Resolving the New Year....

It is said that what you do to end the year is what you will do the most of in the next.  Today, I went SCUBA diving with a friend on the reef out east of American Shoal.  The sky and the sea were equals trying to best each other in a contest to determine which was more beautiful; both equally clear and and of nearly equal hue.  Both exactly the same 75 degrees and the only indication that there was a contest between them to see which was closer to perfect was the choppy, ever moving boundary between them.  We bagged 11 lobster and a nice black grouper.  Truly a "Chamber of Commerce" day for the last day of 2011.  And if this was any indication, I'd say 2012 will be just fine.
But it is not my intent to take that for granted. I need to draw the picture; how do I want my new year turn out? Hmmmm....maybe that's what resolutions are for: to help resolve the details of what the new year should look like. 
Ah, but what is a Blog without some mention of resolutions for the New Year; those cobbles of good intent that are legendary for paving the Road to Perdition?  I really don't believe that notion about good intent, by the way.  Good acts and sustained positive results are not possible without first there being a good intent...someplace.....  Intent is necessary.  Yes, there are a great many "good intentions" that either began as lip service and so died a vacant death, or for whatever reason began well but one excuse or another caused them to fall to the roadbed and Time marched them into well worn ruts. But the Road to Hell was, is and always will be laid down by the wicked and paved with acts of omission and volition at the foundation of which are bad intent, not good.  It's a theory, anyway.
So, to my resolutions.  They are reflective of elements of my life I've been watching for a while now and which could use a tweak or two to help me bring a little more focus to the picture and make a go of 2012.   There's nothing dramatic here; I have no new leaves to turn over or horses to climb back upon.  This is just maintenance and I hope that putting them to black and white will help me to  be the better "artist".  My written Intent, if you will.  I so resolve:

1) To write more.  I am enjoying the process whereby I choose my Blog subjects.  It makes me more observant of my life.  I am interested in seeing more.

2) To close my eyes and listen (just not while I'm driving...).  A friend and fellow Aikidoka recommended this to me.  Close your eyes (and your mouth) for just a few moments and listen to your surroundings.  What do you hear?  He's done this many times in public places in the US and abroad (he loves traveling to Europe).  He says this exercise is why The Netherlands is his favorite place on Earth.  He's never heard sadness or anger there.  While I don't think the practice will make me a devout Oranje-phile (truly, I have the fondest sentiments for my few Dutch friends),  the few times I have tried it have yielded interesting results--results worth studying and maybe writing about later.

3) To make the principles of Aikido more a part of everyday life outside the dojo.  Aikido is the martial art I chose to practice when I was stationed in Korea.  Six years later I am still at it.  I guess you can say I am dedicated to the practice of the art, but that practice tends to stop at the door of the dojo.  Aikido is an art of Peace.  By contrast, I am a quick-to-anger-and-decision hot-head.  I can do better.  There are principles in the practice of my Aikido that apply well outside the school house:
     A) Aikido is to be practiced in a vigorous and joyful manner.  Apparently life should be, too.  I'm doing okay with this one.
     B) When pulled, enter.  When pushed, turn.  Think about this in terms of anger management and conflict resolution.
     C) Always forward (the power of presence).  You can be "present" in retreat just as if you are moving forward.  BUT living in or dwelling on the past is not Aiki.
     D) True victory is self-victory.  A little thoughtfulness and control before we speak and act is a good thing.
     E) Make breathing part of the technique.  Breathe, wiggle your toes.  You'll be fine.  Learned this one flying formation through a thunderstorm in flight school, long before I found Aikido.  No kidding, it works.

4) To work on my vocabulary.  In the movie A Christmas Story, young Ralph describes his father as working "in profanity the way other artists might work in oils or clay; it was his true medium."  Yeah, I do that, too.  I am given to the use of all manner of expletive.  I feel diminished after I resort to it.  I tend to believe that over use of obscenity is a sign of a limited imagination.  That said, there is merit to the use of the well placed tactically considered F-bomb. But such words or their synonyms and dramatic cousins should not be subject, object, verb and adjective all in the same utterance.  Consider your words as you do your actions.  They are the tint of the lens through which you are viewed.

5) To continue with my fitness efforts.  Easy one. Softball, for sure.  The running, work outs, prepping for my first triathlon; all of it so far is a ton of fun and I continue to find myself in the company of the most wonderful people.

Finally,what's not listed here:  such resolutions as "feed the hungry", "adopt a sheltered pet", "help the poor", "shelter the abused" (though I am more prone to favor "bring brutal accountability to the abuser") or other related noble intentions are not listed here.  I already have a cause, and I am fortunate enough that acting on that cause is part of my job day in and day out.   I thank God everyday that I am allowed to be a part of that, and that it demands so very much of me. 
It's not that I don't believe these others to be worthy as causes or as resolutions.  More likely it's that I don't think myself worthy enough to carry them out.  There are far stronger folks than I who make these intentions into everyday acts of their own, and so I resolve that I will support them in their acts when I am able. 
Six Resolutions written above.  Just words, or are they the good intent paving a way to follow into a good new year? I'm being pulled that way and I will enter...so.

Kites, Pirates and The Very Special Theory of Santa-tivity

In the news there is word that scientists at CERN, in Switzerland, using the 17 mile long Large Hadron Collider (LHC), found evidence of conditions that will lead them to discover the presence of the Higgs Boson.  The sub-subatomic Higgs Boson is a fundamental building block of matter and is believed to be, by the Higgs field it creates, the thing that gives all matter its mass.  This is another step in the truly important work going on at CERN's LHC. Recently they captured and held antimatter in a magnetic field and now they have found the fundamental stuff of the universe.  Very cool and very important.  Why?  Well, two reasons actually. The first is that we are one step closer to developing a [more] thorough understanding of the universe and its origins and physical laws that govern it. Confirming the existence of the Higgs particle, it is said, will very neatly tie together the all the parts of the Standard Model of the Universe.
The second reason is that we may finally be able to put settled science behind the theory for how Santa Claus actually manages to make it to all those houses in the space of a single night.  That theory is already in development in the minds of some young boys I know here in the Keys...

It was another “any December Sunday in the Keys”.  It was warm, nearly 80 degrees, but not hot.  It was a little humid, but that didn’t matter since we were already waste deep in seawater when the sun came up. The water was a brisk 68 degrees.  We wore wetsuits, the southernmost answer to the “winter layer”.

And it was windy.  Most folks in the Keys hope for the days when the wind is not part of the recipe.  For me a perfect Sunday starts with 20 knots out of the east. Sapphire skies and tourmaline waters just make the whole thing better than going to church.  Spirit is everywhere.  Religion is where you put yourself to best connect to it.

Sunday was “down-winder” day.  We launched our kites from a friend’s beach in Niles’ Channel, a few miles from my house.  Our mission was to kite surf roughly 20 miles downwind to a remote beach in the Great White Heron National Wildlife Refuge, the “Back Country”, to be part of another friend’s retirement celebration.  We figured it would be a good visual to arrive “under kite”.  With  a few minor complications at the launch site we all got underway with our largest kites and boards to ride the lighter than forecast winds.  Along with us was our friend and fellow kiter, Dan, in his boat.  Dan was the “safety” for the day.  His wife had to work so he had his young son, not yet a kiter, along.  Also in the boat with Dan and his son were the young sons of our unofficial group leader, Wade.  I should mention that Dan is a great father, valued colleague and good friend.  He has the patience of a saint and one of the most easygoing demeanors I have ever met.  He has a wonderfully mischievous sense of humor.

In order to get downwind to our objective we first had to travel several miles upwind.  Making the kite and board combination carry you upwind is final major hurdle in anyone’s basic training to be a kite boarder.  Once you learn it becomes fairly easy as long as you have the right kite / board combination for the wind and as long as the wind and current aren’t pitted against you in unison.  For the day’s run I chose the exactly correct kite and board combo for running downwind.  It was not the right match up at all for the initial upwind leg.  Rookie move, Hudgins.  I spent a good chunk of my morning in tacking drills trying to get northward out of  Niles Channel past Toptree Hammock and into the open Back Country where I could run downwind past Tarpon Belly then Johnston Key toward our first waypoint, the tidal bar on the south side of Marvin’s Key.  It was hard going; my only recourse beyond continuing with the upwind slog was to admit defeat and get in the safe boat with Dan and the kids.  Not even maybe…

I eventually emerged into open water and made up time.  I joined the rest of the group at Marvin’s Key.  We rested a bit and rehydrated, and then lit out for our final destination, a place called Waltz Beach.  This is another tidal bar, deposited by Hurricane Wilma, I think, back in 2005.  At low tide it presents a perfectly white sand beach with a channel running through it.  There are a few such stunningly beautiful beaches throughout the Back Country.  If you are lucky and know a local with a boat, you can get there.  No boat, no beach.  Unless you can ride a kite.

As we left Marvin’s Key, my three compatriots decided a northerly start was again the good call.  But with open water to my south and west and knowing that upwind was not my strong direction that day, I stayed south as I left Marvin’s Key.  It was a good call.  Staying in the lee of the Marvin Keys, and by keeping my kite high in the drive window, I was blessed to travel over glassy calm, clear water no more than two feet deep.  Bait fish, skates, crabs, and coral heads were on display in the noon sun.  I chose well and my path put me well out ahead of my mates.  Unlike during the initial upwind run, Dan and his safety boat would not be monitoring my slow progress.  Instead he followed my mates who were already getting beat up on the north side of the Back Country.

My tack from the start put me on course for the near beach side of Snipe’s Point and the north beach of Snipe’s Key.  With 15 knots of wind out of the northeast, and with the tide coming in, the passage under a kite by the north side of the sandy shallows and rocky outcrops of Snipe’s Key is akin to a sailing vessel passing Cape Hateras or Cape Horn in a winter gale.  It’s rough; the swells and breaking waves propagate at seemingly random intervals adjusted by the unforgiving bottom terrain over which they roll.  It takes a good deal of concentration to take a kite through there without crashing.  As I transitioned from the calm waters east of Snipe’s Point my focus went entirely to keeping the kite driving and keeping the leading edge of my board out of the water.  It was a tough run, but it was fun.  I hopped over breakers and skipped from one wave top to the next.  When I finally cleared what we call Hatcher Point, a pile of rocks named for our friend and kiting instructor because they foil his best efforts to pass Snipe’s Key without incident, I jibed south into calmer waters and made my way down Mud Key Channel and into the Outer Narrows.  From there it was a short upwind leg to our objective:  A gathering of the Backwater Pirates to honor a friend as he retired from federal service and to welcome some new Pirates to the fold.   I could see the pirate flags on their boats from a mile off, and apparently the Pirates knew it was me in black neoprene and dark shades under a black kite.  Their story?  “Hell, Seth, we knew it was you.  There isn’t another kite surfer we know who’s got a head that shines like yours on a sunny day!”  Good one.  

With our kites landed and stowed and our respects paid to the Pirates, the only thing left to do in the day was load up Dan’s boat with ourselves and our gear and head home.

You remember Dan, right?  Good friend, great sense of humor, spent his day following us as the safety boat?  Dan had just spent the morning and part of the afternoon on his boat, alone except for the very energetic and inquisitive minds of three elementary school aged boys.  They peppered him with every sort of query from “Why don’t you have the same outboard engine as my dad?” to “How is Santa Claus able to stop at EVERY house on Christmas eve?”

On Monday morning, as I sat at my desk starting my work for the day, Dan walked in and informed the other parents in the room that they had to start teaching theoretical physics to their children (these boys are 8 and 9 years old).  It was the very first thing he said at 0645.  Not even a “good morning” or the usual “What’s going on, bitches?”  He was clearly agitated and not a little panicky.  “You guys have to teach your boys theoretical physics.” 

I have no children but I am a bit of a nerd (see the opening paragraphs to this post), so I stopped my work and turned to listen to Dan tell his tale of his Sunday with the kids in his boat:

“Man, they asked me every question under the sun.  But when they asked me how Santa was able to hit every house on the planet in one night, I started to get nervous.  How do I answer that?” he asked.  “I told them he has shortcuts.  That shut them up for no more than 10 seconds before the questions began again.”

“What shortcuts?  How does he find them? Where are they?”

Dan is also well educated.  He went to Georgetown.  Georgetown College in Kentucky.  He did the best he could.  “Well, you know how you draw a line between 2 points on a piece of paper?  That line is a certain distance if you walk along it.  But if you fold that paper so that the two points are right next to each other, the distance is much, much shorter.  Santa uses that to make his shortcuts”  Dan was using the folding of the fabric of space to show how Santa traveled.  I was intrigued, to say the least.

“Well, how does he DO that?” the boys asked.

“Man, I don’t know. It took some brains to figure that part out.  Do you guys know who Albert Einstein is?”

The oldest boy, wanting to seem read in to Dan’s explanation said “Yeah, I think we read about him at school.”

“Well,” said Dan, “he figured all this out for Santa.  The science, the math, the reindeer, size of the sleigh.  Everything.  Smart, smart guy.  I don’t understand it all, but I know it works.”

The in-unison “Ohhhhhhh…” from all three boys indicated that they understood, if not the physics, then certainly that Santa really did possess an ability that was beyond their ken.  

Dan let us know that the boys instantly started talking among themselves about folding the paper and then the earth and sky to “make it shorter”.  “My explanation got me off the hook, but you guys better brush up on your physics.”  We laughed at that; a couple of us more nervously than the others...

And so was born the Theory of  Santa-tivity; the relativistic theory of how The Patron Saint of children and sailors makes his rounds on Christmas Eve.  Dan, very much a child in his playful manner and ever his son’s father planted a seed in the fertile ground of the imaginations of three young boys, and they've set out perhaps to continue the work Einstein started to help The Kringle travel.

Einstein is noted to have said, “My sense of God is my sense of wonder about the universe.”

Think about it.  Surely if you can believe (and be excited) in the notion that Man can see into the depths of the universe to understand its intricate workings; if you can have faith (and be humbled) that a boy-king was born to save an entire people; then certainly there is room (and a smile) for the idea of a jolly old man on a reindeer drawn sleigh whose only purpose in the universe is to bring child-like joy to the world.  That he manipulates space-time to make his job a touch easier should just be nothing but fun to imagine.  If you find yourself “theorizing” how he might do that, well, congratulations.  Part of you still remembers what it is to be a child.  And only a child's wonder can imagine that broadest universe of possibility.  Merry Christmas.

A Marathon...Really?

It was a big day  for me. On 27 November, I ran in the Space Coast Marathon, Florida's oldest running race. It was the 40th anniversary, too. It was my first Marathon.

Yup, I did the thing that for the longest time, when mentioned in my presence, elicited the response "Man, I don't want to do anything that feels good for that long!"
And it was pretty cool...I mean, it's not a big deal in the broad universe of things to consider (I didn’t set out to win it or even come close to doing so); but it's not so small a thing either. Some effort went into getting to point where I could finish let alone do so in under 4 hours--my own effort and that of a handful of wonderful people.

I did not get there on my own. Even though I ran ALL of my long training runs alone long before the sun came up on many Saturdays (before most of you were awake--I'm twisted that way), I was buoyed along and cheered on by friends and family. THAT is the fuel that keeps you going.  And I have a ton of folks to thank for their love, support and encouragement.  Jen Hudgins, thanks for the love and for understanding, if not the running, then the need to do it and all the other whacky things I do. Thank you for being the Home Team cheering section. Ultara, HardCore, Rock Star (Tara Tosta, Kim Austin, Sheri Golden), my Marathon Muses and Mentors throughout the last year of workups and training. You kept my brain filled with the right mix of science, lore, and expertise to help me think like and be a Runner. Your encouragement lighted the way to what I consider a success and a great experience. Thanks for training me and training with me.

Cupcakes! Mistress Hay-Hay, "Big" Jess, and Melissa (Halley Haack, Jessica Sheffield, Melissa Impallomeni). You made the training tolerable because you made it FUN. Your positive energy could run a small city. It is infectious and it motivates me. You three put me back in my running shoes. Thank you.

Jen McKay, Mike Hester; you believed. Thanks for training with me. I am faster and stronger for it.
To all the rest of you, my friends and family, for your words of encouragement, your love, for the imagery of golf carts and Blue Moon beer on race day, for setting the example and providing the level to which I need to aspire. Thanks.

With thanks put appropriately first and now out of the way, this post will be about some observations and lessons learned from my training and from the Marathon itself.

1)      Believe and Do.  If you have any inkling at all that you want to try to run an endurance race (half marathon or longer), I strongly recommend that you do it.  It was a great experience and I am pleased beyond words that I did it.  If you want a challenge beyond the grind of your daily routine, if you want a truly human community experience that allows you to pit yourself against, well, yourself, and then against and alongside elite athletes from all over the planet, then a Marathon (or other such endurance event) is for you.  Of course, this is a recommendation based on a lesson learned after the fact.  Why did I originally commit to a Marathon?  Man, I don’t know.  One morning I woke up on the wrong side of the bed.  I spent the next three days cranky and restless.  Me, restless, is not good.  The mind thinks unsavory thoughts, plans devilish acts.  When the body finds itself with excess energy, it must DO SOMETHING to expend it.  Push-ups weren’t enough, so I started running.  I ran a 5K with friends, the result of which was *yawn* mediocre.   Aha!  A challenge.  “Do better or quit,” I told myself.  I did not quit.  A ran another 5K.  And another, and then a Warrior Dash (Google it.  It’s a blast.)  I improved at the 5K level (won a few medals), but I needed a bigger challenge.  And so I committed to a Marathon and started training.

2)      Set a goal for yourself and find the training expertise to help you achieve it.  When I finally let the cat out of the bag, that I would be running my first Marathon, I got a ton of enthusiasm and some very specific advice from my running friends.  One of the most important bits of help was my training schedule.  I decided that, once started, not finishing a Marathon was not an option.  I needed a training plan that when followed would get me across the line running (walking was also a non starter idea).  Under the heading of “your eyes may be bigger than your stomach”, or “you might be writing checks your body cannot cash”, I set a loftier secondary goal to finish my first marathon in under 4 hours’ time.   NOW I needed a training plan that would condition my brain and body to push faster than it was originally prepared to go.  One of my muses/mentors above had such a plan and had used it to good effect on four other marathons.  So I took a copy for myself and for the four months of training, this was my road map to success.  A copy hanged at my desk and was on my desktop on my computer at home.  Every time I looked up, there it was—what I “owed” to the Training Plan everyday for 16 weeks from August to Thanksgiving 2011.    It was a reminder of my commitment, and every time I looked at it I could hear the question, “Are you committed enough to do this instead of something fun?”  Goal number three:  Say yes to that question every time.

3)      Prep the body?  That’s the easy part.  What about the mind?  The Training Plans get your heart, lungs, legs, and core ready to run for a longer time than you normally do anything that feels REALLY good.  Don’t get me wrong:  This all feels good now.  And most of the training runs felt good when I did them, but none of them were competitive and none were run in the same environment as the one on race day.  On race day the body is ready whether you poured everything into training or you skimped on the harder stuff.  You’ll finish, I promise, if your body has that sole vote.  But it doesn't, and if your brain isn’t prepped, if it doesn’t buy into your body’s level of readiness, you won’t make it past “the Wall”.   Your training plan will have a handful of long runs on it.  My longest training run was 24 miles.  Until I embarked on this plan and the path to a Marathon, 9 miles was my longest run EVER.  Why do we do the long runs?  My experience says that this is where your brain gets trained.  This is where your body demonstrates its readiness to your psyche so that it will choose correctly when sides are picked for the battle at the Wall.  You need your mind at that point. After mile 20, your brain is a that last bit of muscle you need to keep your legs moving.  If you did any training at all, your lungs will be fine, your heart will actually be beating normally for a good workout, but what will be screaming at you to stop will be your legs.  Your brain will reason with them to keep you moving.  It will put its considerable power behind you and PUSH you to finish.  Do the long training runs.  They train your mind.  It’s the difference between running across the line smiling in triumph and walking across the line and wondering if you could have done better.

4)      As the training plan goes, so go your race results.  This is my lesson.  I finished my first Marathon exactly as my training performance indicated I would.  Oh, there were a handful of my supportive friends and family who were CONVINCED that I would finish faster, do better than what the training was telling me.  They were persuasive and for a few moments I thought maybe I would indeed qualify for the Boston Marathon on my first try.  To qualify for Boston in my age group I needed to finish in under 3 hours 30 minutes.  That’s an 8:12 pace per mile.  None of my training runs longer than 10 miles were anywhere near that pace.  My time for the Space Coast Marathon was 3 hours 53 minutes.  That’s an 8:55 pace which is what my pace was for my 23 and 24 mile training runs.    Believe the training.  If you want faster, train that way.

5)      Run in a pace group!  Really!  The Race sponsored volunteers to act as “rabbits”, or pacers.  These are experienced marathoners who know their pace and can maintain it through the finish.  They run a steady or slightly negative split which is great.  On advice of another of my mentors I chose to follow this path.  I picked the 8:35/mile pace group thinking that if it was too fast I could opt out and run a slower comfortable pace.  If it was too slow (umm, yeah, uh-huh, right) I could always speed up later—you know, as I qualified for Boston…
So, I chose this group, checked in and met my fellow pace-groupers.  Nice folks.  This was a great idea.  The first half of the race, in fact all the way to mile 17, went by in a blur.  I was feeling GREAT except for two minor setbacks. I will discuss the first of these in the next paragraph.  The second setback happened at mile 18.  Our pacer, a very nice man named Chris, kept us on a very steady pace from the start.  He had a great sense of humor and we talked the entire time.  No kidding, I could have kept  with him just for the fun of it without batting an eye.  And for his help I am very grateful—thanks, Chris!  But he cramped up and fell out of the race at mile 18 leaving the Wall and a 10K left for us to negotiate on our own.  Sigh….Please see the lesson above on preparing your mind for the race.  For me, this is where that training mattered most.  But all in all the lesson here is when you run your first marathon, use the pacer.  It’ll give you a great gage of your performance and you can run with people just like you.  It made the challenge more fun and not lonely.

6)      If you stop to pee, do not sprint to catch back up.   “Stomach issues” plagued me on my long training runs.  I learned to carry emergency toilet paper and I was lucky that I did those runs well before the sane world was awake (so were they…).  I managed, but it was enough to keep me concerned right up through race day.  A couple of lessons here. First, eat an early dinner and watch what you eat the night before.  Spaghetti with red sauce was pre-race dinner for me.  Cannoli for dessert.  Carb loading has its merit.  Worked for me, I am sure, because I felt great the next morning.  I ate early and then hydrated until bedtime.  Not a lot of water, but enough that I wasn’t thirsty through the night.  Next morning (I woke up three hours before the race), in anticipation of stomach issues, I had a half cup of black coffee right when I woke up.  The idea was to “get it all out of my system” before the race.  Bang.  It worked! With the exception of electrolyte pills and a little Hammer Gel, my stomach was empty.  That’s how I run.  Might not work for you.  I know folks who eat a full breakfast before they go race.  Not me.  Not even maybe.
So I had an empty stomach, but not an empty bladder.  It is interesting the psychological effect the starter’s pistol has on a racer’s bodily functions.  Gun went off,  my bladder filled right the heck up.  Nice timing.  Thanks.  11 miles later, I could no longer hold it and I knew that if I tried I would be ground to a halt with stomach cramps at mile 20.  So I left the pace group by sprinting ahead to the next porta-john and gave some salt water back to the US Navy.  When done, I exited the “facility” at a sprint to catch my pace group.  I believe that sprint to have been a tactical error.  If I had simply increased my pace only slightly I would have regained the group and not have burned off energy and strength that I would need later in the race.  Instead I sprinted.  Hard.  And  I caught them in 100 yards instead in a mile or so.  I felt that at miles 19 through 21.  The Wall was higher and harder as a result.  If you must stop, recognize that you abdicate your position.  Deal with it by incremental increases or not at all.  Run your race.

7)      Water and nutrition.  Yes, please!  When I do this again, I will not wear my Camelbak.  The water stations are plentiful and the race staff are more than willing to keep you hydrated with a smile.  I am signed up to run the Disney Half Marathon in January 2012.  I will rely on The Mouse for water.  But I will bring my own running food.  Your training will allow you to find the nutrition your body will want to use.  Experiment early on if you must, but by race time, unless you have a cast iron gut, you will need to have settled on nutrition for the long haul.  Electrolytes and energy.  You MUST have BOTH.  I can’t drink Gatorade or Powerade when I run (HUGE “stomach issues”).  Water is as strong as I go.  I found Hammer Nutrition’s Enduralytes capsules to be the perfect fit.  For my weight (178 pounds) I took three 30 minutes before the race and then 3 every hour during the race.  No cramps ever.  Perfect. Electrolyte problem solved, now I needed sustaining energy after about mile 7.  Sports Beans by Jelly Belly (yup, you read that right) was my snack of choice for the early parts of the race.  After about two packs (7 miles and then again at 12), I got tired of the taste.  I ate one more pack at 16 miles in anticipation of the Wall.  Key point here:  As you approach the wall, added calories helps.     Do not over do it.  A pack of Beans is only 100 calories and is all my body really wanted to take in.  Trust me.  You’ll know if you’ve taken in too much.  Pray you learn that lesson early in training.  DO NOT think that you can take in what you are burning off as you run.  The body regulates itself magnificently and you are just in care taker mode at this point.
At 18 miles, I shifted to caffeine.  Hammer Gel Espresso is my choice.  Mocha flavored, caffeinated nutrition (carbs, protein, some e-lytes) was a WONDERFULLY TASTY change from the high citrus Sports Beans as I hit the late stage of the race.  A couple hits of the Espresso Gel and the mind cleared and the body felt a little less burdened.  On retrospect, I firmly believe that using this nutrition, the race’s water sources (vice my own on my back), and had I not sprinted to catch my group after the pee stop, I would have improved my overall time in the race.  This lesson falls under the heading of Tactics, Techniques and Procedures.  Now I have some!  A corollary lesson here: Find a variety of nutrition sources that you like.  At some point your body will revolt against eating and you will just not want to put a thing in your mouth.  Fight that by making what you eat interesting to your palate.  Shifting from fruit flavors to chocolate/coffee flavors did it for me.

8)    Cross the line running.  No matter what you do all race long, you cross that finish line at a run.  You did a hell of a lot of work to get thru the last 26.2 miles.  You owe it to yourself to look good for the cameras.  Smile, dammit.  You just ran a Marathon.

First Things First...

A few friends think I write well, that I am far more expressive in the way I write than I ever could be in person or on the phone.  I'll second that latter bit.  I loathe talking on the phone.  Have never liked it--even before the advent of email and texting (yes, I am THAT old).
One friend in her typical fit of pique (I'm guessing that it is typical, or at least frequent: we've been apart for 28 years and have only just reconnected, which I find truly cool) at some idiosyncrasy of mine in our daily chats suggested that I start channeling my "talent."
For the record, I don't think I am talented.  At anything.  I do a bunch of stuff pretty well.  I have fun at, and with, what I do, but I am by no means "talented" at any of it.  When I was still active in the Navy--I retired in 2009 after 22 years a Naval Aviator--I had cause to assert (because I quite often observed the truth of it ) that there were two types of aviators: the natural pilots and those who had to work at it.  Any reasoned and unbiased review of my education, training and career will surely indicate that I was one of the non-naturals.  I struggled every day of 16 years in the cockpit to be a decent pilot and aircraft commander.  I didn't die, or lose a plane or hurt  any of my crews.  But I broke a sweat, sucked seat cushion up my ass, and frequently walked away from a night carrier landing with a (I hope) barely perceptible shiver in my gait.
After nearly 47 years of drawing breath, I can say with all certainty and a very straight face that the same can be said of a similar review of my life.  Without a specific talent for it, you live by working at it.   That's where I am, and I am completely fine with that.  But I digress.
I am starting this Blog, "The Windborne Chronicles," to have some fun with words, to put thought behind my interests which all seem to have something to do with air, breath, wind, water or.....food, and to set to words what lessons I've learned as I "work at it".