Christmas Week Training

Christmas week was a pretty good one on the training front. Last year at this same time, I was hobbling around on crutches so anytime I do anything now, anything, makes me feel like I am getting way ahead in my training. I

ran 35.38 miles,

lifted weights three times,

walked 7.73 miles, and

swam two hours and five minutes in the Endless Pool.

I don’t know how to convert the Endless Pool time to meters, but I will figure something out. In short, I feel good about where I am physically and I’m looking forward to big swimming starting around February.

Immediately ahead is the Mississippi River Marathon in February. I will pick up a few more running races along the way, but they are all for fun. After the marathon run, the next big thing is the Chicot Challenge.

The Buddy Bones Turkey Butt Marathon

After falling off the wagon with some deep fried turkey butt on Christmas day, Buddy Bones and I knew we had to hit the road for some serious mileage. We had another eating to attend for the evening of December 26^th, my brother-in-law’s birthday party. So Buddy and I planned to leave the house around 11:00 am and make a long circuitous route to Carroll County. I lifted weights in the morning and got delayed resulting in skipped lunch and leaving an hour late. What could possibly go wrong?

We hit the road at 12:00 pm, crossed the Yazoo River, and headed out Grenada Blvd. As usual the boulevard was heavily trafficked and not a pleasant place to run. When we made it to Highway 7, we crossed over onto Grenada Blvd Extended and had a pleasant mile and a half until we had to get back on the highway. But we only had a half mile or less before we got on the Big Sand Creek Levee and headed east for the Carroll County hills. By then, I already knew it was going to be a tough day. My legs were tiring and we had a long, long way to go.

When we got on the levee, we were fewer than five miles from my front door and were seeing something totally new for us. I had never run, walked, or driven here before and that gave me a thrill. We crossed a couple of gates that made me a little uneasy. Eventually we could see some hunter orange way up ahead on top of the levee. Since I am nearsighted and don’t wear glasses, I couldn’t tell what it was until I was very close. It was a hunter.

We chatted a little and he must have said five times that he had never seen anyone run this levee top. I do a lot of things no one else around here does, especially since I started hanging out with Buddy Bones. I don’t know why I didn’t remember his name. He said he was the land owner and lived in Greenwood. I went on ahead and as I was nearing the end of the levee at the hill line, a truck came up from behind and stopped. He was also nice and I remembered his name, but told me it wasn’t a good idea to be running out. “We’ve had a lot of trouble in this area,” Justin Acey said. “I lot of people are going to be looking at you.”  I told him I was trying to get to that little road that ran along the foot of the hills to Highway 82. He pointed out a turn row I could have taken or the railroad tracks up ahead. We chose the tracks.

The abandoned C&G Railway line was grown up so thick we had to walk the ditch beside it, but we found the little road and started shuffling towards 82. We crossed the highway and headed towards Pelucia Creek and got on the levee there and headed west towards Humphrey Highway. Once more, when we got on the levee, we were in brand new territory and we ran and walked and walked and ran until we made the highway a little under six miles later.

On Humphrey Highway we headed south back towards the hills again. I was really tired now and was walking a lot. It was getting late. The birthday party was to start at 6:00, and I didn’t think we would make it. Surprisingly, I was able to shuffle up the big hill, a difficult feat even with fresh legs. It was dark now and once on top, it began to rain on us. I was ill-equipped for rain and the temp was dropping fast. That’s when my father and brother-in-law drove up. Buddy and I tapped out. We had only covered 23.5 miles, but we had fun, ran off some turkey butt, and saw some new territory. For us, that’s what it’s all about.

 

The time was terrible, but we had a good time.

 

Christmas Day Sin

I was winning the war in a valiant effort to make it through Christmas without eating myself into gluttony, sin, and self-loathing, until my brother tossed me that deep fried turkey butt. Battle over. I lost. Big time.

At mom’s, my little brother, Quinton, always cooks the turkey, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and any other time we as a family feel the need to commit one of the Bible’s Seven Deadly Sins. Gluttony is one of the seven, isn’t it? Well, if it’s not it ought to be.

Deep fried. Quinton deep fries the family turkeys, and believe me when I tell you the difference between that and the traditional oven job is like day and night. The new method seals in the moisture and renders a bird full of moist, flavorful meat that is light-years better than anything I grew up eating before some genius thought to drop a big bird in a pot of boiling oil. But before you go out and buy a turkey fryer, a few words of advice may be in order.

You can burn your house down deep frying a turkey. Easy. Not only that, but you can kill yourself, your entire family, and burn your whole neighborhood to the ground. Let me give you a few safety tips. First, get some bailing wire or some old clothes hangers and wire the pot to the cooker. If the pot tips over and the oil touches the open flame, the resulting explosion will be similar to tossing a burning match into an open container of gasoline. I am not exaggerating. Second, if you marinate the bird, make sure his chest cavity is empty of liquids before putting the turkey into the oil. This can cause a boil over and easily result in incinerating a small city. Third, unlight the fire before putting the turkey in. Heat the oil to 325, unlight the fire, put in turkey, then relight the fire. Cook one minute per pound of bird. Fourth, don’t throw the turkey away. It just looks ruined. I promise. Do not throw the turkey away. Underneath that blackness and charcoal is some of the best eating you have never had. Back to the story.

I made it through Christmas Eve without overeating. I even navigated the three Christmas Day breakfasts I was forced to eat without a major pigout. Then in the late afternoon I watched my brother fry the bird while we told “Dad” stories on the back patio of Mom’s house. It was great. We laughed and laughed and laughed telling about our favorite Roger Hodge fits. Our father threw the biggest fits over the smallest things you could ever imagine. No minor irritation was insignificant enough to stop him from going hysterical cussing, throwing, breaking anything within reach or sight. His children are filled with memories we can pull up at any time and get a good chuckle or a deep belly laugh even. I still cry from time to time thinking about him. But since he left us, I have laughed as much, if not more, than I’ve cried. 

The two turkeys were fried and cooled on the kitchen table when it finally came time to cut the meat off the bone, a job my brother loves. He keeps a large pan nearby and tosses the bones and skin and other delicacies in the big scrap pot. He threw me terrible looking deep-fried turkey butt which I caught in midair and immediately put into my mouth. Half in and half out, I bit down, and when I did grease ran out of the butt and dribbled down into my beard. I shook my head while my eyes rolled back in their sockets. Then I removed the butt, peeled back the skin and fat and began eating that thin little sliver of soft meat next to the bone like a mule eating briars through a fence. My nephew joined in the melee as we grabbed bits and pieces of fat, skin, and bone and ate like starving dogs. I had a piece of black, burnt turkey skin stuck to the side of my face and grease on my nose but I didn’t slow down as Harrison and I competed with each other over who could eat the most from the scrap pan.

Before long, I had grease running down each forearm to the elbows and bits of fat and skin stuck to my shirt which I periodically scrapped off and rammed into my mouth. We gnawed bones, growled, grunted, and burped. We ate until nothing was left but the pure meat set out on the plates for our meal which we didn’t want because we were not only full, we were overstuffed.

I went home that evening with the self-loathing I had tried so hard to avoid and slept fitfully while I passed gas and burped all the night long, my overfilled belly preventing me from sleeping face down. The morning would find me avoiding the scales and plotting my comeback. Hark, an idea! Buddy Bones and I planned to run it all away. That’s right. We would run and run until the weight and guilt of fried turkey butt, burnt fat, and slimy skin was all gone. Many miles would be needed and hours and hours to atone for such a deadly sin. But that was the plan, and we would stick to it.

Endless Pool

The week of 12/15-12/21 was another mixed bag. I

ran-37.85 miles
lifted weights-three times
walked- 8.25 miles
swam- 0.

Dude! For the second time this year, I did no swimming, and I was not a happy camper. This resulted in severe anxiety, frustration, anger, and thoughts of violence. However, I got hooked up with the Endless Pool this week and did my first session. And my second. John came over Monday afternoon, and we lifted weights till I thought my arms were going to fall off. Or I did. I gave him forty minutes after he said he was on the way and started warming up. I had done seven sets of bench presses by the time he got there. Then it started raining. Poor John.

After he left, I duct taped my arms on and drove to the Greenwood Leflore Wellness Center where I swam for one hour and twenty one minutes. It was good and bad experience. Let me explain.

The pool is wide open right now. I talked with the director Monday morning and she told me that no one was using it right now because the heater is broken and the water temperature is down to 86. No one will use the pool because the water is down to 86. No one will use the pool because the water is 86 degrees. No one will use the pool because the water is 86. I swear that is what she told me.

I can do 86. Yes, that is way hot for most swimmers, and many swimmers could not be forced at gunpoint into 86 degree water. But I deal well with heat and 86 is within my range. So I went to give it a try. Not only is the heater out, but the motor is not working well either. It would only get the current up to four miles per hour. When attempting to push beyond that, the motor simply shut down.

Four miles per hour sounds fast enough. I swim at two or slower. But in that pool, I had to stroke unnaturally slow to keep from hitting the front wall. That’s not good but it’s better than a poke in the eye. I needed some water time in the worst way, and I got 1:21 after a hard weight session. When I left, I could tell I had done something.

I went back the Tuesday morning and John Cooke told me they are getting the motor replaced after the first of the year. That is good news. Surprisingly, the water temp was 90. That is really warm, but I can even do 90. In fact, I can swim hard at higher than that although I prefer cooler water. This time I swam 1:46, and although the tempo was necessarily slow, I still got in some work.

Now I feel a lot better, like I am not a danger to myself or others, and I am no longer stressed about DSU being closed. Not only that, but I look to the future with a lot more hope than I have in the past. January and February have been, for the past several years, months of growing anxiety. With my big swim drawing nearer and my only real water access being Delta State, having a shot at this Endless Pool means I can build a better base in January, February, and March. Last year, I went wild on April the 1^st swimming a 10K in a fish pond while wearing a wetsuit. That led to one of my very few swimming injuries that led to reduced training that led to a lot of stress that led to anxiety that led to scheduling the Challenge a week later than usual. I hope to do it all better this year.

Off the Divide

I am no longer at the crossroads or on top of the mountain ridge trying to decide which side to come down on. With the help of my old friend Daniel Collins, I made a decision. The Mississippi Trail 50 is out. Running for fun and training for the Chicot Challenge is in. I feel a giant relief.

Being pulled in more than one direction is nothing new for me. Athletically it has always been that way with running. Dad used to tell me I needed to focus on the 10 K. That is what he did and he ran times I have never touched. If I had followed his advice, I could have, no doubt, run some faster times at that distance. I even thought I might take his counsel for one year at least. But it never happened. Inevitably, I went out the door too many times just to have fun. I think that is important, however, having fun, because you (or I anyway) can only punish yourself so many times before you decide you are too busy, or too tired, or you just don’t want to do it anymore.

I also thought I would spend one year focusing on the triathlon and seeing if I could place at the Heart ‘O Dixie. I started in the triathlon sport in 1980, that’s right, 1980. At one point I was doing five or six per year, but now I am down to one per year, and I don’t think I will be doing very many more any time soon. It would be a real trick to pull that off a place at HOD. As the oldest continual triathlon in the continental United States, and as the state’s championship race, the HOD draws an unbelievably competitive field. Typically my age division will contain fourteen or fifteen men. My finish in the respective events within my age division will usually look something like this: Swim, 1st; Run, 6^th; Bike, 14^th. It doesn’t take a socket rientist to figure that that is a scenario for never placing.

I am simply not a good biker, I will not pay the price to get better, and I just don’t care anymore. I only want to have fun, and I do have fun finishing the HOD each year even though it is still frustrating to get passed by fat ladies on the bicycle or while running up a hot hill in Neshoba County. When push comes to shove, I like to do a lot of long slow running and when I bike I like to do it long and slow and see things and take pictures and eat a lot of food along the way. That’s just who I am.

And then there is the ever present tension between running and swimming. Slowly over the last few years, my athletic identity has changed, and I consider myself now a swimmer who runs rather than a runner who swims. If I have any natural athletic ability, this is where it lies. I did not swim in college. I did not swim on a high school swim team or even on a junior high one. I was given lessons as a child (thank you, Momma), and I splashed in the water like everyone else. As a young adult, I started triathlons, so I trained my swim a bit then. But that was all solo work and then I was off for eighteen years while I raised a family, went to school, and pastored a small church. I started back into fitness for fun and for health in 2004 in a very small way. That year I swim trained three times and did the Heart ‘O Dixie Triathlon. In short, I am an adult-onset swimmer with no competitive swimming background. I started serious swim training in my fifties.

In 2006 I became a little more serious about overall training because I was frustrated with the fat ladies beating me at the Heart ‘O Dixie, so I joined the Masters team at DSU. I did my first open water marathon in 2007, That Dam Swim Twelve Miler in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, because I was injured and could not run. There were no more marathon swims in my life until 2011 when I heard about, entered, and recruited Randy Beets to do Swim the Suck Ten Miler in the Tennessee River near Chattanooga. That is when I became a swimmer.

The following June, I did the first Chicot Challenge, my personal birthday swim (I was fifty-six) that I converted into a fundraiser. The Challenge started like this: I received a text message from Randy Beets.

Beets: I just did a thirteen mile kayak in Lake Chicot from the State Park to downtown Lake Village and back.

Me: That sounds like it would make a nice open water swim.

Beets: I’ll crew you if you want to do it.

The Challenge was born.

We set a date, I started training, and we did it with the additional help of Robin Bond. When it was all done, the swim was 13.94 miles, and the rush I got crawling out at the end was addicting. We raised over $1,250 for the American Diabetes Association, and I realized that I had some talent, maybe only a little, but some gift for long swimming.

Maybe the gift is mostly in the area of ‘want to.’ Endurance athletics, in my opinion, is as much a matter of personality as it is of muscle fiber composition. I am a Type E personality, i.e. the Type Endurance kind. You have to want to do this kind of thing and for some people this realm is the very height of insanity. I understand. I had a wise man once tell me, “If everybody liked the same thing, there wouldn’t be enough to go around.” Very true. God made us different for a reason, or two or three.

But though the gift may be in large measure a part of my personality, it is at least in small part physical as well. Not only do I have the want to, I respond rapidly to training stimuli, swim training stimuli that is. I can do a hard workout and two days later detect the difference in my body. I am certain an exercise physiologist would say that is utterly impossible, that science refutes my claim. However, I know that is not the case with me and swimming and will gladly submit to scientific examination. Any takers out there? That’s what I thought. I have lived in this body for fifty-eight years, I have used it a lot, and I know it well. So in some small way, though I am very late coming to the party, I feel like God has gifted me in the realm of swimming. Though the gift may be small, I don’t want to bury it. To do so is to dishonor God, among other things. So I am not going to gamble with the Challenge by putting the Mississippi Trail 50 on the calendar. It is just not wise. To sum up in a concise manner:

Reasons not to do the Mississippi Trail 50

• It pushes the training window for the Chicot Challenge back a little farther than I am comfortable with.
• It competes with Chicot base training for time and energy.
• It risks severe fatigue from running fifty miles and traveling to and from south Mississippi.

• It costs money in terms of an entrance fee and travel expense.
• It dilutes the gift.
• It makes life unnecessarily complex.

(Sorry about the spacing issues here. Sometimes the formatting just will not cooperate)

Reasons to focus on the Chicot Challenge

• I can still do the Mississippi River Marathon in February without pushing my build phase back as I would with the Trail 50.
• I won’t have to obsess with running mileage but can just run for fun, adventure, and fitness.
• The risk of hangover fatigue is greatly reduced with a marathon in February as opposed to an ultra-marathon in March.
• The Challenge IV is longer than ever (nineteen miles) and I will be older than ever so I really need to focus on it.
• It honors and uses the gift.

And besides all that, the Challenge raises funds for a very worthy charity that supports a very important cause. Starting with Chicot II, I switched to the Diabetes Foundation of Mississippi (DFM) as my charity of choice. Check them out at Charity Navigator (www.charitynavigator.org). The DFM “is the state's premier nonprofit health organization providing diabetes research, information, patient services and advocacy. The mission of the Foundation is to provide hope through research, programs and service to the 372,500 Mississippians with diabetes. The Diabetes Foundation of Mississippi is the one diabetes organization totally dedicated to all Mississippians from our children to our seniors, who live with diabetes. Through our three locations in Jackson, Oxford and Hattiesburg, the DFM strives to better serve Mississippians with diabetes; provide more programs statewide; and increase research at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.” Find them at www.msdiabetes.org

The Great Divide

I feel like I am sitting on the pinnacle of a mountain trying to decide which side to explore. I want both sides and everything in between. While my friend, Daniel Collins, ponders the Continuum Hypothesis, Set Theory, and Metaphysics, I am in a delimma over whether to do the Mississippi Trail 50 or not. An official fifty-mile run has been on my bucket list for a long time. But ever since I started the Chicot Challenge, it has been a bit more difficult to do some of the other crazy things that spurn me to dream. Chicot requires a major commitment of time, energy, and planning.

The Trail 50 is set for March 5th. That would give me time to do it and then shift my training for my June 6th Chicot Challenge. Although that leaves time, the window is just a little narrow. Ideally, I need to start ramping up my swimming in February. If I do the run, I will be shuffling like crazy and then have to start ramping up the swimming the second week in March. That is doable but it gives me a little pause.

Exacerbating my anxiety is the fact that I am finishing my second week this year of no swimming. The Challenge is still a long way off, but having a good base to build on is Endurance Training 101. The pool at DSU is drained for repairs, the outdoor pool here still has water but is very low, and my nerve for cold water swimming in the pond is simply nonexistent at the present time. A new factor in my confusion is the fact that I soon may be gaining access to an Endless Pool. That, believe it or not, just adds to my uncertainty. It will give me a little more access to water. It will temp me to swim more. I need to swim more. But basically, it will be the Endless Pool or the road.

Although I train daily, I do the lion's share of my endurance building on Fridays, my one true day off. My day. Fridays are the day I do the long run or the long swim, which is indispensable for a marathon. To train for the Trail 50, I need to exceed the twenty-six to twenty-seven mile efforts I have been putting in of late. And these take most of the day and all of my energy. There is no way I can do a thirty-mile run and a swim on the same day. There just isn't the time or the energy to train at that level.

Last year none of this wasn't an issue because I was recovering from a stress fracture of my right tibia, and swimming was one of the few things I could do.

So I sit at a fork in the road, on top of a great divide and I ponder what to do.

AN IDEA!

What if I alternate long runs with swims on Fridays? that is run long one Friday and swim the next? Maybe that could work, and I can pull off both. Now all I have to do is pull the trigger and register for the Trail 50.

I'll think about it while I drink one more cup of coffee.

The Buddy Bones Tanglefoot Trail Marathon

A bright sun was lighting up a blue sky when me n Buddy Bones drove away from 333 West Monroe Avenue Tuesday morning December 16th. The excitement was palpable as the long awaited Buddy Bones Tanglefoot Trail Marathon was only a couple of hours away in driving distance and time.

Since I meet Buddy and started training with him, my running has taken a definite upturn. He is so easy to get along with, only talks when talked to, and is ever up for whatever I want to do. A perfect friend and training partner. Of course, I have John for the pool swimming and weightlifting, but for running, Buddy is the man.

We drove up to the Whistle Stop in Algoma about 10:00 am and were thankful for a place to park and use the bathroom before starting. Somewhere around 10:20 we were off with plans to go 13.11 one way and turn around. We headed north into what was for us unknown territory. The air was a brisk 48 degrees with a light wind blowing into our faces. A few birds chirped and occasionally the wind whisltled through the pines, but mostly the day was silent save for our footfalls and breathing sounds.
Despite the fact that it was a weekday and a winter one, we saw several cyclists, a few walkers, and a couple of runners. But pretty much we were alone the whole way.

We saw some lovley woods, a beaver pond, a shooting house, and bean fields. We crossed over a highway, ran past some ball fields, and saw houses hidden in the woods. Occasionally we crossed a road, until we came into Pontotoc. It took a long time to get through and out of that town. Oddly, there was no Whistle Stop there. There were signs on the Tanglefoot with arrows pointing into town announcing bathrooms and food, but nothing on the trail itself.

Finally north of Pontotoc, we were in the country once more. As we approached the thirteen mile mark, I could see up in the distance what looked like and proved to be a Whistle Stop. When we got there, 13.85 miles from Algoma, the sign on the building read Ecru.

When we made the turn and headed back south towards Algoma, I was surprised at the level of my fatigue. I had been hoping to hold up better on this one that the last two. For this one, I set out shuffling 3.25, shifting into marathon goal pace (9:30) for a mile, and then walking for a half mile. I only did two 9:30 miles before my legs just didn't have it in them anymore. On the way back it was all slow shuffling and some walking. The first Buddy Bones Marathon I finished in 5:57. I know that is pathetically slow, but bear in mind, except for Buddy, I am alone and I have to run the marathon as well as work the aide stations. The second Buddy Bones Marathon I did in 5:33. I was hoping to break 5:30 today.
By the time we had made it back through Pontotoc, somewhere around seventeen or eighteen miles, it was looking like I was going to have to ditch my run/walk strategy and shuffle all the way in. I walked one solid mile through town and when I started back, I determined to shuffle all the way to 26.2 and that is what I did although my pace kept getting slower and slower. 

We finished in 5:21 a new Buddy Bones world record. The drive home in the dark was tiring and when we finally made it and got out of the truck, I discovered I was the Tin Man. It felt like all my joints were rusted solid. Seriously, I could barely walk at all. Nothing hurt. I was just so still I could hardly move. Muscles and joints both had rusted everything shut while I drove home. But I did get inside, spent some time with Luvie, took a bath, and slept well.

Buddy wants to do another marathon next week. Stay tuned.