Moonlight Track (aka Solo NZ Running Camp Pt. 2)

With the first day of running done and dusted, I saw no reason to do anything but keep burying myself. After awakening to another banner day on the South Island, I decided to revisit an old friend: the Moonlight Track.

When I lived there, I frequently hiked Ben Lomond, and it took until Epic Camp for me to realize that it was possible to continue around the back of Ben Lomond and put together a massive run. Curiously, our run during Epic was hampered by poor navigation and general exhaustion, so I'd been itching for years to do it properly.

When I say "hampered," of course I mean "near disaster." I wrote about it here, but I'll spare you the indignity of reading that whole thing; here's the section of interest:

...the evil southerly front has passed through, and Saturday morning is crisp and clear. We have our customary snack and are out the door at 7am for a trail run. I lead the way through town to the Fernhill roundabout, and we turn uphill onto One Mile Track. This is a steep climb up the hill that the gondola services. We run/jog/power-hike up the thing, and we finally get out of the forest above the gondola and joint the track to Ben Lomond Saddle. This is a moderately strenuous hiking track, and running up it is not easy. I team up with Tara again and we quickly make it to the saddle.

Instead of summiting Ben Lomond, we head around the backside of Bowen Peak along the Moonlight Track, which at times is more like a goat trail. The torrential rain of the prior day has left parts of the track delightfully soggy, and my shoes are soon soaking. On the north side of Bowen Peak, we somehow miss a fork in the track and find ourselves chasing fake tracks here and there. Mike, Tara, Albert, Doug, John, Newsom, Gordo, and I are all in the same boat here. Somebody yells that they’ve found the real track and we press on. Unfortunately, we’re wrong.

Mike and Tara and our stomping grounds. Before we get lost.

Ten minutes later, we’re hopelessly lost in dense underbrush. A few minutes after that, we’re thigh-deep in gorse, a British import that took over in the wilds of New Zealand. It’s quite possibly the thorniest organism on the planet. Porcupines cower in fear at the mention of gorse.

After much bushwhacking, cursing, and skin-shredding, Albert leads us back to the track. We are ecstatic and run to the end of the track, down into Arthur’s Point, and along the road into Queenstown. It’s a 3 hour 50 minute combination run, adventure race, and survival school. My legs and arms are bleeding and tender, but I’m not as exhausted as I should be. I eat breakfast...

Needless to say, the Campers that I've kept in touch with have always held that run in special regard and with particular wonderment that we went from hero to zero so quickly. More on that in a minute!


Rising above Wakatipu

Back to present day, I pretty swiftly remember that the climb up to Ben Lomond Saddle is a bitch, but the views it affords are well worth it.


Higher yet near the saddle

Over the saddle before my legs have really become aware that I'm asking a LOT from them even after yesterday, I settle in to the gradual downhill at the start of Moonlight. There are frequent soggy patches to dodge, leap over, and tiptoe through.  Further, this is rugged sheep country, and the views of the snow-covered peaks to the north are hard to beat.


Rough day in the office

Even without the veil of exhaustion draped over me, the trail is still hard to follow in places, which makes me feel better about our misnavigation during Epic. Running as heads-up as I can, I follow it well with only a handful of excursions (one of which is, I'll admit, substantial).

Before too long, I go through a gate and pass a sign showing the correct direction. Approximately TEN FEET past this sign is where we stopped for that photo (above) during our fateful visit five years prior. So now it all adds up: we passed that sign, posed for a photo, and then, like spandex-clad goldfish, promptly forgot which way the sign told us to go. I'm astounded that we were in such a state to be that abjectly stupid, and it makes me shocked that we weren't prohibited from operating heavy machinery after that.

Not more than a couple kilometers after this revelatory episode, three things happen pretty much all at once. First, the clouds disappear and it gets hot. Really hot. Second, I run out of water (OK, my rationing reaches the point of being uncomfortable). Third, my legs, now fully awake, unionize and promptly go on strike. They feel as though they're being treated unfairly. Sigh.


Steep ravine down to the Shotover River

I've got no choice but to pull the pace back until two of those problems are solved: there's some shade and I find a gloriously cold stream from which to refill my water. My legs are still on strike, but they're kinda whiny bitches anyway.

I'm overjoyed to make it back to the main road near Arthur's Point, which entitles me to begin the long hot descent back to Qtown. By the time it's all said and done, another 15 miles are under my belt, bringing the first two days of my impromptu camp to 37 miles. A) that's a record for me, and B) ouch.

The huge bonus is C) that evening I find out about a local 12k trail race two days later that I'd be a bad person if I didn't do. Hahahahaha I guess I'll taper for 24 hours and see if I can dig myself out of this hole.

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Lakeside Sunset

I think I'll alternate running geekdom and nature stuff.  Sound good?

The end of the day on the South Island has the distinct possibility of being frequently awesome.  Brett's house is about a five minute walk from the water, well within striking distance for an evening stroll.


Little planet, big lake

Curiously, Lake Wakatipu's waters rise and fall predictably; a few inches a couple times an hour.  Of course, science comes to the rescue with an explanation, which you can read here; the basic principle is the standing wave you can create by sliding back and forth in a bathtub.  However, far more enchanting is the explanation the Maori came up with about the lake's beating heart.  Either way, the lake is alive!


Canopy

Queenstown attracts outdoorspeople from every corner of the globe; it's billed as the adventure sports capital of the world.  At times, the reputation of being Extreme gets to be a little much, but by and far, it's filled with awesome people, both transient and permanent.  This Brazilian dude was practicing his kiting as the light faded:


Practice

And just because it doesn't fit anywhere else, a bonus flower from Jardine Park:


Bloom

Up next, more running destruction!

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Madness Begins (aka Solo NZ Running Camp Pt. I)

The torrential rain that accompanied me on my drive to Queenstown also deposited some snow up high.  Thus, my return to Q-town was capped by a fresh dusting of snow on the Remarkables (and everything else within sight).  Summer, indeed!

Since my pre-trip scheduling was nonexistent, I had the benefit of taking full stock of all goals once I was on the ground and laid out something of a plan.  Circumstances meant that I had a few days totally to myself aside from making phone calls and sending emails to set up meetings later in the trip.

Thus, after sleeping off the rain, I awoke to a glorious day and set right to it: time for a run!  My home base was my mate Brett's house in Frankton, and it's within striking distance of pretty much everything interesting.  I couldn't resist the draw of the run that happened to be the one Ethel and I went on for our first date many moons ago: Jack's Point.

I had packed light: one set of nice clothes for wedding and networking, a rainjacket, running clothes, and camera junk; ample gear for just over two weeks.  I ran everywhere with a GoPro as it was a bombproof method to ensure that I always had a camera on me.  A lot of the places I wanted to run would be inconvenient to go back to with the big dawg, so I wanted to document a thing or two along the way instead of totally losing out.  I must say the ol' GoPro does OK:


Wakatipu and the Remarkables on the way to Jack's Point


This photo is taken at the little yellow nub near the middle-right of the first photo

The run was stunning.  My soul opened to unfettered glorious nature and the miles melted away.  As far as reintroductions to an old spot go, they don't get much better than this.  Cool air, mild breeze, perfect surface, interesting terrain, scenery sourced straight from paradise, and willing legs.  The track never leaves sight of the lake, and it winds up and down through trees, brush, and wildflowers.  It all adds up to, in a word, happiness.

The first 15 miles of the trip easily under my belt, midday was gleefully wasted to a snack, a meal, and a shower.  Even though the GoPro accompanied me competently, the allure of returning with the big camera to a particular spot between Jardine Park and Jack's Point was too strong to resist, so I drove back out there late that afternoon, cracked a beer as I walked to the spot, and watched the waves lap at the shore below the steep embankment as I set to work.  The following is not a GoPro photo :)


Lake Wakatipu (click for -much- larger)

So what's extra awesome is that the panorama you see here is the SMALLER of the two I made (and it's been drastically downsized for web viewing, even the big one you got when you clicked on it).  The larger panorama is still a work in progress, but it's gigantic and wondrous, so I hope I get to share it eventually.

The day was too good to let it expire without another run, so I went out for an evening session into Queenstown from Frankton.  That put me into the realm of having earned some beer, which I amply took advantage of.

Paradise found.  Let the madness continue!

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Impulse

Near the end of last year, it became obvious that unemployment was imminent.  An appropriate response to this revelation is to figure out "what's next?" and fortunately, I have had a rough idea of what that would be for a while.

So on extremely short notice, I booked a ticket to New Zealand.

Fortunately, my trip coincided with a mate's wedding in Akaroa, as well as conveniently falling during summertime, which meant an opportunity for an impromptu training camp.


Next stop: awesomeness

My flight left on New Years Eve and landed on January 2nd, so the flight crew was kind enough to provide champagne at some randomly selected time that roughly corresponded to midnight somewhere.

I don't really sleep that well on long flights, so I passed quite a few hours watching the Pacific pass below at 10 miles a minute.  From a certain perspective, the next three photos are all pretty much the same and I should really only pick one, but from another perspective, they're all quite different.  Frankly, it's my corner of the internet, so I'll do what I want and post them all.


Dimly lit cloud tops


Awesome unintended aurora-ish reflection


Dawn approaches

Also, I was naughty and "forgot" to power off a certain electronic device until a cool opportunity had been snagged :)


On final to AKL

Upon my eventual arrival into Christchurch, I had literally not decided which direction I'd go, although I had some options laid out.  I made a few phone calls, spent some time with some road maps calculating kilometer-age, took a deep breath, and pointed it for Queenstown.  It then promptly lashed down torrential rain (and snow up high) for the entire 6-hour drive.  Welcome to summer on a tiny rock in the middle of the South Pacific...

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Footsie

Well, this confirms my "mild discomfort" during Boston.  This is a side view and a top view of my right foot:


And this little piggy stays home for the next few weeks while his friends go do fun things!

Now that I know what a stress fracture feels like (I'd rank it as "annoying"), I'll know to back off before it becomes an all-growed-up-for-realz-fracture (which ranks as a wee bit beyond annoying).

Also, now that I have all this "free time," I'm going to dive into the ever-looming project of sharing photos from an impromptu trip I took at the beginning of the year.

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A Tale of Two Races

This is about the Boston Marathon - both my experiences and some commentary about the explosions that took life and limbs from so many.

I'm still not convinced it's clever, but I've struggled a healthy amount with the name for this post.

It was going to be A Tale of Two Cities, but that's wrong, because it's a shining example about how the one and only Boston acted before and after.

It was going to be called Two Races, One City, but I'm terrified that if you don't get the reference to the disgusting video of a similar name, you're going to go on a google mission and lose both your lunch and all remaining respect you have for me.  #fortheloveofgoddontgooglethat

It was going to be called The Plight of the 4:10 Marathoner, and while that may be the best title, I feel as though it may rub those fresh wounds a little raw, or be wholly misunderstood.

So it remains A Tale of Two Races, and I'll lay it out as best I can.

My race:
The Boston Marathon gradually went from being totally off my radar to being a huge focus without much pomp or circumstance.

When I was at MIT, the marathon fell on the third day of a four-day weekend.  This = party.  We lived about a 3-minute walk from Kenmore Square, so we'd watch on TV and drink beer until the elite runners were nearby.  We'd hurry over to Kenmore to watch them blitz by, then hang out for two or three hours more, cheering for the hordes of runners that came behind.  I did this all four years I was there, and it was a fantastic way to spend a day.  At that point in my life, running a marathon was wholly beyond my comprehension.  It was so far out there that running the Boston Marathon never made it on to my list of stuff to do.

Well, fast-forward a few years, and a marathon doesn't seem so awful any more.  Still, however, Boston wasn't on my list of must-do races.  After I got hit by a car last summer and missed Embrunman, I desperately needed some race to work towards to motivate my recovery.  Conveniently, I had a run a qualifying time for Boston a few months prior, so I decided to cash that chip in and make Boston a goal.  Being on the other side of the barriers than when I was a student seemed really attractive, all of a sudden, and I wanted to go big.

For about the last 7 months, I did just that in my training.  I set lofty goals for the race, trained like I meant it, and slowly morphed into something of a decent runner.  A couple of big training blocks hit me hard.  In January, I ran 148 miles in 10 days, which included an accidental marathon.  Yes, such a thing is possible.  In March, I ran 112 miles in 7 days, and that week put me into a pretty deep hole.  I spent the next five or so weeks chasing away some aches and pains, and thought I had it handled.  Of note, I had a sore foot that felt fine when I ran, but hurt when I walked or slept or whatever else, so I conveniently ignored it.  Ha ha ha, dramatic foreshadowing.

Race day.

The atmosphere in Boston and in Hopkinton before the race is electric.  It's swarmed with enthusiastic people, and the sheer logistics of getting 27,000 people to the start and through the race course are staggering.  It's NUTS.  I had earned a pretty good starting position, but when the gun goes off, all we're able to do is walk.  When we cross the start line, we're jogging, and within a couple hundred meters, we're essentially up to speed.  The crowd support is unreal.  At times, the cheering is deafening, and the energy is tangible.  The college students take the cake for enthusiasm.  Nearly every mile marker has a clock next to it, and those miles keep melting away in six minutes, plus or minus a few seconds.  This is good.  The training has paid off.  The hammer is down.

Wellesley is everything it's cracked up to be.  A single guy (or girl) who isn't concerned with his (or her) time could do well along the sidelines there.  The miles melt away.  I can feel that twinge in my right foot, and it feels like it's extra sensitive to every wrinkle in the pavement, but there's no pain.  The first half-marathon goes by in a PR time: 1:19 flat.

Somewhere around the Newton hills, the twinge in my foot actually starts to hurt.  My pace slows enough that I can feel it.  Then, over the course of just over a mile, between the 30k and 20mi markers, it becomes unbearable.  My foot feels like it's swollen to twice its normal size, and every footfall is matched with an excruciating electric shock.  When I crest the hill to begin the ideally-fast descent into Boston, my race pretty much ends.  My legs feel great (relatively), but the added impact of the downhill on my foot is a no-go.  I slow to an unsightly limp.  Compared to those around me, I begin moving backwards quickly.  Like, really quickly.  They're running by me in droves, and it's pretty obvious to me what the problem with my foot is.  Or we can call it a problem with my shoe, since my shoe isn't normally filled with broken bones.

By the time I reach Kenmore Square, I'm reduced to a grimacing mess.  The crowds are insane, but I'm barely aware.  I have given up 9 minutes in the last 6 miles of the race.  I manage a PR, but my ideal race went out the window with those stress fractures.  I peg-leg across the finish line and limp towards the med tent (first time ever, thanks), pausing along the way to collect silver blanket (100m from finish line), medal (another 100m), water (another 100m), food (another 100m), and navigate around a couple corners.  I find Ethel further down the block, sit for a while, wait for Velsko to show up, and then hobble off to get a cab...to the bar, where they sell pain medication.

As I slide into the quiet cab and out of the raucous environment that I've been in for the last few hours (and days), I reflect briefly about how spectacularly the city has supported the race and the runners.  And not just the city as an organizing entity, but the residents of the city, too.  Boston has long stood behind its sports No Matter What, unless you're Bill Buckner.

We are only 1200 yards away, right at the corner of the Common at Charles St. and Beacon St., when we hear two big booms.

The City's Race:
Well, we all know what happened.

The day, of course, began like many Marathon Mondays before it. Stupendous logistics: road closures, traffic control, barriers, aid stations stacked with tens of thousands of cups.  Nervous runners with no greater concern than favorable weather.  Thousands upon thousands of genuinely cheerful volunteers. Medical staff expecting to deal with blisters, cramps, and other first-world problems.  It ended turned upside down.

Almost instantly, kind souls sprung into action.  Reports of doctors crossing the finish line and immediately offering their services.  Reports of others crossing the finish line and heading directly to donate blood, no matter how dilute with Gatorade.  And 5,000+ people publicly offering their beds and couches to displaced runners, families, and spectators.

Athletic events tend to be among the most pure gatherings out there.  Athletes seeking personal goals.  Spectators happy to support those athletes.  Volunteers and organizers enthusiastically providing the setting for it all to happen.  And running is an interesting example, as the everyman runner gets to be on the same course as the world-class runners.  Play basketball?  Sure, but not on the same court as the Celtics.  Play baseball?  Sure, but not on the same field as the Red Sox.  Run?  Great, you get to start right behind world record holders!

The general public seems to view runners as a little bit unhinged.  "You're running how far?  I don't even drive that far and I get tired" is a common one, whether at a 5k or a marathon.  So it's usually with some curiosity that the public will come out to watch runners do their thing.  And bless them, because their support is pretty awesome.

The bombs went off with 4:10 on the race clock.  This presents us with a quandary.  A lot people who are crossing the finish line of a marathon in just over four hours, and forgive me for painting with a broad brush, are not racehorses.  That 4:10 finish might have been the result of a life goal to finish a marathon without walking.  That 4:10 finish might have been in the name of raising a bunch of money for a charity.  Or that 4:10 finish might have been a triumphant return to competition after an injury or serious illness or other health problem.

And if you'll still allow me to paint with a broad brush, those people have more supporters - friends they've inspired to get off the couch, tearful relatives who still can't comprehend how far that is, and kids who think mom or dad is a superhero for crossing that line.

And those are the supporters who lost so much on Monday.  Not the ironman widows who have seen it all before, not the coaches of the 2:08 elites who are wondering why they had an off day and ran 2:12, but rather the ones who were there to watch the 4:10 marathoners, the most selfless of the spectators watching the runners most moved by their finish.  And that makes me sick.

Since I started writing this, an MIT police officer lost his life, most of the entire metropolitan area entered a lockdown, and a massive manhunt concluded with one suspect dead and another in custody.  Still, little is known about why the attacks played out as they did, but that will likely change.  To say it was a wild week for Boston is a mild understatement.

Through it all, the residents demonstrated resilience at previously unseen levels.  I also saw more compassion, empathy, and concern for the human condition than I had in the entire four years I lived there.  The city came together, cared for all within its confines, and countered a terror attack with a refusal to live in fear.  And that gives me hope.



'Til next time, Boston.

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Entropy

Entropy is really a bitch.

In case you're not familiar, entropy is a measure of how disordered something is.  More disorder is more entropy, and less disorder is less entropy.  It's easy to imagine a messy desk, or a deck of cards that's well-shuffled.  Lots of entropy.  It's also easy to imagine cleaning and organizing that desk, or returning that deck of cards to its unshuffled state.  Less entropy.  Simple enough, yeah?

But that's where things get tricky.  Unfortunately, returning one system to a state of lower entropy necessarily brings another system to a state of higher entropy.  What, you think you cleaned that desk without burning a few calories and shedding a few skin cells?  And you think you unshuffled that deck of cards without wearing some of the finish off of them?

So the catch-22 is that as far as the universe is concerned, entropy always increases.  If we draw an imaginary dotted line around the desk or the deck of cards, we can make entropy decrease there, but if we draw the imaginary dotted line around us too, entropy inside that box will increase.  Go ahead and eat something to replace those calories you burned and put your entropy a little lower, but then we're going to have to draw the imaginary box around the supermarket where you bought the food, the bike you rode there and back, the truck that delivered the food to the supermarket, and the farm where the food was grown. Now you see where this is going.

If we draw the dotted line around the known universe(s), there's nothing that can be done to slow the inexorable march of entropy towards higher and higher states.  Every time an asteroid smashes into an alien planet, and every time a star goes supernova, and every time the Higgs Field stretches and undulates?  More entropy.  Our supermarket's got nothing on supernovae, dawg.

To put it less delicately, we're fucked, and channeling Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, there's nothing we can do to unfuck ourselves.

So why, pray tell, am I boring you with this?  Here ya go:





That brand-spanking-new pair will carry this bag o' bones at Boston in a few days, and I must say that I've enjoyed the last few months of pretending to be a real runner.  That used up pair may not look totally shot, but my legs know the difference, and they are indeed DONE.  I don't explicitly track miles I run, much less miles in each pair of shoes, but my quasi-accounting puts that pair at about 350 miles.

This process of adding entropy to shoes and then purchasing new examples with less entropy has been happening at a frightening rate lately...roughly once a month.  By cosmic standards, shoes are easy to buy, although I never thought I'd be budgeting -quite- this much for 'em.  And as I'm well used to, food and rest work wonders for repairing the body, although I know these miles don't come without cost.  Just not yet sure what that cost is, and when I'll be paying it.

If you've made it this far, and you're still curious about entropy, I can give you a little reading list that'll make your head spin.  Click away: turns out that black holes shed entropy, entropy = information, and there's a good chance that the universe we experience is nothing more than a holographic projection suspended in a bubble whose surface is a looooong way away.  Put THAT in your pipe and smoke it, hippies.

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