Marathon Plan

I love running, probably a little too much.  I went through a half marathon phase several years ago, wanting to eventually run a full marathon.  However, during my training, in which I purchased the entire Nike+ system, including brand new Nike+ shoes, the Nike+ transmitter and iPod receiver, as well as a new iPod.  I was excited, motivated, and feeling great about it.  I was running every day, which is not surprising because this is when I lived with my grandma and I really wanted to get out of the house.

That year I actually ran three half marathons, but before I ran my first half marathon, the furthest I had ever run was 6 miles.  My plan was obviously to go further than that, but I got overzealous and got some heinous shin splints. At first I thought I could just power through them, and I did, but it literally got to the point where it was painful to even walk up stairs.  I had to completely halt my training, which is one of the most frustrating things I've ever done.

I ran all three half marathons that year without any more real training because every time I tried to start up again, I would get those nasty shin splints.

I've been trying to run ever since then unsuccessfully.  Every time the shin splints come back as if they never left. Of course, it's always minor pain, something I could easily run through, but I know how that worked out before.

I've bought new shoes, I've tried ramping up my work out, I've tried specific stretching, but nothing seems to work.

Of course, a large reason for that is because my version of "ramping up" is going from sporadic elliptical training at the gym, to running three miles.

Last year I bought Vibram Five Fingers.  They are in the minimalist category of shoes.  The idea is that you do a mid-foot strike instead of the heel-toe that is encouraged by all running shoes.  This reduces the stress on your joints (as well as reducing shin splints).

Running in these shoes is a whole new experience and one that frustrated me a great deal, especially since I couldn't keep up with my wife, who claims she is a terrible runner (though she's not!).  Just like every other ramping up period, I didn't give the shoes a fair shake, so I've decided to truly ramp up.

I want to be able to run a marathon by this time next year without worrying about shin splints, and I have a very simple method for doing it.

I am literally going to start out running 1/4 mile three days a week for a week, and then bump that up 10% every week until I am able to run 26 miles.  It will take me exactly 50 weeks.  It sounds kind of silly to say, but I am determined not to run more than a quarter mile for the first week.  In fact, it's going to take me 16 weeks just to get up to a mile and another 12 weeks after that to get to a 5k.  This will probably be an extremely difficult regimen for me - not because the distances are too large, but because of how slow of a ramp up it is.

However, I plan on reminding myself at the end of my 4 minute workout that this workout isn't for cardio; it's to get my muscles in shape after such a long period of inactivity.

We'll see how it goes this time.  I plan on starting today.

America's Got [Everything]

In this particular case, America's Got Stories.  I'll spare you the buzz words and get down to brass tacks.  This is a contest where you write a short story in a particular theme (in this case, supernatural is the word of the hour) in order to win wonderful prizes.

You write your story: if you win, your story gets published in a compilation book; and if you are the grand prize winner, you get an iPad.

I was actually kind of bummed out when I was asked to be a judge for this contest because I had what I thought to be a unique take on the theme.  In fact, my short was going to be a Sci Fi piece with technology ripped from the headlines in a "what could be" story.

I may still write that story, because it seems interesting in my mind, but I'm really curious to see what other submissions we get.

Everybody's got a story - what's yours?

TDB Redux

I thought my days of The Drunken Blog were behind me.  I thought that since I've graduated from college, since I bought a house, since I got married that the days of drunken debauchery were behind me.  I never would have expected those days to come crashing back during a holiday work party.

Every year my company throws a holiday party for the department in which I work.  Heavy hors d'oeuvres, wine, beer, and a whole lot of awkward work-based social interactions.  What could be more fun?  Since my wife was working the night shift that night, there was nothing more fun for me on my agenda, so I attended the party.

I'll start off by saying 9pm is a pretty early time to end a party that involves alcohol, but when it starts at 5 and is open bar, you're doing pretty good.  I mean, the reception for my wedding was only an hour longer (please don't get the impression that this work function in any way compared to my wedding, because it didn't).

Of course, I am one to show up fashionably late slash I had work that I had to finish.  Luckily the bar was within walking distance of the office.  I showed up at about 6pm and helped myself to a beer, since the bartender was apparently taking a break.  My conversation went something like this:

Beer one topic: Work related (professional)
Beer two topic: Non-work related
Beer three topic: Work related (casual)
Beer four topic: Work related (trashing coworkers)
Beer five topic:  Non-work related (but definitely coworker related)

The flow shouldn't be that surprising to anybody.  With your first drink you don't have anything to talk about other than work related stuff.  You're still basically in the office except you have a drink in your hand.

By the second drink you've finally figured out something else to talk about - probably the weather or sports.

By the third drink you've run out of non-work related things about which to relate, so you go back to work topics, although this time you're just shooting the breeze as if you were at the water cooler, if your office actually had a water cooler.

By the fourth drink your conversation degrades into talking trash about other coworkers.

By the fifth drink, you're talking about that drunk person at the party.

The fifth drink is where my story really starts.  Now, this isn't my fifth drink, mind you, but it is somebody's, and she can't handle her alcohol.

I don't want to give any sort of distinguishing features because I promised her I wouldn't tell anybody about this, but suffice it to say she is very high ranking at the organization for which I work in my company.  And she was plastered.

She kept hugging people, slurring her speech, and just generally being a genial drunk person.  You know exactly the type of person I'm talking about - she'll yell at everybody to shut up, put up her hand and point, as if she is going to make some profound statement, and then just sort of sputter some gibberish.

I hate leaving parties earlier, so I stayed with some friends from work and kept an eye on this woman.  I was really curious about how she would get home.  As other people were saying goodbye to her as they were leaving, they also asked how she would get home, and despite the fact that she didn't give a coherent answer, she did give an answer, and that seemed to put them at ease.

After the tab was closed, I continued to hang around because now I was really curious about what was going to happen.  There were only five of us left at this point, and we needed to make sure that this woman got home safely.  She was at that super dangerous drunk point where she thought she was sober enough to drive, though she couldn't even form a complete sentence.

Some coworkers that had left previously decided they were going to go to Jackson's, a bar within walking distance, and this woman also wanted to go to Jackson's to continue her drinking.  The five of us were guiding her away from Jackson's because she clearly didn't need anymore.

Well, that's not entirely true.  One of the group, somebody with whom I work closely on a daily basis, as we were trying to sneak her by Jackson's said, "Hey, aren't you going to Jackson's?!"  I don't think he has quite honed is social interaction skills yet and I gave him the dirtiest look I could muster, which was probably not very intimidating, so I just gave him a head nod to get the point across.  Our group was now down to four.

Luckily, she didn't really understand what was going on and we managed to walk her back to the parking garage where her car was.  The sober woman in our group, who is actually a subordinate of the drunk one, was kind enough to offer to drive her home.  Drunky lived close by and Sober didn't mind.

How naive we were.  Drunky had a huge issue with the fact that one of her subordinates was going to drive her home in such a state and would take no part in it.  She wouldn't even show us where her car was until Sober pretended like she left.

After about 30 minutes we managed to find Drunky's car, but Sober got so frustrated that she left - with our blessing.  So it was just me and Knight left to get Drunky home.  We had another fifteen minute conversation in which Drunky flagged down an elderly man as he was driving away because she thought he was Sober.

I think the problem we had was the fact that we tried to reason with Drunky when she was so obviously beyond that point. After a few more pleas from Drunky to just let her drive herself home, I simply took Drunky's keys from her and gave them to Knight so that he could drive Drunky's car, and I could follow him so I could drive him back to his car.

I ran down in the garage and got my car.  The one flaw in our plan was the fact that Drunky didn't know how to get home.  Or rather, she could not articulate it to Knight, so we ended up in an apartment complex about 2 miles away from where she actually lived, which is pretty impressive since she only lives 2 miles away from the office.

I managed to get an address from Drunky to plug into my GPS by convincing her that Knight had to urinate something awful.  She took pity on him, and after three tries, we got the right address.  So this time I lead the way and we eventually made it to her house.

Of course, it wasn't that easy.  The last house on the block was a number short of her house number, and around the corner they started a number above her house.  We had to use the good old pee trick in order to get her to show us that her house was around back (whoever number those houses had issues).

We didn't bother to make sure she got in bed.  You can call us bad guys, but after this hour long ordeal to get Drunky the 2 miles from the bar to her house, and with each of us having a 30 minute drive in front of us to get to our houses, we split.

It's pretty weird seeing somebody in such a position of authority act like a drunk 18 year-old freshman, but the one nice thing about it is that I think I have a few bonus dollars coming my way in the near future.

Caps Season Ticket Holder Party

I'll be honest, I don't own season tickets to the Caps. I would love to, but right now I'm concentrating more on paying my mortgage. However, I am very lucky to have married a woman whose parents have season tickets. They've had the tickets for over a decade now, so having all of Six Flags rented out for you and your cohorts is pretty passé for them, but a total treat for me.

One of the things that keeps amazing me about hockey players in general (keep in mind, I only started being a fan back in late 2007) is how cool they all are. Not cool in the sense of "I'm a multimillionaire and I have lots of stuff," but cool in the way that makes you think you could be friends with them, or at least, you could razz on them as if you were on the team.

Here's a couple of examples:

As I was standing in line waiting for Nuevirth and Alzner's signature, I saw some ginger walking by wearing a Flash Gordon cape. Pretty funny, I thought (since, as I'm sure you know, one of the player's nicknames is Flash). It wasn't until I saw the guy's face that I realized it was actually Fleischmann.

The line for Alzner and Nuevirth was pretty long for two rookies, but seemed appropriate based on how well both have been playing as of late.

Fehr and Erskine were setup near them, so I hopped over to the next line and got their signatures as well. While Fehr was signing my jersey, he asked if I had gotten on any roller coasters yet. He seemed generally interested when I told him that I had tried to ride the Ride of Steel, but didn't get a chance because after Mike Green got off the ride, it broke down and didn't start up again until at least when the signing started.

After that it was off to Hendricks and Gordon. They were unfortunately placed directly in front of the speaker in the kid's section of the park, so it was playing some very childish, repetitive music that only 6-and-unders would appreciate. When I got my chance with the boys, I asked them how they liked the music, and without missing a beat Hendricks said that the music was playing off of Gordo's iPod. Well played, sir. Well played indeed.

Right around the bend was Brooks Laich. No story there, but I did get him to sign my jersey as "Hockey Hero" Brooks Laich. He was a little hesitant at first, but he eventually came around. Sorry Brooksie, but when you pull over to help somebody change their tire, that's the kind of name with which you get labeled.

And finally I got to Bradley and Steckel. Bradley, of course, used to do the science videos during intermissions at the Verizon Center. He would even dress up in a lab coat. He was forced out of his role for what I am sure was some unjust reason, but he's still "The Professor" in my mind. So when I got my turn, I asked him to sign it as such. Steckel overheard this and leaned over and started spelling "professor" for Bradley. Apparently Bradley is not a professor of English, and I'm sure he gets razzed for that in the locker room.

All in all, it was a great time had by all at the season ticket holder party. It's great that even after hours of signing, all of the players are so approachable. I can't wait until I can actually afford my own season tickets.

iPhone 4G

I know that Apple literally unveiled their iPhone 4 yesterday, and it certainly is a sexy looking phone, but I think it's close enough to the release of their next iPhone to start making predictions.

The next iPhone will be called the iPhone 4G, and will, not surprisingly, support 4G (i.e., LTE) - allowing for, as every tech blogger has ever described the service, blazing fast downloads. at&t should have their LTE network up and running by 2011 (with trials starting in 2010), which will work out just perfectly for Apple's release schedule.

However, I foresee the iPhone 4G rolling out to Verizon first since their LTE deployment schedule is a bit more aggressive than at&t's. I also would not be surprised if the iPhone 4G was the first phone that Verizon carries that handles LTE.

There are rumors that the iPhone will come to Verizon in November of this year, and with Verizon expecting to have 100 million people covered with LTE by the end of this year, I don't think it's totally unrealistic to expect the iPhone 4G to launch with Verizon as early as November (which may explain why at&t is so aggressively trying to lock customers in to another 2 year commitment).

Of course, I still have another year or so with my Motorola Droid, so no matter what happens, I'll be content on the sidelines.

Cube Drama

Hi lady in the office next to my cubicle. I had my headphones on as you walked by, so I didn't hear or see you come in at 10:30 (we work in the same office but I don't think I can get a cush schedule like that). However, that's not to say I didn't notice you.

Please don't wear so much perfume that the only way I know that you've come into the office is due to your odor. It distracts me to the point where I write a meaningless post like this, and nobody likes that.

Fandango

Ok, so I admit that I am a bit of a nerd sometimes. I try my best to hide it from people, and I never really read comics growing up, but that's nothing a little wikipedia can't fix for me.

So of course, with the release of Iron Man 2, I had to round up my friends and catch the midnight showing. As I was going through the confirmation for my tickets, I was reminded that this was a late showing - except the note confused me, which seems to be counter to its objective.

The movie is released on May 6, which is a Thursday. The showing is for 12:01 AM on Thursday. If you remember back to your elementary school days, you'll know that AM is Latin for before noon and PM is after noon. So the show time 12:01 AM (remember - that's before noon!), which is 1 minute into Thursday, meaning I will have to go out late on Wednesday night to catch the show.

The note, however, tries to convince me that the show is actually late on Thursday night and early Friday morning.

Nice try Fandango, but I'm going to be there at 12:01 AM on Thursday despite your best efforts!