One Mile Time Trial: Act Four

Mmmm, taste the toxins!



Apparently, drinking from a garden hose is not recommended.  It contains lead.  Lots of lead.  Like, Chinese toys amount of lead.  When I was a wee lad, I drank from the garden hose all the time which may explain my severe social disorders and four testicles.  But those were the days when seat belts were optional and my brother and I took long family car trips while rolling around the back of the family station wagon.  Safety first!

So, if you have a kid (and you like them), please don't let them drink the lead water from a hose.  Neighbor kid?  Fine, go right ahead but not your kid. (source)

What does this have to do with my one mile time trial?  Nothing really but then again this isn't your blog.  Nothing, I guess, except that it's damn hot out and I'd drink all of the water from all of the Chinese garden hoses in...China if it meant moisture going INTO me rather than out.

It was in this 90 degree/50% humidity climate I decide to tackle my fourth in installment of this summer's One Mile Time Trial.  I can't ignore all of the emails I get asking - nay, DEMANDING! - it's return.  Clever how you guys keep sending me those emails pretending to be from a Canadian pharmacy or offering me Viagra at a discount rate just to trick me into opening it and reading your desperate pleas for another installment.  I don't even open them either because I get my Canadian pills and Viagra and enlargement pills (oh, yeah, those too) from a guy at my local gym.  Jokes.  On.  You.

A brief recap:  One mile = 4 laps at the track or 1600 meters.  It's formally called the One Mile Time Trial series after I rejected proposed titles such as Who Gives a Shit About 9 Meters? and After Running Four Laps, Thirty More Feet Don't Matter.  Those were too clunky.

Act one: 5:39
Act two: 5:38
Act three: 5:34

Today?  How 'bouts 5:26!

Definitely trending in the right direction.  I'm feeling my sluggish cardio starting to come back around.  Must have been all of the Canadian pills and garden hose water chasers.

I'll check back in late July with another installment of this edge-of-your-seat thriller series!

Until then, stay hydrated, the lead-free way.  If you have a rich relative with tenuous health, perhaps whip them up a batch of garden hose lemonade?  You aren't getting any younger.

Happy trails.

When Did Florida Come to Michigan?

I’m on record as saying that I don’t like cold weather and I never complain about the heat.  We get temperatures that are below my personal liking for 8-9 months of the year so I make it a point to NOT COMPLAIN during the few weeks where it is stifling, unbearably hot.  Like, now.  After all, in a few short weeks, I’ll be bitchin’ about the cold again.  So, consider the following an observation not a complaint.  (ed. Heat, don’t go away.  You complete me.  The lawn looks better brown, believe me.)

In fact, there’s a few time honored traditions around these parts.  For the region’s notoriously unpredictable weather, Michiganders like to say, ‘Don’t like the weather?  Wait five minutes and it’ll change’.  Mrs. Nitmos and I always eagerly await the first time the local news anchor turns to the weatherman and deploys the yearly news patter cliché, “Now, here’s Rob with the forecast.  Rob, are we ever going to get relief from this heat?”  This is usually accompanied with a sigh and a hand fanning to cool their fake heat stroke.  Hilarious, right?  At my house, this is also accompanied by a shared eye roll and a snarky comment:  “Yeah, when it’s 40 fucking degrees or below for 8 straight months asshole!”

Despite the obvious simmering hostility described above, you might be surprised to learn that I’m generally a jolly drunk.*  I’d go as far to say that I probably wouldn't even cannibalize someone when mixing bath salts with LSD.  I might grab a nibble – just a sample really – but hardly a full meal. 

But the string of 90+, highly humid days has tested my love of warmth.

Running?  Yeah, it’s getting done but not at nearly the same paces I had planned.  My sweat glands are giving out after three miles.  Today, I doubled back to go again through a lawn sprinkler that was spraying across the sidewalk.  I wanted to strip naked and fold myself over it like a hero saving his buddies from a grenade…to feel the cool liquid jettison into me…to drink the thin waterpik dental spray from the top holes.  But I quickly realized that my anus hasn’t been bleached in several months and the HOT hasn’t fully robbed me of my sense of social decorum and class.  It’s hard to be classy with an exposed, unbleached anus while dry humping the neighbors sprinkler.  The More You Know. (queue rainbow)

I haven’t run in heat like this since we wisely took a family trip to Florida last….AUGUST(?!?)  It feels like Florida moved to Michigan but it didn’t bring the palm trees, beaches, tourists in white rental cars, or frontier justice with it.  I don’t know how you hot weather state people do it.  I guess everyone acclimatizes?  I’ve noticed that my last few HOLY HUMID HELL runs have gone better than the first few.  By September, anything below 80 will probably feel like a break.

So, I’ll again do my exciting One Mile Time Trial summer series tomorrow, as planned.  I’ll hit 11-12 miles on Sunday in my ancestral homeland, as planned.  I’ll continue to do it all with or without my sweat glands…with or without an unevenly bleached anus.  I’ll do it all even if the community puts up Wanted posters for the "Sprinkler Rapist".  (It’s not my fault, they were asking for it.  They’re the ones that left the garage looking all cool and wet, amirite?  Maybe that’s the dehydration talking…)

I’ll keep staggering on in the HOLY HUMID HELL hot.  One of us will give out eventually. This is not a complaint but merely an observation.

I just wish I knew when I’ll get some relief from this heat??  Rob??  /fansselfsarcastically

Happy trails.

* I make it a point to always be drunk by the time the nightly news comes on.  Coping mechanism for the news patter.

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‘Member a long time ago – almost exactly three months in fact – when I told you that you shouldn’t be surprised if I disappeared suddenly at the end of each quarter?  Well, look at your calendar, it’s the end of June or, as we say in the biz, the “second quarter”.  See, if you had been paying attention to the minutiae of FMS  you wouldn’t have been gnashing your teeth and mumbling to yourself, “When is Nitmos going to post again?!?”  Lesson learned?  Let’s hope so.  Pay better attention.

Quick quiz:  What do you think is going to happen on this blog over the last two weeks of, say, September?

The 800 Meter Elephant in the Room

Ready for a confession?

The truth is that I don’t really like my Tuesday track 800 interval sessions.  Who wants to get that hot and sweaty and just plain ole tired?  I’d rather run easy like this guy I see out on my routes all of the time that just kinda saunters in a weird hybrid run-walk.  If you photographed him, he’d look like he was running hard based on the pump of his arms and grimace of sheer exhaustion on his face but, upon closer inspection, you realize he’s just ambling along slowly in a Near Run as if he’s trying to fool a distracted gym teacher.  He’s not quite running.  He’s the Zima of running.  I’d like to be more like Zima on occasion.

No, there is no love for me and 800’s.  They fall into the “necessary evil” category of my personality flaw: Unquenchable PR lust. 

In fact, 800’s are often pure torture.  But I’m nothing if not a bit of a sadomasochist.  Go ahead, ask Mrs. Nitmos’ curling iron, jar of battery acid, and the well worn riding chaps about the places they’ve been and the things they’ve poked, prodded, rubbed, or swabbed.  I’m very kind, considerate and generous to animate objects but inanimate objects?  The first thing I think is…will that fit there?!?

Of course, there is some benefit to these 800 bastards which is why I do them.  After running 800’s at a 5:30/mile pace, a regular mile in the low 6’s suddenly seems quite a bit easier.  Almost like a weird sauntering run-walk.     I know that the ball busting on the track translates into more effortless tempo runs, time trials, long runs, and, ultimately, races.  So Tuesdays, I slather on the battery acid, slip on the chaps, and plug in the curling iron for another grueling session, metaphorically speaking, of course.

I whirl around the ever expanding oval muttering sonofabitch sonofabitch sonofabitch every step of the way.  I hate it.  I clench my teeth and pinch my nipples between my thumb and forefinger harder and harder with each lap.  Why?  Well, I don’t do things half way.  If I’m going to hate it; I’m going to hate it proper.  And you just can’t hate something proper with pleasant nipples.  At least, that’s what Grandma always said.  If I want to induce a crying fit, I put on some Justin Bieber and blubber WHY ARE YOU A STAR at each straightaway between the edges of my ball gag*, streaming tears and rapidly swelling nipples.

But when they’re over and I’ve hit my goal pace, I’m as happy as a submissive that’s received his last lash.  I have a full week to recover and forget until the dread grows again the following Tuesday morning.

What’s even worse now is that my local high school track is hosting all sorts of end of the school year track events, summer running clubs, and field days and the first two lanes are littered with hurdles, discarded jackets, and empty water bottles.  The 800’s are more like 820’s and the nice, smooth laps are more like a steeplechase.  Isn’t the stress of the 800 intervals, ball gags, nipple twisting and Bieber enough pain for one person?  Next thing you know, the water fountain will start streaming Zima.

Makes me dream of the relative comfort of a rapidly warming curling iron….

I admit it.  I don’t like my 800’s and I feel better for having said it.  But I’m going to keep on doing it until my PR lust is quenched or my nipples explode like a teenager working a zit in the mirror.

Pray for the former, will ya?  Meantime, pass the Zima.

Happy trails.

* Oh, yeah, I wear one of those too.

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I'd like you to note how seamlessly Feet Meet Street manages to juxtapose posts with family soccer photos and ball gags.  Weird or AWESOME!?!  You decide.