Don’t Be Ridiculous!

I laugh at myself sometimes over the ridiculousness of what I’m doing. I mean, who in their right mind would go through the suffering that I am going through just for the sake of fitness or getting a high out of it? Illegal drugs would probably be an easier way to get a high but it’s just not my thing. After runs like today instead of someone asking me what hurts, they should probably ask what doesn’t hurt because it seems like the what doesn’t hurt list is lesser than the what hurts list. Well I’ll tell you the what hurts list anyway from bottom to top. My right inner ankle hurts, that’s a given. My left knee hurts, that’s fairly new. My lower back hurts due to my stride changes. To add to all that hurt I’ve been having a toothache the past week. That’s the only non-running hurt that I have and of course when I’m not running the tooth hurts the most.

When today’s AREC run started, I told John M. that I was going to follow a line from a song from “Phantom of the Opera” (The Music of the Night) and run “slowly, gently”. But that didn’t last very long. I’m back to my old habit of trying to catch up with someone up ahead again. Although it feels good to be able to pick up the pace and do that, it jars the joints harder. Like last weekend I was running at about 85% perceived effort again, this time for 10 miles. The good thing about today’s run is that it’s the longest one I’ve done since I tore my posterior tibialis tendon last October, and not at an easy effort. The downside is all the pain I’m experiencing. A normal person would say that that I’m being ridiculous or just plain crazy (I already knew that) for doing what I do to my body (it’s my body so I can do what ever I want with it, so there!) Oh, my goodness that sounds almost like I’m hearing voices in my head just like the patients I work with do.

My joints are beginning to feel the cumulative effects of the increasing mileage. At least we get a break next Saturday, we only have to do a 7 miler and ooooh, can my joints sure use the break. The ridiculousness of running in pain sometimes has its rewards. In the middle of today’s run Nancy D. commented that I looked happy. All I can say about that, to borrow and paraphrase from another old song “ Smile though your joints are aching, smile even though they’re breaking”.

The Accidental Pace

After checking the beep alert on my GPS watch at two miles, I thought it said 19:30, but I did a double take when I saw it actually said 18:30. That would be 9:15 minutes per mile for two miles. I was either having a good day or it was going to be an interminably exhausting run for me. It turned out to be a mixture of the two.

While doing a warm-up jog prior to the AREC nine mile run yesterday (Saturday, June 20), I noticed that my left knee wasn't tracking properly. I could feel a slight pain on the kneecap. It had been hurting on and off in the past week. I was hoping the warm-up would take care of the problem or just hope for the best when we embarked on the nine miler.

My breathing was good and it felt like I was running at about 80% effort most of the way. When the effort went to 90% I would just back off the pace. In past weeks I was running at about 60 to 70% of perceived effort to keep the pounding of my feet against the pavement to a minimum. But then I was running with somebody who enabled me to do that. Yesterday, she wasn't there, so I missed my pacer. I suppose I could have just slowed down and paced with someone else but for some reason I failed to do that. So away I went doing what I was not supposed to be doing: pushing the pace however slightly.

I caught up with this girl going up a hill and on the way down and most of the rest of the way I could feel her just slightly behind me. She would surge for a few dozen steps then back off, almost like doing a fartlek workout and she did this the whole way. Her style of running somehow gave me the push I needed to be able to run a tempo or anaerobic threshhold pace for the whole workout. The problem was I could feel my left knee and right ankle rebelling against the added stresses they were being subjected to. Somehow my joints managed to hang on to finish the workout at a pace I didn't plan on running. The pace for 9 miles was only 8 seconds per mile slower than the 10K I ran a couple of weeks ago. In other words I had a good aerobic day to the detriment of my aching joints and survived to tell about it.

(Also shown in the above photo is the girl who was running her fartlek workout. Thanks for the push Sophie)

Okuribito

I'm watching a movie called “Departures” (Okuribito) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1069238/. It's a Japanese movie which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film for 2009. I'm only thirty minutes into the movie and already I'm finding it quite funny even though the subject matter is about “a newly unemployed cellist taking a job preparing the dead for funerals” (per IMDB Summary). It's 130 minutes long so I hope it takes the subtle humor all the way to the end.
During the second half of the first hour the preparation of a body is finally shown and it is done with so much sensitivity, care, and dignity in front of the deceased family. Undressing, cleansing, grooming, and dressing the dead is done with such precise movements, it's almost like a dance.
The conflict comes going into the second hour when his wife finds out what his new job is. She and his friend find his kind of work unclean and not a normal job. So she leaves him because of this. All this time his thoughts go back to his father who started him playing the cello but left him and his mother when he was six years old.
In the last quarter of the film, the wife comes back and witnesses for the first time how her husband does his job when the owner of the bathhouse they visited in the past suddenly died. The owner's son happened to be the friend who vilified him for his job and now ironically, he has to prepare the mother's body for her funeral.
The end of the movie involves the cellist/undertaker's father but I shall leave this review at this point because I hope whoever reads this will get the chance to check the movie out for themselves. The film evolves slowly but beautifully. In the end, it had nothing to do with subtle humor like at the start, but turned out to be a very well composed drama which also illustrated how the Japanese people take care of the dead.

The Mismatched Runner

My running clothes don't match. The colors do for the most part, but not the brands. For example at Saturday's AREC run, I was wearing Brooks shoes with a blue trim, plain white socks, blue Champion shorts, and blue New Balance long sleeved shirt (exhibit #1: two posts below). Why the mismatched brands? Because I buy my running gear when they are on sale or closeout. I don't wear the latest, newest, most technical clothes in the market because when Nike, Adidas, New Balance, Brooks, etc. come out with something new, they cost too much and not within my means and budget. So what I do is wait a year or two for those types of fabrics to hit the Targets and Walmarts where the store brands are sold at about one third the cost of the major brand names. I call it my trickle down theory of technical wear. Or just wait for the major brands to go on closeout in some stores.

I'm pretty sure nobody scrutinizes the clothes I'm wearing when I'm out running so it doesn't matter if the brands are mismatched, as long as the colors do. And I didn't have to pay exorbitant prices for them. So please excuse me for being thrifty but I got that trait from my parents.

Running Friends From Yesteryears

Last Saturday morning after the AREC run and while the chiropractor was giving his lecture, I espied two people run by and I recognized them as a married couple whom I have run with a long time ago. I waved and stopped them for a little catch-up chat. I ran with Fred and Linda as members of Team Runner's High in the late 80's through 1992. Those were the best running days of our lives when we constantly set PR's, raced almost every weekend and sometimes even on both Saturday and Sunday. One race I distinctly remember was the Labor Day Mount Baldy Run to the Top. It was a treacherous course with some parts on a single track on the side of the mountain
with a steep drop-off, and the last mile was on a very rocky path only suitable for mountain goats. I was going to write about that experience at the time because getting up and down that mountain in one piece felt almost like a biblical experience. I would have started the article this way: “I have been to the top of the mountain and I have seen ...Fred (instead of The Lord). Fred was the first person I saw whom I knew just before I reached the finish line and he was on his way down (like The Lord coming down from heaven to help me up the mountain). It certainly felt like a religious experience but then again it could just have been the thin air in high altitude. Getting back down was another thing. You had to run down four miles after which you had to ride the ski lift further back down to where the parking area was. Being a bit acrophobic all I could do was look upwards while the ski lift was moving.
My memory of Linda involved the 1992 Long Beach marathon. During the middle miles and through the finish I would catch glimpses of her up ahead. Her stride was so distinct that I would recognize it anywhere even to this day. She finished barely ahead of me in around 3:28 while I finished around 3:29. She probably provided the pull for me to set my best marathon time (it was also a PR day for her).
I would see Fred and Linda every few years when I bump into them while running between Seal Beach and Long Beach and the last time they told me that they were cycling more. When I saw them again last Saturday, it had been at least three years since. Fred said he had a bicycle accident a few years back and broke three bones in his pelvis and legs. Fortunately he has fully recovered. They both still run with Team Runner's High but not as seriously as before.
I told them I wasn't not able to do marathons anymore due to my ankle problems and was just attempting to finish the half marathon. I also told them about the growth of AREC and the marathon training group.
So after a brief chit-chat they continued running on their way back home to Seal Beach. It has been nice bumping into them every few years and being able to reminisce about our glory days of running.

2009 NBA Champions

After the Los Angeles Lakers had that 16-0 run in the second quarter last night, it felt almost anticlimactic the rest of the game. No heroics, no dramatic ending, but just waiting to see by how many points the Lakers would win by.
I don't usually follow basketball during its regular season and I don't even like watching the playoffs because I get too tense and nervous watching whatever team I'm rooting for. During last Thursday's fourth game I would only check on the game every few minutes until the last minute of regulation time and the whole five minutes of overtime. Now that was dramatic and heroic.
While this topic is not my area of expertise, I think the game was won because the Lakers played better defense and even though Kobe Bryant won the MVP prize last night, it was a whole team effort on their part that they were successful the entire season.
I was actually able to watch the whole game last night even though I had to distract myself from time to time so I wouldn't get too excited and tense. In the end, one game of being nervous was well worth it. Go Lakers! Now lets go for a two-peat!

From Every Day to Day to Day

Time it was when running every day was a no brainer and just something that needed to be done routinely like eating or sleeping. Wake up, run, eat, repeat same thing tomorrow, for years on end. Nowadays, running is a day to day decision depending on how my ankles feel. I try to run just three times a week now. The recovery of my ankles takes between 48 to 72 hours, and during a running day I have to get a feel on how much time or distance my ankle will be able to tolerate. Running is no longer routine for me and I constantly lament that fact. I enjoy the good days and just hang on during the bad ones. Each time I start a run, I do so gingerly with smaller steps than my normal stride. No longer am I able to let it rip (within the confines of my aerobic capacity). My aerobic capacity exceeds the ability of my ankle joints to handle the pounding of running. My back has even started to hurt lately after I run because I have changed my stride. I now try to take smaller, lower strides so as to reduce the pounding against the ground.

After todays AREC training run, a chiropractor talked to the group about hidden runner imbalances and what can be done to correct them. I had been doing some of those exercises inconsistently based on what I have found on the internet but the chiropractor today just reinforced it and he was able to demonstrate some of the techniques. I shall now try to do them more consistently. I asked the chiropractor if the posterior tibialis tendon can still be rehabilitated and he said that something can be done so that I will be able to prolong my running. I am considering buying a balance board and kinesiotape to try to rehabilitate my ankle tendons. I have nothing to lose at this point so why not try them.

After last week's hard effort at the Wrigley River Run, we took it easy for today's 8 miler, barely breaking 10 minutes per mile. Other than charging up 6^th Street hill at mile 4 and 2^nd Street bridge at mile 8, the run was done at an easy effort. I didn't even do my usual one mile warm-up and cool-down. I'm sure my ankles will thank me for it. 92 runners signed in today. AREC training keeps growing bigger.

Crazy Night At The Asylum (isn't that redundant?)

The night shift didn't start in a good way last Sunday night. One of the patients had started hitting other patients again so he had to be monitored by his own 1:1 staffmember. Then we had two registry medication nurses and two registry nurse's aides working with us, so we were missing almost half of our regular staff.
Just about an hour after we stepped into the ward, a new male patient had gone missing but was quickly found trying to have sex with a female patient in her bathroom. Fortunately for us we managed to have a pre-coitus interruptus. So those two had to be watched very closely to prevent the situation from happening again. The male patient was a huge guy and it would have been very difficult for us to stop him if we couldn't redirect him verbally. To add to that, he would try to violate another person's private space intimidatingly the rest of the night and he didn't sleep a wink despite all the medications he received. We lucked out on the girl who slept all night after 10 p.m. But another confused female patient kept on trying to go inside other patient's rooms so we had to watch her very closely too and when she attempted to go into other patient's room, we had to run after her to direct her out of that room. Still another male patient went to bed at midnight and woke up at 3 o'clock and started pacing in small circles in the hallway, after which he started wiping the walls, windows and floors. When he was done with that, he stripped his bed, remade it, stripped it again, and remade it. This went on every few minutes. A classic case of mania. But at least he wasn't much of a problem because he was occupied with his own business.
It was one of those nights when all the staff had to be hypervigilant to keep everybody and everything safe. I hate working on nights like that although surprisingly despite of what was happening I felt relatively calm. Usually I get very tense and anxious when things aren't going very well.
When morning came the two patients who tried to have a tryst the previous night attempted to hug each other but the staff managed to abort that before it happened. You see, we don't allow physical contact in psych units and that includes public displays of affection. Then the other confused female patient went in a room of another patient and tried to lie on the other patient's bed. We managed to direct her back to her room but as soon as we turned around to leave her, she tried to punch me. Luckily, I was far enough so she wasn't able to connect. She was later given an injection to calm her down.
I couldn't wait for 7:30 a.m. to come and when it did, I was out of there like a bat out of hell.

Surviving The Wrigley River Run 10K On Tender Ankles

It seems like my ankles survived the pounding they took from the 10K yesterday. Considering that I have been running at a 9:40 to 9:50 pace per mile in recent weeks, finishing the 10K at 8:50 pace was more than I could ask for specially that I didn't aggravate anything with my ankles. Not making my ankles worst was reward enough for me and the faster than usual pace was a just a bonus. My mind set about running has changed so much. It used to be: how can I run faster or longer. Nowadays it is: how can I preserve the fragile condition of my ankles so I can keep on running regardless of pace.
The Wrigley River Run is a small community event with an all volunteer corps. In spite of this the event was very well organized. The start and finish lines were set up very well. The distances were measured accurately. The bananas and pizzas past the finish line kept on coming and seemed unending. The first place awards were generous: a $100.00 gift certificate at a running shoe store. Considering the price of running shoes nowadays, $100 is a generous amount. I was wishing I had one of those.
Since my feet overpronate badly when I run, I have to wear motion control shoes and those are the most expensive models with any brand name running shoes. $100 would about cover that cost. But I digress. Kudos to Gavin McKiernan for organizing a well run event and compliments and gratitude to the countless volunteers who assisted in making this event a success. There was even a band at the second turn of the course but unfortunately they couldn't play because it started raining and they were exposed to the elements. Some of the volunteers were members of the running club I belong to: A Running Experience Club, based in Long Beach, California. They gave up their chance to race so they could volunteer. Job well done everybody!

10K's To Remember

Today I ran my first 10K race (6.2 miles) since October 26, 1991 (Bellflower Liberty Run). I wasn't sure what year I last ran a 10K so I had to dig out my log books to find out when it was. Today's race was the Wrigley River Run which I had mentioned in some of my previous posts. Its a nice small neighborhood race so the starting line wasn't crowded like some of the bigger races. The runners can hit their full stride almost right away. In the bigger races, sometimes you have to walk for about two minutes or more before you can even reach the starting line. It was a nice, cool, overcast day with some little sprinkles here and there which didn't help since I wear eyeglasses and I don't have wipers attached to them. So no, I wasn't crying because of the pain of having to run harder than I anticipated. It was just a little bit of rain on my face and eyeglasses.

I warmed up by jogging for 25 minutes before the the 10k (9:11 pace, damn! Too fast for a warmup). During the 10k, I hit the first mile in 8:41 (damn! Too fast again!) So I just tried to keep an even stride and monitor the status of my ankles. I wasn't keeping track of the time too much and wasn't even checking my mile splits. I was just putting one foot in front of the other and tried to hang on. I figured if I run 6.2 miles in about an hour it would be good enough. Imagine to my surprise as I was approaching the finish line the time was under 55 minutes. I eventually finished in 54 minutes and 56 seconds.

Now for comparison purposes through the years:

My first ever 10K race in the U.S. was the Paramount 10K in January, 1981 – 56:59

My personal best 10k was the Bellflower Liberty Run on October 26, 1991- 43:20

Today's Wrigley River Run 10k, almost 18 years later, June 6, 2009 – 54:56

I considered myself retired from racing since 1992 after having set all of my personal best times from the 5K to the Marathon. Nowadays I just run for exercise and to keep my weight at an acceptable level. After today's warm-up and race I had lost 4 pounds of fluids and my pee was very dark yellow when I got home, so I got very dehydrated. I'm currently nourishing my kidneys and icing my ankles as I type this. It was a nice experience running the 10K again and finishing at a far better time than I anticipated but I'm not at any time planning on going back to racing again. I'm still retired :)

The Passing of a Friend

I received sad news yesterday that one of my former college classmates passed away due to colon cancer. He had been living in Canada with his family in the past few years after having moved from France. Jay was a varsity swimmer and body builder in college. After graduating from college with a degree in physical education, we both worked as fitness trainers in the same gym in the Philippines. The lady who informed me of my classmate's passing was also a trainer in the same gym and a very close friend of ours who now lives in Germany. We were a very tight group of two female and two male trainers. I haven't seen or talked to my classmate since 1980 and I would only hear news about him through the years from our mutual friend from Germany. He went from being a fitness trainer to running a restaurant with his wife in the Philippines and in Paris before moving to Canada. A few months before Jay died, his pastor recorded his testimony and uploaded it to Youtube. Here is the link to that video and it comes in two parts:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBp7W8hUK8Q

Jay, you have lived a full life, accepted what life has given you, and you will be missed. God bless.

Failed Hard Drive

Computers are wonderful machines when they are working flawlessly but become frustrating when bugs start to emerge. A few days ago my 500 gigabyte external hard drive started to turn off and on for no apparent reason. I thought it was just a problem with the USB connection so I attached the USB cord to another USB port. Still, same problem. So I connected the drive to another computer to see if it works. It does for a few minutes then it turns off and on again. Looked like signs of a hard drive failure. All the data are still there but accessing them is a hit or miss experience. I'm trying to find ways of recovering the data before the drive fails totally. One possible remedy that I found on the internet is freezing the drive for a few hours then trying to access the data again. I tried it and so far I have recovered almost 200 gigabytes of data before the drive turns off and on again. The drive is back in the freezer for a few more hours then I shall hope and see if I can get any more out of it. 300 more gigabytes to go.

Update: 6/5/2009 – After almost two days I have recovered almost 340 total gigabytes of data from the failing external hard drive. The task is painstaking though because it takes so much time to freeze, thaw, and reconnect the external hard drive to another computer, then trying to transfer the data to another hard drive. But at least the technique is working. 63.6 gigabytes left to transfer.

Dabbling in Closet Karaoke

About five years ago, at a very small family gathering, somebody brought what they called a “Magic Microphone”. Although products like it have been out for years, it was the first time I have ever seen one. I was amazed at how it worked with the background music, lyrics and scoring all in one microphone. My initial attempts at singing gave me mediocre scores which is not even worth mentioning here. Its worth mentioning that my only past experience in singing was way back in elementary and high school when the nuns made us sing in the church choir and glee club. Then I sang “House of the Rising Sun” and it was just in my key. If I remember correctly, I scored an 86. From then on, I was hooked! I'm thinking, I have to get one of these things. After shopping around on the internet, I found the same microphone with built in 3000 songs for the price of $325.00 . I ordered it right away and when it arrived I started practicing. That was the first of 3 magic microphone type devices I have bought. I have since sold my first two which were wired, and am now using a wireless one with two microphones which can be used for a duet. The reason why this blog entry is titled this way is because I don't ever sing in public except in small family parties. When I practice, I close all the doors and windows so the neighbors won't hear me. God forbid if I break their glassware, or worse, if they call the cops to complain about me being a public nuisance or disturbing the peace of their ears. I can't bear to have my neighbors suffer so I shut myself in. Hence, I call myself a “closet karaokist”. My neighbors can probably still hear me, but at least its muted. See, I don't sing that well. Sure I get high scores sometimes but that doesn't necessarily mean that I sang a song well. It just means my timing is good. I could probably recite the whole song in a monotone and get a high score if my timing is right. Also, if you know the nuances of the machine, you can sometimes trick it into giving higher scores. How do I know I don't sing well? I have tried recording myself and I cringe at the sound of me during playback. But with a little enhancement: add a little echo here and there and it sounds better. I even have a homemade CD of myself which I recorded on the computer years ago. Sadly, I haven't been practicing the last few months since I bought the Nintendo WII. Needless to say, I won't be ready when its Karaoke time in the next family gathering. Even if I keep on practicing, Paul Potts or Susan Boyle or Adam Lambert I'm not or will ever be, but at least I'm having fun when I'm doing it. They have nothing to fear from me because my voice doesn't soar like theirs. The only thing that soars is the electricity bill when I turn on the air conditioner to muffle the noise that I make.

Summer Chill

The workout : a 7 mile run

The weather: overcast and cool

The company: a group of like minded peers

The result: an enjoyable no pressure run

The total: 9.5 miles with a 1.5 mile warm-up and 1 mile cool-down, the longest I've run without walking in recent months.

Meeting someone new during a run enables you to learn about other people's lives away from running and explore new topics. In today's case, it was a lady whom I will call M. She is training for her first marathon and she wants to do it before she turns 40. M doesn't look anywhere close to 40 so I wondered aloud jokingly who her doctor was. A little botox here, a nip and tuck there could do wonders. No, I'm not saying M had those done. Some people are just blessed with good skin like M does, while the rest of us get wrinkled sooner because of the sun damage from all the running we do.

A couple of women we paced with last weekend started out a lot faster today and we weren't able to catch up with them. They must have felt really good because even if I was behind them, my pace was still faster than last week. No matter, I'm getting used to this holding back the pace technique. At least my ankles don't feel too battered afterwards. I'm still burning about the same number of calories regardless of how long it takes me to finish.

After the cool-down and after stretching, the cool air caught up with me and I started to feel chilly so I put a sweatshirt on and just skedaddled out of there and headed home. If this edge of summer chill keeps up, I may have to fire up the heater at home again.

Not much substance in this entry, just random thoughts about today's run.

An Increase in Waist

I bought a technical long sleeved shirt from Walmart yesterday for $5.00 because it was on closeout, and I ran in it today. It felt good to wear it so I went back to the store to see if I could find more. Unfortunately, there wasn't any left. I saw some swim trunks and lounging shorts and tried them on. I currently have some swim trunks that I wear for running and they feel just as comfortable as running shorts and they have pockets on them. So I go to the dressing room to try on the merchandise and I discover that what they have for Small size which is supposed to fit a person with 28 to 30 inch waist, doesn't fit me – they were too big! I mean they looked more like size 32 to 34. Surely I haven't shrunk. A few years ago, I bought similar merchandise at the same store and they were a true 28 to 30 inches. It appears that Walmart has adapted their clothing size to accommodate the increasing girth of Americans. Is the increase in inches on the clothing supposed to make you feel thinner? You'd just be fooling yourself or maybe its the intent of the store to fool you. Maybe the resize gives you the opportunity to tell your family and friends - “oh, I'm a Small”, which is a fallacy. Of course they don't sell Extra Small sizes. You would have to go to the children's department for that. Children's size 18 to 20 would probably fit me but the Husky size would be too big. Its not only Walmart who does this. I've noticed that Target doesn't even sell Small sizes for a lot of their clothing, they begin at Medium. And these are the more affordable products that usually go on sale. I remember hearing in the news about this happening to women's clothes too but since I don't have any experience trying women's clothes on, I can't comment on that. What am I going to tell the salesperson? That I'm doing research on true sizes of women's clothes? If any of you have noticed these size changes, please feel free to tell me about your experiences. Thank you.

Downgrading Internet Service

Last month my annual contract with the telephone company's DSL internet service expired so they started billing me a slightly higher monthly rate. However they had three different annual contract options being offered to new subscribers: $19.99 a month for 1 megabit per second (mbps) download speed, $29.99 for 3 megabits per second which I currently had, or $42.99 for 7.1 megabits per second. Being an old subscriber normally disqualifies you from the new promotional offers, but having gone through a similar process last year when I upgraded from 768 kilobits per second to 3 megabits per second, I knew what to do. When you call the phone company's regular customer service people, they won't be able to help you avail of the new promotions. They have a different department called the “solutions department” where they can resolve special problems. Last year I was passed from one department to another before they were able to help me. This time I knew whom and what to ask for. In this case as well as last years', the solution is to retain a customer and the telephone company was able to help me faster this time without me feeling like a shuttlecock being batted around back and forth across the net. For my new annual contract, I opted to downgrade my internet speed to 1 mbps, two thirds slower than what I've been used to in the past year. It was initially discouraging to see the slowdown of my download speed, but bit by bit (pun intended) my patience is beginning to adjust to it. It used to take about 35 minutes to download a 700 megabyte public domain movie. Now it takes about an hour and 45 minutes at full speed. Streaming videos from Hulu.com and TV shows from ABC.com and Fox On Demand can get choppy or pixelated at times. But in this economy, some sacrifice is warranted and every little bit of savings helps.

Night At The Asylum (apologies to Night at the Museum)

A patient yells for no reason, another one is singing hymns in bed, a couple of others are snoring on opposite ends of the hallway not unlike a surround sound system, while still another is talking and arguing with herself while lying in bed. A patient staggers out in the hallway not knowing whether he is coming or going. Seems like the Ambien is not agreeing with him with all its side effects (sleepwalking, confusion, etc...).
It's 1:30 in the morning and all is well. Another night at work and despite of what is happening so far, this would be considered a quiet night. No admissions since the night shift came in at 7:00 PM but that could change any minute because in some remote emergency room someone might have checked in complaining of being suicidal, homicidal, having hallucinations, or just plain have no place to sleep for the night and cannot take care of him/herself.
I am here, I watch the hallways and check on the patients to make sure they are safe, this is my job, I'm a mental health worker, the lowest position on the totem pole of a psych unit.
It is indeed a quiet night but I don't complain about being bored because something might happen at any given second in a place like this, which I hope it doesn't. I like quiet boring nights because it means there is no one acting out and the patients are safe and getting their needed sleep. I wish I could do the same but sleep is not for me at this time of the night. Sleep will have to wait till I get home in the morning. In the meantime I keep my fingers crossed hoping that it will remain a quiet night at the asylum.
Addendum: Come 4:00 AM things have changed drastically. One of the confused patients intentionally or not tried to attack one of my co-workers and at 6:45 AM another patient tried to destroy the radio because she didn't like listening to Janet Jackson. The good news is that nobody got hurt and nothing was damaged. As the night shift ends, a new patient is being admitted by the day shift.
Oh well, another night at the asylum trenches is over and I survived another one.

Yesterday's Post Run Activity

When I left home to go to the training run yesterday, I noticed that the rear left tire of my car had partially deflated again. I've had this slow leak for the past four weeks and the only thing I did about it was add more air. I've been putting off having it repaired for so long so I finally decided to take care of the problem after running yesterday. On my way home I stopped at a specialty tire store and surrendered my car to the tire gods. I mentioned the problem and they said it will be done in 20 minutes. So instead of sitting around, I went for a short walk to check out the shops in the area. When I returned to the tire store my car was ready and I asked if the problem was with the valve stem. They said no, there was a small nail imbedded into the tire. So that problem was taken cared of to the tune of $20.00 for 20 minutes of work. Made me feel like I was in the wrong line of work. Oh well, at least it gave me some peace of mind that my tire was working again.

The Two Wows

Today was the second training day on the AREC (A Running Experience Club) marathon and half marathon schedule. Four miles for the half marathoners and six miles for the full marathoners were on tap. My alarm clock goes off at 5 a.m., and I'm wondering why am I doing this when I could be sleeping in. After all I have to go to work later tonight. But it gives my early Saturday mornings a purpose, so out of bed I get. For some reason I felt very tired and just couldn't wake up fully. I got to Joe's Crab Shack and someone was talking to me and I couldn't even respond very well - I was mispronouncing words. When the run started I was even feeling a little lightheaded. But oh well, I guess we just need to have a little blood pumping up to the brain. I started the run conservatively as planned and tucked behind some people I've run with in past years, but whenever I saw somebody up front whom I thought I could catch, or when somebody passed me, I could feel the urge to pick up the pace. But today, I kept thinking about preserving my ankles so I was able to resist the urge to go faster. My goals have changed, now its just to finish the run and increase my running longevity. The run went pretty smoothly and I talked to someone I haven't met before. Although there was some effort, I didn't feel like I was pushing so it surprised me that I was able to finish the six mile run in under an hour. That was the first wow. The second wow happened when I signed back in on the roster (we sign in before the start, then sign out when we finish so everyone is accounted for). There were 82 people who signed the roster today! Unbelievable! I don't think that many people have ever done the Saturday run before. I already commented to other runners during the run that it seemed there were more people this week than last, and the roster confirmed it. Well, its seems like this old fogey can still run under 10 minutes per mile despite the ankle ailments and at a conservative pace at that. Of course since there are more participants now, there is a better chance of finding someone to pace with, and that helps a lot. Now its time to ice the ankles.

Shake, Rumble, and Jolt

The old song says: shake, rattle, and roll, but instead of that we experienced a shake, rumble, and jolt here in the Los Angeles area last Sunday evening. The earth moved, the cat jumped, the building shook, I was frozen on the couch, then a big jolt ended it all. My first thought was: WOW! That felt stronger than the Northridge earthquake of 1994. Next thing I did was go on the United States Geological Survey (USGS) website to find out where the epicenter was. It said Lennox with an initial intensity of 5.0 which was later revised to 4.7. Not much reaction from my neighbors since the electricity, gas, water, and phones were still working. So I check around my condo and saw that a couple of my emergency flashlights have fallen on the floor and under the couch. I wouldn't have found them if the electricity went out. In the bedroom, I have a huge old analog 43 inch TV on top of a stand which was near the foot of my bed. It had moved about an inch forward on the TV stand. I always feared that this TV would fall during an earthquake and if Sunday's jolt was any stronger, I think the TV would have fallen. I have to get myself a smaller TV for the bedroom. I really don't need a huge TV in there. I opened the cupboards in the kitchen and although nothing was broken, some plastic containers had moved about and fell out. When I opened the refrigerator, I couldn't open the door all the way, the oven door was blocking it, so I had to push the fridge back a couple of inches. There was a 4.0 rolling aftershock on Tuesday but it didn't affect anything here. So there it is, it seems like we survived this one without much damage. Gotta read up on that emergency plan again so we know how to react if worst things happen.

Increased Serotonin Level

Got the first training day out of the way, in the pocket, finito, and Long Beach Marathon training has taken its first steps for the 2009 season! It was nice to see and talk to old friends and acquaintances from previous training years again. This year I promised myself that I'm not going to push the pace but just run comfortably depending on how I feel, regardless of what the pace is. Of course I've sworn the same thing in previous years but could never hold back. This time, if I want prolong my running life, I would really need to control myself.

Since it was early when I got there and people were still signing up, I went for a 15 minute warm-up jog, then after listening to Todd (AREC president) talk about the training program, we were on our way for a 5 miler. Coming down a bridge into a left turn, what do we encounter but a pink thong on the ground. I had to make a quick check beneath my shorts to make sure mine hadn't fallen off.

Its always nice to be able to talk to a bunch of people while running because it makes the time and distance pass, and I got to catch up with people I haven't seen since last October. After the 5 miler, I ran by myself for another 23 minutes as a cool-down. For some reason, I felt really happy after the run. I was smiling all the way home. Not because I saw a thong. It must be the increased serotonin levels in the brain that exercise can give you.

When I got back from my solo cool-down run, I saw a pan on one of the tables that the club set up. I went to check it out and what do I see? Hot chicken wings! At 8:30 in the morning?! That was a first for me (to see, not to eat). Post workout protein replenishment, I guess.

So just like the swallows of San Juan Capistrano in the spring, we return, but instead of to the Mission, to Joe's Crab Shack instead.

Marathon and Half-marathon Training

AREC (A Running Experience Club) marathon and half-marathon training for the Long Beach Marathon starts again tomorrow and I'm feeling apprehensive. So many questions that need to be answered. How will my ankles feel? Will they hold up to the gradually increasing mileage that is required to finish a half marathon five months from now? Will I have the mental toughness and concentration to go through long runs again? I haven't done any long runs in recent months aside from the five minute run one minute walk technique a couple of months ago. Provided my ankles hold up there is no doubt I can finish a half marathon that way. But what if I try to run continuously forgoing the one minute walk breaks? Am I still capable of doing it? It scares me that the tendon tear of last October might happen again. Right now I'm pretty content on being able to run non-stop for an hour or so. I don't really need to run another half-marathon if I don't want to. But it seems that I feel the need to challenge myself again. In the past, needing to challenge myself meant training for a full marathon. I know for sure that I can no longer withstand the pain of training for that. How about training to walk a full marathon? Thats a consideration but it would take so much time to walk a marathon at the pace I'm capable of, about six plus hours. So which training should I try to do? Right now, I don't really know. But tomorrow and every Saturday thereafter for the next five months, I will show up at training and try to find out what I'm really made out of. After all, if I don't try, I'll never know.
This was last years' photo from the Long Beach Half-marathon. As you can see, I'm running crooked because of the pain on my right ankle.

Big Lungs On The 3-2-1

I went out for a run yesterday planning to do a road interval workout. It was either 2 minutes hard effort with 2 minutes recovery jog or the 3-2-1 intervals ( One set consists of: 3 minutes hard effort, 1 minute recovery jog, 2 minutes hard effort, 1 minute recovery jog, 1 minute hard effort, 2 minutes recovery jog, for a total of 10 minutes each set). During the first 10 minutes of warm-up, my legs were feeling pretty good so I opted for the harder 3-2-1 intervals, maybe at least 3 sets of it. As far as my breathing was concerned, the first set felt good, the second felt better, by the third set I was feeling really, really good. It felt like I had really big lungs where despite having to breathe harder due to the increased effort my lungs felt bottomless. So I kept that feeling going until I finished an hour: 10 minutes of warm-up plus 5 sets of hard intervals. The speed of my run may have looked very slow to any casual onlooker, but the intensity and effort I put into it made it a very good workout for myself. The only reason holding me back from being able to run any harder is the pain in my ankles. Yesterday, my ankles cooperated.

Audited By The IRS – Part Deux

I recently chronicled my experience about being audited by the IRS in this blog entry: http://noeldlp.blogspot.com/2009/03/audited-by-irs.html
Two weeks ago, I finally heard back from them but they had no good nor bad news for me. All the letter said was thank you for my response to their inquiry and that they will contact me again within 45 days to let me know what action they are taking, yada yada yada...
Then last week I got another letter from them. It said: “Closing notice. We are pleased to tell you that with your help, we were able to clear up the differences between your records and your payers' records”. More yada yada yada, then, “Thank you for your cooperation”.
I'm breathing a sigh of relief right now and am so happy that they agreed with me. Whew!

The Roots Of My Being

I called my Mom in the Philippines today to greet her Happy Mother's Day a day early because I anticipate the lines are going to be busy the next day. And no, it was not a collect call. We talked for almost an hour about how she was, what was going on at her part of the world, and what her plans for Mother's Day was. We also talked about the upcoming Notre Dame reunion because she was a product of the same elementary and high school as I was. I finally got the chance to ask her how our family came to live in Jolo. On her side of the family, she said my grandpa who was originally from Pangasinan was in the Philippine Constabulary and was assigned to Jolo. My grandma was originally from Pasig but my mom doesn't know how grandpa and grandma met, but they met before they moved to Jolo. My mom and a couple of my uncles and aunts were born there. Incidentally, did you know that there is a community called Jolo (pronounced Joe Low) in West Virginia? Anyway, back to my story. On my father's side, my grandpa was an agriculturist who was assigned by the government to Jolo, although he and my grandma met in Zamboanga where my father was born. So now I know my roots up to the grandparents level. How interesting that I never queried about those things while growing up until now.
How about your roots, can you tell me about them? Click on Comments below and leave me a message :)

Coming Soon

The other night I was assigned to work 1:1 with a patient who had assaulted another patient earlier during the day. Fortunately for me, he slept all night from the time I started watching him till it was time for me to leave in the morning. So what did I do to fill the 12 ½ hours I sat by his bed? Between reading and answering crossword puzzles (I always save the newspaper crosswords for quiet nights such as that night), I wrote drafts of a few blog entries I intend to post soon. Here is a preview of what those topics may be: Audited by the IRS–Part 2, Internet Slowdown, and Karaoke. Everyone please keep checking this blog with bated breathes. LOL!
I also made a list of the names of my former elementary and high school classmates, both male and female (those that I can remember). I still have to figure out what to do with that list. So I managed to be creative with the fortunate downtime I had and got something accomplished.

Going For A BQ

No, its not what you think, nothing to do with cooking meat over hot coals, and no, its not about me doing it either. A BQ is a Boston Marathon Qualifier. The Boston Marathon has certain qualifying standards based on sex and age before the organizers allow you to participate in the prestigious and storied event (there are other ways that you can participate but it involves raising money for charity). It means that you have had to previously run at least a certain finishing time in a marathon within roughly a year and a half before the year of the Boston Marathon that you want to participate in. For example for men aged 18 to 34, the qualifying time is 3 hours and 10 minutes. For women aged 45 to 49, its 4 hours.
My neighbor, friend, and erstwhile training partner, who has gotten faster while I have gotten slower, BQ'd in last year's Long Beach Marathon by running it in 3:49:41. So on April 20, 2009, she toed the line in Boston and finished the race in a remarkable time of 3:50:32. Kudos to her for the achievement (I immediately sent her a text message when she finished because I was tracking the race online).
Another friend is trying to BQ at a younger age group so he ran a marathon on May 3, 2009 in an attempt to do so. The week prior, he told me about his plans and what pace per mile he needed to run to achieve his BQ goal. I asked him what his most recent 10 kilometer race finishing time was. From prior experience and readings in my almost 30 years of running, I was able to mentally calculate what my friends' potential finishing time was going to be based on his 10K time if he ran well on marathon day. He needed to finish the marathon in 3 hours and 10 minutes to BQ, but my calculations brought his potential more into the 3:20 range. I didn't have the heart to tell him that because I wanted him to keep his positive mood for the race. Besides, who knows? He might be able to outdo his potential with the proper circumstances on race day. It has happened to others before, so I just kept my fingers crossed for him. Alas, it was not to be. He finished way short of his goal and even short of the calculated potential. In his own words he said he “crashed and burned”. I feel bad for him. So his quest for a BQ continues and I'm sure he is going to keep on trying. After all he is still a young man and has lots of opportunities to achive his goal. When I was running my best at my prime, I would have never BQ'd because I never even had the calculated potential to do so. If my friend continues to train well, he does.

What Happened Last October or The Half-Marathon of My Discontent

Looking back at my training logs to the last few days leading to last year’s Long Beach Half Marathon, I just realized what could have caused my posterior tibialis tendon to tear. Having been a physical education major in college, I learned that one of the principles of training is specificity. This means that to be good at sport, you have to train specifically for that sport. So if you are a tennis player, you play tennis, if you are a cyclist, you cycle, and if you are a runner, you run. This is so the muscles and joints get used to the specific movements of the particular sport you are training for. Using that principle, I ran for two consecutive days on Saturday, and the race on Sunday. I believe now that this spelled the doom for my posterior tibialis tendon. When you exercise, you develop microtears in your muscles and connective tissues and it is during recovery days between hard workouts that these muscles and joints get a chance to repair themselves. In my case, with a pre-existing injury, even the short run recovery day on the eve of the half marathon continued to irritate my ankle tendon. And this is what I think led to its overstretching or tearing during the race. It was just a bad training decision based on a good training principle. Keeping an exercise logbook does help to see where things went wrong and likewise when things went right. Hopefully, I know better this time and not make the same mistake. Learning about your own body is an experiment of one.

In Search of Wee

About a month ago, my elementary school classmate who is a doctor in the Philippines asked me to try to look for his aunt whom he said lives in California. He was planning on visiting this coming summer. I asked him for the last known address that he knew and whatever other information he had. I searched on the internet and the phone book and found a woman with the same name whose address happened to be about 3 miles from where I lived. Not only that, but it was on a street that the River Runners used to do their workouts on Saturday mornings. So for my running workout the next day, I decided to run to that house, check it out, then run back home. When I got to the address, I rang the doorbell and a young man answered. It appeared that I had woke him (must have been a night shift worker). I briefly stated the purpose of my unannounced visit, asked him if there was a woman whose name is so and so lives there and if she was from the Philippines, and he said yes. So I told him I was going to call their listed number later to give more information. Then I apologized for having woken him up then left to run back home. Later that day, I tried calling the number I got from the phone book and internet, but to my disappointment, the number was no longer in service. So a few days later, I wrote a letter addressed to the lady of the house introducing myself and restating the purpose of my prior visit. I left my email address and phone number in addition to my classmates email address in the Philippines. I put the letter in an envelope, ran from a different location, then dropped the letter in her mailbox. Later that day, I received a call from the lady and she acknowledged that she was indeed the aunt of my former classmate. We talked in our native dialect for a few minutes and I told her I was elated to find her and about being able to help my friend. Then to our mutual surprise, we found out that we work in the same hospital! What a coincidence! We had never met because I work in another building, but one night a few months ago, I had worked on the unit where she was a charge nurse. After talking for a few more minutes, we bade our goodbyes and believe it or not I could almost hear the song “It's a small world after all” in the background. I was very happy to be able to reunite an aunt and her nephew.

That Loving Feeling

“You've lost that loving feeling” , so goes the song by the Righteous Brothers. That is how I have been feeling the last few weeks about my running due to certain aches and pains to my lower extremities. After having worked the last two nights with hardly a break, I expected today's run to be another slog in the neighborhood streets. I started out pretty slowly but after about 15 minutes I felt a good bounce to my stride and the pace speeded up subconsciously. My plan was to run for only 30 minutes but I ended up finishing 38 minutes with the last 23 minutes in an unintended tempo/race effort. I just love it when I experience this kind of run and the natural high that I feel while I'm doing it. Just a short run but very satisfying. I'm happy to say that the loving feeling is not “gone, gone, gone”.

How I Came to Live In The U.S.

I've recently been in touch with another former classmate in the Philippines. She works as an archaeologist over there and she sent me an email recently asking me how I ended up in California. It seemed to her that I just disappeared from the face of the earth right after high school. We went to the same university after that but we never saw each other there. So here is a brief history of how I got here:

The running boom in the U.S. during the 70's finally reached the Philippines around 1979. I was working as a physical fitness instructor then and I joined a Sunday training group in the Metropolitan Manila area. It was just one of those weekly fun run events where they gave you ribbons for finishing and after participating 10 times, you got a free t-shirt. There was also a group that followed the Honolulu Marathon Training Program with the intent of running the 1980 Honolulu Marathon. It was with this group that I hooked on to which enabled me to come to the U.S. They arranged for the visas, air travel and hotel accomodations after we gave them the money so everything was taken cared of. With us came the medical director of the fitness center I worked for, so he was my roommate in Hawaii when we got there. We had already run our first marathon in the Philippines in November. So we ran the Honolulu Marathon and it was one of those rainy days where peeing in your shorts while continuing to run to save time wasn't out of the question. After all, the rain just washed it all away. No need to pull over the side of the road to expose and relieve yourself. Gross, huh?!

Part of the plan was to visit relatives in the mainland so the day after the marathon, we left for California. We went our separate ways here, me to visit my uncle, and the good doctor off to see relatives in Connecticut (if I remember right). So this is how it came to be. Visiting relatives, finding a job, becoming a legal alien, then finally becoming a U.S. Citizen. All this things happened to me and I owe it all to running. Thats probably the reason why I continue to run today, because without running I wouldn't be where I am now. Being in a place where a lot of people all over the world can only dream of.

Keeping Cool

The heat wave earlier this week left everyone sweltering even indoors. Coming from work Tuesday morning, I went to bed and upon waking up in the afternoon, went to the bathroom. To my delight, I saw that my cat had found a comfortable spot to keep herself cool – the bathroom sink. That gave me a good laugh because it was so cute so I just had to take a picture of her.

The Year of the Gun

The year: 1992. It was the height of the Los Angeles riots. People of different races were being threatened and harassed on the streets and were in danger of getting beaten or worse. It was at that time I purchased a .25 caliber handgun from a sporting goods store. The gun was a piddly little thing which probably had no stopping power. I have never used it all these years and it has never been fired. Last weekend an opportunity arose to finally get rid of it. The L.A. Sheriffs Department has a program called “Gifts For Guns” where you turn in a firearm with no questions asked and in turn they give you a $100.00 gift card from Best Buy, Walmart, or Target if it was a handgun, and $200.00 if it was an assault rifle. I wasn't familiar with the collection area so I drove past it before seeing the sign. I turned around and parked on the opposite side of where the entrance was supposed to be. The sheriffs had put those yellow “do not enter” tapes around the area. Not thinking too well, I took the unloaded and boxed gun from the car trunk and started walking past the yellow tape approaching the officers manning the entry from behind. I didn't realize that this was a drive thru operation until I got there since the newspaper notices didn't mention it. I was immediately stopped by an officer who asked me where I was going. I pointed towards the entrance and said I was turning a gun in. Another officer escorted me, took the gun and had to frisk me because I was a “walk up”. Then it occurred to me at that point how dangerous it was for me and them, that I had crossed the yellow boundary tape and was walking towards the officers with a gun. So I understand why they were taking extreme precautions. However, the officers were very respectful and walked me through the whole process. They separated the ammunition first, then at the next table they inspected the gun barrel for any bullets after which they inserted a disposable plastic gun lock in it. At the next table were the gift cards. There was a choice of picking two $50.00 cards from whichever store you wanted. I picked a couple of Walmarts because I thought that was where I could get the most bang for the buck. They also gave away a free t-shirt with Arnold Schwarzenegger's picture on it saying “TERMINATE VIOLENCE”. Everything turned out to be a very pleasant experience. I got $100.00 worth of gift cards for a never used gun that I bought for about $60.00 a long time ago. Pretty good deal!

New Nintendo WII Tennis Record

Playing Nintendo WII tennis has been an up and down experience. I have found that if I don't beat the machine handily my skill level points goes down by leaps and bounds. Even when I win a match, I can still lose points by not winning all games or if the opponent is given a chance to rally too much. This is how it goes. A match in WII tennis consists of 3 games, unlike in real tennis where a match consists of winning 6 games in a set and 2 or 3 sets in a match. So basically, WII tennis is a very shortened version. You have to win 3-0 all the time, not 3-1 or 3-2 or else you lose your overall skill level point standing. It gets worse if the machine beats you. Of course this encourages you to play better and harder. The machine hardly beats me anymore but sometimes it wins one or two games so that brings my point total down. Thats the reason why I take a picture of my record score for posterity because I might not exceed it again.

Thoughts of Retirement

The recession, poor economy, exhaustion from working, has led me to thoughts of retirement. No, not here in the U.S., I wouldn't be able to afford retiring here at this moment. As an emergency plan, I thought returning to the Philippines might be a good idea, specially if a job loss happens. I've saved all these years but most of my savings are in tax deferred investments and I have to wait until I'm at least 59½ before I can withdraw from those accounts without a 10 percent tax penalty. I'm not even sure if I have enough liquid cash to last me from now till I'm 60 before withdrawing from the tax deferred accounts. Money aside, there is this problem about the place I might want to move to where my mother now lives. The general area is very notorious for kidnappings by rebels who don't agree with the government. Here is a comparison data about the cost of living in the Philippines which a remittance company had in their newsletter:
San Francisco / Metro Manila
Movie Ticket: $11.00 / $3.00
Fast Food Meal (Lunch): 5.00 / 1.50
Restaurant Meal (Dinner): 15.00 / 4.00
Taxi (5 mile trip): 12.00 / 1.30
Studio Apartment (monthly): 1100.00 / 160.00

Another friend who lives in the city where my mom lives told me that its possible to live very comfortably there for about $500.00 a month. Will that be within my modest projected budget? Well, it could be possible...
Of course its not just a matter of checking out from here, then checking in over there. How do I liquidate my condo, car and other possessions? What kind of lifestyle will I be able to live? What if if I find out I don't like living there? How do I collect social security from here when I reach the appropriate age? I'm thinking that with the internet, applying for it and having direct deposit may make it possible, but thats a long way from now. There's also the concern about healthcare. With no health insurance, will I be able to afford the cost of medical care in case something happens to me over there? So many questions which answers I still seek. Well, like I said, its just an emergency plan. Or not even a plan, but just something to consider.

Curtailing Running

The hard and long workouts I have been doing the past few weeks has finally caught up with me. I have been doing road intervals (running hard for a few minutes then jogging slowly to recover, repeat a few times), and long run/walk workouts as I mentioned in previous blog entries. It felt so good to be able to run hard and long and be able to push the pace sometimes. One day I averaged below 9 minutes per mile which I haven't done since last summer. I've even done a couple of two days in a row of running. I don't seem to learn my lesson because in the recent past, when I run on back to back days, my joints don't recover very well. This week even my good left ankle started to hurt. That led me to the decision that I should curtail my distance, time and pace so I don't injure myself further. It's better to be able run slow and short than not be able to run at all. Remember, I can't Zen the pain away anymore.

Must Watch!

Copy and paste to your browser. Watch it and let me know how you felt after watching it. Thank you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-KiGva9dV4

Oil and Filter and Poop

I went to have the oil and filter changed on my car today and was planning on running while the service was being done. Normally you would fill out your information on a duplicate form then the serviceperson would write up the work order then depending on how many customers were ahead of you, your car would be lined up behind others until everyone else is serviced and its your turn. I was planning on having this waiting time to do my run and hopefully by the time I was done, the oil and filter change would be finished. Well it seem like this service station or the corporation that runs it had a new technique. I spent approximately 40 minutes of waiting around before a serviceperson addressed me to find out what service I needed. That was 40 minutes I could have spent doing my workout instead of stewing and raising my blood pressure while waiting around doing nothing. The service person never said anything except “I will be with you in a few minutes”. Apparently if your car has been serviced there previously, then they already had a record of it, which mine did. So that eliminated the filling out of paperwork. After getting the work order the serviceperson said my car should be ready in about 5 minutes. I told him I was not going to wait and was going out for a run. It seems that this new marketing technique would make it appear that the waiting time between write up and finishing the service is shortened. What they probably didn't consider was the waiting time beforehand. So I go for my run which I now badly needed to de-stress myself. I was still stewing about the long waiting time and was already having a bad day because of it. To make things worst, after I finished running and was walking back to the service station, I felt something drop on my forearm. A bird had just pooped on me! What else can go wrong with this day?! I took some leaves from a nearby plant and wiped the poop off my arm, paid for the oil and filter change, picked up the car and went home to take a shower. I'm now currently trying to decompress from a stressful morning. Hopefully the rest of the day will better. I am considering calling or emailing the company to complain about this new service technique.

Recently Watched Unknown Movies

I watched two movies today: The Burning Plain with Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger in it, and Revanche, an Austrian film. I don't believe these two movies got any press here in the U.S., because I've never heard of them before. Both had beautifully and carefully crafted stories and I think deserved to at least be nominated in the recent academy awards for best director and screenplay.

This is the plot of The Burning Plain as described by IMDB: A drama with a two-tiered storyline concerning a mother (Basinger) and daughter (Theron) who try to form a bond after the young woman's difficult childhood.

OK, big mistake, I just discovered that Revanche was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film of the Year during the last Oscars. Here is its plot courtesy of IMDB: Ex-con Alex plans to flee to the South with his girl after a robbery. But something terrible happens and revenge seems inevitable.

I hope that if you have the time and if they are available at your local video store, then you can check them out.

Long Beach River Runners

The alarm clock jolts me out of a dream and its time to wake up earlier than usual to run with the Long Beach River Runners group. I haven't woken up this early since last October and it takes some time getting used to doing it again. I usually set my alarm for 7 A.M., when I'm off from work and catch up on my night sleep (I work nights). For the past two Saturday mornings I've been joining a group of runners who are preparing for the second annual Wrigley River Run and Tadpole Trot on June 6, 2009. Some in the group are experienced runners, others coming back into running, and still others who are complete beginners who set their goal to finish their first 5k or 10k run. I usually get there early so I get about a 15 minute warm-up jog, then join the group for stretching, then run with them (20 minutes for the past 2 weekends), then go off and run by myself for about another 30 minutes. So far so good, I might have to curtail my warm-up and post group extra miles when the group incrementally increase the number of minutes they run through the coming weeks. Its just nice and inspiring to be able to see people doing something to improve their physical fitness. After having a crummy 40 minute run yesterday where I struggled from start to finish, I had a better day today despite having run 2 days in a row which I hardly do anymore. Running with other people always helps. Makes waking up earlier certainly worth it.

For more information about the River Runners and the Wrigley race, please visit: http://www.lbfoundation.org/Events.html