Weather systems are stupid

I knew it was too good to last. The weather has been beautiful until almost the end of November, and even though I know that it is unrealistic, a little part of me thought that maybe it would stay nice all winter. It finally broke yesterday, as I woke up to sleet tapping at the window and the wind howling. Here come the runs in single-digit temperatures, the runs where you get done and you have icicles on your eyebrows. Here comes the depression brought on by not seeing the sun for three months. You tend to lose all track of what day it is or what time it is, as it gets dark at four o'clock every day.

But there are good parts of winter too, few as they may be.

One thing is the times when cabin fever sets in and I get a little loopy from being inside for too long and decide to go for a run at night. It's great to run through the town lit up only by the yellow glow of streetlights, with the sounds of traffic muffled by the falling snow as I run along silently. It's things like this that do a little toward keeping my sanity through terrible northeast winters.

Other than that I can't wait until global warming really starts kickin' in and Cortland is beachfront property.

Stay Hungry

There is simply no way for a person to succeed in endurance sports without some sort of intrinsic motivation. If you are a runner or cyclist or whatever, you can't be in it just to win some medals and get some prize money. If that is your state of mind, you'll burn out and quit within a couple of months, maybe even sooner. There has to be that burning hunger in you to see how far you can take your body and your mind. It is that hunger that tears you out of bed on cold mornings to go run, it's that hunger that makes you get back at training after you're injured, and you lose all the fitness you've suffered so hard to gain, it's that hunger that keeps you going through the terrible days out there on the road when all you want to do is stop.

That hunger is a tough thing to keep up all the time, and lots of things can threaten to satisfy it. Even success, the very thing that you strive and train for can take your hunger away, which seems counterintuitive, but in my experience, the hardest thing to do is to keep focused after success.

The key is to stay angry, stay insulted by all the people that think you can't do it, stay focused, stay cut throat.

Stay hungry boys and girls.

Awkward encounters

Here's a social experiment, next time you go running, or riding, or even just walking, say hello to the people you pass, and see how many of them respond, or even acknowledge you.

Most likely almost no one will return the greeting. This bothers me, especially when I am running and see someone else who is running, I make a concerted effort to say hello and smile at them. I am almost always met with a funny look, or they just keep looking ahead and pretend I'm not there. Has our society become so self-conscious and uptight that it isn't acceptable to be friendly?

I think this is especially strange behavior between two people that are running, but maybe I'm the only one that thinks there is some kind of bond, a mutual understanding of how miserable running can be at times, and an understanding of how no matter how miserable, we always feel better after a run.

Call me crazy, but I'm going to keep saying hi and smiling at people like an idiot. Join me if you dare.

Sundays

Sunday is a bittersweet day of the week.

The bad part is that it marks the end of the weekend, and the return to work and class.

But Sunday has a lot of good parts too. You get to sleep in, and then you wake up wherever you ended up the night before. Then you and your friends go to a diner for breakfast looking very disheveled and most likely not smelling all that great, wearing the same clothes you wore out saturday night. You order something delicious at the diner and recap the ridiculous things that happened the night before. (Expect a full post about breakfast at diners soon, as it might be my favorite thing ever.) After the diner you go home and digest for a while and try to piece your life back together a little before the long run. With any luck the trails are dry and the sun is shining, as you run farther than most people can fathom. You get back to your house tired, dirty, smelling even worse than before, but satisfied and happy in a sort of semi-comatose way. After a good sunday like that you might just have the strength and patience to make it through another week without losing your whole entire mind.

My house is most likely going to explode

That's it, my apartment is going to blow up.

Or something like that is going to happen, too many good things have happened, and the only way for the universe to stay in balance is for something bad to happen. In the past 12 hours the following has happened:

I got an internship with a newspaper, meaning I will in fact graduate college and might even get a job.

My housemate Paul got hired with the Bank of Tokyo, like an actual job with a salary and everything.

My other housemate Eddie is applying for a position with UBS as a compliance officer, which he has a good chance of getting because he has a cousin that works there.

That is far too much success for the world to handle at once. I don't think I'm going to leave the house for a while, because if I do I will most likely get hit by a car, or arrested, or something. If I have a good run today too, it's over.

The fact that all of us idiots will be the ones making society function should scare everyone. Here we come world!!!!

Between a Rock and a Moron

The topic of discussion on the run the other day was Aron Ralston, the author of "Between a Rock and a Hard Place," the true story of how he amputated his own arm with a pocketknife when it got caught under a rock when he was hiking alone in the canyons of Utah. For some reason, the man has been seen as a hero, an ideal of the outdoorsman that does whatever he needs to in order to survive.

Bullshit.

Aron Ralston is an idiot. He went hiking alone, bad. He didn't tell anyone where he was going, bad. He climbed on suspended rocks, bad. It took him seven days to realize he could break the bone and cut his way out, bad.

We decided that it wouldn't have taken a week to decide to cut the arm off and get back to the nearest McDonalds. Arms are expendable, that's why god gave us two of them. If my head was stuck under a rock, it might have been a little tougher of a decision, as I have only one head.

Today we salute you Aron Ralston, real original title for a book.

Shockingly, whiskey is not an ideal pre-run drink

The balance between training and socializing is a delicate thing.

The first saturday without a cross country meet is a chance to let the balance tip toward the social end of things. As me and my compadres ventured to the Red Jug Pub, I was introduced to a new drink, the whiskey ginger, and approached this delicious concoction with my normal lack of moderation. It was a great night, filled with fun and mischief, with the night culminating with the kidnapping of several shoes belonging to people who shall go unnamed, and resulting in one man having to walk back to our house Shoeless Joe Jackson style.

I tried to keep all the fun I had saturday night in mind as I staggered through a 17 mile run on sunday. Strangely whiskey is not the most hydrating fluid, my cotton-mouth and the salt rings accumulating on my shirt from sweat without enough water in it are testaments to that.

One of the good things about being fit is that even with a lil' bit of a hangover, runs aren't that bad, as I still managed to average about 6:40 a mile for the whole thing, albeit with a little more effort and self-loathing than usual. Gotta love college.