Hello Trouble Makers!
I have been meaning to post here for quite some time . . . but I’m lazy. Or especially non-lazy but very busy. Or, as I have vowed to say, time and time again, blogging has not been a priority for me.
But I am here.
Since last I posted, I, um, got a new job, broke my elbow (again), and spent the Covid lockdown finding all that weight I lost over the previous 8 years. But that’s not why I’m here.
I am here because I cannot tweet at present. But no, I’m not in twitter jail — I’m just epically stupid.
I am on vacation — same beach house that we have been to for the past 6 years. Same beach we have visited since I first met my wife (and, for her, at least 10 years prior to that). We love it here. I love it here.
I woke up with a killer headache this morning because I was hungover as fuck and opted out of a trip to the beach with the family — but everyone else went to the beach. Me? I went kayaking1. There is a 5 mile round trip paddle ride that I like to repeat. It’s from my beach house over to the bridge connecting Assateague & Chincoteague islands2.
I was on my way back to the beach house, the hard part done – my “work” was essentially keeping the kayak pointed in the right direction as the wind & water did the work for me.
Then a dolphin swam up beside me.
I was in awe . . . I have to believe it was confused & trying to determine just what, exactly, I was . . . but it was AWESOME.
So I pulled out my phone to take a video. But my hands were tired and the water was moving.
So my phone is now at the bottom of the Assateague Channel.
#fuckaduck
And, of course, I’m super security-conscious. Most everything has two-factor authentication. I can’t log into Twitter. Or Facebook. Instagram. LinkedIn.
But, I remembered that my blogging account is tied to my twitter account. So, if I posted a blog post, it would tweet for me.
Except I hadn’t posted in a fucking long time. So here I am, on vacation, writing a blog post to explain why I don’t have my phone.
Where I wore my running shoes
I don’t really remember how I ended up associated with this race – but I feel like it must have been associated with World Naked Cycling Day or something. I probably posted a pouty tweet because I didn’t know that naked cycling was a thing until after the naked cycling day when someone asked me if I was going to be running naked. At first, I laughed – whilst I may love being naked – well, when I run, there are lots of jiggly bits (not related to those bits which you normally keep under a bathing suit). I do not have a thigh gap, so I wear compression shorts to keep my thighs from chafing. I wear a compression shirt to avoid chafing around my shoulders and armpits (and to avoid nipple bleeding, which, alas, is a very real thing).
Running naked – well, it just sounded painful.
But I was intrigued.
So, last year, I signed up for the Wiggle, Jiggle, & Giggle – a 5k race hosted at a nudist resort a few hours from my house. I raced on a cold day where it was threatening to rain. I raced having no idea what to expect, or where I knew anyone. I had an absolute blast. I had such a good time that I started to clear the weekend on my calendar for future years, just to make sure that I’d be available to run the event, year after year.
This year, my second time running the 5k (I also ran their 7k trail run last year – this time, bringing a friend with me, as well as meeting several of the friends I made in my first race), I went looking to push myself.
With running, I’m kind of in a weird place, as of late. I have a very limited window in which I can run – and, weather permitting, I take advantage of said window as much as possible. While I should use my running window to make myself faster – that involves lots of work, and planning, and monitoring of your pace, and fartleks, and I can’t think about fartleks without giggling, and I can’t run faster when I’m giggling1. So, I’m running, and I’m running consistently, but I’m also, kind of, running aimlessly. I’m taking in good audiobooks, and I’m enjoying the scenery, and I’m making myself sweat, and I’m racking up mileage from Pokemon Go Adventure Mode, and I’m giving my eyes a break from looking at a screen all day – but I don’t know if I’m making myself a better runner. Heck, I only ever see my pace at the very end of my run (if I set my app to give me updates at regular intervals, I start thinking about my current pace WAY TOO MUCH, and usually end up losing track of my audiobook2).
As I’m running aimlessly/haphazardly, I’m also running, most days, at least a 10k, and I’m in a constant battle to get my body trained to the point where I can “just up and run a marathon.” By this, I don’t have a specific time in mind – I simply want to make it so that, if I was handed a free entry to a race, I could run things in the morning, give myself 20-30 minutes to hydrate and change, and then go about my day as if I had run “just another run” that morning. I can do that with a half-marathon. I cannot, yet, do that with a full.
But here I was, planning to push myself, running a distance that I never, ever run.
And doing so in my birthday suit.
A quick note on being at a clothing optional resort – “being naked” becomes normalized about 30 seconds after you end up in a place where many are nude. Some might be wearing some clothing. Some might be wearing a lot of clothing. Many might not be wearing anything at all – but it’s not like the 12-year-old me getting his hands on a porno mag, where I just *stare*. It’s naked – it’s a fact. It’s absolutely not sexual. It’s all quite natural.
And, quite enjoyable, if I’m being honest with the 3.5 of you.
Typically, when you run a race put on by a professional group (like Pretzel City Sports who put on this race, they put a sensor in your racing bib which is read when you cross the start and finish lines – oftentimes along the course, as well, just to keep track of where people are (and to try to ensure that nobody is taking shortcuts to the end). But, when running sans clothing? There is no place to put a bib. So there is no sensor. If you’re looking to win – you’re aided by starting first, as there is no such thing as chip time.
While they handed me a bib, that simply was packed along with the race t-shirt. My number was printed, in sharpie, on my right leg.
Anyway, as I have no strategy as to “how to run hard” for a distance that I seldom ever run, my early plan was to simply follow several of the people with whom I’ve raced, previously, and with whom I thought I could keep up.
But several seconds after the starting whistle, I lost track of all but one person I recognized. So I paced myself right behind this person.
The course was quite hilly – incredibly hilly. And it became apparent to me that this person with whom I was pacing, well, he might be faster than me on a straightaway – but I was outpacing him, considerably, on each climb. So I passed him. And I lost track of everyone, aside from some butts way off in the distance.
Then I passed this guy who was just shouting out numbers – and I realized he was sitting at the one-mile mark. I was one mile into the race.
As I said, I don’t train for this distance. And I seldom ever run this distance. But I do know that, during my best ever 5k, I ran an average of 6:32/mile. This was a near perfectly flat course, with ocean breeze filling my nose, after I had been traveling all day. I just sprinted without thought and made it to the end.
Here, I knew I had to navigate some serious hills. And was only a third of the way done. So I eased up, just a bit. And immediately started running downhill.
One of the reasons I so enjoy cycling is that, after an uphill, there is always a downhill . . . I coast. I rest. I catch my breath. I use the wind against my skin to dry my sweat. I recover.
Running? That doesn’t happen. When you’re my size (6’3″, more than 200 pounds), downhills are HARD. I need to pull WAY BACK for fear of my upper body positioning itself too far forward & my knees then trying to bend the wrong way. Downhills suck.
And, during this big downhill? I was passed by many. I should have taken stock to see if I recognized any of the runners who left me in their dust, but the first runner to pass me was wearing a hot pink sports bra, and had a very cute butt . . . and while I can say that the whole naked thing was normalized and non-sexual, and I mean it . . . it also doesn’t mean that I didn’t appreciate a fine form passing me3.
After the big downhill came a pretty steady up-hill, and I passed many who had passed me on the downhill.
And then I passed the guy calling out the times, and he called out 13:47 at the two-mile mark (yep, we did some looping). So I had slowed – but not considerably, but I felt I could keep my current pace to the finish.
So I went down the great big hill. On the steady uphill, I put one guy in my sights. I knew I was in the top-tier of racers, but had no idea whether that meant the top 25% or 10% or 2%. The woman with the pink sports bra, I never did see again, but I felt like I was “racing well” and that the chances that I might take home an award were high.
And, of course, if I finished ahead of the guy in front of me, those chances would increase.
But I never did manage to make up the ground ahead of me. I had some kick at the end – but so did he. He finished seconds ahead of me.
Then I heard from the people tabulating the results that I was 8th overall.
I finished second in my age group4.
I had a blast.
I still have no idea how to run a 5k.
Where I share an odd dream
Yeah – I’m still here. I am still Daddy Runs a Lot – I am still running as often as possible, and the kids . . . well, they’re still there. What I haven’t been doing much, at all, is writing. Not here, not at that other blog. Heck, I’ve barely been reading as of late (honestly, it’s in reading where I get the motivation to write – usually starting with a fun idea whilst leaving a comment on someone’s blog post and thinking “oh, hey, I like the creative process”)1. Life is busy – perhaps my life is exceptionally busy – and writing, well, writing just hasn’t been the priority.
But my dream last night kind of forced priorities to the forefront of my thought process. And I wanted to document things before the details drifted away like all dreams eventually do.
In my dream, I woke2, and I was a senior in college. I was in the townhouse I shared with three other guys, the outside temperature was chilly, but the window was open, I was nestled, happy and warm, under the covers. I didn’t want to get out of bed – I’d just skip my 8am class. Chances are I was awake for the day – I’ve never been one to get myself back to sleep – sure, I could just lie in bed, and that might feel good – but I seldom actually fall asleep once my eyes open. I’d get up, eventually – maybe play some Madden, and then beg Monique for her notes from engineering lab.
But then I thought that was stupid. See, I was in my 20 year old body, living my 20-year-old life. With my 41 year old mind and memories. I’m paying for college – not going to skip “just because.”
Realization came in full, now. I was 20 years old. I had my 20-year-old metabolism, but with my current work ethic. I crave and enjoy working out. I understand diet’s effect on the body. I have self control when it comes to dessert.
I have a work ethic3.
The end of my college career would end on an academic high note, as opposed to the “limp to the finish line” which was my reality. And I’d be my healthiest, physically, as a young man (as opposed to my reality, which I’d say I hit my apex a year or two ago, firmly entwined in middle age. Though I’m hardly “out of shape” these days, my younger self, well, I commonly used my height4 to mask my weight issues).
I’d be able to end a truly unhealthy-for-me relationship before things got too out of hand (at this time in my life, I was preparing to propose to my girlfriend . . . only, well, lets just say that we weren’t very good for each other – there is a ton more to process here, but that’s, perhaps, not for something this public). Knowing what I know now, I had the whole world open to me.
And then, outside of dream world and in the real world, my daughter flopped over and smacked me in the face, rousing me from the dream.
Only, which was the dream? Because, for the next 20-30 minutes or so, I was convinced that I had been sent to my younger body with my current mind & memories, but now was dreaming of my life before then: a dream within a dream within a dream.
I started plotting how I could ensure I had the family I had, now, whilst avoiding many of the mistakes I’ve made. Because mistakes (say it with me in a Sinatra voice)? I’ve made a few.
Then it got me to thinking of time travel in the Connie Willis world (hey, my brain is nothing if not perverted random), where it’s possible to travel back/forth in time, but it is an inexact science – if you try to head back to witness a history-changing historic event, you’ll either show up impossibly before, or just after the event. Or arrive in a location so far away that you can’t get to witness the event in time to possibly affect anything.
Then I started thinking about time travel in the Stephen King world, where time really doesn’t want you to fuck with it and if you manage to alter a historic event, Stephen King things happen to the world.
Was this one, pivotal morning, where the climate was perfect and my motivation was low, the singularity from which my life, as I know it, stemmed?
Was this moment my Demon Reach from the Harry Dresden world?
All I knew what that however much my daughter flopping her arm onto the middle of my face in the middle of the night angers me in the moment it happens – even if I feel I’d spend less time thinking “I wish I wouldn’t have…”, had I lived my 20’s with the wisdom I have in my 40’s, I definitely wouldn’t want to change just where I am right now.
Where I experience a running first
Eight years ago, this week, I ran my first marathon. Since that time, there have been a LOT of runs. I’m pretty sure I have run 15 marathons. I can’t count the half marathons, 5k’s, mile fun-runs, and everything in between. When you’ve run a bunch, the opportunities for “wow, that’s never happened before” dwindle (warning, sexiness beyond bounds coming next): the first time I ran a mile straight, the first time I had to pause a run because of runner’s trots, the first realization of “the runner’s high”, the first lost toenail, the first sub-ten-minute mile, the first successful snot rocket, the first bloody nipples, the first time you pass someone, the first time you pass someone who had previously passed you, the first realization of chafing between my thighs/armpits/butt cheeks, the first time running through a downpour or snow, the first fall during a run . . . but after this weekend, I can say I’ve experienced the first time I finished first in a race.
As 2018 comes to a close, I have a The Rehoboth Marathon coming in early December. I ran the race last year, and it was just a tremendous race. The things is, with a marathon…you need to train. Well, at least, I need to train 1. When I don’t train properly for a marathon, there are tears. Maybe a tantrum. Angry wailing. Moping. Often, the next week brings the dreaded mancold. Things are not good when I don’t train properly. What do I do to train, though? Well, I run.
At least, I should run, but lately I’ve been allowing myself to take the easy way out. I wake early to walk the dogs…and then, when I should be fitting in a tempo run, I’m sneaking back to bed. Because bed is warm and comfy and offers Coltrane snuggles. Weekends are supposed to be for long runs – somewhere north of 10 miles . . . hopefully working to north of 20 miles. Really, I want to have my body confident enough that it can run 20 miles without falling apart . . . if I can do that, for the last 6.2 miles, I can fly by on autopilot (mainly because, by this point, the brain has stopped processing pain).
In Pennsylvania, lately, though, there has been a LOT of rain. Especially on weekends. My son’s soccer schedule was decimated. And my long run planning has gone to absolute shit. So, as we get close to my next marathon, I turned to a tried & true method for getting my self to run . . . pay for something.
I found a local half-marathon on a Saturday morning that was, otherwise, unscheduled2. The entire week leading to the event? Zombie apocalypse Torrential rains. On Friday afternoon, I checked enrollment for the race: there were six people signed up. Then, Friday night? Temperatures dropped south of freezing.
When I woke Saturday morning, well, let’s just say I was not enthused to run. It was freezing. While the roads were mostly dry, random areas of ice abounded. My bed was really fucking comfortable. And the wind — well, gusts were reaching 50 miles per hour. When you combine the conditions with the light enrollment, I wasn’t sure the race would even be held.
I would not have complained if I saw things were called off.
But by 6am there had been no notice of a cancellation. And I’m not about to skip a race that I’ve paid to run . . . so, I dug out my cold weather running gear (running tights, a tech mock-turtleneck, and a running jacket) to Gifford Pinchot State Park I drove.
Despite the fact that this state park is less than half-an-hour from my house, I’d never been here . . . heck, I don’t know if I’ve even heard of it. But, it’s a lovely park – and one I plan to visit, as it looks like the lake would be great for recreational kayaking. I got to the registration & was handed a bib and a baggie full of rubber bands.
The race director explained that the original plan was to have us run along the lake . . . only they noticed, when they went to mark the path, that several picnic tables, from the picnic area immediately before the lakeshore trail, appeared to be half-submerged in the lake. one appeared to be floating in the middle of the lake. Simply, we have had so much rain that the lake was WAY above it’s normal level. Running along the lake was not an option.
So they went to use another trail . . . only that trail had tremendous water damage – significant ruts and what might amount to “leaping” from one part of the trail to the next.
Eventually, the plan was made to mark half a mile into a single trail, put up cones, and have the runners head back.
Now, I am not a fan of “there and back again” races. One of the ways I distract myself from the fact that I’m running, during a run, is to take in the scenery – look into people’s windows, notice interesting sights/vistas/trees/rocks/flowers. During a standard “there & back again” race, the second half – where I need all of the distraction possible – I’ve already seen everything.
This race? Half a mile uphill, turn around, run back . . . and repeat 13 times. For each lap I completed, I would drop off a rubber band . . . when I was out of rubber bands, the race was over. I was going to get to know a half-mile stretch of trail really well.
I took my stuff and sat back in the car . . . because it was COLD. I dicked around on my phone for a little while . . . but as other runners started arriving, I decided I was being anti-social. I put on two pairs of fleece pajama pants over my running tights. I bundled into an extra hoodie. I talked with the other quasi-sane people assembled.
And quasi-sane doesn’t begin to describe the people assembled. After everyone talked about the common hatred of dreadmills, I learned that three of the runners were training for a 100 mile event. That’s 100 miles, on foot . . . and here I am, using this half marathon to get myself to train for 26.2 miles.
We talk about kids & “bucket list runs” and how bloody cold it is when the wind hits you.
And then it’s just about time to start . . . I strip off my extra layers, begin shivering uncontrollably, and then they start the run.
Only I wasn’t quite prepared — the starting gun goes off & I go to my phone, start my audiobook3 (The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, read by Jim Dale), start up RunKeeper and go.
After about a tenth of a mile along the parking lot, you enter the trail path, and you start going uphill, at a fairly steep climb. At three places along the trail, things were WET. I mean, there was standing water . . . there was no way to keep your feet dry – you had to trudge through standing water and thick mud. The last tenth of a mile flattened out, but then we turned around, ran down the trail (through the muck), and back across the parking lot.
The only time I came close to falling was the very first time up the trail, as I tried to find more-solid parts in the first boggy passage, only to fail in my search. By that point, my feet were SOAKED and I just said “fuck it” and rain straight through the quagmires.
Only have I mentioned how cold it was? I lost feeling in my feet before the first mile was up. I still had twelve miles to run.
By the time lap three or four was over, I had lost feeling in my fingers . . . I ended up having to double and triple check that I was only handing off a single rubber band at the end of each lap.
Randomly, I ran into an old coworker walking her dog on the same trail.
By lap 6, I lapped the first of my co-entrants and I started to realize something . . . I was well ahead of everyone else.
When I dropped off my penultimate rubber band, the race director told me I was on my bell lap, though she had no bell to ring (I was actually a bit surprised, I figured we were on our own honor system, but they were tracking each runner). When I hit the parking lot for the last time, I gave all my legs had in them . . . I managed a half decent sprint to the end.
I won the race.
Now, this event took place the day before the Harrisburg Marathon (in which I could not participate due to a family commitment), so many serious, local runners wouldn’t even think of signing up for a Saturday half-marathon. And the weather likely scared away other distance runners.
But I crossed the finish line before any other entrant. No grand celebration – just a hearty congratulations, they handed me a medal, and invited me to take a miniature pie.
I chit-chatted with the race director and volunteers, mentioning that, in my last trail run, the trail wasn’t nearly as well marked, and several of us participants, all running in a row, nearly got lost when the leader at the time took a wrong turn and everybody else just followed. “How poorly was the course marked that you all made the same mistake?” someone asked. I had to mention that my eyes were more fixated on the other runners than the course itself. When prompted for why that was the case, I had to fess that the race was clothing optional.
I hung around, cheering on finishers until the wind and temperatures started to freeze the sweat still dripping off of me. I made it home; I felt accomplished; I had a shower beer; I realized this may be the first and last time I ever win a race.
Last month, I had a vasectomy – and while I read TONS of “what to expect” posts online, they were all written by urologists. It’s all great to get a doctor’s explanation of “what to expect”, but I found very few “this is what it was like” from a “normal guy1” postings. Birth control is important – hugely so. The world is overpopulated as it is, and even if you don’t think so, kids are VERY FUCKING EXPENSIVE.
I’m at a point where, even if I change my mind, in the future, and think “well, hey, let’s try this parenting thing anew,” I’m adopting. Plain & simple.
There, really, are two permanent solutions for a couple to consider for birth control – you either make it so the guys semen is missing sperm (by severing the vas deferens) or you ensure the woman’s egg never reaches the uterus after departing the ovary.
The male solution is much less invasive.
So, now that I’m recovered from “minor surgery” right now. That’s how I’m calling it, at work, and that explanation, at least for now, suffices to say why was relatively inactive whilst at the office. In short, I was quite sore, but all is better now.
But the whole story of why I’m like this? Well, we need to go back a few months – and because I’m me, we’ll head to yet another tale of running. Specifically, we start with a tale of a marathon — well, two marathons.
In early May, I ran the Flying Pig “4 Way With Cheese Challenge” in Cincinnati, Ohio. Three days, four events (one mile Friday night, a 10k early Saturday morning, a 5k later Saturday morning, a full marathon on Sunday). Normally, with that much running, I’ll take at least a month off before considering another trying distance. But, I’m motherfucking Daddy Runs A Lot, so when the opportunity to run the York, PA marathon came up, two weeks after that running extravaganza, I said yes!
The marathon starts like most any race. While I’m pretty good with math, I’m really not very good with counting – but I believe this was my 15th full marathon adventure – and my strategy, for every marathon, is much the same:
- Start: try not to get caught up in the excitement, don’t fight for positioning
- Mile 1: start to “run my own race” and hopefully have cleared from the crowds at the start
- 5k: ensure I’m on auto-pilot
- Mile 13.1: remind myself that I’m halfway done — this is a distance that I’ve been able to “just run” for some time now.
- Mile 16: remind myself that my during-the-week training runs have increased to 10 miles – and that’s all that’s left. Get incredibly discouraged that 10 miles are a LOT longer than 10k.
- Mile 20: it’s just a 10k left, anyone can run a 10k.
- Mile 22: left foot, right foot, left foot right foot – think of nothing else.
- Mile 26: (incoherent animals noises emanating from some deep recess of my mind)
- Mile 26.2: Finish and cry.
While that all is going on – a LOT can go wrong.
During the York marathon, a lot went wrong.
I remember that it was somewhere between mile marker 16 and 20 – I want to say that I was able to see mile marker 20 – when I felt a tug in my groin. My immediate thought was that, somehow, a pubic hair had somehow twisted around my right testicle, gotten caught up in a rather private piercing, and as I ran, it tugged. Or maybe my running shorts were starting to fray, and, somehow, Mr Right Nut ended up in the middle of some diabolical compression-short unraveling ceremony?
Because I’m über-klassy, without stopping, I reached my hand into my running shorts to free things up. Only, there was nothing seemingly amiss. But that tugging was persistent. I stopped running.
If you’ve ever run a marathon. No, fuck that, if you’ve ever run a distance where you are pushing your limits, stopping is a bad, bad idea. I’m a big guy – the amount energy required to get me moving from a stop is significant. After 20 miles in blistering heat? After having run a whole bunch, just two weeks prior? That energy simply didn’t exist within me. The last bit of this marathon ruined me.
But I finished — only, as I drove back home, the battery light came on in my truck. My truck then died. I got to arrange for a tow, then an Uber, before getting myself to a gig I had to play that afternoon. The craziness of the post-marathon logistics kind of pushed that testicular pain to the back of my mind – “getting my truck back” was a bigger priority than anything else.
And I did get my truck back – the alternator belt cracked, breaking the alternator, fully sapping the battery . . . it wasn’t cheap, but it wasn’t horrible. By Thursday of the next week, life had returned to normal.
Except for the random stabbing pains in my right testicle.
I “lived” with things for about a week . . . then thought of the advice I’d give anyone who was dealing with “random stabbing pains”. I called the doctor. Things were investigated — no real sense of what might be wrong, so he put me on noninflammatory medication & told me to call back in two weeks if things weren’t better. Chances are I disrupted a nerve in the run, and things were “settling”.
Two weeks went by and the stabbing pains lessened, but did not fully go away. I went back to the doctor, who referred me for an ultrasound. The ultrasound revealed a cyst on the right epididymis2. I was referred to a urologist.
Cysts on/around the testicles are far from uncommon – what is uncommon is for them to hurt. The urologist mentioned that he could try draining the cyst – it was the least invasive action that involved some sort of action – but he was pretty certain that, in time, the pain would go away on its own. But pain is best avoided, and that “go away on its own” might have been a “couple of weeks” thing, or maybe a “decade or two”.
And while they were in there….well, I’m done producing kids. Kids are the worst, except when they’re not. So, while my scrotum was cut open, might as well redirect those sperm ducts so ensure I am no longer capable of creating kids while still fully being able to enjoy sex.
For preparation: I took Friday off work, I cleared everything in my schedule for the weekend, and I arranged to work from home on Monday. I trimmed my pubic hair.
Early in the morning, I took a Valium, and Duffy drove me to the urologist’s office. The medication had me . . . quite calm, and any anxiety I had about what lay ahead for me was greatly reduced.
There were two quick injections of a local anesthetic – similar to what you get from the dentist for a filling. This was, physically, the most uncomfortable part of the ordeal. But, I’d say that getting a Novocaine injection in the gums is far worse. After a few minutes to ensure I wasn’t feeling anything “down there,” my a small incision was made in my scrotum, and the cyst drained. I never felt that at all.
Soon thereafter, my left vas deferens was severed, and the two loose ends cauterized (to help ensure that “nature doesn’t find a way” and things figure out how to repair itself). The smell – well, that was the worst part of the ordeal. I didn’t feel ANY of it – but the smell of burning flesh was unpleasant.
After lefty was done, righty was completed.
All told, I was in and out of the doctor’s office in under 45 minutes.
I went home, still numb, grabbed a bag of frozen peas, and watched shitty television/movies for the next few hours with my feet up. I took a pretty regular diet of Aleve over the weekend. By about 2 in the afternoon, I was truly uncomfortable. I had a beer or two. I played some computer games to get me thinking of anything else. I kept the frozen peas over my nutsack (well, I had two bags of frozen peas – I would grab the one from the freezer, replacing it with the thawed one). I went to bed in a fair bit of pain, but I slept well.
Saturday, I got out of bed, and the only thought I had was “OUCH”. I was on my feet enough to make coffee – but the day was spent, mostly, seated, with frozen peas, Aleve, some beer. The big change is that i went with shitty Horror films besides binge-watching television. It was almost an entirely inactive day.
Sunday, again, I woke with the thought “ow” but it was far better than the previous day. Again: seated with frozen peas, Aleve, beer, binge-watching The Haunting of Hill House, and playing a bunch of computer games from my youth. I found myself getting up & walking around far more often.
Sunday also marked a pretty big milestone — I woke up from a nap with an erection. The relief I had was palpable here – simply, it told me that my penis was still working. I was far too uncomfortable to actually do anything with the engorged appendage at the time, but, at least, I knew I could get an erection. It was a huge relief.
Monday, I got out of bed and it was the first day that pain wasn’t first on my mind. I walked the dogs (though an abridged walk). I managed to work through the day, though I was home, so when I got overly sore, I had the luxury of putting my feet up.
Tuesday, I was back in the office. I have a convertible standing/sitting desk – while I typically stand on a balance board while at the office (is it really “work” if you’re not coding while working your core?), I sat for the whole week. As Tuesday turned to Friday, I walked more & more in the mornings. I felt less and less sore.
Thursday marked my first run since the procedure; it was just a 5k, but it was something3. Then, after showering, in a magical, rare moment of time truly to myself, I got to, ahem, “test the plumbing.” I can’t say the masturbatory session was entirely pain-free, but I did climax. A few days later, when I was alone yet again, I had an orgasm where I’d say there was truly minimal discomfort.
We’re now a month beyond the procedure, and the only thing amiss is some discomfort when the little impish brats who live with me my kids or dogs land on or bump into my scrotum – see, the dissolving stitches haven’t completely dissolved there.
In summary: the procedure truly was quick & easy. Things were pretty awful in the immediate aftermath, but I had planned for that, and the pain was never such that I couldn’t move or take care of myself. As time passed, things got progressively “more normal”, and we are now at a point where, aside from the very random “kid walks into my crotch-head first moment, I don’t even remember that I had the procedure. Everything still works. I’m noticing no loss of libido, loss of enjoyment of sex, or quantity of semen ejaculated.
Where I start a new workout plan
Hey everyone – it’s me! You know, that goofy guy who pretends to write every now & then!
Well, I’m still around. Obviously, I’m not writing as much as I once did. Simply, other things have taken precedence in the hierarchy of priorities in my life. These days, if it’s not actively ensuring the welfare & safety of my kids/family, making me money, getting me drunk, or making me healthy, it’s on the back burner. I still run, when I can – in fact, I’ve been running pretty regularly, but running keeps me healthy. And writing – while I once used it to “keep the crazy at bay,” I now regularly see a professional to talk things out – it’s certainly a far more direct way of dealing with some of the crazies in my head.
But I’m here today because I’m having some fun with my new workout regimen. I have a limited lunch time, and I don’t have shower facilities available to me, so running over lunch, right now, simply isn’t in the cards1. As I painfully slowly work my way toward a black belt in Tang Soo Do with my kids and bitterly accept the bullshit that is getting older realize I’m not as young as I once was, I’m finding that I don’t move all that well. I mean, sure, I can make my way through an hour-long class with my kids a couple times a week . . . but trying to get into a split? I watch everyone in class, happily complying with a stretch as sweat pours down my brow and I wonder if my groin is just groin to up and depart my body. Then I watch the more-advanced students practice their skills & realize “there is no way I’m ever going to manage that shit without some sort of intervention.”
I stumbled upon a workout plan by getting tricked into following an Instagram ad. Basically, it showed some middle-aged guys moving fluidly. GASP! “Hey, I’m a middle aged guy” I thought as I clicked through the ad. Minutes later, I was begging them to take my money.
Now I’m spending my lunches these days working on making myself stronger, more flexible, with more control over the way my body works. The focus is on three moves: The Bear, the Monkey, and the Frog2. I’m…having fun working out (though I’m certainly getting a few weird side-glances from my coworkers as they, you know, do things that normal people do, like use their lunch hour to go out to lunch).
The Bear: start on your hands & knees and push your butt into the air so that the soles of your feet and the palms of your hands are flat on the ground. Keeping your butt high, “step” forward with one hand, then the opposite foot, then the opposite hand….
The Froggy: start in a deep squat, place your hands in front of yourself (fingers facing out). Slowly shift weight so that more & more of your weight is supported by your hands and your knees are just barely off the ground, “hop” forward” back into a deep squat.
The Monkey: again, start in a deep squat. Place one hand in front of the opposite foot, the other hand outside of that same foot. Put your weight onto your hands and push your body so that you switch the foot/hand which are together.
It’s an 8 week program, and today marks week 2, day 1. I’m certainly getting myself sweaty over my lunch break (though nothing like what would happen if I were running). I’m sensing improvement – that may simply be because of the number of isometric holds you end up doing. I’m usually someone who feels a weakness & tries to compensate with something else that isn’t so weak. If I hold my ground when something doesn’t feel strong, though, well, it makes me think about how things feel as I get stronger.
I’ll see if I can chime back in every few weeks, just to show how things are going. Because, frankly, loyal readers3, I miss posting here.
Where I break down a bad run
Yesterday, I ran my fifteenth marathon . . . and it didn’t go so well. You’ll have to excuse me for a minute while I use this space to break down just what happened.
So I ran the York Marathon — normally, this event would have been a huge *nope*. You see, just two-weeks prior, I ran the Four Way (with Extra Cheese) challenge in Cincinnati1. Two marathons, in two weeks . . . well, I haven’t yet worked my body to the point where a marathon is “just another run.” A marathon is something for which I need to rest ahead of time, and recover afterward. I knew, two weeks after some serious running, I’d still be recovering.
But York is less than an hour’s drive from my house. It happened to be scheduled on a day for which I wouldn’t be needed as the church organist (there was a major festival at the church – while they still had services, so many people make themselves more-available to the festival than to the services, so we forego having choir, as we’d have minimal attendance, and when there is no choir, we have no organ music). It was a super-early start time, so I’d be able to mostly have a regular day. And it was a pancake-flat course.
So I chose to run it.
Ow.
I’m not a big fan of “there & back again” races2 because you can’t distract yourself with new scenery when you’re struggling to just fucking get to the finish line. But I was feeling pretty good to the turnaround point – I was chatting with runners, and felt loose & light on my feet. I certainly felt that I had a lot more in me. But I started to notice something amiss with my left foot. It felt that, maybe, some silt had worked into my Vibram Five-Fingers and was rubbing against my foot. But, well, I was running, and running good . . . I didn’t trust myself to stop, clean out my shoes, and get going again.
And by mile marker 17? I wasn’t noticing much amiss at all.
But then, as mile marker 20 came into sight, my left hamstring, kind-of, seized. I stopped & tried to work things out . . . but the cramping was bad. Every time I put any weight on my left leg, my hamstring just turned into a pretzel. It took me a LONG time to get running again. But, eventually, I was going again. Only to stop four miles later with the same problem.
Eventually, I stretched/massaged out the cramp, got back on my feet, and ran/limped across the finish line, a good 2 minutes per mile slower than I had hoped.
Looking over things – there are very specific reasons for why this race wasn’t a success.
- I haven’t been training. I can give any number of excuses for this, but I haven’t been training properly for a marathon. Take your pic: I’m overly-committed, the kids have too much going on, the weather has been rotten, I don’t have a shower at work. All of them are true — but if I want to run marathons, I need to keep myself running regularly, adding in regular long runs.
- I changed my running style. I can tell you this now, but my left foot feels precisely like both of my feet do, during my week at the beach, where I run miles along the beach. Simply, pushing against sand, when I’m used to running against the road, causes chafing — and chafing on the bottom of your toes HURTS. At the beach? I seldom run more than 6 miles in a day . . . but I felt something amiss around mile 14 – considering my cramping only seemed to come to my left-side, and I really feel like I have an old injury, I think I know the root cause.
- The conditions were far from optimal. While I run on a rails-to-trail fairly often, whenever I do, the weather is near perfect – it’s dry and cool. The run in York? While it didn’t rain, it had rained, extensively, the day before. Portions of the trail were absolutely swamp-like (how I suspect trail dirt got into my shoes) and slippery. And the heat & humidity were at such a level that I’d not found myself in any training to this point. The day was muggy — and my body did not react to said mugginess well.
- As I said, I was still recovering from the run two weeks ago. While I watched Ultra-Marathon-Man, where Dean Karnazes runs 50 marathons in all 50 states over 50 days, leading up to the race, I am not Dean Karnazes and Dean Karnazes is not me. If I had more time to devote myself to running, I’d *love* to attempt races like that . . . . but, for now, if/when I need to run a marathon, I need to allow my body to heal.
- There is more of me than there was last fall. From September to December, I ran a series of three marathons (the Maritime Marathon in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada; the New York City Marathon; the Rehoboth Beach marathon) each in under four hours. While I’m eating *mostly* healthily, I’m eating a little more than I was, then (especially when you consider that I’m not regularly running). And I’m drinking more than I should. While some try to tell me that I’m too-skinny as it is, the simple truth is that carrying around 15 pounds of extra John over 26.2 miles would take a lot out of anyone.
So, how do I fix things?
First, I’m about to run into a magical time in my schedule — the kids wrap up school a week from Thursday. I’ve conditioned myself to wake up early – during the school week/school year, I wake, walk the dogs, make lunches, dress the kids, and ensure everybody is out the door in time. I won’t need to . . . so, assuming I don’t touch the time my alarm goes off (I have the most-effective backup alarm, in my dog, Benji, known to man — once my alarm goes off, he’s not letting me go without his walk), I’ll find myself with zero responsibility at 5:30 in the morning. That’s prime run time, assuming I don’t let myself go back to bed.
I’m not really sure how to combat the trail-dirt problem. It might be that I need to wear actual sneakers when running on any sort of trail, including a rail-to-trail. Or it might mean that I need to wear toe-socks in my silly toe-shoes. But I’m not so sure this is a real issue — aside from my run along the beach to get REAL secluded so that I can do yoga, naked, at the sunrise early morning vacation jaunts, I’ve never had blisters like I’m dealing with, right now.
If I run like I would like, I’ll be far more used to regular body exertion — two weeks should be PLENTY of time between long runs, I think, if I’m running regularly & managing a long-run a week (and, as I wrote before, as choir attendance is sporadic during the summer, choir is dismissed, so John doesn’t have his regular Sunday gig . . . so “church time” can lead me to worship by pounding pavement).
Lastly – if I’m running regularly? Hopefully there will be less of me around. Less of me to carry means an easier time over any distance.
Where I listen to some deep fantasy
So I finished Pretty Girls – and was left underwhelmed. I like dark – and that story was certainly dark, but there were, simply, so many questions about how things were possible, who was involved, how those who were involved in the grand conspiracy. The best to which I can equate the story would be like finding out who all was involved in the grand conspiracy revealed at the end of Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, but the story just ends with Girl With the Dragon Tattoo — you kind of need the story to figure out why & how the bad people came to be.
After the dark, dark book, I chose to switch things up and head over to start listening to The Dwarves – but I’m still in the early goings (I have more than 18 hours of listening left). It’s Geeky. I think the world is likely more intricate than Lord of the Rings. So far, I’m really enjoying it – though it hasn’t quite…lit me to wanting to run all of the time — I have a marathon in 7 weeks, so I hope that something in the book starts to click where I feel that I *must* continue listening, meaning I’ll run more & more, or I might just pause things and move onto an old favorite.
I’m still working my way through Pretty Girls, so there won’t be a Friday Reads post — the book has me hooked . . . the story seems to be getting away with itself, with each plot twist being a bit more unbelievable than the last, but I’m loving the ride on which the story is taking me.
That out of the way, I’d like to present the latest in the tales of Blondie, the bad dog. Blondie typically knows no shame. The dogs are not to go into the basement. And while sneaking into the basement is something each dog will do, Benji, when he does it, even if I didn’t catch him, will act guilty for hours afterward. Blondie will run up the basement stairs and wiggle her butt at me before running to the pantry to see if the doors were left open (meaning she might be able to steal something) or to the trash can, which we have had to lock behind a baby gate to keep her from knocking it over and feasting on the marvels of our trash.
Then we head to this morning. I’m toweling off after masturbating showering, and I heard a crash from downstairs. Now, when I hear a crash in my home, the list of suspects for causing said crash are, in order:
- Me. I am quite clumsy and irresponsible. But I couldn’t be the cause of the crash, because the crash was downstairs and I was upstairs.
- Coltrane, the boy. 8 year old boys are dervishes. But Duffy had already left, with both children, for school.
- Leila, the girl. She inherited my grace. But see above.
- Benji, the slightly-less-bad-dog. He is big, with unparalleled leaping ability. But he was cuddled up, with the cat, on the bed.
- Luna, the cat. The best argument against the flat-earth conspiracy1 is that the earth cannot be flat – if it were, there would be a edge somewhere. And by now, cats would have pushed everything on the earth off of it. But see previous item – the cat was napping, with the slightly-less-bad-dog, on the bed. Which was decidedly not downstairs.
- Blondie, the bad dog, of whom I am writing this post. I head downstairs to investigate. Blondie, who typically shows no shame, is in her crate2, trying to make herself invisible. Seriously, she’s a hard-core cuddler3, so we keep several blankets in her crate with her, and she’s nosed under them – I only knew she was in her crate because her tail was sticking out.
So, the dog who, to date, has never known shame, and may be the most social animal in existence, is voluntarily hanging out in her crate, under a pile of blankets. Nothing uncouth here.
Now, I’m left trying to figure out how she broke a bowl. The bowl was on a table in the den – the table in the den is a tall “pub-style” table. There are four chairs around it – I’d classify each chair as a barstool. Blondie is, I think, 14 pounds. She hops about on three legs. I guess I’m just greatly underestimating the jumping ability (combined with determination) of small, three-legged dogs.
Anyway, Duffy, we lost one of the fiestaware bowls today4.
- What I’m listening to:
- Karin Slaughter‘s Pretty Girls
- When I started:
- Monday Afternoon
- How Much I’ve Listened:
- 6 of the 37 chapters
- What I’m liking:
- After the last book, which seemed to increasingly insult my intelligence as the plot progressed, I’m liking this book, more & more, as things unfold. Honestly, at this point, I’m not even sure what the grand tale is – some time ago, a girl went missing.
She had (has?) two sisters – one of whom is really rich but her husband was murdered right in front of her just after she was released from home-confinement – but the characters are unique and vibrant. The dialog is snarky. It’s been great (and creepy, though not quite on a Caroline Kepnes level of creep). - What I’m not liking:
- There are a LOT of “I just revealed this little bit of back story, and the story of that back story is going to be absolutely crucial to the story arc, but I’m going to switch gears now and focus on another character / plot point” moments. Yes, it makes for riveting listening . . . but I find myself sighing, fairly regularly, realizing that I’m going to have to wait even longer to figure out: why so and so was arrested, whether this woman will really do that thing.
- What’s Up Next?
- Something from this list:
- Richard Paul Evans’s The Walk
- C.T. Phipps’s The Rules of Supervillainy
- JD Barker’s The Fourth Monkey
- Ashley Posten’s Geekerella
- Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck
- Neil Degrasse Tyson’s Astrophysics for People in a Hurry