My iPod is Possessed by the Devil.

My iPod is possessed.

I’m convinced it’s the devil’s work. Who else would put Madonna’s Immaculate Collection on shuffle for an entire 14-mile slog in the middle of a wet and humid August? The infernal machine decided to skip from Track 3 to Track 12 and completely ruined any sense of continuum. Then, just for laughs, it decided to jump from track 15 to track 5. Yes: it skipped backwards. It was like it had mixed itself up with a Shuffle, but it could only play one particular Madonna album.

And frankly, my running habit is already too expensive to permit the purchase of a replacement, non-possessed iPod. Besides, a replacement would probably just get infected by some iTunes download. My only hope is that the devil will decide to haunt, say, one of my inexpensive lamps, which I could then pitch and replace without qualms. Because two and a half months of training to Madonna and only Madonna is not really going to work. No, really. I love Madge as much as the next girl, but I need variety.

Maybe I shouldn’t have bought the red one. In retrospect, that might have been asking for it. Although, I’m sort of convinced that Apple is actually the devil incarnate; maybe that was where I went wrong. Because it isn’t like this is the first iPod I’ve burned through.

That’s right: apparently I’m the only person in the world who thinks Apple products are a stupid waste of money. This being my second iPod, I can guarantee you I won’t be forking over any more money to that company until they start producing a product that works for longer than one friggin’ day after the warranty expires. Even with the damn warranty, every time you walk in to a Mac store for help from a Mac “genius” you have to fork over $60 and get a lecture about how you, a mere human, don’t deserve the absolute awesomeness that is whatever overpriced tech gadget currently malfunctioning in your hot little hand. Hahaha, you thought “genius” referred to being able to fix your machine? WRONG. It describes their facility for weaseling your credit card out of your wallet.

This is why I don’t buy Apple products. The company just sucks to deal with, and its products are attractive little boxes into which disappear your data, time, and money. At least with PCs I can get in there and mess around with the bits until they work again, if tech support is useless (which is often the case). Or at least retrieve my data without paying some zit-faced teenager three hundred dollars to scowl at me for actually trying to use whatever lovely but nonperforming piece of crap I’m bringing in.

Do I sound cranky? You’d be cranky too after hearing Madge for two and a half hours straight. I hate it when my equipment doesn’t perform. And it isn’t just my iPod that’s failed me of late. My expensive new Enell bras have chafed me badly enough to leave scars half an inch wide and two inches long on my torso. Which means I’m still without adequate bosom support, and will likely have to fork over money I don’t have for more bras I can’t return if they don’t work out.

Riddle me this, readers: why is it so damn hard to find:

• A functioning iPod
• A bra that holds your tatas in place without rubbing your skin off in big bloody patches that really sting when you’re sweating through mid-August long runs
• running shorts with pockets and WITHOUT some weird mesh liner intended to keep men’s balls in place but thoughtlessly replicated and foisted upon running women

Seriously. Who designs this shit? Whomever does the market research for these products ought to be fired. Maybe tortured by being sent on a 14-mile forced march while listening to “Vogue” on repeat.

I did have one minor breakthrough today, however: when I came home and took off my shoes, there was blood on my sock! That’s right – I have ventured into the territory reserved for real runners, where your feet begin bleeding partway through a run. Honestly, I was so annoyed with my iPod that I didn’t even notice any pain. Apparently one of my toenails was just a smidge too long and it cut into the neighboring toe during my run. What can I say? It made me feel kind of macho. I’m no glutton for punishment, however; I went out and bought a new pair of running shoes in a half-size larger than usual to prevent that from happening again. I may even buy some of those weird socks that encase your toes individually.

I also decided to try Shot Blocks from Clif Bar & Co. instead of gels during my run today. I liked them! They didn’t give me weird stomach issues like the gels sometimes do, so I think I’ll have to get more. So the run wasn’t totally worthless and painful. I discovered a new product that is a real improvement over my previous solution, and I managed to shave a couple of minutes off my half marathon time as compared to my time in the Brooklyn Half Marathon on May 30th: today I ran the same distance in 2:13:34, while my time last May was 2:15:52.

So progress is happening, in baby steps. In the meantime, if anyone knows a good exorcist, preferably one specializing in demonic iPods, by all means let me know!

Hijacking the NYT Q&A

So I’m quite enjoying The New York Times’ series on marathon training. They have some wonderful writers, such as Liz Robbins, who is probably my favorite sports writer, contributing articles to the series. But if you’ve read this blog for more than a couple of posts, I’m sure you’ve already gleaned the childish glee I take in skewering things. So my skewers below are not intended as a dig on Tara Parker-Pope’s Q&A article.

The article to which I am referring is called, of course, “The Summer Running Slump.” And did ever respond to it, because I am slumping hard.

Starting with the good bits (from the “A” portion of the article):

“I tell people, right now the goal is consistency, just getting out the door to get your runs in. The pace or how you feel is less important than it will be a few months down the line. It frees them to not put too much pressure on themselves. They’re thinking, “14 miles is so hard, how am I ever going to run 20 miles?” But if they just focus on getting out the door and being consistent, usually things will come around…”

Please, god, let them come around soon, because even though I am lucky to be training during an exceptionally cool summer, I am so feeling the drag. I did 14 miles last weekend, and reading this, I thought exactly that! How the hell *am* I going to run 20, much less 26.2? Then I re-read the article (Like most of ya’ll, I don’t read on the Innernetz, I scan) and saw that the Q&A was with none other than Greg McMillan, who is none other than the architect of my torture training program!

It was like getting personal training advice from a coach! A coach whom I have never met or talked to, but hey, on the Innernetz we’re all best friends, right? So I kept reading.

“Q:  How much does running pace right now tell us about our marathon pace in the fall?

A: You can still make a lot of improvement. If you’re a beginning runner, your rate of improvement will be greater than someone who is more experienced. You’ve got more room to improve. You can expect, and you should expect, that you improve quite a bit as the race gets closer. This is the time you’ve got to focus on just getting your running in, and just living through the initial fitness building process. When you’re building fitness, it’s always the hardest part.”

Well this is fabulous news! I thought I was pretty fit before, flying through a half-marathon in a very respectable time, thank you very much. But I guess there’s always room for improvement. This explains the fact that the only noticeable difference in my pace thus far is…nothing. Not one whit of improvement. My hamstrings are getting extraordinarily tight, though. I’ve stopped wearing heels at the office, they hurt so much, and it’s not like I wore anything higher than an inch to begin with. Hopefully they’ll stop improving soon so the rest of my body can catch up.

(Remember back in the bubble days, when Sex and the City was on TV? Remember the episode where Miranda falls in her bathroom and can’t get up and she calls Carrie to come save her, but Carrie’s a flake and sends her boyfriend instead? And she hollers something into the phone along the lines of “my body’s all fucked up from the marathon!” when Carrie resists? That’s what I envision happening to me by the time this marathon is over. Seriously. Lying on the bathroom floor, so stiff that I can’t even sit up under my own power. Why did I sign up for this again?)

Anyway. I had two major giggle moments when reading Mr. McMillan’s answers to Ms. Parker-Pope’s questions. The first was when he talked about the weather breaking:

“The hardest part right now is the weather change. People are excited about running their fall marathon, but right when you want to be feeling your best the weather changes, and it can be hot and humid. The weather keeps you from feeling good right as you’re getting started in your marathon training, and that can be kind of a bummer.”

Uh, not in New York, bud. Here the weather got stuck back on “May showers” and never progressed as far as “April flowers”, much less to summer. We still haven’t broken 90 degrees yet this summer in New York, as far as I’m aware. So if we’re counting on weather changes to make that whole improvement thing happen, this program ain’t gonna work.

But the real you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me moment came when my coach suggested an insane list of cross training activities:

Q: What else should we be doing besides running to build fitness?

A: As you get more fit, the running gets a little bit easier. Augmenting running with cross training activities can help burn calories and improve fitness. Spin classes, swimming, an elliptical trainer is great. Aqua jogging or water running is an option. If you’re a beginning runner, that’s what you want to be doing to be as fit as possible.

Uh, yeah, I’ll fit those right into my schedule! Never mind that getting up at 5:30 AM to run 4 days a week barely gets me to work on time, plus I’m cranky as an unnapped preschooler every Tuesday and Thursday from sleep deprivation! Yep! Sign me right up!

So I’m thinking about switching to the Galloway method instead. While I’d dearly love to run a marathon in less than 4 hours – which theoretically means shaving thirty minutes off of my expected time, based on the half-marathon – it’s going to take more than a break in some comparatively pleasant weather to make that happen.

Have I made a tactical error in choosing this training program?

What do you think – drop it in favor of the Galloway method, or stick with it and see what happens in September?

Kicking It Up A Notch…Plus a Trip to Governors Island

This summer has been, thus far, one of the coolest on record. According to The New York Times,

“The daily average last month was at or below normal every day but two. The temperature broke 80 on 16 days in New York — one more day than in Fairbanks, Alaska. Depending on Friday’s high, this was the second or third coolest June and July recorded in New York.”

Essentially summer in New York has looked like this: gray and rainy, cool and muggy.

That said, yesterday I endured a very fun long training run in Central Park with the New York Road Runners. The groups did 4 loops of the park adding up to 20 miles, and you could drop out after any of the loops depending upon your training needs. Now, thanks to an imprudent night out with friends on Friday, I showed up late. I managed to join the 10:30 pace training around 1.5 miles into the first loop, and that proved to be a very comfortable pace for me to maintain. I went with them for 16 miles, which for me was about 14.5 miles. I admit I felt like an impostor getting my ice packs strapped to my legs, but I just wasn’t up to doing the last 4-mile loop and I decided that running farther than I ever had before was a pretty decent accomplishment for the day. I took my Utz pretzels and my banana and, feeling perfectly serene as the bags of ice strapped to my thighs melted in rivulets down my legs, wandered in the direction of the subway.

At some point it occurred to me that I was, at that moment, one of those lunatics people are talking about when they shake their heads and say, “only in New York” with a huge sigh of disgust and/or annoyance. I had become the person to whom rational folks give wide berth when walking along the sidewalk. And I can see why: my shirt was thoroughly soaked, and I do mean that there was not a single millimeter of dry cloth on my body. My hair looked gray from being covered with salt from my dried sweat, and I had plastic bags of half-melted ice Saran-wrapped to my rather wobbly legs. And I was walking around eating pretzels like this was completely normal behavior. For runners, it is: for anyone else, call the guys with the straitjackets and the white van.

In short, I had become a Runner of the Living Dead. A shuffling post-long-run zombie, mindlessly gobbling every carb within reach.

In any event, I’m proud to say that I made it 14.5 miles. I am fearful of doing the remaining 11.7 miles in a few months, but I think I can get there from here. I’ll probably sign up for some longer runs just to make getting out there a bit easier. Mentally it’s pretty challenging to cover the same few miles over and over again, so I’ve been trying to get out of the Financial District and the eternal pleasures of Battery Park City a little more often. One place that has proven to be a wonderful haven is Governors Island. (The name is plural, not possessive.)

The New York Times’ Roving Runner recently did a brief article about the Island. It’s as good as he makes it out to be. The views of the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and the big orange Staten Island Ferry boats are all amazing, and I am very grateful to Brian Fidelman (the article’s author) for identifying the bizarro recording that plays over loudspeakers at the far end of the island. The first time you hear it, it’s weird and kind of wonderful. By the fifteenth time you’re hearing it, you begin to understand why the comfy free hammocks within hearing distance of the loudspeakers are the last to fill up. Maybe the recording doesn’t need to be played constantly, you know? I’ve been out on numerous occasions, and sometimes it seems to be going constantly and others it seems to kick in every half hour or so. I find the latter arrangement much preferable.

The entire island is like a really interesting 2.2 mile track. You can also run in the interior, although that’s where a lot of the arts and culture events take place, so it’s more crowded. By crowded, I mean amply spacious by New York standards. This is where I’ve started doing hill work.

I only have two complaints about the island: the ferry schedule doesn’t run often or late enough to accommodate clockwatchers like me during the week, and there are no drinking fountains on the island.

This, to me, is a huge oversight in Brian’s otherwise excellent piece. I asked a guard about a non-functioning fountain near the ferry terminal, and he explained that there’s a problem with the water system on the island and that the water is thus non-potable. If you are looking for hydration during a long run, be advised that you’ll either have to pack it in or buy it from one of the vendors in bottle form. Or, you can always hit the new Water Taxi beach for a post-run beer. Just bring a change of clothes or something, lest people run in terror from the invasion of the Running Zombie.

Happy running!