Showing out, showing out, hit and run.

Cleveland!

Twenty years ago today, June 27, 2006, marathon training officially began. I happened to be in Vermont, looking after the kids while the wife took classes, pursuant to her MFA.

"Out on RT 2, lush trees and mountains ... and the occasional semi. I'd try to find a path through the woods, but it rained for a day solid yesterday, I can't imagine any of them are at all dry."

A three mile run at 5:00 am in Vermont. Nice.

Distance: 3.1 miles

Duration: 28:37
Pace: 9:13

Brother comes into town this weekend. Time to clean up the house a little. Or at least the spare room.

Sophisti-pop 80s Workout Playlist

Cue Fanfare - Prefab Sprout

Mercy Mercy Me/I Want You - Robert Palmer

What Have I Done to Deserve This? - Pet Shop Boys ft. Dusty Springfield

Love Changes (Everything) - Climie Fisher

Home Town (Live at the Roundabout Theatre) * - Joe Jackson

Robert DeNiro's Waiting - Bananarama

Love Is the Drug - Roxy Music

Route: Forest Hill Loop
Temperature: 68°
Climate: sunny & warm
Mood: good

Beautiful day, beautiful run. No pain. So much to do, I didn't want to tax myself with a six miler. Maybe next week. Maybe Monday.

Stretches: yes
Water: yes
Weight: 165 lbs. (-0-)

Planks: TBA
Push-ups: TBA

Sit-Ups: TBA

Keep up with the exercises, man.

I think I'm done with the sofa.

The peaceful days. We take the bus. We take the stairs. We watch the games.

Distance: 3.1 miles

Duration: 28:59
Pace: 9:20

I try to avoid eye contact, but this guy really wanted to use my phone to call his woman (that's what he calls her) and I let him, but then my bus arrived and I had to just take the phone out of his hands.

This is a true story.

Route: Forest Hill Loop
Temperature: 74°
Climate: after the rain, perfect
Mood: good!

Outside Playlist

Outside

Spinning the Wheel (Forthright Edit)

Soul Free (Special Radio Edit)

Monkey (Extra Beats)

Careless Whisper (Tonight The Music Seems So Loud) sped up

I Want Your Sex (Rhythm 1)

Too Funky

Happy birthday, Yog.

Stretches: yes
Water: yes
Weight: 165 lbs. (-0-)

Planks: TBA
Push-ups: TBA

Sit-Ups: TBA

I'm saturated.

So, I have developed another bout of sciatica. Alas. It's on the right side, just above the glute, and goes all the way down through my calf. If I didn't know any better, I'd think that's also why it feels like I pulled a string in my right big toe. Or maybe that is why I feel that. 

Distance: 3.1 miles

Duration: 28:37
Pace: 9:13

"He looked at his friends. He saw these beings who never wearied, unless from sport -- who never sweated, unless for sport -- who were never out of breath, unless from sport. Beings requiring their joyous games in order that their food and drink might agree with them, in order to be able to sleep well and digest easily."

- "Metropolis" by Thea von Harbou

Route: Forest Hill Loop
Temperature: 62°
Climate: lovely
Mood: good

Lovely day off yesterday. Much personal work accomplished. Return to my desk for the first time in three weeks, all of June. Imagine working.

Stretches: yes
Water: yes
Weight: 165 lbs. (+2.0)

Okay, working on a period accurate summer mixtape for the year 1988, and by that I mean tracks I was actually listening to at that time -- and recently released. Which begs the question ... should I include a song from Joy Division? A CD collection called Substance (also the title of New Order's greatest hits collection, released the previous fall) dropped in July 1988, exposing myself and countless others to the band.

This is is why, amongst Never Tear Us Apart by INXS and The Killing Moon by Echo and the Bunnymen, it makes sense that Love Will Tear Us Apart is in Donnie Darko.

I think I just answered my own question.

Summer 1988 Mixtape (in progress)

Guns In the Sky (Kick Ass Mix) - INXS

Monkey (Jam & Lewis Remix) - George Michael

Spark (acoustic) - The Church

Fast Car - Tracy Chapman

Suedehead - Morrissey

(Nothing But) Flowers - Talking Heads

Planks: yes
Push-ups: yes

Sit-Ups: TBA

Incidental highs.

Gabriel & Dresden's eponymous debut album was released twenty years ago, on June 1, 2006. My first record of having run to any of its tracks was Tracking Treasure Down, in February 2007.

The first time I ran to the entire album was on April 28 of that year. 

"I have been waiting some time to attempt a run listening to the entire Gabriel and Dresden album. That's my record of the year. I picked up a track on iTunes a few weeks back and really liked it, and then they started the "complete your album" promotion and so I got the whole thing — which includes the entire album mixed as one, uninterrupted track. Except for this Pink Floyd-esque thing right in the middle, the entire record makes for a dynamite run."

Distance: 5.9 miles

Duration: 55:35
Pace: 9:25

A few downbeat tracks are a bit of a drag, and the whole thing is one hour thirteen. Today, I have chosen a mix which suits my recent summer weekend loop. It's one of the only albums I have returned to (and more than twice) as part of Albums For Running.

Gabriel & Dresden - Gabriel & Dresden (2006)

Let Go

Enemy

Dust In the Wind

Mass Repeat

Closer

Sydney

Dangerous Power

Tracking Treasure Down

 

Route: Forest Hill-Cain Park Loop 
Temperature: 69°
Climate: nice
Mood: mostly good

So, no. It was not something I listened to while training for New York in 2006. But it was a major inspiration while I was writing And Then You Die. It is my mid-life crisis soundtrack. Regret, yearning, aspiration, doubt, determination, guilt, and on and on. 

Stretches: yes
Water: yes
Weight: 163 lbs. (-3.0)

Heading out I had pain in two points in the back of my right knee. Unpleasant, not debilitating, and it subsided soon enough.

Around mile five, I got a sharp pain on the inside of my left knee cap, and that was debilitating. I stretched, I hobbled, I endured. It, too, subsided. Oof.

Anyway, here's Father's Day.

Planks: yes
Push-ups: tba

Sit-Ups: yes

Girl, indeed. I can run it.

Camp has closed for the year. And a perfectly wonderful Bunbury it was.

Distance: 3.1 miles

Duration: 28:43
Pace: 9:15

Managing the rest of the season should (should) be a breeze. A more flexible schedule, and the opportunity to cross-train. To maintain. There are also vacation moments, which should not necessarily be taken as a chance to pack fried food stuffs.

I also hope to get a lot of reading in.

Route: Forest Hill Loop
Temperature: 61°
Climate: clear skies
Mood: good

"I didn't know much about Shakespeare before I came here" Arif said. "I'm learning so much about him and his work everyday. Each time I read something that Shakespeare has written, I get the feeling that I understand everything that he is saying. The next day, though I discover something else in those same words that I didn't know the day before. And the next day, one more thing."

- "Shakespeare in Kabul" by Stephen Landrigan and Qais Akbar Omar

I’m enjoying this book. I was an arrogant young man, and I have found the only way forward is to learn humility. It is a hard lesson.

And it's Juneteenth, white man. Atone.

Clean Juneteenth Party Playlist (up tempo)

Can You Feel It - The Jacksons

Golden - Jill Scott

Good Times - Chic

Run it! - Chris Brown ft. Juelz Santana

Bustin' Loose - Chuck Brown & the Soul Searchers

Stretches: yes
Water: yes
Weight: 165 lbs. (+2.0)

Last night, to celebrate the end of camp, I packed myself with fried food stuffs.

Planks: yes
Push-ups: yes

Sit-Ups: yes

When I’m moving too fast.

Something else summer makes me think of: R.E.M. My interest in the band dropped off after they signed with Warner Brothers, their IRS cannon is just spectacular. 

While I enjoyed singles like Pop Song 89 and Losing My Religion (one of my favorite songs of all time) albums like Green and Out of Time don't hold up ... and don't get me started on every Gen Xer's favorite, Automatic for the People, which is straight-up trash.

No, seriously. If you like listening to Man on the Moon, you're an idiot. 

Distance: 4 miles

Duration: 37:50
Pace: 9:27

The jangling pop stylings of this Athenians quartet came at just the right moment for me as I was expanding my musical sensibilities as I was approaching adulthood. I jumped on in the summer of 1985, with their third album, Fables of the Reconstruction, and worked my way back.

For me, Reckoning is a long drive down a rural two-lane highway (in my case, one in Maine) lost in thought and regret. It's peaceful and melodic and ruminative but also spirited and upbeat. 

Route: Forest Hill Loop
Temperature: 59°
Climate: bright & cool
Mood: good

Reckoning - R.E.M. (1984)

Harborcoat

7 Chinese Bros.

So. Central Rain (I'm Sorry)

Pretty Persuasion

Time After Time (Annelise)

Second Guessing

Letter Never Sent

Camera

(Don't Go Back To) Rockville

Little America

The other night, the wife and I watched a documentary about Squeeze. It was apparent how the band lost interest for me, and everyone else, when they became overproduced and immediately sounded like absolutely everyone else.

I appreciate that artists need to expand, to create new things. But when what they did in the first place is so affecting, and what they do later is not, I don't need to remain a fan.

You know who is good at experimenting and can also return to form and also consistently creates great work? That's right. Elvis Costello.

Stretches: yes
Water: yes
Weight: 163 lbs. (+1.0)

When I was a sophomore at O.U. I bought the VHS collection of music videos called R.E.M. Succumbs.

"An introductory clip at the beginning of the collection features guitarist Peter Buck and the band's then-manager, Jefferson Holt, introducing "citizens of the future" to an "outmoded artform" called the "video", predicting it would have a staying power similar to that of Nehru jackets and other forgotten fads." - Wikipedia

He wasn't wrong. But what the tape did include was an experimental (see: non-narrative) short film called Left of Reckoning, directed by James Herbert and shot at Whirligig farm. The soundtrack was the first ("left") side of Reckoning without drawing any literal or figurative connection to the music itself.

I must have watched that short film dozens of times during my college years, and then never again. 

Planks: yes
Push-ups: yes

Sit-Ups: yes

Seem to have pulled a string in my right cheek. It is a pain, indeed. Standing, sitting, getting out of the car — having to drive well over thirty minutes, both ways. I wish I could take the bus.

A clock in my heart.

Summer will always take me back to my teenage years, and specifically the summer of 1983. It was kind of a big deal. So, the music. The "Sweeping Up at Grebe's" playlist is an epic for me, a real crossing over point, from what to what else I do not know. But the masturbation was compulsory.

Too much? I don't even care anymore. The staged reading this weekend was so rewarding, how do I capitalize upon that?

Distance: 3.1 miles

Duration: 29:21
Pace: 9:28

Sweeping Up at Grebe's

Pleasure of Love (Instrumental) - Tom Tom Club

Promised You a Miracle (US Remix) - Simple Minds

Come On Eileen - Dexys Midnight Runners

Oblivious - Aztec Camera

Time (Clock of the Heart) - Culture Club

I Melt With You - Modern English

The Safety Dance (Extended Dance Version) - Men Without Hats

Yes, very important (especially on a morning like this one) to have chosen the music in advance. I did not have the bandwidth for much even after an hour of drinking coffee, water, and writing.

Route: Forest Hill Loop
Temperature: 57°
Climate: overcast & cool
Mood: all right

Big storms last night. We were spared the worst. Brought the temperature down. Light cool run.

I do not even remember running through the woods, at all. Most of this run I was way back in my subconscious.

Stretches: yes
Water: yes
Weight: 162 lbs. (-1.0)

The readings on Saturday were very special. I've been wanting to hear this play read before a live audience for years. And the laughter was full, the jokes were understood, and the story shocked. It rocked. People cared. And they believed. It was so rewarding.

What will happen?

Planks: TBA
Push-ups: TBA

Sit-Ups: TBA