On not winning Nanowrimo

I have written 26,241 words of a novel this month.  In order to "win", I have to get to 50,000 by midnight on Wednesday, a pace of nearly 4,000 words per day.  This is most likely not possible because in the next six days I have commitments with family and friends and my job, so I most likely will not win.  Except that I'll have written 30,000 words that I wouldn't have written otherwise, and found a story I didn't know I had.

The nanowrimo website has a little graphic showing you how many words you wrote each day, and that graphic is highly informative in my case.  The daily goal for nanowrimo is 1,667 words.  There were days I wrote 3,000 or 4,000 words.  There were days I wrote 1,000 or 2,000 words.  There were days - stretches of them, five or ten in a row - in which I wrote 0 words, and those days were what got me behind.  I would look at my goal up to that point - 26667 words for example - and my progress - say 18741 - and I would see a gulf too big to be crossed, and I wouldn't pick up the (metaphorical) pen.  And then the next day the goal would be 28333 words and my progress would still be 18741, and the gulf would be even bigger.

Writing 1667 words a day can be tough.  I can do it in an hour if I put my mind to it, but I don't always have an hour, especially an hour when I'm wide awake and undistracted.  But 500 words a day is easier, it would only take 15 or 20 minutes and they might be higher-quality words.  If I did that every day, I'd get 15,000 words a month - about half what I'll probably do in November - and I could write a novel in a year.

thankful thursday, thanksgiving edition

1. I'm thankful that I could take time off work - paid vacation during which I don't have to even check my work email - to visit my family.
2. I'm thankful I had some time alone with my parents before my brother and his girlfriend came.  I like them and was happy to see them, but sometimes it's nice not to have to share.  My father went out for several hours yesterday and my mother and I had a bonding-and-giggle-fest.
3. I'm thankful that I wasn't seriously injured running the marathon, and that I'm a basically healthy and fit person.  Running has been hard for me the past couple of weeks, but I had a short run yesterday and another short run today and I'm starting to feel pretty decent.
4. I'm thankful I don't have any food allergies or dietary restrictions and can enjoy a meal prepared by other people without asking what's in everything.
5. I'm thankful I live in a city so awesome that everyone watches it on TV every Thanksgiving morning.
6. I'm thankful I have a good job in that city, and good friends.
7. I'm thankful for all the great theater I've gotten to see this fall, and for my upcoming plans to see The Nutcracker twice.

This week I went to see two plays, Man and Boy and All-American.  Both were good and worth seeing (the former a bit more so).  It was nice, although I'm getting a tiny bit burned out on two plays a week (which is fine, since I don't think I have any more theater tickets for the immediate future).

Today I attempted to do my long run.  I'd been doing okay with the active recovery thing, I guess.  Saturday I did yoga, on the grounds that it is good for you.  Monday I attempted to run on the treadmill, and did not die, although I did have to take a long break to lift weights in the middle of my three mile run, which I thought was fairly pathetic.  Wednesday I went to spin class.  Thursday I did more yoga.  Friday I went to another running club workout, which was amazing.  The guy in charge of it is borderline-scary.  We did a progression run (= torture instrument) and then ran up and down Cat Hill, which is a largeish hill in Central Park, and by some miracle I did not faint or die.  Today I wanted to do a long run.  The guy in charge of running club said I should do an easy run, and I said I wanted to run six miles, and he said I would probably not be able to, and I thought (very stupidly) "of course I will be able to!".  This morning I felt pretty bad - my legs did not actively hurt the way they did on Saturday but they were not thrilled with the concept of standing up - but I set out for the run anyway.  Somehow in my (stupid) mind I had decided I would run eight miles rather than six (stupid, stupid) and also that I would run an out and back rather than a loop.  This seemed like a good idea in that it would force me to not bail out anytime after the halfway point.

The run started out rough, and did not improve.  It was warmer than I'd thought, and all the water fountains in the park were turned off for the winter, which I hadn't foreseen.  By 2.5 miles in, I was suffering.  I felt bad but not horrible at the turnaround, but I was struggling by the time I got to the 5.5-mile mark.  At this point I bought some water, which I thought would revive me and help me finish strong, but did not.  I resumed running, but my speed at this point was dismal - really, I'd gone from "very slow run" to "fast but highly inefficient walk" to "not very fast but highly inefficient walk".  I had no energy.  All of a sudden a grassy spot appeared and, without even thinking about it, I collapsed in a heap.

I decided it would not be a good idea to resume running after that.  Generally speaking, if I feel that I need to lie down, it probably means that my body is done running for the day.  Of course, I still had to get home, which was about a two-mile walk at that point - luckily the weather was nice, but my legs were pretty beat up (from what?  sleeping all morning?).  Worse, I felt terrible emotionally. True, I ran about six miles, which was the originally-planned length of the run, and which the much-smarter-about-running-than-me running club guy said I wouldn't be able to do.  But it's not a nice feeling to bail out in the middle of something, even if it was something I probably shouldn't have attempted.  And I'm supposed to be running a 15k in four weeks - I'd been hoping to be fully recovered and working on upping my speed by then, but now it's looking like I'll be very lucky if I can get in one proper long run before that.  I know I need to be patient, and that the 15k isn't really important, especially relative to recovering fully, but it's hard.  Plus, I've felt sick and yucky the whole rest of the day, not capable of doing much besides lying on my couch and being pissed off at how stupid television is.

Maybe my legs will be all fixed and ready for a nice long run tomorrow?

This week I have mostly attended plays and thought about running.

The first play was Suicide Incorporated, which was not very good for a Roundabout production, although that still puts it in about the 75th percentile of all theater. It was very well-acted and there were some funny parts and some affecting parts, but there were also a lot of places where it reminded me of something I would have seen, or written, in college.  The second play was Venus in Fur, which was very good.  Supposedly it has a lot to say about power in relationships, although mostly I thought it was very absorbing and featured some phenomenal voice work.  Also I ate at Maoz, which is rapidly becoming my new obsession now that I have run out of people willing to be dragged to Balade.

I didn't run much.  Apparently one is supposed to take some time to recover after the marathon.  I have opted for "active recovery", which means I walked two miles Monday (I could not run; in fact, walking was a challenge), did yoga at home on Tuesday, went to spin class on Wednesday, did no exercise on Thursday, went to running club (more on that below) Friday, and went to yoga class today.  My legs actually feel pretty good (although I think  I am a bit congested in the nose-and-throat region), which suggests I did not run hard enough in the marathon.

About running club.  So, I am filled with ideas about how to become a better runner: get a Garmin, take Jackrabbit classes, run twice a day, etc.  There is a running club at my office that meets Fridays, and I had not been going because (a) it requires leaving before my usual time, (b) I'd have to plan ahead and bring running clothes to work, (c) everyone else is a faster runner than me, and (d) I am a wimp.  Yesterday I decided those were bad reasons, and I went.  Everyone was really nice, even though I was the slowest runner there (albeit only out of six).  The guy who runs the club is an incredible athlete and longtime 3-hour marathoner who seems to really enjoy helping other runners improve.  He gave me lots of advice, some of which (about speedwork and hills and so forth) I will take, and some of which (about becoming a twig so that I can run faster, or something) I will ignore.  We ran about five miles, plus did some drills.  I've never done drills before, and apparently this shows in my form, as I don't pick up my knees, which means it is basically impossible for me to run at a reasonable pace.  I did the meat of the workout (the 3.4 miles in between warmup and drills) at about an 11-minute mile pace, which is by no means fast, but is pretty close to my normal running-in-the-hilly-park pace.  I can feel it in my legs today, probably more than I would if I hadn't just run the marathon, but I'm still pretty pleased about my recovery.

last week

1. Drinks at Ayza.  Actually, wine and cheese and chocolate-covered strawberries at Ayza.  The Girls' Night Out deal is amazing - you get a free chocolate-covered strawberry and a free shot of chocolate martini each, which was a great deal (free is always a great deal, especially when it's free chocolate) and also accomplished the presumed goal of making me want to go back and buy a whole chocolate martini.  Also they gave us coupons for more free chocolate at their new location in the West Village.
2. Dinner at Bianca, a tiny, noisy Italian restaurant downtown.  Good food at very reasonable prices.  But I don't think I'd go back - it's far away, and while the food was good, the wine was bad, and the chocolate dessert was overly sweet and not sufficiently chocolatey (and I'm not one of those 80% dark chocolate freaks... it was a* dessert even a boy would like).
3. Brunch at Josie's with the parental units.  Turns out an organic diner on the Upper West Side is a very odd place to eat with parents. 
   
4. The ING NEW YORK CITY MARATHON.  This is the most awesome race ever.  Or at least I thought it was for the first half.  The level of enthusiasm at the start is astounding - the sheer size of the race, the fact that you're starting on this huge amazing bridge, the people around you who came from all over the world to participate in the event.  And then there's singing about America (they only do the anthem for the first start, I assume), and then the announcer says, "Marathoners, the city awaits you.  The world awaits you."  Which any New Yorker knows is two repetitions of the exact same thing.  And the gun goes off, and they play "New York, New York", and you're not moving yet because there are ten thousand people in front of you, but everyone's singing and dancing and just fidgeting to be off.  The first half of the race - entirely in Brooklyn - was just incredible.  I had no trouble with speed - in fact, I was so distracted by the scenery and the spectators that the miles just flew by - and the runners were all going at the same pace.  I hit the half at 2:30:19.  Then I had to make a pit stop and wait in a long line right around the halfway point, and that kind of broke the spell (and caused my muscles to tighten up).  I walked on the uphill of the bridge to Queens, and Queens itself felt kind of sloggy, and then I ran up the hill of the Queensborough bridge but when I got to the top I felt very unhappy.  Coming down the hill into Manhattan was supposed (according to others) to be the highlight of the race, but I was mostly filled with a sense of exhaustion and desolation.  First Avenue is really wide, and it seemed like this endless desert that I was going to have to run on for a zillion miles (actually only about four), and then run around in the Bronx, and then run all the way back.  This is where my mental game slipped, and around mile 17 or 18 I started taking longer and more frequent walk breaks.  Up until then I'd only been walking at water stations and the one bridge, but I took a few unscheduled walk breaks of varying lengths, and when I was running I was not running fast.  The worst part about all of this was really my attitude - I was not happy about the walking, and that made me unhappy about the race, and that made me feel more tired and want to walk more.  And then we got to the Bronx, which is basically just two bridges connected by a narrow stretch of featureless asphalt (seriously, I remember almost nothing about that borough, even though I think we were in it for two miles), and then back into the city.  I was toddling along, not happily but anyway not really getting any slower (at this point I was at a 14-15 mile pace, which is amazing because I was actually running about 3/4 of the time, which means my run was basically a very fast and inefficient walk).  Finally I got to the 23-mile mark, where a friend was waiting for me (all my other spectating friends had long ago gone home) and told me that, actually, I was not going to die on the course.  This gave me the energy to continue running, and from then on I didn't take any walk breaks except at the 24-mile water station.  In fact, I picked up my pace significantly for the last 1.5 miles (at least, it felt significant... in fact, I ran the last 1.2 miles in around 14 minutes so I was not exactly a speedster, but I'll take it) and finished feeling strong.  My chip time was 5:33:00, which is actually about two minutes faster than my long-ago Raleigh marathon time.  The most bizarre thing is, one day later, barely able to walk, I'm already planning my next race.