Green Christmas

Merry Christmas, everyone! 2011 is almost over, and in keeping with tradition of distilling 8,760 hours down to “good” or “bad,” 2010 has been a pretty “bad” year. A year is never made up of 100% "bad" or "good" moments, but my "bad" was pretty weighty this year, while the "good" is only just beginning. So I’m ready to be done with the old, bad shitty year and get started on the new, “you’ve earned it,” good year.

One of the more superlatively shitty parts of 2010 was the fact that I haven’t spoken to anyone in my family except my mom since I was accused of ruining Christmas last year. I did not ruin Christmas, but that didn't change the fact that no one is willing to admit that they are wrong, and so I will be excommunicated until pigs fly (for the sad, lurid “Running with Scissors” type details, you can read this post). So I was relieved to have an excuse to not come home for Christmas.

I have never, ever in 27 years missed a Christmas at home. Wherever I was and whatever I was doing, my parents always bought me a plane ticket and made sure I came home. I've missed all the other holidays, but never, ever Christmas. I really like going home for Christmas, so it helped soften the blow that it never really felt like Christmas in San Francisco. Sure, there were lights around and you could see Christmas trees in people's windows, but it's never really Christmas until it's so cold that your nose runs every time you go outside, you've had to dig your car out of the snow at least once, and... well... you've gone home. So even though all the lawns in my working class neighborhood are so lit up that you can see them from space, it looks a lot more like "tacky" than like Christmas to me.

But what to do for Christmas? My Rockstar Housemate from Boston would be visiting his brother in San Diego the week between Christmas and new years, why not drive down a day or two early (I would never dream of interrupting his Christmas with his family) and get a hotel in the least wintery place in the lower 48 states: San Diego! Nothing to make you forget it's Christmas like a room with citrus trees growing outside!

My plan was to ride Mt. Palomar, and the rest of a 130-mile loop that brought me through Temecula and back to Escondido. There were some problems with my plan, I discovered in the morning. First, the sun is only up for about 10 hours a day around Christmas, meaning that I would have to haul ass to cram 130 miles and tens of thousands of feet of climbing into 10 hours. Also, I would have to leave before the hotel breakfast began, which meant no utensils to eat yogurt or oatmeal, and NO COFFEE! Even worse, I apprehensively drove by the nearest Starbucks on the way to the beginning of my route, and it was CLOSED! (Starbucks, please sponsor my blog.) This wasn't going to be a Merry Christmas after all.

I found a 711 (711, please don't sponsor my blog) and walked inside for some bad coffee that would stave off the caffeine headache, and what to my wondering eyes should appear? Two grown adults in red and green elf suits complete with tights and jester-style three-peaked jinglebell hats at the coffee island. The female elf was serving herself coffee, while the male elf was serving himself liberally from the hot cocoa dispenser. This is too rich! I thought. At first I thought maybe the elves worked at some department store and had been out drinking all night to celebrate the end of the Christmas season, but when the male elf looked at me and yelled, "Hey! She's wearing tights just like me!" the novelty and excitement he expressed about his costume made me realize that the outfits were just one of those things that appears in your life when you're drunk. Who knows where they come from, they just are. Never mind the fact that I wasn't actually wearing any tights, I was wearing black and purple shorts.

Once I started riding, I thought of another problem with my plan: I was woefully underdressed. Just because the highs were going to be in the 60's, didn't mean that the lows wouldn't be in the 40's. I guess I had been a little optimistic when I packed only shorts and a wind-permeable jacket.

A fifth problem (but who's counting?) was that I had pulled the cue sheet for my ride verbatim off of the MapMyRide's automatically-generated cue sheets. Have you guys ever used those things? I don't recommend it. They're terrible! Forget the fact that the mileages are wrong, the names of the roads are wrong too. (And while we're on the topic, WTF with the new MMR site, I can't make head or tail of it!) In the first four miles I'd already gotten off my bike to consult the maps in my phone twice and amended my route just as many times. What would I ever do without my iPhone?

As much as I wanted to be in a good mood, I was not. It was beautiful out, and I wanted to enjoy the beauty, but I kept coming back to the fact that I'd sent home gifts for my dad and even my thuggish brother, but only Mom had sent Christmas gifts for me. I had a suspicion that my gifts would go unopened again this year, just like last year, and father's day, and Dad's birthday. And damn there was a lot of climbing on this route!

As I rode through towns like Escondido ("Hidden") and Rincon ("Corner"), and thought about other California towns with silly names like Las Pulgas ("The Fleas") and La Mirada ("The Look;" not 'view,' 'look'), I wondered who was responsible for naming these towns and whether it was really just a dim 7th grader with a Spanish dictionary opening the pages up at random. How else do you explain a town called, "Rafts" (Cayucos), "Hellhole Canyon" (this one in English), and Coalinga which admittedly doesn't mean anything but bears more than a passing resemblance to 'cunnilingus.' I saw one street named "Whaaat" (3 a's).

I was also surprised at how many cars were on the road. Not like there was traffic or anything, but I just assumed that anyone who had someone to be with on Christmas wouldn't leave the house, and certainly not before 8 in the morning. But do you know the surest way to bring a steady stream of cars on a deserted country road, even on Christmas morning? Pull down your shorts to pee. That's when 15 cars will suddenly be driving through the orange groves toward nothing but a mountain whose parks are closed. Know the second best way to bring a whole bunch of speeding cars out of nowhere? Take your hands off the handlebars to eat a snack. And what were the only stores that were open? Why, liquor stores of course! So even though it was 8 in the morning on Christmas day, it was a perfect day to be speeding through switchbacks drunk.

I have to admit, this ad at a liquor store was a little bit beyond me.

After what was already much climbing (and a little more getting lost), I reached the foot of Mt. Palomar. I was probably already at about 1000' of elevation, so I just had about 4500' to go over the next seven miles. Piece of cake!

And it was. It wasn't a hard climb with the average grade only being about 6 or 7%, it was just lo-o-o-o-o-o-o-ong for someone who hasn't done that kind of riding in awhile and doesn't want to admit how out of shape she is. Thinking back on it, I didn't have any major melt-downs (the hallmark of a Claire biking adventure) but I was definitely counting down the distance to the top by tenths of a mile, so I must have been at least a little bit unhappy.

I was a bit confused by this one too. Sure, it's a mountain, but if in December it's about 55 degrees up here, are snowballs really a big problem? And a $500 fine or 6 mos in jail, isn't that a bit steep?

The real unhappiness came after I reached the top. First of all, I had been long out of water and sweating for over 3 hours of mostly climbing. There was a general store at the top of the mountain, but surprise, surprise, it was closed. Oh well. All I had to do was hold on for a 10-mile downhill and then there had to be something open at the bottom, right? Right??

I tipped my front wheel down the other side, but was getting a little lost in the signage. I was in the state park now, and stopping off at every camp ground to try to find a water fountain. All I found were picnicking Latino families, and I didn't really feel comfortable asking them if they had any water to share. Then all the "Exit" signs were pointing back the way I came. When I found myself at a dead end in the middle of a Christian Retreat center, I finally pulled out my phone again to plan my own retreat. No signal. Worst-case scenario, I was going to have to go another two miles back up to the top of the mountain and come back down the way I'd come up.

I climbed back out of the Christain colony and made my way back toward the summit. About half way up I stopped at an intersection with a clear view of the sky, and miracle of miracles I had reception! Praise the Lord! Thank you, baby Jesus! Find me, phone! I beseeched. The little blue dot showed me that I was back on the path to where I wanted to be. A Christmas miracle! Then I looked at the path where it wanted me to go: "Road Closed."

I briefly considered just riding around the "Road Closed" sign, but then if I figured that I got 4 miles down the road before I found the road was completely impassible because of a mudslide or something, I definitely would throw a temper tantrum if I had to climb back up again. Also, this meant that I wouldn't be able to get out to Temecula.

Okay, truth be told I'd given up on going all the way out to Temecula hours ago, and between rousing refrains in my Pity Party Anthem ("All I want is a fucking drink of water! Is that too much to ask?!" --in quotes, not italics because it was whined out loud), I started to beat myself up for being so relieved to cut my ride in half. Why was I so bent about riding the longest Palomar loop on MapMyRide? Why did I always have to do the longest option of everything? Surely I was long past that "I can't compete, so I'll just do events that I can be proud to complete" mentality. Right? I mean, I run marathons on a whim just to thumb my nose at those people. I see your marathon and raise it by not training, you pussy! What the hell was I trying to prove anymore?

Just like any drug, if you dip into the depths of your own stamina and self-control too many times then you start to abuse it. You don't get high anymore from it, you just kind of start to feel used up. But you can't stop. A 10K just isn't enough if you know there's a half marathon being offered. You know you're too spent to be able to push yourself in the shorter stuff anyway. If you doubled your distance last season, then you have to quadruple it this season, just to prove that you've still got it. No, fuck that. That doesn't sound like fun at all. The mountain was enough.

Didn't I say the mountain was enough? As I rode back, I tried to cut out all the hills between me and the hotel. It turned out to be impossible. No matter which way I went, there were hills. I had tracked down some fluids from an open liquor store, but every time I hit a bump my dehydrated, undercaffeinated brain was rattling around in my skull making me want to get off my bike and fall asleep in the broken glass, trash and cacti at the side of the road. Finally, 6 hours (only 5:20 of which were riding) and 70 miles later, I pulled back up to my car.

Driving back to the hotel I stopped at the 711 for more coffee, but then driving by the Starbucks (Starbucks, please sponsor my blog) I noticed that... are those people sitting outside Starbucks?! Okay, I'll admit it. I actually drove into the parking lot hoping it would be open before I actually saw signs that it really was. (Starbucks, please sponsor my blog.) I got out of my car and got in the ridiculously long line.

Rant Alert!

Now what kinds of people do you suppose go into a Starbucks on Christmas day? There was the woman who was ordering 15 complicated drinks for everyone in her family; a woman obviously unfamiliar with the whole Starbucks ordering procedure. Even though these 15 orders were all perfectly written in Starbucks syntax, this woman had to ask 5 questions about each drink to the lone register girl taking her order. Pet peeve no. 1: When there's a complicated order and the line's backing up, pull someone else to the second register to take orders!

Behind the woman ordering in bulk was the Impulse Buyer. This woman stepped across the aisle and was checking out every piece of syndicated crap that Starbucks had for sale. This was not just the casual glance of someone bored and flipping through products while she waited for the woman in front of her to order a truckload of coffee, this woman was engrossed in the children's books and sample gift sets. She was so engrossed that she was blocking the only path from the bar to the door and people were asking her to excuse them, then bumping in to her as they passed, and she STILL didn't move a muscle. Pet peeve no. 2: If you are going to be engrossed in a public place, step to the side and make sure that you won't be in anyone's way. If you do find that you have been inadvertently blocking someone's way, then excuse yourself, step aside, and find a less heavily trafficked place to be absorbed.

Then there was me. I stank. I was covered in salt and bike grease. If you know me well, you know that I am paranoid to the point of obsession about smelling bad. When I know I smell bad, I don't want anyone within 4 feet of me, which is hard when you've got a Starbucks full of clueless people.

Then behind me there was the type of mother-daughter pair that only southern California can produce. The mother was portly and frumpy, a fact that was not hidden by her impeccable dye job and expensive jacket. She was also obviously stupid, as evidenced by the conversation she was having with her 90-pound, 5'9" overly made-up 20-something daughter handling the travel mugs across the store. "Maybe we should get one for Alex. Do you think she has one? It's cute. Do you think she would like it? Well if you think that she's already got one like it...? I've also got some of those special Starbucks gift cards. We could put some money on that and put it in the cup, but if you don't think it's a good idea..." The conversation itself wouldn't have been so bad except that it's gouche to A) reuse an already-used gift card and B) be shopping for Christmas presents at 2:00 on Christmas afternoon. Not only was she yelling this whole conversation across the store, she also had her back to the direction of the line and was ever-so-slightly backing up... into me. Pet peeve nos. 3 & 4 people who bump into you and don't even realize it, and then continue to do it without apologizing, and people who violate your personal space and THEN yell into your ear... even if they're not talking to you. Pet peeve no. 5: people who yell conversations across public places.

For the hundredth time today, I missed Boston. In Boston, these people go to Dunkin Donuts (Dunkin Donuts, please don't sponsor my blog.) and leave the Starbucks to the far classier entitled set of rude people, who turn their nose up at yelling and distance themselves from people who smell.

Revisited

Back at the dawn of time (in this case, 2004) when I was training for my first marathon, my friend Lorraine (a trail runner and accomplished ultramarathoner) gently suggested that maybe I might want to try a race (any race) before I did my Big Marathon. Since I was in a state of constant anxiety for months leading up to said Big Marathon, and since everyone seemed to respect Lorraine, I took her up on her advice. Not knowing what race to sign up for, I also took her up on a trail run in her favorite series: one that offers a 50K at every race. I signed up for the Pirate's Cove (now called Rodeo Beach) 20K. At the time it was the longest run I had ever done in my life. I was unable to walk normally for days afterward. I learned of pain.

Flash forward to the dawn of today, or a couple hours before it to be more specific. The 25 mph winds and driving rain had kept me up part of the night, and I really wasn't feeling all that thrilled about running for 18 miles through that shit. Especially since my running has been sporadic at best and a bit scant in the mileage department. I had tried to sign up for the 20K, but it had been sold out at the time. When I got to the race (just on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge), I found a whole table designated for people changing distances and met a girl who had just signed up for the 20K the night before. I was slightly miffed that I had missed an opportunity to slack, but I had a reputation to uphold here! I had said I would run 18 miles and 18 miles I would run, dammit!

I remembered very little about my last go-round on this race except climbing a set of stairs right at the beginning, and running a quarter mile in deep sand at the end. Then I remembered getting lost in Sausalito on the way home. That's it. So I stood at the start studying the course profile, which looked like this:

If you can't see it, a subtitle in the corner says "Gain: 4203'."

Suddenly I felt a tap on my shoulder. "Heeeeey! What are you doing here?!" It was Sponsor. I gave her a huge hug. "Last minute trip to Sports Basement?" she asked, pointing to my jacket and zipping her own up higher. We were wearing the exact same jacket. We were also wearing almost exactly the same shorts.



"Well that's embarrassing!" I said.

"Dude, these trail runs have changed my life!" she said. I'd turned her on to the series months ago and then had never been able to make a race because of work commitments. I wanted to tell her that I was glad to have returned the favor, but it didn't occur to me to say it until several miles into the race. "They're amazing. This one old guy spent like a mile helping me find a place to pee with no poison ivy 2 weeks ago. No road runner would ever do that!"

We began running together, and immediately the trail started climbing steeply, but not so steeply that you couldn't run some of it. "Holy shit, when's this going to end?" she asked after walking the better part of a mile. I looked at her. We'd barely started and it wasn't all that steep. There was some more tough stuff to come. "It's just that I've been...mffmmmmb"

"What?" I asked. My hearing's not so good and I lose a lot of what people say, especially when they're out of breath.

"I'm ashamed to say it here," she said. There were runners right up our asses and we in turn were up other runners' asses. I guessed more than heard that the missing word was "smoking."

A million emotions ran through my head: shock, disappointment, sympathy, the desire to gloat. Drinking hadn't been the only bad habit that I'd gotten back into when I jumped off the wagon, and drinking wasn't the one that it took me longest to kick either. She had given me a relentless hard time about it. Now the tables had turned. "What happened?" I asked.

I wasn't in any kind of a hurry today, but eventually I couldn't wait for her any longer and set out on my own, running up the hill. For the most part the rain held off, but the fog was still so thick that you couldn't see 50 yards down the trail, let alone to the bottom of the cliffs we were running along (which is probably a good thing for me).

Somewhere behind that fog there is a cliff and then stunning views of the ocean, or maybe the Golden Gate Bridge and the San Francisco skyline, or maybe a pot of gold or the fountain of youth. The world may never know.

On a drier day, the trails may not have been too technical: mostly dirt singletrack and fire roads with very few rocks and roots. However, I had never run on a surface that was both slippery and sticky at the same time. When we came down the first long descent, it was like running on wet clay. Actually, it wasn't like running on wet clay, it was running on wet clay. I passed one guy slipping and sliding down the hill more than he was stepping. "Slippery as hell out here!" he said to me as I ran by.

I wanted to tell him, "It's much easier if you don't resist it!" but I was already way down the trail. I realized that that was true of a lot of things in life. I felt very zen for the next mile as I resolved to go with the flow more often.

Much to my surprise, I was feeling great. My butt was a little bit sore from some squats that I had done to shove it in Jillian Michaels' face, and my hips continued to be sore, tight, and bothersome, but my fatigue factor never exceeded about a 5 on a scale of 1 to 10. The hardest part (just like all the old people say) was the downhills. Most of my running lately has been on treadmills, so I was in great uphill running shape, but there's no downhill on the dreadmill and my hips seemed to be taking most of the pounding. I'd never actually felt my ass contracting to brake my controlled falling downhill before. Weird.

Somehow the miles seemed to be disappearing behind me faster than I could appreciate them. Even though it was shitty and foggy and wet and it started to rain around mile 10, I was still in one of those states where I couldn't believe that this was actually my life! Here I was running up and down these mountains (which I'm sure had wonderful, stunning, amazing views), along trails that I recognized from ultrarunning blogs (Miwok, Marin Headlands, etc.), back out in California, and I had the fitness to actually rock up to one of these things any time I wanted to without being out of commission for a week afterward. How many other people were lucky enough to even have the fitness to have the OPTION to enjoy something like this? I loved my life.

"Isn't this so much better than spending the morning hung over?!" I asked a girl as I passed her (and almost slipped and fell on top of her) on some singletrack.


"I think I'm going to feel hung over for the rest of the day," she said.

I didn't feel that way. I don't think I had a single low moment for the whole race. I passed another guy, who got out of my way without my even having to say anything. "No hurry," I said to him. "I'm just having one of those moments where I feel so lucky that this is actually my life!"

"Well enjoy it while you can, because THAT won't last!" he told me.

It lasted. He was a humbug.

Somewhere around mile 15, I started the long, roller-coaster-like descent to the finish. Then the open hillside in my immediate vicinity (which is all I could see anyway) gave way to misty forests. I didn't want it to end. I wanted to keep running in those misty forests for another 10 miles. I can't remember ANY race that I didn't want to end. Ever.

Despite my hips being sore, I still felt light and fluid. I ran the last flat mile into the finish (not a deep sand finish, thankfully) somewhere around 9 minute pace. Nine-minute pace isn't so bad when it's mile number 18.5 and you're not particularly trained for running.

I passed the timing tent and asked where the finish line was. "You're done, honey. You can stop running now," the guy told me.

"Oh." Damn.

I finished about 20 minutes before Sponsor, and have no idea how I finished in the pack. In fact, I didn't remember that there WERE other people running this until somewhere around mile 16 and I realized that I just simply didn't care.

As I was running I was trying to figure out the reason for my good mood. How could I recreate this in every race I ever did for the rest of my life? I realized that a few things were different about this race:

1. I was out here because I WANTED to be out here, not because I wanted to beat a time, come in somewhere in the pack, add another feather to my cap, or train for another event.
2. I was fresh. I hadn't been training my ass off (or hardly at all) for over 6 months.
3. I didn't give a flying fuck where or when I finished. I was just out here to be out here because there was nowhere else I wanted to be at that particular moment. I had no idea what my body was capable of and was happy for every pain-free step that I got. I know that this is nearly the same as number 1, but it bears repeating.

So will I go back to being a trail runner? A cyclist? A triathlete? I had also been going through old race photos for a Christmas gift for my grandmother and realized that the happiest year of my life was the year that I didn't have any race goals and did every race under the sun. It wasn't until I actually tried to DO anything that I mucked up my happiness with goals. So maybe that's what my 2011 focus should be: going only to the races that I want to go to, and going only as hard as I feel like going.

...And build up a new crop of Straight Men Over 40 to keep me company while I do it...

The New Experiment

ANNOUNCEMENT: Claire is getting her social media worked out.
Many of you have complained about the pop-up asking for a password when you try to view my blog. That happened when I figured out that whenever you google my name, my Twitter account is the first hit. Since I use words like "shit" in my tweets, I found it necessary to block my tweets from prying eyes (potential clients). I have dropped the Twitter feed from my sidebar (tear) so that the password popup is gone. If anyone knows how to get my real name OFF my speedracer twitter account, PLEASE LET ME KNOW!

In the meantime I have recently created more professional Facebook and Twitter accounts that I will be updating more regularly sans the cursing and with more information than just "first satisfying bowel movement in weeks" as my tweet content. My newer "professional" twitter name is @ClaireLunardoni, and my Facebook is finally linked up to my real name (and if I went to high school with you, no I STILL don't want to be your friend!). Hit me up!

Winter is my season of experimentation. In the winter of 2008-09 I experimented with giving up sugar, caffeine, processed grains, and dairy. It was great but completely unsustainable. In 2009 I tried a training program to do 1000 push-ups in an hour that I KNEW was bunk. I proved it was bunk when I gave up on Christmas Eve after achieving 500 push-ups in an hour and 15 minutes. My shoulders are STILL rounded forward from it.

This year's experiment is a doozie... for me anyway because it requires me doing something that I absolutely LOATHE: counting calories.

Many of my clients ask me about Biggest Loser. Even though I personally love Biggest Loser for many of the same reasons I loved both the Anna Nicole Show and Lifetime Television, as a trainer I'm also obligated to poo-poo it because of the negative impression that it gives of our profession. (Although I don't know if ANY trainer should be complaining about a show that is basically a 2-hour commercial for their services). Nevertheless, despite practically living in a gym (my desk chair is a plyo box), I don't know any better what goes on behind the scenes at Biggest Loser than my clients do. How much are they eating? How much are they exercising? What exactly is the composition of their diet and exercise program? Are Bob and Jillian really like that behind the scenes? Uhhhh... hold on, I'll just pull out my How the Fuck Am I Supposed to Know app.

Some internet research told me that they're doing some 4-6 hours of exercise a day (including at least 90 minutes of intervals) and eating somewhere between 1000 and 1500 calories a day. With a deficit of several thousand calories per day, bodies that are screaming to be given a chance to heal, and cutting all the processed crap out of their diet, it's no wonder they get results. There's also some severe dehydration going on to cut weight, but that's beside the point.

In a quest for more detailed knowledge of their fitness and nutrition plan to report back to my clients (and because I'd recently had a dream that Jillian got drunk and insisted we have sex on her motorcycle), I picked up a couple of Jillian Michaels' books. Around this time, one of my heavier clients said to me, "Yeah, but it's easier for someone like you to lose weight than someone like me." Well that was it. Not only was it completely untrue, but the best way to get a Claire to do something extreme and possibly stupid is to make it into a competition, even if it's just an imaginary cage match with scrunchy-faced "fitness guru."

One of the Jillian books I had picked up was "Making the Cut," which promised me that I could "drop the last stubborn 10 to 20 pounds once and for all" in 30 days. Sure, okay, whatever. Who doesn't want that? Rather than being aimed at the morbidly obese, this "plan" is closer to what participants on her spin-off show "Losing It" probably do: a 30-day diet for drastic results for one specific occasion (wedding, high school reunion, that day that you finally "accidentally" run into the ex).

Here's a summary of the diet: you only get to eat your BMR's worth of calories, and you're supposed to do these high-intensity "advanced" weight-training circuits 4 times a week, plus cardio for like an hour every day. There's this 50-question questionnaire that tells you what kind of metabolism you have, and I'm a "slow oxidizer," which means that I get 65% carbs, 25% protein, and 15% fat (more carbs than the other two oxidizing groups).

Problem No. 1 with The Plan: I'm a vegetarian. Most of my meals are high in carbohydrates from vegetables and whole grains. My protein sources tend to be toward the high-fat (cheese, eggs), high-carb (legumes, whole grains), or no-no foods anyway (soy, tisk tisk). Of course I feel full after eating a lot of carbs, because I always eat lots of carbs. Of course I find high-fat meals satisfying if it's pretty much the only time I get both fat and protein in my diet. So how am I supposed to answer a question like, "You concentrate best when you eat: A. fruits and grains, B. nothing in particular affects my concentration, C. meat and fatty food"? Well, A is the only one I've tried so...

Problem No. 2 with The Plan: Michaels gives me a formula to figure out my BMR, but doesn't take into account body composition. I have way more muscle than the "typical" person my size. I weigh 130 pounds, but I have 110 pounds of lean mass. I'm also WAY more active than most people. I'm a trainer. I'm lifting, spotting, demonstrating, and riding my bike around the city for 12 hours a day 5-7 days a week. According to Jillian, I'm not allowed to eat more than 1385 calories every day. According to the Katch-McArdle formula for BMR, my BMR is more like 1450, and my. My daily caloric expenditure is somewhere between 2500 and 3000 calories per day. Michaels' answer to any excuse I may have, "It's only 30 days -- suck it up!" (that's a direct quote).

The real reason that I tried the "The Fuck You Jillian Starvation Diet" (other than, I'll admit it, wanting "my sexiest body ever!"), was because I thought it was a terrible idea. I have several clients who are subsisting off of fewer than 1500 calories per day, and they're the ones who aren't losing any weight. But how do you tell a frustrated dieter that the best way to lose weight is to eat more? And how do you sympathize with someone trying to cut calories when your 5'2" frame has processed 2500-3000 calories pretty much every day for the past 10 years? Finally, I knew what was supposed to happen when you go on low-calorie diets, but I wanted to see for myself.

Diet Strategy Number 1: Don't Keep Your Diet a Secret
I told every single one of my friends, clients, and coworkers that I was doing this diet so that I wouldn't chicken out. Let me tell you, I would have given this stupid shit up on the first day if it hadn't been for that!

My typical day's eating looks like this:
4:30 am -- apple
8:30 am -- oatmeal with 1/2 a scoop of protein powder and a tablespoon of chia seeds
10:30 am -- lift weights for an hour. Feel like shit. Am able to lift way less than I usually would. Take extra long breaks because my recovery is shit. Am successful in not fainting.
11:30 am -- plain nonfat Greek yogurt and a banana
12:30 pm -- run, ride, do yoga, swim for 30 - 90 min, high intensity. Cardio actually felt okay through the whole experiment
2:00 pm -- eat some sort of grain salad with veggies
4:00 pm -- eat a fruit salad and worry about going over on my carbs
8:00 pm -- 4 egg whites, sauteed spinach, be glad for the chance to go to bed and not be hungry anymore

Diet Danger Number 1: If You Severely Restrict Your Calories, You Will Lose Muscle, Not Fat.
After 10 days on the diet, I had lost 2.4 pounds. I had lost 1.9 pounds of muscle, despite lifting weights for over an hour four times per week. Yes, this was a very short time for a weight training program, but I wasn't really looking forward to having lost 8 pounds of muscle by the end of the program.

Diet Danger Number 2: If You Are Hungry All the Time, You Are Unlikely to Stick to Your Diet and You Will Gain the Weight Back Sooner Rather than Later.
I was so hungry! I don't mean like tummy grumbling hungry. I mean like feeling like I was in a constant state of bonking hungry. I managed to stick to my calorie limit for 10 days, keeping all my macronutrients in the right proportions. Every time I stood up, I would be dizzy for a good 30 seconds. I would lose count while counting to 10. I couldn't remember what people had said to me that morning. I was nearly getting in accidents because I was driving around in a fog. I was loathe to demonstrate an exercise because I was afraid I would collapse and my muscles would burn for the next 10 seconds. I could think about nothing but how hungry I was. Walking past restaurants was torture. I began fantasizing about food.

I was a total wreck, not just energy-wise. I was going crazy. I turned into a control freak (more than ever, like I was when I was a teenager and I used to pitch a fit if somebody wanted to watch something else when it was my turn to watch Ally McBeal all alone and do my crunches). If something unexpected came up, I was more likely to cry until I get my way than to get it done. Clients would ask me to reschedule appointments and I would get extremely put out. "You want to come 15 minutes later? Fine! Let me put an ALERT on that so I don't FORGET." (Fucker!)

I was even more scatterbrained than ever. I would tell my clients to do 12 of an exercise and stop counting at 5. Supersetting squats and shoulder presses? I'll forget the squats. I'd spend eons staring at my phone because by the time I've turned it on, I've forgotten what I was checking, so it times out and puts itself to sleep. Then I'd turn it back on and try to remember.

I couldn't deal with anything mentally trying, which really sucked because in day two of the Fuck You Jillian Starvation Diet (28 days till pizza), someone smashed my window right outside of work and stole my new bike out of my car. I don't know how I would have reacted normally, but as I dealt with insurance (bike's not covered), the autoglass guys (what do you mean you have a Massachusetts insurance company?), called the cops ("yeah, sure, we're on it."), listened to my coworkers tell me how stupid it was to leave my bike in my car in the first place, and filed a police report ("how does a bike even fit into the back seat of a Corolla?"), if I'd had a gun and ran into the crackhead who violated my car and my bike, I would have shot him in the face without thinking twice. Then I would have continued to shoot when he was on the ground. Yeah, sure, it's a violation. They stole something that I worked my ass off for; something that was perfectly fitted to me and only me with the tiny frame, extra long stem, and aggressive fit, and they sold it for $20 worth of meth. But I don't like guns. Still, I was feeling violent. That night I saw Scout and laid into her so bad that she told me that she didn't want to hang out with me anymore tonight.

Starvation not only affects your energy for exercise. I had no sex drive, and didn't even want to be touched... or be around other people. Meals are so precious and so restricted that any person demanding my time or my energy may rob me of precious calories, or worse force me to cheat. I might miss some of my 8 hours of sleep that are my only escape from this shit. They may demand a portion of my already severely-depleted energy stores. I started isolating myself.

Diet Danger Number 3: If You Aren't Eating Enough Calories, Your Workouts Will Suffer
I'm an athlete getting back into training. It's bad enough that my workouts have been shit. I've got an 18-mile run on Saturday where I'll be burning 1.5 times my daily calorie allowance in the race alone. I've got a 120-mile ride on New Years that will require about 2x my daily allowance. My workouts were already crap. I was ending them early and turning down the heat because I was so low on energy. I wasn't recovering properly. Things that normally wouldn't make me sore were tearing me up. I quit one hill repeat workout short because my hips were so stiff I was afraid that I would slip out on the 40 mph descent, not crap out on the 7 mph ascent.

After 10 days I was absolutely dead. I had been hungry and able to think about nothing else for a week and a half. I couldn't imagine another 20 days of this, and the mental fog and hunger were only getting worse. My job performance was suffering. I felt sick, not in my stomach, not in my head, but in my body. I already knew the answer to this experiment: It was a terrible idea. Did I really need 10 more days of this torture to figure this out?

Diet Danger Number 4: Most Dieters Wind Up Gaining Back More Weight Than They Lost/Hunger Leads to Binging
On the 10th day I got home from my ride starving and couldn't stand the thought of having to get through the next 4 hours on nothing but a container of nonfat yogurt (I'd already eaten the banana out of desperation to get through the workout at all). I ate the yogurt, then I ate another banana, then I ate my dinner, then I ate a granola bar that had survived the pantry cleansing I had done 11 days earlier.

Then I went to the mall to go Christmas shopping. But I couldn't concentrate on finding any gifts because all I was really looking for was a Sweet Factory. I found Godiva Chocolates and See's Candies, but I couldn't very well walk around the mall eating bonbons out of a box. I had to find something that would require as little unwrapping as possible and where I could reach into an opaque bag discretely as many times as I needed to until I had eaten so much sugar that I was going to throw up. Having walked 2 laps around the mall and not found the type of binge haven that I sought, I went to the Trader Joe's next door and bought a container of Almond Butter Toffee Chocolate Dipped Whatever Things at 170 calories each. I ate all 8 of them in the package as I bought gifts in Borders. Then I went out to dinner with Scout. I was jolly and happy again and willing to be touched.

The next day I felt alive again. I was able to focus on what my clients were saying and deal with the unexpected. I went to Target to pick up part of a Christmas gift and found myself wandering the grocery aisles wishing all the other shoppers would leave so that I could design the perfect binge in peace. I hadn't eaten this way in years! What was happening to me? In the car I couldn't shove foil-wrapped white chocolate pieces and blue corn and flax seed tortilla chips into my mouth fast enough. I ate so much that I thought I really was going to vomit, and then I had pizza for dinner. This was terrible. Normally I enjoy eating with friends and pride myself on craving healthy foods. What I was doing right now was addictive behavior. What had Jillian done to me?

I know that my eating will normalize shortly, and I look forward to getting back to my own workouts rather than Jillian's mind-numbing light-weight, high-rep circuits that use half the equipment in the gym.

I have also learned valuable lessons about myself in this experiment:

• I do have willpower when I have a very specific program, but when I relinquish any control, then I lose all control.
• I need way more than 1385 calories per day to function. I should probably go no lower than 1800 calories per day to avoid going crazy.
• I still don't eat enough protein.
• Everything that they say about diets is true. The hard part is actually following the only one that works: proper diet and exercise.
  

No! and then Yes!

Gone are the lazy days of Thanksgiving where I had almost 4 full days off (almost). This week was back to a normal schedule of 12-hour days and lots of running around. To complicate matters, this week Lindsey was in the area for a workshop only about 1.5 hours away in a suburb of San Jose called Morgan Hill.

Shithead had told me that she would be in town from Monday till Friday, so I blocked off Monday night and possibly Wednesday night to see her. Late Sunday night she told me she wouldn't be in till late Monday and couldn't do dinner. Thanks a lot, fuckwad. I've only been asking for your flight itinerary for 2 months...

Shortly after having this conversation over text message, I went into the supermarket. I was in the personal care aisle and saw that they sold lube. Scout and I had run out of lube that weekend, so I pulled out my phone to ask her if I should pick up some more. Practical problem, innocent question.

When I got out to my car I noticed that I in fact hadn't texted Scout about the lube, but instead I'd asked the last person I'd been texting: Lindsey. Fuck you, iPhone!
Still, I assumed Lindsey had figured out what had happened and would still be down to have a very G-rated dinner on Wednesday night. I took Wednesday afternoon off of commitments and canceled my Thursday morning appointments so that I wouldn't have to be up at 3:30 in the morning the next day. I heard nothing back from Lindsey on Monday night confirming she could do dinner. Nothing by Tuesday afternoon. Tuesday evening I called and left a message asking her where/when I should pick her up. It wasn't until I was getting in bed Tuesday night that I got a call back from her. "There's nowhere to eat around here," she said.

"Lindsey, I don't care where we eat, that's beside the point. I don't care if we go to Denny's."

"Oh, well there's a Denny's right outside."

"Okay, well I don't really want to go to Denny's." I then went on to tell her about how I'd cried myself to sleep over a little old lady I'd seen eating oatmeal alone in a Denny's on Thanksgiving. I kept saying "we" as I told the story.

"Who's 'we'?"

"Me and The Girl."

"How's that going by the way?"

"Really good, actually." End of sentence. End of topic as far as I was concerned. I didn't want to get into that with her. It was none of her business.

"So what was that text message...?"

"Uhhhhhh, yeah. Sorry about that. That wasn't meant for you... I just... you know how I text the wrong person sometimes..." (this has happened before).

"Yeah, I was with my girlfriend Jenn when I got that and..." Dropping the girl's name sounded forced. I rolled my eyes. Whatever. I knew the new victim couldn't have been around for more than a month anyway. Poor sucker didn't know what she was in for.

"Well I'm embarrassed about it, so let's not talk about it anymore. I'll pick you up at your hotel at 8."

At 6:00 the next morning she called me. "What's up?" I asked her after I was out of my session.

"Oh sorry, I must have ass dialed you. I'll let you know later if I'm still up for tonight."

Long pause. I was deciding whether to throw my phone across the room or give her a piece of my mind. I'm sorry if me taking off of work to drive 1.5 hours down there and buy you dinner is inconvenient to you, you stupid cunt! I wanted to say. "Yeah, whatever," I said in my flattest, you're-the-biggest-fucking-loser-I've-ever-met voice I could muster. "Just let me know before 6 if you're going to be a flake." Then I hung up.

No confirmation at noon. No confirmation at 2. No confirmation at 3. At 4:30 I texted her to see if we were still on. At 5:57 I was getting out of the shower and hopping in the car when I got a text message: "I've got an exam tomorrow and I've gotta study and get to bed at a decent time. I'm really sorry."

I wanted to scream. I wanted to drive down there and tear her throat out. I wanted to call her up and tell her just how much of a fucking loser she was. I wanted to stomp her face into the pavement. When half of life is just showing up, she still can't get shit done. I'd thought that suddenly and unexpectedly being in the same neighborhood after 5 months she would take an hour out of her day because that's what you do. But no, Lindsey has never done a single thing in her life that she could possibly get out of. She almost missed her brother's wedding. I wouldn't be surprised if she missed her dad's funeral.

I texted her back saying, "You've never studied a day in your life" (you stupid cow, it's only a 2-day workshop anyway) "and I've been up since 3:30 and already put in 12 hours' work. I don't have to play this Chase After Lindsey game anymore. Go to hell."

I was furious. Not because she'd ditched me. Over the past couple of weeks I couldn't see anything positive coming out of the reunion at all. But what made me so pissed was the inconsiderateness and disrespect of it all. This whole time I had thought that she had treated me like shit because she was trying to prove something, and people do horrible things to each other when they're breaking up. But no, she really just is that self-centered, stupid, lazy, and disorganized. She hadn't even taken the time to be vindictive. She'd just discarded me like a CD she was sick of listening to. And I had let reading into her malfunction ruin my life. I wanted to drive over there and tell her what a fucking loser she was, then I wanted to call all her friends and tell them the same. Then I wanted to sell her dog to a nice family with a dog house to make the beast sleep outside every night.

I vented and then I moved on.

The next day I was in a session with a client when a certain well-known San Franciscan, Korean-American gay activist comedian came on TV. "She's not looking strung out anymore," I said. "She must be off the coke if she could gain weight after being on Dancing with the Stars. I'd love to see what her training looks like..."

Yeah, be careful what you wish for.

That night I got an email from Ducky with a lead. His line said, "You want it?" and then began the forwarded message:

Hi, I'm looking for a personal trainer to do a bootcamp style class for Gargamet Show [name changed to protect the Claire] and 2 others on Saturday at 4pm. It would need to be at the venue she's performing at, the Nob Hill Masonic Center. Please contact me if you have someone that might be interested.

Uhhhh, YES! Okay, well my first though was, will there be cameras?! But I told Ducky I'd do it.

Immediately Lindsey was forgotten, except that I wanted her to know that while she was so self-important about a workshop for a job that paid her less after 3 years of being a mechanic than I used to earn after 3 months selling bikes, I was now making about three times her yearly income and training celebrities. Loser!
But I was frightened too. I would be in unfamiliar surroundings, with no equipment, and training not only a celebrity, but someone I had been a huge fan of since high school. The rest of the week I was shitting bricks.

I did not have a quiet day to get ready for My Big Break. Instead, this was the morning of the Lollipop Run 5K; the culmination of all our hard work with the elementary school girls. It was pouring with rain in Golden Gate Park, but 8 out of the 11 girls showed up to run anyway. Still, more Running Buddies (adults who volunteered to run with them) came than we had girls. As I walked to the start, I started to get a little misty-eyed. A 5K is a really long way for a 3rd, 4th, or 5th grader, especially our girls who didn't get much physical activity. Most of the girls wore a bigger shirt size than I did, and all of them had actually started to grow on me. Yes, I actually loved these girls and I was just so damned proud of them! I made sure I hardened up before I actually had to see anybody though.

The rain stopped before the start, and the girls and their running buddies set off. I waited until all the girls and all the Running Buddies from all the schools in the Bay Area had crossed the starting line, then I started running through the pack. As I caught up with each girl I talked with them for a little bit. They'd all started out too fast, they'd all gotten a cramp, they were all tired, and they all finished. I ran through the crowd from the very back to near the front and heard the same conversation: (little voice) "I'm tired, my legs hurt..." (big voice) "Do you want to walk?" "Let's run again when we get to that tree." "You're doing great!" "Pace yourself, slow and steady." And then one, "You can walk when you finish!" As they crossed the finish line, each one had a huge smile on her face, even the ones who were too cool for school in practice. I couldn't have been more excited.

I rushed across town for one more session before going home to change, then coming back to pick up some yoga mats and dumbbells for Gargamet Show. I came into the empty venue and they showed me to a room in the basement where I would be training her. They introduced me to the security guys who would be protecting us, and pulled down the blinds so you couldn't see the room from the street.

When she finally came in with another one of her roadies, I stuck out my hand. "Hi, I'm Claire."

"I'm Gargamet," she said just at the same time as I was saying, "I know who you are and turned my attention to the short girl next to her and asked her name."

I make a fool of myself in front of celebrities, so I just stuck to my job. Fill out the Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire (How would you rate your state of health? "Excellent" circled), sign the liability form (AUTOGRAPH!), discuss training history and current aches and pains briefly. Train.

We started with bodyweight squats, and somehow I wound up leading them like an aerobics instructor. Here I am, doing squats face-to-face with a woman who used to dominate my headphones back in the days of Napster, and she's watching me do squats. "You have really nice legs," she said.



"Thanks," I said. "Cyclist."

"Is that what does it?" I shrugged. I was resisting the temptation to tell her exactly HOW MUCH weight I'd gained since moving to California (10 pounds, but 5 of it muscle somehow).

I had them moving the whole time, and kept small talk to a minimum. Gargamet Show didn't really seem interested in stories, she just wanted to train. By the end of the session, the ice had melted a bit though. "Am I going to get made fun of tonight?" I asked finally.

"No," she assured me. "I do this in every city. It's not part of my act. I've had 30 trainers in 30 cities though, and this has been by far the hardest. I like it."

"That's fantastic!" I said. I handed her my card. "Next time you're in San Francisco, give me a call."

"I will put you in my phone," she said in a funny "tough guy" voice, actually looking at it.

"Thanks!"

I started explaining to them that if possible they should keep moving for the next hour or so to prevent soreness. "I don't know exactly what you guys do to prepare for these things, but I don't want you to be stiff on stage tonight."

"Are you coming to the show?" she asked.

"No, I kind of had plans..." (to buy more pants for work) "I didn't even know you were in town until I got the email on Wednesday."

"Well a couple of my friends can't come tonight, why don't you take their seats?"

"Okay, I've been trying to be cool about how I'm a huge fan," I admitted.

"You're sweet!" she said in a voice I suspected she reserves for ga-ga fans. "You can bring your... friend? or? whatever...?" she was looking at me inquisitively.

"I'm sure she'd love to come," I said.

"Great!" she said. "Thanks. You kicked my ass!" Then she left.

"You kicked her ass!" the roadie told me. "You're going to have a really great time at the show tonight. It's a good one. She's really funny."

"She said you kicked her ass!" the publicist said when she came in to pay me. She took my name to put me and my Plus One on the guest list.

Three hours later, Scout and I stopped by the bathroom on the way to the will-call window and ran into Esbie. "Look!" she said, bubbling over with excitement and showing us a vinyl album with the cover signed. "SIGNED! I didn't know you guys were going to be here."

"Yeah, neither did we until Claire scored free tickets a couple hours ago," Scout said. I was a little bit embarrassed. I didn't want to upstage Esbie, so I kept my mouth shut.

When we picked up the tickets from the will-call window, the woman left and came back with two back-stage passes as well. I looked at Scout like 'Oh fuck!' Then the usher escorted us to the center of the orchestra seats about 10 rows back. We still couldn't see because we were behind some tall queens, but that could have happened in the second row.

The show was funny, if a bit crude and afterward we debated whether to go to the afterparty at all. "The guy next to us just texted Michelle Tea," I wrote to Scout. "We're among the creme de la creme of San Francisco gay society." I usually shun the "cool" gay crowd in the city.

Still, we decided to stay in the surprisingly small crowd (about 20 people, one of whom I had worked with in Santa Cruz almost a decade ago and so we had someone to talk to) and drink bottled water and diet coke backstage waiting for Gargamet to come out. When she did and began moving her way through the room and posing for pictures, I just continued my conversation. I would NOT be one of those people.

Finally she noticed me. "HI!" she said. "You know I'm high from that workout. Like seriously. High. I feel great!"

"Oh good!" I said. "Are you sore at all?"

"No, I walked around for the next 45 minutes just like you told me to," Just like I told her to! "And I feel fine. Just like in la-la land."

There was a matter of a birthday present: a sex toy that resembled a chainsaw, then some more chatting, then she told everyone that she was tired. "SHE" (pointing at me) "really kicked my ass today."

Too bad the hipster sex toy crowd didn't look much like the type to be potential clients. Their fitness programs consisted of coke, trendy fixies, and organic food. I thanked her for the tickets and said good night. "Thanks again," she said.

"Give me a call next time you're in town," I said. "We'll do it harder." I was proud to draw a laugh from the coolest gay kids in SF.

And if I were a 16-year-old girl writing in my journal, I would end this entry with:

Best!

Day!

EVER!

A Race Report, FINALLY!

That's right! Claire is finally, at long, long last back in action. I was going to stage my comeback last Sunday, but the thought of running 9 miles in the cold was feeling a little bit daunting for my inertia level, and when it started pouring floodbuckets as I was driving to the race, I decided that my time would be better spent in a Starbucks somewhere. (Starbucks, please sponsor my blog!) Instead, I ran a rather pathetic two-mile trail run near the house that afternoon and finished absolutely disgusted with myself. I was tight, tired, and out of breath. It seemed to take so much effort just to start moving that to keep moving was too much to ask. I had no idea what my next big event would be, but I decided that I was going to race myself back into shape, starting this week. That's right! I was very motivated to start moving... sometime soon, but not right now.

So comeback 2.0 was planned for the Brazen Racing Nitro Turkey Trot in Pinole, CA. A client would also be doing this race, so there was no chickening out or I'd never save face. As we made the drive over, I was thinking about how this time last year I was on a plane on my way to Mexico, and the two years before I had PRed at the 5 mile distance. Right now all I could hope for was sub-10's.

I knew I would be running a 10K trail run, but other than that, I had no idea what to expect. What was the course like? How many people? What time did it start? I wasn't really sure about any of these things. Scout (formerly Bobberanne, but that nickname is too close to her real name so I feel obliged to change it) and I rolled into the Point Pinole Regional State Park up near the northern tip of the San Francisco Bay a comfortable 45 minutes before the race was supposed to start. But by the time I'd filled out the race day registration, picked up my chip (that's right, CHIP! For a 10K Turkey Trot!), picked up my t-shirt, and used The Smelliest Outhouse I've ever used in my life (no exaggeration), it was already 15 minutes past the projected start time. Luckily, there were so many late arrivals, that the race didn't start until about half an hour after it was supposed to. I wasn't worried. I had a feeling that there would be suffering involved in this, so I wasn't in any particular hurry.

At the Salem Wild Turkey Trot, I had never seen anyone run dressed up. Dressing up is for Halloween runs and charity activists at spectator marathons. Half the people at this race were dressed up as pilgrims, turkeys, or Indians. One woman was wearing a pilgrim's bonnet, one of those frilly bib-like things that the Puritans used to wear, and a full black ass-tight running outfit. She looked like a giant baby missing her diaper. I tried not to judge the idiots who had dressed up as pilgrims or poultry, but I felt free to judge the people dressed up as Indians because they were clearly loser racist bigots who deserved to sprain their ankles and they had better all be behind me, even though I wasn't expecting anyone to be behind me today. Also, since I was signing up the day of the race, I would have to wait for my finisher's medal to be sent in the mail. Really? A finisher's medal for a 5K/10K?

Can I take a moment to go off about finisher's medals? Call me a snob, but I don't believe that any event that the winners complete in under an hour deserves a finisher's medal. We're coddling our children and we're coddling our adults. Half the girls that participate in our girls' running program are overweight. I traded my t-shirt with an 8-year-old because hers was too small and mine was too big. I wear a youth large. She barely fit into an adult small. These girls could probably run a whole mile without stopping, but they know that they'll get the same credit if they walk, and they know that if the workout has a time goal, that there's no more reward for running than walking. Because it's non-competitive. Okay, I see it. Kids can get really upset when they "lose," but you know what? Losing is a part of life. And now we're coddling out adults, increasing the "acceptable" body fat percentages and trying to sugar-coat the fact that the Surgeon General had to increase the daily activity recommendations (60 minutes most days of the week) because we're increasingly sedentary and inactive in our everyday lives. Now a 5K is treated like some huge achievement. In some countries (even some people in cities like San Francisco) you can't get through your day without walking 3.1 miles. And here we are awarding finisher's medals to people finishing a 5K in over an hour?! It's like saying, "Congratulations! You managed to wipe your own ass AND tie your own shoes!"

No, you know what, I take that back. The people who finish a 5K in over an hour DO deserve a finisher's medal, because they are either so old, so young, so fat, or so out of shape that finishing a 5K really is a huge achievement (see the Biggest Loser lady who inspired me to run a marathon). But for the people who are otherwise healthy individuals, whether they run slow or fast, how good their Thanksgiving brunch will taste after the race should be reward enough. Someday I'm going to run an obesity awareness 5K where everybody has to run with a BMI over 30. If you are of a normal weight, then you have to wear a weighted vest that puts you over 30 (so I, as a 5'2" female weighing 125 lb would have to wear an additional 29-lb vest). Anyone whose BMI is over 30 would get a .1 mile advantage for every point that their BMI is above 30. Then I'll give people finisher's medals for a 5K. And the finisher's medals will be galvanized doughnuts. Hmph. Okay, I feel better now.

I was beginning to see where my $45 race fee was going. I wrote "NO MEDAL NECESSARY" on the address line of my registration form and went to pick up my chip.

"What do you mean, your chip?" Scout asked.

"They make you wear this computer chip around your ankle," I explained, pulling the OTT triathlon-style neoprene band out of the envelope. How much extra had I paid for chip timing? In a race where people were running with turkey waddles hanging from their visors and feathers on their heads, did we really need computerized timing? What ever happened to the days of tying it into your shoelaces or tearing the tab off the bottom of your number? I could feel that I was turning into a grouchy old man.

"What? So if you get lost in the woods they can identify you? Like a pet?" Scout asked.

"No! So they know when you started and finished!" It was funny to see her taking it all in. Scout wasn't familiar with the whole running culture. From the looks of it, neither were most of the turkeys (and pilgrims and Indians) here.

Finally we lined up and the race announcer went through an interminable explanation of how not to run off-course. When I saw how non-technical this course was, the explanation seemed even more preposterous. Most preposterous of all, though, was that the announcer was talking to a sea of ears plugged up with earbuds. Packed cheek-to-jowl with a bunch of white people in face paint, I couldn't wait to get started. I thought I would have to sit through a bunch of faux Indians pulling off their headdresses to sing the National Anthem (at which point I would have thrown up), but luckily there was no Star Spangled Banner in this crowd.

The fog horn went off, and we all started running. The first several steps were on some soft grass, and mere seconds into my comeback I felt a burning sensation spreading through my ankle. It didn't last long, though, and in no time I was darting through the sea of walkers and 13-minute-mile runners (with headphones, of course) who hadn't headed the recommendation to stay back if you were slow. I vowed to think of a way to punish these people someday.

My strategy for this race was just to sit back and listen to my body. I knew that I could finish 6 miles, even in my sad state of being, so this would be a question of just not fucking it up by doing anything stupid. Just run, I thought. I felt like a cyclist trying to run. My back and hamstrings were tight, and I felt heavy, not light and bouncy, like I was trying to muscle my way down the path. I felt like I was stuck in the first 5 minutes of a transition run for six miles. My muscles burned and my hips wouldn't move right.

Me hiding behind probably the only other 2 people in the race NOT wearing headphones.

As I thump-thump-thumped down the trail, I was passing more people than were passing me, ESPECIALLY on the "hills." I couldn't believe it. This was no hard-core technical single-track, it was more like "path running" than trail running and you could run at road race pace (not like I have one of those these days). And yet I was still passing people, even in the second half when things had usually sifted out and my too-fast pace usually catches up with me. Weird, huh? I wasn't running a blistering pace, but this pace felt tough. I tried not to look at my watch in fear that a "tough" pace would be 10-minute miles.

I was enjoying my elephant run; plop, plop, plopping down the trail, even kind of enjoying the burning in my lungs and crankiness in my hips and back that told me I was sorely out of shape. I was enjoying being in the woods, out of the city, and stomping over the eucalyptus bark on the trail. But I might as well have been out there by myself. I didn't breathe a word to another soul for the whole race. At first I thought that this was some serious turkey trotting, that people were too busy racing to offer encouragement or holiday wishes to other runners. Then I noticed the headphones. This sure was different from New England running... I wondered if I would ever meet any straight men over 40 in California if they were all wearing headphones. Who would I ever talk to?

Despite feeling like poop, it looks like my form was actually better than in any race photo I've ever seen. Forward lean, no forward footstrike, high knees... But the strangest part indeed is that strange expression I have around my mouth.

Over the last 2 miles I was closing in on a girl. Once we hit the six-mile mark, I decided that I would try to kick it in. She heard me coming and kicked back. Then my stomach kicked back. That's when I remembered my race strategy to not throw up, and let her go. As I crossed the finish line, a guy kicking behind me didn't quite pass me. The camera caught me just as I looked at him with a great feeling of well at least I beat you!

I left the finishing corral, grabbed a glass of water, and walked back to where I'd seen Scout around the 6-mile mark. As I walked, I saw a girl pull over just yards short of the finish line, duck under the line of flags, and puke her guts out. I'd done that before. I remembered the feeling. It's called a hangover. Despite being as out of shape as I was, I was glad that I wasn't that girl.

Much to my surprise, I'd finished in 52:39 for what Garmin called 6.32 miles. (Splits: 8:25, 8:18, 8:46, 7:59, 8:12, 8:27, 7:47). It wasn't the fastest race I'd ever run, but it was far from the nearly 60 minutes I'd been expecting to take. That put me somewhere in the middle of the pack in 70th out of 263 (top 27% of turkeys, giblets, and racing racists), and 9th out of 24 in my age group (38%).

Sure, sure, it wasn't a great result. I've fallen pretty far (back about 2 years to be exact), but at least while I was plodding along I was enjoying being back out there. Who cared that I was running like a bulldog rather than a greyhound? I had a whole, entire day off, I had food in the fridge, and money to sign up for a $45 race. I guess I had something to be thankful for...

I've got more plans and schemes coming up, but I'll save those for another post. Happy (belated) Thanksgiving, everyone!

When your back's up against a wall, fight like hell

My life is still completely unrecognizable from one week to the next, but things are finally stabilizing. For the first time since I moved to San Francisco, I've had a chance to take a look around and see where this crazy four-and-a-half-month ride has taken me. I've finally been laid off for the season at the bike shop, so I have my weekends back. I'm training people anywhere from 12 to 17 hours per week and writing more than I ever wrote when I was unemployed and the freelance gig was my only job. I live outside the city. I am now considered "full time" at work, and spend 12+ hours at or near the studio a day. I'm responsible for the company newsletter. I'm sober without AA and don't even remember to count how long it's been anymore (about 4 months). This week, for the first time since September, I was able to afford a full grocery trip. I had to remind myself not to feel guilty for buying shampoo.

But these past two weeks have been the scariest yet. In one week I reached the tipping point where I could not grow my business anymore without a key to the studio. Also, I would be paying more by giving them 40% of my income than if I just went on "full rent." To get the key, I would have to stop the 40% payment plan and come up with $1300 in a week. On top of that, a $400 debt that I had deemed "unessential" for four months finally asserted itself as "important" by having a collection agency call me and tell me I had 2 weeks to pay it. That day my phone got thrown clear across the room, nearly hitting one of the owners who was perched on a bench. "Here, you dropped this," Ducky (not his real name) said in that tone of voice that men have for avoiding women's temper tantrums.

I took it and flung it into the bathroom. Someone came out of the bathroom a few minutes later and handed me my phone. "Someone left this on the floor in the bathroom," he told me. I threw it in the corner behind some filing cabinets and didn't dig it out until I had made good and sure that it would stay there without ringing and without being returned to me for at least half an hour. To top it all off, because of a clerical error my pet deposit ($290) from Shane's place was returned to the wrong place: to Shane. And he cashed it. In the thick of bill collectors calling me, now I had to call the property management company and use the same threatening language that I had learned from the grouchy bill collectors. I hated this. I missed the days of steady paychecks and benefits packages.

Miserable, I approached Ducky and Evil Kenevil (the owners) looking for a stay of execution on the $1700 I was going to have to pull out of my ass in 2 weeks, most of which was going to them.

"You've got to stay positive," was Ducky's advice. I was kind of hoping for advice that offered the words, "a free month's rent."

"How can I stay positive when I haven't been able to afford groceries for three months and now I'm supposed to come up with 150% of my average monthly income for that period in just 2 weeks???" I asked.

"When you've got your back up against the wall," Evil Kenevil said, "Fight like hell. If you didn't have a fire under your ass like this, you'd get complacent."

The advice was anything but what I'd been hoping to hear, but Ducky and Evil Kenevil had slept in the gym for two years to get it off the ground. Now they had a bank account a million dollars strong. I was here to learn from these guys, and although I sometimes bristled at their pushy big-business talk, I knew that I would never survive in this big, mean world without them.

Despite the long days and the stress, I've been feeling really lucky to have my job lately. I'm no longer "the new kid," and I've had the chance to see other trainers try to break their way in:

"He come in talking about how he was a 'Big Picture Guy,' and then the only business experience he had to tell me about was a gym that folded in the first 2 years!" Ducky said of one perspective trainer that he'd turned down.

"He's just 28 or some shit like that. He's just a young kid. He thinks he knows everything, but he don't know shit!" he said about another. Hey, I'm only 27!

"He comes in looking like a model and says he's some big-shot bodybuilder and I looked him up and he didn't even win that shit!" he said about another. "If you gon' brag about something, you better have fucking won it!" I was beginning to think that maybe Ducky wasn't as unobservant as I'd originally thought. He probably had noticed that I'd never held the title of "trainer" before, (even though I'd worked in gyms for years and been certified twice).

"Ducky, why did you hire me when you didn't hire all those other people with stronger resumes than mine?" I asked.

"For two reasons," he said. "Because you could write and because you came from Boston. None of these lazy motherfuckers that work here would ever pick up and move 'cross the country with nothing and try to build they own business! That takes balls. You're willing to do the things that most people's scared to do. If you come from Boston and you ain't got shit, then we will help you get started because we already know that you're willing to do whatever it takes to get what you want, but if you come from San Francisco and you ain't got shit, you's either stupid or lazy.

"All these people think it's like magic that I built this bu'ness up from the ground in the middle of a recession and now I got motherfuckers comin' in off the street who want to pay $80/hour to train with us. They don't see everything that it took to get there." He started walking, putting one heel carefully in front of the toes of the other foot. "I just started walking while all those other fools were sitting there in their comfortable 24 Hour Fitness jobs, and to those guys who wasn't looking they say, 'How'd you get from here to there? That must be magic!' But they don't see that anything look like magic to those fools who never take a step." Jim Collins calls that the Flywheel Concept, by the way.

A day or two later I asked Ducky if he would train me for a session just to see what his style was like. "I'm about to do a workout right now. Why don't you work in with me?" he asked.

We warmed up and then he asked me how I'd been training lately. "I haven't been doing much of anything to tell you the truth, Ducky," I said. "I haven't been training because I don't want to make myself hungry. When you can't buy food, getting hungry is bad."

"How can you train other people when you ain't training yourself?" he said in disgust and disbelief.

"I don't know... I mean I've been riding, but..."

"You'll see. You get back into training and you'll be on fire for your clients. Your clients will become like your fan club. They love that shit and then the referrals will start rolling in.When you ain't training, the quality of your workouts just sucks. You don't push people because you think everything's hard."

He was right. The workouts I'd been giving had sucked since I started going hungry because I was focused on where my next meal was coming from, not that I loved my job. I made it a point to take an hour out of every day and just train again, just to get back in shape. Can't afford it? Oh well, I'd just Act As If I could afford it. I'd deal with the what I was training for just as soon as training was a habit again. And wouldn't you know, my clients started opening up to me after that. New people started appearing through different avenues.

But now that I'm back to working out, I can't believe how far I've fallen. I'm someone who's staked my whole self-worth for the past seven years on being extremely physically active. Fitness has been my job ever since my publishing job went under in May of 2009. It's humbling to get sore. It's even more humbling to not be able to do things.

The other day I dusted off my sexy bike and went to change the flat tire that I'd noticed when I hung it up almost 2 months ago. But all my spare tubes had valves that were too short for my rims, and I ruined two tubes trying to will the damned things to work. One tube wound up in a tree, and the Tarmac stayed in the garage. I took my new Allez out instead figuring that a bike's a bike if you're not racing, right?

A little bit about where I live: Pacifica is one of those coastal towns that has the beach, a coastal highway, and then mountains all within half a mile of shore. The mountains aren't tall, but they're sure as hell steep. I live near the bottom of a canyon on the back side of one of those hills. To get anywhere, I have to go over the hill.

I set out to find my way 10 miles along the ridges to San Francisco. I came out the driveway, rode a block, and started climbing... at a 20% grade. There is a half-mile climb out of the canyon, but it's an average of about a 15% grade with 2/3 of it being around 20%. My little Allez has two fewer climbing gears than my Tarmac (the smallest gear is a 25, not a 27). And I haven't been seriously training since May. I was a wreck.

I got to the top of that hill without getting off my bike, but people standing in their driveways were turning their heads to watch me pass because they could hear me huffing and puffing from three driveways away. When I got to the top of the hill I thought I was going to throw up. Then I made a left and got half way down the hill when I realized that I was headed back into the canyon. I should have gone right. Damn. Now I had to go back up there! I returned to the top of the hill pretty sure that I was going to die and still less than a mile from the house. Then I rode down to the coast.

By the time I got to sea level, I still hadn't recovered and my insides felt like they were going to rot out of my body. I had hiccups from breathing so hard, and they were so violent that I thought I would rupture something. I. Was. Miserable. I sat on a low wall for about 10 minutes until the Yuck in my body subsided, then I decided that I'd had quite enough and it was time to go home. One problem though: I had to go BACK over the hill. My lungs were sore and I was coughing for the rest of the day.

I was so angry with myself. How could I let myself get to this point? How could I be SO out of shape? Who was I anymore? Moreover, who was I trying to kid? I'd gone less than 9 miles. This was war!

The next day I got out my racing bike and got my new housemate's help in fixing it up. It involved adjusting the cables, bending the derailleur hanger, replacing the chain, and giving the whole thing a healthy dose of lube. Then I went for a ride. I took a less steep way out of the canyon and managed to find my way out to San Francisco all by myself. I took route 35, called "Skyline Blvd," which seemed like a pretty great choice for a challenging ride through the hills and along the coast. What they don't tell you is that Skyline becomes a fucking FREEWAY for a couple of miles. I mean FREEWAY with exits, shit on the shoulder, a 55 mph speed limit, on-ramps and all.

I was riding along, feeling quite pleased with myself and looking forward to the windy descent back into Pacifica over the road that I'd just climbed. I'd just crested the hill and was now in South San Francisco (which is not actually part of San Francisco). I could recognize the big radio tower and a few of the hills of SF up ahead of me. There were trees on my left and right and pine cones on the ground. Suddenly I saw a sign that said "Begin Freeway!" I looked around. There were three lanes of traffic between me and the divider and three more lanes of traffic before the shoulder on the other side. I would have to ride at least half a mile in the wrong direction to get back to the last intersection. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!! I thought. There was a tiny little sign with a bicycle on it that said "Share the Road," and I thought foolishly, Maybe that FREEWAY sign was a mistake!

Then I saw the 55 mph speed limit. Then I saw an exit sign. Then I heard cars behind me that might very well want to get OFF at that exit going 55 miles per hour just as I was crossing it. Then I saw the ON ramp with people coming off the interstate. I was going to have to cross that too, and people coming off the interstate onto another freeway certainly aren't looking for bicycles. I saw a break in the traffic and tried to cut right across the ramp back to the shoulder. A car kept coming. I kept making my intention clear. The car kept coming. Finally I came to a dead stop (on my bicycle, on the freeway) and let him go by. He had moved slightly RIGHT onto the shoulder, which meant that if I hadn't stopped, he would have most certainly hit me. Fuck that!

I found a way back home that was flatter and on frontage roads.

Last week I worked out six out of seven days, and when I walked into the gym in the afternoon Ducky told me that I was looking buff. "Yep, that's all it takes, two sessions," I told him.

So what are YOUR suggestions on what my next goal should be? Weigh in on the poll on the sidebar.

Working...

I'm working on a series of daily posts, but they're going to be released on delay because I want to make sure that I have time to edit them and stuff and still write more each day. They're on a new theme, nothing to do with swimming, biking or running really. They're all about getting well and getting sober again.

Updates that you may have missed:

• I moved to San Francisco, I arrived here on July 4.

• Texting and Twitter are the best ways to see what I've been up to.
  

• I found a temporary job almost immediately at a bike shop and I've been working there while I look for a personal training gig.

• As part of my job I have to build bikes, and am learning a TON about the mechanics side of things.

• I have been very homesick. I have been missing Lindsey terribly, as well as all my other friends. It turns out that if you run away, your baggage can still follow you.

• I thought I was going to quit drinking as soon as I hit California, but it hasn't worked out that way. I've been too depressed to care about taking care of myself.

But I'm bouncing back slowly. The rest is in the upcoming posts.