Tired...

Did a long brick today. Thirty-two miles (I was always taught never to begin a sentence with a digit. Is that right?) on the bike followed by running a full loop (a little over 9 miles). And I was and am really tired. In fact, when I was getting out of the car at home afterward, my left leg cramped. I rarely get cramps, except after (or even more infrequently, during) an exceptionally hard effort. Even "only" a half Ironman is 56 miles on the bike and 13.1 miles running. And that's after a 1.2 mile swim. So I have a lot of training to do if I'm ever going to honestly consider something like that.

I actually felt OK most of the time, except when the strong wind was right in my face. Wind can be a little discouraging, because you clearly are having to work harder to achieve the same effect (go the same speed) as when it's not windy. Of course, my response to that is just to slow down. Not that I have much choice.

(Big Bill Broonzy on Early Blues singing Black, Brown and White. Never heard that song before. "If you's White, it's alright. If you's Brown, stick around. But as you's Black, whoa brother, get back, get back, get back...." Fascinating song. Kinda early for too much of that. In fact, Pandora says the song's release was delayed, and then only released in France. Too much for us to hear.)

One or two brief comments about my 5K last weekend. The last timed 5K I did was a long time ago (late last summer) and was about 29:50. My goal was sub-30, so that was fine with me. Now, though, that would be really slow. So my goal (public) was sub 26 and my goal (private) was sub 25.

(All that "public/private" stuff is purely self-motivational. No one cares how fast I run, so having different goals is meaningless to anyone but me. Really. Saying I have a "public" goal implies that people are asking how fast I'm going to run. But no one actually is. Except Doug, who's a LOT faster than I am and is exclusively encouraging, no matter what I do. I'm still trying to figure out how to run races, how to pace myself, and how to make an appropriate effort (which is really the point of this current 5K discussion.))

In fact, I ran a 23:29. That was **great** from one perspective. It was faster by a whole minute than I thought I'd be able to run. I was 75th overall out of 343 runners, and 11th out of 23 in my age group (male 50-54) (There are some really fast guys in my age group, including Chris Phelan, who 2 years ago was ranked #1 in the nation in the triathlon.). Everyone at the end (my running friends from the Pace Group) was very impressed.

(Another positive result was that I finished ahead of EVERY person pushing a baby jogger. (No joke.) And I was only beaten by one person under 12 years old. (An 11 year old boy whom I think I will trip at the next race. If I can find him.))

On the other hand, it was **really** hard to run that fast. I was completely knackered by the end.

I had a sort of weird semi-out-of-body experience during the race. During the last mile, I was very tired. My brain had a conscious conversation with itself. (I certainly couldn't actually talk. I couldn't really talk even for a couple of minutes after the race was over. All the oxygen I could take in went to places other than my vocal chords.) Half of my brain was saying "Slow down, you dope! This hurts! Why are you doing this?" The other half was saying (without apparent thought) "It's a race! Gotta run! Gotta run fast!" In the end, I think my brain just got out of the way and my legs took over, entirely unsupervised. They decided not to slow down. Fully under the control of the limbic system.

This may sound weird, but I mean it sincerely. It was as if "I" didn't really have a choice. That "conversation" was happening without "my" input, whatever that means. I was just providing the vehicle. Once the race started, some other internal (instinctive?) forces took over. Is it possible to learn and internalize behaviors so thoroughly that they entirely take over? If there was a controversy about this, there is one no longer. The answer is yes. If I had asked myself, I would have wanted to slow down. But I never gave myself the option. It was a little spooky.

I suspect that's the same theory used by the military. They use various techniques to ingrain behaviors in soldiers that allow the soldiers to do things they otherwise would never do -- not if they stopped and asked themselves if they "wanted" to do whatever it is.

And religion. Isn't that the same thing? Ingrained belief and behavior patterns that are not subject to question.

In case you're wondering, involuntary competitiveness when playing Scrabble is another phenomenon entirely. Perhaps. ;-) At least they say awareness of the problem is the first step to a cure! Maybe there's hope for me yet.

All this and I haven't even gotten to politics, which I wanted to do.

Let's just say for now that the real race has started. Hillary has that little totally staged "crying" episode. Someone is digging up Ron Paul's past. It's about to start getting really nasty. I fully expect to hear something soon about Romney's connections to polygamists, Giuliani's connections with terrorists, McCain's failures as a soldier, Huckabee being gay, Obama secretly reaffirming his Muslimism, and on and on.

More on politics later....