Two Florida runs end the season

I do not know what is wrong with my stomach, but a week after getting ill at the marathon, I ended up getting woefully sick after the first night of my Florida trip for the marathon that did not happen.

So all day Saturday was spent in bed...when I was not in the bathroom with explosive diarrhea and vomit that gradually went from chunks to liquid to dry nothing.

That killed Sunday, too. Imagine if I had to run a race that day!

Monday, I did a light three-mile jog (plus one-mile walk) with my mom at a 10-minute pace.

Tuesday, I did 5.2 miles in the grossly muggy 72-degree Florida morning. I thought I was running much faster than the 8:35 pace I was doing, but then again, I had lost eight pounds from being sick. My muscles were weak. I was dehydrated. I had not had a solid poop in days.

It dawned on me during that run that any hope of doing more distance work in the near future had now been dashed. All the work I had done in the previous 18-weeks, including my snapped-to return to form last week, was now gone. My muscles need to begin to repair from scratch, just as they had after those triumphant, 3:04 and 3:06 races.

Happy that I was at least able to do a couple of short runs in Cape Coral for a change of scenery, I viewed it as the end of another season in my life of running. Now, onward.

Return to form

I rested Sunday after the race, but on Monday I was ready to jump back into the fray, first with an easy three-miler that went very well.

On Tuesday, I did an eight-miler in 57 minutes with almost no effort. 

Wednesday, I did five. And Thursday I was back out on the track doing speed work (12 x 400m at sub-5K pace) as if the marathon had not even happened. 

Because my pain in the marathon was gastric, not muscular, I was back in shape quickly and ready to go. Perhaps another marathon is in the cards to get the taste of the last one out of my mouth (pun intended).

Fortitude for First Descents Marathon

With the cancellation of the Mangrove Marathon in Cape Coral, Fla., I was bit lost with my race plans until I stumbled upon the website for a Dec. 1 marathon in Delaware.

It made perfect sense - only one week before the date I was supposed to run Mangrove and in a state where I have never done a marathon.

Showing up the night before to pick up my packet, it was very much as small an affair as I had expected. The event was at Cape Henlopen State Park. Packet pickup, pasta dinner, and starting line were at a youth campground building. I ate a hearty amount of pasta and pizza, drank a few cups of apple juice and, with Karen there with me, headed to the hotel.

In the morning, I had the usual jitters, but felt great. The course was four times around a 6.6-mile loop. That made me a little nervous. They said the course was clearly marked with arrows and, if you saw cones, you needed to turn.

All was well for the first two or three miles. We ran off the road and onto trails in the park. I was pacing myself nicely, listening to the same Phish show I used for my previous marathon because it was three hours and three minutes - my goal time.

Then I came to a set of cones, but it did not look like there was anywhere to turn. There was woods all around me. The trail seemed to only go straight, except for a short extension to the right that let to a park bench. Could the cones merely have signified that I should not run toward the park bench?

So I continued on the path. You have to understand - at a seven-minute pace, you have only mere seconds to figure things out when you come upon them. I made my best guess and moved on...
...and found myself at the beach.

Cursing everything from the ground to the sky, I doubled back, and noticed this time that the cones led to a very narrow, woodsy path...and that they were being rearranged to better point the way.

My race was shot already. I lost as much as many as two or three minutes. What to do for the next 23 miles?

I sprinted for a while hoping to make up the lost time, but by the sixth mile, I realized that was probably not a good tactic. I needed to save energy for later in the race. Angry and dejected at the end of the first loop, I saw Karen there and, instead of happy acknowledging how happy I was to see her, I simply said, "It's fucked. I blew a turn. I'm two minutes behind."

So I kept it moderate for the second loop, figuring that if I did goal pace (or slightly slower since I did that sprint), I could still get a decent time, maybe 3:06, and lop off the two minutes or so for my own records. I even considered going back the next day and re-running the blown turn to see just how long it took. At the end of the second loop, I was happy again, and when I saw Karen, I told her so.

But the third loop brought the same tragic gastric problems that plagued my previous marathon. I could not believe it - how could this happen again?? All I ate for breakfast was a Clif Bar! What the hell???

It started in Mile 15 with an uneasy feeling in my tummy. I had not even taken more than a few sips of Gatorade but I knew I would not be able to have any more of it. By Mile 18, I knew I was in big trouble. The memory of the agony I went through in April came flooding back. At the end of the third loop, I told Karen things were bad, really bad, with my stomach, but I was going to finish anyway.

I really could have, and perhaps should have, dropped out right there. But I came to Delaware to complete a marathon, after getting the Florida rug pulled out from under me. I would crawl if I had to.

And I almost had to. For the first time ever, I walked part of a race. What a disappointing, almost shameful, feeling. Walking. Some people walk in races and that is fine for them. Not for me. I am a RUNNER. Moreso, I am a RACER.

I thought about how Ryan Hall dropped out of the Olympic Marathon this year and that made me feel a little better mentally. Pro racers are better off dropping out. They can not afford to risk serious injury because it is their job.

Me, I have to risk it. I came a long way. I trained hard for 17 weeks. I needed to hit the finish line no matter what. Otherwise, what was it all for?

The tightness in my stomach was almost unbearable. At times, I almost cried, but mostly, I wanted to vomit. It felt as if someone reached inside my gut and started squeeeeezing my stomach. Not my abs, my actual stomach.

I ran a little. Walked a little. Ran a little more. Walked a little more.

Women passed me. Older dudes passed me. An older woman passed me. Other walker/runners passed me. A woman with a racing stroller passed me.

The last three miles seemed like an eternity. They practically were. The entire last loop took about an hour and a half. Pathetic.

And then, with only about a half mile to go, I puked.

Vomit gushed out of my mouth and nose. I wiped it away with my hands as it dripped from my beard. I felt like I was covered in it. I trotted toward the finish line, feeling a bit lighter, but beaten, and wholly mortified at the thought of Karen seeing me like that.

She was wonderful, cheering me in as if I had run the best race of my life. I had to hold back tears. I thanked her for her kindness and told her to definitely NOT hug me.

I sat for a while in the bunker-like building, waiting for some kind of normalcy in my tummy that never came. We left without cheering in other runners, eating post-race food, or staying for the awards. No joy in Pukeville.

At the hotel, I soaked in an ice bath for a while and then took a nap. An anti-climactic end to 17 weeks of hard work.

The mad scramble for NYE tickets

How many Phish fans does it take to cripple ticketmaster.com?

I do not know the exact number, but try logging on at 10 a.m. the day New Year's Eve tickets go on sale and you will experience it firsthand.

It happens every year - hundreds of thousands of fans trying to get tens of thousands of tickets. It is maddening.

Not that the top brass at Ticketmaster or Live Nation, especially that dipshit prick CEO Irving Azoff, will do anything about it as long as the money keeps rolling in. They do not give flying crap about you or me. They laugh at us while the screen says, "Your wait time is approximately five minutes" for a half-hour straight. And then they laugh at us again when half the tickets go to their buddies in the "ticket broker" business.

"Ticket broker", if you did not know, is a euphemism for "legal scalping". Funny how I can get a ticket for neither Dec. 29, 30, nor 31, from Ticketmaster.com at face value, but other sites have them on sale for hundreds of dollars. Assholes. Fortunately, I got the 28th from Phish's own limited mail-order system.

See, I am old enough to remember the good old days when your chances of getting a ticket depended on how badly you wanted it. Tickets went on sale at 10 a.m. on a Saturday? That means camping out Friday night at the local Ticketmaster outlet. First in line had first dibs, fair and square.

For New Year's Run shows in 1994, 1995, and 1997 (including NYE for the latter two), I was in the front section on the floor at Madison Square Garden with my best buddies and my brother. Why? Because we had the balls to camp outside in front of a god damn strip mall building in New Jersey in late October. That is why.

And hanging out all night with fellow Phish fans was FUN. You met people. Exchanged stories. Maybe agreed to a few tape trades (we listened to Phish shows on cassette in the pre-mp3 days, and copied and mailed them to each other).

In the late 1990s, they started the wristband system to keep people from camping out. Goodness knows they did not want people having fun in the middle of the night in non-residential parts of town where no one would be bothered. To my knowledge, no crimes were ever committed at these sleepovers. No violence. Just a bunch of people waiting for the store to open to get their fair reward.

The wristbands ensured that whether you got there at 9:00 the night before or 9:00 that morning, everyone present at opening time had an equal and random shot at the good stuff. They gave you a wristband with a number, then they called the number that would be first, and went in sequential order.

It is no big surprise then, that I did not get tickets to NYE 1998 (though I did manage to score Dec. 29 and 30). And after that, Ticketmaster truly became Ticketbastard.

NYE 1999 was an organic affair, a festival ticketed through Phish's organization, so tickets were plentiful and easy to obtain. And that was the last NYE I have ever attended.

2002 was damn near impossible as the first show back from hiatus - instead I landed a single ticket to the Virginia show on Jan. 4. And 2003 and 2009 were in Miami, so they were out of reach. But the last three years at MSG have been the same circle of Hell, over and over.

I wonder if I should even care this much. Listening to the recordings, I found last year's shows to be good, but nothing more special than any other Phish show until the third set of NYE.

Not that I am a 3.0 hater. I am totally on board with new Phish. Summer tours this year and last were possibly the best ever. The problema are that damn Garden and the pressure of delivering huge NYE returns when the memories of those previous extravaganzas have still not faded after all these years.

Still, I continue chasing the dragon, hoping that if I get lucky enough to snag that golden ticket, I will see an MSG show that blows my mind the way it did in 1995 and 1997.

That is not likely, but I requested floor-seats only, effectively narrowing my odds of actually attending in favor of increasing my odds of enjoying it more if I do. There is a deep frustration being stuck in the 300s and 400s, struggling to hear the band in the echo cavern near the ceiling of MSG. It is floor-only from now on.

With that in mind, I think I will be happier attending the one show on Dec. 28 with my seat on the floor than attending two or more with crappy seats. That way, if they play an average 3.0 show (which is to say, awesome but with no crazy frills), I will have a perfectly excellent time.

Then I'll go to the Trey Anastasio show in Montclair in January and probably have as good a time!

Westchester Running Festival half-marathon

Halfway through the Hal Higdon marathon training program, which I have faithfully used for each race, it is recommended to run a half-marathon race as a fitness test. Though the marathon for which I was training suddenly did not exist, I decided to continue the training as prescribed and I found the Westchester Running Festival set for Oct. 7.

Taking place in White Plains, N.Y., around 35 miles from home, it was a mid-sized, well-organized event that also included a quarter-marathon.

Making sure to get there early to pick up my packet and get myself ready, I drove in the dark of morning and got to the Westchester County Center at the crack of dawn, giving myself plenty of time to stretch and take a short warm-up jog.

The course seemed boring on paper - 6.5 miles south then back north again on the Bronx River Parkway. Remembering the Suffolk County Half-Marathon last year (also a highway out-and-back), I was prepared for a boring course.

I was pleasantly surprised. That area of the BRP was almost, dare I say, scenic, with plenty of trees, streams and trails along the side of the road and (duh) the Bronx River. And because it is a divided highway, the return trip was like being on a different road altogether.

Not so pleasantly surprising were the hills. In the second mile there was a long, steep downhill. I said to the person next to me, "Oh great, we have to run UP this hill in Mile 12."

The hills continued to roll and I implemented a strategy I had been testing in training - pushing hard up the hills and easing back significantly on the way down.

Two other new strategies for this race involved freeing myself of two major crutches - a stopwatch and a Gatorade bottle. Instead of obsessing over how close to my 6:24 PR pace I was with each mile, I ran solely on feel. On the flat sections, I trusted myself to know when I was lagging and when I was pushing too hard. And rather than carry my own bottle to hydrate at my own intervals, I took advantage of the aid stations for a change.

The result? Despite the expected hell of the hill in Mile 12, I cranked out my second-best half-marathon of the eight I have run in the past five years, pulling off a 1:26:28. Considering that I was not even specifically doing half-marathon training, I would call it a rousing success. Coming off of a PR from 10 months prior, the fact that I ran my two best half-marathons within a year at 37 and 38 years old, I could not ask for more.

Sore from pushing up those hills, I also took advantage of a free massage, even as it started to rain. Plus, there was plenty of post-race food, not to mention lots of good vibes.

It was an excellent race experience on a (mostly) beautiful October morning in New York.

Twenty years later

This past August was the 20-year anniversary of the first time I ever heard Phish. I think it is safe to say my life changed that summer day when, riding in my brother's car to buy a birthday gift for our mother, my ears and mind were opened up to music unlike anything I had ever heard.

My brother's friend Mike always managed to find new music and pass it along to Ben who would ultimately introduce it to me.  Ben was in college and I had just graduated high school. That summer of 1992 was the HORDE tour with Spin Doctors, Blues Traveler and Phish. It was what the college kids were listening to. Ben had already introduced me to the Docs, to whom I took an instant liking. But on this particular day, he said, "Check out this band, Phish," and popped the 'Lawn Boy' album into the cassette player.

"The Squirming Coil" was interesting enough, but it was "Reba" that turned me into a fan, right then and there in Ben's Dodge Colt. We arrived at the store as the jam section started, so the ride home consisted of the entire jam, leading into the whistling, and back to the refrain. I remember exclaiming, "This is the SAME SONG?"

And so, as it goes with Phish fandom, I needed to hear more. And more. That is how my crazy 20-year continuing odyssey began. And though the Spin Doctors' 'Pocket Full of Kryptonite' spent the most time in the cassette player in my dorm, I was still armed with copies of Phish's three studio albums. It would be another year before I experienced the full thrill of the live show, but I was was hooked on Phish forever.

Phish Dick's

"We love Dick's! We love Dick's!"

I have not laughed that hard listening to a Phish show in a long time. When the band and crowd chanted how much they love Dick's, it made for one of those moments, not just because it was funny in itself but because the band was in the throes of some top-notch playing. Everyone knew it. There was electricity in the air that you can hear on the recording, and that chant proved it.

Remember last year's "S" show (also at Dick's), in which all the songs began with the letter "S"? They were at it again the first night of this run - the first letter of each song spelled out "F-U-C-K-Y-O-U-R-F-A-C-E" and then the set culminated with their 1980s goofball song  of that name (which is about a guitar that will figuratively do so, nothing dirty).

How about that "Undermind" (the second "U" in the sequence)? As the song continues to elude me (I have been to 27 shows since they started playing it and STILL have not seen them perform it), it gets better and better. And longer. And funkier.

The "E" was "Emotional Rescue" - a welcome rarity in keeping with the bust-outs of Leg One of the tour. First time since Vegas 2000!

The second show had the first "Run Like an Antelope" opener since 1990 and was a knockout. Every song, short and long, was a killer. When "Tweezer" is only one highlight, you know it is a damn good show. And "Mike's Song > No Quarter > Weekapaug Groove" to close Set Two? Crazy awesome!

And night three was solid in every way. The huge "Sand" that opened the second set shone brightly at that show. "Sand" was definitely a contender for MVP jammer of the summer.

But the clear winner was Dick's "Light", which will probably go down in Phishtory and a must-listen for every fan - 20-plus minutes of glorious jamming. It was Phish at its best. Even as an old fan, I will put that up against any jam from the 1990s. "Light" has definitely been the Number One jam vehicle this summer and it all came to a peak at Dick's.

What a way to end the tour, but it almost feels as if they saved it all up for those shows, only teasing and hinting at the greatness to come in each show leading up to it. That is nice as a story arc, but I do feel for the Midwestern and southern folks who maybe went to the one show in their areas, catching well-performed but unexceptional concerts.

My advice to the casual fan and the curious listener - skip the entire second leg up to Dick's, but get all three tour-ending shows.