A hard road ahead, Part II

Sure enough, the miles took hold.
Don't you just love the day before a cold or flu or stomach bug takes hold? You can feel it coming, in a way. Your nose tickles. Your ears seem to wiggle when you run. You're tired, and not in that blissful, I-just-ran-15 sort of way. It's more feeling like you're just worn down, like after five days of heavy drinking.
Well, the crud hit, but it didn't hit hard, and after these last few days, I feel like I'm in a boxing match with a toddler. But the match never ends. Eventually, even punches from a toddler have to hurt if you're in the ring long enough, and I've fought this, whatever it is, for almost a week now.
Of course, I probably WOULD have fought it off long ago, if I wasn't running every day, and especially if I hadn't of run 8 and then 17 miles when I felt it coming on. That's what I meant by the miles taking hold. It stretches out illnesses, keeps you tired and a bit worn down and makes you a little sorer than normal.
Running is hard enough. When I wake up, it shouldn't take me a half-hour to clear the crap from my nose and chest, get my bearings and feel halfway like a human being before I go out for a run.
On most days, I've still ran and ran well. When I get out there, the cold wimpers in the corner, afraid to challenge the beast. But when I'm done, and my immune system takes a bit of a hit, the cold strikes back and waits for the evening, when I finally go to bed at, say, 9:30 p.m. and makes pus all night.
Today I ran intervals, some 800s, and they were terrible. I've felt strong lately but not today. I felt weak, worn down and completely unmotivated to run hard and fast. I hated every second of them. I quit early.
Last year I was sick more often than I wasn't while training for the marathon. I truly hope I've dodged most of those bullets. I think I have. But then again, the 20-milers start next week, and I'll just have to see how the miles take hold.

A hard road ahead

In these last few weeks, I felt as good as I've ever felt in my life.
I dropped five-six pounds, and thought I didn't necessarily need to lose the weight, I felt light, almost springy, when I ran.
I had no lingering injuries. When you're a runner, aches and pains are a part of your life (that's probably true for lots of sports). But my troublesome hamstrings felt loose and free. My back didn't bitch. Hell I hadn't had as much as a blister in months.
As a result, I was running faster than ever. I PRd by a stupid amount in November and just PRd again at altitude in a 5K a couple weeks ago at the Super Bowl Run (and I keep those records separate because altitude makes such a big difference; running at sea level is a pure treat, something I rarely get, sort of like a Ghirardelli sundae in Vegas). At that Super Bowl Run, I ran 21:25, and it was almost effortless, like it was suddenly EASY to run the second-fastest race I've ever run in my life and float along at a 6:53 pace.
Well, those days are over.
Training for the marathon started in earnest this week.
I've been on the plan since Jan. 1, but it's a long plan, 18 weeks, and so the first third of it wasn't really much different than what I'd done most of the year. The long runs didn't go beyond a dozen miles, and I can run 12 these days without being tired at all. I didn't eclipse 35 miles a week. I wasn't doing speed work every week, and breaks from those torture sessions always leave me refreshed.
Well, this week I ran 43 miles. Friday we ran 8 at marathon pace (which I hope this year to be 8:30 per mile), and Saturday we ran 16 miles. I felt OK after those 16 - good, even - but it wasn't easy, and Sunday, when I got up, those familiar aches and pains were back. My 3-mile run that day, just to loosen up, was brutal.
It's going to be this way for a while. Weeks, actually. I've got 8 to do Thursday and 17 Friday, then Saturday will give me a much-needed day off. I don't have many tough runs the rest of this week until then - I just have 6 tomorrow and 3 on Wednesday - so that will help, but I would imagine by the time I'm done with Friday's run, I'll be ready to stash my shoes in the closet and never see them again.
Fortunately I do have a down week coming after that, but just as quickly, I've got a 19-miler and then the dreaded 20 a week later.
Running a marathon is pretty damn hard, but putting in the miles and, therefore, putting up with all the aches and pains that accompany them is the toughest part, I think. In fact completing a training plan without getting hurt is an accomplishment in its own right. It almost killed me last year. I got sick several times, was going to bed by 9 p.m. some nights and rarely drank. I faithfully did the 20s and enjoyed them, but it seemed to take me the whole week to recover from them, and I relied heavily on those fallback weeks in order to do so.
Now my back hurts a bit, and I'm as tight as a yo-yo string, and even today, when I pulled off a hard tempo run, it was tougher than it should have been.
When you cross the finish line in a marathon, the race is when you cover the distance. But now, when the training is at its toughest, is when you earn it.

Cocoon

The wind rattled against the car doors as I pulled into the parking lot and shut the engine off. I pulled my hat over my exposed ears as tightly as I could, trying in vain to reach every inch of exposed flesh that I knew would suffer against the icy wind.
I know many who can handle the cold. I'm one of them. I know a few others who not only can deal with the cold but enjoy it. Sometimes that's me too. But I don't know anyone who likes the wind. It is an insistent, nagging, even painful reminder of winter's chill. And I hate the wind.
You would think I'd get used to the wind, with as many mountains as I've climbed, given that a day above treeline without it is rare, almost unheard of. But I never do. Getting used to the wind, in my mind, is like getting used to traffic. Even if you could, would you really want to accept it as just a fact of life?
On days like these, getting out of the car and running - in this case running a race, a 5K - is the toughest part of the run. I've said it before, and that's a fairly common mantra among runners. And yet I think I struggle with it even more than most.
I do not like leaving my cocoon of comfort.
Now one of the things I truly love about situations like these, about running and mountaineering in crappy weather, is it makes you appreciate your cocoons more than most. You just don't take a hot shower for granted after you've been out in a bluster that's rated at 0 degrees.
The thing is, I REALLY like my hot showers. It's going to be tough when the kids get older because I hog as much hot water as a teenager, my normally environmentally conscious mind be dammed. I like my bed and its cozy flannel sheets. I even like my car, with (currently) Mastodon blasting through the speakers and the heater on high.
I am a wuss at heart, in other words, so the wuss side of me is in constant combat with my tougher badass side. Only, as you might expect, the wuss side is, well, a wuss, so he loses to the badass side all the time.
He does eventually, anyway. He hangs on like the entrenched Japanese (that may not be the most PC comparison but I just saw "The Pacific" and believe me, it's an apt one), whispering to me to stay in the car and maybe just go home and forget this stupid race because it's windy and cold and running 5Ks the way they are supposed to be run hurts.
The wuss whispers to me during the race, too, for me to slow down, just relax and enjoy it, why even bother running this hard in a stupid little event before the Super Bowl. I used to call this the troll, but I've learned to silence the troll for the most part, and now that is just a tiny little voice suggesting it every once in a while rather than insisting. Now it's the wuss.
The wuss is what keeps me from being better, getting out there and achieving PRs, like the one I ran Sunday (21:25 for a non-sea-level 5K). It's a constant struggle, but I'm learning to enjoy leaving my cocoon, spreading my wings and flying.

127 Hours and the search for adventure

When I had to leave my home state of Kansas more than a decade ago, I chose Colorado for my fresh start.
Well, of course I did. That place meant more to me than any other place, even, by that point, Kansas.
It was the place where I felt most alive.
The need to feel alive is an urge I could never truly explain to people. I still struggle with that. But when people ask me why I feel that need these days, I'll just steer them to "127 Hours," the Aron Ralston movie.
Most everyone knows who he is these days, but if you don't, I'll put it crudely: He's the guy who cut off his arm to save his life. Oh, I can hear you saying. THAT guy.
A movie about that experience, I'll admit, sounds boring and horrific at the same time. His arm was trapped by a boulder, so you're watching a guy whose arm was trapped by a boulder. No car explosions, no shootings and, more seriously, no real climbing scenes either.
So why is it so riveting? Well, for one, the movie does a great job of showing you what he's up against, with its sweeping views of the vast landscape that's swallowed him whole. You can't even hear his screams a few feet beyond the constricting walls that have him pinned. The obvious tension comes from the fact that it's not hard to figure out he's on his own, and the only way he's going to make it out is by cutting off his arm. The natural question, of course, that comes from that is wondering if you could do it.
But by showing you that vast landscape, it also shows you, at least for me, WHY Ralston is so mesmerized by it. It shows why he's out there. I'm pretty sure that if someone told him there was a risk of him getting trapped by a boulder, he'd be out there anyway. In fact I know that.
I'm out there, after all.
I've written about this before, but in 1999, my first year of my fresh start, I was scrambling down some giant boulders in a steep rockfield when they moved and then went. It's the first time in my life I saw death - I even yelled "Oh God!" just like in the movies - and I rolled with the rocks. I somehow stopped myself after the third flip. I was beaten and bloodied, pretty badly, and had to walk with a cane for a few weeks, but 17 hours later I made it back to the trailhead with my father.
Just four years later, I was traversing on a ridge between two 14ers in the toughest climb of my life when I got a touch cocky and jumped every so slightly down from a ledge. A rock spilled out from under me and I rolled like drying laundry to what surely would be my death, 2,000 feet down to sharp rocks, when I managed to wrap my leg around a boulder three feet, or one more roll, from the end.
That climb lasted another 16 hours, and it's one of the five most memorable things I've ever done, out of more than 200 adventures. It was terrifying at times, but I loved it. Less than an hour after I was killed on that climb, I was loving it.
That's just the hold those special places can have over you.
Ironically, the movie, too, shows just how amazing those places are even if 90 percent of it is about his desperate need to escape it.
The beginning of the movie is a frantic, MTV-like montage, one of Danny Boyle's signatures (he uses the same technique to perfection in the Oscar-winner "Slumdog Millionare"), and as you struggle to keep up, you get a sense of what Ralston is trying to escape. All those lights. All that action. All the noise, noise, noise. Yet the city, for all its cacophony, supplies us with everything we need, ten thousand times over. Fresh, clean water out of the tap. Contact with others. Taco Bells. Leaving all that behind is a risk even if it's also fun. That's one of the best things about the peaks: They make you appreciate the simple creature comforts that we take for granted. By the end, Ralston is so desperate for water, he drinks his own urine. I just filled my water bottle after I wrote that. That line made me pretty thirsty.
You need to leave that comfort every once in a while, I believe, and Ralston seems to believe, in order to discover yourself. The movie seems to say that, too, and I can't see how anyone couldn't leave "127 Hours" without feeling the same way.
Ralston still climbs. He still gets out there. He, just like me, appreciates the risks a bit more now.
It's an incredible survival story. But it's much more than that. I took it as a movie that finally shows what it means to be alive.

Two products, one problem

Two products have caught my attention lately. One of them may just be downright disreputable about what it claims. The other is completely honest about what it is.
So guess which one is a poor reflection of our society?
 Power Balance recently admitted that, well, its bracelets really don't improve balance, strength or flexibility, at least not as much as it claimed, or, actually, there's really no scientific evidence at all that it does anything.
In a stroke of marketing genius, the company not only admitted that but has since used it in its commercials, saying that its Admits that its products have been worn during the World Series, blah blah blah.
So it sort of lied about its product, just like many companies do about their products. That's what some call "creative marketing" and what the rest of us call "lies." Dannon yogurt was recently fined $21 million for its "exaggerated" health claims.
On the other hand, Forever Lazy is completely honest about what it is. I really have no way to describe it other than to call it a Onesie for adults.
Yep. It even has a flap in the back so you don't have to decide between going through the incredibly difficult process of unzipping your fleece cocoon or shitting yourself.
If you've ever read "The Lorax," and if not, why not, a Forever Lazy looks exactly like a Thneed.
Forever Lazy does not claim to give you energy, make you a better person, give you bigger tits or ripped abs, make you thinner or even make you look sharp, sexy or sensual. No. In fact, it seems to encourage the OPPOSITE of any of these traits. It says one of the things you can do in it is "raid the refrigerator," and the commercial shows a guy with enough food in his arms to feed Idaho. It shows many people napping in their chairs, many others watching TV and all of them looking slovenly.
It makes me wonder if it comes with nacho cheese stains already built in.
Now I suppose in a way this is an admirable trait. Too many times we're faced with misleading marketing ploys that continually fill our heads with false promises that buying their products will make us thinner, better looking and general animalistic tigers to the opposite sex (or to the same sex if that's the way you swing, who am I to judge). All this really does is, one, make people rich because there many, many sad people in the world, and two, make those people sadder, because the ads remind us that we're not in the small percentile of people who belong on magazine covers.
But Forever Lazy just tells us that buying our product gives us permission to be lazy have the body shape of a rotting pumpkin and never, ever try to do anything to improve it.
So what's the better product here? In fact, what product do I own?
Well, if you read this blog, you've probably already guessed. I have a Power Balance bracelet. I will never, ever buy a Forever Lazy. In fact, if I ever see someone with one on, I will make fun of them.
My reaction to the Power Balance story was, honestly, who cares? Here's why. Being active is difficult. Yes, it hurts. Running hurts. But much more than that, it's a tough mental exercise to get out and stay fit. It means, for me at least, getting up early six days a week (even on weekends), dressing for at least 15 minutes, going out in fingertip-numbing cold and trying not to slip on the ice while I run. I do this so I can run races where I feel like my lungs have caught fire and a hippo is sitting on my chest and my legs scream at me to stop.
I can honestly see why people don't do it.
But when I feel like I want to quit, I look at my Power Balance. A friend, an incredible runner who just may make the Olympics one day, gave it to me, and when I look at it, I think of her and all the work she's doing, and that makes me think of my other friends who are out there, fighting the same battle I fight every day, and that puts me in my place. If they can do it, well, so can I.
I don't really care if the Power Balance is actually helping me with my balance or making me a better runner. I just THINK it is, and that's far more important to me than actual results.
When I look at a Forever Lazy, I just see our country getting fatter. I see us not caring about ourselves. I see us eventually looking like a bunch of elephant seals, lounging around in our heavy fatsuits, trying to remember what it was like to run or even walk.
And the danger is I think a Forever Lazy sends the same message that the Power Balance bracelet sends. "If they can do it, so can I."
What would you rather be inspired by?

Come Together

Probably the worst part about being a parent of 3-year-old twin girls and a 5-year-old is...well, let's be honest, there are lots of things.

But the worst, I think, anyway, is the fights.

A 3-year-old, at least in my experience, is pretty much on the verge of a screaming tantrum anyway. They are the aftershock of an earthquake. They are an eggshell with a crack. They are the next Windows operating system. Any slight fault and there's a crash.

Like, you know, when you want something and your sister (or, occasionally, your brother) has it. This is because:

1. The toy is some crappy little thing he/she got in a McDonald's Happy Meal and therefore it is the most awesome thing ever created. Even better than the Hope Diamond. Who doesn't want the Hope Diamond or the toy equivalent to that?

2. He/She grabbed it from you. You find this very upsetting, like someone just killed that new puppy you got for Christmas.

3. You were playing with it, but then you got distracted, like from those drug-induced hazes on Yo Gabba Gabba, and so you dropped the toy. When someone else picked it up, it was like he/she just broke a treaty and you recommended immediate nuclear retaliation. 

Fights, which, as I've hinted, are usually over crap like that, getting to sit with Mom (leaving Dad with the unhappy leftovers, but that's another blog post) or, very occasionally, either what to watch on TV or not being quiet enough to pass the hearing test of a Bordie Collie when a favorite TV program is on.

Fights result in screaming, more screaming, incredibly loud screaming, then considerable effort on our part to break it up, so they don't kill each other, even when you secretly wish they would just get it over with so you could go back to a time when your house was actually quiet. In the past, our efforts meant yelling at one kid to stop it, then the other kid to stop it, then putting one kid who hit the other kid in time out, then more screaming because said kid is now in time out (which is not the peaceful Alice in Wonderland that SuperNannyQueen or whatever the fuck her name is would have you believe), then stomping and grinding the thing they were fighting over into a very fine dust that could be sold as a stimulant (actually I'm making that last one up, that's more of a fantasy of mine).

It's probably no coincidence, then, that in the last few years, as I've been thrown deeper into the parenting well, that I've grown more and more cynical about politics.

Quite frankly, after being around my toddlers for these last few years, I'm finding it harder and harder to tell the difference.

I would love to say that the Tea Partiers and the right-wingers and all these angry conservatives are responsible for this. I do think to a degree that's true. But it's everyone, and I can say that with confidence because the Tea Party used our anger to its utmost advantage in these last elections and nearly swept every cowering Democrat away. So without all that smoke pouring from our ears because the economy didn't improve the instant Obama and his Democrats took office, well, stirring us up doesn't really work.

But I have to tell you, I really wonder if it's gone too far. You know what I'm referring to now. Jared Loughner found it fit to open fire on a crowd, killing six and injuring 14, because Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was in the middle of it.

I wasn't sure what to think of the shooting. I don't really completely buy the sheriff's argument that the political crap, and that's really what it all is, let's be honest, caused the shooting. I tend to think that "disturbed" people like Loughner, as he's been described in the no-shit statement of the year, will eventually shoot a bunch of people because they're disturbed, not because they listen to talk radio. Millions of kids were bullied, including me, before we had Columbine. If this happened in a post office, we'd be talking with very serious faces about how the postal service stamp increase may cause people to go nuts, and then, when there was enough distance, stand-up comedians would have a field day with the word "postal."

But believe me it did make me wonder. 

Perhaps that's because I'm in the media myself, and we media love to think after big events like this and then write (or the opposite), and if you think I'm any different, I (along with the copy desk chief) decided to run a piece just like that on Page 1 today of the Greeley Tribune.

But perhaps that's also because I'm a political cynic, and I'm really trying hard not to be. I don't want to be that way as an adult because I don't want to be that way as a parent.

It's hard for me, after all these years, to combat the burnout that I feel from all these squabbles. Things are to the point now where they (my kids, not the politicians) are super cute and affectionate and love their Daddy, God Bless their tiny souls, and I don't want the fact that they scream in the highest pitches over plastic shit made in China to take away from that. 

Strangely enough, we've gotten better at managing these fights, and that's because we - er, mostly I, as Kate knew this from the start - that managing the chaos means compromise and not yelling at them to knock it the hell off.

I know. It sounds like a lecture now, doesn't it? A letter from Dear Abby. A lesson at the end of "Blues Clues." Yeah. I know. We've heard it many times.

But are we listening? I'm not sure. I would say no. We seem to have gotten to the point where we enjoy the yelling more than the compromise. Those shows get higher ratings. We'd rather accuse and get angry and hurl insults at each other because I'm a Republican and you're a Democrat and we're all for cutting the deficit as long as it doesn't affect ME.

It's still hard to believe that someone would assume that the next step from all that would be bullets. But it's not as hard as it should be.

We've managed to soothe hundreds of tantrums of 3-year-olds. I can deal with them. But I have yet to figure out adults. Who is more mature? The jury's out. Show me.

Frosty Peak(er)

There are, honestly, very few times when I question why I'm out running. Running is hardly heaven at times, but it's very rarely hell.

Still, Friday, on New Year's Eve, with a fantastic dinner, a nice night with the wife (including an anticipated movie, "Black Swan," that we'd see in an actual theater) and a late-night poker tournament with friends waiting for me that night, I sat in my car as the wind threatened to topple it over and exchanged text messages with a running partner.

This guy was a three-time Ironman finisher. He'd battled high blood pressure, problems with his medication, back problems, issues with his legs and a recent sinus operation. And even he wondered why I was going to run outside.

It was snowing sideways, the temperature was lower than the age of my toddlers, and strong winds dipped the chill down to -23.

I was not sold on the idea just yet either. When another running buddy, my last hope, really, for company, a guy who does ultramarathons, including a few 100-mile races in his past, and therefore enjoys suffering, didn't show, I was left hoping I had enough hair metal on my iPod to keep me focused.

But I had faced worse. I think. Maybe. And I wore long underwear under my running tights and five layers up top and a neck warmer and a hat and a face protector. And so, the inconvenience I would surely face to take all that off and hit a treadmill, a torture device strictly designed and modified with the sole purpose of boring you to death, won out over common sense. I strapped snow spikes on my shoes.

"I'm going out," I texted him.

Just before I opened the door my phone beeped.

"Have fun," he wrote back.

• • • 

The hardest part of a run is getting out the door to go for the run. Seriously. It's not the hills, the exhaustion or the weather. It's getting your butt off the couch and doing it.

That's true 98.7 percent of the time, but about a mile into Friday's run, I really thought about turning around. I had reached that rare point in my training when I wondered why I was out doing it.

I wore runner's gloves, which, despite me wearing layers that gave me a coat thicker than a polar bear's, was doing nothing to protect my hands. These gloves have gotten me through many single-digit days, but the difference between a -20 windchill and a 0-degree windchill is the difference between 75 and 95. That's the difference between a day you spend on the porch and a day you spend inside with the air conditioner struggling to keep up. Every time the wind gusted, it hurt, and I cocooned my fingers inside my palm.

"OK," I thought to myself as I started up an icy, snowpacked hill. "I'm charging this hill. If I don't warm up, and my fingers don't feel better, screw it, I'm bailing."

No one would blame me for that. Hey, I tried. I honestly began to look forward to the car again.

But as I topped the hill, I did, in fact, start to warm up, and I had to smile. OK, fine, I thought. I'll keep going.

You see, I ran outside mostly for the same reason I climb mountains or wanted to do the marathon. I wanted to see if I could do it. I wanted to see if my body and my mind would respond to the challenge. I was curious more than anything. Sure enough, once again, both were responding. I honestly feel sorry for those who don't ever push either one to face seriously difficult circumstances. We really have some incredible equipment, far better than even an iPad.

The gusts of wind, along with the 6-8 inches of snow, had turned my normal running routes into chaos, so I did what I could to stick to the sidewalks and the roads. Normally that's a run meant to pound my joints on painful concrete surfaces, but the snow was good for one thing, and that was a nice cushion. The spikes worked beautifully to keep me from slipping. 

The wind was at my back as I headed for a park while dodging slippery cars, so I was somewhat warm. Warm-ish anyway. I wasn't in danger of hypothermia. When I went for a drink, my sports beverage had only frozen a little bit, turning it into a tasty but brain-freezing slurpee. When I went for a bite, my Sports Beans were hard but malleable. My iPod continued to work. Hey, what was I worried about?

Then I turned into the wind. 

Oh, yeah. That.

• • •

I knew the neighborhood, my old neighborhood where Kate and I bought our first house, actually, was only a temporary reprieve against the frostbiting wind, but I didn't care. You don't care about reprieves when you're in pain. You just want it to end.

I was tired at this point, but that's always the point of a long run, and I knew the snow and ice and cold would make me worker harder than normal.  My pace slowed, but I knew, too, that that wasn't just because I was fading. I really didn't want to hit the wind, and yet, I had to to get home. Fortunately it wouldn't be that long, for a mile at the most.

But man. Man oh man. When I did hit headstrong into the wind, I knew right away what few pieces of skin I had left exposed. A thin strip on my forehead that my hat could not cover. A piece of ear. A sliver of my wrist. The wind blasted over them, and the pain was bad, but the numbing sensation, like a shot of  narcotics, was worse. I knew I needed to get to the car soon or I'd possibly have some serious, painful thawing to do.

One last hill. When you're tired, hills test you in ways the last mile of a fast 5K can't touch, and the wind was pushing me back, like a bully, trying to prevent me from reaching the relative safety of my car.

I snarled, picked up the pace and bounced around like a bunny when I reached the occasional drift.

Downhill. A tree. The car.

Home.

People like to make resolutions. I'm all for it too. I cheer the people who crowd the gym, though the resolutionists, as I call them, rarely make it into March. I don't really make them, except for one. I resolve to continue to live my life, and that means not letting anything, even a polar blast that turns the wind into razor blades, keep me from my goals of being a good Dad, a good husband, a good friend and, yes, a good runner.

It's something I'll continue to remind myself of now that winter has finally visited Colorado. Tomorrow, in less than 12 hours actually, I start training for the marathon again, come what may.

An imperfect Christmas

The day started with some whining, as it usually does, quieted by bacon on the stove and sugared cereal in their bowls. An hour later, we dropped off our 3-year-old twins and our 5-year-old boy at the daycare place in the gym. It was empty, as if we were the only parents audacious enough to do such a thing on Christmas Eve.
When we got home, there was one fit, then another, and then I burned the queso a bit as I fixed it for tonight's taco dinner at Kate's parents.
The kids took forever to get their shoes on, as they usually do, and halfway through the slog down the Interstate, the girls had to pee, which forced me to stop at a packed gas station full of chain stores, impatient shoppers and barely enough concrete to cover it all. A sign barred me from making the easy left turn back on the highway.
As we pulled in, a horribly cheesy song played on the radio. What happened to Jingle Bells, I mumbled. It was 55 degrees outside and the grass was the color of graham crackers. A dusting earlier that week had melted into the cracks of the sidewalks and driveways.
I stubbed my toe on the porch as I struggled to get inside with the boxes full of stuff for all the kids. Toys from China, most of it.
Dinner was good. Mexican food for Christmas. My queso was a hit.
Paper flew everywhere a half-hour later. The kids attacked their gifts like a swarm of piranha on a caribou. My son complained that he didn't get as much as the girls. We assured him he did. He refused to believe us.
My present was thoughtful but possibly too small. A receipt is floating around somewhere, maybe.
On the way home, a twin screamed half the time, then fell asleep. She's still awake as Santa taps his foot.
It's not a Hallmark card. It's real. It's an imperfect Christmas. And those are the ones worth remembering.

The feeling sorry-a-go-round

One thing I've noticed as a poker player, a member of the workforce and, most of all, as a parent, is how easy it is to feel sorry for yourself.
It's something I constantly battle. I've done much better in the last couple of years. I'm a better poker player because I don't let suckouts bother me as much. I'm a better worker because I've accepted the fact that my boss is trying to get stories accomplished, not screw me over with a heavy load (EVERYONE has a heavy load in the newspaper business these days).
But I still struggle with it as a parent.
I struggle after weekends like the last, when everyone else was having fun out in Vegas and I was at home with three little ones. It seems like on weekends when I'm already internally bitching, mourning all the fun stuff and life experiences and friends I have to miss because I'm a parent, the kids act the worst. It's possible that my tolerance is lower at those points then it should be, but it's also possible that the kids were, at times, whiny, loud little brats who got us up at 6 a.m. Saturday AND Sunday.
When I tweeted something like, Toddlers: All the exhaustion of Vegas and none of the debauchery, I really meant it. It was an exhausting weekend, as it always is, and if you have the AUDACITY to go out with friends and get home at the late late late late late hour of, um, 11:30 p.m., there's no recovering from it because sure enough, here come the kids at 6 a.m.
Never mind that getting them up at 6:30 a.m. on some weekdays is like trying to rouse a bear from hibernation and getting nearly the same reaction once they are sort of awake.
I have reminded myself over and over that I wanted to be a parent. But the feeling sorry still comes from the fact that the twins were not planned, they were a surprise, and this surprise was a life-changing doozy, the kind that happens after, say, you catch your hand in a garbage disposal. Yes, it's better than it was, but it's still hard, almost impossibly hard at times, the kind of hard that comes when you're on mile 23 of a marathon, only for us, it's almost every day.
The other issue, of course, is feeling sorry is catching. You've seen it as a poker player: Opponents whine about catching second bests, about not catching at all or about other players catching against them. It's easy, probably too easy, to fall into that line of thinking, that the world must be against you, or at least the poker Gods, if you don't hit with A-K every time and if someone's 37 percenter does hit.
Therefore, it's easy, probably too easy, to whine right along with your spouse and begin to have contests about who has it worse, about who got up at night while the other cleaned the kitchen for the 37th time in a row.
I have done well at letting things go, but it's so easy to fall back into the pattern, like those who work hard to lose weight, then put it back on.
This is my struggle. It's a vice I just can't let go.
I'd prefer cheesecake and nachos.

Poker: Your Guide to Life

Poker is no longer an obsession. It's barely even a pastime any longer. It's just something I love to do.
I can't tell you how freeing that is.
There are many ways I love to pass the time, one of the sad and wonderful things about having children is it forces you to make severe choices about your life (and I know there are many other things that probably compare to children, such as a busy job, a demanding girlfriend or heavy drinking). Even when I was married, I didn't have such handcuffs. If I wanted to play video games, I could. If I wanted to climb mountains every weekend, I did. If I wanted to, say, play several hours of poker every night, I did.
In that glorious past, I had enough free time to do maybe two or three things every night. I could play two hours of poker, then watch a movie and maybe even read an hour before I went to bed. So because I run and hit the gym, which I'm going to do, now I'm lucky if I get to do one of those things every night if I still want my eight hours of sleep, which my lifestyle as a runner somewhat demands.
Well, a year ago, I took a hard look at what I was choosing to do with my time. And I didn't like it. I wasn't reading books any longer. I was barely watching movies. No, what I was doing was watching sports, playing video games and, of course, playing a lot of online poker.
None of that was making me a better writer, or even a better person. Online poker was almost boring, in fact, and if it wasn't for Omaha I would have yanked my money out of there already. Video games were extremely fun, but again, they're not helping me write. And I'm going to watch my Jayhawks.
So I quit the video games, and, one day, I decided not to play online poker. And then the next I didn't play, and then the next, and fairly soon, it was weeks without playing, and now it's been a few months.
And I don't miss it.
This is an incredibly long introduction to Sunday's trip to Black Hawk to play a long, extended session with one of my best friends. We'll call him "Donovan."
I remember voting for a measure that would increase the betting limits to $100 per bet in Colorado. Before the betting limits was $5, so the max any game could bet was $5, meaning they were the most donkey-filled games you could ever imagine and people were usually winning pots with 8-2 suited. You would basically get a hand, close your eyes and bet $5 to the river and hope you didn't get sucked out on. You've played 2-4 limit poker before. Yeah. It was like that.
Well, the measure was approved by voters two years ago, and I remember being really excited and thrilled that we would essentially have 1-2 NLHE in Colorado.
And I didn't make it up there. At all, in fact, until Sunday.
Having kids also means I've had to choose what days I take to do what I want, and training for a marathon last year (and something I'm doing again soon) meant not really getting a chance to take a full day to play poker without the threat of divorce.
(It also means taking one road trip a year, and helping some of my best friends do their first Ironman in Arizona was more important than going to Vegas for the WPBT. Sigh.)
So I was really excited at the chance to see Donovan, who had to move away for a job. But I also was excited to play poker again. It had been a while.
And now I had nothing to prove.
This is why approaching the game this way is incredibly freeing. I don't feel the need to build a bankroll (even when I still keep a little money set aside for poker) or make badass plays or go against the best players and BE CHAMPION OF THE WORLD one day.
I just think it's fun to play.
Given that, I brought $300 to Black Hawk and had no concerns if I lost it. It was entertainment, not a chance to make money.
That didn't mean I threw around money like candy at a parade. I quickly discerned at the table that the players were a little better than $5 poker but not much better, and so playing tight-agressive, with a bit more raising preflop to keep them unbalanced, was going to either earn me money or get me sucked out on.
I don't have many hands for you because, to be honest, I got my fair share of good ones, and I didn't get sucked out on. When that happens, you don't have to be good, you just have to be solid.
The hand that got me started on the right path, after about $50-$60 in losses in the first couple of hours, was QQ in early position. I had four callers of course to my $12 raise, and we saw a flop of J-3-8 rainbow. I'm first to act, and I check to see what others are going to do (it's a dry board). A guy on the button, a loose player who had just won a monster pot by cracking a player's AA with 5-2 sooted bet $30. It's folded back to me and I call. I check to him again on the J turn, because the pot's fairly large now and the J worries me a bit. He bets $50. I count out my chips. If I call it'll leave me with another $50. So it's shove or fold. The fact that another J comes means he may not have one. Plus I don't like the way he's staring me down. I shove and he insta-folds. I don't love the way I played the hand, but it did allow me to put pressure on him rather than me betting and him shoving on me and putting the pressure point on me. Anyway, that gets me past my $200 buy-in.
I had several huge hands, including winning a huge pot when I flopped a full house with 6-6 (the only hand the whole night I think I really slowplayed), but one other hand was really big, even if I think it played itself.
I have J-Q suited and I call a small raise to $7. So do five others, and the flop comes 8-9-10. Not bad. But there's two spades out there, and while I know this is not Omaha, I'm first to act and I don't want anyone drawing out on me, so I bet $30. The guy to my left raises me another $100, the maximum, remember, he can bet.
Predictably the other three fold, one of them mumbling about having to fold his flush draw, and it gets back to me.
Well, that's a nice pot, and I'm happy with it now, given the way the board looks. If he has a set I'm ahead, and if he has a flush draw I'm way ahead. I"m not fucking around, in other words, and I raise him back another $100. This leaves me $29 behind, but I have to follow the rules. He just calls.
OK, so an 8 falls on the turn. This does not make me happy, not in the least, but I'm obviously committed, so I put in my $29 and he calls and turns over....9-10. Whew. I essentially double up to $500.
When I'm up, I'm usually a lot more patient with my hands, and in the middle of the session several times I lay down top pair/good kicker to decent players in multi-multi-way pots. I'm almost always right, and even when I can't see if I am, I don't care. It costs me, at the most, $25 to lay a hand down, and I've already seen far too many people at our table blow their stacks with similar hands.
By the end of the night, the predictable douchebag sits at our table, which is another reason why I don't love poker as much as I once did. Only the douchebag was a woman. Can a douchebag be a woman? That would make her LITERALLY a douchebag, huh?
Anyway, she was snippy and all that, but my favorite part was when she was coaching/imploring the fish at the table to play better (despite her own mediocre play). Why do people continue to do this?
I left at midnight for my long drive home up $520. That's my best win ever.
I have lately approached running and other activities of mine as hobbies, that these things are supposed to be fun, and so far it seems to be working.
Apparently it's not just a good way to approach poker. It's a good way to approach life.

Breathe deep against the gathering gloom

You may not believe this. In fact you won't believe it. But for a long time, I really hated running.
OK. That's not really true. I actually hated racing.
I ran half marathons and eventually the marathon for several reasons - the main one being it's much more of an adventure that way - but one of the reasons, in fact perhaps the overriding reason, was I hated the pain of the shorter distances.
I only sort of liked 10Ks and honestly could not stand 5Ks.
I would do my best to avoid them when I could, and when I couldn't, when the inevitable Fourth of July or Thanksgiving race came around, I would run them with a sense of dread.
I approached the races the way you would approach a session with the Pit of Despair in the Princess Bride.  I tried to block out the pain, putting myself in another place, and hoping (praying) that the aggressive metal would help me get my grr on.
Sometimes it worked. Other times it didn't. But always it was miserable. I remember asking my wife, "Am I really supposed to suffer THAT badly during a race?"
I did find some things that helped. I bought lighter shoes just for races, got a Garmin GPS to keep me honest and started taking medication for acid reflux, so my throat doesn't catch fire every time I run hard.
All that helped some. But the bigger issue was every time the gun went off, I felt trapped, like I was a prisoner being forced to run by wardens for sport.
As crazy as that sounds, in a sense, it was true. I have competitive, badass friends - as you saw in my previous post, I just got back from helping a few of them complete the Ironman - and when I raced, I felt a responsibility to run as hard as I could to not only keep up with them but not let them down. And they were justifying those fears without even realizing what they were doing, as every time I had a bad race (a race, by the way, that still beat 80 percent of the field but one I nor they were happy with at all), they would ask what went wrong, what happened, what I could do better next time. They weren't the only ones. I run an intervals track group on Wednesdays, and the coach of that track group would rightfully wonder about my times in a race, even if, he, too, didn't mean to be critical.
It's great to have badass friends. It pushes me to be much, much better than I ever thought I'd be. But there can be some pressure there. There was an episode of The Simpsons once where Marge feels pressure to keep up with some new, well-moneyed friends from the country club, and I felt what she was feeling, from an athletic sense.
It's so ironic, too, because I've never considered myself an athlete. Dribbling down a basketball court is challenging for me. I loved softball, mostly because I can't hit a baseball. Anything I did, whether it was bench pressing 300 pounds, climbing all the 14ers in Colorado or running a 6-minute mile, was because of hard work, not any kind of athletic gifts.
Still, I was feeling good this fall. After completing a marathon with a disappointing ending, I was running well, even if my results didn't always show it, and I knew I was due for a breakthrough. I ran 1:44 in a half marathon in October, a PR, and finished fifth in another trail half marathon two weeks earlier.
I had not really run a 5K all year, and I thought I had a good race in me in Arizona. I just had to do it.
And then, during a session of intervals with some tough friends (I usually finish near the end), we ran sections of 800 meters on a new track. The new track was significant because I didn't know where the splits were. I really wasn't even sure about the finish line. I would just have to run.
So I ran.
And I hit the 800 in right around 3 minutes.
That time's significant because that's the pace I would run for a mile. In the past that would hurt. But I just ran. And when I hit that time, I wasn't too gassed. Yeah, it hurt, but I didn't have to quit. I finished four more 800s and ran those pretty well too.
It's amazing what you can do when you don't know you're not supposed to be doing it, I tweeted.
So I approached that Arizona race with a different attitude. I was limiting myself. That night, my friends were encouraging, telling me it was a flat course, in cool weather, at sea level. But rather than let that put pressure on myself, I relaxed and just told them we would see how it would work out.
When the gun went off, I chanted my word, another mental exercise that I wrote about in the last post.
And I relaxed and found people to pace off. And I didn't look at my watch. I've said all that before.
But mostly I ran for fun.
It's fun, mostly, because what I've realized is pushing yourself isn't torture. Sure, it hurts, but letting go of the pressures we put on ourselves, whether its because of what we perceive from our friends or our leaders, is freeing, and pain is only temporary.
As proof, Thursday at that annual Thanksgiving race, where it all began six years ago, it was bitter cold, and I was still stiff from Saturday's race, and my feet were numb and I was stressed from getting Thanksgiving dinner together. But I smiled before the start, and I ran, and I ran 22:10, my best time at the event ever, despite a tough, hilly first mile that left me gassed right from the start. I finished 9th out of 119 in my age group for my first top-10 finish at such a large event.
And it was fun.
Pain really is only temporary. That race hurt for a while. Then it got better.
It always does.
When you're in the fire, breathe deep, my friends. Soon enough, it'll start to cool.

Cracking the iron ceiling

I am somewhat of a technical runner. Before a race, I've got so many wires coming out of me, you might think I've just left a hospital.
Ipod. Heart-rate monitor. And most of all, my GPS Garmin.
I love the Garmin. It tells me how far I've gone, how long I've run and how fast I'm going. It tells me this if I'm in Kansas, at home in Greeley, Colo., and if, like today, I'm in Tempe, Ariz. for the Ironman.
Now, no, I'm not doing an Ironman. Believe it or not, I am not insane. I know my limitations, and the Ironman is a bit beyond that. If you're scoring at home, it's a 2.4-mile swim (and I really don't swim very well), a 112-mile bike (and not only do I not have a bike I could ride beyond 20 miles, I've never ridden more than 65 miles in one sitting) and then you run a marathon (and yes, I've run a marathon, but I was shattered for a couple weeks after and didn't do, say, a full day's worth of hard exercise before I ran it).
Still, I am out here for some very dear running partners who have inspired me just about as much as anyone in my life who CAN do all those things, and they are capable of all those things. The Ironman is a big fucking deal, and I'm out here to soothe nerves, run errands and just be there.
So I am also, however, not above a little bit of selfishness, and since I am giving up my annual Vegas trip to be here (yeah, I know, sorry), I wanted to do something for myself.
Ah. The Ironman 5K. Perfect!
Now I'm not entirely crazy about 5Ks. I'd much rather run like an 8-mile trail adventure or something like that, and I've already got a Turkey Trot to run Thursday. But whatever. So I'm leaving the condo at 6 a.m. for a two-mile run to the start. It's a perfect warm-up to the start. It's a little chilly, so I've got my arm warmers on. I've also got some metal cranking in my ears. Both do the job.
The Ironman 5K is not a huge race, not like the event itself, but it is a pretty cool little event, and we'll get to run part of the course and finish where my friends will finish later.
I have a goal of 21:30. That would be a PR, and a nice one, too, as I've only broken 22 minutes once.
Tuscon is not sea level, but it is 1,500 feet, and that, folks, ain't 5,000.
In the last couple of months, I've had what you might call a mental breakthrough. I think I've detailed my head issues here a bit, mostly with my battles with the troll, that little monster who tells you to slow down, and I've had some bad races this summer partly because of them. But I also think I've made a couple changes to the way I'm approaching races, and they're paying off.
The first is to find a word that resonates with you. When you are suffering most during training, go to that word. It's given me a serious weapon in races. Mine is "fight." I said it a lot today.
The second is to ask myself why I race. Is it to suffer? Yeah, a bit. Is it to feel good about my accomplishment later? Yeah, definitely, that's addicting. But is it mostly because you enjoy it?
Yeah.
I had to come to terms with that. I wasn't out there to prove anything to anybody. I was out there to enjoy myself and run as hard as I could. Knowing that relaxes me. In the past I would try to build myself up and block out the pain as much as I could. That doesn't work for me. It just makes me tense. Now I just try to embrace the pain and, yes, enjoy it.
So when the gun went off, and the 5K quickly descended into a chaotic dash to the end, as it always does, I embraced it and looked for someone to pace off. That's another little thing I've done. I've found someone to pull me along.
Only my first mile was 6:25. Holy sheet. If I was in Colorado, that would scare me. I can run that time in a mile without really thinking about it, but running that, and then finishing a 5K, is a different deal.
But I felt good.
Pretty darn good actually.
So I decided to unplug. I hardly looked at the Garmin the rest of the race.
And when I no longer worried about my time, I ran the best ever.
20:40. That's a PR of more than a minute. Now, sure, the elevation made a difference. But so did my attitude, and so did relying on myself, and not a watch, to tell me how fast to go.
The Garmin is an awesome tool. I love it. But it's a ceiling. It forced limitations on me.
I'll still use it. I just may not listen to it anymore.

One Day In Your Life

I'm not a curmudgeon. I'm not a crank. I'm (barely) not old enough to fit those profiles.
Yet I really didn't want anyone to make a big deal out of my birthday.
It was my 39th. So, really, who cares. I'm all for blowing out my 40th. That's a big milestone and deserves a celebration for making it this far without contracting some major disease, weighing 400 pounds or being thrown in jail. But 39? Eh.
Plus I was in a bit of a funk. Sometimes I get those. Does everyone? I'm not sure. My funks get to swirl around feeling like I'm getting screwed over at work because I have (what I think) is too much work. My funks tend to muck up feelings of unworthiness. My funks tend to splatter around frustration at my running, at not getting faster.
Funks are never warranted. I don't have any more work than anyone else in our short-staffed newsroom. And I'm running fine, better than ever, in fact, and clearly, if I really do want to be faster, I either need to lose a couple pounds and run my intervals harder or just be patient because I think a breakthrough is coming.
Those feelings of unworthiness are hard to shake though, and though I could clearly point to many people in my life, feeling a bit out of touch with them only makes it worse when you think about them. It was my fault, I thought, not others, for my unexplained loneliness.
Then I curse myself for feeling like a baby, as I clearly enjoy being alone, and it goes round and round into a big, boring monologue that no one can learn from. Let's just throw in some worries about the future and maybe I needed some meds.
Funks, though, are minor. It's not like I was even remotely seriously depressed or even sad. A good run wiped those feelings away most of the time, at least for a few hours. But still. I was in a lull.
So my birthday rolled around. I got up at 4:30 a.m. to run with a good friend who I hadn't seen in months. I normally would laugh at 4:30 a.m. for just a six-mile run (yes, even me), but, hell, it was my birthday. I figured I should enjoy it as much as possible.
And one of the runners pulled out a small cake that looked like a mountain. Pretty cool.
Then I signed on to Facebook, and holy cow. I probably got close to 100 birthday wishes. Pretty cool.
When I pulled in my garage that night, my girls swarmed over my car with balloons. Then Jayden poked his head out the door. "Happy Birthday Daddy," he said. They sang to me. VERY cool.
I don't really like pick-me-ups or special things done for me. I'm not like this needy person who likes constant reassurance about my state in people's lives.
But today, as I write this, the funk is gone.
Everyone, maybe even me, needs a special day. Thank God for birthdays.

What I'm Doing (instead of playing poker)

I had no idea how much of a time sucker poker was until I stopped playing it.
It was not a conscious decision to stop playing. I still have money in my accounts. I still watch it on TV. I played it the other night in a fun home game and didn't want to leave after several hours.
But I'll be honest: I'm tired of the game. The easy pickings seem to be gone, and even in Rush Poker, I'm stuck trying to fleece a bunch of players who are every bit as tight as me, and a good majority of them are better, even at the modest limits I play.
But this sounds like whining. That's not the point of this post.
The point is to show you what I'm doing with my time.
• Writing - I know, writing is SO 2006. No one really blogs any longer, which breaks my heart, since I loved how blogs were encouraging people to write. There are a LOT of great writers out there, especially those who never thought they would be writers at all.
I'm still determined to update this blog at least once a week. I think the writing on this space is good for me.
But I'm also doing something else. For years one of my best friends has tried to get me to do the November Novel Writing Month. Well, I had a baby, and then I had baby twins, and then all those kids sapped most of time, and I thought there was no way I could write 50,000 words (fictional, no less) in a month.
But to be honest, I also thought it was a waste of time. When you're a professional writer, as I am (can't you tell?), writing is a joy, but it's also a job, and writing should have a purpose. Why should I spend hours a night to write something that will most likely never be read by anyone?
Well, I cheated a bit. I call it the twin handicap. I had a whole weekend to myself in mid-October, which these days is something like being the silly rabbit and stumbling upon a whole barrel of Trix. So I decided to spend three hours to see if I could crank out part of a story that was haunting my brain.
Well, 5,500 words later, I knew I was in this year.
I've now got 20,000 under my belt, and yeah, it's going to be with an asterik, but I'm going to finish.
I have discovered that purpose in this as well.
It's fun.

• Reading - I've read many books, knocking down my stack of "to-dos" to almost nothing. I haven't read like that in years.
Here were three of my favorites in the last few months:
1. Lit - Mary Karr writes with lush yet blistering prose about her alcoholism. I give this book my greatest complement: It made me a better writer.













2. Born to Run - I know what you're saying if you've read this blog at all in the last year. Well, DUH. But this book is wonderfully written and fascinating. I dare to say you'd like it even if you think people like me - and the people he writes about in this book - are completely nuts. It might even make you buy a pair of running shoes. Or ditch them and run barefoot.















3. Lost Vegas - Pauly's best writing in one book, so you don't have to store your laptop on a shelf. What's not to like? I read this in three days, even with my kids demanding juice boxes in between pages. Don't worry, I did get them some. Eventually.













• Watching movies - I've worked through my NetFlix queue on a good pace, even pausing to watch seasons 1 and 2 of Breaking Bad (um, you can release season 3 like right now please kthxbye). I went on a little horror fix, watching five Zombie movies and a vampire flick that did not involve teenagers gazing into each other's eyes, and, oh, Saw VI. I believe it has scarred me for life, or at least until I watch those herky-jerky claymation Christmas specials.
Here's a couple highlights from my recent movie orgy.

1. Dead Snow - The best zombie flick was not made by Romero. This is a German film about Nazi zombies, a chainsaw and sex in an outhouse, and really, what else do you need? How about the best opening scene I've seen from a horror movie in a long time.














2. Jennifer's Body - One of my favorite writers, Diablo Cody, and one of my favorite hotties, Megan Fox, combine to make an underrated horror film.














These two are not terrific movies, but they are good horror movies, and since most horror movies just really suck (when "Paranormal Activity," a good flick, is seen as a masterpiece you know the genre needs some work), that's enough.









Halloween is over so I can return to my usual serious, thought-provoking dramas that most of the public rightfully hates.
Here's one, and it was my favorite film of this year. Yes, it's subtle and slow, but it's also wonderful. Just awesome.
3. Phoebe in Wonderland.

What are you doing besides play poker these days?

Sympathy for our devils

I am not a foodie.
I like your fancy foods as well as anyone, but dropping a car payment on a meal is not my cup of tea, or $20 sniffer of brandy. I can't afford it.
Food's never really been a big part of my life.
Then why, oh why, do I have more and more days when I can't stop thinking about it?
Sunday night I got home from my weekly night shift and almost had to put a lock on the fridge to prevent me from eating a plate of nachos, ice cream and cookies.
It's an ever-increasing battle. I want to eat more than I burn off.
I shake my head at what I ate in college. I used to consume small pizzas for dinner, boxed pasta for lunch and maybe some breakfast. Fruits and vegetables weren't really a priority. Yet my weight stayed the same.
I was lucky, and I really didn't realize how lucky I was until I hit my early 30s. I remember trying on a pair of Dockers one day (because that's how I roll beeotch) and having trouble snapping the button.
It would be insulting to those who battle their weight to say that I battled it as well. But even as my diet had evolved over time, including servings of fruits and, yes, even veggies with every meal, that was the first time I realized that how much I ate actually could affect what I weighed.
Fortunately, that summer, I started running, and my college weight, about 180 pounds, returned to me with little effort.
Only now I'm almost 40. Almost! And now that I'm a fairly serious runner, trying to set PRs, I'm as restrictive in my intake as I've ever been in my life.
And it's shed some light on our obesity problem. There is a general consensus that 75 percent of us will be overweight in the next 20 years. That's three-fourths of the population. That's pretty slovenly. If this were the old days, the Vikings could work us over pretty well because I doubt most of us could get off the couch to fight.
But this is not the old days, and that's precisely the problem. Here's my ultra-amazing-scientific discovery  thanks to my own diet: It's HARD not to be fat.
As a country, we work pretty hard. Most of the day. Sometimes more. Many of us adults have offspring, too. We struggle with this, and we don't even have a commute.
That means you either need to study, learn and read how to prepare quick, easy and healthy meals or spend whatever free time you can muster on cooking said meals.
Is that all? That's not all. Temptation is around every corner.
Seriously, sometimes I feel like a heroin addict with easy access to clean needles and a cheap high on every corner. When you're trying to watch what you eat, that's exactly what fast food restaurants look like. And our grocery stores are full - stuffed, if you can excuse the pun - of high-fat, high-salt crap.
There are whole AISLES dedicated to calories, and all of it looks pretty good.
If you do have offspring, as we do, said offspring likes to have cookies and candy and sweets around the house. Yes, you can limit what they eat - and we do, pretty strictly, I think, to the point where the kids consider frozen blueberries and yogurt a treat - but you're probably not in the business of completely taking sugar out of your kids' lives. I STILL remember the resentment I felt because my parents would not let me have sugar cereal, and even today, I have trouble not putting Fruity Pebbles in my cart because of that.
And our society seems to believe in having food around at all times. How many snacks and sweets are just....around at your work? Or has vending machines? Even a cup of coffee can be full of calories.
I can't imagine being on a diet with all that temptation floating around. Those who actually do lose weight must have the willpower of Ghandi.
Is that all? Well, no, of course not. Most of us spend all day at our desks. I do. That's not gonna help you shed pounds. So exercise is the thing. And, yeah, as many of you know, I've got that down.
Yes, I do, but I run 35-50 miles a week, some of it pretty fast, and spend a couple hours a week lifting. And I still have to watch my diet. So is the 20 minutes many spend on the Stairmaster really enough? Well, it's definitely better than nothing, but not really. And most of us do nothing, mostly because we don't know how to get started, and when we do get started, we generally overdo it, find out it hurts and stop.
There are solutions to all of these problems. I know that. I'm proof of that actually. But it's not only a struggle just to get started on them, it's a constant, evolving struggle. Let's say, for instance, I get hurt. I've been really lucky. I haven't been hurt in my five years of running. But it's probably inevitable at some point. When I do, will I exercise as hard if I have to give up running for six months? No. No way.
I used to look at fat people with a mild form of disgust. I could never understand why someone would do that to themselves. But I've since become a parent, become older and struggled with my own diet.
I'm not fighting the same fight as many of you. But I am fighting it. And it's harder than it should be.
I wound up having some of that ice cream Sunday night. I couldn't fight the temptation.
But I punished myself the next day with a hard tempo run. And then I thanked my own fortune that I had the opportunity to do it.

Denver Half Marathon

The time just sang in my head. 1:41. It was like the gold that drove men to chase metal in the mountains.
I had my eyes set on a PR, and not just any PR, but a personal best of almost four minutes.
It was, of course, very aggressive, and probably not within my reach. But I didn't care. I was going to go for it.
The plan, Sunday, was to hang with my training partner as long as I could. It's something I've worked on this year in my race. It's OK to let people pull you. Someone as fiercely independent as me always believed that I should rely on my own fire rather than let someone else stoke it for me. But that's not only stubborn, it's a little foolish. The best runners pace off others. Going at it alone, in fact, is considered foolish until the end.
OK, but I knew it was going to be tough, if not almost impossible. I'd had a tough year. Even though I'd done many races, including a marathon, the Pikes Peak Ascent and the recent trail half, none of them seemed to go particularly well. I had cramps in the marathon, nausea in the ascent and wilting heat in the trail half marathon.
A PR is like fool's gold. All courses are different, and I was getting too wrapped up in times this year. So I decided to enjoy this one. But enjoyment, for me, is going after a goal and attacking it. Maybe that's a little sick of me. It's probably more than a little sad.
It's also who I am.
• • •
We got in the elevator to head down to the starting line from the hotel and were joined by a mother and what looked like her two older daughters. I was struck by the different cultures that exist even in the running world.
They had on sweats and jackets. We had on shorts and a tank top with arm warmers and a light pair of gloves.
The message was obvious. They were hoping to finish. We were hoping for a PR. They were hoping for a good time. We were hoping for a good time. They're probably happier people, I said to my partners.
We slipped into the second wave (out of many) and waited.
I love those last few minutes before a race. Runners bounce up and down like kangaroos. They stretch. They shake their hands. They snuggle up against each other against the chill, and no one files a sexual discrimination suit. They listen to music. They hug good luck and give strangers fist bumps. And then the Star Spangled Banner starts.
You don't really realize what a beautiful anthem we have until you hear it moments before you are preparing yourself for pain and suffering and fun all at once. I always remind myself how fortunate I am to be there during this time, and that's meaningful on so many different levels. And then, almost right away, the gun goes off and the stampede starts.
I was worried about the 1,000 people ahead of me, but they moved forward quickly. I'm not an elite runner, not really, but I am fairly fast, and it's amazing to me to see so many people moving as quickly as me in a long race. It's heartening, actually, and a good balance to the constant, depressing news about our obesity rates. There are SOME people who still care about their bodies, I thought to myself, and wished all the other fellow runners behind me good luck for they were there, too, even if they were not as fast, and hoped the ones kicking my butt already wished the same for me.
The race went fine. It was a good day and I was moving quickly without much effort. The temperature, probably 40 at the start, helped a ton, as I would not have to stress about drinking a lot of fluid. I still haven't really got that, and if that sounds stupid, run for a mile at a fairly hard pace, then grab a cup of Gatorade, keep running and try to drink it.
The trouble - there's always trouble, isn't there - came at mile 4 or 5, when we crested a big hill. The hills came like paper cuts, and by the time that big hill hit, I was bleeding oxygen and unable to catch my breath. I can handle that for a while, even all 6 miles of a 10K, but I thought to myself that I still had 7 or 8 miles to go. And that's when I made the painful decision to let them go.
It was tough, but I knew it was a stretch, and honestly, I don't know if I'm a 1:41 runner. Not yet. I may never get there, and that's OK if not. I have improved every year.
Still, these are thoughts that don't come to you when you're in the heat of a run. I was discouraged, and any sense of discouragement is deadly when you're trying to run hard because all your body wants to do is quit.
Still, I looked at my watch and this time, the tough part of me won the mental battle against the Troll and told me to relax, settle down, have fun and, oh, by the way, YOU CAN STILL PR.
Oh. That's right. I wasn't dead or even bonking from the aggressive pace. I was just out of breath. It was a cool day, with a great atmosphere, and I had friends along the course all day.
So I looked for someone else to pace off. I traded positions with a couple people all day, but they didn't seem right. The metal in my head helped, but I still needed some motivation. I found it on the back of a T-shirt on the back of a 20-something guy.
"You'd better dig deep because you're falling behind," the T-shirt said.
Really?
Seriously?
I battled waves of nausea - I almost puked twice - and the occasional cramp as I pushed on, but they always were just waves, not tide pools (huh?), and I kept the T-shirt in my sights.
I passed him at mile 12.
Still, I knew it would be close after I plodded up a mile-long hill. I was proud not to have to walk this year, but a hill a mile long is always a killer when you are close to red-lining it anyway.
I was needing a fast, last mile, and I didn't know if I had it in me. I inched up to a 7:30 pace, a half-minute past my normal pace of 8-min miles, and hoped for the downhill to take me.
That's when I saw three of my good running friends, friends who are way faster than me, heading up the hill.
And I knew, when they settled by my side, that I was going to be carried to the finish.
It's unreal how much that helps, and my pace crept up to 7 minutes per mile and beyond. I was flying, and I felt OK. I was ready for the finish.
The last tenth of a mile is always the easiest and the hardest in a race, and it was almost as if the racing Gods were screwing with me, as the course was a bit long. Still, I sprinted in at the end and crossed the line a minute ahead of my best time.
That's 1:44:32, or a 7:59 pace, if you're scoring at home.
It's a good finish - 600th or so out of 9,000 runners - but it's nothing to brag too much about. Some of my friends are now invited to elite races. My running partners finished in the teens in their age groups. I was 87th out of about 600.
But this was my race, my good race, and the feeling you get from it, the good feeling, is overwhelming the soreness I'm feeling today.
Well, now it is, anyway. The aches, I'm afraid, may start winning here tonight.

Beta Challenged

We didn't go for the tropicals, the ones with the sharp fins and the striped bodies in three or four colors. Or the fish in Finding Nemo's tank. Or even the goldfish.
Those fish, we were told, required care. Salted water. Fancy food. Perfect temperatures. They were sensitive. They were not for the fish challenged.
We needed a beta, we were told.
Betas were easy, we were told. They could survive in all conditions. Sure, you could only have one in a tank, which was a bummer, but our tank was more of a trailer than a home anyway. It wasn't made for a school. It was made to be on top of my son's dresser so he could gaze lovingly into it and see the wonder of life.
And so we got a beta. And, yeah, he was pretty easy. Jayden named him Nemo, which, I thought, was pretty appropriate. Nemo was red. He was kind of pretty actually and pretty easy-going too (probably, truth be told, the most mellow in our family).
After about a year, he was looking a little gray. Well, the sad truth is, the life of a fish, while exciting, vivacious and thrilling, is not long. Fish believe it's better to burn out than fade away, and Nemo, sadly, faded away for good.
Jayden was sad. Then he asked if he could get another fish. Well, sure, we said. After all, by this time, we were fish experts. We kept a beta alive for a year! We were great fish parents!
Now we were cocky as all get out.
So we got another beta.
And he died in a month.
Oops. OK. Well that didn't go quite as well. But, you know, we went to a corporate pet store, and surely those places have some bad fish, sort of like the occasional pack of Chicken McNuggets that make you sick. It happens.
So we got another fish.
A beta.
This one was beautiful. He was pearl white, with a rainbow tail that seemed to change color every time it caught the light.
I found him floating in the water, his skin like ash, his tail green as pea soup, after two days.
OK, well, I felt bad about that one. So we cleaned the tank and scrubbed the rocks like volunteers at an oil spill and I changed the filter pad, and we got a new fish for the shiny, almost-new-like tank, and we put the fish in there after the water was conditioned, and he died two hours after we put him in the tank.
We had been exchanging the fish at the pet store - there's a two-week guarantee, apparently - but at this point Kate did not take the corpse back or else they might think we were dipping the poor creatures in Clorox or watching them flop around on the sink while we laughed like Jack Nicholson poking his head through a splintered door.
We waited a week or so, then went to the other corporate pet store. Our faces weren't on the wall yet at that place, and we bought another beta (half price, score!).
And it died in three weeks.
Seriously?
So we went back to the other store again, and they looked at my wife funny but gave her and Jayden another fish, and Brewster V (or is it VI, let me count, gimmie a second, OK, yeah, Brewster V) was home. I kept suggesting to Jayden that perhaps Brewster wasn't that great a name. Nemo worked pretty well. But he kept naming it Brewster. I think he's a little stubborn. I'm not sure where he gets that.
ANYWAY, the fish lasted a couple months, but sure enough, he was looking gray and then he died.
When my wife asked the fish guy at the pet store what was going on - maybe something we should have asked a few fishes ago - he asked how much I was feeding them.
As it turns out, I maybe, might, possibly have been overfeeding them a tad.
It turns out that fish are like most Americans. They can overeat.
Ooops.
Now I felt bad. Really bad. Sure, I doubt I killed all of them, but I no doubt killed some. And so I thought we were done with fish for a bit. I cleaned out the tank, dumped the rocks and let things chill.
Then my wife came home on Sunday with frogs.
That's right. Frogs. And shrimp.
The frogs, I thought, were a good idea. A change of pace. Surely we could not kill frogs as much as fish. Plus Kate bought shrimp, and shrimp were a great idea because they would eat the extra food on the bottom. Just, you know, in case I overfed them.
So I went in today, just to check on them. The frogs seemed fine. The shrimp seemed fine.
When I got home today, Kate had a plastic bag.
One frog was fine.
But it was time for another exchange.
We're on our third frog in two days now, and you have to wonder if, at some point, we're like the little girl in Finding Nemo. The one all the other fish were scared of. Maybe I'll wander in the pet store in a week or two. It is Halloween, after all, and everyone, even fish and frogs, deserve a good scare.

Blue Sky Half Marathon

It's a strange thing to look forward to a race.
I doubt if you asked an evil king's prisoners if they were looking forward to the day, you'd rarely get a yes, even on Fried Rat Day. No one looks forward to, say, the torture rack, do they?
And yet, despite me being a tiny bit facetious, racing really CAN be torture.
Now, sure, you could be one of those 5K runners who enjoys a nice jog through the crisp morning air during your city's annual Turkey Trot (and yes, I'm pretty sure your city has one of those). Hey, I love the Turkey Trot too. But that's not racing, and I'm not a casual joggers. I train too hard for that, and besides, I'm anal and competitive and kind of a jerk. Those qualities aren't the kind that fit with runners who like to high-five spectators.
It's funny, too, because I'm not out to win. I would be, if I had better lungs, legs and 15 years off my body. But I am out to beat my own time. I compete with myself, and I'm not happy when I leave a race unless I've given myself a good fight.
Even so, despite all that, I looked forward to the Blue Sky Half Marathon, even when I knew I would suffer.
This race, even if you do want to just jog it, demands suffering. It's not a turkey trot. In some ways, it's hell.
It's a half marathon (or a full, if you're really a sick fuck) on a dirt, somewhat rocky trail that climbs over a few giant hills and many small ones. If the big hills sap most of your energy, the smaller ones greedily snap up what's left. There's one aid station, about halfway through the course, so you carry your own fluid. It's dusty and there's always another hill to climb or dash down, even when it's almost over.
It's also beautiful, gorgeous, even, run by a small crew of volunteers who want others to love trail running as much as they do. They yell your name when they see you - they have to check your name off a list so they know you're not out there, lost or dying of a rattlesnake bite - and their personalized encouragement is nice to hear as you're trying to bust through the seventh circle of runner's hell. I did the race last year on a lark, just another half to do before the more "important" races, like the Denver Half, and I loved it so much that I swore I would do it again and take it more seriously.
After a couple months of long runs, the Pikes Peak Ascent, a few climbs and some trail running, I did, indeed, believe I was ready for it.
And as I started the race, it felt like I was right. I didn't feel great. Finding the magic on race day this year just doesn't seem to be in the cards. But I didn't feel horrible, either, and after the first two miles over somewhat flat terrain, I felt good about my pace, my stomach and my legs. I felt ready to fly even as I took it carefully, trying to reserve my mojo for the hills that were coming.
I didn't have any music with me - it's not allowed on a single-track trail marathon - so I would have to rely on my spirit, and not a screaming metal god, to get me going.
When the hills hit, I attacked them a bit at a time, telling myself that I would walk if I had to, but also that I would try to avoid walking as much as I possibly could. It's a tough balance. Walk too much and you lose your rhythm. Walk too little, and you go into oxygen deprivation, and then you're walking whether you want to or not.
I was thrilled, then, when I topped out around 6 miles, without walking at all and facing down the first big challenge and heading for the aid station.
And then the sun came out.
The temperature threatened to creep up beyond 80 degrees even before the sun hid for a while behind the clouds. The clouds did their best, but they could not hold off the sun's punishing rays forever, and sure enough, just as I began the toughest climb of the day, they came out and started baking my shoulders.
This is when I made my biggest mistake, my only real mistake, actually. I romped up those hills as best I could, crashed down the back side of the hills and even passed a few people as I charged up the road that led me back to the trail home. But I finished off my bottles, and then, when they asked me if I needed more drink, I said no.
Stupid.
As I made my way back over the big hill and headed for home, I had three miles left to go. Three miles seems like such a short way to me. It's a lark, a 25-minute run, and that's if I take it easy. I was still on pace to run two hours, or at least break last year's time by at least five minutes, and I didn't want to take the time to get fluid, even with someone right there with her pitcher.
Around mile 11, I knew I had made a big mistake. Around mile 12, I started shivering, even though I was hot, not cold. I'm no medical expert, but shivering, I knew, could not be good.
This was the time to dig deep and keep running, even if it wasn't as fast as I had hoped. Last year I finished off the race running 8-minute miles, but last year was cool, almost cold, and I didn't sweat much.  By the time I reached mile 12, my hat was soaked and my brow was salty.
But the difference between this race, and others, was my attitude. I've worked on my attitude a lot this year. They tell you to think of a word to say, over and over, during the tough moments, a word you can draw on when you need to push past the pain and go to work. My word, not surprisingly, is "fight."
Fight against the trolls in your head telling you to quit. Fight against the doubts in your head. Fight against your mistakes, even if they are stupid ones, like not drinking enough on a hot day. Fight against that heat. Fight against my own past, when I was picked on others for not being athletic and believing them even when I was.
Fight against all that. And when you go out with the intent of crossing a finish line, go kill it.

Misery really does love company

Last week as we attended Oktoberfest (or whatever the spelling is that reflects beer, brats and lots of inflatable kiddie stuff) in downtown Greeley, I ran into one of my running friends. He, like many of them, is mellow, happy and generally one of the nicer guys I've met. He is, in fact, pretty much the opposite of me. He's also one of the guys I try to emulate in my own personality, but most of the time I fail miserably.
He's also one of the few runners I know who has young children, just like me, and so I enjoy talking to him because he can actually relate to what it's like to feel as if your energy is constantly being squeezed like water out of a washcloth.
As we waited in line with my kids for their turn on the big inflatable slide, I was hoping my girls or Jayden would remain in the calm, satisfied state we were currently enjoying. They seem to have trouble holding this serene state for longer than three minutes, but nonetheless, I prayed they would keep it up.
No one, after all, enjoys dealing with a whinefest in front of your friends, and I'm as guilty as anyone about wondering what others must think of my skills as a parent. I don't lay awake at night worrying about that - I'm far too tired for that - but I do get embarrassed when my child, or children, as it usually goes, throws a fit in front of people. Especially in front of my friends. Especially in front of said friends who are typically easy-going, mellow, nice people who surely don't have the same problems with their children.
Only I was surprised, even shocked, when his boy, who was probably 6 or 7, kept whistling. It was a shrill, high-pitched call, if you will. It was annoying. It was exactly the kind of thing my kids would do, if they knew how to whistle.
"Don't you hate it," my friend said, obviously embarrassed, "when your kid is in a funk all day and you can't do anything about it?"
Um, yes, I do. That seems to happen just about every day, actually.
And then it hit me.
All parents go through what I go through.
I'm not alone.
And I'm sorry to say, it felt good to know that.
• • •
What is it about misery that makes us want others to go through it?
Well, if you're a parent, the biggest fear, other than your child getting hurt, some strange illness or maybe getting eaten by crocodiles, is fucking them up. It's easy to constantly question what you're doing as a parent. What TV show are you letting them watch? What are you feeding them? When do they go to bed? What are they wearing? What tantrums do you acknowledge, and how do you deal with them?
These days, it's much easier to question yourself, too, because of all the damn advice other parents love to offer on places like Facebook, Twitter and those hundreds of self-help Web sites, not to mention Dr. Phil and Oprah and social circles with real, live friends you talk to without typing in something on your cell phone.
It seems like parents trip over each other to talk about how perfect they are.
No one has made me question our own happy home than the twins turning 3.
3 is a hellish number. The holy trinity seems to be the only good thing associated with that number, and that's certainly true when you talk about the age of your toddlers. We hear all about the terrible twos, but that, I think, is a result of clever alliteration more than the truth. The terrible twos really aren't all that terrible. But 3? 3, my friend, sucks.
I can't remember a morning when we weren't dealing with at least one fit, probably because they can't find their Barbie or car or shoes, and if they can't find them, they're fighting over them. Or maybe it's that they want juice. Or a certain kind of cereal. Or they're just in a crappy mood and want to assert themselves, which is 93.2 percent of the time. Nighttime generally is the same way. Hush, you, on telling me they're probably tired. I know. That doesn't make the screaming any easier to take.
These tantrums are multiplied with twins, and they're even tripled, I'd say, because at least a third of their tantrums are a direct result of each other. One has a toy that the other is convinced is hers. One is wearing a blue shirt and the other one wanted to wear it. One wants to sit with Mommy while the other is forced, horrors upon horrors, to sit with Daddy.
To be blunt, I'm so, so burned out on it all, and it's by far my biggest challenge as a parent. Because not only do the tantrums make you feel constantly exhausted, they make you feel walked upon. Trampled upon, actually, like a desperate high school student in need of a date for homecoming.
I wish it weren't so, because 3 is also such a cute, cute age. It's uber cute, actually. Every day they say something that makes me laugh, and laugh hard, as cracked-corny as that sounds.
But to watch all that cuteness get warped and eventually possessed by a demon makes you want to stop it, and that means picking your battles and, many times, giving in. You don't want milk? OK, I'll get juice, because you just don't want to put up with 45 minutes of hellish screaming otherwise.
So you worry. You worry if you are raising spoiled brats. You wonder if other, more controlled, more thoughtful parents who let things roll off their backs could calmly explain why milk is important, and their 3-year-olds look at them with doe eyes and stop crying, drink their milk and then go on to become doctors and win pulitzer prizes while you picture your girls becoming, say, Paris Hilton.
At least I worry.
So maybe that's all I need is confirmation. I don't need to know I'm doing a good job. I need to know others, even the ones who seem perfect, really aren't.
Maybe that's shallow of me. But I'll worry about that in a couple years, when my girls are well past 3, and I have the energy.

Conflicted fun

I was asking myself what the last day of my life would be like.
I wondered Saturday morning if that day would be the day.
I never thought about death before I had kids when I went mountain climbing. I don't think that's because I never considered the possibility. I think that's because there was no real consequence if it happened.
Even after I got married, I figured Kate could find another guy. She was young, beautiful and without issues. Those women are rare. She'd be fine.
I valued my life. I wasn't cavalier about it in the least. Ten years ago, when a bunch of large rocks swept under my feet, threatened to swallow me under their granite and bashed into me, I fought for my life, flipping through the air to stop myself and walking 17 hours after I was hurt to get help from the hospital. When, four years later, I slipped and rolled toward a ledge, I desperately looked for a rock to wrap my leg around and found it.
But I knew, deep down, that if I did indeed die, I'd die doing something I loved and that it was my choice to put myself in danger to do it.
Thing is, these days, when I prepare to do something like Saturday's Little Pawnee-Pawnee traverse, I know I'm no longer making a choice for myself but for my family.
And I still don't know if it's fair.

• • •
The day looked to be another glorious one in the mountains. At least that's what weather.com said. I saw something completely different.
I saw a sullen sky that spit droplets of water on my climbing partner's windshield as she swept down the highway. Hmm. Lighting is always the biggest concern, and days like the one the clouds were predicting rarely produced lighting. But on a route like the one were planning to tackle, the rain is almost as bad because it soaks the rock, and wet rock is slick rock. If it was raining when we got to the trail, the hike would be over before it started.
But as we got higher, the sky got clearer, and by the time we reached the trailhead and parked, the sun and blue sky were pushing us to go on. In fact it looked like exactly the kind of day you need to do a long, dangerous traverse like the one that faced us.

• • •
Rules, like the one I discussed above (1. Never climb a tough route in the rain) helps salve my guilt over doing something dangerous when I've got twin 3 year-old girls, a 5-year-old boy and a haggard wife, but only some. It helps because you can convince yourself you're being smart, and when most climbers die when they're not being smart. Climbers die when they go off the route, don't stick with their plans, push their luck with the weather, forget to bring the right equipment or make a thousand other fairly easy mistakes that seem small and yet can turn really bad too quickly. It's happened this year. It happens every year.
In fact, it's easy to convince a guilty mind that EVERY death is because of some error that, of course, you would never make. But believe that and you're lying to yourself in the way addicts lie to themselves about just needing one last hit, or one last fling, or one last bet. A young guy died this year on the Maroon Bells when a rock hit him, causing him to fall. Another climber was severely hurt just this year on the very traverse we'd be attempting that day. In both those instances, no real mistakes were made by the climbers. They just got hurt, or killed, doing what they loved.

• • •
The day started out with some map reading, trying to find the best route up the mountain before we could start our climb of the ridge. Despite 200 climbing trips, this is still one of my biggest weaknesses. This time probably still took longer than it really should. It's a little tricky because the start isn't an obvious, jutting peak you can identify through any photos, and there was two alternative routes, neither one which stuck out or looked all that promising. You could either wander through a forest until you reached a grassy ridge or take a more direct route through cranky bushes and a growling boulderfield. We chose the second option.
Once we reached the ridge, it started easily enough, with some easy class 3 climbing. If you don't know, class 2 means walking off a trail, and class 3 or above means you'll need to use your hands as well as your feet. Class 4 is essentially hard class 3 climbing that's usually exposed, meaning a fall could hurt or even kill you.
I wish sometimes that I didn't love hard, class 4 routes as much as I do. But as we started into the trickiest part of the day, an exposed downclimb that many prefer to use a rope on, my voice shook a bit. I was afraid, of course, but the shaking, I have to admit, came from something.
Adrenaline.
I was pumped.

• • •
I'm not a junkie. Not really. I'm not the maniac I used to be, when I was doing 20 peaks a year, some of them difficult, even dangerous. I'd look at a weekend at home during the summer as a wasted opportunity. I climbed three peaks this year because I needed to be home more than usual this summer, and I honestly didn't miss it as much as I thought I would. Running is a good challenge for me now, and it seems to fulfill that other side of me. The side that needs some sort of adventure or goal. Maybe even a touch of pain.
But that other side needs a trip like Saturday's once a year. I still wish I didn't. But as we scampered across ledges and climbed our hearts out, I was giddy, like a teenager in love. It was just so much FUN. It's fun to get scratched by the rock and fun to have your foot graze open air and fun to be out there. Just out in the open. It's fun to accomplish a cool feat. It's fun to solve the puzzle of a route and use your whole body and be throughly exhausted. It's fun to see such beauty and rely on yourself.
And, yes, it's fun to go through something dangerous and make it through unscathed. I have felt a much deeper fear, too, now that the consequences of me getting hurt or killed is much more severe. Occasionally, that fear brings me to tears, as it did last year on what I consider to be the toughest 14er in the state.

I know if I die climbing, it's an incredibly selfish act, perhaps the most selfish act ever. It leaves my kids without a father, and even if someone else stepped in, it could scar them for life. And I'm taking a chance that that could happen. It's a small chance. I never felt like Saturday was beyond my abilities. But even a chance is also selfish. 

I have a response for the conflict. Climbing is a part of me and has been since I was 13. So how can I teach my kids how to live if I can't feel alive?

But that's an easy statement. And so it's not really an answer. It's just something I say to soothe my nerves before I throw on my backpack and head out into the wild.