Friday and Saturday I ran with Team Velociraptors in the 2010 Ragnar Relay NWP.  “NWP” stands for “Northwest Passage”, and it’s one of a handful of Ragnar events around the country in which teams of twelve runners run continuously for around 30 hours or so, in legs of 3 to 9 miles.

This event started at Blaine, right next to the Peace Arch at the Canadian border, and ended in Langley, on the southern tip of Whidbey Island.  In between we ran through Bellingham, the lovely Skagit Valley, Anacortes, La Conner, across Deception Pass, and up and down the hills of Whidbey Island.

I got hooked up with the team thanks to fellow runner and friend Chris Pothering, who I met on Daily Mile 6-odd months ago.  I signed up for the relay probably 5 months ago.  So of course I did most of my logistical race prep on Thursday.  Hey, there’s nothing like the last minute to get your adrenaline flowing!

Half of our team rode up Thursday night with Paul and Jenny Ingram in their Odyssey and overnighted in Bellingham.  The other half of the team came up early Friday morning.  I was in Van #2, the one that rode up Thursday night, along with Paul, Jenny, Chris, Joel, Leslie, Terry.  I’d previously only met Chris, Joel, and Leslie, but instantly became good friends with Paul and Jenny.  Paul was our driver, navigator, support staff, cheerleader-in-chief, and humorist all rolled into one.  He made the race so much better and saved the runners from having to double duty as drivers in between their legs.

On the way up to Bellingham we stopped for dinner at Claim Jumper and I had a 12-lb chicken fried steak.  More on that later. (ed: foreshadowing? Isn’t that kind of unnecessary in a blog post? Me: no way!)

Friday morning we made our way to the starting line and I was immediately taken with all the wild, creative decorating that some of the teams did to their vans.  Jenny went to work decorating our van and drew a scary dinosaur on our van with some window paint, along with our team name and other fun stuff.  Secondarily, I was blown away by some of the costumes.  One of the teams was “The Petting Zoo”, and they ran in animal costumes.  One guy, the cow, had udders coming out of his stomach area.  There were cavemen, cheerleaders, princesses, wild-haired rockers, whores, and several other themes I can’t remember.  I should have taken more photos.

Brad, from Van #1, started us off in Blaine and then we in Van #2 did the smart thing and went right to a Starbucks for some coffee.  Oh wait, we went to Target first and got a van-top carryall since we packed way too much stuff.  But then to Starbucks.  As we were drinking our coffee we got into a game where we tried to throw a scrunched-up pastry bag into the trash can and I’m proud to say I had the shot of the century – an up-in-the-air, off-the-chair toilet-bowl-flush shot.  Jenny captured it on video.

Then to Exchange 6, where we cheered on Katie and sent off Joel on Leg 7.  We picked up Chris, who had ridden in Van #1 to run Leg #4 since we only had 11 runners.  One of our team had to back out at the last minute so three of our runners – Chris, Leslie, and Katie – each picked up a fourth leg.  Superhuman.

My first leg, #10, was a shortish but hot leg at about 4:00 PM and I of course started out too fast, but realized it early enough to not kill the rest of my relay.  I had predicted 11-minute miles on average across all three legs, but I think I came in under that overall and felt pretty fit.  My main complaint on all three legs was tightness/creakiness in my knees and hamstrings.  And getting out there and running, just running, was freeing and fun and wonderful.  I was nervous going into each leg – what if I’m too slow?  What if I get lost?  What if I trip and injure myself?  – but once I started, all worries went away and I was just, you know, out there, one with nature and the team and the race.

At about 10:00 PM Friday night we got 45 minutes of sleep at Exchange 18, then were off again.  I ran Leg 22 at about 2:30 AM, in beautifully cool weather, under a nearly-full moon, just outside Anacortes.  That was my favorite leg.

We got about 3 more hours of sleep at Exchange 30 in Coupeville, in a gym at the Coupeville Middle School.  For some odd reason the fire alarm went off a couple times, but I slept like a rock, even on the hard gym floor.

By the time I got started on Leg 34, near Langley, I was feeling damned good (mentally) and not nearly as bad as I had feared (physically).  My legs were tired, but I knew I could finish.  Even a brutal hill in the middle of the leg didn’t diminish my confidence, and I notched up a few “kills” (where you pass another runner) on that hill.  Speaking of kills, I was negative for the race, due to some speedy jackrabbits in later-starting teams, but I passed enough people that I was only mildly negative.

Funniest moment?  For me, there were a few.  One was when we watched this video of the “full on double rainbow” guy.  Another was before Leg 33.  We had dropped off Terry and went to a little store for coffee.  I had filled up four large coffee cups with drip and cream before Paul realized there was espresso further back in the store.  I went ahead and bought the coffee anyway, since I’d sort of committed myself.  Then at the Leg 33 parking area, the van in front of us looked at my coffee cup and said “Oh my god, that looks so good” and I took the opportunity to give away the extra hot coffee.  Good karma and all that.  Then I went to the port-a-potty and spent a few choice minutes getting reacquainted with my chicken fried steak, so to say.  Feeling a few pounds lighter, I made my way to the handoff area and this exchange took place:

Jenny: So, you got rid of it.

Me: Yeah!

Jenny: The coffee.

Me: (confused) No, the chicken fried steak.

Jenny: (confused)

Me: (confused)

Then I doubled up with laughter.  She was referring to me giving away the extra coffee, but I was referring to, well, something else. Too funny.

A few other things that were memorable: holding flowers out for the runners as they came up for water.  Learning how to best support runners by leapfrogging in the van and being ready with water or Gatorade.  Tapping the one-mile-out markers as I ran by them, for good luck.  Not stopping to walk, even on hills.  Getting caught with my pants down as I was changing out of my sweaty running clothes at the start of Leg 24, when the van parked behind us turned on the lights.  Oops!

Most of all, I just loved the team, the camaraderie, the together-ness of it all, and the pure joyous act of running.  Many or most of us are at least interested in doing it again next year, and I know for sure I’m going to be in Blaine next July.

I’m such a retard. I have two awesome books open right now – DeLillo’s Underworld and Amis’ London Fields – and have just decided, for nebulous reasons, to open a third – William Gaddis’ JR. I wound my way through the foreward and was sufficiently interested to dive into the book itself. And it’s a delight. Messy, verbal, confusing, multithreaded – if such a term can be used to describe a book, and not a piece of software – and fantastically courageous.

I’m already a fan.

I’ll of course do a full review once I’ve completed it, which, based on my reading habits of late, should be about 11:00 PM tonight. I jest, of course – I have actual work to do, work work, not the work of disentangling Gaddis’ language of counterfeiting and futures and inheritances and the salvation of art in a world absent all semblance of order.

Speaking of salvation, I’m operating under the assumption (today, at any rate) that salvation comes in small doses, not big advances. The Pacific fleet won the war island-by-island, after all, and by the time the Big One was dropped, it was surely all over anyway. So, measured steps. Lifted eyes. Burdens eased, and recognized, and internal commentary re: same reinforcing the stupendous opportunity I’ve been given (actually, plural: opportunities!). Productivity measured breath-by-breath, beat-by-beat as my Bodyrox station on Pandora goads me ever along.

A beautiful Saturday! I ran this morning, sagging slightly at the start from creaky 38-year old knees, but warmth and purpose warmed up those patellar tendons within a half-mile.

Now comfortably ensconced at a Tully’s coffee, laptop and cappuccino and iPhone all within easy reach, taking those short steps.

Have a wonderful day!

Here’s a picture I snapped halfway through my run around Discovery Park this afternoon:

I’m really lucky.  Lucky to live in a wonderful place; lucky to have my health and fitness; lucky to have readers who will appreciate a view like this.

Woe is deceptive.  It tries its best to isolate you; to distract you from the many wonderful things going on right in front of your eyes; blinds you as to all the opportunities around you – stimulating, engaging, or otherwise.

Defy woe.  Defy inertia.  Defy endless rationalization.  Defy your rut(s), whatever they might be.  Let go.  Be present.  Stop saying “no” and learn how to say “yes”.  Life awaits.

“Hotel Yorba” just finished blowing out my eardrums and I’m awfully psyched and thought I’d pop my head up out of the laptop and review my last couple days.  I’m sitting at Victrola, coding a bit against Twilio’s uber-awesome API, doing a small amount of people-watching and a fair bit of reflecting on the weekend just about to pass.  It was (typical for me lately) a study in contrasts; black-and-white paint spattered on the canvas, but patterns are starting to emerge, themes and riffs and reoccurring choruses and moments of sunshine and the reappearance of cloudbanks that I know I’ve seen before.  My analytic brain tries too hard to pattern-match, to put things into boxes with labels and yet my creative brain, the one I’ve begun to understand and love in ways I never knew before – even though I’ve always considered myself to be the creative sort — likes to sort of hang out and observe and watch things unfold and draw loose associations and connections that arise abruptly and surprisingly from my subconscious.

This morning I ran twelve miles.

That sort of deserves its own paragraph because I seriously don’t think I’ve ran that far since college.  Earlier this month I signed up for this crazy relay in July called the Ragnar relay and I met a couple of my relay teammates for the first time this morning at Greenlake and we ran.  Twelve miles.  I’m proud and tired and happy and realize that what I thought are my limitations are not my real limitations.  That’s powerful.  Chris and Leslie, the two people I ran with this morning, were supportive and encouraging and I had a really great time.  Did I mention it was twelve miles?

A couple great meetups this weekend, reaffirming my sense that I feed off of, and am made happy by, time spent conversing with smart, engaging and passionate people.

The weather in Seattle this weekend was A-fucking-MAZING.  That was the macro story; the thing on everyone’s lips.  It’s February but feels like we’re deep into springtime.  I didn’t get out as much as I would have liked, but what time I was able to get out and enjoy the weather was spectacular and memorable.

I hope you had a great weekend as well.

Today after work I ran around Discovery Park – just about 3 miles door-to-door, but the magic is all within a quarter-mile stretch along the bluff, where you can look out 180 degrees, from West Seattle to Indianola.  There must have been about a dozen people just standing and staring out to Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains, watching the sun about to set and letting the beauty soak in.

A metaphor for my day?  I had a good Monday by any reckoning.  I guess I’m getting much better at compartmentalizing and/or taking conscious control over my perspective and thoughts, because I felt good today.  The great weekend was part of it – I had a really good weekend – but the day just seemed to slip in, all stealthy, and infect me with feel-good vibes.

This is even though I didn’t win the Super Bowl pool at work.  I ended up getting crappy numbers in the draw – twos and sixes and such.  Who can win with numbers like that???

For the second time in the last week, I’ve been approached out of the blue to have a meeting re: Crowdify.  Strange, but very welcome.  If I can find some time I’m going to release version 2 of the website any day now.  Then – sales.  Sell, sell, sell.   Position the service as something that will solve tangible problems that brand managers and marketers have.  Emphasize the uniqueness of the data, and back it up with case studies from representative brands.  I think 2010 is going to be a big year.

What else?  Looking forward to a couple meetups and tech/networking events.  Tomorrow and Wednesday is the Agile Open Northwest conference, this time held at the Seattle Center, and I’ll be able to attend about half the sessions.  I’m going to present – on what, I’m not sure, but I have until tomorrow morning to text one of my team with the topic so they can put it up on the board tomorrow.  Tomorrow night is Founder Dating, but I’m definitely sure I won’t be able to attend.  I’m not even sure I’ll be able to get away for soccer tomorrow night.

Had a nice lunch today with an old friend and savored some delicious sushi.  I tried some fatty amberjack that was OMG-melt-in-your-mouth wonderful.  Catching up is always nice, and I always come away from a good lunch like that thinking I need to do a better job of keeping up with people.

Not sure if I’ll be able to attend this weeks’ Seattle Tech Startups meeting.  The topic – TechStars – is one that is probably going to draw a big crowd, and I’m sure the conversations at the Big Time after the meeting will continue late.  I’m meeting a friend in Bellevue earlier that evening and am not sure if I’ll be back in time.

Here’s to good friends; old, new, and yet-to-be.

Hope you’re having a good evening.

So I agreed today to my first competitive multistage race, the RAGNAR – NWP, aka the Ragnar Relays at the Northwest Passage.  It’s a 187-mile race wherein 12 runners on each team race relay-style for the finish line.  From the Ragnar Relay website:

You and 11 of your closest friends running day and night, relay-style, through some of the most scenic terrain North America could muster. Add in live bands, inside jokes and a mild case of sleep deprivation. The result? Some call it a slumber party without sleep, pillows or deodorant. We call it a Ragnar Relay.

Sounds kind of fun, right?  I got word from an acquaintance on dailymile that they were looking for a couple more people to fill out their team, and hey, I’m game for anything.  Plus I love the challenge of a clear, motivating goal.

So, July 23rd and 24th, I’ll be running, resting, cheering, encouraging, and probably occasionally gasping for breath   Looking at last year’s results, the winning over 30 pace was 7-something per mile, which is way faster than I can run ONE leg, let alone three legs.  Wish me luck during my training the next six months – I need it!

No, seriously, though, what’s a Ragnar?  Turns out he was a 9th-century Norse king.  Their about page has a special section for people like me who get a kick out of the name and want to learn more.

I’m very excited.

I’m writing this as I sit at Serendipity, so it seemed like a good title for a blog post.  Sometimes I don’t put a title on a blog post until after I’ve written it; tonight, however, I just intend to ramble a little bit, so “Serendipity” seemed like a good jumping off point.

First off, little about my last week has been serendipitous, except (possibly) in deep retrospect.  I’ve been chugging along at work, on projects, and getting out a few evenings a week for meetups and other events, but mostly have been trying to put the brakes on a sort of submerged moodiness, a navel-gazing introspection that doesn’t do me any good.   Funny how life works sometimes.  There’s a big difference between being surprised about something we see in ourselves vs. recognizing something that was already there all along.

Having said that, it hasn’t been a bad week – far from it.  For example, I put in place an organizational/reminder system that is helping me stay focused on some specific short-term goals I have, and it’s worked wonders.  The system is tactile and visual and I see it every day at work and it keeps me on track when I’m tempted to run off the rails.

I’ve been very good with my exercise and diet program, after experiencing a road bump that started a few weeks ago and lasted a week or ten days.  I’m working out five or six days a week and being VERY good about what I eat, and it’s showing.  I hope to hit a huge milestone in the next week – a weight that I haven’t held since 1992.  I’m pretty sure I can do it without much in the way of superhuman effort.  However, if it takes a superhuman effort, I’m going to give it

As far as fitness goes, yesterday I ran the 6 mile loop around Lake Union, and am running a 5K on February 13th, so that means I need to get back on the hard intervals in the next couple weeks.  Tomorrow (I think – maybe Sunday) I’m going to do a 50-miler on the bike.  Not sure where I’m going, but part of the fun is the – well, serendipity – of not having a set destination when you start out and discovering fun things along the way.  The last 50+ I did, the weather was terrible, but I had tons of fun despite (or because of) that.  The weather tomorrow looks decent.

Funny story – I was almost done with my run yesterday when a group of four young runners passes me and the last guy yells “You have the biggest calves I’ve ever seen!” I laughed.  I do have big,muscular calves. What’s weird?  I went for a walk today with a friend from work and saw the EXACT SAME GUY running with the EXACT SAME GROUP.  Eerie.

This week I registered for the Big Climb for Leukemia and Lymphoma, which is like a 1,000,000 stair climb up the Columbia Center, and if you are feeling generous and care to donate to a worthy cause, you can do so at my donations page.  I’d better bust my ass in February up the Blaine Street staircase on Capitol Hill if I’m going to beat my age-group placing from last November’s climb at the WAMU tower.

I’ve been distracted from writing lately – at least anything more than simple coming-attraction posts – and that’s something I DO worry about.  In the past, I’ve sort of let it all hang out on the blog, but not only do I feel a little subconsciously constrained here, but I have what I might describe as writer’s block on a couple important pieces I have committed to write.  I’m convinced that the one feeds the other.  When you pull the reins on one horse, the other horses slow down.  I don’t like it.  I like to live life fully, freely, unconstrained, not too worried about convention or appearances or fashionableness or propriety.  It’s all just ME, and I’m a good, caring, authentic person and want to express myself as such.  So I’m a bit stumped, tending to glumness about this whole writing thing.  I have to break through and get back to where I was before, because writing and expressing myself is one of the things in this world that gives me pure joy and doesn’t depend on anybody else.

Now I look back and see the novel I’ve written tonight and think that perhaps this longish post is already a start in the right direction.

So the full results are in for Sunday’s Jingle Bell Run, and I finished in the top third of my age group, coming in 70th out of 240 in the male 30-39 division.  I’m very pleased with that placing.  I felt worse than I actually performed; my hamstrings were sore and tight before and during the run, and in fact all day yesterday.  Today is a different story; I feel great and am not at all sore.  In fact, I was able to get to the gym this afternoon for a fairly intense weight workout.

All this focus on fitness and exercise is just a net good thing.  There’s nothing bad about it.  I’m feeling great physically, and although my diet has lapsed a bit in the days since my 100-day workout challenge, I know that it’s a temporary thing and that I can take the next step in my personal fitness goals whenever I decide to set my mind on it.

I’ll leave you with two words: adventure racing.

12,000 of my closest friends and I got out in the freezing Seattle weather this morning to participate in the 25th annual Jingle Bell Run in Seattle.  This is a kind of anti-race: the joy is in the participation, in the costumes, in the shared community spirit, not necessarily how high you finish.

Having said that, I did really well, ha ha ha!  I beat my previous 5K PR by over a minute, coming in at 26:01, or an 8:31/mile pace.  Pretty good considering I woke up with really sore hamstrings and ran the whole way with reindeer antlers.   I think that I can definitely get down to a 7:00/mile pace by mid-to-late spring, if I keep exercising and eating right.   Good things happen to good people, right?  And I’m DEFINITELY due for some good things to happen.

To the lady in the port-a-potty who forgot to slide the latch shut so that the label still read “OPEN – I’m really sorry.  It’s just that I was one of hundreds of people standing around, looking excitedly for the green “OPEN” labels, and I really didn’t mean to *cough* expose you to the world.  I hope the fright made you run a bit faster.  Next time I’ll knock first.

Best costume?  Hm.  There were quite a few Cindy Lou Who lookalikes, but my favorites may have been the two Santa’s elves who were taking pictures on the top floor of Westlake Center.  You two looked like you were having the time of your life, and your costumes were fantastic!

Full Jingle Bell Run race results here, for those of you interested.

If you would have told me six months ago I’d finish in the top half of my age division in a 5K race, I would have told you you’re nuts.  Yet here I am, the day after my first road race in 5+ years, looking at the results – and I finished 36th out of 82 finishers in my age group!  Woo hoo!  My official time was 27:33, but I was chip-timed at 27:04.

One note for the race organizers: the results page doesn’t format properly on the iPhone.  So – ye gods! – I had to wait until I got to the coffee shop to see my results.  There should be a special place in Heck reserved for web designers whose stuff doesn’t work properly on the iPhone.

Feeling pretty sore today – gluteus medius in particular.  Probably will go to the gym anyway and work out in other ways.  I have a lot of nervous energy to work off, and my goal for the next little bit will be to go to bed exhausted so I don’t have to worry about getting to sleep.