Sweet Victory

Andy Warhol said that everyone gets 15 minutes of being famous.... In the blog world, I think it's closer to five. At any rate, my ship came in tonight... After writing my review of yesterday's Digital Magazine Forum and posting it to this blog , the posting was picked up by the FishBowlNY.com crew at MediaBistro. If my Mom knew what a blog was, she'd be proud.

So I've been reading Bernd Heinrich's Why We Run , which was formerly titled Racing the Antelope... At the mid-point of the book, I'm still not sure Why We Run is a good title -- How We Run or How Creatures Run would be more descriptive, but no matter: the book is an absolute delight if you're seeking one of those books which is partial biology and partial biography. Heinrich goes into great deal explaining how bugs, birds and antelopes achieve their amazing acts of ultra-endurace, and tempers the science lessons with his own experiences in the world of ultra-marathoning. It's an interesting blend of understanding why certain athletes (and animals) can kick our butts while also giving some thoughts on things we can do to improve our own performance. Pronghorn antelope have always been fascinating to me. Though I've never hunted, stories about hunters tracking these very fast and very skittish animals make for great reading. Heinrich provides the reader with a ...

Last week, I mentioned the fun of trying to run down an Amish buggy from my Cannondale... I was hauling him in, but the wind was in my face, I was tired and before I could do so, he turned off the road. Today: same road, different buggy (I presume), fresher legs and less wind. I caught up to him on an uphill and hung out behind him for a minute until we crested the hill... Blew by him on the downhill, which was really cool... until I popped my chain on the way down (obviously the Craigslist Cannondale still needs tweaked a bit). But it was a big downhill, so I coasted all the way down... hopped off the bike and popped the chain back on and was on the road with the buggy still behind me. Today was my fourth ride on the Cannondale... 4th ride in a row with a faster average mph... 2/10th of a mph better than Saturday's ride and only 6/10ths of an mph from being respectable. Planning on a lunch-time ride tomorrow, rest day Thursday, bike Friday and bike or run Saturday... hard to know ...

So Saturday I had a nice 15.5 mile ride... well nice except for the part where I wiped out about a mile into it... it wasn't a high-speed wreck by any stretch, but it did serve to prove that the Craigslist Cannondale really needed a tune-up before I hurt myself even worse. Three days and $109 later, the bike has new brake pads, new brake cables, a new black wrap and a new chain, which means I should be less of a hazard to myself in the coming months. I'm still using my original elbow, bloodied though it may be. Glad the bike thing is working out, though - tried for a run on Sunday and it was a joke. My knee is truly interested in an off-season... I'm thinking of giving it a week. So long as the bike weather is ok, that should be fine. Race results have been posted for the York White Rose Run... I came in 99th among 155 men, which isn't great. Then again, I've been running for all of 4 1/2 months... all things considered, it ain't so bad. But I'm eager to d...

So the Cannondale and I took a nice twelve and a half mile jaunt over lunch. In terms of mileage/time, it was a slight improvement over Tuesday's ride, but given the windy conditions, I think the *athletic effort* was definitely more intense. The course was awesome though - rolling hills past mostly Amish farms and probably no more than ten cars passing me the entire time. Very cool. Riding among the Amish is a nice treat... Tuesday I passed a school house just as the kids were getting out. The boys all cheered when I flew by (fortunately it was a gentle down hill, so I actually was flying - a little.). Later on that same ride, I passed by an old Amish man pushing a scooter. Only in Lancaster County. Today I chased a horse and buggy for about a mile and had almost pulled them in when they turned off the road we were on. I'll get 'em next time. ;)

So now that I have a tri-worthy bicycle, I think it's ok to layout my tentative plan for end of '06 and beginning of '07. Though I'd always hoped to do a few triathlons next year, planning one without a bike is kind of like planning a trip to the shore without suntan lotion. In a nutshell, I like to do 1 race per month... it keeps me motivated without cutting severely into family time. It's interesting reading over triathlete blogs and seeing how many people are trying to train for Ironman competitions while their family is being left behind. Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me. I know I can do a good job in an Olympic length triathlon while keeping my house in order. I think the *potential* exists to do a half-Ironman without my wife and kids forgetting who I am. But a full Ironman? No way, so I'm putting that idea on the back burner for a few years. (And if you've had a better or worse experience, feel free to comment -- this isn't a training issue...

So today I finally was able to take the Cannondale out on the road.... After buying it a week ago and taking a few days to get it road-worthy, I was treated to four days of solid rain. Not funny. Add to that a sore knee from the race on Saturday and I was going out of my mind. While it's still pretty much a rainy today today, it was dry enough to hit the pavement for a lunch-time jaunt. Cycling is always such an interesting contrast to running. Generally speaking, running seems to have a fairly constant amount of pain (depending on the workout). Your run is either easy or hard or somewhere in between and while hills have a nominal effect on the amount, it's all relatively constant. Cycling, however, is as easy or as hard as the road beneath you. A rip-roaring twenty-five mph downhill can give way to a hard-charging level stretch followed by a quad-numbing ten mph uphill - and all of this can (and does) happen within two or three minutes. All in all, it was a lot of fun. :) Acco...

So last Saturday was the York White Rose Run - five miles of - mostly- flat terrain through the city of York, PA. This would be my first race since the half marathon six weeks prior and my first five mile race since... hmmm.... 1989 (!). The goal for this one was to break forty minutes. After my hm, my trusty McMillan calculator said that 41:33 would be a good goal for a five miler, so I rounded down and decided to go for forty. The past six weeks haven't been optimal for training, though... After the hm, I'd taken two weeks off to let my foot heal, and since then, I've only been running two to three days per week, never more than 5.5 miles... That being said, some of those workouts were very quick and felt if all went right, I'd be able to hit my goal. It was a smaller field than most races - I haven't seen any results yet but I'll be surprised if the group was bigger than 200. There were, however, a handful of impossibly sculpted Kenyons. The start was smoot...

So the truth of the matter is I didn't start running again to be a runner. My goal when I hit the road in July wasn't so that I could be the guy I was in 1990, who ran 70 miles a week, six days per week. Actually, my goal was to be the guy who raced bicycles in '87. I loved doing that. It was invigorating and exciting and fun. But it's also expensive as hell. And until July, I hadn't actually been physically active in years. So I told myself that if I got into shape I'd let myself get back into biking (and triathlons - since I do enjoy swimming and running, too). However, even though I'm healthy, I'm still cheap and I kept my eyes open for a loooong time. Finally, a week ago on Craigslist, I spotted a Cannondale R600. Now, it's not this Cannondale R600 , but rather a Cannondale R600 from 1996. Granted, in 1996 it was still a thousand dollar bike, but ten years is ten years... Similarly vintaged models were going for about 350 on E-bay. This, however,...

So according to diabetics blog-wide, today is D-Blog Day, the day when those of us affected by diabetes are supposed to blog about it. Or draw awareness to diabetes... Or something like that. I'm really a bad poster child for the disease. Not because I'm not in great control (actually, I am), but because I've just never been bothered by the disease so much. Red sums it up well in Shawshank Redemption: "Get busy living, or get busy dying." So if living means three blood sugar tests a day, so be it. If living means being hooked up to an insulin pump, go to it. That being said, I feel for anyone with diabetic kids... I'm a tough guy about the disease. I wouldn't be if my kids had it. If either of my kids had diabetes, I'd be screaming about the politicians who are spending money on wars instead of research, and I'd be yelling about the schools that make it difficult to be a diabetic in the classroom. But my kids don't have diabetes, so instead I ...

Assuming there's a biography about me someday - something behind this blog, for instance - it would be curious to see how 2006 gets written about. Particularly, if the biography is about Marcus Grimm, the "writer." In many ways, 2006 could go down as my most "successful" year ever. My stories have appeared in two anthologies this year. "A Hell of a Deal" appears in the Horror Library from Cutting Block Press , and "Everything is Something to Somebody" can be found in "Rebel Voices" from Rebel Press . Today comes word that the latter has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Now here's the kicker: In the past year, I've written zero fiction. Nada. Not a line. Keep in mind, it's been a good year. Heck, a great year. I love my job and a couple of freelance clients ensure we'll have a nice Christmas. And let's not forget about the half-marathon a few months ago, either... But it's odd having a relatively accompl...