicrous. I was still a little sore from the marathon, it seemed, I should just stay home. But one more race meant an extra helping of Thanksgiving dinner.

And so…

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Giving credit where credit is due, the photographers at TriDuo.com did a fantastic job with photographing the OBX Marathon. I liked my pictures enough that I actually ordered a CD-ROM with high-res images, but in the meantime, here’s some amusement for everyone. (Sadly nothing quite hits the, “Help me I am lost and have amnesia” photo’s level of hilarity from the Firenze Marathon last year, but still, good stuff.)

This is my absolute favorite picture from the marathon; we’re exiting Nags Head Preserve Woods and I just love how you can see the varied terrain of the marathon here as well as the big grin on my face. Don’t get me wrong, the last mile of the woods was true trail-running, straight up and down, and it was hard as hell and I was thrilled to escape it, but at the same time? I really enjoyed it.

The secret to getting your picture taken? When you see the photographer, do something to pay up to the camera. This year my strategy was “pump the fist in the air.” A nice sort of victory stance. And it worked well.

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Well, this morning I went up against the Outer Banks Marathon… and emerged mostly triumphant!

My plan was to break the race down into three segments; a slower 10 miles, a faster 10 miles, and then an even faster final 10k (aka 6.2 miles). And up through mile 14, things went great.

Then, two things happened in rapid succession. First, someone decided they were going to drive across the course without checking for runners first, and stopped about a foot and a half from me (and only because I screamed, “Whatareyoudoing?” really loudly and with a real edge of panic in my voice). Then, about 45 seconds later, my right calf muscle tightened up and never really let go. I stretched it out as best I could and kept going.

I finally briefly crashed and burned in the 25th mile; my knees were starting to kill me (they’d begun to ache around mile 20) and I ended up walking the majority of that mile. Once I only had 1.2 miles left to go, though, I forced myself to keep running again and finished in 4:29:06 — a new personal record. (My previous best in November 2006 was a 4:46:48.)

It was a beautiful course (or at least the first half was, the second half was primarily highways) and I’m delighted with my finishing time considering the physical pains I was going through.

Phew! It was a tough, but good day.

Ok everyone, it’s time for the fourth iteration of the fabulous game show that gives out prizes¹: Guess Greg’s Finishing Time!

Here are the details/rules:

Guesses must be made no later than 11:59pm (Eastern Time) on Saturday night. No waiting until it’s over to guess! It doesn’t matter if you are “over” or “under” the time, but in the impossible case of a tiebreaker, the more flattering option is the winner.

You don’t have to include seconds in your guess, but that can very well make the difference between winning and losing. I’ll also reveal that this year I’ve been training at a 9:00min/mile pace, while last year was a 9:30min/mile pace. You can even look at all my past race times if you think that will help.

Guessing that I won’t finish the marathon is not only an immediate disqualification, but will also earn you a punch in the stomach the next time I see you. Hard. You have been warned that I find such predictions intensely unfunny.

Good luck on your predictions! You too many soon join the ranks of Neil, Krista, and Rick (winners for MCM 2005, National Half 2006, and Firenze 2006)…

¹ And by prizes, I mean none. But you get to bask in the glory of winning, that’s exciting, right?

Waking up this Sunday felt odd to me, as it should have—it was the first time in six years where on the day of the Marine Corps Marathon, I slept in. I’d run the race four years in a row, 2002 through 2005, with varying results. And while I’d gotten my best performance yet in 2005, I’d decided that with the chaos of the newly expanded field that year (upping the number of registrations from 22,000 to 30,000) that until things were under control, I’d find other races to run. In 2006, working for AIDS Marathon meant that I was out on the field from 5am to 5pm; hardly a restful break from MCM. So this year, everything would be a little different.

I’d remembered last year that the Metro was an utter madhouse even an hour and a half after the race began; Pam, Brent, and I had set up a cheering station at mile 2.5 before heading into Crystal City to establish our new base camp there, and that was negotiating with a pair of bicycles to boot. Oof. So when Laura and I made plans to meet at Crystal City, I decided that three hours would be plenty of time to get to our spot and avoid the chaos.

Oh, stop laughing. Yes, I was still being naive. The Metro was crushed full of people, well beyond capacity as every last millimeter was taken up by human flesh. Saying it was an uncomfortable ride was an understatement, but eventually we arrived and began to watch for our friends—in our pace group, Andreas, Dave, Dvora, Erika, and Paul were all running, plus I was planning to keep my eyes open for good friends (and fellow trainees) Carla and Karen.

Even as a spectator, the large numbers of runners meant that watching was nothing short of chaotic. The one half-decent picture I managed to snap was actually pretty late into the day, if only because earlier the throngs of people meant you couldn’t get a good shot of the scene; just a mess of limbs and technical fabrics moving by in a blur. It also meant it was hard trying to see our friends. I don’t think it’s a small coincidence that the two we never saw (Dave and Erika) weren’t wearing their old AIDS Marathon singlets; being able to pick out that bright yellow made life much easier.

Being at the point on the course where miles 22 and 23.5 (or so) intersected meant it was interesting to see the different form that runners were in. Some people blasted through both parts of the course with the greatest of ease, while others were clearly out of fuel, stumbling along as best they could. One poor runner got a sudden, massive cramp right in front of us and came to an immediate stop with a look of pain on his face. After a minute of massaging it, he moved on, slowly and awkwardly at first but then some small amount of grace returning with time.

In addition to seeing most of whom I’d hoped to (Andreas, Dvora, Paul, Carla, Karen) there were a couple of nice surprises as well; Karen Kelly, whom I’d worked with at AIDS Marathon, was trucking along with such ease you’d have thought she did a marathon every day. Seeing Beechy (an AIDS Marathon staffer who transferred to the Chicago office earlier in the year after the DC office closed) was another nice surprise; the glee on his face as he gave me a big hug was heartening.

It was a fun, if more than a little tiring day. I’m jazzed about the Outer Banks Marathon on November 11th, now, especially with another trip to the podiatrist under my belt yesterday. Fingers crossed, this could be a good one.