You're a good man.

Maybe the regular running will resume soon. For now, an outdoor jog through what appears to be a deceptively pleasant morning. I am headed out into a sunny day in the mid-fifties. Forecast suggests madness is coming our way.

I have not been drinking enough water. My lips are horrible chapped and maimed.

2012 Playlist*
All Your Gold - Bat For Lashes
One Thing - One Direction
Take a Walk - Passion Pit

* Short list. When I meet up with Chris at the Rec Center I turn off the tunes, and today we were having such a good conversation he ran back to the house with me.

This is a good thing, because just as we were about to turn onto my street, the wind whipped up, it began to rain -- and then to hail.

"What is this?" he exclaimed, "The Half Marathon?"

"Yeah!" I said, "It is May?"

Distance: 4.78 miles
Pace: 10:03
Route: Forest Hill Loop
Temperature: 55°
Climate: beautiful! then not beautiful!
Mood: good! and anxious. and stupid.

Visit my Team Challenge Crohn's & Colitis page and support my bid for the Chicago Marathon!

A shadow on the run.

It has been quite a week. I did not imagine I would go seven days without exercise, that was not part of the plan. Yesterday I received my brand new TEAM CHALLENGE training shirt, and am excited to train in it.

Distance: 3 miles
Route: Rec Center
Mood: anxious
Exercises: yes

Baseline: 179.5 lbs.
Today: 178.5 lbs. (-1.0)
Goal: 175 lbs.

There is enough empirical evidence in this blog that I could, if I chose to, determine whether an impending playlist will deter me from exercise. To wit; I like music from the 1960s, I am not crazy about music from the 60s. Ditto specific years, like 2005. Or 2006. Or 2007.

1967 Playlist
Mary, Mary - The Monkees
Baby, You're a Rich Man - The Beatles
Funky Broadway - Funky BroadwayPaper Sun - Traffic
Easy Rider - Janis Joplin
Hip Hug-Her - Booker T. & The MG's
She's Looking Good - Rodger Clemens
There She Goes - The Velvet Underground
Little Games - The Yardbirds
Oogum Boogum Song - Brenton Wood
Somebody to Love - Jefferson Airplane

Cooldown:
Star ****** - The Monkees

Man, that last one is offensive.

Visit my Team Challenge Crohn's & Colitis page and support my bid for the Chicago Marathon!

You can run down the waveband.

Still with the kink in my ankle. Only when I wake up. Doesn't trouble me when I run. Not yet, anyway. Today we tech for the show. It is fascinating to enter a production in this way, jumping in at the last minute.

At the same time, my new script About a Ghoul is in rehearsal at Talespinner and I have been receiving notes from rehearsals with suggestions here and there for changing lines -- even the name of one character for whom I had received a poor translation.

I had read that the word "Samira" is Arabic for friend or companion, when (in Morocco, at least) it means "one who stays up late like an owl." While I love knowing that, it is an inappropriate name for the character!

And rehearsals for The Way I Danced With You begin Monday night at Ensemble. What a busy, busy month!

Distance: 2 miles
Route: Rec Center
Mood: good
Exercises: no

The 'Strange Science' Behind The Big Business Of Exercise Recovery, Fresh Air (2/11/2019)

Today Fresh Air told me that marathon runners refer to Ibuprofen as "Vitamin I." Thanks, Terry!

Seriously, though. On yesterday's episode, author Christie Aschwanden (Good to Go: What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn from the Strange Science of Recovery) teaches us that everything we know about recovery is wrong.

For example:

1. Ibuprofen is actually harmful as a prophylactic pain reliever or for regular use as an inflammatory.
2. Proactive drinking is bad for you.
3. Relief from a foam roller is psychosomatic.

Well, we knew that last one was true. Anyway, a worthwhile listen.

Baseline: 179.5 lbs.
Today: 179.5 lbs. (-1.0)
Goal: 175 lbs.

Two miles, straight through, no stopping, no machines. Big day. Gotta move.

1977 Playlist
Every 1's a Winner - Hot Chocolate
Mr. Blue Sky - ELO
Blame It On Cain (demo) - Elvis Costello
We're A Happy Family - The Ramones
The Things We Do For Love - 10cc

Cooldown:
Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll - Ian Dury & The Blockheads

Visit my Team Challenge Crohn's & Colitis page and support my bid for the Chicago Marathon!

Annie? Are you ok? Are you ok, Annie?

Last time I got a kink in my left ankle. I can still feel it when I wake up, though it almost immediately subsides. These little pains are so odd. They aren't new, it's just part of life. They come, they go. What are they?

Distance: 3 miles
Route: Rec Center
Mood: getting there
Exercises: yes!

Okay. Ok, ok, ok. I keep thinking of the running play. I keep making little notes here about the running play. It's been ten years, it is time to revise the running play. And now I have the motivation.

Also, I am curious about my new experiment with weight machines. How stronger am I? Am I stronger? How will I change shape? Will I change shape? Right now I am quite pillowy. Maybe that will change. Maybe I will become big and pillowy, I don't know.

Baseline: 179.5 lbs.
Today: 180.5 lbs. (+0.5)
Goal: 175 lbs.

Help.

1987 Playlist
Cry, Little Sister - Gerard McMann
Rock Steady - Sting
Smooth Criminal - Michael Jackson
Hourglass - Squeeze
Girlfriend In a Coma - The Smiths
Nightclub Jitters - The Replacements
The One I Love - R.E.M.
Lean On Me - Club Nouveau

Cooldown:
Figure It Out - The Bears

Visit my Team Challenge Crohn's & Colitis page and support my bid for the Chicago Marathon!

You need to be there when your baby's old enough to relate.

Exciting news, I will be holding up a costume in Witness For the Prosecution. In the role of a barrister I will have no lines, but will be filling in for those actors who have day jobs and cannot be present for the student matinees.

Having a costume fitting this morning, which reminds me I am doing a show this summer for which I will also need a costume ... I have a tendency, during shows in which I play a significant role, that I lose weight as the show goes on, things begin to sag from my hips.

It would be nice to get out ahead of that before April. But I'm not even trying.

Distance: 3 miles
Route: Rec Center
Mood: good
Exercises: yes

Quite a morning, feeling good, practically charging down the track. Moving onto heavier weight levels, I think I am improving. Waking up I couldn't imagine going through with it, now I can't imagine not having done so.

Forgot to weigh myself. Seriously.

The late 90s were truly the last musical renaissance, the last time something new and unusual was being created -- and it was being created out of the detritus of the entire twentieth century. Spooling together big band sounds and psychedelic tech and lounge and world music and it was just crazy. Some of it even got onto the radio. And we all still listened to the radio.

1997 Playlist
Walking On the Sun - Smash Mouth
One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces - Ben Folds Five
Sleep On the Left Side - Cornershop
Queen Bee - Taj Mahal
Burning Ground - Van Morrison
How Bizarre - OMC
Missing You - Basement Jaxx

"Smash Mouth" is two words?

Visit my Team Challenge Crohn's & Colitis page and support my bid for the Chicago Marathon!

Hold onto me, pretty baby, if you want to fly.

Strange bug bite on the back of my calf. James assures me it's not from a tick, that if it were a tick I'd know, but it round and itchy and weird. A spider? Who knows. Where did I score that? No idea. Monitoring my energy. I think I'm okay.

Distance: 3 miles
Route: Rec Center
Mood: good!
Exercises: yes

Tour time, throws my schedule off. Was enjoying my work in the gym, using the machines. Just takes a day to feel like you haven't done a thing at all. Got a big show this spring, hoping to have more strength and endurance by then. You have to build up to be able to bread down, do you know what I am saying?

Baseline: 179.5 lbs.
Today: 180 lbs. (+2.0)
Goal: 175 lbs.

Such a pleasant morning, weather-wise. It could have been an outdoor run in a cool mist, but I would have missed the machines. Seriously, I am on a machines kick.

There's this one guy, though, on the track. He bugs the hell out of me. There are four lanes, the inside two are for walking, the outside for running. This guy, he's maybe sixty or so. Tall. He's got airpods in, and he is just grooving, with his elbows working high, really lifting up those elbows as he bops along.

But he's in the outside lane. And he's not running. He's not even speed-walking, he's just walking. Mister, I don't care how high your elbows work, you have to lift your knees to run, get the fuck out of my lane.

2007 Playlist
Land of All - Sky Cries Mary
Le Disko - Shiny Toy Guns
I Feel It All - Feist
The Boys - Dragonette
The News - Carbon Silicon
The Moneymaker - Rilo Kiley
Flathead - The Fratellis
Electro Man - Calvin Harris

Visit my Team Challenge Crohn's & Colitis page and support my bid for the Chicago Marathon!

Someone will come running.

Has anyone seen my shoes?

Met Chris at the Rec Center for a treacherous run around Forest Hill, the melting snow, standing frigid water, slippery ice. Running there on my own, down unshoveled walks, I was worried about slipping, falling, twisting, doing damage to my back just from the constant adjusting and re-adjusting.

Together, we ran and we walked. Trying to keep on our feet. I managed to make it without my shoes getting too soggy, Chris did not fare as well.

And yet. Running out of doors. What bliss!

Distance: 4.45 miles
Pace: 10:20
Route: Forest Hill Loop
Temperature: 43°
Climate: sunny and cool
Pavement: a mess
Mood: not bad

Baseline: 179.5 lbs.
Today: 178 lbs. (-3.5)
Goal: 175 lbs.

Ok.

2017 Playlist
IDGAF - Dua Lipa
Across the Room  ODESZA ft. Leon Bridges
Drew Barrymore - SZA
You Will Be Found - Ben Platt, Kristolyn Lloyd, Will Roland, Laura Dreyfuss & Original Broadway Cast Of "Dear Evan Hansen"
Always Ascending - Franz Ferdinand
tonite - LCD Soundsystem

Visit my Team Challenge Crohn's & Colitis page and support my bid for the Chicago Marathon!