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Miles run: 13.22
Time: 2:08:46
Pace: 9:44
Temp: 38°
HR: 164/175
Perceived effort: 8.5
On the iPod: Dissolved Girl by Massive Attack

Ok, another milestone completed. Planned on 10 miles, but I felt great, the weather was perfect and the lure of another milestone was looming tantalizingly on the horizon. The half-marathon distance. Actually I got an extra tenth of a mile because in my dehydrated stupor I transposed the decimals between the two distances of 26.2 and 13.1.

Dehydrated stupor? Yeah, I bonked at mile nine. So those last four miles were on an empty tank and diminishing resolve. But in spite of that I felt good and knew I could push through the pain and grab the brass ring of half marathon distance. Check out the graph of my pace, you could have a good tubing run down that slope after mile nine. I know I need to eat every hour and drink every 15-20 minutes. Given that, I’ll leave a water bottle and energy gel by my garage so I can recharge every five miles. It’ll be nice to see what kind of time I can get when I don’t actually run foolishly and bonk. Sigh… have I learned NOTHING from cycling?

To get that distance I did three laps of the five mile course. That meant I’d have a long cool down walk home. The cool down walk took a long time and I cooled down too much and started to get cold. When I took off the sweatshirt I saw it was soaked. I did notice I was sweating more than usual at the beginning of the run. Weird how 38° could make such a difference.

Things I noticed:

• A top mattress at mile 1.25 (must have been the companion to the box spring I saw a week or two ago.
• The same snowmobiler crossed the road right in front of me at miles 3.5 and 7.
• A cop pulled over two cars at the corner of Ballard and Northern Pines.
• A pileated woodpecker swooped across the road in front of me and alighted on a tree near me. Beautiful birds.
• Nipples hurt like hell from about mile 6 to mile 11. Miraculously after 11, they stopped hurting. (I think they completed worn off and nothing was left!) (Band aids are not staying put, damn it!)
• At mile 5 I got into a wonderful groove, each foot fall felt effortless, I felt like I could keep the pace forever.
• At mile 6, lost my groove when I had to stop and fix the stupid Nike+ clip. But I figured out the problem. It unclips too easily whilst on the right shoe, so I moved it to the left shoe and solved the problem.

After the run:

• A bottle of Recoverite and two cups of tea.
• Long-ass shower.
• Tendons on the tops of foot very sore.
• Small blisters on in the feet up near the toes. Not too bad though, should be gone in a day or two.
• Mildly lame.
• Knees achey, but to be expected.
• But most of all, basking in the glow of a big miles day AND a PR (personal record).

Why Dissolved Girl by Massive Attack? Massive Attack is the perfect blend of downtempo and electronica for me. They have an earthy, organic, sensual sound that gets better both the louder you play it or when intimately listening with quality headphones. The vocals are sometimes soft sometimes harsh, always plodding and with multiples layers of meaning. The videos (no I don’t watch videos on my iPod while running… don’t have that kind of an iPod!) have a distinctive style and complement the organic nature of their sound.

The things I look for in electronic music? Interesting sounds used as instruments. The traditional pop or rock band sticks with the tried and true guitar, drum, and bass instruments. I intentionally left out keyboards, since apparently they’ve been banned since the early 90’s up through today. The Eighties were all about the keyboard. Not so much now. Sigh. Anyway… Where was I? Oh yeah. Interesting sounds. Take any classic good techno piece and it’s good because of the way the artist combined the rhythm of the beats with the noise of the instruments. Loops of Fury by The Chemical Brothers (hopefully the link will work for you) is a prime example. Brilliantly simple piece. It just works. I never tire of it. It works because of its simple structure, simple instrumentation, simple juxtaposition of sound and silence.
Electronica artists take non-standard sounds and make them musical. Think that’s a cop-out? A gimmick? An overdone technique? I don’t. I think it takes skill to mesh disparate sounds into a cohesive and coherent song. Granted the word song is used in it’s loosest sense in the context of electronica. Only certain sub-genres actually contain lyrics. Vocal Trance being the most accessible of these. Castles in the Sky, and I See Right Through To You are good examples.

I was thrilled to get XM radio almost two years ago. It came with THREE electronica stations. I was going to be in heaven! Or at least in a castle in the sky. However, only one of the three I deem worthy. And even that channel, The System 82, takes a back seat to the newly added channel, The Chill 84. The Chill is the downtempo channel with smooth electronic grooves that don’t harsh your driving mellow. The two other channels that I’m essentially dissing are just so much mindless beats. What this? Isn’t that what I crave? Well, yeah, I DO love my mindless beat music, but it’s got to have soul. Or heart. Or at least something organic about it. Too much of the music is just programmed and unimaginative. Mind you, I’d still choose it over some of the mindless drivel rammed down our throats by traditional radio stations.

Oh yeah, almost forgot… 3.22 bonus miles are up for grabs. Achey, slow, bonked-out miles. But THESE are the PR setting miles. These are the ones that counted in the end. When my muscles ran out of the normal fuel and started to cannibalize other cells, (hopefully the cells that gravitate around my mid-section) that’s when I truly start to test my mettle.

The miles at the end are always the best ones. I can go out any ol’ day and bang out five miles, but the commitment needed to spend two full hours on the road is hard to muster. Once I get to that point, I don’t want to stop, it’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy. When I get to 9, it’s only one more mile to 10. Once at 12 (the old PR) it’s only 1.1 to a half-marathon. Once I’m at 13.1 (or 13.2 in this confused instance) it’s only 1.9 more to a round 15. It’s hard to stop reaching for the next milepost because the effort it took to reach the current one is logarithmically greater with each passing mile. I wanted the nice round 15 number, but exhaustion was too great and won out over my will. (If I’d just had a lousy Clif bar at mile 7… and about a half gallon of water…)

This entry was posted Saturday, March 3rd, 2007 at 10:49 pm and is filed under Music, Running. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.