Runs go like this sometimes

I've been nursing an achilles strain for ten months now, a lingering and stubborn injury which put me into a boot for much of the summer and led to my ensuing inertia and sloth which caused me to put on a prodigious amount of weight, but I'm trying to come back.  This week I went for a run, or run/walk, with my past and future running buddy at my former workplace, and we went a mile and a half before I literally crashed and burned and we walked it back in.  Runners leave no person behind, except maybe during a race and even then they'll wait for you at the finish line.

The run started off well enough, an easy and very slow lope for half a mile to the Titanic statue down on the latest new DC waterfront, stopping to smell the flowers just starting to emerge from their winter sleep along the way.  Necessary stops on my part to quell the frantic thoughts racing through my overcharged body that oh yes, on this block I was going to die.  Good company promoted good talk so we whiled away the first 12-minute mile confirming with each other how calamitous our lives had become during the past year while we watched and worried about the non-stop, frenetic assaults upon our revered democratic institutions (we're both lawyers and we notice such things) that the unthinking and unseeing right cares, knows or does naught about (except to excoriate the liberal left with dripping, consuming, venomous hatred).

Torn up streets being worked upon by crews caused us to veer down unfamiliar sidewalks and as I was glancing behind me at an idle group of young men we had just passed I tripped over a riven sidewalk panel projecting upwards a good 8 inches due to an underlaying root from an adjacent tree.  Fixing the streets?  How about fixing the sidewalks, this hazard didn't develop overnight.  I went down hard, tossing my water bottle aside in my sudden descent and slamming the action camera in my other hand into the mud of the nearby grassy strip as I landed, sprawling.  I have tripped mightily over things three times due to momentary distraction since I acquired and started carrying this small camera in my free hand 5 years ago, and as during the two times I fell before, I was fortunately unhurt other than bloody road rash on my palms, an elbow and a knee.  Obviously when I descend suddenly and fast while running, I tend to come down on one side or the other except for my outstretched, bracing hands.

So we walked it in from there after I poured water from my bottle onto my wounds to wash the mud and bits of cement grit from them.  Once I rubbed the mud off my Pentax, it operated fine, another testimonial to its claim to be "shock-proof."  (The small print in the owner's manual stated this claim was verified by the camera being dropped once from a height of four feet onto a sheet of plywood without being damaged, quite the exhaustive scientific test.  But I'll vouch for its ruggedness and longevity.)  And as if in payment for my pain, a couple of blocks later we came upon three bills lying in the street, a ten and two singles.  Nobody was about except for another group of idle young men a block away in the wrong direction so we collected the money off the street and, with no apparent owner in sight, resolved to give it away to a good cause.  Since I had spotted the abandoned or lost currency first and had suffered a fall, my running partner left up to me to choose its use.  I said I would donate it to the campaign of the chief democratic opponent (Alison Friedman) of the republican incumbent congresswoman representing Virginia congressional district ten, one over from my district, a political hack (Barbara Comstock) who votes with the faux president 97% of the time but is very exposed in her district which encompasses both the conservative farm country (and vineyards and horse country) far to the west of DC and also the liberal suburbs of McLean and parts of Fairfax county.  This was a satisfactory resolution to our acquiring a small sum of money, which clearly wasn't ours, by happenstance with no prospect of finding its owner, and I have already forwarded $12.43 to the democratic candidate, which represents one ten-thousandth of the amount of money the republican has taken in from the NRA.  My friend went back to work and I drove home, glad to have finally undertaken a baby step, with the help of my running friend, towards my return to running, the first real (sort of) run I've had since last April.

I'm Falling

I told the Program Director of the Walk-To-Run Cycle 2 program I'm coaching for that I was going to change my status to "drop-in" coach, showing up as often as needed like last week when the director was busy and I took the trainees out.  Excuse me, the trainee out.  We went four miles on the Mount Vernon Trail past Washington National Airport at a ratio of one minute of running and four minutes of walking.

That was fine but I want to build my base up a little faster than that.  So this morning I ran with my running buddy John, who I ran with all last fall when I built my base up to 9 miles and shed 30 pounds doing so.  (Ten of those pounds have come back in my present slothiness.)

He's about my speed and a little older than me so I can run with him without embarrassing myself.  For an old timer he's fit, but he hasn't been running for awhile, so we started out at three to four miles.  It was good to lope along with him and catch up, even though first I was breathing heavily, then he was.

The omnipresence of Harleys in DC on Memorial Day weekend was evident as dozens, no, hundreds of Rolling Thunder bikes rolled noisily past us constantly for the entire 35 minutes we were out there.  A big congregation of 1200 cc riders stopped to allow us to run across a crosswalk and cheered us on with shouts of encouragement.  They were pleased to see two guys in their sixties out running and we were pleased to see dozens of guys in their sixties and seventies out on their bikes, and we were especially grateful that none of them tipped over on their heavy hogs as they waited for us to pass.

On the backside of the Lincoln Memorial I ran down the steps to the River Road and back up--twice.  John joined me for the secopnd descent and ascent.

It was a beautiful day for the first of our escalating series of Saturday morning runs but some funny stuff happened.  A pretty girl ran by us and we lamented to her that she was faster and fitter than us and she threw over her shoulder as she ran away, "You're older is why." 

We encountered congestion on the Mount Vernon Trail with a bicycle coming up on several runners approaching us the other way and I took to the grass off the footpath to avoid the bicycle but the rider took to the grass too instead of slowing down and kept pointing toward me as I went wider and wider.  He just about ran me down head on.

A heavily accented black runner stopped us and asked which way to the "D.C. Monument."  "The Washington Monument?" I asked.  He nodded so I directed him past the Iwo Jima Statue towards Memorial Bridge and said, "You can't miss it."  He thanked us and took off at rocket speed, albeit running easily.  We theorized he was an elite African runner here sightseeing.  Next he was probably going to run up to Philadelphia to see the Liberty Bell.

I took a full-blown header onto the concrete sidewalk, my first fall running in several years.  Talking with John, somehow I missed a half-inch rise between two cement panels in the sidewalk and struck it head on with my toe and went sprawling.  John said I did a graceful swan dive onto the sidewalk, and I merely skinned my left knee and bruised my palms.

We partook coffee at Starbucks after our three and a half mile run in just under 35 minutes, where we saw some of my acquaintances from my former running club run by on their SLR.  None of them stopped to chat with me, the former president of the club.  I resigned a couple of years ago after being subjected to unbelievable effrontery from the head of the club's IT department and his gang of twenty-something running geeks, boorish jackals all.  That guy is the current president, having barely attained thirty.

It felt great!  Next week we're going to push it out a mile further, running down the most venerated grass strip of all, the National Mall.

Stormy 'n me.

Colorado high country near Durango, October 10, 2009. I'm wearing blaze orange because it's the first day of rifle hunting season for elk.

Goin' Down.

We're goin' over!

Yesterday I came out of a restaurant after lunch in DC and unlocked my bike (one of the 100 bikes that SmartBike.DC keeps scattered about the town for my use whenever the mood strikes me) to return to work. It was next to the curb, and the rear wheel slipped down the cement sidewall into the street. Then the front wheel slid down the curb. Next I started going over.

As I tried to keep the bike from clattering onto the street, I just followed it down into the roadway. Face down. In the gutter. At high noon in midtown. In my suit.

All energy being expended, motion ceased. There was no harm done to anything from the slow spastic fall.

I looked up from where I was flat on my face in the street, lying atop a candy-colored red and white SmartBike. If I was a younger version of myself, I would have sprung back up and cycled away before anyone noticed me. (Yeah, right, an anonymous noisy falling down in a busy street at noon.)

I stood up, brushed my hands off and righted my bike. Everyone on the sidewalk bustling by was ignoring me. I raised my arm, waved it and said loudly, "Don't worry, I'm alright everyone!"

A man crossing the street called out, "Are you all right?"

"Everything's fine except the pride," I said and he laughed.

I just hate it when those slow motion train wrecks get started.

Fantasy Football

Is Tom Terrific going to complete his dream season in Super Bowl XLII on Sunday? Or are Osi, Justin, Michael, and Fred going to rain on his parade? (Left: Working on the Brady Bunch. Tom's ex, Bridget Moynahan.)

I already completed my dream season. I won my Fantasy Football league's championship. My team was (ahem) the DC Spinsters.

Two years ago I was a novice at it and lacked savvy. I got knocked out of the playoffs in the first round, but I won the shadow playoffs, made up of the first-round losers, and came in fifth.

Last year I made the championship game but the opposing QB, a guy named Marc Bulger, had a hall-of-fame week and I lost. Marc who? Exactly.

This year I won it all.

My secret was to let the computer draft my team. It strictly applies a formula to the needs of your team versus players available when your turn comes up, while everyone else is playing hunches and using rank favoritism to pick players.

Then I made big trades and scoured the waiver wire for pickups. Before the season started I traded my starting WR and RB, two big name players, for Randy Moss and Clinton Portis. Neither Moss nor Portis had done much the year before so they were a gamble. They both turned out to be scorers who had banner years and paid terrific dividends. (Right: Tom's current, Gisele Bundchen.)

You have to give value to get value. Late in the season I traded the best tight end, Antonio Gates, for a productive RB coming back from a mid-season injury. I was able to do this because I picked up the Redskins' TE, Chris Cooley, on waivers. He was very productive and had his best year, and the RB I acquired was prolific as well.

Lastly I did not change my lineup at all during the final five weeks. This drove league members batty, who were playing weekly match-ups (essentially, game-time hunches).

Fantasy Football is a godsend for the NFL, a marketing dream. In recent years I had fallen away from devoting my Sundays to watching football on TV. All the regular season games seemed to be the same. I could name only four or five NFL players. Suddenly I found myself watching the Tennessee Titans play the Jacksonville Jaguars to see if Reggie Williams would catch a ten-yard pass and pick up a Fantasy Football point. I was delirious if he scored a TD (six points). Reggie who? Exactly. (Below: My man Reggie.)

Some people in the league subscribed to NFL services and got live feeds. They’d be watching two games on two TVs, listening to a third on the radio, keeping track of yet another game in the corner of their computer and be getting live information on players in the red zone at that exact moment streaming across the top of their laptop screens. Can you spell revenue bonanza?

If the NFL ran its games back-to-back-to-back all day Saturday and Sunday, half the men in America would not emerge from their houses during weekends in the fall. Ever.

Fantasy Football. A football fan's dream and a football widow's nightmare.