The plan was to stop every mile and stretch and walk to break up the steady wear-down. Once I started running, I ended up moving past each mile marker until 12.x when I walked a couple hundred feet. The first 6 miles were easy, as I routinely run 5-6 miles in my lunch break at work. I forced myself to keep a slow, steady pace, even as hundreds of runners passed me.

By mile 3, I developed a nice runners’ high.

Mile 7 was a new record, as I have never run more than 6.1 miles in a single day.

By mile 8, my slow pace was paying off. I kept a steady pace on uphills, and I started to pass people regularly.

Mile 9 stretch out a little longer than I expected. Mile 10 was noticeably longer, and by 11, I was pretty sure the distances were increasing on an exponential curve. I kept a steady pace, passing other runners constantly.

Towards the end of mile 12, I developed a pain in my right hip, possibly due to excessive heel-strike. I ran until the pain hit redline, then slowed to a walk. It felt like my feet were wheels rolling downhill and I was helpless to stop them. Once my feet had regained some range-of-motion (less than a quarter mile) I picked up the race again, and ran to the finish.

For the last minute, I was running parallel with another man and his trainer, who was encouraging him to sprint to finish. I took his words for my own, and sprinted the last couple hundred feet through the finish line. I had no conscious control of my feet at that point; the sensation was elated, powerful, predatory, hungry, joyful, laughing. I remember laughing as I crossed the finish line. I couldn’t feel my feet, but it was all good. Everything was good.

Until I found stairs. Stairs were a problem.

I sat and saved the run into Google Tracks, then went and found a banana and free beer. The beer started to kill the runners’ high, so I left it on a random table and went wandering around the city barefoot but not naked.

Equipment list:

• Flip flops
• Cargo shorts and techwick shirt
• Music player and headphones
• Cash, ID, insurance and keys
• 20 oz water
• 2 aspirin, 1 energy gum, and a pinch of raw tobacco
• Phone, GPS recording the track

Yes, I ran in flip flops. I received a lot of commentary; mostly favorable, some sarcastic. “Are you sure you’re ready for this race?” It was all good. I had no blisters, no injuries, and my feet were barely sore. The flip flops, sadly, are mostly gone by after a few years of constant use. It’s too bad; they cost $1.83.

Around mile 12, when I had to slow to a walk, I took out an aspirin and put it in my mouth to swallow it with some of the water. The moment I got the taste of it, I reflexively spit it out. Bad stuff, not the chemical for helping a race.

I then tried a small pinch of tobacco. It was dried, organic smoking tobacco that I picked up from a small smoke shop in Burlington, VT, some months ago. I chewed it up to let the salivary enzymes break down and release the chemicals, and held it in my mouth through the end of the race. The thought was to test the theory that tobacco would help sports performance in this context and method of usage. It does.

I would have rather used fresh leaves, but I don’t know where to source them locally. I’ve never tried tobacco in any form before, other than tasting a tiny pinch last week to make sure I wasn’t deathly allergic to the stuff. Before anyone gets their pants in a knot over tobacco usage; I read up on the health effects of tobacco, positive and negative, and made my own educated decision. I’ll probably post a lengthy post on this topic later.

My time was 2:28. My goal was to finish under 3 hours.

Spring is not here yet.  Oh, but you already knew that.  I’m spending the evening enjoying the warm smells of multi-bean soup, the gentle riffs of Isaac Shepard’s Deep Joy, and the happy fuzzies of studying a few too many numbers after a long day of accomplishment.

Tonight’s recipe-of-the-moment consists of bean medley soaked for 20+ hours (oopsie), onion, garlic, carrot, cayenne, garam masala, with more spices to-be-announced.

The kindly (yet grumpy) fellow who works in the cube behind me walked to his chair a few minutes ago.  I clearly saw his reflection in the backs of my glasses as he walked by.

What does it mean, for this song to be on the hearts and tongues of our children now?

“…will I ever see another sunrise?”

1. Jackals do not gnaw your head while you sleep.  Besides, they’re in Africa.
2. Mosquitoes do, even through mosquito netting.
3. Space blankets do not protect you from the coldness of the ground.
4. Air pads do, and are therefore the absolute best invention since sex.
5. Dew is cold as hell, or would be if hell froze over.
6. The dawn songbirds are saying, “holy fuckin-a I’m soooo cold,” but God bound them to only sing pretty tunes.
7. If you get up and move around at dawn, the temperature rises 70 degrees.
8. If you do not get up and move around, your legs will fall off.
9. The sun is the most beautifully warm thing in the world.  Except, (so I understand), God.
10. Coffee is a specialty medication designed to bring you back from purgatory (which is cold).

Mine let go.

Other people have had the same experience with that particular fork.  It was a Manitou Splice, stock fork on an ‘05 Marin B17.

After going back and forth a bit with Manitou, I ended up with a Manitou Drake, for a price low enough to make me very jealous.  The dickering process wasn’t the best, but it ended up with me holding a brand-new, shiny white fork in my hands, saying to myself, “What the heck do I do with this?”

First, I cleaned the old bearings and bearing races.  They are low-end WTB races, and the lower bearings are pretty much shot, but I’m going to use them anyway.  I did remember to remove the lower bearing race from the old fork with a mallet and a screwdriver before leaving it with the bike shop.

I ran into a small panic when I realized that the lower bearing race seemed to be much too big for the fork.  After talking with the bike shop, I realized that the bottom of the steerer tube is actually quite a bit bigger than the rest of the steerer tube, and the bearing race fit perfectly on that.  Ye of little faith!

I assembled everything, bearings, spacers, and stem, and marked the steerer tube where it came out of the stem.  I disassembled everything, and marked down about 3/8″ to give the tube cap some “squeeze” room.

I took a large tube cutter, the kind that spins round-and-round-the-merry-go-round, and used that cut the steerer tube.  Afterwards, I filed down the heavy burs left from the tube cutter with a couple older files.  Total time was about 20 minutes.  I actually ended up significantly rounding off the end  of the steel steerer tube to make it easier to put everything on.

I had to purchase a tube nut, which cost about $3 or so.

Put everything together, screwed on the end cap, connected the cables, and it was good to go.

Lovely ride, and an awesome fork.  Adjustable compression on a 140mm fork is the bomb.

(I chose 140mm because it had the closest crown height to the original fork.  The original Manitou Splice fork had an unusually high crown height, and I wanted to keep the overall bike geometry as much as possible.  Dumb reason to choose 140mm, but it was the same price and I’m very glad for it now.  Yay, soft landings!)

(To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click post.)

1. My brothers are nuts (and awesome, but nuts)
2. My parents are awesome
3. I was homeschooled.
4. I got my first salaried job before I finished high school.
5. I bought my first car with a loan from my boss.  My monthly payment was more than most people’s mortgages at that time.
6. Orson Scott Card is simply fantastic.
7. I have no nephews or nieces, but many cousins.
8. My family turned the TV on to view broadcast programming a total of 3 times when I was growing up; the ‘89 California earthquake, to see some some friends on the Dr. Phil show, and 9/11.
9. I’m a Pisces.  Strongly.
10. My job was and is my dream job.  I wanted to play with computers since I was about 5.
11. I think tattoos are the most conservative form of art and expression imaginable.
12. Money is entertaining, even when I lose it.
13. Social networking makes me feel old.
14. I can sleep anywhere, any time, if I’m tired.
15. I can eat almost anything (no allergies or taste/texture avoidances), but…
16. I was a vegan for about 14 years, and still keep some of the restrictions.
17. My first paid job was a database conversion for a doctor’s office when I was 13.  I enjoyed pointing out to the sales and technical people how much their product sucked.
18. I think most Christianity is really stupid.
19. Prayer works, if you ask the right question.  God has a significant sense of humor about these things.
20. I used to work as a ballroom dance instructor.
21. I started playing music simply to prove that I could start something and stick with it.
22. Beethoven’s Fifth makes me cry.  And my skin tingle.  A lot.
23. REM sleep is very noisy.
24. My grandmother drove me to my first three contra dances. (and then I got my driver’s license)
25. I’ve never done a list like this before, and I think it’s interesting but also takes too much time.

It’s weird to open your eyes in the morning and see the world as you used to see it.

Frou Frou’s Let Go brought back some interesting emotions.  Thanks, you know.  The world turns, and day turns to night, and then day again.  Never the same day again, but the same warmth and happiness.