Days 1 and 2

disclaimer: read the previous post first

As I mentioned in my previous post, today begins the Quest to complete the Broad Street Run in Philadelphia on May 2^nd. I have sixty days to get into shape, which so far has left me impressed by sports movie montages because right now it feels I'm filming all the material that gets edited out. If they made a movie of what's happened so far, it would literally be two hours of an exhausted, sweaty guy doing nothing interesting, but thanks to the new Oscar rules it's probably worth a Best Picture nomination.

Day 1: March 2, 2010

I initially intended on running at 6:30 a.m. this morning and getting it out of the way early. Thirteen hours later, I was finally on a treadmill.

The day started with a 6:00 a.m. reveille initiated by my phone. An individual's cell phone alarm eventually gets to be the most hated sound in that person's universe due to the unadulterated misery it brings on a daily basis. In fact, I encourage you to play the alarm tone on your cell right now and experience the combination of fear and rage that is usually reserved for early mornings. I thought it was pretty cool that the tone has the ability to elicit this emotional response at any time of day.

Tuesdays are a tough day; class from 9 until noon and work from noon until 5. The best days at the work are when the office gets breakfast catered, which means that there are huge amounts of bagels, muffins, eggs, and various other rapidly decaying foods up for grabs throughout the afternoon. I was starving around 4:30 and knew that I was going to run, so I plowed through two stale bagels and two muffins. Distance running on an empty stomach is nearly impossible and I considered it necessary.

Eventually, I was changed and ready to go to the David S. Pottruck Fitness Center. I put my earbuds in and flipped my iPod over to my Eminem collection; I've been on an Eminem kick for the last two weeks and I turned on 2002's phenomenal The Eminem Show. The walk from my house to the gym gave me the following songs: "Hailie's Song"; "Till I Collapse"; and "My Dad's Gone Crazy". I Wikipedia'd the album later on, and I learned that "Hailie's Song" samples "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and that "Till I Collapse" samples "We Will Rock You". Too bad Relapse was awful; Em's old stuff puts all modern rap to shame.

I already ran a few times in the past week before yesterday, and so I was ready to see if I could set a personal distance record. The goal was seven miles. Unfortunately, I was at the gym during peak occupancy hours (5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.) and I had to wait for a treadmill. This allowed me to notice parts of gym culture to which I had never before paid any attention.

1. The ridiculous split between intense runners and people who are at the gym to be seen. I am neither, but it is easy for to identify members of each clan. The intense runners dress in goofy skintight clothes (like bicyclists) and wear short shorts on top of their leggings. They usually wear t-shirts they received from their respective high school running teams which have movie quotes across the back where the last name would be on a football uniform. For example, the front might say Spiro T. Agnew Regional High School and the back would say something that's kind of amusing at first, but gets progressively lamer which each subsequent reading, much like Fundamentally Soundd. The people who are at the gym to be seen arrive in leggings as well, but they don't wear baggy clothes on top in order to showcase the curves of their bodies. This is a trend which makes me alternately thankful or furious depending on the figure in question. Casual treadmill users will never select a speed greater than two miles per hour and have either a really fat chemistry textbook or the latest issue of The Economist splashed across the machine's control panel. I never understood the concept of reading while being on a treadmill. I think it's a lot like those kids who used to carry around SAT prep books with them all the time in high school, meaning that it's nothing more than a display of how Seriously they need to be taken. Sometimes they read Vogue though, so I don't know.
   
2. The energy shake stand within the gym served two purposes. First, it reminded me of Power Rangers, since I think that they all used to work in the yogurt section of a karate gym or something. Second, it was clear that some of the shakes were actually pretty bad for you. Even though the sign out front says that all of the drinks are non-fat (maybe it said low-fat, I can't remember in hindsight), I was curious and I requested the nutrition facts pamphlet. The verdict? Fat! The peanut butter based smoothies all have at least 15 grams of fat. Someone should do something about this. Or, to put it more accurately, someone else should do something about this. Penn is a place where the first milk container to be empty in the dining halls is always the one which holds skim, which suggests that most people are obsessively competitive about fitness. If I can be 15 grams of fat ahead of everyone else, it's a secret I'm willing to keep.
   
3. Do you remember when Al Gore pledged in a 2000 Presidential Debate that he would put funds in a "lockbox" in order to save Social Security, and the term became a pop culture hallmark for a year or so after that? The gym literally has a lockbox, which is a giant cardboard box filled with dozens of locks that people have lost. I asked the attendant about it, and he said that people who lose locks are too cheap to spring $6 for a new one, so they spend hours trying their combination on the entire pile of identical Master locks. He even said that in the past week, two separate people picked their lock correctly out of the huge box on the first try.
   

After indulging my inner Tocqueville (Travels in America? Anyone?) for fifteen minutes, a treadmill finally opened up. For the record, I am aware that Tocqueville references are also pretentious displays of how Seriously one needs to be taken, but I'll be damned if that asshat Montesquieu ever gets mentioned on this blog again. After extensive stretching, I jumped on, turned the speed up to 6.5, and began to run. Over the next 70 minutes or so that I was running, a few thoughts crossed my mind.

First, the Pottruck televisions that are displayed in front of the treadmills are unbearably cruel. The channels on the three that I could see were showing Juno, Around the Horn, and some Food Network program. The fact that I actually enjoy sports meant that I didn't want to see the first two, and the fact that I was starving and had nothing but cold spaghetti at home meant I didn't want to watch the final one. When I ran on Sunday, they Professional Bowling U.S. Open was on and it was wonderful. Not only is the sport strangely riveting, but the announcers don't waste any time describing the action or analyzing the play. Instead, they talk about how Bowler X is "such a good guy" and how Bowler Y is "staying at Bowler Z's house for the weekend – you don't get to do that unless you're a really good guy".

Second, mile five is the breaking point right now for me. I was fine through five, but the last two were pretty tough. Gotta step it up if the Broad Street Run is in my future.

Eventually, the screen flashed "7.00" and it was time to stop. I climbed off and immediately began stretching again, hoping to ward off future soreness. I'm not sure if this helps or not. From what I can gather, most of the secrets of running technique are closely guarded by witch doctors and shamans and it's therefore impossible for a layperson such as me to figure out what I'm actually supposed to do. When and what should I eat? Should I stretch? At what points? Which shoes are the best? I may never know.

It felt damn good to accomplish my goal of seven miles. I lied down on my back and swung my legs once each to my right and left to crack my back. Sweat from my hair began to drip directly into my eyes.

Day 2: March 3, 2010

Today's run was far more stressful and far less fun than yesterday's. I have a test tomorrow, so it was not easy to carve out time to go for a run. Second, I was advised that the day after a heavy run should be followed by a light run in order to help clear the legs of excess lactic acid. Again, I have no idea if this is good running technique or not, but my friend seems to be a knowledgeable source (four years of cross country in high school). Then again, this man was once involved in creating a situation in which urine was filtered through a Brita pitcher and drank – albeit by someone else – so I don't really know what to believe. Lactic acid reminds me of anaerobic respiration, which is the only type of respiration I believe in since aerobic respiration sold out and gave that bastard Krebs the naming rights to the historic Citric Acid Cycle.

Yesterday's music for the walk to the gym was provided by Eminem. Today's was Animal Collective. I am not sure how to feel about Animal Collective. On one hand, they are indisputably the most critically acclaimed band in the indie rock world. On the other hand, their work more frequently sounds like noise than music. I turned on 2009's Merriweather Post Pavillion and listened to "Summertime Clothes" and "Bluish". I like both of these songs, but I really don't get what the big deal is about these guys.

After making fun of Pottruck's vaunted lockbox, I found that I actually needed to use it. I lost my lock the day before – I was probably still riding high after the seven mile run and wasn't paying attention. In any case, I did not need to sift through the giant pile of locks since mine was the only one that was a) golden and b) not a Master lock. I learned about this study where there is a certain type of fish that hunts other types of fish, and the predators target prey that have atypical red undersides (most prey fish had silver undersides, so the red ones stuck out). In an experiment, the predator fish would not attack a dummy prey fish that was shaped exactly like the actual prey fish, but it would attack a shapeless red blob. In conclusion, fish have very short attention spans, but most of what they are thinking is pretty racist.

2.7 miles later, I was ready to call it quits. On the walk home, I started reading a Club Trillion post that I missed. I found the site thanks to a tweet by Bill Simmons, and it's phenomenal. Mark Titus is the man.