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Most Disappointing Costumed Race

Britain is famous – or infamous – for its love for costumed road races (or fancy dress, if you prefer). Brits dress as Santas, snails, sumo wrestlers, gorillas, and just about anything else at the drop of a running shoe.

As I look through this BBC slideshow and an Internet search of the Robin Hood Marathon in Nottingham, I see Smurfs, drag queens and Mr. Potato Head, but no one dressed as Robin Hood, Maid Marian, the Sheriff or Friar Tuck.

Do you go to Halloween parties dressed as Santa? C’mon, UK! Get with the theme!

Dog Days

When you combine the number of “out of office” replies to my e-mails with the giant stack of personal business I have awaiting me, it looks to be a good time to enter a period of sporadic blogging. I’ll still be around, will keep an eye on things and post, but it just might not be daily for a short while. Enjoy the heat!

You Guys Are Great

I just wanted to thank everyone for your good advice and kind words in response to yesterday’s post. In fact, all the advice was so good I’m still not sure what to do. However, I am a firm believer in the old adage: When in doubt, procrastinate.

If I do another marathon, it will be my local one – the California International Marathon – on December 4. That means my current mileage level is too much, too soon. So my short-term plan is to reduce mileage to roughly 33-37 miles per week, then run a 10-mile race next month and a half-marathon in October. If I decide to do CIM after that, I’ve got two months to ramp up to marathon mileage. If I decide not to, I can look for another half, or try trailing, or any of the other excellent ideas you’ve proffered.

The only small hitch in my master plan is that CIM registration closes out no later than October 1, so I do have a deadline.

Anyway, we’ll now return to our regularly scheduled programming. I’ll let you know when I do something significant.

Well Played, Sir

You  may recall a blog post I wrote a while back about search engine optimization. I consider myself a pretty sophisticated web user, but I admit that this morning I fell for the cheapest, old school, traffic-spiking trick in the book – the misleading headline.

While searching for funny or unusual stories to entertain you, I came across this headline from the running blog hosted by the Dallas Morning News:

Area Runner Gives Birth to Twins at Local Park

Naturally, I clicked on the link, only to discover that blogger “Spareribs LaMothe” justified the headline this way, “During this morning’s run, my fertile imagination gave birth to twin follow-up stories…”

Later on, he asked, “How am I doing on the cheesy headlines so far? I didn’t hear anything from the headline guy so I think I have the hang of it now.”

You do indeed, sir. You will, however, have to work a lot harder to get me to click again.

The Last Shall Be First

Here’s a neat story about people designated to finish last in a 5k so that no participant has to worry about it.

If You Ever Get to Chicago…

…don’t miss a run on the Lakefront Path. It’s beautiful and the only caution worth mentioning is to always keep an eye out for cyclists – but there’s a little dirt shoulder along a lot of it so you should be fine.

I got out there at about 7 a.m. so I didn’t see anything funny – unless you include my attempts to find the underpass across Lakeshore Drive. I finally made it, but I’m sure when I get to map my route from the Garmin data, it will be hilarious.

Borderline Normal

No, that’s not the title of my memoirs. I’ll explain.

My heart attack last October left me with significantly reduced heart function. The heart’s pumping capacity is measured by ejection fraction (EF) - that is, the ratio of blood it pumps out compared to the amount it takes in. A normal range for ejection fraction is 50-65%.

After my stents were installed, my EF was 30%. That’s bad, but not horribly bad. But because any serious arrhythmia could kill me, my cardiologist wanted to operate and place an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) in my chest. Alberto Salazar has one.

But Salazar was dead for 14 minutes, while I walked into the ER and joked with the EMTs in the ambulance. I also did my research, and learned quite a few of these procedures are unnecessary. I wanted to wait, and my cardiologist agreed to give me a couple of months.

In December, I had another echocardiogram, and my EF was 40%. I thought this was terrific news, but the doctor still really wanted me to have the ICD. So I did what any other patient with great respect and deference for the medical profession would do.

I changed cardiologists.

My new guy is a lot more positive, particularly about my fitness and running. He scheduled me for another echo. A couple of weeks ago, I got the results. Now my EF is 45%, which the analysis described as “borderline normal.” No more mention of ICDs, and I was able to get off a couple of my meds and switch to supplements.

I had already run my half-marathon before getting this news, but I decided that if my heart was borderline normal, my pace should be borderline normal, too. I’ve been less tentative while training, and Saturday I ran the Run 4 Independence 10k. My mile splits were 8:58, 8:39, 8:35, 8:37, 8:33 and 8:31. I finished in 53:41, which is about 30 seconds per mile off the pace I ran in my last 10k before the heart attack – I guess you could call that borderline normal.

I got through a traumatic physical event with a minimum of discomfort, have had no lingering after-effects, and have even been able to approach my old running form – not that it was anything to brag about. I feel like the luckiest man on the planet.