Why I care (and why I don't) that online poker is poofed

I have to admit something. This is no longer a poker blog. You've probably guessed that by now, if you still bother to read any longer. And, as you may have guessed, I haven't played online poker for months.
The reasons vary. The games got too tight even for my taste at the levels I preferred to play, and I found it harder and harder to find any fish at all. As a result, the margin of my profits slimmed considerably, and so it also became harder and harder to shake off the bad beats, as they were inevitably cutting into what little profit I could eke out.
As you all also know, I've got three kids, and my free time is valuable, and a huge chunk of that already is devoted to training. It just didn't seem worth it to spend time playing a game that made me irritable for the hourly rate of a factory worker in Cambodia, especially when I get more brain food from reading, writing and, ahem, playing Angry Birds.
But I'm still mourning the loss of online poker, at least for now. Here are some reasons why, along with some other reasons why I really don't.
Why I care
• I don't like the loss of any freedoms, and this strips me of my ability to find a poker game when I want to play.
• I'll miss you guys. I still look back on those old Mookie matches with the kind of glee I normally reserve for shows like "The Walking Dead." And along those lines, there are some really great writers, people I look up to, now out of work. That sucks. The world needs good writers.
• I still watch poker on TV. And let's be honest. It's probably gone. Maybe High Stakes Poker survives, as well as the World Series of Poker, but even those telecasts are in danger of at least being whittled down, I fear.
Why I don't
• It'll be back. The Vegas casinos are drooling, I'm sure, at the potential revenue, and it's entirely possible  those sites will be filled with the kind of fish we used to catch in 2005. Probably not. But a guy can dream. And I wouldn't mind using those player points for things like free rooms instead of a mouse pad or stress ball.
• There are better things to do. Like, you know, play Angry Birds. Lord help me. Poker was less frustrating at times.
• I prefer live play. I love the table, the cards, the surly douchebags — er, characters — that crowd the table. Plus the players are a lot worse.

The last 20

I ran down the steep hill near the country road and thought about turning right to head back home. But I looked at my GPS and wasn't sure I would have enough to get to 10 miles.
I needed the 10, according to the marathon plan, and I wanted all of it, given that this was the last big weekend before I would start to taper. You gain more in the last mile than you do in the first nine. So I didn't want to leave it, and yet, I also didn't want to run around the block twice to get whatever leftovers I'd need. Making up miles at the end of a run, when your route is finished, is like waiting until 6 a.m. to open Christmas presents, and then your parents walking in your room at 5:59 a.m. and telling you you'll have to wait until 7 a.m.
I wondered what to do.
Then I saw the tree and smiled.
The tree was a marker six or seven years ago. When I began running, I would park my car at the nearby Poudre Learning Center and take off down the Poudre Trail. At the tree, I'd stop and turn around.
The run was, maybe, 20 minutes.
It was enough back then.
It was almost more than enough.
This is not an inspirational story. I didn't have a disease. I wasn't overweight. I was even, by all accounts, in shape, a mountain climber. But I could barely run three miles. I was out of breath as soon as I began. I flopped around like a penguin. I didn't even enjoy it very much.
Yet I always made it out to the tree and back.
Today I got up with the wind blowing. I knew it would be cold and maybe even rainy as the ground was wet. I peeked out my window and wrinkled my nose. This was exactly the kind of day I used to skip. But I had 20 miles to do today. Again, it was my last big day. The 20s are more important than any other run in a marathon plan. They reassure you, more than anything, that it IS possible to cover 26 miles and run for four hours.
Running a marathon is not magic. It merely means doing the miles.
So Saturday I was putting in my last 10 before the 20 the next day. I like running these miles at race pace. It trains you to feel what the pace you want to run, so you're not staring at your stopwatch at the race. You're worried about your hydration, other runners, that spot between your thighs that is starting to chafe, your rumbling tummy (is it hungry, about to explode, or just distressed), your nipples falling off, the heat, the location of the next aid station and how far you've got to go before this fucking thing is over.  You don't need to worry about your pace.
Plus it makes you a bit tired for the next day's 20. That's what you want. That's the only way to try to mimic what the last six feels like during the marathon.
I'm paying for the weekend now. I'm tired. It hurts a bit to get up. My feet are pissed.
But I like that feeling. I'll sleep well tonight. Part of the reason was Saturday I did run out to the tree again. As it turns out, I didn't need it at all. I went over by a mile.
From that intersection, it was about a half-mile to the tree.
I didn't need that mile for my training
It may be crucial for the race.

Sleeping in Salina

Whenever Kate wanted to visit her grandmother, I would drive through Salina with only one thought on my mind.

"Thank GOD I'm out of this place."

It was a mean thought. I'll admit it. Especially for a Kansas boy, someone who grew up in the suburbs of Kansas City but understood that it was towns like Salina that pieced most of his beloved state together like a puzzle. Salina, in fact, was a corner piece, the largest city between the state capitol, Topeka, and Denver. You may have stopped for lunch there on a road trip.

But in my mind, mean was justified.

A dozen years ago, I lost my job at the Salina paper. It was a good job, or so I thought at the time, and it broke my heart to be forced from a job I enjoyed, even if it was my fault.

Salina was an adjustment at first, when I started there in 1994, with its small-town feel, population of only 40,000 and three or four females my age. The most popular restaurant in town was an Applebee's. Yet I found my way, making friends all kinds of ages, throwing myself into training for my summer mountain climbing trip and diving into Salina's surprisingly rich art scene, playing in the symphony and acting in Shakespeare plays that packed its downtown park. 

Well, I had to leave all that, plus a girl I truly cared for (I managed to find one of the three), and as with any breakup, there were some bad feelings. This time the breakup was with the town. A few years later, I came back to visit Kate's grandmother (in one of the many coincidences that somehow let you know you've found the right person, Kate's mom grew up in Salina), and I blamed Salina for the bad feelings.

I had moved on by then. I somehow landed on my feet and found an even better job, in a place that was made for me, a city, Greeley, that combined Kansas' small-town feel with an hour's drive from the mountains. I took full advantage, eventually climbing all 54 of the state's 14,000-foot peaks, snowshoeing and skiing with abandon. I was in heaven, and I wondered, of course, what the hell I'd ever seen in Salina in the first place. THIS was the place where I wanted to live the rest of my life? Ha. In a snobby, snooty sort of way, I dismissed Salina and quite frankly dreaded going back. One year I simply refused to go, disappointing Kate more than I realized, and on many others I selfishly treated it like a pit stop before I could visit my parents in the suburbs that I truly called my second home.

This time, however, I agreed to a four-day trip for Kate. I've tried not to be so selfish with my own time - it's a constant struggle that I'll always fight - and Kate's pretty patient about my running and climbing adventures, even if they've been reduced. So I agreed to go. Plus Kate's grandmother is 88. She's doing well. Really well, actually. But that age, right or wrong, is always associated with "you never know."

Maybe because of that open(er) mind, or maybe because I was so emotionally and mentally drained from working on that story about Delaney (see last post), I was not dreading the trip. I think, deep down, I knew it would be exactly what I needed.

We arrived at grandma's Friday afternoon, and I jumped out and threw on my running clothes with Kate's blessing. Nothing cures an 8-hour car ride with three little kids more than a run, and six miles was on the marathon plan anyway. I googled a map on where to run in Salina and found some parks. I mapped out my own route that would take me to two parks and was on my way.

One of the things I love most about running is it helps you get to know the places you live. Towns truly do all look alike these days, thanks to corporate chains. There's the McDonald's. There's the Starbucks (and the other and the other). There's the Conoco gas station. There's the Applebee's. It's hard to tell one town from the other, unless you visit the nooks, and many of those nooks are in their parks.

Parks CAN look the same, but those friendliest to running generally don't. Rather than dig up the land, throw some sand down around it and plunk down plastic playground equipment, most cities now leave a couple spots that embrace the cities' natural landscape features and, other than carving out a couple trails, simply let the land BE. There are a couple places like this in Greeley, and they are my favorite places to run.

My route on the first day took me to two of these places, and one of them immediately brought a smile. It was Indian Rock, and its scrubby, rocky trails that jutted up and screamed down gave me the perfect place to train for my summer mountain climbing trips when I lived in Salina. I'd throw on a backpack and speed walk the trails for a good hour almost every day. This time I ran them, twice, and loved every second.

The next day, for my 12 miles (it was, thank God, a down week in the plan), I found a flood control ditch and ran it as far as it would go. By the time it was there and back, I only had 10 miles on my GPS. One of the challenging things about training for a marathon is finding good places to give you all the damn miles you need for a long run. I didn't care. Good enough, I thought.

There are nooks in a town, and then there are the tourist spots. Tourist spots are, of course, almost always cheesy and meant to draw you in so you'll help the local economy, but they're also usually quaint and give the towns a uniqueness that not even another McDonald's can quash.

In this case, we visited a zoo, the Rolling Hills. We saw the mall's tank with monster fish inside (that's always a hit with the kids). We wished for fireflies - Colorado doesn't have them - but knew it was too early.

We also ate. Vacations, for me, are vacations from everything except my training plans, and that includes my somewhat strict diet. We hit up the local BBQ joint, got shakes from the local burger joint and ate at Brookville. Brookville is a museum, only you eat there. It's a place where they serve real, authentic fried chicken dinners, the kind they used to serve after church 80 years ago (the waitresses even wear out-time outfits). That's all they serve. You get mashed potatoes and gravy, creamed corn, biscuits, fried chicken, lemonade, cottage cheese, and….sorry. I'll stop. It's goooooooooood.

There is also the strong Kansas wind, which infected two of my four runs, including today's which was cold enough to sting my chest as I stubbornly ran into it. But no place is perfect.

Last night I visited a good friend for an hour, and after I left, I drove up the road and by my first apartment, the first place I lived by myself, with my first real job. I wasn't sorry to see it in my rear-view mirror, but I waved good-bye with a touch of nostalgia. 

I hopped into bed after, and Kate thanked me for coming back to Salina. 

"There's a lot of good memories here," she said.

"For me too," I said, and slept well.

Story I'll try to never forget

Thursday we went to see Princesses on Ice. It's exactly the kind of show that, even two months ago, would make me roll my eyes, slump in my seat, maybe even scowl a bit.

I was happy to take my kids. I'm the one who sought out the tickets. My girls, like an estimated 87.3 percent of 3-year-old girls in America, are into Disney's Princess factory now, and so I thought they would love it.

(My 5-year-old son wasn't so sure. I thought he would love it, but he asked me before we got in the car, "Are there going to be other boys there watching? I reassured him that there probably were going to be other boys there. I saw one of them about his age walking to the doors. I pointed him out. I'm glad I saw one early on. There WERE boys there, but let's just say at the break that the line for the boys' bathroom to the girls line was like comparing the New York Marathon's to Idaho's Potato Run).

(I really don't know if Idaho has a potato run, but it probably does, and if it does, you can probably assume it's less than the NY Marathon. Sorry, where was I?)

So sure, I'm always happy to take my kids to crap like this. But that's how I saw it. As events to endure, not necessarily to enjoy. We take hits like this all the time as parents. We have to watch Care Bears in the car and Wonder Pets at home, even though I'd rather be watching Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead or, this time of year, college basketball (Go Kansas!).  Occasionally you get lucky and a new Pixar movie comes out. Most of the time, you are sacrificing your own thirst for something enriching for your children's sake. 

And then I met Delaney Wadsworth.

• • • 

Delaney was a 3-year-old girl from a nearby town where I lived with a brain tumor. She was exceedingly popular. She would have been head cheerleader and homecoming queen for sure later in her life. Her Facebook page was followed by 35,000 people at last count, or twice the population of the town where she lived.

Yet I stayed away from any kind of a story, even though I'm usually the one at the Greeley Tribune who does them. The human interest beat, they call it, though I prefer to approach it as the kinds of challenges we all face and how normal people beat them or at least cope with them.

Journalism is full of what we call — rather cynically, I know — diseased kid stories. I did approach our photographer earlier in the year and ask if maybe we should be doing it. He said he didn't want to do yet another story on that and watch a kid die. I agreed with him and left it alone.

Only, after meeting the parents for another story, a friendship they struck up with another family who lost their 18-year-old girl to the same very rare brain tumor Delaney had, I was impressed with Jason and Brenna's approach. They had decided not to treat her illness. They weren't selfishly trying to pump her full of chemotherapy just to keep her around a little longer. They were choosing to fill her remaining days with activities, like raising baby goats and going to Disney World, instead of hospital visits.

I saw this as a story about life rather than death. I ignored it for a few days, then finally listened to my urging instincts and approached my editor, who initially had the same reaction I did until I told him about my angle. 

Granted, this kind of tumor, DIPG, leaves little hope that any treatment would work, anyway, so their decision was a little easier. A little. At least at first. Ironically, just as Jason and Brenna said they would welcome me into their lives, they got the news that Delaney had less than two months to live unless they did a round of radiation on her. That miserable treatment might give her another month.

I spent as much time as I could without ignoring my other duties at The Tribune, my family or wearing down their patience (which, to my amazement, was infinite, at least with me and our photographers). 

I am proud of the package as a whole, the photos, the video I made and the story. I think it's important.

It also killed me. When I would see Delaney, I would see the faces of my 3-year-old girls. I saw pain in Jason and Brenna's eyes that hit me like shots to the kidney every time I interviewed them. I knew in some way, at least much more than I used to, what they were feeling. I was there the day Delaney slipped into a coma. It was heartbreaking and traumatic not just for the parents but for me. I was a wreck the rest of the day.

I in no way pretended to believe that I was suffering anywhere close to what Jason and Brenna were feeling. But it did hurt me.

It changed me a bit too.

• • • 

The story, of course, is a sad one. Gut wrenching at times, in fact. But there's hope in it, I hope, as well. I won't give away too much. You'll just have to read it.

Still, what hurt me more than Delaney's death was the little moments. There was a day when Delaney wanted to go swimming. They took her, of course. I talked to Jason about it later. 

"For a while," he wrote me back, "it almost felt normal."

Everyday, little fun moments, the kind that parents, including me, especially me, not only take for granted but view as necessarily trials to kill the days and wear them out, were rare treasures to Jason and Brenna as Delaney weakened. They did their best to do those things every day, but eventually, those moments became less frequent, until they completely disappeared. 

It made me think that life is not only trips to Disney World or contained in fun things that we like to do as adults, like Vegas. It is, in fact, in trips to the pool, which I'm planning to do as soon as I finish this post. It is in the moments that we look on things to endure, like a Princesses on Ice night out with the girls and Jayden, when we walk past 75 souvenir booths (seriously) and lemonade stands and pizza spots all meant to make our kids beg and stay up too late and then wake up at 5 a.m. to run 10 miles and spend the rest of the day tired and yawning.

I am beginning to understand that a bit more thanks to Delaney. And during the performance, when Snow White came out to the pre-recorded dialogue and canned music, the smile on my face was almost as big as the girls'.

http://www.greeleytribune.com/article/20110326/NEWS/703279997/1051&ParentProfile=1001

Canyonlands Half Marathon

I felt a tickle inside my belly as I walked to the bus that would take us up the Canyonlands in Moab, Utah.
It is only a tickle I feel before a race. It's the buzz of anticipation, excitement and nerves all in one. I haven't been single in a long time, but I would imagine the only thing that would bring on that package would be a first date.
Saturday's race was, in a sense, a first date. I've wanted to do this race for three years, but it's so popular, you apply and hope. I applied with a group of five of my best friends. They run. But you probably guessed that.
Well, we got in, celebrated and took off Friday morning for Utah. I'd never been to Moab despite the fact that it's one of the outdoors destinations in the world. That's sort of like a poker player ignoring Las Vegas. That's why I wanted to do this course. It's down the Canyonlands.
I had been looking forward to this, in other words, for three years. The sights were some of the best I'd seen on a run, ever. I was with my running partners. I had never felt better in my life.
It should have been a classic run.
But early on, I knew I was in trouble.
• • •
Denial is a powerful drug. When you're running, it's a steroid.
Looking back on today's race, I didn't really feel good after mile one. I didn't have the bounce in my step. I didn't feel fresh. I felt winded almost the whole time, even after we slowed a touch from the 7:30 pace.
We hovered around there for the next few miles, and I kept telling myself that I felt great. Really great. Awesome. So good. I was fine. I could keep up with my two closest training partners. This pace was pretty damn aggressive, yes, given that my best pace for a half marathon in October - when I PRd, by the way - was 7:59. But I had never felt so good. My training was great.
I was fine.
Only I wasn't.
I don't like to make too many excuses. The weather is always a part of a run. But a gusty, brutal headwind kept us chilly before the race and slowed us down once it started.
I didn't want it to bother me. But after a while, it was like someone pushing me back. Or like trying to run through molasses. It definitely affected me.
I kept up with them until mile seven, which was far too long to be running at a pace that was may, honestly, be too fast for me even on the best days. I still think I can run that, and soon, but not this week.
Here's the thing. Training is good for you. But when you're training for, say, I dunno, a marathon, and you've run back-to-back 50-mile weeks, and those included 19-mile and 20-mile runs, well, you're tired.
That's just it. I felt tired.
When you do start too fast, the miles after that, even when you do back off, in a word, suck. You feel worn down, like you have the flu, and slow, like your shoes are in cement, and just pain miserable, like you hate running and all you want to be is done.
I tried, many times, to quiet the troll in my head that was telling me to walk or slow down, and I eventually bargained with it. I would slow down, a little, even from my usual 8-minute-mile pace for half marathons, as long as I didn't have to walk much, and we'd get through this together.
I tried to enjoy the race as much as I could. The scenery was still beautiful, even if, after a while, it was mocking me.
That beautiful scenery, however, makes me feel OK about today's race. I had fun. It was a great experience. I loved it.
Perhaps the next time, I'll try to enjoy it.

The crest of the hill

How can I be feeling this confident, this good, this cocky, even, about the marathon training?
Two 20-mile runs are still on the schedule, and the race is two months away. That's a lot of opportunity to get hurt.
But I still think the worst is over.
The worst was over Saturday, when I finished my first 20-miler.
This 20, after all, came after last week's 19 still on my legs. I ran 47 miles last week and ran 49 this week.
This won't mean as much to you, but I ran this week's 20 at a 9-minute pace, which is pretty aggressive, and yet, I felt good the whole time. Maybe it was the good company, staying hydrated or just the warmth of spring.
You tend to get used to being uncomfortable when you're training for a marathon in the dead of a Colorado winter. Stinging cheeks, frozen snot, frosty eyelashes, numb toes and bitter thighs are all common. Too common, really. So when I walked out Friday morning, for my 10-miler the day before the 20, in shorts, and though it felt good, I didn't feel joy. I felt dazed. It was probably what the bear feels after emerging from his den. My body felt light because it wasn't weighed down by heavy clothes. My body felt free and warm. It felt wonderful.
Ironically, Saturday's 20 was much easier than that 10. And that was encouraging and confusing at the same time.
Running can still be unpredictable, even when you prepare and train and know what to wear and how to sleep and, most of all, what to avoid. You can do everything right and feel like crap and do everything wrong and feel great.
So the worst is over. I feel great to be done with the toughest two weeks of the plan. But I know that there's no guarantees.
And no room to be cocky.

Angry Birds

Angry Birds

All A-Twitter

Well, we're a snarky bunch, aren't we?
Do you remember anything about Sunday's Oscars besides who won? Let me guess. You remember how much it sucked, right?
That's mostly what I remember too. But I don't remember the forgettable show. I remember the comments I made DURING the Oscars.
Here's a quick summary:
Anne Hathaway sucked. James Franco sucked. OMG THEY SUCK!
Only a lot snarkier and more clever and funny.
The thing is, looking back over those tweets, they weren't nearly as clever as I thought at the time.
This is the danger of social networking.
You can now release any random thought. And when you let them out of the cage, sometimes they bite back.
E-mail was the first to cause these problems. I tend to be a little, ahem, reactionary sometimes, and if I felt overworked, which is pretty common at a small newspaper and also for me cause I'm a bit of a stress bug, I'd spark off sometimes. I guarantee you if I had to say those things in person, I simply wouldn't. No email would have saved me a couple closed-door meetings.
Less serious, of course, is what twitter and Facebook are doing to us. It's turning us into a bunch of overtly clever, snarky, snippy smartasses.
Yes, Hathaway and Franco sucked Sunday. They were flippant, unfunny and unfocused.
Unfortunately I wasn't much better.

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.