Boston Marathon 2012 RR: Sometimes You're the Windshield...

"Sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug."  --Dire Straits

Coming off a big -- and relatively conservative -- PR at the Cherry Blossom two weeks ago (6:20/mile for 10 miles), I was feeling good for Boston.  The equivalence calculators suggested that a time in the high 2:50s was possible, but given the hills and my historic under-performance at the marathon distance, I wasn't quite buying it.  Still, I felt at least as strong as I'd been when I ran my 3:07 in Eugene, OR last spring to qualify for Boston, so I thought I had a legitimate shot at a new personal-best time.  I felt confident that I could at least re-qualify for Boston 2013 by running a 3:09 or better.  What could go wrong?  Oh.

I'd checked the weather during the lead-up to race week.  At one point, the predicted highs for the day ranged from 62 and cloudy on one site to 82 and sunny on another, which I believe is weather code for "anything is possible, including a rain of fish."  When I expressed consternation about the forecast, some friends had offered their perspectives, including that obsessing about weather isn't healthy -- one should just show and go, and make the best of whatever the day presents.  I'd like to be sympathetic to that view, but I also feel that the weather is an important piece of information.  For example, given the forecast of possible wind in Ironman Wales, I'd brought a shallower front wheel so I'd have an option when I arrived.  And it's a good thing I did, because otherwise I'm fairly certain I'd have been blown clear across the English Channel.  

Dressed for success.

In any case, it would have been hard to ignore the weather entirely, because starting three days before the race, the racers started to receive dire "weather updates" from the race officials.  The first merely called athletes' attention to possible temperatures in the 80s, but by the afternoon before the race, the predicted high was 88, and the last warning email basically said, "It is possible that someone will finish this race without succumbing to heat stroke, but it won't be you."  In fact, the race officials announced that, in light of the weather, they would allow any competitor to defer his entry to the 2013 race, and about 4,000 people took up the offer.  Given that I needed a finishing time in order to compete in the Big Sur portion of the Boston 2 Big Sur Challenge in two weeks, deferring wasn't an option, but even if it were, I wouldn't have considered it.  I've never bailed on an important event simply due to less-than-ideal conditions, and the very notion strikes me as antithetical to the spirit of endurance sports.  If we wanted ideal conditions, we could all be bowlers.  Or Cross-Fit'ers.  

In a nod to the conditions, I did bring what hot-weather gear I had -- a white singlet, Zoot arm coolers, and a Zoot cap with fabric that shields the ears and neck from the sun.  I figured that any little bit would help.  My nutrition was a hand bottle of CarboPro C5 (600 calories), plus two Nuun electrolyte tablets and a little bit of caffeine.  A similar concoction had worked perfectly at the Eugene Marathon, where my plan had been to get all of my calories from the bottle, and to supplement it with water from the aid stations.

I awoke at 6:00, which is a downright civilized time for an event like this, and one that was possible only due to the rather unusual 10:00 start time.  We hopped aboard the chartered bus for a 45-minute ride out to Hopkinton, where we were released into the Athlete's Village, i.e., the mecca of marathoning.

It also basically ended here.

On race morning, one is accustomed to huddling for warmth and perhaps finding a little coffee -- anything to keep from losing energy through shivering.  Suffice it to say, that was not a problem this year.  Temperatures were in the high 70's and sunny when we stepped off the bus, and they reached 80 by the start of the race.  The Athlete's Village, though, was a sight to behold:

Welcome to my world of suffering!

There was coffee in the tent.  No one was drinking it.

Eventually I stumbled upon my friend Dave, who'd qualified for the race with the same time as me, meaning that we were assigned to the same starting wave and corral.  We walked the half-mile or so down to the race start, and took our places in the sixth wave.  Theoretically, this meant that everyone around us ought to have a similar time goal in mind.  The trick, however, was that no one had much of a clue what effect the temperatures would have on race times.  We knew they'd be slower, but how much?  A couple of online calculators I'd found had suggested that 20-30 minutes slower was a realistic estimate, but that seemed extreme.  I resolved to run the first half of the race at about a 7:15/mile pace, which would have been a 3:10 overall.  On any normal day, that would have been conservative.  I figured I'd assess things at the halfway point and dial it back if necessary.

After the Star-Spangled Banner was sung against a backdrop of circling news helicopters, we were off on the 116th running of the Boston Marathon!  

The first five miles of the marathon are very much downhill:

True to form, I went out a little bit fast -- according to my watch, 6:45, 6:52, 7:02, and 7:04 for the first four miles.  But it felt very easy; I was running conservatively and just rolling down the hills while trying not to apply the brakes through poor form.  Effort-wise, I think I was running close to a 7:10-7:15 flat-land pace, which was exactly where I wanted to be.  Halfway through mile 5, however, I realized that I was not feeling remotely good, with vague tinges of nausea and the odd sensation that I was breathing through thick fabric.  I realized that I had a long day ahead, so I pulled off and walked for fifty yards or so, something that's virtually unheard-of that early in a marathon.  My fifth mile was a 7:49, a rather pathetic concession to necessity.

Disturbingly, however, things did not get better, even with what became rather frequent walk breaks. Things did not get better at all.  Miles 6 through 8 passed in 8:07, 8:35, and 9:06.  I simply couldn't get my heart rate down, no matter how much water I dumped all over me and how much I slowed down.  In mile 9, I realized that I was having trouble breathing even when I was walking.  Whenever I'd breathe deeply, I'd get sharp pains in the sides of my lungs.  Not side stitches, which are lower, and with which I'm well familiar, but cramping, stabbing pains in the sides of my ribs.  I simply couldn't expand my chest to get air in, and I discovered that there is nothing remotely fun about struggling for oxygen in the middle of an endurance event.  I don't have asthma, but I felt like I could relate a little bit to what sufferers go through.  

Miles 9 through 13 didn't get much worse: 9:19, 8:55, 9:49, 9:15, and 9:40.  On the one hand, this was comforting, but on another, it was deeply worrisome -- I should not have been struggling to run 9:xx miles halfway through a marathon when my goal pace was 7:15/mile.  It did not bode well for the second half of the race.  In mile 12, however, I did encounter Iwan and Nelson, two friends who were racing for charity, and it was good to see such friendly faces.  I hoped they were doing better than I was.

As I approached the Scream Tunnel in Wellesley, which marks the halfway point, I noticed another disturbing thing: the world was glowing.  Or, rather, the runners whose clothes were bright (white, pink, or neon yellow) had distinct auras around them, and the brightness seared my vision such that I'd see spots when I'd shift my gaze.  I was also feeling a little bit unsteady, and I still couldn't get air in.  The Scream Tunnel was deafening and wonderful, but getting a kiss from the Wellesley women was the furthest thing from my mind -- I felt like I might simply collapse against the railing where they were.  So onward I trudged.

My first-half split was about a 1:50.  That was well off of my 1:35 goal time, but I reasoned that all I had to do was run a 2:10 second-half split (about 10:00/mile), and I could salvage a time under 4 hours.  That would be nothing to brag about, but given how I was feeling, it also wouldn't be a disaster.

It also wouldn't happen.  Miles 13-15 were a 9:38, 10:21, and 11:20, respectively.  When I hit the hills in Newton, things came to a grinding halt, more or less literally.  I was sucking air in, dumping water all over me as much as I could, putting ice under my cap, drinking multiple cups of water and Gatorade at each aid station, but I simply couldn't run more than about 100 yards without getting lightheaded.  It was also at this time that my calves and inner quads started cramping painfully, such that I had to stop multiple times to stretch.

The last ten miles were some of the toughest I've ever covered in my racing career.  I was completely shattered, couldn't breathe, couldn't run without locking up, and was just trying to keep moving in the right direction with an eye on finishing without needing medical attention.  I passed several athletes prostrate on the side of the road, covered in bags of ice and surrounded by medical personnel.  The ambulance sirens became a steady backdrop.  The only goal was forward, forward, forward.

Needless to say, any hope of a 4-hour finish evaporated as quickly as water on the sidewalk.  In the last twelve miles, my pace hovered in the 12:xx range, which was the result of 80% walking and 20% desperate, awkward shuffling.

When I reached the finish line, there was a sense of triumph, but not of the usual sort.  Instead, this was simply a survival exercise.  I briefly considered visiting the medical tent, but there were about 50 athletes in wheelchairs queue'd up to get in, many sobbing or looking dazed, and I didn't feel like I was quite that bad off.

The 4:34 total time is about two minutes fast, because my watch
auto-paused several times when I stopped to de-cramp.

I'm not sure quite where it all went wrong.  The first few miles were somewhat fast, yes, but they were downhill and not inordinately fast.  Even had I run 8-minute miles instead of 7's for the first five, I don't think the outcome would have been dramatically different.  I simply couldn't breathe or see straight, and I think the reason is that, as much as I was drinking (multiple cups from each aid station), it wasn't nearly enough.  Indeed, I had two bottles of fluid (about 40 ounces) at the finish line, but even including those, when I got back to the hotel, a scale confirmed that I had lost approximately eleven pounds.  In other words, I'd lost about 1.5 gallons (two hundred ounces, or ten bike bottles) of water since the start.  Frankly, it is something of a wonder that I was still upright.  When I got to the airport shortly thereafter, I was hit with a wave of vertigo and nausea, and I parked myself on a bench and drank about a gallon of water in an effort to put things right.  I didn't feel remotely settled until later that night.

In all, I'm not second-guessing very much about my race.  I just was nothing close to prepared, and neither was anyone else.  My training this spring was adequate to my goal, but it was somewhat rushed after a two-month winter layoff, and I had favored shorter, more intense efforts over long sessions in the sun.  Even with such sessions, however, I wouldn't have been ready for this.  There's simply no way to prepare for an 89-degree day -- a record by 5 degrees -- with full sun, in mid April.  What little tailwind there was only made things worse, as it matched our forward momentum and thereby made the air feel completely still around us.  

I have the Big Sur Marathon in eleven days, and I intend to see what I can do there.  It may not be much; my system took quite a shock, and even two days after Boston, my legs are still giving out periodically when I'm walking around.  But I'll do what I can do.  No one said this is easy!

I think someday I'd like to return to Boston to give a better account of my abilities.  Unless I pull off something highly unlikely at Big Sur, it won't be in 2013.  But who knows what the future will bring?

Race Report: Cherry Blossom 10-miler (2012)

"Running hurts.  A lot.  What a stupid sport.  Why the heck does anyone do this?"  

-Me, 10' across the finish line, Cherry Blossom 2012

It looks like my fitness may be coming around just in time.  So far this spring I'd run two races: a 10-mile portion of a marathon relay, where I crashed and burned in epic fashion, and the Rock 'n Roll Half-Marathon, where I felt okay through the first half but again cratered out to a 1:29:55 finish.  Despite those weak performances, my training had been going well, and in the last week I'd knocked out two key tempo workouts.  First, on Tuesday, I completed 3x2 miles at 6:06/mile (2' recoveries).  Then, on Friday, it was 2x3 miles at 6:15/mi, with 2 miles at marathon pace between the sets.  Those were great confidence builders with Boston looming, but they left me with something of a dilemma: how hard should I run the Cherry Blossom?  I could see an argument for cruising it at marathon pace (7:05-7:10), going hard but not full-speed (6:40-somethings), or just giving it gas and letting the pieces fall where they may.  I ultimately decided that, even if racing 10 miles two weeks ahead of a goal marathon isn't exactly a by-the-books approach, I wanted to give myself a chance to have a good race under my belt; it's never easy to head into a marathon where all of the tuneup races have gone poorly, and I didn't want that millstone around my neck.

Me and my dad before the race.

This was to be my 6th consecutive year racing the Cherry Blossom, and my previous times had been:

(2007) 1:07:12 -- 6:42/mi

(2008) 1:07:12 -- 6:42/mi

(2009) 1:06:24 -- 6:38/mi

(2010) 1:04:55 -- 6:29/mi

(2011) 1:05:06 -- 6:31/mi

The trick this year was that, not only had my other tuneup races gone poorly, but I wasn't coming into the race rested (much less tapered).  Based on my training paces, I figured a good day would be anything in the 1:04's, or under 6:30/mile.  A PR was within reach, I thought, although each year the last few miles of this race have made me feel like death on toast.   Given what we now know about wheat gluten, this is even worse than it sounds.  I resolved to try to keep it between 6:25-6:30 per mile and see what the day gave me.

Fortunately, as always seems to be the case for the Cherry Blossom, the day was a perfect, still, overcast 45 degrees.  I jogged easy for a couple of miles to warm up, then seeded myself about 3 rows from the front of the first wave corral.  I knew from past experience that the first half mile or so would be Project No Faceplant, so avoiding heels was a top priority.  In general, I find that one rarely goes wrong by seeding oneself overly aggressively, although game theory suggests that I should keep that wisdom to myself. Whoops.

The first few miles went as they always do: too fast.  The ten-mile distance is a tricky one to pace because even though you're running pretty hard, there's none of the immediate suffering of a 5k or 10k.  You must, in other words, run fairly hard without it actually feeling hard.  No matter what I do in this race, I always seem to finish the first mile (which has a little downhill) in 6:10-6:20, and this year was no exception to my overenthusiasm, clicking off a 6:08.  The highlight of the first mile was when a girl just in front of me, who must have ripped off a 6:05 opening mile, heard a spectator shout to her from over her right shoulder.  She turned her head to yell back, looking behind her, and immediately went ass-over-tea kettle, right into the pavement.  Guys were hurdling her and diving out of the way.  Fortunately, she rejoined us soon thereafter, doubtless beneficially lighter due to massive blood loss.

I resolved to slow myself down to something closer to goal pace for the mild hills over the Memorial Bridge in mile 2, and so I did: a 6:15.  Still a little hot.  Then, descending off the bridge and cruising past the Kennedy Center, I saw mile 3 flash by in 6:11 -- gadzooks. I wasn't hurting too much but I realized that this was getting silly: my midweek hard tempo runs had consisted of 2x3 miles @ 6:15, and I'd just run the first three miles of the 10-mile race at an average of 6:11.

For miles four through six, I basically just slowed myself down, kept it light, and prayed my first few miles hadn't set me up for a mid-race explosion.  I was reminded how evil 180-degree turns around cones can be when you're running fast: the acceleration back up to race pace is treacherous not only because acceleration is inherently tiring, but also because you have to identify "race pace" again starting from a standstill.  Oof.  But I kept it rolling: 6:20 and 6:23, making for a 6:15/mi pace at the half. That was a full minute faster than I planned to be, which was either very good or very bad news, depending on how the rest of the race unfolded.

But it just kept unfolding.  Mile 6 came past in a restrained 6:25, and with four miles of Hains Point to go, I had to decide whether to (1) back it off a touch and be happy with an inevitable PR, ensuring no pre-Boston injuries, (2) accelerate and try to capitalize on how good I was feeling, while risking a meltdown, or (3) just relax and keep clicking off the miles.  I opted for the last approach, remembering that my fast first few miles could catch up with me at any point, and wanting to record a solid result above all else.  So I kept it steady -- dead steady. Miles 7-9 breezed by in 6:21, 6:22, and 6:22, respectively.  It was only at that point that I really started to suffer, but I realized there was no need for last-minute heroics, so I tucked in behind a couple of guys and just concentrated on staying light.

Each year I'm reminded of how utterly nasty the last, pathetic little hill toward the finishing line can be.  It's probably no more than a 30' climb, but coming at mile 9.8 of a 10-miler is insidious.  I think the only way to handle it is just to charge up it at close to full speed, and when you get to the top, point yourself down the other side as you black out, and hope that your momentum will bounce you off of any race barricades you encounter on your way down the chute.  So that's exactly what I did, and the last mile was another 6:22 -- the fourth in a row within 1/2 second of one another.

According to my watch, I covered 10.07 miles in 6:19/mile.  The official time was 1:03:32 (6:22/mile), the difference being the extra tenth of a mile or so I ran that didn't strictly follow the shortest route on the course. Considering that my PR had been 1:04:55, and that that time had come in a fully-tapered condition, this counted as a big victory.  In fact, I realized that it hadn't actually hurt that much until the last mile or so; I think that, in a rested condition and at a time when I wasn't afraid to leave it all on the course, I might have been able to go sub-1:03.  Goals for the future!

(Finishing video at 3:25.)

The next month or so will be fully booked with two marathons: Boston on April 16th, and Big Sur 13 days later, on April 29th.  After that, my focus will be on ramping up the cycling miles ahead of some long triathlons and ultra-rides, but my running training will follow quite a different approach as I try to cross another item off of my bucket list: the 5-minute mile!  It'll be an adventure.

This is called fun.

Looking further down the road, I signed up for the California International Marathon, in Sacramento, on December 2.  It's a fast course and will come at an ideal time for me to finally break through the elusive 3-hour barrier.  My Cherry Blossom time equates to a 2:57 or 2:58 predicted marathon, and while I'm not so naive to think that I can actually pull that off at the moment, I do think that, by December, I can give it a real go.

To infinity and beyond!

Thrilled to be back in the chase

"Even if you fall on your face, you're still moving forward."  -Victor Kiam

Keep up the chase and you may reach your goal, even if the prize is only a mouthful of metal rabbit.

The last three months have been extremely difficult ones, with challenges ranging from a host of injuries after Cozumel to a neverending series of tough briefs to write at work.  At times, it's seemed as if every dawn is a bit false, and it's showed in my workouts and races.  

Two weeks ago, I had perhaps the worst race of my life when I ran the first leg of a 3-man marathon relay.   My part was just under ten miles (I got the short straw), and I realized about three miles in that my head was anywhere but in the game.  It's amazing how much mindset affects our physical capacities, and as I was trying charge up tough climbs, my heart and mind were in another place entirely.  I think that, had I not been on a relay, I'd have just abandoned a couple of miles in.  As it was, I wound up walking on many stretches of the course, and trudged into the relay handoff zone nauseated with turmoil.  I suppose I was tired, too, though I can't particularly recall.  My teammates were very kind, all things considered.

Despite it all, for the last six weeks, I've gotten my training in, even when I just had to force myself out the door sometimes.  And happily, in the last week or so, things have suddenly started to come around: Last weekend I knocked out a 22-mile run, and both of my hard midweek runs have suggested that I'm rapidly getting back to my form of last fall, when I was tearing up PRs.  I've even managed to make it to the pool four times in the last week, and I think the crossover benefits are beginning to reveal themselves.  I'm not where I need to be yet, but my weight is plummeting according to plan, and I'm raring to go.  I'm optimistic that, by the time Boston and Big Sur roll around next month, I'll be ready for 'em.  I've even knocked out the first half of my forthcoming book!

I'm not quite the same athlete I was last fall, though.  I've learned some things about myself, and a big one is that endurance training and racing are deeply imperfect substitutes for the things that matter in life's final analysis.  We have to enjoy the process, not merely idolize a possible result about which no one but us truly cares, and we must remember that, as much as we love to run, ride, or swim, those things do not care equally about us.  At their best, endurance adventures can teach us a lot about ourselves, but only if we don't mistake the messenger for the message.  

Two Steps Forward By One Step Back

“A lot of what we see in athletes that just train all the time and never give themselves adequate recovery is often portrayed as toughness. What I’ve realized over the years is it really is a weakness. It’s an insecurity that you’re not good enough to recover like other athletes: I’m not good enough to do that; I need to keep training; I can’t take time off; I can’t take easy days.” -Alberto Salazar

Sometimes you've gotta take some time off from the chase.

Today I realized that, after typing my fingers off in December and the first part of January, it's been three weeks since I posted anything.  I wish I could say that it's been performance art -- a witting illustration that, in blogging well as in racing, one can't go out too fast without risking a blow-up long before the finish line.   But it hasn't been anything quite like that.  I had no advice in mind.  Instead, I was just thinking about other things.

After training for 13 months nonstop, I took the month of December off by design.  I was mentally exhausted and physically broken from my bike wreck and subsequent death march in Cozumel, and I just couldn't imagine doing anything structured.  I'd envisioned taking a few weeks to goof off with step aerobics or whatever silliness struck my fancy before dialing things in once more starting January 1st, with an eye toward a solid 16-week training block heading into Boston.  Instead, I got to January and tried to crank it up, but it wasn't happening.  I'd get home from work and, instead of looking forward to a ride or a run, I'd really want nothing more than to read a book with a glass of wine.  I realized that it had been a very long time since I'd really had time to dedicate to interests other than training, and I'd forgotten that I have quite a few of them.  What's more, a close-order-drill of massive deadlines at work and some challenges in my personal life conspired to ensure that my mind was on anything but training.

Interestingly, in the last couple of weeks, I've gotten a couple of unsolicited emails from people who have been struggling with just the opposite problem: they've found themselves, in late January and early February, dead on their feet and displaying all of the classic symptoms of overtraining.  I can relate to what they're going through.  There have been many winters in the last few years when the last race of the season has only spurred me to buckle down twice as hard in the winter months to ensure that I'm poised for a PR-shattering season come the following April.  It's been effective to an extent, but it's also true that I plateaued for a number of years without understanding why.  In fact, it took me four years -- from June 2007 through July 2011 -- to lower my times at the half-Ironman and Ironman distances.   It was only after doing something completely different last winter by doing zero cycling or swimming for five months, and focusing only on running, that I was able to make progress.  Revealingly, despite that exclusive focus on running all the way through late April, when the summer races rolled around, I set PRs not only on the run leg of triathlons, but also on the bike and swim legs.  

I think the Salazar quotation at the top of this post is exactly right.  Unfortunately, it's the sort of quotation that many people will deem quasi-profound but won't actually embrace until they discover it for themselves.  "Rest is great!" they'll think, as they're on their way to the pool at 5:00 a.m. on a cold January morning, having slept for four hours.  "I could really use some of that, but I'm working my ass off, and that'll show come Ironman Wisconsin in September."

Maybe so.  But maybe not -- and at what cost to the rest of one's life?  Training for hours every day year-round, and adding extra credit beyond the training plan, ultimately is a form of mental insurance: If an athlete errs on the side of overtraining, he ensures that, if a race doesn't go his way, he at least can tell himself that he could have done nothing more.  Surely there's solace in that literal truth, but it misses the point that, in a more profound sense, he might have done more by doing less.  As Salazar said, it takes confidence and bravery to trust one's body enough to take rest as seriously as training.

At the moment, I suppose a mathematician might say that I'm testing the theoretical limits of the proposition that one gets stronger through rest.  I find myself 9 weeks out from Boston and struggling mightily on my long runs.  But I've stayed afloat through tough workouts for the last week, and I feel myself getting stronger by the day.  Who knows what'll happen come April?  Maybe I won't crack three hours, but that wouldn't be the end of the world.  Training is an important part of my life, but I refuse to make it the only part when my mind and body are telling me not to.  Epic races are terrific fun and wonderful motivation, but I won't make them golden calves.   And who's to say that the trick to taking a big step forward isn't first to have the confidence to take a small step back? 

Reasons

Cycling is so hard, the suffering is so intense, that it’s absolutely cleansing. The pain is so deep and strong that a curtain descends over your brain... Once, someone asked me what pleasure I took in riding for so long. ’Pleasure?’ I said. ’I don’t understand the question.’ I didn’t do it for pleasure, I did it for pain."

-Lance Armstrong

Sometimes I find myself looking forward to a day when I ride simply because I want to, not because I need to.  If there is an external barometer of my happiness, in some ways it could be described as inversely related to my athletic ambition.  I suspect that I am not alone in this, although it has taken me years to recognize it.  To the driven, maximizing one's achievements is equal parts moral compulsion and snipe hunt: who would settle for less?  But how can we reach our potential in every worthy pursuit?  Decisions are thrust upon us, and at times, I question certain of my choices.

Anesthesia through limitless exertion appears preferable to any other kind: it honors our gifts more truly.  Yet anesthesia by its lights offers mere superficial succor, sequestering symptoms and side effects -- it does not curb the malady.  Equally, the relief it offers is fleeting, and as we acclimate, we demand more, ultimately ensuring that we fall short in our grasp for stable orbit. 

We must always interrogate our reasons.  Past choices are made, but future ones are not faits accomplis.  Sometimes the familiar path of least resistance is a mere Mobius strip, bringing us glimpses of our destination, but presenting no true means of bridging the gap.  It is incumbent upon us to find the way by constant assessment, even if honest reflection risks fatal damage to long-treasured premises.

Bikes Bring People Together

Since I bought my first "adult" bike in 2005, an aluminum Cervelo P2SL, I've never ceased being amazed at how many people that decision has enabled me to meet.

Just another day in the saddle.

To take but one obvious example, through the years I've met literally hundreds of athletes through Team Z, but it hardly stops there.  Some of my closest friend are similarly masochistic folks with whom I've bonded for 10+ hours at a time while grinding up punishing climbs at Mountains of Misery and the Diabolical Double.

In my experience, you can never tell who might be spinning the cranks just next to you.  During my first crack at Mountains of Misery, in 2007, I found myself in a paceline with a guy festooned with blazingly bright maple leaves on every item of his clothing -- including his socks.  We introduced ourselves, and it turned out to be Leslie Reissner, a Canadian diplomat who worked at the embassy in downtown D.C.  We got to know each other pretty well during the day, and met up for another challenge century, the Mountain Mama, later that summer.  Unfortunately, I only met him twice -- he was soon sent back to Canada, and then to Germany -- but we still keep in touch on Facebook, and he's extended several invitations to come and ride around Europe with him.  In the meantime, it turns out that he's a fascinating guy, with interests ranging from architecture to history, flying, cooking, bicycle touring, to opera and wildlife conservation.  He's also a gifted and prolific writer, not only of an entertaining blog, but also of many insightful book reviews on Pez Cycling and other sites.   All it took was a couple of long jaunts down the road together.

Hiking up Skyline Drive last autumn.  I'm in the grey kit on the right.  I rode behind Andy, the guy in yellow, because I found his expression entirely unnerving.  Also, it seems I can't ride in front of him.  Photo credit to Jenny Gephart, who took this riding uphill, looking backward, and threatened to sue me unless I said so.  One also meets pretty persuasive people while cycling.

A little bit closer to home, I've noticed that, among the lawyerly set in D.C. at least, cycling is the new golf.  (Thank goodness.)  In my years with a private law firm and the Department of Justice, I've yet to meet any avid golfers, but cyclists are everywhere, and crop up in the least expected places, always for the better.  A couple of years back, I interviewed for an in-house counsel position with a large telecommunications company.  After spending a few hours meeting groups of attorneys, I met with a vice president of the legal department -- a very senior guy, and one whom everyone described as intense and intimidating.  He's the guy you have to impress, they said.  Well, I sat down expecting the worst, and the first thing he said was, "so you're a cyclist?"  I'd listed it as an interest on my resume, and it turns out that he was equally avid about it.  We'd both ridden Mountains of Misery and similar rides, and the overlap went further still.  It turns out that, that morning, we'd both been at swim practice at the same pool.  In fact, we were on the same triathlon team.  Later that year, I was cheering on athletes at Ironman Florida, and on the run course, I found myself giving a motivational talk to, and frantically shuttling chicken soup to, this allegedly intimidating corporate VP, who was cramping up severely.  We're all equals out there.

Some, however, are more equal than others, a fact of which I was reminded yesterday on my flight home from California.  I noted a guy across the aisle, and a couple of rows up, leafing enthusiastically through a cycling magazine like a kid on Christmas, and I felt an immediate kinship -- someone who shares the obsession!  He looked the part: 50's, closely cropped hair, very trim, and no-nonsense.  Moments before, I'd finished reading Hell on Two Wheels, an excellent account of the 2009 Race Across America.  For those who don't know, that race covers about 3,000 miles, from San Diego to Annapolis, MD, every summer.  Only 10-15 people usually complete it successfully, and those often ride for 22+ hours a day for 10-12 days straight in order to do it.  It's billed as the most extreme endurance event on earth, and was the subject of the award-winning documentary "Bicycle Dreams."  (It's outstanding, incidentally.)

I figured that, if the guy reading the bike magazine was as enthusiastic about the sport as he appeared, he'd probably love Hell on Two Wheels, so when we got off the plane and were waiting for the train in Dallas, I said hello, mentioned that I saw him reading the magazine, and handed him the book, suggesting that he might want to pick up a copy.  He took it, looked it over for about ten seconds, and said, "Well, what do you know," and handed it back.  He then remarked, "I actually finished that race in 1995," and extended his right hand and pointed to his ring, on which was emblazoned "RAAM 1995."  It turns out that, that year, he was one of only 10 finishers.  Our connection was immediate, and we chatted enthusiastically until he had to get off the train.  He gave me his name, and I looked him up as soon as I got home. Very impressive, Ricky Wray Wilson, very impressive.

It just goes to show that, when it comes to cycling, you can never tell whom you're going to meet.  It brings us together, and thank goodness -- the world needs more things like it.

I'm writing a book!

Big news!  I've just finalized a contract with Endurance Planet and Ben Greenfield Fitness to write a book on endurance sports, to be released later this year! 

Obviously, it'll be a page-turner.

The working title is, "Advice from the Trenches: Endurance Planet's Insider's Guide to Sports Performance."  During my years in endurance sports, I've written a number of guides and lists of tips and tricks, and given all sorts of advice to aspiring and veteran endurance athletes.  This book will distill and expand on the things that people have found most helpful, and should provide a huge amount of concrete, useful information to help athletes get the most out of themselves in their training and racing.

I've personally gotten a great deal out of the Endurance Planet and Ben Greenfield Fitness podcasts and resources over the past couple of years, and I'm really looking forward to working with those guys to produce something terrific.  It'll be available on e-readers from iPad to Kindle to Nook, as well as in hard copy.

More details as they emerge!