Cold Shoulder

Thanksgiving Day I injured one of my right hamstring muscles. It was a stupid injury. I have a tendency to just try and work/force my way through pain instead of trying to avoid it or stop before I legitimately hurt myself and in this instance I lived up to my own shortcomings. It was simply a matter of running when I could feel my muscle hurting with every step, when I should have just stayed off it for a day or two and moved on. It's a real shame because I had just topped off at nine miles and I was feeling really strong and confidant about this whole thing.
I couldn't run or walk much on it for a while, but last Wednesday I was able to run on it for a little bit. Unfortunately, it hurt a lot more afterwards, so I haven't been running since. This is a real problem. Tomorrow I plan on trying to "run" on an elliptical trainer so I can at least work on the aerobic aspect of my training, but it won't help in preparing my muscles for the physical stress of running large distances. What's worse is such a sudden drop in physical activity is doing a number on my mental health. The lack of endorphins being produced by my system and my sleep cycle going to shit have started to take their effect. Those who know me know I'm normally a miserable wretch, but since I started this training I've been generally a lot happier and more energized. Just better able to function as a regular human being without wanting to blow my brains out at all times. To be back to moping around listening to sad-sack Brit-pop just sucks.
Since I don't have much else to say regarding running I'm taking this time to write about awesome music.
One of my favorite bands is Kill Holiday. They were around in the late nighties; the product of Unbroken guitar player Steven Miller, but they sound nothing like Unbroken. At first they were doing a Quicksand/Supertouch (minus the weed) kind of sound with heavy guitars and songs built around an unconventional groove, but with personal lyrics ranging from rejection to being a public figure. This style doesn't really connect with me, but the song Cold Shoulder from the Monitor Dependency 7" really rises above the typical; it has something special underneath the typical emotive heavy hardcore which is simply undeniable. I believe Lester Bangs called it soul. Their split with Dempsey (which I own a test press of... but nobody cares!) is more of the same, but the same soulfulness comes to fruition on their Meant To Let You Down single.
The song is by far their best. Frankly, it's perfect. A simple jangly punk riff pushes the whole song along, powerful enough to pull you in, but reserved enough not to play out like some U2 phony epic shit. The song doesn't deviate much from the same couple riffs, it just builds up steam until it climaxes with a pure, unadulterated, played-from-the-hip solo kicked off by the line "People change - well how hard is that to say?" Sometimes solos are just little flourishes thrown in by a seasoned guitar player to spice up an otherwise straightforward song (see: every Antidote song for the perfect example) and other times they're the centerpiece of an artist's work. The song serves only to package that burst of emotion (see: Eric Clapton or Jay Mascis's entire body of work). But other times they work as some crazy spiritual release. As if the guitar player, overcome with primal urges conjured up by his own music, can no longer bear it and throws everything against the wall, making whatever noises exploding fingers on metal strings make, and it is only by sheer passion that the noises coalesce into a beautiful sound. THAT'S the kind of fucking solo this song has. There really is nothing special in this song except a man with nominal musical talent singing his exceptional heart out. And that's what punk is to me.
Their final musical outing is an LP titled Somewhere Between The Wrong Is Right. It's a massive epic about love, loss, regret, and a newfound appreciation for what little tastes of happiness we can find in life. It sounds like Joy Division/New Order and The Smiths, mixed with Husker Du and Jawbreaker. But by straight edge hardcore kids. From what I understand, nobody liked it. And I can see why. I often describe the album as a train wreck of epic proportions. It has problems. It veers too often into broken-hearted high school poetry. The songs are mostly really long, which isn't always a bad thing, but every once and a while, the songs are too much. And it also has some of the best tracks on the CD version only. But where it falls short, it more than redeems itself by being completely emotionally exposed. It's the most honest album I've ever heard, and that honesty is really to blame for it's "shortcomings". It reveals itself to the point where you can see it faults, and that, to me at least, it better than any perfectly crafted, emotionally calculated album, any day of the week.
That's the other reason it's a train wreck. It's an emotional journey that will just ruin anyone with a heart. And I don't mean anyone with a facsimile of a heart, but too much of a carefully crafted image for the public to let themselves feel some unadulterated heart break. So if you're like me and you've given up on acceptance and you're miserable and you miss somebody, pick this up.

Hooray For Personal Bests

I just ran eight miles. I've never run more than seven miles in my entire life, so I'm excited. I'm actually confused right now because I'm not tired and the only reason I stopped was because I was getting bored and I didn't want to fuck up my training by running too much on one day. I guess this is what happens when I eat properly and get a full night's sleep. Think of the possibilities if I did this everyday!

That's actually not really much of a joke. If I could live everyday of my life like this I'd die a happy man. Working at a job I love, running, and listening to hardcore (Capital - Homefront (Hello, Duncan), 86 Mentality - Final Exit, and various American Nightmare and Deathcycle songs) is basically all I want out of life. Well, aside from one other thing which I'm not gonna talk about to any of you jerks. And hardcore shows. If I don't get to see James Vitalo or Crog for too long I get the shakes. Cooking is also mandatory.

My new shoes are so great. I feel like Hermes, the Greek god who had wings on his feet. Ironic considering the Mediterranean origins of the marathon. Pheidippides, a Greek messenger, ran from Marathon to Athens to announce that the Persians had been defeated in the historic battle of Marathon. He supposedly dropped dead immediately after telling the Athenian senate and didn't stop once on his journey. It is my hope to accomplish both a non-stop twenty six point-two mile run and to drop dead immediately after.

Shoes, Bears, and Heavy Hardcore

Here is my running log for the past week:

• Sunday - 7 Miles at 9AM + band practice in the PM. I felt really good running in the morning and could have easily run more, but I didn't have time before work.

• Monday - 5 Miles at 6PM. I messed up my neck something fierce at band practice the night before and had a grueling time getting through these five miles, but somehow this helped to ease the pain in my neck and loosen everything up.

• Tuesday - 4 Miles at 11AM. Another day where I just didn't have time to do as many miles as I would have liked. Somehow my neck was miraculously cured by physical activity, which should have made it worse. Go figure.

• Wednesday - Day off. I basically slept late, bummed around all day, and went to a show. I saw this band called Rock Fight who were undoubtedly the new kings of NYHC.

• Thursday - 3 Miles at 11AM. Day sucked. I woke up late, ran well, but had no time before work.

• Friday - 7 Miles at 8PM. I had to run a lot to make up for the short run on Thursday, but my body was not feeling it. This was fueled purely on force of will and this demo:The band is called Mother of Mercy, and it's got Bob from Let Down spitting some mean vocals. It's raging heavy hardcore with a metal tinge to it. Think Integrity meets Judge with a nice breath of fresh air. Here is a wma file of my favorite song.
  

• Saturday - 4 Miles at 10am. I know an album rules when I'm listening to it while running and I wind up going really fast. I listened to the MOM demo, again, and then American Nightmare's Background Music and Blood for Blood. Good thing all of those bands are fucking great because I was spent and looking forward to my day off tomorrow. This brings my total to the week up to 30 miles, which is a nice level to be at for the next month before I start to really train heavily. I'm going to relax here for a little bit, work on building the strength in my knee up, and then I'll hit it hard.
  

I had the day off from work today and with my plans postponed I finally had time to get some new running shoes. I've been wearing the same style (New Balance 587s) for 10+ years since at the time I started running they were one of the only pairs out there designed to correct my right foot's tendency to turn inward. Sort of like if I was pigeon toed, but only on one foot. Since NB decided to stop manufacturing them I had to buy something new. Being completely ignorant of my options or what I would want to be looking for I went over to a local running store in Sayville where the staff was knowledgeable and courteous and set me up with that fine pair of Brooks "Extremes" or whatever catchy marketing name they came up with to sell them to kids who like to get vertical. Regardless, these suckers are pretty great. A lot lighter than the clunky 587s, but still with enough firmness and support for me to feel comfortable in. About as much bounce as an early Integrity too. I'm pretty excited to go out in these and see how it effects my bum knee.Blatantly the most important part of this day was the POLAR BEARS calendar I got to write out my training schedule and log my runs/times/etc. My friend Caitlin and I went to Boarders and found about a million sweet calendars, but the bears win out because they have paws, live on glaciers, and will eat your head. The Rudy Guiliani "Countdown To Victory" calendar didn't stand a chance. Just look at these guys:









Note the paws.












The glaciers.








And the head eating.

Arbeit Macht Frie, Motherfucker

So It's been about two weeks since I started training. I haven't been keeping a good record of what I've been running, which I really need to do, but I think I've done around fifty three miles over the past two weeks. Crazy to think that I'll need to be doing more than that every week. I had hoped this blog would help me to keep track of what I was running every day, but I've been way too into actually doing things to update this.

My father used to run marathons and biathlons when he was younger so he gave me some training schedules to follow. All of them are about four or five months long so I've still got a month or two before I need to do this for serious serious and I think I'm going to enjoy doing this for fake serious for a little while. Giving myself a little leeway (cue Marathon) here and there and running more for the fun of it rather than as a chore.

I got a new mp3 player, which absolutely rules. It's a massive 2GB, but to me, who has been using a 250MB player for the past four/five years, it actually is massive. It's crazy to me that I can put more than four albums on it at one time. It's crazy to me that I can go out and not know what I want to hear and just skip albums until something comes on that I'm psyched to hear. Music generally makes any run better though. Today I did four miles to Blood For Blood's Living In Exile and Sheer Terror's Love Songs For The Unloved (side A). Skinhead Girl has to be the heaviest song ever written.

I'll be using this marathon running thing as a way to raise money for a really great charity. Nothing is set in stone so I shouldn't say more than that, but it's gonna rule to be doing this for a cause I care about and not just some abstract impulse I have.

I like running. And I like punk music.

Question: What are you doing?
Answer: I'm training to run the Long Island marathon (26.2 miles) on May 4th, 2008.

Question: Why are you doing this?
Answer: Because I like to go and run for prolonged periods of time. I also like to torture myself. The two go hand in hand.

Question: No, why are you writing about it and posting it on the internet, you self-important twit?
Answer: Good question! For one, I'm anticipating a good amount of funny, odd, or just interesting things to happen during all of this running and I figure it will entertain people between stealing music and jerking off to free porn. I'm also hoping other runners will see this and comment with tips, advice, whatever, since I don't know what I am doing. And there is the off chance that I'll hit on some deep philosophy about life or junk.

Any other questions? Good, I'm not here to chit-chat.

I'm into day three of my training. Let's recap;

Tuesday, October 16th, Day 1 - Ran seven miles after work (about 9pm) without any stops. I listened to Mind Eraser's Cave, the New Lows demo, and 86 Mentality's Final Exit. It was one of those runs where no matter how much you're pushing yourself, you just don't get tired, which set off my final decision to start this whole thing. Last summer I had gotten into a bad bicycle accident which I don't think I ever properly recovered from, since I had no health insurance. Later on I had a nagging pain in my knee which I kept ignoring and further injuring until I had to stop running altogether. I had wanted to train and run a marathon for quite a while, but with the constant hindrance of my bad knee I knew it was just not possible. With my knee feeling fine I'd begun running a good amount again and after Tuesday night I knew it was time to do this for real.

Wednesday, October 17th - I was mildly surprised that I felt fine after seven miles the night before, so I went out for another six when I woke up. I ran three to a beach nearby while listening to American Nightmare's Background Music and then three back to Black Flag's Slip It In. I took a brief break in the middle and stretched on the beach to Antidote's Thou Shalt Not Kill. I forgot how great beaches on Long Island in the fall/winter can be; nobody goes there so you can be alone and appreciate your surroundings. What is best in life? Hardcore, isolation, and nature.

Thursday, October 18th - I had to go to Sayville Bike Works to get a new tube since I got a flat tire last night in some backwoods area of Oakdale. The bike shop is about two miles away so I woke up and ran there and back for a four mile run. Deathcycle and The Dicks on the way there, Ramallah on the way back. Sore as hell, but I got the job done. Running early before work has it's advantages and disadvantages. It feels more like a chore, my muscles aren't very loose, and I can't really appreciate the experience as much, but I feel like I have a lot more energy and my spirits are a lot higher the rest of the day. There are also people around, unlike at night, which is a bother. Some asshole almost ran me over by one of the many gigantic Churches in Sayville. I'm sure Jesus was pleased.