Fast Bastard - World's Fastest Hematologist

Big and small differences

2012-02-14T10:51:00.000-08:00

I love the topic of how Denmark and the US are different. I don't know where I feel more at home. Sometimes, the glass is half full and sometimes it's half empty. Here's a list of differences the reader may or may not be aware of.

Some obvious ones are:

Equality vs Inequality. That's the biggest difference; the one I will never get used to. In Denmark, the entire middle 95% have essentially the same quality of life. Success isn't rewarded like it is here, and yet this doesn't really bother Danes. Surprisingly, the "poor" (who make more money than the median US household income, mind you) still bitch and moan about how the "system" is out to get them. And boy, I would never even be able to say something like this in Denmark without getting funny looks. So it sounds like I would prefer the US system, but I don't. The inequality is everywhere. Unfairness is everywhere, every day in the ER.

Religion. Americans don't realize this. Scandinavians notice it immediately.

Politics. Just two parties and nasty us-versus-them partisanism. It seems like Danes love discussing politics, whereas Americans get tight sphincters if you ask them who they voted for. Probably a product of the two-party system in America, which few people seem to question.

But here are some smaller differences.

Amateur sports. Open the locan paper in Næstved, Denmark, and the sports pages will be about the local adult amateur teams. Some of these teams are semi-pro, sure, most mostly it's regular working folk playing national level handball (olympic handball to you North Americans), soccer, tennis or badminton or what have you. Open the same size local paper here and there are almost identical articles about kids' sports. Danes are unable to comprehend how big kids' sports are here. If a local kids' team is excelling nationally in Denmark, it leads to some coverage in the paper or local TV news, but you can't compare it to the focus on kids' sports here. You could take any of the local high school track teams in La Crosse and they would probably be able to beat every single junior track team in Denmark (except maybe two or three). But then kids graduate from high school and college and it just drops off. A top Division 3 college sprinter can go from being, essentially, a full time athlete to an old man after outdoor nationals his senior year. This topic could fill 10 blog posts, so I'll leave it there.

Pro sports. Wisconsin has the Packers, Bucks, Brewers and... I dono't know, maybe a female basketball team,? There used to be semi-pro basketball league. In the summer there is minor league baseball in maybe 10 cities. Let's say around 10 pro sports teams. Denmark has, what, 200 pro teams in a number of sports. I don't get it. One could argue that college sports fill that role in Wisconsin, but it's still interesting. I should mention that both Wisconsin and Denmark have populations of about 6 million.

Public radio. I love public radio here as do most people I talk to. Wisconsin has Wisconsin Public Radio, whose programs are partly produced by NPR. Denmark has 5 public radio stations and at least two of those are far from popular. What gives?

The price of food. Not a subtle difference, but still. It blows my mind that I drive to work and my dinner is a 99 cent burrito from Taco Bell. 99 cents! And I get full from this burrito.

Hmm, there are more but the Girl is home...

Settling in La Crosse

2012-01-31T06:48:00.000-08:00

Life is good here.

We sit in our breakfast nook and look out on the snowmen that I built with Christian this week. There are six of them, one for each member of the family. He was very particular with how tall he wanted each of them. I ended up shorter than the Snow Girl, but I have a bigger and rounder head. We put boobs on the Snow Girl, so people could tell who was who.

Little Snow Guapo is less than a foot tall and has tiny rocks for eyes. They fall out every time the sun shines. Sometimes Snow Guapo has to sit on the Girl's hip, because he is so small. Christian is overcome with jealousy when he sees Snow Guapo on the Snow Girl's hip. He won't run over to knock the little snowman down, because he likes the game too much, but he is very adament that Snow Guapo stands alone at night.

He goes to the Waldorf school in La Crosse. It's a lesson in not being quite cool enough for all of us. We have spent hours searching for SmartWool socks that fit a 3-year old and go up over his knees. He wears his Thomas the Train shirt at home, but any sign of pop culture is strictly banned at his school. The parents and teachers make we nervous when they approach me wearing homespun hemp. Then speak slowly and with righteous conviction. They never break eye contact; they drive Subarus or Volvos and are never in a hurry. They shop at the co-op and are probably 100% organic at home.

Yesterday, I got a few points for picking up Christian on my bike. I had temporarily forgotten just how unusual it is for someone to ride a bike in January in La Crosse. Drivers are so nice here that it feels like I slowed down hundreds of drivers. But the weather was nice and it was worth it to see the elites at the Waldorf stare jealously at my muddy pants. Yes, muddy pants trump "eat local" bumper stickers.

Christian and I like to run or bike to the La Crosse River. We throw ice and snow into the river, whether the river is ice or water. Ice floes break loose from upstream and yesterday a floe larger than a minivan sailed past us. We go skiing at Mount La Crosse; when I am more than an inch behind him, he screams "I fastern you, dad!". When I am more than an inch ahead of him, he screams "vent for me, far!". He rides over the jumps on the edge of the run, oblivious to the glares from teenagers he cuts off.

The Girl is in a crazy exercise phase. Like most of the people who read this, she is addicted to exercise. Suddenly she has time to exercise as much as she wants, for the first time since her intern year. She runs/bikes/swims/yogas/etc from 9 to 1 and then she is done for the day. It's a strange relief from the tears and frustrations of life in Denmark, where she was never able to exercise as much as she wanted. Here, She comes home tired from all her exercise, works for a few hours (10 hours a week, officially), and we have a normal afternoon/evening with the kids. Yesterday, the car broke down and we had to spend over an hour to get it jumped and then get it to the shop. It was almost fun. In Denmark, the Girl would have had a full-blown panic attack because her days were so insanely parcelled out that any interruption would topple the exercise apple cart. Last night, there were jokes and laughs.

And of course, she is in great shape. She is taking easy days every other day (ie. she only runs 10 miles and then cross trains for 3 hours). On hard days, she runs quality workouts. If I ran like her, I would be injured immediately. She runs over 100 miles a week. 100K for me is about as high as I can go, and even that is pushing it. She needs to run more intense stuff, which has always been her weakness, but even that is coming around. She is doing 1 mile intervals right now (I wasn't allowed to join her, unfortunately). We have a half marathon next weekend. Depending on how cold it is, I think she has a huge PR in her, maybe high 1:20s.

The chances of me getting "wifed" at Three Days of Syllamo are very, very real.

(An earlier version of this post had an exaggerated description of the Girl's eating habits and singlemindedness during a heavy training phase. I thought it was funny; the Girl less so).

Mammoth

2012-01-18T19:09:00.000-08:00

The weather in the Sierra Nevadas has been unusually warm and dry, so the Yosemite east entrance (going over Tioga Pass) was open. The highlight of the trip, at least runningwise, was running from Olmsted Point almost to the valley. All by ourselves. We didn't meet single person all day. There was only a tiny bit of snow. In January. When is that ever going to happen again?

Half Dome in the background.

Closer to half dome (switchbacking down to the valley)

Skiing-wise, the story of the week was this:
That's my brother-in-law. He was fine.

This is the whole gang on the life. They had made enough snow to make it a ski trip, but everything was green or brown outside the open runs.

Christian liked skiing. Perhaps that was the absolute high point.

Everyone on the back porch of the wonderful house we stayed in.

2011-12-27T04:48:00.000-08:00

I'm at the airport waiting to board. An era is over and I have reminisced. Goodbyes were said to colleagues, friends and family and 7 months of laid-back La Crosse lie ahead.

My running is going well, as is the Girl's. We aren't 100% sure which races weare going to do, but the list so far looks something like this:

3 days of Syllamo in March
Ice age 50 (K for me; miles for the Girl.
La Crosse Marathon (Granddad's Marathon).
Voyageur 50 miles

The girl also plans a 100K in Copenhagen in April.

In between, there are plenty of shortsr races in the area. Plenty is not reallt accurate, but there are a few out there, like some half marathons within a few hours' drove and some shorter races in La Crosse.

I plan on running a ton and cross training on my bike and in the pool. For the unlikely reader who knows La Crosse, Bliss Road, which leads to the top of the bluffs, washed away last fall, so the biking will be hampered by that. Who knows, maybe it will be fixed by spring. That road has washed away like 4 times in the 6 or so years I have known La Crosse.

Wow, in 10 hours I will see the Girl and the two boys and tomorrow I will be back with Natali and Andreas. Not bad.

Running Log December 2011

2011-12-19T11:08:00.000-08:00

3 bjergmarathon 3:45 or so. Fast last half.
4- some slow stuff. Legs generally tired after two races in 2 weeks.
11-12 long run saturday. 2 lakes with Nikolaj Sunday
14 long run in Copenhagen
15 ran to the hospital and up to the 26th floor a few times
18 forgot about the marathon Saturday. Great long run in the green tunnel and around the usual trails. 30k? Last 10km very fast.
20 Up and down Herlev Hospital. PR frok 2nd to 26th floor: 2:52
22 quick little 5k before going to bed
23 Great legs. Around 10 miles, fartleks. Very fast. Legs hurt the next day.
25 Another great run around Bagsværd Lake. My legs are finally over the back to back races earlier in the month.
27 Femveje in the rain. Legs were a little stale. Leavving for Chicago in an hour.

Oh no, I didn't!

2011-12-18T01:06:00.000-08:00

I ran hard Monday, Wednesday, easy Thursday, and took Friday and Saturday off, because I had a marathon Sunday.

My week was strange, without a wife and kids. Work was hard, with all the research I'm trying to finish up and, unfortunately, no less that three of my clinic patients had relapses within two days.

So I was looking forward to the marathon. It was all planned out; the usual slow start, followed by a fast caffeinated second half.

But. As I was on the phone with the Girl yesterday, she asked "how did the marathon go?" and I realized I had the date wrong. It was yesterday! So that's definitely a strange end to a strange week.

Running Log November 2011

2011-12-01T01:52:00.000-08:00

29: Treadmill 800s in Vangede in 14:36 and 14:16
27: Half-marathon "Næstved Cannonball", Lasse's alternative route. 1:16.02
24: Treadmill 800s in Næstved in 14:26 and 14:15
Skovmaren Marathon 2:55
Several treadmill 800s in 14s
Cross duathlon
40-50K-ish a week, but very intense workouts.
Weight very low (lowest 63.9kg in the morning)

It's December 1st and I'm in great shape.

2011-12-01T00:45:00.000-08:00

After probably two years of no injuries, and a few months of decent training, I find myself in really good shape. Sunday, I ran a half marathon in 1:16.02, which is a few minutes off my PR, but it was windy, I ran alone, the course was very hilly, and I got lost twice. I don't know what it translates into but the legs felt like they could go for a PR.

On the treadmill, where I have been doing my speed work, I'm running faster than I remember running during previous peaks.

Only problem is that it's December and we're moving to Wisconsin in three weeks. I don't even know when or where our next race is going to be. Before we leave, I do have two tiny marathons, but these are on crazy hilly trails so the times won't mean anything.

What to do, what to do?

And you may be curious to know that my future will be decided today. I have to choose between two jobs that are as different as night and day. Some may know that I will work as an ER doc in Wisconsin until next summer, but then we come back to Denmark for the final year of the Girl's eye study (and PhD).

One job is in the city, at a university hospital, where I would work as a junior attending. There are about 20 hematologists in the department, the teaching environment is great, opportunities for research are ample, and I would have a group of diseases (plasma cell disorders) that would become my area of expertise. I would learn from an near-retirement plasma cell guru. But it's in Copenhagen, and we live in the burg of Næstved. Commuting isn't really an option in my mind, so we would have to move to the city, away from Natali's school, Christian's day care and the Girl's job.

The other job is in Næstved, in a smaller department, where I have worked previously during my fellowship. It's one of the last (if not the last) combined hematology/oncology departments in Denmark. (For some reason, the combined heme/onc concept has survived in America to this day, and is still found in community hospitals everywhere; but that's another post.) The hematology seen there is generally not overly exciting, as the complex cases are sent to the city for treatment. There are four hematologists, who are all nice, and with whom I would love to work, but I would certainly have to do a little oncology, too. That would be fun to learn, but it would also dilute my hematology skills. I would be a decent-sized fish in a small pond, with the usual pros and cons.

It would be nice to stay in Næstved, with our safe routines waiting for us in Agust, when we come back from Wisconsin. Career-wise, it's a no-brainer, of course.

I am meeting with the deparmtent chair in 3 hours and I still haven't made up my mind what to tell him.

Almost perfect

2011-11-07T01:52:00.000-08:00

Everything went according to plan. More or less.

I started out super slowly. Went through 5K in 21:30-ish, which is slower than 3 hour pace. The fast people were long gone and I was ok with that. 10K in 42:17, just a hair under 3 hour pace still.

Then I got anxious and sped up a little. I wish I had held back another few kilometers; maybe next time. Came through halfway in 1:27-something.

I had still held back significantly and finally it was time to run. I drank a caffeine drink I had stashed in the woods and got a huge high almost immediately. I went from 7th at the halfway point to 2nd with 10K to go. I hit the 31K mark at 2:11, which meant that a 38 minute 10K would lead to a small PR. The legs easily felt like I could run that.

But.

With 4 K to go, I got a huge cramp in my hamstrings and had to stop and stretch out. It was really aggravating, because the legs felt great, except for the cramps. But it was what it was. I walked some of the hills the last few Ks and was able to run gingerly on the flats and downhills. Thankfully, I got passed by only one guy and still ended up on the podium with some nice prizes. My time was 2:54 something.

Those last 4K shouldn't spoil the race, though. It was fun to continuously speed up through the race. In retrospect, I probably went too fast from 21 to 37K, but it felt really effortless at the time. At the Milwaukee marathon, everything just got suckier as the race progressed. This was a different kind of collapse; after Milwaukee, I thought, "never again", whereas yesterday, I couldn't wait to come back next year.

The Girl took 2nd after starting out slowly and speeding up at the end. Her time was 3:27.

Preview of my Perfect Marathon

2011-11-05T05:08:00.000-07:00

The stars are aligned. Conditions are perfect. Tomorrow, I'm running my perfect marathon!

Here's a brief list of things that point to perfection:

1. I am light and have been so for over a month. My body is used to it, so I am not "weak light".

2. I am in good shape. Haven't raced much or well, but I feel like I have one coming.

3. This race is all on trails.

4. I have figured out exactly how fast to start out: running the first half in 1:30, the second half in 1:19 for a tiny PR.

5. I have a playlist that will hopefully induce a strong runner's high at the half marathon point.

The only drawback is that there are money prizes and reasonably fast people there. I tend to become too stressed to start slowly, when everyone takes off in the beginning. My last Perfect Marathon, it just so happened that the guy who ended up taking second ran the first half in something like 1:30, so I had a companion for the first half. Tomorrow, a 1:30 first half will probably put me in 10th place at the halfway point.

That's my plan. Wish me luck.

The Girl is talking about a PR, too.

Beautiful Wisconsin

2011-10-15T23:05:00.000-07:00

Hi all. It's been a while, but we're on vacation here in La Crosse and life has been busy.

The overall project has been to set up shop for when we move here in December. We found a nice place to live (bottom floor of an old house). We have moved our stuff in and it already feels like home, although we haven't yet slept there. It's a wonderful old house, with a breakfast nook and creaky wooden floors. Unfortunately, so far, it's been nothing but trouble, with a gas leak that needed emergent fixing and a bathroom that was being remodeled the first few days of our moving in. But it's in the part of La Crosse that we wanted to live; right on the "grid", within walking distance of downtown and the bluffs.

It's going to be fun living here again. I know Natali is excited and even Andreas has indicated some satisfaction with having us around.

Christian is learning English the hard way - at the YMCA day care and by talking to his grandparents. It's amazing how he figures out how to say things, when it's something he really needs. He is so fascinated by everything, from the "Chucks" (trucks) to the "Punkins" outside people's houses.

I'm getting back into the world of the ER. Hematology is such a small field that we tend to consult on every little non-hematologic problem. That's just the culture at an academic center. In a small town ER, it's the exact opposite. No problem is too big or too small to be dealt with by me. I like this small town and the people in it, so I love working here. But, honestly, I miss that uber-specialized scope of hematology sometimes.

Running, you ask? Well, I completely tanked at the Milwaukee Lakefront Marathon. Again, an unsuccesful road marathon for me. I was going for 2:45 but my private hope was low 2:40s. I ran the first half very slowly (1:24.xx), hoping it was slow enough to preserve my typical fast finish. But, as it turned out, the last few miles were terrible and I didn't even run a negative split (or, if I did, it wasn't very negative). My time was 2:49 something, which is a PR by 10 or 20 seconds.

I had lost a lot of weight, which had helped me PR on all my training runs, but the low weight didn't feel like a great advantage at the marathon. In any case, being here has made me put on a pound or two of fat, so I'm back in my "normal" weight range. I felt a little sub-manic for a few weeks, being so skinny, but it's very hard to maintain for me, especially being away from a routine.

Another problem with big marathons is running on pavement. Since I train on trails only, my legs were beginning to feel stale much sooner than I would have expected (probably around halfway). Afterwards, I made up my mind to race a trail marathon later this fall with a strategy of going out super hard, just to see what would happen. Now, that plan seems a little naive, but we shall see. I would need a marathon where I could easily drop out, like one with multiple loops, and I would need someone pacing me during the last half. It would be a fun experiment.

Training is going well. How could it not, in gorgeous La Crosse? I discovered a new trail that goes from the valley floor to the top of the bluffs. If you have seen La Crosse, it looks like the bluffs over the town are nothing but one big park, but that's unfortunately not the case. There is Hixon Forest, which has some amazing running trails, but there is also some private land up there. In between, there is the conservancy, which is a mix of private and public land, with undeveloped trails. Very few people go in there, so finding a runnable trail that goes all the way up to the top of the bluffs was very cool. I took the Girl out on it, and we had a nice run up it.

Well, the ER is quiet, so it's time for me to get some sleep.

Race Report and "What if I Died Today?"

2011-09-14T13:34:00.000-07:00

First, a crazy little race report. Yesterday, I tried my hand at a duathlon. For those of you who don’t know, that’s a triathlon in which the swim has been replaced by a run. So you run-bike-run.

The race was pretty small. Of the 50 or so participants, there were only one guy with really flashy time trial bike. There were two distances, out of which mine (the sprint) turned out to be more of a fun run. Only a few people warmed up and people gave me the “Jeez, Focker, it’s only a game"-look, when I started doing strides.

Anyway, the race was so small that they had decided not to place volunteers on the bike course, which worried me before the start. I had a hunch that I would be the fastest runner, and this turned out to be very true. After the 4K run, I had almost a 5-minute lead to the next person on the short course (this turned out to be a woman, actually). Then, I had to time trial into the unmarked, unknown course into normal Danish Sunday traffic, with cars, bikes and pedestrians everywhere. I knew immediately that I would get lost, and I did. A guy, who I thought was from the organizing club, passed me in a car and told me to turn left at some point, which, unfortunately, turned out to be wrong. Anyway, I got off course, biked around for a bit and then found my way back to the transition and ran the final leg.

I felt ok the whole time, and doing a competitive duathlon one day might be fun. The organizers were pretty nice about the whole thing. No one could figure out why I had been shown down the wrong road.

Oh well. Which leads me to the question of “what if I died today?”

It’s 9-11. I’m waiting to board a plane to London for a hematology meeting. 9-11 and a flight from Copenhagen to London, both cities high on the terror target list.

Let me just say, though, that it annoys me to look up and see BBC and CNN broadcast 9-11 accounts and speeches all day long. When 50 Pakistani or Afghan civilians are killed by errant missiles, we shrug our shoulders and move on. And this happens almost daily. Of the hundreds of thousands of family members of those killed by Western missiles during this war on terror, no one got a second's public grieving on CNN. No grieving husband or son gets to slowly publicize their memories of the death of their loved one. It’s hypocritical, to say the least, to pretend all these hundreds of thousands (by some accounts, millions) of lives matter less than the ones lost on 9-11.

With that off my chest, just what would happen if I died today? I would be gone, which wouldn’t matter to me (me being gone and all), but a good number of people would be affected.

What would their 9-11 speeches in 2021 be about? Probably tangible stuff, like what I said in a final call or text message from inside the crashing plane. But drama aside, how would they fare without me?

Andreas, at 8, is so estranged from me that it wouldn’t matter tremendously to him. I aim to change that dramatically in the next few years, starting just a few months from now, but if I died now, he would feel nothing more than a symbolic loss of a faraway father figure. In the last three years, I have seen one single sign of sadness from him during all those goodbyes. And I say don't say this jokingly: that one time may be because he learned at the same time that he wasn't getting pizza for dinner! But I hope it was me leaving, not the pizza. I wonder what he would tell his kids 30 years from now about the father who left him for no particular reason, and then died on 9-11-11. In fact, even if I don't die today, I wonder what he will say about me!

El Guapo, at 7 weeks, would grow up without a dad, of course. He would hear more about me than Andreas, and , through that, would end up at least somewhat influenced by me.

What would Christian remember? This morning, he begged me to take him along to London. We played outside in the sun, with a very palpable sense on his part that I was leaving. When I told him it was time to go inside, he pointed at everything at said, “but we haven’t tried the sandbox... or the playhouse... or the other sandbox!”. If I die, he will remember this morning like John Wheelwright remembers the day his mother gets hit with the baseball in A Prayer for Owen Meany. I imagine them talking about me at family dinners, after a while only remembering the extremes of me, like the crazy things I said or did. Christian would look at pictures and be amazed that I was yet so young when I died (he would remember me as an ancient father, of course, as all kids do).

Natali would suffer most, I think. She would receive the news and cry inconsolable, as she has so many times over the last three years, saying her histrionic goodbyes. But over time, she would settle into normal Wisconsin life, her bi-cultural edges wearing off, her unique personality disappearing behind reruns of Glee and How I Met Your Mother. She is the one I worry the most about; the one I feel the need to protect the most.

And the Girl? It’s a difficult question. She is more of an island than the kids. I would miss her more if she died, than vice versa. Her life’s trajectory has been pulled so much off course by meeting me that if I died, leaving her with two little kids, she may even end up resenting me. Sometimes, I sense that her idea of me is more important than the actual me, our lives a homeopathic version of what it would be like with me dead. Again, it hard to imagine exactly what would happen. She is not nostalgic, as I am, and I worry her memories of me would be kept alive mostly to please the kids.

Addendum: I lived!

Half marathon race report

2011-08-31T08:15:00.000-07:00

I thought I was in 1:15 to 1:16 shape and the Girl wanted to PR. There were some good prizes, so the main objective was to win.

We have had terrible storms in Denmark this last month, and 20 seconds into the race it started thundering all around us. The RD, Charley Proedel, had stated before the race that no matter how bad the lightning got, he wouldn't cancel. Still, when lightning struck a few hundred yards to the left, I was wondering whether the lead-out bike would pull over and seek cover.

He didn't, and I was able to stay in the lead the whole race. I started out slowly, hoping that we could get a little group going, but no one wanted to come with me. A number of the runners looked really fit, including a lean, mean triathlete.

My time was 1:19 something. I lost some time from starting really slowly and had a crisis at 12-16K as the storm came from straight ahead. Still, 1:19 is a little disappointing.

Here I am, confused about what to with the finish line tape. It didn't seem like it was something I could run through, so I stood there looking stupid. Stupid and lean as hell, you have to admit.

The Girl ran in 1:39 and won. Her hip hurts a little, but she is in great shape.

She checks her Garmin every 20 seconds, which drives me nuts. She looks like this when she runs intervals:

Life outside running is good. El Guapo is gaining a pound a week and is almost able to defend himself when Christian tries to kill him in various ways. The Girl's mother is here to help us out, which makes all the difference. The Girl continues to work part time, which is very unusual for Denmark. Most women take a year off, where they focus solely on being mothers. This may be more unique to Northern Europe/Scandinavia than I had previously realized. My cousin, an ambitious star biochemist, took a whole year off with both her boys, and apparently loved that life.

The Girl hates that life. She is thinking about going back to Wisconsin early, just so she can find a daycare that accepts babies. It probably won't come to that, though, and we'll have to use our baby-sitters a lot, so she doesn't go crazy.

This weekend, we are running "Skovloeberen", a trail race. I'll do the half marathon and the Girl does the full. It's pretty competitive, but top 3 or 5 should be doable.

Running log August 2011

2011-08-06T13:44:00.000-07:00

27: Half marathon in a terrible storm. Won in 1:19. Slow time, but hard course/conditions.
25: 5k very slowly
21: Tri club championships
19: Fartleks
17: 10 hills in 21:18 PR!
9-16: Can't remember. Decent training with hard sessions every other day.
8: Long run. 2:09. Steady, decent pace. Ran 5 x perimeter loop.
7: Some core stuff while watching TV. Last night of paternity leave.
6: Hill loops. 39 laps under 2:20 average. New PR!!
4: Long run. 40 minutes in the morning, 2:10 in the afternoon.
2: Back to reality. 6 x 1 mile. 29:38. This is probably around 40 seconds slower than my fastest time from last year and 20 seconds slower than my best time from 2 years ago. On the other hand, it may be the 4th or 5th fastest time out of 30 tries. So, although I was hoping for a little more, I'm not far off being in really good shape.

Running log July 2011

2011-07-31T04:14:00.000-07:00

31: Two hours at night. Last 5K with great legs. Engine is running a little hot; maybe it's time to back off a little before I get injured.

30: 5 (five!) runs throughout the day, to the playground, to the store, with Christian etc. PR on 10xHills: 21:16!

29: 5K jog with the Girl and the Dualie jogger. Weight: 65.7kg

28: Long run: 2:15. Five loops on the perimerter trail.

27; Mixed stuff. Can't really remember. 1X Stenskoven

26: PR on 10XHills: 21:28!

25: Biked 3xStenskoven. Ran a little bit?

24: Treadmill intervals (in the rain). Couldn't remember how I did them last year. Now, I run 4000 twice, like this: 3X800 fast with 200m at 12.5kmph in between. The last 1000 I run at 0% incline (the rest at 1%). Got 15:11 and 14:55, I think.

23: Hill loops under 2:20: 35 loops!! New PR

19: Hills loops under 2:20: 29 loops. New PR

17: 10x Hills: 21:35. I think close to a PR, but I'm not sure.

The early part of the month, I ran in Sweden and in Denmark, but nothing was timed.

A good day

2011-07-30T14:19:00.000-07:00

It's hard to complain about life right now. Getting back into shape should be my priority number 6 or 7, or whatever number sounds good to you. Without a doubt, there are bigger things on my plate right now, like the Girl, the kids and work.

But I have to admit I've been waiting to get fast since last fall, and finally being able to train hard feels great. This winter and spring, my work (and commute) and being a dad to Natali took too much time to seriously train. One would think that exchanging a 10-year old for a new-born would add more work, but I was more or less a single parent to Natali for most of the time. Most nights, it was a question of going for a run or spending time with her, and she could manipulate me very effectively.

So I'm coming into this late summer very undertrained but perhaps the most excited about running and competing I have ever been. And I'm not even that undertrained. Sure, the miles have been low, but I've run 4 or 5 marathons around 3:10 to 3:15 and they should be able to count for long runs through spring and winter. So, I'm not starting from scratch.

These last weeks, I've gotten serious. I've lost weight and I'm improving quickly. With everything else going on in life, it's intoxicating to feel myself getting faster almost daily. Maybe it's escapism, but at least it's a healthy form of it.

So what am I training for?

I still have enough track runner in me to think of ultras as just a little bit of a cop-out. You can't really compare the times in those races, not to races of equal distance or, really, to the same race previous years.

On the other hand, I train almost 100% on trails, and when the Girl and I talk about races for the fall and next year, they are all trail races and/or ultras. I think a compromise will be to run a few "real" races, just to post some times to show (myself) that I am fit, and then run the trail ultras for the awesome experiences they can be.

This evening, a solid PR on my hilly route capped off a perfect day of paternity leave. I've gotten so incredibly close to Christian since the baby was born. It's a combination of having time for him, while also wanting him to know that the new baby isn't going to replace him. He is such funny age (three and a half), and his language is such a comedic treasure trove. I can feel that just this last week I have changed the way he looks at things, and I love getting that feedback from him.

The baby is perfect, meaning that he is cute, eats and sleeps well and holds the promise of becoming someone with a personality soon. The Girl is a superwoman, for good and for bad. She is being watched, both in real life and on her blog, while she pushes the envelope for what's possible post-partum. She would do well to take a day off now and then and enjoy her maternity leave but I have very little to say in that matter.

And the two kids in America are doing well. Andreas is spending the week in northern Wisconsin and Natali is about to start soccer camp.

A Baby is Born!

2011-07-22T12:06:00.000-07:00

Mattias was born yesterday. Everything went well and we were back in our apartment with a perfect brand-new baby 5 hours after we left home. The epic details can be found on the Girl's blog, of course. She is already at the gym working out and showing off her newborn son.

Becoming a dad for the fourth time has released a lot of strange emotions in me. I've thought even more than usually about my two kids in La Crosse. We skyped yesterday and Natali was very interested in everything. Andreas took a quick look at the baby and promptly went back to playing Wii Mario.

Christian had been with my parents for a few days and already knew that the baby had been born. When my parents brought him to our house, we had put the baby in the back bedroom, so we could "discover" him together. He exclaimed, "there is my baby" and ran over to look him over dilligently. He did poke at the little eyes, and a few times an elbow found its way drilling heavily into the defenseless baby, but he seemed genuinely excited to meet his little brother.

The impending delivery and all its uncertainties, like whether it would produce a normal, healthy baby, had blocked our view of the future a bit. But now it seems realistic to start planning the life that starts after my fellowship ends on December 31st.

We had talked about moving to Madison, but it turns out that we'll be in La Crosse next year. No doubt Madison would have been cool, but I'll be working a lot closer to La Crosse and it will be great to live right by the kids. Also, La Crosse has somewhat better running and much better biking opportunities than Madison.

Which leads me to our racing schedule for next year. For the first time in months, I am starting to train seriously. I have already dropped 3 or 4 pounds and I can feel that I am getting faster every day. We have Skovløberen, a trail marathon, and the Milwaukee marathon planned. I don't think neither I nor the Girl will be able to hit peak shake so early though, so hopefully we can find a race in late October/early November. Maybe the Copenhagen 6 Hours? I will have to look into that; for now I just enjoy getting back in shape.

The plans, in terms of race schedule, are also solidifying for next year. I think Ice Age (50k for me, 50m for the Girl) and Voyageur are pretty certain as is a little triathlon near La Crosse (the first triathlon we ever did in 2008). La Crosse has a marathon now, called Granddad's Marathon (named after the big bluff towering over the city), but it's all on roads and the level of competition has varied a lot in its first two years. We may run the Tuscobia race, which is put on by my ex brother-in-law, Tim Roe. And we're talking about the Birkie, although the Girl has never cross-country skied.

The Girl is home, beaming from being able to exercise the day after giving birth.

Awash in Nostalgia

2011-06-23T19:19:00.001-07:00

Natali bent down and cried a little when she said goodbye to the Lorax. They have lived together for two years and won't see each other until October. My ex made a point of not inviting me inside, instead insisting on being friendly enough outside her house. Andreas was already inside, so he didn't get to say goodbye to his brother, and probably didn't care. I talked for a while with my ex, while the Lorax looked at her dogs and wondered aloud where Natali had gone to. It was like he knew she was more gone than when she usually disappears from sight.

I get to spend one more day with them, when I get off from work after this weekend, but the Lorax will head back to Milwaukee with his grandmother tomorrow.

I took Christian for a walk around downtown La Crosse. He marvelled at the same things Natali and Andreas did five years ago, when we first moved here. It's such a beautiful, cool night here; the Lorax shrieked as he chased sticks down the little stream that flows from one of the statues. He got too excited and stepped in the little river, just as his brother did 4 years ago.

I could have cried, but I haven't yet. The Lorax sleeps with his grandmother and I just got back from a run. I planned to go running around town and to thicken the nostalgia I ran around the hospital where we used to live. Many of the houses were hit by a tornado this spring and ours is marked with a neon orange box. Some houses have x's inside the boxes, and they seem to be condemned, but ours had a family moving in. It struck me that the new interns are probably starting next week.

I snuck around the back and almost couldn't breathe as I looked into our old kitchen. Birthdays with the kids, our first Christmas in La Crosse, my early romance with the Girl, the kids running out the back door; it all came back to me. It felt so close, like I could reach back in time and walk in there to a life that resembled normalcy.

I could see the bedroom ceiling and imagined all our things on the floor. I imagined waking up there with the Girl on a warm summer morning, listening to the birds outside.

It's an end of an era. Natali has been a light in my life these last two years and she has been a major positive force in Christian's life. She is very proud of what she has accomplished in Denmark and talks about keeping a similar lifestyle in La Crosse. I hope she succeeds.

Now that she is gone, there are a few positives. I will have more time for Christian and the Girl, not to mention the new baby. Natali and the Girl have a step-mother, step-daughter relationship that I don't understand. Seeing their disagreements move into the background will be nice.

But even with a myopic focus on the positives, I am already counting down the days till we move back here.

2011-06-08T08:15:00.000-07:00

I felt moved to write a blog post just now. I'm on the train home and was reading World According to Garp. Garp's kid just died and I was starting to water up so bad I couldn't pass it off as allergies. The girl opposite me was looking at me, trying to figure out what was going on.

What's going on is that I am a mess. Natali has 10 days left here and she is doing everything once last time. Everything is a panicky realization that " dad, we won't be able to do that before we leave!". She is planning things with each of her friends, exchanging email addresses and Skype info. She hasn't started packing yet; in fact, she still decorates her room, pretending she will be in it forever.

I have resolved not to wallow. The Girl blames me for being too nostalgic, and she is right. If I started grieving, I would take it too far, and ruin Natali's last weeks here.

It's six months and we'll be in Wisconsin for The Girl's maternity leave (likely Madison, but we not 100% sure). But I'm not built for these long waits, at least not anymore. She will grow up without me there for an entire half year, making new friends, changing, learning, opining.

The critical reader may say that I have another son, who I readily left for three whole years. And that read would be right; my only explanation is that people adapt to anything, and my adaptation was to dote on Natali. I look forward to spending time with both of them this winter, so all is not bad.

The fact that the new baby is not growing adequately is making this time worse. I couldn't believe that the Girl returned from the doctor's yesterday with scary information and less that half-assed reassurance that "things are probably ok". An u
Ultrasound will tell us if things are ok, not a nurse who is behind schedule and wants to "move the meat" (which happened to be something I said all the time as a senior resident, but it seemed cool then). Goddamn Danish health care. Especially primary care is so dangerously incompetent that one always has to hope for a quick referral to a specialist.

So on the positive side,

The weather is good
Work is good
I'll be a hematologist in 6 short months, ending my life-crippling commute.
The kids don't have leukemia
The Girl is slowly starting her maternity leave. She is happy and healthy.
Natali loves it here and will think of these two years as the best of her life.

on the other hand,

I have a life-crippling commute
I'm too emotionally labile to read Garp in public
I'm fat (ran a 3:19 marathon that felt like a 3:05 marathon should)
Natti is leaving
I worry about the baby

A day in the life of Danish Health Care

2011-05-16T10:08:00.000-07:00

A young man is getting chemo for his cancer. He has about a 60% chance of cure and it's very important that he gets scanned on time between his chemo treatments.

His chance of cure may fall to 59% or 59.5% if he doesn't get scanned on time, or it may not fall at all, statistically. But for his kind of cancer, having spread the way it has, this particular scan and this very particular time will guide which chemo he gets next.

But Denmark needs money. So the health care budget grew less than it should, meaning each hospital got less money. At our hospital, the radiology department was hit unreasonably hard. CT slots were cut. Nurses, techs and radiologists were no longer allowed to work overtime, as this is usually very well-paid in Denmark.

The wait-lists grew, but since our patients tend to be very sick and very salvagable, they tend to get the scans they need, and I have only been vaguely aware of the problem.

Until Thursday, when I realized my patient hadn't gotten his scheduled scan. My first thought (my first fear, rather) was that I had forgotten to schedule it. But no; there it was, clearly ordered for a specific week. I called radiology and was told it couldn't be done on time. I had to tell this to the patient. He is a nice guy, with a warm smile, but he was visibly worried about the delayed scan. I had to walk a tight line between blaming "the system" (and keeping his faith in me) and pretending the scan could easily wait (keeping his faith in the system).

I got his scan scheduled today, after reaching an onco-radiologist, who sympathized with my plight. Still, the scan will be a week late.

For those interested, here are my thoughts on the future of the Danish health care system.

I think the standard of care is running away from Denmark. So far, we have been saved by our wealth and a health care system that offered high-level care in bare-bones surroundings. In Denmark, we have been able to treat people with $100,000 biologic agents, while they sleep in 3-bed hospital rooms with a shared bathroom (if they are lucky; sometimes, they sleep in the hallway). But the growth in the number of, and duration of, treatments have outpaced economic growth. Where, just 10 years ago, some diseases had very cheap, palliative treatments, there are now piles of novel, or biologic, agents to try. They are without serious side effects, so you can use them in everyone.

We're seeing some rationing, but it's politically impossible for anyone to devise a list of who can receice which drugs, and who can't. Drug costs will rise exponentially and the health care budget will stay steady.

I'm not optimistic. The Scandinavian credo has always been that everyone deserves the same care, rich or poor. In ten years, a wealthy American (or a wealthy Chinese, for that matter) will receive care that is unavailable in Denmark. Can we stand that?

Now, I'm not neccesarily a fan of the American health care system. Where I frequently work, it's not unusual to see people in their twenties with dentures, because their parents couldn't afford dental care (or the one medicaid dentist in the area moved). I have seen old couples ration out pills between them, because they couldn't afford meds for two.

I don't know what's right, but I don't like what I see.

In other news, I'm fat. Natali thought it was funny that my man boobs jumped up and down last night. I am so miserably out of shape.

In other, other news, the Girl and I have a plan. It's great; it's a dream, and my spirits are high. The plan? I can't reveal it, for fear of the Girl changing her mind.

All over again

2011-05-10T06:51:00.000-07:00

We're back from an almost month-long vacation. First, it was two weeks in America; then, half a week back at work and off again to Mallorca for our triathlon training camp.

We had a great week there. The island is mostly known for its white sandy beaches, but cycling is another major source of tourism. We didn't train as intensively as the other members of our group, who are all accomplished triathletes (most of whom have completed Ironmen (Ironmans?) in 10-11 hours).

They would get up and swim every morning at 7 and then ride around a hundred miles a day.

The mountains on Mallorca go up to 1400 meters, with the highest paved mountain pass at 1100 meters. The longest climb is 13K at 7.4%. I've never climbed real mountains before and loved every minute of it. If I lived by mountains, I doubt I would be a runner.

Christian has no idea whether he is in Denmark, America or Spain. He liked the beach and the fact that we bought him toy cars and ice cream. He loves Lightning McQueen and screams "Lamma Queen!", when he sees anything related to Cars (which is all the time on the Mallorcan tourist strips).

Because of our peculiar life, Natali travels a lot, but she only sees the same two countries, and most of her vacations are spent at her mom's house. She lapped up the sights and sounds of Mallorca and tried speaking a little Spanish here and there. She is such a thinker; she notices and questions everything.

After we got back from America a few weeks ago, she missed her mom so much that she would wail in frustrated despair. It was difficult for a few days, but it got better. She has always stated that she wants to stay with her mom, and she smiles when I go on about how much I'm going to miss her. I think she considers me the strong parent; the one who will stay a constant in her life, no matter what. She often mentions that her mom does not miss her enough, and that she never seems sad when she says goodbye.

Now, her move back to La Crosse is just a month away, and she can see it coming. I realized that I have no more weekdays off until we leave for America in June. I told her, and the realization that we wouldn't have any more afternoons together dawned on her. I won't be biking her to school or picking her up - ever. Not for the foreseeable future, anyway.

Yesterday evening, we played soccer with the neighbor girls. She wore her new Barcelona jersey (number 10 Lionel Messi, away colors) and did the Messi cheer when she scored. She asked me whether I thought she would play soccer in America and if I would pay for it, if her mom couldn't. Later, she asked when our annual spring day in Tivoli (the old amusement park in downtown Copenhagen) was going to be. She perfectly well knew that no such day will happen this year, as I have no days off. And then, trying to pretend all her questions were unrelated, she wanted to make sure I would call her every day. She figured out that I could stay up till 11 and she would hurry back from school, and we could talk that way, despite the time difference.

It's horrible that she is leaving. I dread it and it clouds my mind.

Chippewa Moraine 50K -report

2011-04-26T11:02:00.000-07:00

The ending is really exciting, so keep reading...

After my scarlet fever and subsequent antibiotic treatment, my plan for the race was to start easy and see how I felt. I didn't really think I could win, and when Brian Peterson showed up to register, it was no longer an option.

Before the race, I was recognized by many as the husband of "that crazy pregnant doctor with the blog". At least that's what I took their double-takes to mean.

We started off in a pack of 6, with Brian Peterson already running way out in front. The pack included John Storkamp and Joe Ziegenfuss, with whom I have raced (or have seen race) a few times. A young guy from Duluth, Craig Hertz, looked really strong. Jonas Ryttie was yo-yo'ing a little ahead and behind the pack, whereas Rob Semelroth followed the pace.

I didn't feel good and was noticably more out of breath than the others. At maybe 8 miles, I was spit out the back of the group with Joe Ziegenfuss and then Jonas Ryttie. The front group seemed long gone. Before the turn-around, I got lost going up a hill to a house, and didn't realize that I was off course until I was running over a buried septic tank. I Ran back down the hill to see the front group (including Brian Peterson) coming back from the turn-around.

On the way back, the two-way traffic made the trail a little crowded. On the other hand, it was fun to see how close the women's race was. The Girl was near the back, going a steady pace, still without contractions. We talked for a little while, during which Joans Ryttie, whom I had run with since the turn-around, got out of sight.

The course is so undulating that it's hard to spot other runners. Even if you see other runners, the trail twists so much that they could be ten seconds or two minutes ahead. I settled into a content pace for the next ten miles, during which I didn't see another runner. I was starting to feel pretty good and felt a little runner's high. On the one hand, it seemed like I was in for a typical strong finish, but on the other hand, it seemed like it was going to be a very lonely fast finish.

And now it gets exciting. With a few miles to go, I passed John Storkamp, and then saw two spectators, who shouted "there are a couple of runners up there you can probably catch!". Interesting. Suddenly it felt like I was in a race again, and I sped up. Almost immediately, Rob Semelroth came into view. When I passed him, I saw that both Craig Hertz and Jonas Ryttie were up ahead in the distance. The former was being passed by the latter. I figured I could catch them, if I dug deep and started surging ahead.

The last mile is a long sweep around the perimeter of the field below the park headquarters. I could see that I was getting closer, and for a moment it seemed like I would get up to Craig and Jonas, but then they started surging up the hill, starting a long sprint. They were halfway up the last long hill when I got to the bottom, and a large part of me was quietly happy I didn't quite catch them. The two of them were forced to sprint/powerhike up the steep wall leading to the finish line. It was crazy to watch. Craig used long classic-ski style steps, whereas Jonas hiked with choppy, fast, short steps. Craig pulled ahead to take second and seconds later they were both rolling on the ground deep in oxygen-debt.

I thought the hill was terrible at an easy no-pressure power-hike and I can only imagine what if would be like to have to sprint against someone else in front of 50 or so spectators on a hill that steep.

I got fourth with a time of 4:15. All in all, a decent race. I've been regretting not speeding up earlier; I had a lot left at the end, and would have loved it if they turned it into a 60K. It's that feeling of "running out of trail to catch people". Maybe if I hadn't gotten lost, if I hadn't chatted with the Girl or if someone had shouted "you're about to catch a couple runners" a mile or two earlier...

Oh well, excuses and retrospections are always aplenty, and it's possible the other guys got more lost than me (after all, one little detour in a 50K is pretty good for me).

The Girl's very sensible DNF is well-described on her blog, of course. She had a good time, all things considered. We will definitely be back next year.

Results here

10 vacation stories

2011-04-17T19:41:00.000-07:00

1. Plane fever.

Rigors, high fever set in while waiting for the plane. About an hour into it, I am shaking and feeling like I could pass out if I moved my head too quickly. Natali watches the Lorax for two hours and I'm able to take max amounts of tylenol and ibuprofen and take a nap. I feel a little better after that and don't have another attack until we roll into the driveway at the Girl's parents house. Scary.

2. Madison Rendezvous.

The Lorax rus over to give Andreas a big hug. Andreas looks embarrassed, and he doesn't feel like hugging me either. I have lunch with the Ex, our two shared kids, their new step-sisters and the Lorax. It it pleasant, although disagreements are always breewing under the surface.

3. Is my son retarded?

Andreas is 7 and can't zip up his jacket (he can zip up everything else, but the jacket is apparently very challenging. He doesn't hear anything I tell him, stops mid-sentence, stops mid-putting on socks, mid-everything. When I bring anywhere public, he bumps into everything and everyone.

4. In the onions.

We're at the children's museum in Madison. The power-moms, who are done feeding their kids organic snacks, eye us sceptically as I let Andreas into the kiddie-area. It looked so appealing, and both he and the Lorax wanted in. I figure I can pretend we are both playing with the Lorax. Two minutes later, Andreas is hiding in a mud hut, banging fake fruits and breads together. With me 104 degree fever spiking at this moment, I feel unable to get in through the opening to yank him out of the hut (and the kiddie area). Instead, out steps Andreas, holding a some rubber fruit (a large plum?), which he proceeds to hurl at me.

It hits me square in the nut-sack.

I point at him, letting him know that he'd better follow orders, or there will be hell. He ducks into the hut, re-emerges with another fruit (this time a yam?) and hurls it at me.

You guessed it; direct shot to the onions.

He runs away, onto some swinging bridge, where I finally catch up to him. I grab him so hard, he starts crying. and pulled him out of the kiddie area. I get him into the back area and gave him a scolding he won't soon forget.

Of course I realize that this is all my fault. How did my life end up like this?

5. So Many Kisses

I am buying some shirts for Andreas at Dick's sporting goods. The Lorax is tired and getting ill, too. He keeps begging for stuff, as he sits on my shoulders, resting his snotty face on my head. I speak English to Andreas in front of the guy at the register but then the Lorax yells that he wants to ride in the bus outside the store. I say "only if I get a kiss". He bends down precariously to give me a snotty kiss and murmurs "dad, I give you so many kisses today". The register guy looks at us with a bewildered look.

6. Is my son a genius?

Jeebus. We are playing chess and Andreas knows how to play! Not just that; he concentrates, and he is good. I play without my queen, and with that handicap we have an even game until he makes a couple of mistakes. We rewind some moves so he can see how he can better defend himself, and he learns from his mistakes. Hmm?

He draws and writes stories. He focuses on robots and monsters with an excessive amount of weapons and powers, but there are intricate details in each drawing and his stories are good. One year ago, he couldn't even read, and now he writes full stories about heroes and dragons. Not hmm. Wow.

7. I Narrowly Miss Sarah Palin.

We almost got stuck in the protests around the Capitol, which have been simmering all week, We are on our way to see Rango, so this political stuff is inconsequential. Turns out Sarah Palin was there speaking to the Tea Partiers of Wisconsin.

8. My trail in La Crosse.

The Lorax got picked up by my mother-in-law, whereas the two other kids were at my Ex's house. My illness had been retreating for the last few days, and I go out for my first run in 6 days. Whew, the first few miles are rusty, then the legs get golden. The trail is the same; I run it without thinking. My feet know all the roots and rocks. One section washed away, but that has happened several times in the last few years.

9. I am in Love.

I miss the Girl more than I had expected. A vacation just isn't the same without her. We Skype and she flashed me. I feel ten years younger.

10. The Doctor Gets Ill part Deux.

I get back from my run, and prepare to shower. I have vaguely been aware of a rash on my forearms all day. My arms are all freckles and moles and hair, so a rash doesn't stand out like it does on, say, other humans. I take off my shirt and - BOOM! - I see a massive maculo-papular rash on my arms, chest, neck and back. And face, I realize! Shit, a rash like this a short week after getting a sore throat! Add to this the fact that Natali was diagnosed with strep throat the day before and this screams... Scarlet fever!

Jeebus. I called in some amoxicillin for myself three minutes later.

As always, my vacations are never boring. And I should add that the last 48 hours with Andreas have been the best we have had in years.

Preview of Chippewa 50K and Life in General

2011-04-04T06:40:00.001-07:00

First, my running. I am impressively out of shape. My training reminds me out my intern year, the other year in recent memory, when I have been this undertrained. I can't remember another time, other than intern year, when I have been this un-injured and permanently feeling fresh. Every workout is a treat to be savored.

That's the positive spin on it. The negative is that I am 5 pounds overweight and 10-15 minutes slower over 50K than I should, or could, be. I can feel in my workouts that the typical spring "pep in my step" hasn't come. I can hold a decent pace for a decent amount of time, but it's not better or worse than it has been the whole winter.

Chippewa is my big spring goal race. Let there be no mistake about it. I am no ultrarunning hipster; and I won't pretend that it's just a fun run or a training race. But, on the other hand, my current form dictates that I will have to run my own race and get whatever place falls into my lap. Ironically, Chippewa in 2008 continues to be the race where I have most severely bonked, and the 2011 version could surpass that, if I started out too fast. Besides, Joe Ziegenfuss, who probably runs a 50K on par with a very in-shape me, has signed up, so there is no realistic chance of winning.

But, again I have to be honest, one can always dream, a la Jim Carrey's "so there IS a chance!". Who knows what kind of shape this Ziegenfuss fellow is in, and who knows if he will even show up. And as people think "but there are so many other people, who could beat you", I remind you all that I do not read minds. There is a chance of winning ,however small it might be. And as I always tell people, the fun races and the ones where I have a decent chance of winning, placing, finishing in the money, or getting a PR.

Hmm, the bravado is getting me excited. Too bad it's too late to train. Maybe I could drop a pound or two?

Now, to life in general. Denmark is enjoying the first few days of spring, and the effects are everywhere. Nurses are flirting with paramedics, stroke patients are learning how to wink with their good eye, and my recently divorced friend and future hematologist started dating one of the nurses on the leukemia floor.

And yours truly is feeling it, too. Reader(s?) will know that I tend to get melancholy when I think of the uncertainties of the future. Last week, we hit a low in that regard. The Girl suggested that we move close to La Corsse, so Natali live with her mom (my Ex), which suddenly meant that our, admittedly tentative and perhaps realistic, plans for moving to Oregon or Alaska had to be cancelled. From one moment to the next, we had quasi-settled on four possible locales: Madison, Twin Cities, Rochester and Iowa City (in that order of preference). The cities with med schools, that is.

I had looked forward to living with Natali and exchanging her for Andreas (who was always going to live with my Ex, anyway) duting school breaks. But our new plan will work, too, although I was depressed for a few days after this new decision. Not because of the plan, just because something so basic to my happiness can change so rapidly, beyond my control. Natali would prefer living with both her parents within a few hours drive0
, too, so she and the Girl are actually agreeing for once.

So once we had our new plans settled, and a fair amount of pointing at the Girl going "you're not going to change your mind again, are you, because 15% of my brain is constantly is constantly thinking about this!" had occured, things started getting good. The weather happened upon us, as we ran an almost-marathon in a beautiful forest on Sunday.

It's almost to the point where I feel optimistic about life.

Work is okay.
We found a name for the baby: Mattias.
Natali is doing well.
Andreas is doing well.
Christian is speaking fluently now, and is making slow progress in his potty training.
Mattias is healthy, as far as we know.
The Girl's research is going well.
Our plans for next year are solidifying.
Our plans for life are solidifying.

And in ten minutes the Girl will bring back the Lorax from music class. I will bike with him to pick up Natali at the gym, where she is currently in her "young fitness" program. We'll have a few minutes before the emerges from the gym, and to pass the time, the Tallest Slide in Næstved awaits us; he shrieks as he slides down, his long blond hair flying behind him. He knows that I, on occasion, will have a few gummi bears in my pocket to reward him for particularly spectacular descends, and he looks up optimistically the moment his feet hit the sand.

Life is all right.

2011-03-24T11:44:00.000-07:00

We have been thinking hard about a name for the baby. I have always felt that picking a girl's name is so much easier that a boy's.

We want a name that's primarily Scandinavian but will also work in America. A name that makes people go, "yeah, that's right, he was born in Denmark", but not one that he will spend a lifetime spelling and explaining.

For the readers who know my name, it's very unusual for America, but the corresponding last night is pretty common. So it's not completely unfamiliar to most Americans, but probably a little bit on the weird side, if I'm to be completely honest. So that's a consideration.

Here's a top 10 (and this will be fun to read in ten years):

1. Mattias

2. Tobias

3. Carl-Mattis

4. Anakin (yes, like Skywalker)

5. Mats (like Wilander, the tennis star)

6. Samson

7. Isak (probably a little higher than 7th)

8. Lukas

9. Eric

10. Emil

I was discussing my unusual family structure with my department's professor. We were talking careers, and I mentioned that going back to Wisconsin/Minnesota isn't so much a work thing as it is a kid thing. The professor understood and confessed that he too had step-kids and kids with step-parents. I told him how Andreas had looked at me and called me Jeff (my ex's new husband) and I swear the professor got a little bit of a tear in his eye.

Another attending is on his third marriage and has a complicated structure of kids and step-kids, so he is another person who can relate.

The truth is that Andreas is doing better than ever. He has always been an introverted, shy kid. He has always been well-liked, though, and he is a handsome, tall boy. His favorite things to do is play video games and draw robots. He doesn't like Skyping, so I don't get to talk to him very much, but the other day he read to me from a book about Christopher Columbus. I didn't even know he could read more than a few words, and now it turns out he reads like a 4th grader (he is 7). Jeebus. He was in summer school last summer, because his reading was subpar. So he is doing well, no thanks to me.

I don't miss him the way I missed him and Natali when we first moved here. when Natali came to live here, I was ecstatic that I had at least one of them, so the desperate feeling disappeared. But I think about him every day, and there is a constant sense in my mind that things didn't turn out like they were supposed to.

So there's another sappy post in a long line of sappy posts.

But I do like the name Andreas. I felt it was a little too Germanic, when my ex insisted on it, but I like it more and more. When Andreas watches the Tour de France with me, he is fascinated that there are other Andreases out there (like Kloeden from Radioshack). In a tiny, but palpable, way it connects him to the Old Country.

It's a bois!

2011-03-14T13:04:00.000-07:00

The Girl carries a sonographically normal little Lorax!

She's a little more than halfway through her pregnancy, juggling her monster PhD, her multiple other projects, two kids, me, running, swimming, biking, bills, her Green Card (it's approved for another two years), our taxes (Danish and American), dishes, painful breasts, minimalist hipsterism and smoky gourds forgotten in the oven.

It's not easy to be the Girl right now and I should work harder to keep her happy. The Girl, if you read this, this quest for your happiness will start after my guys' soccer night on Wednesday!

Two patients with leukemia

2011-03-02T10:08:00.000-08:00

These two patients are examples of why hematology is such a crazy, unique specialty.

Patient one has an incredible story. As a teenager, he developed leukemia while living in tribal Pakistan. His family must have been wealthy, because he had access to several expensive medications that kept the disease at bay for a year or so. Then, his family's business was extorted by the Taliban and/or the local warlord but refused to pay. His parents were killed and he fled through Asia to Europe.

When he got to Denmark, he may have had to lie about his age. He had no papers and it's slightly less impossible to gain political asylum if you are a minor. So we're not sure exactly how old he is.

He has no family and no friends in Denmark. He lives in a refugee center, while his case is being processed, but spends most of his time in the hospital. The leukemia is mutating, so over the last 9 months, it has progressed despite all the possible and impossible combinations of medicines we have tried on him. He now has what amounts to a second or third body's metabolism from the leukemia cells. He sweats and hurts and his spleen weighs 15 pounds.

He is dying, but has one shot left. There is a clinical trial in Sweden testing out a new drug that happens to target his main mutation. So he rides an ambulance to Lund, Sweden, across the bridge, once a week, with his refugee passport that took a million phone calls to push through.

He has such an incredible story that touches everyone in our department. He speaks halting English and, by now, understandable Danish. He has a naive optimism that the Danish teenagers with leukemia don't seem to share. When they sit with earphones on, typing on their laptops, he talks to the other patients. Everyone, doctors, nurses, janitors, patients all know who he is, because he is always there. He is the only patient I have ever seen being allowed into the nurses' station to eat ice cream. The other day, he looked one of my colleagues in the eye and said "I am so scared that I'm not going to live long enough to have a family" and 6 of us were in tears during noon conference.

He should have been dead 5 times over already. Killed by the Taliban and four more times by leukemia. Hundreds of thousands of people die from poverty and cruelty and misery every year all over the world. This guy has beaten the odds in such a way that he might even pull through.

Patient number two is an 87-year old woman who, by all accounts, lived a good life. Two sons, an unknown number of grandkids, and 10 great-grandkids. She has had enough and is in the hospital to die. Her hemoglobin is dropping but she has chosen that she doesn't want any more transfusions. In the next few days, she will lose consciousness and die, while being kept comfortable by morphine and tranquilizers.

I thought her plan was reasonable, when she told me how she wanted to die. Patients are rarely as straight-forward about death as she was; she was very clear about not wanting transfusions. I called her sons and they were equally reasonable.

If this were Chicago Hope or ER, some emotional tune would play as the camera scans the hospital floor. Our old lady would pass away quietly, while at the same time, the new study drug would start working on our teenager.

We'll see.

9 little things

2011-02-21T03:42:00.000-08:00

1. The baby is kicking. We talked about whether we wanted a boy or a girl this time, and I can honestly say that I would be equally happy either way. We'll find out at the ultrasound in a few weeks.

2. I'm fat and undertrained. I leave for work at 6:20 and comes home 11-12 hours later. There is just no time to train. I ran a training marathon in 3:09 a few weeks ago; this compares to a training marathon in 3:02 same time last year. Overall, I'm probably running half the miles I did last year.

3. Natali turned 10. She is so at peace with her life here, and I wish she didn't have to move this summer.

4. I had my all-time worst conversation with a patient a few weeks ago. It's been a big deal in Denmark lately that all patients must be told whether we plan to rescussitate them and/or transfer them to the ICU. An elderly lady with advanced cancer was seriously ill on the floor; in the past I would have written in the chart that she was incurably ill and that she shouldn't be resucssitated or brought to the ICU. Instead, I had to tell her, and it completely took the wind out of her sails. Sometimes, people need to cling to hope during their last days; you could call it denial or misguided optimism, but I took that away from her.

5. We are thinking about doing a month or two of international medicine in rural Guatemala next year. The Girl volunteered at the clinic as a med student; it's very rudimentary.

6. After two months of being, effectively, an illegal immigrant, the girl was forgiven for letting her green card lapse. We applied a month late for a renewal, which often means an automatic denial, but we were forgiven.

7. First Cairo, now Madison. Andreas has missed three days of school because of the teacher walk-out. I don't know what to think about the Walker bill; the cost-cutting seems necessary, but curbing union bargaining rights seems wrong. The odd part, to me, is that the workers aren't officially on strike yet. The unions' very existence is threatened and they aren't striking? Interesting.

8. I'm trying to get a Jehova's Witness through chemo. Her bone marrow was packed with cancer cells, so she was anemic to start with, and chemo will make her more anemic. We would transfuse most people once a week, or once every two weeks, to keep them "tanked up", but we can't with this lady. Instead, we gave her EPO to boost her blood prodution to the max before starting chemo. This type of cancer is very treatable, so you'd hate to have to back off chemo because of anemia.

9. We're going to a triathlon training camp in Mallorca, Spain, for a week in May. Nice.

Natali, the Girl and Denmark

2011-01-24T04:33:00.000-08:00

The Girl wrote a great post yesterday about being foreign in Denmark. She has come here with ambitions of becoming as Danish as possible; she is hoping to learn to speak completely accent-free, something that's nearly impossible for Americans.

She has learned to speak almost perfect Danish. There is an accent that some people mistake for Faroese or Icelandic, but only rarely do they guess that she is American. Even more impressively, she is writing Danish better than many Danes. Danish grammar is hard, especially punctuation, and she has learned to master it.

I notice how she has failed to become Danish in other ways, however. Everything is so hurried here; the slow pace of everything that exists in the US is still in her bones, and it causes problems. The example that always comes up is when she is at the register at the grocery store. Danes expect you to get our stuff off the belt very quickly, so you don't slow down the next person. The Girl is famous for forgetting her bags and fumbling to get her wallet. If looks could kill, she would have been buried a long time ago.

She is getting better at driving, but she is still annoying the Danes. On the freeway, the passing lane is not a place to linger like it is in America. The Girl passes a car, sings along with the radio, slows down a little (while still in the passing lane). Someone is forced to pass her on the inside and glances over with an icy look.

That look. She writes about the way people look at her, when her behavior slows down the frantic Danish pace. It's the look someone gets when they stop to look at a store window, and the person behind them is slowed down, perhaps a fraction of a second. It's that exasparated look. I know the look; hell, I give that look sometimes.

Natali, on the other hand, has become 100% Danish. It's been wonderful to see her grow here. Not like a foreign exhange student might pick up a new fashion sense or a new taste in music. It's truly 100%. She hasn't forgotten her American side, but her frame of reference is Danish now.

She is moving back this summer, 6 months before we are, to stay with her mom. I tell myself she will do fine, but I wonder how fast she will become more American than Danish. I am curious to see what she will miss the most; my guess is the freedom she enjoys here. She has a white bike with three gears and a basket that she takes to school and to town. Going up hills, she stands up to pump, just because is feels good. She parks her bike and walks around the old downtown, browsing for new clothes; sometimes buying a hotdog or cathcing a movie with her friends. She could do that in La Crosse, but she won't. I would worry about her biking there, anyway. She lives close enough to walk downtown, but it's not in the culture to do so there. The sidewalks stop at one point, and she would have to cross a busy street to pick up another sidewalk.

But a 9-(soon 10-)year old doesn't sit down to complain about car culture or the lack of bike lanes. She will get a ride to the mall with her step-sisters - and she'll have a great time. Because Natali is a child of both countries and she will be happy in either place - or both. Right now, she wants to move to Africa to help people, and then open a restaurant in Næstved with her friend. We shall see. The whole world is her oyster.

As readers of this blog know, I feel guilty about leaving my son, Andreas, for 3 whole years. Had I known how that would feel, I wouldn't have done it. But for the Girl and Natali (and the Lorax) to be able to live here for a while, for them both to grow and learn, and for me to witness it, has been wonderful. It's an experience we'll all take with us, and I am very thankful for that.

The Ultrarunning Hipster

2011-01-09T13:40:00.000-08:00

It's odd how sports that are 95% similar attract (or foster) such different personality types. Take the three sports I dabble at: triathlons, long-distance running and ultrarunning.

Triathletes are just complete dorks. Look at this video and try to disagree (mind you, these are elite triathletes):

Some people refer to these videos as bike mounting porn.

Triathletes are generally fitter and better looking than runners, but there is something about the outfits and the emphasis on overly expensive equipment that is so inherently uncool. Both aspects are captured here:

And, mind you, this guy could swim, run and THEN kick my ass in a 10K.

Long-distance runners are pretty normal. It's a sport one can do without being a fanatic. Ambitious long-distance runners become geeky in their pursuit of losing weight and hitting their workouts. I had a few years, where 100 grams or a few seconds off on my 800m intervals would worry me. But all in all, long-distance runners are pretty normal.

One funny thing, though. Long-distance runners often look at marathoners as people, who are too slow or old to do well in the shorter races. In track, the 10,000 is the same; not a very cool distance to race. The cool people race the mile, and moving up in distance is done out of necessity. Compare that to ultras in a bit.

Ultarunners are very different from long-distance runners. I should emphasize that I speak of trail ultrarunning here. Ultrarunners are less competitive, at least on the surface. The clothing does border on the ridiculous, sometimes. From the minimalist:

To the "Ultra Triad", ie. sleeves, gaiters and an elaborate hydration system:

Ultrarunners are also oddly into New Age stuff. Take this VESPA quote:

"For the really long Ultras the 2-4 hour rule is still a good one to go by, however, later in the event as your hemoglobin get utilized and fatigue and other factors kick in to diminish oxygen delivery you will need to increase your intake of sugars/carbs with something like GU etc. as you are simply fatigued and your body cannot oxidize fats because it can’t deliver enough oxygen like it could earlier in the day when hemoglobin levels are fresh and high. You still take the VESPA but you also take in the sugars at a higher rate."

Really? Really. Damn that fatigued hemoglobin in the really long ultras!

But, seriously, people buy into that stuff. Or maybe the top runners pretend to be into it, so they get sponsored. Who knows?

The VESPA phenomenon repeats itself in the way ultrarunners talk about electrolytes. Electrolytes are hard to understand and very unpredictable. I check electrolytes on patients all the time and they are very hard to correct, even with IV access. People all over the internet talk about potassium, sodium and magnesium as though it's common knowledge how they behave in ultras. I admit to not having looked at the research (if there is any) but I bet it's not nearly as simple as ultra hipsters make it out to be.

Another thing is barefoot running. Real ultra hipsters love to talk about running barefoot, like it's this new thing that Chris McDougal discovered from the Tamahura Indians. Of course, it's not new. Abebe Bikila won the Rome Olympic Marathon running barefoot. Roger Bannister ran a four minute mile in what looked like a lightweight bowling shoe. Today, an ultra hipster would call it a "minimalist shoe".

No doubt the shoe companies have tricked us into believing that overly expensive shoes prevent injuries; they have capitalized on this these last three decades. But now these same, or related, shoe companies are selling a hipster fad based around running free and being close to nature. Another way of saying it: the only people who consider running barefoot cool, are people who can easily afford not to. I certainly don't imagine kids in Ethiopia dumping their shoes on the way to school to be cool.

Yes, the Girl, this is aimed at you, you budding hipster, as you sit at home shopping for "minimalist shoes" with good traction, so you can run a trail marathon 9 months pregnant. Wearing nothing but gaiters and sleeves.

Agoraphobia

2010-12-29T09:39:00.000-08:00

The Girl (calling from the bathroom): We might be out of toilet paper!

Me: I'll get you a new roll.

The Girl: No, I don't think we are all out, because I took the last roll the other day.

This conversation meant that there was no getting out of a small foray to a store. With two kids, in Denmark, on December 29th. Why, Universe? I've always had a touch of agoraphobia, but it has been evolving from a personality trait to an actual problem. Feeding on the burdens of life, work, kids, wife; my life has been saturated with stress the last 5 years and my agoraphobia has thrived.

Another problem with me, among the many I have, is extreme impatience with everything. It's always been impatient; I've gotten grief for it from when I was a little kid. We have called it my condition, and I've even been somewhat proud of it, like it was a sign of efficiency. But agoraphobia and impatience don't go well together.

One of the ways I get around my agoraphobia is that I only venture out, when I know there will be no crowds. I shop for our groceries 15 minutes before the stores close. We go swimming on Friday nights in a rural community pool, which we have all to ourselves. Any visit to a theme park or such similar attraction has to happen in the way off-season

But when the Girl announced that we were out of tp, I knew there was no alternative to diving into Danish Christmas craziness. Most Danes have the week off between Christmas and New Year's and it seems like they love to shop all day, every day.

The Lorax was crying most of the time; he screamed "skoldkopper!" (chickenpox) to get my attention and was hard to handle in the busy store. He is through his run of pox, but he still likes to be pitied, apparently. The toilet paper and other necessities were quickly located and I tried wrangling the kids toward the registers. Or, I should say kid, because Natali is actually more help than bother at this point.

In a packed store, with a screaming Lorax, without room to maneuver, it's gotten to the point where I have to control my breathing to prevent getting shivers. It's never bad when I'm alone; it's when I'm with the kids that it really ignites.

The stress is getting to me. There is no other way of looking at it.

At least I have been running well on the treadmill at the gym. I had a winter a few years ago, where I ran almost exclusively on the treadmill. That winter led to my 1:13 half marathon PR, so maybe this Wisconsinesque snow is good for something.

2010 Season in Review - Goals for 2011

2010-12-25T10:38:00.001-08:00

I had a very unusual 2010 running season. For one, I wasn't injured; more than likely, I was safe from injury because of undertraining. There were some highs and lows, and all the highs came in marathons or ultras. As I am writing this, I am sorely out of shape and I won't have time to train properly in the next few months. My goals for 2011 are, as such, very vague.

My goals for 2010 were stated on this very blog a year ago:

5K 16:00 flat (under 16 would be too much pressure)
Age group national champion in the 5000
10K Under-34
Half Under 1:15
Win an ultra

Hmm. Only made one of those goals.

I started out the year with a winter marathon. Jogged the first half, sped up and finished in 3:04. Finished 2nd and in the money. Great start to the season.

The next race I remember was Hells Hills (no apostrophe after Hell, just so you know). A poor man's ultra at just 50K, I did win it. That was the one fulfilled goal for 2010. A fun race, but it's hard to compare times in trail races. If three faster guys had shown up and I had taken fourth, I probably would have thought I sucked that day. But as it was, it felt like a great race.

Then came another training marathon in 2:50. Felt good and relaxed. Stuck with the other two leaders till 13K to go and then raced the last bit on a good runner's high.

The Copenhagen Marathon. I was aiming for 2:42 and got 2:49. The end was terrible. Looking back, I was probably mining some good form that ran out just before this race. I ran one more marathon a few weeks afterwards, where I dropped out, proving that my peak was long gone. I won't run a road marathon again for a long time.

The rest of the spring, I was able to train really well. Because of my schedule, I had post-call days off every week, and I was able to put together two strong months. Ironically, my goal marathon for the summer (Grand Island in Marquette, MI) filled up too fast and I ended up just training through the summer.

I did run a 5K in 16:32 in Carlton the day before the Girl ran Voyageur. This was in 90 degree heat and it felt miserable the whole time. I bet I could have gotten close to 16:00, another of the goals above, but that 5K was the only short race I did all year.

Ok, not really. I forget some fun races, like a relay, where I ran two legs in high 16s. But the Carlton race was the only short race I truly raced. The last time that happened must have been 15 years ago. Wow.

What did we do in the fall?

It feels like there was some other race first, but the high point was certainly October's Brocken Marathon. 3:04 on that course is what I consider my "relative" marathon PR. The best part was that I got done with so much left in the tank, and a promise of faster times. That vein of form continued into running 46 miles at the Copenhagen 6 Hour Race.

High point? Either Hells Hills or Brocken. Both non-technical, hilly trail races, which would appear to have become my strong suit.

Goals for 2011.

Since I failed 4 out of 5 goals for 2010, I had better make my 2011 goals more attainable. Problem is, I don't know what next year will bring. I don't know if we're moving back to Wisconsin in September or in January. This winter and spring are going to be uber-busy at work. How are these for goals:

Keep a running log
Get under 65 kg consistently
Win a short race
Win a long race
Win an ultra

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year to all.

Drukket!

2010-12-18T11:35:00.000-08:00

When I speak dreamily about a faraway fairytale land, sometimes referred to as Utopia and other times simply called Wisconsin, I always mention "snow in winter". Yet, how the hell come, whenever it snows here, I hate it.

Because my cross country skis are in Wisconsin?

No. Not really, although it would be cool to have them here. Snow profoundly paralyzes Denmark. We have gotten maybe 10 inches over the last week, and the resulting traffic chaos is amazing. Add to this the fact that I work 60 miles from my house. I usually take the train, but for night and weekend shifts, I drive. This morning, with an inch of fresh snow in 25 degree weather, some people were going 20 miles an hour on the freeway.

I should mention Natali.

She didn't take the news well; that her teachers had brought up the weight issue. I wrote to my ex about what had happened, and she responded with a nice email full of advice. Natali was pissed. She is a superb splitter and had lost a golden opportunity here.

The interesting thing is that she got over her anger very quickly. When I saw her the next afternoon, she seemed almost relieved that the can of worms had been opened. I know she has been thinking about it a lot, and of course the other girls have made fun of her. This process has made it acceptable to talk about her weight. Somewhat to my surprise.

So in the last three days, she has been very active and even skipped her evening snack one night. I asked her "are you really hungry?"; she smiled and looked down and replied: "I'm learning to speak to my stomach and he says no". She is so cool.

Meanwhile, the Girl is throwing up non-stop. If you wonder whether being an MD makes her less or more nervous of something happening to this pregnancy, here are a few examples of her state of mind:

- "I'm so nauseated. Then it can't be an ectopic! Hey wake up. I don't think it's an ectopic!"

- "Now I feel great. Oh god, what if it's an ectopic?"

- "My stomach is so big. What if it's a molar pregnancy? Molars make lots of hCG, so maybe that's why I'm nauseated.

- "Oh my god, maybe the Ginger is filling up my stomach. So if I take too much, I'll get nauseated again."

She is throwing up so much that the Lorax scream "drukket" (has drunk), whenever she makes a gaggy face. We're not sure why he screams "drukket", but we suspect that he thinks that she has drunk too much, too fast.

Time out!

2010-12-14T14:59:00.000-08:00

Am I the only one who feels like life is happening too fast?

We've been back from our work/vacation trip for almost a week now. The apartment's a mess; there are a million little things we are behind on. The jetlag won't die. Christmas is coming, whether we like it or not, and we still have to buy 10 thoughtful presents. Oh, and the Lorax has chickenpox!

The kicker came today at Natali's parent-teacher conference. There were three teachers and one of me. Academically, she is doing fine. Ok, I knew that, but their concerned faces told me that the conversation was about to turn sour. In short, they think she is fat, and that I am not doing enough to prevent it. Her female teacher told me that if only I would spend more time with her, Natali would forget about eating. Don't I see that all the changes in her life are causing her to resolve to food as a friend that never lets her down? All three of them kept going on about how lazy and fat she was. One of them, a guy I don't know too well who runs the after school program, joked that Natali's first words upon entering the building was always "what's for dinner?". Har-dee-har-har.

It was like sitting in front of three Dr. Phils, only with more platitudes. I told them that from when I come home from work, Natali is never more than 3 feet away from me. I didn't tell them how the Girl sometimes complains that Natali acts more like my wife than she does, but maybe I should have; just think of the forthcoming bumper sticker logic!

I was up against the ropes.

We came to the following conclusions:

1. She can only eat the lunch/snacks we pack for her. No accepting leftovers from other kids. No begging snacks at the after school program.

2. One hour of moving around every day.

3. She gets weighed every Thursday, and her teacher will sit down and review the result and the preceding week's eating and exercise.

I like the rules; hopefully they will work. I did not like the attitude, though. They kept implying that she has too much responsibility for her age. That I'm too uninvolved. Talk eventually turned to our plans next year. I explained that my ex wants her back in La Crosse next year, but that I'm hoping to get her back the following year. They lectured me on the importance of stability, and I told them that I had no say in it. I mentioned that for all I knew, my ex could call the police and tell them I kidnapped Natali to a foreign country. That got a little respect, or at least generated some genuine interest, and I'm convinced our sorry tale will be shared over pipes and Birkenstocks in the teacher's lounge.

At first, I was a little angry. I was driving to work, cursing this outside-Green-zone Baghdad that is my life. Cursing my commute, cursing the distance to Andreas, cursing how Natali has to move next year. Cursing the day the Girl looked at me and said, "why can't we move to Denmark" and I said "why not?", because I was so in love and would go anywhere with her. A simple "nah, I can't leave the kids" would have sufficed.

Then a sense of despair set in. If only I could slow down life a little; if only I had more time. Time to mold our family into a unit so tight, with values and traditions so strong, that we could laugh at the mundane troubles of ho-hum life. Why don't we have a Christmas tree yet? Why do I work every day till Christmas, including a 24-hour shift on the 25th? Maybe our last Christmas in Denmark, and it gets swallowed up in stress.

We dream of an end to all this, of course, as idiots in our shoes always do. The end never comes, until one of us, most likely me, dies from a stress-related heart attack. But a short respite is on the horizon, at least. When the Girl goes on maternity leave in the fall, we are moving to Wisconsin for 6+ months. She'll work on her PhD with the UW eye people; I'll be done with fellowship and will freelance at odd jobs. It's certainly something to look forward to: imagine being close to the kids, working less but for more money, while living in an exciting new place (Madison, where I have never lived, but where the Girl went to college). This coincides beautifully with Natali's forced return to La Crosse. For the unlikely reader unfamiliar with Wisconsin's layout, it's about a two-hour drive from La Crosse to Madison. A cross-country trek by Danish standards; a well-deserved chance to catch up on some NPR by American.

Perhaps I wil get some sleep tonight and enjoy my post-call day with the Girl and Natali. Our poxed son is still with his grandmother, so the three of us shall form a tight unit and find a Christmas tree. It will be me and my two wives, all of us losing weight from the walking and the emesis.

December running log

2010-12-14T14:55:00.000-08:00

1: 10 miles around Old Key west. Some decent fartleks.
3: 8 miles to the convention center and back. Horrible Orlando!
5: 8 miles around Orlando
6: 4 miles on the treadmill
7: 10 miles of fartleks around some residential areas in Orlando.
10: 3 perimeter loops in the snow. Tired legs
12: Two hours slow with the Girl. 20 minutes tempo around Buddinge/Bagsværd. Felt zippy.
14: 3 Perimeter loops, preceded by dropping Natali off at school. Slippery trails, but decent legs
17: It was supposed to be 8X800m on the treadmill but I quit after 6. It was hot. I gotta get used to it. First 4, including 200m jogs in 15:04. Pace probably around 5:45 and felt terrible.
20: Two tennis court loops (10K?) tempo. Started rusty; finished strong.
23: 6K jog in the snow around Bagsværd.
26: 8Kish tempo in the snow along freeway trail.
27: 12K on the treadmill. "4x800" in 14:56. Description: 200m@12.5kph, then 800 fast. Repeat four times. Feeling surprisingly peppy.
29: 10K on the treadmill. "4x800" in 14:50. Ok legs.
31: New Year Social Marathon with the Girl. Not exactly too social, as we got left in the dust by the group. Nearly half the field dropped back and I'm sure a few got lost.

Crazy trip

2010-12-07T09:56:00.000-08:00

My last two weeks have been a little out of the ordinary.

We flew in for a wonderful Thanksgiving. That day turned out to be the most relaxing day of the whole trip.

Then I worked the whole weekend in the ER. It was moderately busy, but no one was seriously ill. I only shipped one lady out and admitted three, so that was probably below average.

I love working there. It's the exact opposite of the ivory tower medicine I practice every day, and I miss the general medicine stuff more than most of my colleagues. The fact that anything may roll in to the ER is unnerving, no doubt, but at the same time it's refreshing. It's increasingly obvious to me that my dream job would be that of a community hematologist, with an amount of general internal medicine thrown in. Hematology is such a specialized field that one almost has to work in a large center to see exclusively hematology, and I'm not sure that appeals to me. Some do combined hematology and oncology, which I won't be able to do unless I get trained in oncology, too.

We flew to Florida and Disney World. We were there two years ago and the kids loved it. I arrived two years ago, convinced I would hate it. I expected a fake, tacky plastic world full of fat people waiting in lines. And, of course, that's what Disney World is. Still, I ended up having a great time and looked forward to coming back. The second time wasn't as good as the first, but it was still a very good time. We visited EPCOT, Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom, and they all had their own charm. After the first day, the whole family glided smoothly through the parks with a shared purpose of having fun.

My son, Andreas, sees me as a fun guy who shows up every few months. He had a good time in Disney World, and he opened up a little bit to me on a few occasions. We will live away from him for another year, but at least there is an end to it. He is generally doing better in school than I have feared, but he has behavioral problems. I do wonder if he has a bit of ADD, and his teachers have voiced concerns about that, too. I need to get back in his life.

Suddenly, one night, I had to leave for my convention. We had gotten into a mode of riding Disney shuttles, racing to pools, and playing loud games in our condo. And from one moment to the next, I had to leave. Natali was crying and Andreas went into quiet beyond-reach mode. The taxi came quicker than I expected, and I had to leave a house full of wailing chaos.

So there I was, at the hematology convention, wearing a suit and talking about lymphomas with other hematologists, knowing the Girl and the kids were just a few miles away.

I want to describe Orlando. Partly because Orlando is a horrible place that deserves mention, but partly because I realize that my fellow Danish convention-goers think of Orlando as America. What a terrible place to live! Everything seems so unsustainable and fake. There are beautiful sidewalks that meander through flower beds and palm trees. They end suddenly, at arbitrary spots and are clearly built for people to look at through car windows. It's not possible to walk anywhere; I had to break several laws to find my way on foot to the convention center.

The grass is unnaturally green, and if one runs on it, it feels fake. It's watered several times a day, making it thicker than grass should be. If one runs on it, it's apparent that there is no normal soil underneath. It grows on some kind of rubber mesh. The grass is made to be admired from a car.

Orlando has a strip, akin to the Las Vegas strip, of hotels and restaurants. Universal Studios and Seaworld lie at opposite ends of this strip. Everything is manicured beautifully, and a trolley reminiscent of Europe or San Francisco will take you up and down the strip. But when one looks behind that row of glitzy hotels, there is nothing. Just abandoned lots and fences and, beyond them, an unhealthy-looking swamp.

And the people. The convention-goers all praise the service level here. I am struck by how unfair it all is. It's hard not to notice how everyone in a menial job is black or Hispanic. Every white person appears wealthy, thin and aloof. Every Hispanic, and I mean every adult person to the man or woman, is obese. There are restaurants so exquisite they import the entire waiting staff from Italy, while the people who actually live here eat mostly fast food.

Okay, so I have been away from my routines for two stressful weeks, and it shows in the above post. But I stand by the general sentiment. I hate Orlando.

Life in Limbo

2010-11-10T02:53:00.000-08:00

My last 24 hours have been perfect.

I got off from overnight call at 9. I had gotten a decent amount of sleep, so I started my commute home by biking to a train station, a little farther away from where I usually catch the train home. It was a brisk 50 minute ride through the cold, bright morning, all on bike lanes.

Read two interesting articles on the train on two different kinds of leukemia. Got home and fixed a late breakfast. Read a bit of Last Night in Twisted River, the new John Irving book. I got done with A Prayer for Owen Meany last week and that was a great book. Twisted River is okay and it's getting better as I'm halfway through. I was about to take a nap when the Girl got home from her run. She has to change quickly into her work clothes, which is always fun to watch. We talked a bit before I dozed off. Post-call naps are the best.

When I got up, I did some sit-ups while watching Bones. Threw some running clothes on and ran to Natali's after-school care. She was happy to see me; there are times when she is a little embarrassed of me, but this wasn't one of them. Some of her friends came over to see if she could play on this or that day. I referred them back to Natali, who likes to hang with friends no more than every other day.

I ran while she biked. She has a bike that she loves; I just put some of those fancy induction bike lights on it. She likes to sing while riding one-handed. It's hard to keep up with her. We swung by the grocery store on the way back to buy stuff for dinner. She wanted home-made burgers, insisting on fresh ground beed, not the pre-formed patties. She had also seen a set of new sheets (duvet and pillow covers) that she wanted. I reminded her that she had spent her last money on a stupid Nerf gun and encouraged her to save up for the sheets. She mock-pouted.

At home, I agreed to eat in front of the TV. After all, Friends and Two Guys and a Girl were on. Then the Girl came home from music class with the Lorax. He had been singing loudly the whole way home, on the back of the Girl's bike, and now went straight for a burger (which he pronounces buh-guh in Danish). The Girl was off to look at retinas for a few hours and I cleaned up after dinner.

Then I played with the Lorax. Our typical game included me hiding and scaring him. Then I tickle him until he screams "sloot", meaning "the end". Then I freeze and he climbs up on my back. He says "start" and I start to buck until he falls off. Then I run off to hide again or, alternatively, he runs off to hide. We always end up giggling hard. Sometimes, he gets overwhelmed by the game and goes "hej far!" ("Hi dad"), touching my face, to remind himself that I'm dad and not some crazy wolf about to eat him.

Then I put him to bed. He can go from wild savage to fast asleep in 5 minutes. I offer him a rub and a song and he climbs into bed and lies on his stomach. I always sing "Superman Song" by Crash Test Dummies. I have sung that song to all three kids; perhaps I've sung it 500 times. If he's not asleep by the end of it, which he usually is, I sing "I've just seen a face" by the beatles, followed by "Long may you run" by Neil Young.

I read to Natali; a novel that takes place in Norway. We talked for five minutes before I turn off the lights and kiss her cheek. She always insists on me tucking her in under both duvets.

Then the Girl came home. Her study is humming along right now, and there has been no major crisis this week. We had an hour to ourselves before calling it a night.

This morning, I ran two hours on the trails that start behind our house. Up and down steep hills, trying to beat up my quads as much as possible. Beautiful running on beautiful trails.

24 perfect hours. I can't imagine life getting much better, and I can think of millions of ways life could get worse. I am convinced we'll look back at this time in our lives and think of how happy we were. I should be happy; And yet, I feel like I'm living in limbo.

There is a simple test to see if I am enjoying life. If I want time to go slower, I am enjoying myself. Up until high school, I wanted time to slow to a standstill. I loved my life and wanted it to continue forever. Throughout my marriage with my ex, I wanted life to go fast; I wanted to get done with college, medical school, residency etc. But the last year of residency, especially after I met the Girl, I wanted to slow things down. This lasted until we moved to Denmark, after which I have wanted time to fly by.

It's the limbo I can't take. Or limbos; namely two, and a bunch of smaller ones.

The first is Natali and where she will be next year. My ex wife hasn't decided what she wants to do and, as some readers may know, she has the power to decide where Natali will live next year. I think about this 500 times a day, as I am biking or running or clearing the table after dinner. We can't plan anything past next summer, or "N-day" as I call it.

My ex-wife, bless her heart, ignores my emails. We have had some minor arguments lately. Really minor stuff, but her lack of communication makes the situation unnerving.

I don't know what I would do if she demands that Natali come back to Wisconsin. My first move could be to tell her (in writing, so I could show InterPol that I wasn't trying to kidnap Natali), "okay, she is all yours; come and get her". Now, my ex has watched me bring and pick up Natali 6 or 7 times over the last two years, while she has driven a few hours, tops, to Madison to meet us. She has paid half of one of the plane tickets, while bithing endlessly about it. Just that fact, that she would have to come here to pick up Natali, may deter her from wanting her.

Of course, such a move on my part would mean that I would be even farter away from Andreas, and being away from him is another one of my worries.

He's a pit of guilt and regret, moreso than a limbo, though. The other big limbo is what we'll do when the Girl is done with her PhD. This depends largely on what specialty she goes into. Right now, she is torn between ophthalmology and sports medicine. People may ask, appropriately, how the Girl could do a PhD in ophthalmology and then go into sports medicine. I personally think the Girl would be happy doing either specialty, and if she would go into sports med, she would sell her PhD as more of a public health/epidemiology study.

She would do well in either career. Ophthalmology seems more obvious, but her interests right now lie more in sports medicine. As much ought to be claer to anyone reading her blog (ie. the five people reading this). Her choice is exciting, but it also represents a state of limbo for me. Ophthalmology would probably take us back to Wisconsin and Andreas, whereas sports medicine would most likely take us to the Pacific Northwest. So it's not just a career choice for her; it's me being close to Andreas and, god forbid, Natali, if she ends up with my ex. And it has implications for my career, as hematology is a specialty of large academic centers. If the Girl does sports medicine, I may end up working in the ER, for a while or permanently.

I think the Dalai Lama has said something like "don't worry about things you can fix; fix them. Don't worry about things you can't fix, because you can't fix them, anyway". It seems like such simple advice to give, but it's hard to follow.

November running log

2010-11-06T08:54:00.000-07:00

2: 3 miles slowly. Recovering nicely from the 6-hour race. A little bit of plantar pain on the left.
6: Green Tunnel Hills, 5 repeats, one extra long stairs. The legs were ok, but not as peppy as a few weeks ago.
8-20: Forgot to log.
22: 3 Perimeter Loops.
24: 4 Perimeter Loops, feeling good.
26: Easy 5K or so before flying to Chicago
27: 3 hours at Lapham Peak. The Girl was cranky and pregnant. I ran a final loop alone and felt good.

Copenhagen 6 Hour - Report

2010-10-31T11:36:00.001-07:00

This race is really well-organized, by some of the nicest people I have met in Danish running. I would recommend it to anyone thinking about venturing into the ultra distances.

The only minor complaint is that they have a marathon at the same time. I'm not sure why they do this; I think the two races combined capped at 150 runners, with just 30 or so runners going for the marathon. I wonder if they couldn't just have filled the race with 6-hour runners.

At the start, it's confusing that you don't know who's in the marathon and who's in the 6-hour race. I was just going to run my own race but, on the other hand, it's impossible not to look around to see how you are doing. I started slowly, trying to use the first couple of laps to warm up. After two laps, I steadily moved up through the field, always playing this little game in my mind to see if I was going too fast: whenever I was passing someone, I tried to stay behind them, and if I started to feel like I had to consciously slow down, I would pass. My game plan was to never run slower than "cruising pace", and I was sticking with this plan.

At a point, maybe around 40 minutes in, I found a guy, whose pace matched mine. We would yo-yo a little, especially around the aid station, but we ran together until two hours. This was Charlie George, who, despite his name, is Danish and runs for Hellas in Roskilde. We exchanged resumes, his including a 1:17 half marathon this spring, which at 51 earned him the M50 national championship for that distance. Incidentally, he beat our teammate, Per, in that race. He had never run an ultra before.

We talked about pacing, and we obviously had similar strategies: if it feels good, don't slow down. We got through 20K in 1:30 and kept this pace till 2 hours. I mentioned that we were exactly on 50-mile pace, and there was no way in the world that I could run 50 miles in 6 hours. He concurred, but on we ran.

Then at two hours, my plan called for walking breaks. I was starting to feel sore, but not sore to a point where I would usually consider taking walking breaks. It was hard to let my companion drift away, and it felt like the race was moving on without me. From two to four hours, I walked 4-5 minutes every two laps. This was brisk walking, of course, but it felt miserable as 15-20 runners would pass me during every walking break.

But here's the thing: once I started running again, I would quickly re-pass the people, who had passed me. My cruising pace was holding up nicely. I was watching one guy in particular, who I had just lapped before the walking breaks began. For the entire two hours (from 2 to 4 hours), I passed and was re-passed by this same guy, which I took to mean that I holding my place decently in the pack.

A 4 hours, I turned on my iPod. I kept using the walking breaks up until 5 hours, but they were a little less regimented. The music made me really emotional. I had looked forward to this moment, hoping to rekindle the tearful runner's high from the Brocken Marathon three weeks ago. The recipe calls for exhaustion and good music but, I have realized, an important ingredient is that I have to go low on calories and, just before I bonk, eat a lot. And it came: that wonderful, drugged sense of floating effortlessly. Most people walked intermittently at this point, looking dead tired. The lake and the fall colors in the sun looked so peaceful. It sounds sappy, but it felt like everyone was running together.

My well-orchestrated high lasted 10-15 minutes. I had saved my music and gone low on calories for this, so I was hoping for a little more. But it was well worth it.

Then the race began to suck. I was starting to cramp, which always seems to be my limiting factor. I was nauseated and just sick of running. One thing that got me going a little was that Charlie George lapped me; immediately afterwards, he stopped to get something to eat and drink and looked pretty dead. I sensed that I would be able to pass him if I kept my current pace.

The last half hour, I was joined by Helle, of mountaineering and cancer-survivorship research fame. This was wonderful, and I now realize why pacing in ultras is such a big deal. We stopped taking walking breaks, except waling up a little hill. Thanks, Helle!

At the very end, we got passed by Jakob Lindberg, and this was the only time I got passed the entire race, outside my walking breaks! Jakob notwithstanding, I think this fact made all the difference. Even as I was slowing down, I continued to feel fast, because whenever I ran, I kept passing other runners.

I ended up running just over 73K, which is more than I was hoping for. It's a minor breakthrough, as I see it. And this just three weeks after Brocken, which was another good race.

I ended up passing Charlie and opened a 1K gap on him, but otherwise I kept my place through the last few hours. I didn't know what that place was, but it turned out to be 5th. The winner, Ole Stougaard, ran over 80K and told me after the race that it was his first ultra. He is a retired elite triathlete, who "runs to stay in shape". Dang. A 50 miler in less that 6 hours in his first ultra...

The weird thing about these short-lap races is that you see the same people over and over again. But the ones you don't see are the ones who run your pace. Kim Hammerich, who runs on the national ultra team, stayed ahead of me, but on the same lap, the entire race! I saw him at the start, and then forgot he was even in the race. In the end, he was 900 meters ahead of me I asked Kim why he wasn't farther ahead of me; it turns out he ran a 100K last weekend, and is running another 100K next week.

I was trying to suppress 10 different cramps, while trying to understand how he can possibly run so much. I don't even run 100 kilometers a week, during my heaviest weeks, and he runs ultras three weekends in a row. I will begin to think about being able to run again next weekend, by the time he probably wins another ultra.

The Girl did well and got 63K. Her race was insanely close, with just a few hundred meters separating 3rd to 5th. Just as I could pretend to almost beat someone on the national team, the Girl almost beat May-Britt Hansen. May-Britt was coming back from a shoulder injury and ran the race to get some miles in. After the race, the Girl did less well. She threw up several times and looked like she was about to pass out. I should mention that once we got back to the car, I cramped up so hard that she had to drive, so I wasn't faring much better.

I'm sure we'll do it again next year...

Preview: Copenhagen 6-hour Run

2010-10-29T00:30:00.001-07:00

We did this race last year. You run around a little lake on a paved 2.2K loop. Over and over again, until you have lost track of have many loops you have done or what place you are in. I had a miserable race last year, and along with Voyageur 50 miles, it was one of the two big races that I was disappointed with.

This year, my preparation has been different. Not better, neccesarily, but very different. Last year, I had done the Transalpine with the Girl and then run a low-16s 5K (which was probably a little short) and won a somewhat competitive cross country race. This year, I ran one of the best races of my life three weeks ago at the Brocken marathon. And last month, I set PBs on all my principal training routes.

The one thing I am worried about is whether I have bounced back completely from the marathon.

A 6-hour run is hard to plan out. Last year, I started slowly with the Girl the first hour and then sped up. I probably went from 25th to 2nd place over the next two hours and came through the marathon in 3:11. I was in second place for maybe five minutes, after which came 3 hours of being passed by seemingly hundreds of runners (some individual runners passed me several times). I think I got to 65K and took 6th, although at the finish I would have guessed I took 20th. Interesting how that works.

The lesson to me was that walking/jogging isn't as slow as it seems when you are doing it. I think this year, I will start out faster. Yes, faster. I don't think starting out slower than my usual cruising pace postpones my inevitable collapse. So if I use the first few laps as a warm-up and then start cruising, I imagine that will put me near the front of the race. Now, I know that this year, the field is much stronger than last year, but my optimistic cruising pace is still pretty fast in a 6-hour race.

A big part of starting out fast is I get to see the top runners. Last year, it sucked now knowing who was where in the race.

Then comes the master-stroke of my plan: I slow down. After maybe two hours, I will start to feel fatigued and sore, and that's when I start taking frequent, long walking breaks. I plan on the middle two hours being very slow, while I sink down through the field.

But. And here's the but. Then the last two hours, hopefully, I shall walk less and run more. Or run more talk less, as the hipsters say. I plan on eating a ton at four hours, which will propel me into a tearful runner's high the last two hours. Last year, everyone was suffering at the end. If I can be that guy with lots of energy, that wouldn't be half-bad.

Or I may ust keep jogging and walking, while enjoying a tearful painfest. We shall see.

I hope to get to high 60s, low 70s, in terms of distance.

A little something for the ladies...
As I recall, as this point, I had started out in these clothes, then stripped down after one hour, but after three hours I meekly re-robed and wore this dour facial expression.

Bilingual or no-lingual?

2010-10-26T00:01:00.000-07:00

The Lorax speaks only Danish so far. Since we plan to move back to the US in two or three years, I figure he needs to completely solidify his Danish now. He will learn English soon enough and, hopefully, will end up fluent in both languages.

But, let me tell you, this bilingual thing is not as simple as one may think. First off, I botched both Natali's and my son, Andreas', chances of bilingualism 6 years ago. For the same reasons as the above, my ex-wife and I spoke only Danish to the kids. Whenever we were in the US, they spoke Danish and my ex-in laws had to learn baby Danish to keep up. Then I started residency and they started US day care for the first time - and everything changed dramatically. Within a month, they were perfectly bilingual. They spoke Danish to us and English to everyone else.

Slowly, they forgot their Danish. I showed them Danish movies and online TV, but slowly it disappeared. I read to them in Danish, but it became clear that they preferred the stories in English. I had my own translation of Dr. Seuss, but they weren't buying it.

Andreas is now completely uni-lingual and Natali, because we moved back, is bilingual.

But what does it mean? Is she really 100% proficient in both languages? No; this becomes clear as we read more difficult literature in both Danish and English. She lacks depth; not just knwoing all the words, but reading between the lines, picking up irony and appreciating grammatical intricacies. I'm not 100% sure if it's just her age, but I suspect it has to do with having to keep up with both languages.

We had a medical student rotate through our department last month. A child of Chinese immigrants, he had grown up in Denmark. He was smart, hard-working; a wonderful med student to work with. But his Danish, once he had to construct a hard, thoughtful sentence, was sorely lacking. He had no accent, but he lacked a certain depth that many people commented on. It fascinated me. I don't know if he has ever gone back to China; he probably has. I'm sure the Chinese think that his Mandarin(i'm not sure he speaks Mandarin) is sub-par, having only spoken it with his parents and other Chinese in Denmark.

Then there is my brother and his wife. My sister-in-law's first language is Malay English. What they speak at home is a variant of what Danes call "Danglish", ie. a mix of Danish and English. Most Danes think of Danglish as Danish with lots of borrowed English words. Their Danglish, however, is primarily English, but they share a complete disregard for grammar and sentence structure. Especially their prepositions are off, as they juggle English and Danish. My brother, for example, doesn't ride his bike; he "rides on his bike" or "cycles".

My brother grew up speaking Danish. He went to college in the US and got married in his early 20s. Since then, he has spoken mostly English, or their variant thereof, at home. Without a doubt, he has lost depth in his Danish, both spoken and written. If he were told to speak for a half hour in complete 100% Danish, he would be in trouble.

So my brother and the medical student, are they bilingual - or no-lingual?

As I sit here pontificating in my ivory tower, I can't ignore my own situation. Admittedly, I'm a little bit like my brother; it's hard not to be. But we do try to speak 100% Danish at home; mostly for the sake of the Girl and the kids, but also for me. We have almost lived in Denmark two years now, and I still speak Danish somewhat haltingly. I have no accent, of course, but I have definite trouble constructing sentences, especially Danish colloquialisms. Yesterday, in an elevator, I got the idea for this blog post. An attending had gotten frustrated with a notoriously non-compliant patient. She is sometimes a little too nice, or docile, so it was cool to hear her speak up. I wanted to tell her that I thought it was cool to see her.. get a little riled up, see her speak with a little oomph, gusto, fanfare, temper. Halfway through the sentence, choices such as these popped up in my head, but no Danish equivalent came to mind. I used the word "fanfare", which can only be used in its literal sense in Danish, ie. the sound that horns make.

And this happens all the time, especially with patients. "We'll cross that bridge when we get there", "just to rule out something serious", "we'll keep an eye one it"; I want to say this all the time: I start a sentence and realize that there is no Danish equivalent and often end up constructing ugly linguistic orphans.

And my English is going to pot, too! The in-laws were here to visit last week, and my English was certainly imperfect. Again, it lacked depth; it lacked that ability to construct a long sentence, while thinking about the subject matter.

Alas, I am also no-lingual!

So what do I have in mind for the kids? Well, this time, I think it's going to stick for Natali, so she might come out on top of all this. For the Lorax, I know we'll keep speaking Danish at home, and we might move back to Denmark at some point. Or he and Natali may go to college here. So I have high hopes for those two.

Andreas? My 7-year old son who lives an ocean away. My parents are visiting him right now, so I've been thinking about him a lot. If he learned to speak just a little Danish, even haltingly, and without any depth, I would be happy as a clam.

October log

2010-10-25T07:45:00.000-07:00

2: 10 miles on hills. 5 repeats at end of Green tunnel
4: 8 miles
6: 8 miles in the mountains around Goslar. Very good legs; the uphills felt effortless.
9: Brocken Marathon. 3:04. Felt great; probably my best marathon.
12: 15 miles fair slowly. The legs have rebounded impressively.
15: Perimeter trails.
17: Hills at Green Tunnel. 3 repeats. Legs a little heavy.
20: 2X5K tempos with the Girl. Legs didn't feel good at all. Ran them both around 19 minutes.
23: Green Tunnel hills. I love this run. 5 repeats at the end. The legs were a little heavy despite the light training lately.
24: 10 miles. Turned out the legs were awesome. It turned into impromptu fartleks.
26: 10 miles on the trails
28: 6 miles slowly.
30: 6-hour race. 73.1K (43 miles). A new PR. 20K in 1:30, half in 1:34, marathon in 3:15, 50K in 3:56.

Brocken Pictures

2010-10-13T05:18:00.000-07:00

The Girl cresting Brocken in howling wind and high spirits. She was still in 5th here and thought about top 3.

While top 3 never happened, she did have the best-looking legs of the field (women's field, at least). That's some toned-up shank right there.

Yours truly cresting Brocken, full of pent-up Danish rage and energy after walking the last several miles. Small children averted their eyes when they saw the facial expression of this particular bad-ass

The finish; looking you and without a care for the world. I felt this-is-what-life-is-about good.

This is my bro, who at his college-days peak ran a sub-18 5K. He is blessed and cursed with the looks, physiology and metabolism of Jan Ullrich. He also married a great cook and many an Indian curry later, he is fighting his way back into shape. He ran the 22K mountain run in well under three hours, thus posting the achievement of the day.

This picture shows Der Jan being pursued by my dad and uncle. My dad is the guy with my future hairline and my uncle is the bi-sected guy one step behind. Both my dad and uncle got lost; even though they started over an hour behind the marathoners, they somehow managed to follow the marathon course. Halfway up Brocken, they were met by crew disassembling an aid station. They accepted the light beer and soup offered to them and jogged back down the mountain.

The relaxed man in tights is my cousin's husband. He cruised the 22K, but was probably in marathon shape. The guy in front of him is unidentified, but judging by his overall sweatiness, his bleeding nipple and his scream, my guess is that he was amply challenged by the course. And check out the German power-lady on the left. Typical German power-lady look, camel-toe and all.

Like her husband, my cousin wasn't even halfway spent at the end of her race, the 11K. She should have done the 22K and she showed off this fact by bounding several feet in the air with each step.

2010-10-10T11:31:00.001-07:00

We ventured down to Harz, Germany, this weekend for the Brocken Marathon. Most readers will have read the Girl's blog and seen the killer hill (Brocken) in the middle of the race. The course climbs approximately 800 meters in 8K (2500 feet in 5 miles?), ie. a 10% incline for the cycling afficionados. However, the 8K are preceded by a few K of gentle climbing and the hill gets steeper and steeper as you go. In other words, that mountain defines the whole race. But let's begin at the start line.

I fancied myself with a shot at the top 10, possibly top 5. But, above all, I didn't want to crack on the long downhill, so I started conservatively. The part of the course that may appear flat on the elevation map is anything but. In the first 5 miles, we ascended and descended hills that would be the centerpiece of a tough Danish cross country course. Of course, as opposed to Danish cross meets, which always are better-wear-spikes technical, we ran these hills on non-technical trails - and stayed on them the whole way.

I took it easy, and counted the people ahead of me to learn that I was in 16th spot at the position-wise nadir of my race at 5 miles. Then, slowly, we started climbing more than we descended, and this separated the pretenders from the contenders. The first few miles of low-grade climbing suited me well, and I advanced up through the field, always feeling like I had a lot left in the tank.

Then the hill got so steep that it made no sense to run. At least it made no sense to me. There were little plateaus, where I ran, but I made a point of walking and eating whenever it got really steep. I was passed by 3 or 4 runners, but they were barely running faster than me. I power-hike pretty efficiently and was almost able to keep up with the runners.

At a point, with a few miles left to go to the summit, the trail turned into an East German road made out of concrete slabs. It got so steep that running looked completely silly to me. One German guy passed me and yelled "I sink your sistem is werking. I try it too" and then we walk-ran together to the top. The views up here were amazing, of course.

Even though Brocken is only 1140-some meters high, it feels like the high mountains. It was really windy, which probably isn't a rarity up there, because there were no trees. The top is occupied by an old East German weather station. Cool stuff.

Then came the downhill, and with the crazy steep uphill, I had worried that it would be too steep for me to run. I'm not a good downhiller at all. But the downhills, except for very few sections, were the crusing types. I turned my music on and floated down the mountain. I chose to run on the grassy shoulder, which seemed like a good choice for someone not used to the pounding.

Just coming over the top, I passed a couple of people. The people who had run up, were all so stiff, that I easily put a couple hundred meters on them. Again, if anyone reads this as a preview for their own race: walk the hill. A fast power-walker may lose a minute or two on a runner over the last steep miles of the hill but that time will easily be reclaimed on the way down.

And, yes, the way down went well. I floated and floated and, purely by chance, always had the next runner in view a hairpin turn or two below me. I had lost count of the place I was in and just focused on picking off runners. Suddenly we were in the last few miles and I entered what I fancied to be an all-out Solinsky beast mode. It's been a while since I tapped a good runner's high in competition; last time must have been Hells Hills in April. Yes, there were some tears. At this point, the half-marathoners had joined the course and there were lots of spectators. I felt like I was absolutely screaming down the mountain and there was a even an uphill section that I ran all-out. I am sure I had the fastest time in the race for the last 5 miles.

The last two K are steep downhill. I passed a guy, who was in the marathon, and then probably took it a little too easily. I got stuck behind a half-marathoner and then, when 400 meters to go, got re-passed by the marathoner. He wanted it more than me, I guess. Had there been a flat section, I would have been able to use my fresher legs, but it was steep and I was worried about going insanely fast. Plus I am not a very skilled downhiller, to be honest.

As it turned out, he took 5th and I took 6th. Six people get to go on the big podium to receive prizes, so it all turned out all right. But still, I should have just have surged by him, when I first passed him. I expected there to be a flat finish ,but it was downhill all the way to the line. Good advice for other runners would be to run the last two K all out.

I finished with lots left. I would have been happy if they had converted it into a 50K. My time was 3:04, which is pretty wild compared to me PR of 2:49. I actually ran the first 10K in 40:46, which is PR pace, even though it felt easy and was hilly. It makes one wonder how fast I would have gone on a flat course. Needless to say, I am very excited about this race. I've been setting PBs on my training runs, but until you see a big result in an official race, it doesn't really matter.

Two hard months of bad sports on TV

2010-09-27T13:05:00.000-07:00

As a sign of growing older, I pay more attention to the passing of the seasons. Growing up in Denmark, you could argue that the seasons are so bland that they don't legitimately influence people's daily routines.

When I moved to America at 19, though, I think the weather outside stayed an afterthought. And this was northern Wisconsin, where the variation in temperature is extreme by most standards. I remember winters that were very cold and summers that were hot, but I don't recall thinking, for instance, "my life is going to get a little better when the snow melts".

Sometime around 30, I started paying attention. Maybe because of the kids, but also because by that age, my job was so demanding that the tiny window of spare time to spend outside became so much more important. I stopped cross country skiing, for example, around age 30, because everything about it took too long for the time that I had available (waxing, driving to the trails etc.) So in a training sense, some seasons are now much better than others, although this is more true in Wisconsin than in Næstved.

These last few years, I have become aware of how the sports on TV influence my day-to-day happiness. Tonight, in the shower, a thought popped into my mind; a thought I remember forming last year, and possibly the year before: TV in October and November is the worst of the year. And let me tell you why.

Winter has skiing on TV. I watch cross country and biathlon and, if nothing else is on, nordic combined. This lasts from December to March, at which point the Diamond League (formerly Golden League) and cycling take off. This peaks in summer, with the Tour and most years an Olympics or track and field worlds. Once every four years, as was the case this year, there is no major international track championship. But I survive and pretend Zurich Weltklasse is a worls championships.

September sees the Vuelta and early October has the cycling worlds.

And then nothing. Not a single endurance sport on TV. What the hell gives? There are cross country meets out there, but they don't make it onto any TV that I have ever owned. There are still triathlons going on in warmer climes, including the Kona Ironman, but their presence on TV is too slight and sporadic for me to follow.

Part of the problem is that the endurance sports are up against formidable competition in the form of soccer in Europe and football in the US. And, gaad, do I hate to watch those sports on TV. Ok, so I dislike wathcing team sports in general, but the "Big 2" particularly annoy me, because of the money and hype involved. What is gayer (in a non-bigot hipster sense, of course): soccer or football? The prize would have to go to a sport, whose biggest star has a girly first name, a very feminine French (and mispronounced) last name, who cries everytime he retires (which is at every press conference).

15 years in northern Wiscosin taught me to tread lightly when it comes to Brett jokes, but now that he is playing for the Vikings, I'm safe.

Brett Favre. Farrrv. Just saying.

Sports on TV in October and November (excluding cycling worlds): you can kiss my ass.

Tri Club Championships

2010-09-20T02:51:00.000-07:00

10 Triathletes swam 600m, biked 24K and ran 7.5K for yesterday's club championships.

Swim: the water was dangerously cold and we almost decided to cut the swim down to "across-the-lake-and-back" but no one wanted to be the one to declare openly that they were worried about the swim.

I don't know what the water temperature was, but apparently the Danish triathlon federation doesn't allow open water swims in water colder than 15 degrees Celsius (59F) and this was colder! 20 yards into the swim, I panicked. The water was so cold my face hurt. The wetsuit felt so tight that I was afraid of suffocating.

I breaststroked the first half of the swim in dead last. Then, I slowly got used to it and was able to crawl some. However, in the dark water and, presumably, because of the cold, I had no sense of direction and couldn't hold a straight line.

Finished the swim in 8th place (third to last). Rikke, who normally swims as fast as the Girl, swam even more zig-zaggy than me and got way off course. I should mention that the Girl swam very fast and finished 4th or 5th, a few minutes ahead of me.

The Bike: drafting was allowed, so I sprinted up from the swim to see if I could make up some time on the transition. Stig, who normally races a spacecraft-like TT bike had had a flat tire before the race, so he was on his wife's road bike. He was coming out of the transition just 30 seconds before me, and I eventually was able to get onto his wheel. I passed the Girl on the way up to Stig and yelled at her to get on my wheel. She was at her limit at that point, though, and couldn't get on.

Stig and I rode most of the bike leg together, although he drifted back a ways on the last section, which included a lot of hills. Runners like hills on bikes; that's just how it is.

The run went really well, as I caught a couple of people and ended up in third place. All in all, a great race, followed by a nice grill-out. The kids were along and another family also had kids, so they all played together. Good times.

Panic attacks

2010-09-13T13:08:00.001-07:00

I should be thankful for what I have. But, like so many other things in life, everything is relative.

Life is good. It really is. We had a great weekend; I went for a run with Natali, initiated by her! She had this loop scoped out that she wanted to run 10 times. I don't know how far it was, maybe 1.5 miles total. She took walking breaks and didn't really want me close by. I ran around her, looking at her form and her walk-run strategy.

Then after our outing, she conned money out of me by doing little paid-for chores around the house. The Girl was out swimming, biking and running (I think she did all three) and I was trying to get the house ready for a friend's vists. I was getting bugged with the Lorax, so I paid Natti good money to take him down to the playground. Then, when she had made her money, she rode her bike the half mile into the old town and browsed the stores for a few hours.

She is doing so well. And yet, the panic is there. I revel in the nostalgia that will ensue once she is gone. Walking home through the old town Friday night, the wind was cool and the sun was setting over the roof tops. The first leaves were starting to fall. I told her "just think that this is the first day of fall and there will never be another first day of fall, when you are 9 and we're walking together like this". Completely sappy; she didn't buy it.

The thing is, I don't know if she is leaving next year or not, and I don't deal with that uncertainty well.

Then I panic about the responsibility. I missed a class meeting for the parents. It was listed online on an intranet I never check. Instead, I got a message from her teacher, recapping the events of the meeting - and reminding me to wrap her books. Which I still haven't done, and that was 2 weeks ago.

Her teeth are very crooked and she's supposed to get called in to see the orthodontist soon. But I don't know if I even want them to start working on her, if she will be back in the US next year. She is very aware of her crooked teeth, maybe because one of her front teeth reaches half way across the other. She wants braces now, and it frustrates me now know what to about it.

All this parenting stuff may sound so simple, like "get a clue" simple. Sometimes patients will describe how hard it is for them to get to appointments, and I generally have zero compassion. But this is kind of the same thing; a world where I have few skills, no experience and no confidence. I should just suck it up, get her that orthodontist appointment, wrap her books, anticipate that next meeting. And show up with homemade brownies.

Not that I am a bad dad. Natali proudly called me the coolest dad in her class; said that all the girls think I'm cool and funny. I had her at 26, which is very young for Denmark, and longterm student types do tend to stay hip. Ahem. No adult would ever call me hip, but these kids are delightfully unrefined.

Work is all right. Just all right. Again, I don't like the uncertainty; I don't know where this fellowship will take me. I don't have a dream job in mind. Working with critically ill or dying patients all the time is taxing. I have a weekly clinic day, where I see two or three new patients, who have been referred with a new blood cancer diagnosis. It's just a few patients, so it's not a lot of work; but the conversations drain me. They come in in profound crises, in packs of four or five, with daughters who are nurses or doctors. Sometimes, I feel like I'm about to pass out when I am done; after a few hard conversations, I collapse in my office with a candy bar for 10 minutes before I can venture out again.

Medicine in Denmark has pros and cons; overall, I'm glad we are eventually moving back to the US. I feel that, here, I'm just a cog in a big machine. The machine generally does a good job, but it's frustrating being unable to make a visible difference. This is compounded by hematology being a specialty, where the work-up for each disease is largely set in stone, even before the patient comes to the clinic.

I used to have this dream, if you can call it that, that I would be the type of hematologist that told patients his cell phone number. I thought I would say "here's my cell phone number; don't abuse it, but if panic sets it, you can use it". In the US, that would work wonders. But here, if someone called me at home on a Saturday, I would have no way of helping. All I could do would be to tell them to call the on-call hematologist or the hospital floor.

I'm happily married to a wonderwoman - who just happens to have the most stressful job in the universe. I don't know how she got duped into running her gargantuan study, but she did, and there's no other option than to tough it out. Tough it out for both of us, that is. We desperately need more time toghether, but none is on the horizon. I still dream about our 5 days in Duluth this summer. Best five days of the year, despite the Girl's miscarriage...

I mean, it could be worse. I'm on call right now, and will get home tomorrow before noon. Then we're running a 20-miler together on the trails. Yes, it could be a lot worse. I guess I had hoped there'd be more family dinners and quiet evenings watching a movie. But the Girl is constantly stressed out about her project; she would think of those things as a waste of time. This sometimes leads to evenings, where I'm a single parent of two, while she either exercises or works in her nearby office.

Oh, how I whine. The 30 people physically nearest to me right now (not counting the nurses) suffer from frightening nothing-is-ever-going-to-be-the-same blood disorders. If I one a loved one became that sick, we would pray and beg to have our blessed lives back.

Everything is fine. Relatively speaking.

Blogging blasts from the past

2010-09-07T00:30:00.000-07:00

I just got through readng a few months worth of blog posts from the fall of 2006. This turned out to be downright eye-opening. I completely forgot how a friend was going to set me up on a date with this woman I knew from the hospital; I think she was a nurse, or maybe in training to be an NP. I do vaguely remember what she looked like, and that I was disappointed that the date never materialized. Weird; I remember every minor crush and romance up until I met my ex-wife.

In fact, a lot of the stuff that happened in 2006 seems to have been erased from my memory. I describe in my old blog how I had to be the ice-breaker between my ex-wife's family and her lesbian girlfriend at Thanksgiving dinner. I, again, don't remember that at all. I do remember being supremely popular in my ex-wife's family after the news of our divorce broke. Classic Al Gore effect. Reading about that time, I am very happy I got out in one piece.

I did copy one post, whih broke my heart a little:

INSIDE DAUGHTER'S HEAD (October 2006)

What can be gleaned from this photo? Well, the setting looks like a low-budget early eighties kitchen counter-top. A few items can be seen, including a bottle of vegetable oil and a bottle of cola. These are of the brand "Great Value", which means the owner is poor, cheap or both. Or maybe he just likes Walmart and its practices.

The attention then turns to a hand pump by the brand Bell. This is another low-budget acquisition. A needle can be seen; the owner is likely a volleyball, soccer or basketball player as well as a biker. He must have a wicked six-pack.

A bisected piece of paper can be seen as well. The piece of paper advertises Levoxyl, a thyroid hormone. Clearly, this guy has few moral principles, since he accepts gifts from drug reps. There is a drawing on the piece of paper by the hands of a 5-year old girl. It depicts her parents. They were meant to hold hands in the picture, but they no longer live together; that's why she cut it in two pieces. She told her dad that she felt is was her mom's fault; that's why the mom piece is wet.

Yes, she tried drowning her mom.

Sometimes I just don't know what to say.

I clearly remember the little drawing. In fact, I think I still have it somewhere. It's easy to forget how traumatic divorces are for kids. And for adults, too, if there are kids involved.

My relationship with my ex-wife has been fairly solid since the break-up, but we continue to argue about the kids and about money. I have blogged about this before, of course. Right now, we are playing a high-stakes game of chicken. We are planning a trip to Disney World in December, since I have a conference in Orlando at that time. I'm working in the ER in Wisconsin in November, so I plan on picking up Andreas, my son, before flying to Orlando. But Natali won't see her mom until the spring, if we don't figure out a way for her to fly via Wisconsin. To figure out a way to make all those tickets work out has been near-impossible. And natually it will be more expensive to have Natali fly via Wisconsin to Orlando than straight to Orlando.

After we put in the hours of searching for tickets, I asked my ex-wife to pay for some of Natali's ticket and she has refused. That was two weeks ago and we haven't communicated since.

I worry about this; my ex has an expectation that I will always be the one responsible for getting the kids back and forth. That I will always come to La Crosse in the summer, because that used to be our home. I have asked her before if this expectation will continue, once we move back, because we will not move to La Crosse. Even if we live in Madison, just two hours from La Crosse, sharing the kids will require tmie and energy spent on both sides and I think the burden should be shouldered equally.

It will probably all work out and the kids will grow up healthy, though slightly scarred and bruised. These worries about the kids may seem so minuscule in a few years.

And that's why I love blogging. I'll read this post in ten years and remember things and thoughts long forgotten. My old blog - now closed for eternity to the public - was so nakedly honest that it attracted a much larger readership, much like the Girl's does blog now. This blog will, hopefully, lead a quiet existence for many years to come.

Ten ways to piss me off

2010-09-05T13:34:00.000-07:00

1. Say "it's all in the chart". I know it's probably all in the chart; actually, it's not ALL in the chart. Just answer the damn question.

2. Interrupt your sick mother or father, by saying what you think they are trying to say. Especially if we are talking about the serious stuff, like end of life care. Along that line, say "of course you want everything done, right dad? If there's even a little chance you could make it through, wouldn't that be worth a month in the hospital? Dad, are you listening?"

3. Show me your list of questions at the very end of the encounter, when I'm about to do the "ok, I'll see you in a few weeks"-spiel. Lists are fine, but please reveal them up front.

4. Show me any kind of pill. They all look the same to me.

5. Mention names of other doctors at other hospitals, when describing your health odyssey. Most people have an odd sense that they have been seen by the finest physicians in the universe, up to the point of having to endure a half-studied rube such as myself.

6. Say "oh yeah" stupidly, like you've so been there, at the wrong time, interrupting me. Example: "your mom is very sick. It's not really one organ that's sick. It's the way her electrolytes are out of whack; the way she is increasingly confused, and her blood pressure and heart rate are coming up and down; I think she is dying." Daughter says, "oh yeah" after "electrolytes", like she's been eyeballing that potassium for a few days and she figured it looked pretty ominous.

7. Talk about chronic stuff, when I'm asking about your acute illness. It's going to be a long day, when I ask a guy with a fever if he has been coughing, and he talks about his battle with bronchitis in May of 2001. Trick for med students and junior docs: when you see a tangent like the above coming, start examining the patient and ask "does this hurt?", while looking worried. Works every time.

8. Talk while I listen to your heart or lungs. And when I politely say "hold that thought, let me just have a quick listen", say something like "oh yeah! I guess you can't hear anything when I talk. That reminds me of the time..."

9. Breathe in but not out when I listen to your lungs. What is the deal with that? Most people get it, when I say "in and out" pointedly a few times, and yet some persist in holding their breath. I actually breathe along with patients, a la the way you open your mouth when you feed a baby, which makes it even more painful for me.

10. Ask "so what do they think is wrong with mom?". They? What do I look like? Ok, so I look like a balding, fidgety version of this guy, but still.

Otherwise, I'm, pretty easy to get along with.

Perfect day with Natali

2010-09-02T21:38:00.000-07:00

The good thing about working as many nights as I do, is that I get a lot of weekdays off. I love those days.

On said days, I get up before anyone else to prepare breakfast; my monster commute has taught my body to be up at 6am, so sleeping till 7 is a luxury for me. On good days, I make pancakes and eggs; yesterday was a good day. We sit as a family and eat until Natali has to go to school.

On days when I'm at work, she bikes to school on her own. I have never been entirely comfortable with this; she goes through the hospital, where the rules of driving and yielding aren't exactly set in stone. So when I'm home, I bike with her to school before biking the Lorax over to his daycare.

I love riding through town in the morning, especially on a fall day like yesterday. I go through the old town, where cars are either discouraged or entirely banned. A few shopkeepers are setting up their wares and delivery trucks are idling on some of the main thoroughfares, but mostly the Lorax and I have city our humming selves. He points at sizeable cars and goes through a mini-seizure of excitement if he spots a semi truck or a bus.

Yesterday, the weather was perfectly crisp and clear. After dropping off the kids, I enjoyed my second breakfast (leftovers from the morning's feast) and took off on a two-hour run in the woods. Got back, looked at some work briefly and took a long nap.

The above describes many of my days off. I generally think of this time in our lives as a "rough patch", every day yearning for a better time. Surely, I will move on to different jobs at different hospitals and will one day wear a sports coat with gold buttons. But I may never have days off like these; crisp, cool fall days with the Girl and the kids in little Næstved.

And yesterday was even better than the average day off. The Girl was headed to Copenhagen for a 5K relay. The Lorax loves trains and came along for the trip, leaving Natti and me to enjoy a father-daughter afternoon evening. A perfect father-daughter evening consists of this:

- Getting her ears pierced. She has been begging to have this done for years, and this was the night. Boy, was she nervous beforehand and, boy, was she glowing and self-important when it was over. All night, I watched her smugly feel her earlobes, just to make sure the little diamond studs were still there.

- Renting Sunny With a Chance of Meatballs. It was ok.

- Eating huge greasy burgers from a little place we haven't gone to before. Eating them in front of the TV. Having so many fries that we didn't even fight over them.

- Presenting her with her new phone. The Girl destroys her phone every so often, so she will inherit Natali's old phone, while Natali gets this new one. This new phone is a smart phone-ish thing that didn't cost very much.

- After an evening like this, she will be eating out of my hand for days.

Half Ironman race report - It's all about muscles

2010-08-24T11:03:00.000-07:00

My season of doing only low-key, odd-distance races continues. Looking back, has a 5K in Carlton, MN, really been the only race at a commonly accepted distance? Almost.

This was my first half Ironman, and it wasn't even a whole half. It was 1000m-76K-20K, so all the distances were slightly amputated. Still, it was pretty close to a half IM and that's what we have called it.

The swim went well. I have trained sporadically in the pool for a few years now, going from barely being able to crawl a lane to barely being able to crawl through a triathlon. The swim was over pretty quickly without incident. The Girl started 30 seconds behind me and, of course, passed me with a few hundred meters to go. Chicked. Still, I went a little faster than I had expected, so all was good.

I got really dizzy after the swim and almost couldn't stand up after getting out of the pool. A volunteer guided me back towards the pool, as though I had to swim another 500 meters; I didn't realize what was going on before the guy in front of me jumped into the pool. The volunteer then said "oh, you just looked so fresh that I assumed you were only half way". I must be able to hide my disequilibrium well.

The bike leg was interesting in that drafting was allowed. I tagged on to a guy, who seemed like a very capable rider on an exceedingly capable tri bike. After a K or so, we took a wrong turn, and the guy got off his bike to yell at the volunteers at the confusing intersection. We had just passed the Girl, and once I got back on course I passed her again. She was looking pretty capable, herself, with her fancy tri skinsiut, new helmet and new tribars. She had even bought that kind of handlebar bottle that you can drink from without getting out of aero, but opted out of using it. She looked 90% pro gazelle and 10% female Fred.

Many men were jealous of me that day.

But, anyway, the capable guy was gone (into a fit of rage, apparently). But up ahead was another guy, who seemed to be going my pace. I surged up to him and ended up riding the entire leg with him. If you ever read this, Claus Busk Andersen, thanks for letting me draft of you! Claus was a little stronger than me on the bike and rode very consistently. I pulled maybe 25% of the time, Claus pulled 50% of the time, and whoever else was in our group pulled the rest. We passed tons of people of various abilities. At times, guys would try to hold on to our little group, and some even took healthy pulls at the front, but interestingly everyone got dropped sooner or later and after 76K Claus and I finished together. We also got passed, of course, by a few leg-shaving plate-wheeled dudes. These guys go fast! At a point, a train of four such dudes passed us and I wanted to try to hold on to them, but Claus made it clear that it was too fast for him. Too fast for him would spell disaster for me, so we let them drift off. Good move.

This was by far the fastest I have ever ridden 50 miles. The average came out as 31.5kph, but that included the transition, so I imagine it was closer to 33kph. Very happy with that. Little did I know the Girl was breaking into new territory on a bike. She ended up riding at almost 30kph average speed. In windy, hilly, technical conditions. This was actually a pretty slow course. Holy shit! It's been almost to the point of me thinking she cut the route short, because I had no idea she could ride that fast. On our club rides, she sometimes gets dropped during the warm-up. What happened here was probably her strong competitive spirit kicking in. She was lucky enough to get passed by a woman soon after I passed her, and simply sucked onto that wheel like a estrongen-bitchy barnacle. Until a better wheel came along, and then she sucked onto that.

Then came the run. I had a shot a top placing (in reality, a top 10) and the girl was fighting for the podium. In all the other triathlons I have done, my running has been fine. After a few K, it's almost like I haven't swum or run at all. Not this time, though. The first K went beautifully, but then my adductors starting cramping up in both legs. I had to stop and the 10 or so runners I had just passed were left wondering if I was about to have a bowel movement or was passing a kidney stone. I honestly thought I had to drop out, but I walked a couple of minutes and slowly the legs started to cooperate. I had my music along, and it helped me get into a comfortable zone. I had to stop a few times with minor cramping but got through. I ran the 20K in 1:29, which was very disappointing. The running reminded me of an ultra-marathon in that cardiovascular fitness becomes secondary to how one's muscles are holding up. While the rest of my body wanted to go faster, my muscles didn't hold up well at all. Hopefully, this gets better when I get a few more ultras/long tris under my belt. Still, running is my forte in a triathlon and I went from 40th to 16th overall. It's not world shattering, but I'm proud of getting 16th out of almost 100 guys. This isn't like getting 16th in a running race with 100 participants, because triathletes tend to be much more serious and fit.

The Girl had a run that was a little less disappointing that mine. It wasn't as fast as I had expected, but even a mediocre Girl is a very fast runner. She went from 7th to 3rd overall, which is insane against a field of hard-core triathletes. After her miscarriage, she has hit a vein of form that could yield a few PRs this fall. She has a trail marathon in two weeks (I work that day, unfortunately); if it's not too technical, she could even PR there.

She is hard to coach but she is doing some of the things I have been trying to teach her, like taking easy days. She is strong and toned and has gained a few pounds of muscle. It's almost to the point where she cares less about her weight and more about looking good in a trisuit...

Big Engine - No Skills

2010-08-16T10:04:00.000-07:00

Tried my first bike race yesterday. I have ridden a little in packs of up to 10 riders but never in competition. This race was a laidback citizen's race, ie. the slowest type of pack racing one can find. There were just a few guys with shaved legs and lots of excess subq to be seen.

I had been told that these races often break up into smaller packs almost immediately and I had planned on going with the second-fastest group. I figured that the second group would work together fluently, whereas the very front group would see the guys attacking each other for the win.

But the pack of maybe 80 riders stayed together. I sat in the way back, unsure of what to do. The pace went unpredictably from fast so the pack would string out, to slow so everyone would have to hit the brakes.I saw tires rubbing and a few guys having to ride on the loose-gravel shoulder; both made me nervous. I tried to be the very last guy, but this is harder to control than it sounds. A few times, I found myself with a guy on both sides leaning into sharp turns, completely unsure of which line to take, but hoping it would be the same as theirs. Scary.

Thankfully, people started falling off the back. Some would go out to the side and stop pedalling, to signal that they had to drop back. Some, however, would try to hold on to the very bitter end, so a gap of a few yards would open up. It was hard to gauge who was truly being dropped and who simply let a little gap form. In any case, whenever someone dropped off, I would pass them and sprint back up to the field.

This was fun and exhilirating stuff. This kind of knife's edge racing is not like a running race at all. A few times, a chunk of the pack would fall off together and a few (including me) had to bridge back up. It's a cool feeling of digging deep, being completely out of breath, and then getting back into the shelter of the pack.

We had gotten to a point, maybe 25 miles in, where the pack was down to some 35 guys. It had started to feel like we had shed the weaker riders. I saw no beer bellies in front of me and no one seemed like they were working insanely hard just to sit in. I drank a little from my water bottle, which meant having to fall back 10 yards before I dared look down to get the bottle. I had also had great plans for a Powerbar but it didn't seem realistic at the time.

Then suddenly on a little uphill, the pack broke in two. The gap formed very quickly. On TV, it looks so easy to find space in a pack but in real life, you have to worry about traffic (the course was open to traffic in both directions) and all the other riders, who were standing up pumping on the uphill. It took a little too long to see that the split was real and permanent, and by the time I got past the slower pack, it had grown to maybe 70 yards or so. I stared sprinting, hoping some of the guys would come with me to lend a hand. One guy came along and this happened to be one of my attendings from the department. We tried for a long time to bridge the gap but they were going really fast in front. I was hoping for a sharp turn, which always slows down and stretches out the pack, but none came.

We sat there for a good 3 or 4K and got as close as 30 yards from the back of the pack. Frustratingly close, of course, but we just couldn't close the gap. We decided to wait for the next group but they had fallen so far back they were out of sight. We rode on alone for a little while, until we noticed we had gotten off course. Long story short is that we found the course, but at the wrong place and decided to drop out.

Imagine sitting with a heart rate of 200, in your first bike race, all senses hyperacute. And then 5 minutes later, you're lost and out of the race.

Looking back, a smart move would have been to sit near the front of the pack. But, then again, I don't have the pack-riding skills and I would put myself and others at risk. After the race, people were commenting on the size of the pack. In some races, they send off riders in packs of 20 with 2-minute intervals. This seems like a safer option to me.

All in all, a fun day, especially talking about the race afterwards. Biking is a little more wild and adventurous than running, and the tales were a little taller.

The Girl did really well and rode around 18 mph on average. She had some minor mishaps including a little detour, but she also had a fun day. We'll have to do more of them, preferrable the ones with a staggered start.

Summer Vacation

2010-08-08T06:30:00.001-07:00

Three weeks is a long time to be gone from one's normal life. It feels like we're different people - jetlagged, different people.

I'll offer a few impressions as a full account would be unrealistic.

The Lorax loves his grandparents. He loves seeing cars and trucks and trains and airplanes. Best of all, he loves to sit alone in "Gampa's car" erotically stroking all the buttons. He loves his brother, whom he sees for a week every few months. In fact, he does everything his older brother does, which is cute, comical and a little annoying to his brother. He is at a wonderfully impressionable age, where he is still young enough not to be embarrassed by anything.

Coming off a rollercoaster at Great America, he exclaimed (in translation) "dangerous train. Fun. Not the end". Sitting in a lazy boat ride, an attendant was swatting at a fly, and he waved back with a big smile, because he loves the world and it loves him back.

Andreas, my 6(almost 7)-year old son, expresses his emotions differently. We had some good times, but I am nothing but a pleasant distraction in his life. He thinks of me as his dad only because he has grown up with no other meaning to the word. He is so easily distracted that I worry that he has ADD. It's impossible to ask him a question and get a straight answer. I will ask about whether summer school is done, and he volunteers information about a superhero he just drew. As we were saying goodbye, he seemed completely unaware that I would disappear again for months. Still, we had some good times. He seems pretty happy with his life and is doing better in school.

Natali stayed the whole summer with her mom. She adores her new step-sisters and the best night of the whole summer was when they biked to Kwik Trip to get candy and stayed up till 3 am. She didn't do much while in La Crosse and seems to accept that she is back in Denmark for another year.

The best moments for me all occured in Duluth. For a little background, I lived in Duluth for a year when I was 20. I love the town, Lake Superior, the North Shore and the feeling of being at the edge of the world. That's where I met my first wife but we only visited Duluth for day trips over the years.

It's been a dream for me to move to Duluth (or Marquette, but for people who know both towns, they have many things in common). Duluth has such a cool history; it used to be bigger than it is now, which means it has a surprisingly regal downtown and very little sprawl. The geography is unique and reminds me of La Crosse. La Crosse is squeezed in between the river and the bluffs with zero room to expand. Duluth has expanded from the lake shore beyond the hills but there is the same feeling that geography played a commanding part in city planning.

We stayed at the William S Burrows Bed and Breakfast. We were supposed to stay in Duluth for just two days but because of the miscarriage and the fact that we forgot our passports, we ended up staying there five days. One day, there was a roaring storm sweeping in from the range. We were driving back from Gooseberry Falls, where the Girl had biked (having just run Voyageur) and I had run 20 miles on the trails. The rain got heavier; we needed some food and I got completely soaked springting from the car to Super One. We spent the afternoon in bed, from where we could see a sliver of Lake Supoerior out of the open windows. Best afternoon ever.

I thought I had the Girl convinced that Duluth is, indeed, the perfect place to live. But no, she says it's too cold. Besides, the chance that the two hospitals up there will be looking for an ophthalmologist and a hematologist in the same time frame is very slim. But one can dream, right?

US traffic. Hmm. Americans are nice people and this is reflected in their driving. My commute to and from Copenhagen is a war on wheels. In and out of the passing lane, letting faster cars by, while trying not to be slowed down by slower cars. I have gotten used to this kind of traffic and suddenly I'm on I-94/I-90 and people are passing each other insanely slowly. One semi is going 66 mph and a guy is going 68 (both on cruise, no doubt). Why should he be bothered to speed up when passing, just because there are ten cars waiting behind him? No one gets mad, beeps or flashes headlights like they do in Denmark. I used to have a one hour commute in the US and I never noticed this stuff before! By the end of the trip, I had wound down and didn't get bothered by it anymore, although I still noticed it. I had the same experience in grocery stores, where the lines aren't necessarily longer than in Denmark (often, they are much shorter) but the pace is toe-curlingly slow. Danes? They get bitchy and yell for more registers to open. Americans? They pick up a gossip magazine and leaf through it.

Wildlife in Wisconsin and Minnesota. The Girl pointed this one out. Everywhere we went, there were bunnies, deer, squirrels, foxes, insects, birds and fish. The forests were so thick you could see no further than 20 feet into them. It sounds like millions of crickets, birds and frogs are screaming at each other. Stopping to pee on the Superior Hiking Trail, I kept getting the feeling that tentacles would come out of the thick brush and attack my penis, possibly dragging me into the undergrowth to smother me. Neither of us had been aware of this difference before and we agreed that it had to be due to the fact that Denmark is so much farther north than Wisconsin.

Health care in the US. Contrary to what you may read and hear, the health care that the average American enjoys is far superior to what I see in Denmark. Far superior. The cost is much higher in absolute dollars and percentage of GDP, of course, but I'm strictly talking about the quality of care. The Girl and I came in to the ER in Duluth and, within an hour, got an ultrasound done. Within two hours, the result of the beta-HCG was called to us. In terms of outcomes, one could argue that both are unneccesary, and the Girl proved this by passing several big clots within a few hours. In terms of peace of mind, however, the approach was excellent, since we knew what had happened and what was to come.

Funny moment in the ER. The ER doc had a medical student with her. They were both nervous, as providers always are when they treat other providers. The Girl talked about the 50 mile race that she had just done, and the medical student later returned with an abstract from a Danish study showing that running in pregnancy is safe. The Girl may be the person in the world who has read the most studies about exercise in pregnancy and knew this study quite well, so for a while she forgot about the miscarriage and talked about one of her favorite topics.

Watching Voyageur is way more fun than running it! I remembered last year's suckfest vividly, as I served as manservant to the Girl. She took it pretty easily but was still crabby enough to yell at me for being to talkative. A great time, all in all. This year, I was also able to enjoy the post-race dinner and meet some interesting people.

We met Steve Quick and Helen Lavin for a run in St. Paul. It was weird, to say the least, at first, to be so full of preconceptions about them and yet meet them for the first time. It turned out to be a genuinely good time and it would be great to get to know them better. The big question for me before the encounter was to find out more about the enigma known as Steve Quick. In non-blogging life, I am known for gross exaggerations woven into my generally truthful stories. I sensed some of the same in Steve Quick, like when he told us that Basque separatists got so sick of him in the basement of an undisclosed Dutch museum that they paid for his trip back to the US. All told with a wink and a smirk, of course.

The food. I got to run a ton and still gained four pounds. I attribute this to being on the road so much. We ate out more than daily compared to bi-weekly in Denmark. I'm hoping it'll come off easily.

And now we are back. This trip resembled what we did last summer but it will be the last of its kind. If Natali truly is summoned back to Wisconsin next year, we'll spend the summer seeing Europe. By that time, it'll be high time for us to move back, too, and a good old-fashioned European vacation would seem in order. Natali wants to go north to Sweden and Norway. We shall see.

Flashes of our vacation

2010-07-27T19:09:00.000-07:00

It's been a roller-coaster. Everyone reading this has already read the Girl's blog so they know what happened to her pregnancy. The last two days have had lows and, surprisingly, some good highs. One develops a morbid sense of humor on a day like yesterday and we both laughed when the Girl pointed out the fact that the remains of our would-be baby ended up in a trashcan outside Duluth Running Company.

I'm far from an obstetrician and the times I have dealt with pregnant ladies in the ER, I try to get them out to a "higher level of care" as soon as I can, ie. as far away from me as possible. My skills go as far as to do an exam to see if the cervix is open and the lab can check to see if there is amniotic fluid in the discharge, meaning that the water has broken. So I have never, not even as a student, seen a spontaneous abortion in progress. The Girl, as it turned out, had been carrying a non-vital embryo for weeks, although the pregnancy hormones were still quite elevated and she certainly had a lot of symptoms of pregnancy. I can't claim to understand this, actually, but that's the working diagnosis.

So she actually had to deliver this little 4mm sac, in a way. With back cramps and everything, she passed several clots over the day, each of which was inspected by us both. Sometimes knowing a little is worse than knowing nothing, as when we looked at a hard little seed, that had the shape and feeling of a scaled-down grain of rice. Could this be it? If so, it blew off the Girl's finger and now rests near Big Manitou Falls south of Superior, WI. But her cramps continued, and as I was looking at my fat, hairy legs in a pair of Sugoi running shorts in Duluth Running Co, the Girl passed the above-mentioned clot. In Danish, she briefly let me know what was going on and we went outside to play embryo pathologists. The ultrasonographer had told us that the actual remnants of the embryo, and who knows if there was ever a viable embryo per se, would be 1mm in size. We found nothing and dumped the clot in a trashcan. Miraculously, and this is the part of the story I have working up to, the Girl felt completely normal. No backpain, no cramping. Within the hour, her little potbelly disappeared and we even think her face changed a little from some swelling disappearing.

Okay, so we dealt with it through a very mechanistic lens. We already have the Lorax so we know we can make normal babies. This one just wasn't going to happen.

But out vacation has been other things than losing babies.

I taught my son, Andreas, how to ride a bike. After two frustrating hours of me trying every trick I could think of, he suddenly got it. Now, we have cruised around Riverside Park in La Crosse so many times that he knows every landmark there and comments on them. I run behind him with a broomstick stuck attached behind his seat. I save his life every quarter mile or so, but the saves are becoming less frequent and less impressive. It's our thing now; he even talks to me on the phone up here in Duluth, which he never did before. I can't wait to take him out again on friday, when we get back to La Crosse.

I ran a 5K race in 16:32 on a super hot night. The winner, Sammy Korir, ran more than two minutes faster... Still, I was happy with my time. A group of fast people showed up and I was actually in 6th place for most of the race. Did get into fourth with a half mile to go and was closing in on the Duluth Running Co guy in third. Didn't quite get up to him but the dead embryo in his trashcan should teach him a lesson.

Vacation!

2010-07-17T14:06:00.000-07:00

We're off to a summer vacation to Wisconsin, Minnesota and Thunder Bay, Canada. We're not working at all, so it's a rare three weeks with nothing on the agenda but to enjoy ourselves.

Of course, our vacations aren't really what you consider normal. There's always drama when we come to town. I expect my son to bond with me more than he does, and he gets overwhelmed with having his dad in town, spoiling him for a precious few days. It usually leaves him moody and ill-behaved and doesn't bring us any closer. This time around, I want to teach him how to ride a bike. I remember teaching Natali when she was 5; she was a slow learner but finally came around.

My son, Andreas, is almost 7 and very tall for his age. He still can't ride a bike for unknown reasons. My ex-wife says she has tried to teach him but that he is just too scared. I see it as a sign that he is left immature in this and other ways, because he has no dad; this makes me feel guilty. I also see it as a sign that my ex-wife has too much going on in her life to spend the time teaching him how to ride a bike. He isn't in any sports either and has no close friends. This annoys me, but there is nothing I can do about it.

We talk about the kids, and invariably end up fighting. I bring up the unfairness of having to pay exorbitant child support and she threatens me with not letting Natali spend the next year in Denmark. I consider the implications of an all-out war between us: we have shared custody but she is designated the primary parent, even to Natali, who has lived with me this last year. I would have to stay in Wisconsin for the court proceedings for the tiny chance of getting a judge to let me get custody of one or both of them.

I don't want that at all. I don't to fight and I would lose, anyway.

We are actually caught in a weird detente. I pay generous child support; generous even if she had both kids living with her. Wísconsin child support actually thinks Natali is staying with her. So I don't bitch about the child support and she lets me keep Natali. If she were to open up the war, her child support would certainly be reduced; whereas I would lose Natali, should I fire the first shot.

This makes it sound like we hate each other. Quite the contrary, actually, but these cimcumstances are so hard to deal with that there is bound to be ample disagreement.

So, yeah, not a normal vacation. The Girl and I are taking one week away from all three kids, though. Yes, that's right. My mother-in-law, thankfully, has more than a thing for her Danish-speaking, blond grandson and has offered to watch him for a whole week! It's insanely sweet; and this is where Minnesota and Thunder Bay come in. Just the two of us, feeling young and unburdened. The best part, of course, will be coming back to the kids when it's all over, but the second-best part is us alone for a whole week.

The running is going well. I have been doing intervals and feel smooth, light and fast. It's not a PR-setting shape at all. More like the kind of shape where running is fun. I'll be pacing the pregnant Girl at Voyageur next weekend. Well, maybe not pacing per se. More like taking pictures of her and trying to not get in her way; she hates it when I run with her during races. Probably, my main task will be to get her to take it easy. For all her running-in-pregnancy bravado, she isn't planning on racing hard - but may need to be reminded once the gun goes.

And boy am I glad I am not racing. I think my range may reach as high as 50 miles in the next few years but not yet. Voyageur was terrible for me last year, so, instead, I'll do the 5K fun run the night before.

Welcome back, intervals

2010-06-27T09:01:00.000-07:00

My running seems to be getting nowhere.

Last week, we ran a marathon that was supposed to be a training run and I ended up dropping out. I ran the first half in 1:26, which turned out to be too fast. I think the problem was that I had expected to easily finish in the top 3, based on last year's times. It was won in 3:02 last year, but this year the winner came in in 2:44. Not sure what happened there.

Anyway, I got really nauseated at 30K and couldn't run anymore. The legs still felt ok, but things just weren't passing through my stomach anymore and I decided to quit. I used the same nasty gels that I used at the Copenhagen marathon, where I got stomach cramps, so I have promised myself never to use them again.

Overall, the picture is clear, bad gels or not. This spring, I have run a 50K and three marathons about a month apart. I tapered for each one and they all left me too sore to run for a week afterwards. The first race, Hells Hills, went really well. The next, Copenhagen Ultra (I just ran the marathon), also went really well (2:50 without really trying). Then the Copenhagen Marathon didn't go well (2:49 while really trying) and this last one just plain sucked. The overall picture is that I need to train more and race less.

The good news is that I have a decent base and I'm 95% injury free. My right ankle still bugs me a little but it feels like it will abate on its own. So, starting tonight, I'm doing two interval sessions a week.

I don't have any big races coming up. Sometimes, it's nice just to be able to concentrate on training.

Natali

2010-06-15T14:28:00.001-07:00

Natali is almost at the end of her first school year here in Denmark. She has come a long way from the first day I brought her to school and all the girls stared at her. I told the class that she could understand a lot of Danish, but couldn't speak much, because she had lived abroad for so long. They stared some more.

And she was different from them in other ways. They are almost all blondes, and the ones who aren't are still of much fairer complexion than her. Mind you, she doesn't get her melanocytes from me. She also dressed differently with her jean shorts, t-shirt and flip-flops. Her hair was short and rarely, if ever, organized or combed and she never wore (or wears) two matching socks. The girls in her class wore very expensive fashion-conscious outfits.

Her first few weeks were tough and she took a nap on a couch in school on two occasions, because trying to fit in was so taxing. She simply lay down to sleep, because it was a way for her to get away for a little bit. But thankfully her Danish kicked in very quickly and she inched her way into a trial membership of a group of girls.

Natali weighs a little bit too much; she has always been a little heavy but gained a few dangerous pounds during the divorce. But she carries it well and certainly didn't stick out in her school in La Crosse. In Denmark, her weight is something the girls comment on, sometimes to be mean, sometimes simply because it's something to talk about.

I worried about the girls teasing her; but it didn't turn out that way at all. I think her accent helped a lot, and the fact that she could sing along with the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus. The accent disappeared quickly but she is still able to throw in an unusually constructed sentence to seem exotic. She is not a great singer but when I asked one of her friends how music class was, she said that Natali was, of course, the best singer in her class. Amazing. She even composed a rap song about how people shouldn't call her Natali but Natty (Natty is very un-Danish), and people made their own versions of that song.

So, to my surprise, my little poorly dressed pot-bellied daughter became supremely popular in school. She pressed her luck by asking Simon to be her boyfriend; she was turned down immediately by email. A few boys made fun of her, but the girls stood by her.

She is still bothered by the fact that we live in an apartment, as opposed to her friends' big houses by the river. She begs us to buy a house in the neighborhood by the school, so she can walk over to her friends' houses to gossip and jump on the trampoline. Even though she is popular, she is still different from the other kids, and they are all very aware of it. Right now, my ex-wife has only allowed me to keep Natali here until the summer of 2011 (which is sooner than we plan on moving back, so there is a shock waiting on the horizon), and Natali talks about this with her friends. Even though it's more than a year away, she worries about having to leave and told me the other day that she wants to stay in touch with everyone on Facebook.

Lately, I have worked a lot of nights. When I leave, Natali often breaks down in tears and cries herself to sleep in bed, because I am not there. Not that she doesn't like the Girl, but they are more like friends than mother-daughters. I read the Hobbit to her these days (or, actually, she reads it to me). We lie in bed and whoever is not reading gets hair rub from the other. It's heavenly quality time but when it's over, she wants me to tuck her in and come check on her again and again. It's separation anxiety to the extreme, brought on by the divorce and the constant changes that followed.

She leaves for a long summer in la Crosse in less than two weeks. Her first trip as an unaccompanied minor, from Copenhagen to Chicago, where her mom will pick her up. when we went back in March, she loved her new step-sisters and had a great time. She didn't want to return to Denmark and cried for days, because she missed her mom so much. I worry about how she will feel after 6 weeks.

I worry about her about her in so many ways every day but she also brings me so much joy in life. I often think of how wonderful it is to have a 9-year old daughter and be able to see the world through her eyes. I worry about her, feel gut-wrenchingly guilty about my son in La Crosse, and feel confident that, no matter what, the Lorax will turn out okay.

The Evils of Screening

2010-06-04T23:56:00.000-07:00

The other day, the Girl wanted to try her fancy ophthalmology equipment on me, before unleashing it on the population of Southern Zealand. She checks vision and refraction with a fancy machine, checks for strabismus and color blindness and then takes a photo of the retina. I cruised through the first parts of the exam and was diagnosed with perect vision and refraction. Ahh. Of course I knew that doctors are immune to illness, but confirmation is always nice.

Then she took a high-resolution photo of my left retina. No signs of diabetes, hypertension, age-related macular degeneration or other disease. She focused in on my right eye, the blinding flash went off and, almost before I could see again, she exclaimed "huh?". She took another picture to make sure what she was seeing wasn't an artifact, but whatever she had seen was apparent in both photos. She let me walk around to the doctor side of the room and see what had surprised her. There was a little crescent-shaped brown lesion between my optic nerve and my macula. She had no clue what it was, but it wasn't supposed to be there.

The Girl being a lowly resident, I hoped her attendings, including a renowned retinal speicialist, would be able to tell her it was nothing to worry about. Instead, after getting multiple opinions, she told me that it was "most likely not cancer" and that it might be a scar or toxoplasmosis. The advice was for me to get it checked out. How, I asked, followed by a pregnant pause. By getting a new retinal photo in a few months. Good thing I am married to the woman doing a population study using retinal photography, huh?.

Or maybe not. Ironically, I have always told the Girl that she has to worry about the incidental finding on her screening exams. She plans to have a clinic day a week, dedicated to the patients with newly discovered disease. Or at least to the ones with disease beyond the scope of a regular ophthalmologist. It has been a complete unknown how many patients she would have to work up through that clinic, and what problems they will have. Thing is, no one has ever done a study like hers before. Right now, her only patient is me (and my odd lesion that's probably not cancer).

Her study starts on Monday.

Screening for disease is an accepted medical practice in clearly defined areas of medicine. Pap smears, colonoscopies (or at least sigmoidoscopies), cholestoerol and blood pressure screening have solid data behind them. A yearly TSH, checking for thyroid disease, might; I am not sure. The screening exam known as the annual physical exam has no data but is still performed in some parts of the world.

Then we have the controversial modes of screening, PSAs and mammography. Honestly, if one cuts out emotion, these tests would have a place in medicine, but they wouldn't be used in population screening. Some studies have shown no benefit, but considerable harm; others have found a small benefit, but considerable harm.

Screening is a huge industry. Take a woman, who carries a small early cancer that most likely will disappear on its own. Imagine the money involved in the follwing process: first she get s mammogram, where a density is seen. Then, she gets an ultrasound or maybe an MRI. A biopsy shows cancer and a lumpectomy is performed. She may get adjuvant radiation and chemotherapy and almost certainly hormone treatments for five years. That's a lot of money. And, a woman in her 50s with no other health problems, is a perfect patient. She has good insurance, shows up on time, pays her bills and has no annoying questions about other health problems.

Drug companies and makers of medical equipment make tons of money on this. Every time a patient is brought into the sick group, it's a boon for the industry. Most physican opinion leaders are sponsored by these companies and the studies conducted by them are sponsored by the same companies.

Many studies have shown no benefit of PSAs and mammography but, interestingly, people aren't happy to hear this fact. Well, some men are happy they don't have to worry about PSAs (and some aren't), whereas most women all determined to get their mammograms. The typical news release talks about a study showing no benefit, as though the result is controversial. Experts then talk about all the limitations of the study. It's rarely mentioned that the experts are sponsored by the drug companies. Sometimes women, whose "lives were saved" by screening, comment too.

And I think there is the rub. The men and women, who have "been saved", are hard to ignore. Of course, out of a hundred women with minimal cancers at diagnosis, only very few (if any) have been saved statistically. But we can't tell who is who. The 98% of women with parts of their breasts missing, having gone through radiation, chemo and hormone therapy, would have done just fine without their mammograms. Of course, we tell them they have been saved. Who the heck wouldn't say that? I have done that over and over again, myslef, and I'm not sponsored by anyone; it's just human nature to paint an optimistic picture.

Drug companies are everywhere. At my previous department, the makers of the different hormone treatments, came to visit all the time. I should say that chemo and radiation are both pretty cheap, but the hormone treatments, including anti-estrogen therapies, aren't. They bought fancy lunches, paid the attendings well for speaking to patient groups and invited all of us on trips to various conferences. Needless to say, as doctors make less money these days, the companies are very influential. I know an MD/PhD, who works in endocrinology, which is generally not very well paid. I imagine he makes more money doing drug talks than he does working as a doctor. And he is the one making guidelines for the hospital about when to use which drug. He is a nice guy, but does anyone really think he isn't biased?

So we have patient organizations, doctors, hospitals, drug companies and makers of medical equipment all in favor of screening that has minimal or no effect. No politician or even insurance company will dare come out against screening.

Imagine a pill that prevented an occasional cancer. Some studies even showed it prevented no cancers. It had horrible side effects, including severe anxiety, humiliation, pain, the loss of a prostate, impotence and incontinence. And it was supremely expensive. Would that pill ever get approved? Then what is it about PSA screening that makes it acceptable?

I worry about the future. People are getting screened with CT scans, sometimes out of trailers in parking lots. This screens for atherosclerotic heart disease and aortic aneurisms, and a lot of incidental findings better left alone. Every time a diagnosis is made, a work up plan is formulated and a medication is started, someone is making big bank on it. The industry wants people sick; that's just the way it is.

Take a field, where no one is making any money: old folks with multiple medical problems. Care is getting so fragmented that an old patient often sees 6 specialists, who treat "their" organ with disregard for the overall picture. Having been briefly in primary care, I can testify to the fact that being the quarterback on such a patient is impossible. Often, the patient complains of fatigue, pain or general decline. Each specialist points out that their organ is doing well and generally presents an overly optimistic picture to the patient. It takes a brave and skillful family doctor to cut through the clutter, start reducing meds and discuss the fact that old age is cathing up to the patient.

Reimbursement is extremely poor in these complicated old patients, so there is little incentive to improve care. Many folks have miserable deaths, because there was no time and money to formulate a living will or simply have a talk about what the patient's wishes were. A fraction of the cost of screening could sponsor the palliative care programs and multi-disciplinary meetings that are so sorely missing.

Never Again

2010-05-26T07:02:00.000-07:00

At least I stuck with the plan. Came through the half in 1:21.10, so just on track. Came through 30K in 56:50ish, which meant I was starting to slow but still had a sub-39 10K average. Up until this point, I felt inappropriately smug, drafting well, eating well, feeling well. At 30K, had you asked me, I would have said I was ready to speed up.

The slowdown came at 32K. At first, it was stomach cramps, which I have never had before. I was running with a guy, actually leading in the headwind. I had to slow down and told the guy that I was having a crisis and asked if I could sit behind him for a while. There were little ups and downs over the last 10K but, overall, I slowly came apart and got passed by some 20 runners.

Dead man (very close to) walking:

My time was low 2:49, so just a measly 90 seconds faster than my training marathon 4 weeks ago, where I started slowly and ran very negative splits. I kept imagining the ghost of 4 weeks ago, running behind me in that last 10K, passing people while enjoying a huge runner's high. Honestly, had the ghost known about me, he would have caught me.

Where did I go wrong?

1. Started out too fast. I'm probably just not in shape for a 2:42. It sure felt easy but I guess that's no guarantee. Maybe if I had started out running a 1:23 half marathon, I wouldn't have imploded. Too late, I've vowed never to set a goal time in a big city marathon. If a low 2:40s is in my future, it will come off a slowish start and deeply negative splits.

2. New gels. We bought a new kind of gel (Multi-Karbo?) at the expo before the race. BOth flavors (orange and cola) tasted like overly concentrated melted popsicle. The new kind of gel may explain the stomach cramps but not the whole deroute.

3. Weight loss? I lost quite a bit of weight leading up to the race, from stress and lack of time to cook. It surprised me how easy it came off.

4. Training on trails. I haven't run on roads, barely, this whole winter and spring. I love training on trails, but perhaps the pounding of pavement for 2 hours was too much for my spoiled lower extremeties.

The Girl's race has been well-documented on her own blog. I think the pressure got to her, as it got to me. People have been guessing finishing times that were unrealistically low, and she went for such a time. She is fine and is already looking at other races. We will probably do a trail marathon in 4 weeks.

Copenhagen Marathon Preview

2010-05-21T12:25:00.000-07:00

Oh boy. The marathon is getting close. Before most races, I am nervous but also excited. Before this one, I'm nervous and just want to get it over with.

I have raced three marathons in my life and all three have been miserable experiences. I ran the Copenhagen Marathon when I was 22 and 23 in 3:08 and 3:09, as I recall. Both times, I did what young guys often do: started out fast and finished slowly and in pain. The first time wasn't 100% bad, mainly because I didn't know what to expect and that seemed to make the race go by faster. The second time, I remember cramping up in my legs and abdominal muscles after the race, while throwing up. I vowed never to run a marathon again but did, anyway, the same summer. This time, it was the Paavo Nurmi Marathon in Ironwood, MI. Same thing: cramps and vomiting and a promise never to do it again.

Fast forward ten years, and I have run a few ultras with mixed success. This winter/spring, I have even run (but not raced) two marathons, in which I have started out slowly and sped up at the end. This last one was in 2:50.

If only there was another big race after Copenhagen, so I could sandbag this one under the guise of using it as a training run. But this is, unfortunately, the target race and there will be no starting out slowly. I may as well state my goal: 2:42 (ie. Steve Quick's PR. He has PRs in all the shorter distances that I will never beat but his marathon PR is weak, comparably). Some might say that cutting 8 minutes off a 2:50 "training" marathon shouldn't be too hard, but when I look closer, I start to worry. I'll be going for a 6:08 per mile pace, which amounts to 38:20 per 10K. Now, I don't think I can count on running negative splits on Sunday, so I actually have to start out running the first 10K in 38:20 - or less. See, that seems pretty fast to me and it makes me realize that I am risking a complete collapse in the second half of the race. In fact, I could end up running slower than the 2:50.

So, yes, I have been toying with running without a watch and simply going by feel. It sure would make for amore enjoyable experience.

There are other worries. I seek out small races where I have a chance of winning; and this to the point of now having been in a race for years, where I couldn't line up in the front of the pack. I can't do that on Sunday; the fast people (including women; I will get chicked on Sunday!) will look at me and wonder who the old, fat man is. There are 12,000 runners all starting at once. There are probably going to be fences and corrals and guards and a fair amount of agoraphobic activity on my part. I should rightfully be able to line up near the start, say close enough to see the front. But I'm not even sure I can find the front with all the people there. I worry a lot more about this than I should.

I have even devised a cop-out plan if I get stuck somewhere in the middle of the hoard of runners: just start out slowly and enjoy the day. What a thought, huh?

The Girl has tapered by running the least this last week I have ever seen her run since she was pregnant and injured. Instead, she has biked with the triathlon club and swum several miles. She is ready to rock and will easily PR. She won't break 3:20but it will be close.

My claim to fame during the Copenhagen Marathon will be my friend Justin Stakston, who is coming over to run - and win - the race. Justin has a PR of 2:27, so winning might be a tall order. He could podium, though, which in itself is huge in such a big race. I know the course snakes around the city, so I am hoping to see the front group a couple of times. I should mention that the Copenhagen Marathon is one of the few big city marathons in Europe that doesn't offer money prizes, which means there is no group of second-tier East Africans showing up to lay claim to the top 10. It's usually won in low 2:20s by an elite (but non-pro) foreigner or by a fast Dane, especially when the marathon doubles as Danish Nationals (it doesn't this year).

Finally, there is an issue with my right foot. It goes back to this winter, when I ran obsessively on snowy trails in heavy trail shoes. A point on the outside of my right foot, which I think may be the insertion point of the short peroneal muscle, has been aching. Just aching but not enough to stop me from running or racing. It warms up and goes away during longer runs and races but comes back afterwards. I thought it would disappear for good during my marathon taper, but instead it has come back even worse. I don't think I will feel it during the marathon but I fear that it might turn into a real injury afterwards.

Report follows.

Setting all kinds of PRs

2010-05-13T04:05:00.000-07:00

In the last two months I have run a 50K and a marathon; both of them PRs, although I haven't really raced at those distances before. It's been hard to gauge what kind of shape I am in, based on these races.

Then last weekend came a PR on a course I have run since I was just a kid.

I grew up near Bagsværd Lake and have run around it, I imagine, about a thousand times. My first race was a race around the lake. The race, the Bristol Race, ceased existing maybe ten years ago. It was sponsored by a local sporting good store called Bristol Sports. Nowadays, there are just a few big sporting good chains in Denmark. But I digress.

Growing up, the Bristol Race was the race of the year. I thought the people running up front were so fast they could surely run in the Olympics. I was a little kid, happy to run in the middle of the pack.

Then came high school. In Denmark, high school usually marks the nadir of athleticism for most people and this was the case for me as well. The exact opposite is true in America, which is a topic I have pondered often and which deserves its own post. I played on a club soccer team with some kids from school, but it was hardly competitive. I drank and partied as kids did - and forgot all about running.

Then came the move to America, marriage to my first wife, and later the kids. I must have been in my early twenties when I ran the Bristol Race again. This time, I had run competitivey in college in the US and had, I think, just joined a track club. Nah, track came later in med school, but I was certainly training and racing hard. It was fun coming back to this little dinky race. I didn't win it, but I took second or third, impressing people who, like me, had grown up running this race every year.

Now that the official race is gone, we still run on that course. My dad, my brother, and sometimes my uncle and cousins, run tempo runs around the lake. The distance is much debated but is probably a little less than 4.5 miles. But the distance doesn't really matter; the time does. Last year, I ran two loops in 47:56, a PR, probably in the best shape of all of last year. Last weekend, I ran 47:40. Now that's a PR!

The Copenhagen Marathon is in 10 days and we are staring to taper a little. I have a sore ankle that I am trying to nurse back to health as well. Goal is 2:40 to 2:45. We shall see.

Odd life

2010-05-04T17:08:00.000-07:00

She was 73 when she was diagnosed with Mantle cell lymphoma, a blood cancer. It filled up her whole abdomen. She had problems with alcoholism and it wasn't felt that she could tolerate the kind of chemo that would cure her. At a tumor meeting, we decided we would try a milder kind of chemo and see how she fared.

After one cycle of chemo, she stopped eating and almost didn't get out of bed. It worked on the cancer, so we gave her one more cycle. Saturday, her family called twice to the doctor on call, telling us she had pain and nausea. My colleague told them to give her some more pain meds and keep her at home. I had the pager Sunday and they called in the morning, telling me she couldn't keep her pills down but her pain was better. It told them to keep at it at home with the pills for pain and nausea.

Later that day, I admitted her. She was in complete renal failure and was dialyzed. This evening, she started vomiting and pooping blood. Her three kids and husband were there, as she was starting to lose consciousness from the blood loss. The surgeons took her down for a gastroscopy but she couldn't breathe properly and she was put on a breathing machine.

We decided enough was enough and pulled her breathing tube out. That was two hours ago and she is still in there with a beating heart. She will almost certainly die tonight, in no pain and with her family there. The truth is we killed her with our chemo, but with the fate that awaited her, had we let the lymphoma grow, perhaps it was for the better.

So here I sit at 2:30 am, with my bed waiting in the call room, blogging. Whenever I have had to guide a family through the dying process, it's been an emotional experience. I think I have gotten good at it by now. I still find myself close to tears when the family members start crying, but I suspect even the most senior doctors do.

Editing links to other blogs

2010-05-01T04:43:00.000-07:00

Today, I took upon myself the task of editing my links to other blogs. Having a link from the blog of the world's fastest hematologist is, of course, a great honor. Never mind the fact that no one ever reads this.

Out went:

Wynn Davis. Simply because the link was dead. I looked everywhere but couldn't find Wynn's writings anywhere. He seemed like a cool guy when I met him at Chippewa in 2008 and I thought his race reports (from his own and other races) were excellent. But, alas, the link was dead.

Julie Berg. I was on the fence about this one, as I have read Julie's blog for years. It was one of the first blogs I started following. But she doesn't seem to run that many races anymore and she is getting into bodybuilding and fanatic diets. Ah hell, it's still pretty interesting. I should add her back in.

Matt Hart. Used to have some good race reports, but no longer. Seems to be focusing on coaching and is trying to sell stuff.

In came:

Mike Wardian. What a stud, winning races left and right, and his race reports are interesting.

Ian Dobson and Julia Lucas. They are both elite runners battling injury. Ian seems like a normal guy and Julia seems like a good mix of OCD and honesty. I think people read her blog for the same reason they read the Girl's blog.

Piccolapinecone. There is something about slightly obsessed OCD women that fascinates me, I guess. This blog is delightfully analytical, sometimes overly so. And I love the race reports.

Sealegsgirl. My own OCD wife and her beloved, hated, debated blog.

Staying on the list:

Steve Quick. Obviously.

Sean Meissner. I don't know anything about him, but he has almost exactly my running abilities and runs cool races in cool places and blogs about them. One could call me jealous of him.

Olga Varlamova. I have followed Olga's blog for a long time. She is not as prolific as she used to be. Also, I miss her old aggresive race reports. Sometimes, I can't help thinking "okay, so you bonded with numerous people, cried with them, passed out for five minutes and almost died but, damn it, what place did you get?".

Anton Krupicka. The Girl wants me to wear little running shorts to bed, which is within reason. But when she wants me to pack eight gels into them, wear a wig and answer to the name Tony, it gets weird. But, still, one has to admit that he has an interesting blog.

Scott Dunlap. His blog is great, no matter how you look at it. I tend to get annoyed by people like him, but I met him in real life and he impressed me. He took second at Angel Island behind a guy, who got lost and ran some of the course in the opposite direction. The guy probably should have been disqualified, but it seemed like Scott devised a plan with the RD to get him back on track, not caring about his own place.

iRunfar. Hmm. I've been annoyed by this website lately and thought about taking the link down. It's getting too fragmented and too commercial for me. Still, it has occasional interesting stuff.

Marathon Race Report

2010-04-24T08:01:00.001-07:00

It was cold this morning and the race started unusually early for Denmark - at 8am. This was to accomodate the slower runners in the 100K, who are probably still coming in as I am writing this. The marathoners started separately from the 60K and 100K races. This was nice, since we were able to spot our competition that way.

At the gun, a guy took off with me hot on his heels. Quickly, we got a good lead on eveyone else. My plan was to go out easy and finish strong but this was anything but easy. He started slowing at 4K and I went by to take a turn at the front. To my surprise, he wasn't interested in drafting but simply drifted back.

I was alone with almost en entire marathon ahead of me. The route is one small 2.2K loop followed by the 4 10K loops. The back stretch of this loop had a fierce headwind that made me change my mind about running alone. After all, this was supposed to be a training run; I slowed down waiting for the other guy. He wasn't that far back, anyway, so all it took was a slightly longer than usual break at the next aid station.

This guy did not like drafting, which made for a strange dynamic. It was a very windy day, so in my mind, drafting was key to get around the course. However, whenever I took a turn at the front, he would simply let me gap him. I didn't like this. I like being able to pay back in kind the draft I have received from someone else, but it didn't work that way.

I kept telling myself that this was a training run and that I would stick with this fellow until 13K to go. Why 13? That was the turn where we got ouf of the wind for the second-to-last time.

So we stayed together until 13K to go. I grabbed a handful of candy and ate a GU coming up to 13K to go, skipped the next aid station and quickly built a gap. The last 10K were just like I wanted them. I turned on my music and started cruising on top of a nice runner's high.

My time was 2:50 and I am happy with that. I ran a negative split and my last lap was easily the fastest of the four. I wouldn't call it anywhere near easy, but I did hold back until 13K to go. This was my last race before the Copenhagen Marathon; I think low 2:40s is a reasonably realistic goal. This means that I will have to go out a lot faster that I did today but I think that's feasible.

The Girl had a great race and won easily. Her main competition, Linda Kjäll from Sweden, was about ten minutes back. Here they are after the race:
She PRd with a solid 3:27. That's three weeks after Hells Hills 50 miles and one week after getting a PR at the half marathon. As her coach, I am more than satisfied. If I can convince her to taper a little before the Copenhagen Marathon, she should be able to dip below 3:20. If we can find enough races, she will PR at every distance this year. Here she is with the impressive trophy:

She felt quite good in her skin as she was walking around with her Transalpine shirt. Somehow that shirt always raises eyebrows, especially when worn by a young woman. Yes, I was a little more than a little proud of her.

What's next?

2010-04-20T02:25:00.000-07:00

What's next in running? I don't think I have ever been this slow in April, perhaps with the exception of my intern year. I have run essentially no intervals in months. My only speed work, if you can call it that, is going fast whenever I feel like it. I just don't feel like running intervals this year. The reason is probably my commute from hell, which forces me to go to bed relatively early. In the past, I have almost always run my intervals at night between 9 and 11. My new schedule includes lots of overnight call, so I have a fair number of days off. On days off, especially after call, running slow on the trails always sounds better than intervals. I haven't even touched a track this year.

On the other hand, I feel like I am in decent shape. So what's next? We have a marathon this weekend: the Copenhagen Ultramarathon. Ultra? Yes, but there is a marathon too, which I suspect is more like a fun run supporting the real races. The big deal is a 100K that often serves as the national championship (but not this year). I'll run this as my last long run before the Copenhagen Marathon on May 23rd.

The Copenhagen Marathon sounds like a big goal, but I'm basically running it because there is nothing else to run. If I could find a long trail race, anything longer than a half marathon, I would much rather run that. But those races are scarce here, unfortunately.

What's next for the Girl? She is running the marathon this weekend and the Copenhagen Marathon, too, and should be ready for a big race on May 23rd. I'm a little worried that she is overdoing it. Just two weeks after a tough 50 miler, she PRd solidly in a half marathon. I'll have to make sure she runs the marathon this weekend very slowly. It's a flat course, so she'll probably run a PR anyway, but I'll have to make sure she views it only as a practice race. I don't think she will have much competition, so I may succeed in making her run slowly.

What's next in life? We have had a rough couple of weeks. Natali is missing her mom terribly after our trip back to La Crosse a few weeks ago. It's put a bit of a damper on everything. I think we all had a great trip, and coming back to work and normal life was a little disappointing. The Girl's PhD project has been stalling for a few weeks but seems to be taking off very soon. She has been waiting for some software to set up the study and it's finally coming.

I hesitate to write about this, as real people from my life read this. As a segway, I have to admit that my imaginary ideal reader is a midwestern runner, but lately, through the Girl's blog, more and more Danes are reading this. But anyway. We finally came up with a Five Year Plan. The Five Year Plan came about on day out of the blue and everything has seemed better after its inception. I won't divulge too much, but keeping in in the running vein, it does involve us running lots of UMTR races.

Hells Hills 50K Report

2010-04-06T10:39:00.000-07:00

Let me first describe Smithville, Texas. Or, rather, Smithville, TX, in early April, when you come in from a long winter in Denmark and a long week in Wisconsin. It's green and lush; the Colorado River flows lazily by. People speak with a slow drawl, as in "the food show is good at The Back Door". The town has seen better, more prosperous days and the train no longer stops at the famed Katy station (named after the Kansas-Texas, or Katy, line). It's a perfect place to unwind without kids, especially if one does it at the the Katy Bed and Breakfast.

We had arrived two days before the race, which gave us a chance to explore Austin. It also gave the Girl a chance to buy a headlamp, since she was starting her race at 5am. This at the urging of Olga, who also suggested I get one. For some reason, I couldn't imagine that it would be truly dark at 6am, when my race started. Maybe I was just too cheap to get one.

On the morning of the race, there was a thick fog and everything was pitch black. We had a hard time even finding the Rocky Hills Ranch, where the race is held. Did I mention it was dark? The organizers had laid out flares, mapping out the first section of the course, much like an airport runway. Someone had a fire going. It was a little eerie. Anyway, it was obvious that it would still be dark at 6am, so I was getting worried about this. Thankfully, Olga knew multiple people there, including the race director, Joe, who had an extra flashlight for me.

I have never run in the dark and I have never had any reason to run with a flashlight. The start went and I figured it would be safer to be out front. After a couple of minutes of running, I was leading a pack of five runners and didn't like it at all. It was obvious that passing was difficult - or impossible - on the narrow singletrack lined with cacti. The guy behind me was so close I could see his light under my feet. The trail twisted and turned sharply without warning, so it felt very difficult and stressful to run in front. Thankfully, I made a wrong turn and, thus, ended up in the back of the pack. Now, back there it was fun to follow the four other guys. Running back there, I would know well in advance, which way the trail turned and if there were rocks, roots or a steep downhill, someone would make it known with a warming or explative.

We were going fast, probably a lot faster than we should have. There were several falls, including a small tumble of my own, but nothing that stopped anyone. We lost the trail a few times, which meant a reshuffling of the order of the five of us and I wound up in front again for a while. At some point, one of the other guys simply pulled over, visibly and audibly short of breath. If it felt fast to me, I assume it felt unrealistically fast for him and he did the smart thing and slowed down.

The four of us continued, and we must all have though about what would happen next. For a full hour, we ran like characters in some past-paced video game through the technical mountain bike trails in complete darkness. The trail was typical of a good mountain bike trail: lots of tight turns that have become somewhat banked over time. The Rocky Hill Ranch isn't very big, so the trails twist and turn to make the most of the terrain.

We all ran through the first aid station without stopping. I wanted to stop but didn't want to lose the group. At the second aid station, I was the only one to stop. I drank two very quick cups of Gatorade, while someone filled up my handheld bottle, and stuffed a handful of gummi bears in my mouth. They were 50 yards or so away and I sprinted to get back to them. It took a good effort to reel them back in and I was breathing heavily when I got back onto the back of the pack. On the other hand, I was now the only one who had had anything to drink or eat. The others would sip from their bottles but hadn't even gone through half their bottles after an hour.

Then the predawn dusk came and the sun made it known where it would eventually rise. We were still together and it seemed like that's the way it would stay. The others were all built like runners. They ran smoothly with a fast turnover. There were no signs of weakness. I later learned their names were Travis, Mike and Rob. Like I said, we must all have wondered what would happen next.

Then, suddenly, the sun rose as we were running across this unreal meadow with a million bluebonnets and one longhorn cow staring at us. There was even a headwind and I had time to think: "If there was ever a reason to draft in this race, now would be it". And then the race disintegrated. Rob, who had been leading, almost slowed to a jog and then Travis sped up. I wasn't feeling great and thought I would draft behind Mike, at least across the meadow. But Mike made it known with his body language that he was running on empty, too.

We had obviously gone out too hard. Travis was gone, I was in second with Mike and Rob basically far gone. I figured second was good enough. But, lo and behold, suddenly I started catching up to Travis and eventually caught him. He wanted to let me pass but I stopped to pee, drink a bunch and have a GU. I caught up to him again and we chatted for a while. I was just explaining to him that the Girl was doing the 50 miles and I was saying that "you know, for the ladies, it's almost like the long runs are easier, because they don't have to run so fast" and suddenly there was the Girl! We said a quick hello but there was no time for romantic exchanges. I was hoping she didn't hear my comment. And she did look like she was running plenty fast at that moment (it turned out she had just gotten back to the trail after getting lost). Shortly thereafter, I passed Olga, who was leading for the women.

At the halfway aid station, Travis stopped to drop his shirt. Finally, my pale skin helped me out in life; I hadn't even considered going topless. I had time to drop my flashlight and grab a GU and I was off. Travis was a bit behind as we left. I felt good. Sure, the legs could tell they had run for almost two hours but I still had several gears. The banked turns were a lot more fun in the daylight. I turned on the music and enjoyed the morning.

With 5 mies to go, I was really starting to feel it. This corresponds pretty well to the ultra part of the ultramarathon. Interestingly, we have gone as far as a marathon in training this winter, but never farther. I was starting to cramp up and walked all the hills. I ate and drank as much as I could. Oh, and I looked behind me quite a bit to see if Travis was coming back.

Thankfully, I was passing 25Kers and 50milers and this kept up my spirits. One final GU with a few miles left gave me a good runner's high, and I was listening to my "fast" songs on the MP3 player. It felt good to run the last few miles but it also felt good to be done. Travis came in a few minutes later and we discussed the day's events. He admitted to feeling a little exuberant on the meadow, when he took off and agreed that running so fast in the dark had been fun and crazy. Mike came in fourth, having been passed by strategically wise Patrick, a South African living in Austin (quite a day for the foreigners). Rob had stomach issues and finished back in 16th, poor guy.

Then began the waiting. I had fun meeting people, all of whom agreed that Austin was a great place to live. It was hard to argue with them on a day like Saturday. Look how nice it is there, wood nymph or not.

One thing about Austin is that everyone is just so overwhelmingly nice. Certainly, Americans are generally nicer than us reserved Scandinavians but I think Texans are even nicer than Wisconsinites. We kept meeting people, who offered us free parking, entrance to pools, rebates on clothes etc. just for making it clear that we came from far away (we said Wisconsin and Denmark, depending on the conversation).

The Girl came through her second (of three) laps, looking quite tired. She was in third, since Juliet Morgan had blasted through the pack. Juliet stated after the pack that she was nervous about running in the dark and fell five times. The Girl fell eight times, and had the bruises to show for it. I think people at the aid station were impressed that this young, bloodied woman was running so fast. Then she screamed "where is my bottle?!?". I had completely forgotten that I was supposed to give hand a bottle of Gatorade and she was miffed by this fact. A few people likely thought: "who is that terribly important bloodied woman with her pale manservant?".

As you can tell, I was able to find some Gatorade and save the day.

The order of the women stayed the same: Juliet, Olga and the Girl. It got very hot at the end and I am sure I would have completely atomized, had I run the 50 miler. The Girl sunk into a chair, only to be showered with her cool lizard award and multiple cool gifts from Olga: socks, shirts, a skirt, more shirts and singlets. Olga is essentially the same larger-than-life character she is on her blog. She would sit in her camping chair, while cathing up with everyone and being served food and beer. It would have been nice to spend more time with her, but family stuff beckoned and she left for Austin.

I helped the tired Girl back to the car. We stopped at the Smithville grocery store to get some supplies and quickly realized how the Girl looked in the eyes of normal people. Someone said "it show looks like ya had a bad day". But it was quite the opposite: what a great race and what a great race!

Hell's Hills 50K/50M Preview

2010-03-29T09:36:00.000-07:00

Maybe I'm just delirious after working all weekend in the ER, but let me put a little pressure on myself.

I don't know who plans on showing up on Saturday. But they had better bring their A game, if they want to keep up with me. I feel fast and rested. I have run a marathon or farther in practice three times this winter, every time finishing by running sub-6 minute miles for the last few miles. My recent 10K in 34:50 off of no speedwork felt good.

The course recors is 3:50, which sounds slow. However, the route is hilly and technical, so the record may be pretty legitimate. Well, I googled the guy who holds the record (and has run within minutes of this time twice). He is a little slower than me in a marathon and much slower in a half-marathon. That may not mean much, but, honestly, I am hoping to break the CR.

Strategy and tactics, you ask? Me sticking with the lead group for the first half or so, then turning on the iPod and taking off. If someone starts out really fast, I will have to let him go, since I plan on using the first few miles to warm up. If it's super slow, I could decide to go it alone before the halfway mark.

If someone feels faster than me, I'm going to hang on for dear life. Lt me make it official: no sandbagging this time. I shall go down figthing!

In case it's not apparent, I'm PUMPED!

The Girl is running the 50 miler and her race is going to be exciting to watch from the sidelines. She starts an hour before me, so I'll probably pass her and get a chance to see where her competition is at. In the last few weeks, a few fast women have signed up. I forget the name of the female winner at Rocky Raccoon, but she will be there as a clear favorite.

However, the edge-of-your-seat showdown will be the Girl vs Juliet Morgan of California.

Juliet beat the Girl at Angel Island 50K two summers ago in a way the Girl will never forget. The Girl was leading by 10 minutes at the halway point and famously stated that it felt super easy and that she wa going to win. It sure looked like it, too, but the Girl forgot to eat and completely blew up. Aftr some 35K, she looked like she was going to pass out and moved more sideways than forward. She had to walk the last few loops and got passed by a wiser, more experienced Juliet Morgan.

Honestly, though, if the Girl doesn't do something stupid this time around, she should win this contest hands down. Then there is Olga (I would link but everyone knows Olga), whose coach is having her do speedwork and take easy days. She recently won a 50 miler, sleep-deprived and hallucinating. That contest may be close. I expect the Girl to build a healthy lead, but Olga may catch up with her famous Russian power-walking towards the end.

Of course there may be other women there, who could be faster than the ladies mentioned above.

Race report should be up on Sunday - expect lots of pictures!

10K Race Report

2010-03-22T04:11:00.000-07:00

This race - the Holbæk Classic - turned out to be a lot smaller than we had expected. This misunderstanding was mine; all I can say is, I must have confused this race with another , much bigger, race in the Holbæk region that I have been vaguely aware of.

As we were warming up, the Girl pronounced that she had "buttery" legs, and that she was going for a time of about 40 mins.

My right ankle has been hurting on and off for a few months due to al the snow running and it was giving me some trouble. After jogging a few miles, it quieted down, though.

After the gun, we circled the track twice before embarking on the two-loop course. I glued myself to the leader for the first lap, feeling good. Then a third guy passed us both and pulled at a brisk pace for a short amount of time. He was obviously going too fast and had to surrender his lead. However, he grabbed the spot right behind the leader, and this turned out to change the dynamics of the race for me. After 1K, while we were taking several sharp turns, he lost the draft of the lead runner, with me being stuck behind. It was just a 3 yard gap and I assumed he would close it, once we got onto a straight road. But he didn't, and the gap grew.

The pace had increased and I kept hoping I could stay out of the wind and that the gap would close by itself. Instead, the gap grew and grew. I had to suck it up and close it, which took next 2K. I don't know if the leader saw me coming or what, but it took muck longer than it should have. This surge probably took me into the red zone for a little bit too long.

Anyway, at 3K, I was back up there and we were cruising along. I stayed behind him until around 8K. Not that I was a complete weasel about it; I did try to take short pulls in front, but he didn't seem interested in letting me lead. Then at 8K, there was a long stretch coming up with a storng headwind. This laster until the track, and I figured it was now or never, if I didn't want it to come down to a sprint finish. I was feeling good and was hoping I could put in a surge that would drop him before the headwind.

I accelerated through some turns and had a 5-yard gap coming into the headwind. Just enough to eliminate the draft. I felt him edge closer and accelerated again. But he stayed at 5 yards and then started clawing his way back. Then for maybe a quarter mile, we both slowed down to what seemed like a painfully slow jog. Neither of us wanted to lead. I tried one last surge; got a few yards but he was able to close the gap.

With my lack of speedwork, I didn't really trust my kick, although it used to be decent. Coming into the track, the guy starting speeding up and it became more of a long anaerobic surge than a pure sprint. There was a decent amount of spectators, nearly everyone cheering for the other guy (this was his home track), so it felt more than a little anti-climactic to get beaten.

After the race, the winner told me how he was "hanging by a thread" during the first headwind surge. I keep asking myself what would have happened, had I kept surging. There is no doubt I'm in good shape but without speedwork, I would have been wise to put all my money into dropping him before the finish.

On the other hand, this guy was stronger than me. In a time trial, he would certainly have beaten me. I drafted off him for a long time and was only able to have a shadow of chance of winning because of this. And what a cool race it was! Most of these small races, I end up running alone, often in first or second position with no one else in sight. This was the kind of race that's so exciting you don't feel your legs until it's over.

The Girl's race... Turned out to be a complete fiasco. Running without female competition, she opened with a 20:20 5K, a little slower than she had wanted. Then she got stomach cramps and had to slow down. The cramps turned into vomiting the following day and it turns out a violent gastroenteritis is running its course through our family.

My time was around 34:50, which is very acceptable, considering the lack of speedwork. The breathing got labored, when we started going really fat, but the legs held up beautifully throughout the race. It certainly felt like I could have gone on for a while.

I feel very ready for the 50K in two weeks!

Cross Country Regionals Race Report

2010-03-15T14:24:00.000-07:00

What a strange race this was. The course was insanely icy, snowy and muddy. It was the regional finals (the West Zealand championships) but, because of the wheather I presume, some of the top teams didn't show up. The guy I had narrowly beaten twice, and been beaten by once, earlier this season, wasn't there. Peter, a young fast guy from our team wasn't there, either.

I had planned on running in spikes but the first (and last) half mile was on a sidewalk, so I chose my trusted Salomons. This turned out to be a big mistake. I warmed up on the course and practiced ascending and descending a few of the worst hills. The legs felt really good.

At the gun, I found myself in a small pack. Some of the runners wore spikes and had to run on a tiny dirt strip between the road and the sidewalk. Every 50 feet, there was a tree that they had to avoid. I felt smug in my Salomons for that first half mile, and was able to enter the narrow trail section in first place. The first long hill had good traction and I got a little gap on the the other runners. With these conditions, drafting wasn't a consideration and I assumed some people would fall and possibly bring down other runners, too.

I had the lead for about a mile, honestly thinking I could win the race. Behind me, though, I could hear the clickety sound of spikes in ice and, sure enough, I got passed by a guy, who jokingly informed me that I should have worn spikes. I tried to stick with him, but couldn't. In addition to his spikes, he was also fast. On the other hand, while trying to keep up with spike guy, I got a comfortable lead on everyone else.

He beat me by 20 seconds and there was another good minute down to number three. On paper, a silver medal in the regional cross country meet sounds good. But I have taken second and third at the other meets this year, and this one seemed to be the weakest field. My training has been erratic these last few months, because of the amount of snow on the ground. Tons of quantity but little quality. I was hoping for a solid indicator of the shape I am in, but didn't get one.

We are doing a 10K next weekend on a, presumably, fast route. I have never done this race before but it's competitive and I expect to be able to find a good sub-35 minute group to draft behind. That's a loose goal, anyway, although I really don't know what to expect. Compared to last year, where my first 10K of the season was, like 34:45, I have done no speed work at all. My weight is about the same and I have run way more miles this year. We shall see.

Sunday, I watched the Girl in a big 15K race in Copenhagen. I had been drinking rather heavily at my brother's birthday party the night before, so it was easy to assume the martyr role and agree to babysit. Thankfully, the route looped around a park with a little playground, so we could watch the Girl run by several times.

She did well, and she deserves it. She is still a novice runners, despite being so fast. Still used to setting PRs, she was disappointed that she could only lower her 10K PR by 30 seconds - in a 15K race!

I watched her come by at 4 and 6 K. Just outside the top 5, she was gaining on the women ahead of her. I thought she looked calm, but, as it happened, she got a little too excited passing and being re-passed by another runner. I have seen her do this, when we run together and she gets passed by a woman. She will go from a leisurely jog to an all-out sprint to get back ahead.

When I saw her again at 14K, she looked very tired. Several women had passed her and two more were lurking right behind her. I ran over to the finish, to watch her come in a few minutes later, sprinting against one of the women.

All in all, she got a huge PR and there is definite room for improvement. She has done speed work this winter, no doubt, but these have been mile repeats. When we go on the track in April, she will get much faster still. Her racing skills also need fine-tuning, and it's fun to think about how much she could improve if she learned how to draft and bide her time. Most of the women, who beat her, are much older than her and, obviously, smarter racers. They know how to sit in packs, especially when there is wind, always taking advantage of the men racing around them.

I think the Girl is a little too used to ultras, where the dynamics are so much different. In a shorter race, when one is racing so close to the maximum capacity, your whole race can be ruined by the oxygen debt created by a single surge. Drafting is also very important in fast races; I have tried to teach her, but she gets nervous running too close to others. Even in track races, where a tight pack of runners is going her exact pace, she prefers to sit a few yards behind on her own.

But my plan with her is working. It's still the early season and she is already setting PRs. By the end of the season, she will have PRd at every distance she races at. Yes, on a day like yesterday, it's fun being her coach.

Danish Idioms

2010-03-06T10:16:00.000-08:00

Perhaps the best thing about living here is watching the Girl and Natali learn to speak Danish. I especially love the way they use swear words and idioms.

Natali has always been fast to pick up new expressions, sometimes using them incorrectly. We have several family inside-jokes, which all stem back to her, very cute, misunderstandings. This is all in English, of course. Some classics:

"I like him, but he is not the sharpest bulb in the shed."

"Come on Dad, it's not rocket surgery!"

One morning, while biking to school, she proclaimed that the weather made her feel "undisaffected".

Quoting Zoolander: "Hansel, you think you are too cool for school. But I got a news flash for you, water croc boy. You aren't."

Singing loudly: "IT'S TOO LATE TO CALL THE JIVE! IT'S TOO LATE!"

Here are some Danish idioms that are slowly being picked up by Natali and the Girl:

When something is simple: Der er ingen ko på isen, there is no cow on the ice.

or

Det er der ingen ben i, there are no bones in that.

To be tough: Have ben i næsen, to have bones in your nose.

And, in case you are wondering, everyone does. Cartilage, but bone too.

To fall for something: Hoppe på limpinden, jump on the glue stick.

I love that one, by the way.

When something is worrisome: Der er ugler i mosen, there are owls in the marsh.

It's also fun to listen to the Girl's use of different Danish dialects. Why would the Girl use different Danish dialects, you ask? I can only answer that by say that I have often caught myself doing that in English. There is something enticing about adopting a new accent. I remember talking a lot like a gay friend for a while; for a few months after working with a cardiologist from Boston, I didn't pronounce r's at the end of words. Similarly, I was influenced by Indian colleagues and found myself picking up some of their expressions.

It's fun, is all I can say.

The Girl does it, when she is nervous, like when talking on the phone to someone important. Suddenly, she has a sing-song Jutland accent. Sometimes, she swears like a longshoreman, not knowing how cute it sounds.

As a family, we speak English and Danish at home and it often comes out as the ugly daughter of the two, Danglish. People look at us with curiosity, when we speak this mixed language in public. I, personally, find Danglish to be the easiest way to communicate, followed by English and Danish. A full year after moving here, I still can't talk to patients like I did in English. On a daily basis, I stumble over words and expressions, almost always related to medicine. I will work a few shifts in the ER when we come to Wisconsin in March, and it will be interesting how my English will fare then.

It's odd how situation-specific my preference for a language is:

Baby talk to the Lorax: Danish

Bedtime stories to Natali: Danish

Hematology: English

Running, training, racing: English

Emotional, romantic: English (ineptly so, probably)

Daily life: Danglish

The Olympic Games

2010-03-01T14:38:00.000-08:00

I have watched way too much Olympics over the last two weeks. I thought the games were a success, although there are too many "new" x-games type sports. In my mind, the traditional skiing events are central to the Olympics. Not aerials, skier cross, moguls. Not all the snowboarding events.

Yes, I have become an old man.

I was angry in an old man way, when I realized that the long distance skiing events on Saturday and Sunday had been changed to mass starts. I liked the old time trial format, which has been used for 150 years, much better. No true cross country skiing fan really wants to watch skiers in a pack for two hours, only to see Petter Northug win a close sprint finish. But it's better for the casual viewer, because they can wrap their minds around a bunch of skiers poling like nuts for the finish line.

Best moment of the Games? Without a doubt watching Justyna Kowalchyk and Marit Bjørgen's sprint duel at the end of the 30K Saturday. Okay, I realize the irony, since that moment would never have happened in a time trial.

Who do I root for, you ask? Well, like many, I always root for the underdog. I love when Americans or Canadians do well in skiing events (real skiing, see above) but hate it when they do well in x-games events. Devon Kershaw of Canada took fifth in the men's 50K, missing out on 4th by a few inches. That is absolutely huge for a North American man (Beckie Scott of Canada has medaled before) and, frankly, a bigger accomplishment than a Canadian gold in an x-games event.

In skiing, I hate when Norway does well. But, of course, they always do well, so it's futile. I watch all the events on either Swedish, Norwegian or German TV, depending on whether I want to hear the announcers despair or gloat. Note: The Norwegians always gloat or wail like kindergarteners, so it's fun to watch events where they lose. Like when Northug took 41st in the opening 15K: great to watch on Norwegian TV. The Swedes are much more gentleman-like but also very patriotic. Swedish sounds like an old-fashioned sing-song Danish that can be very comedic (to Danes). Natali tries to speak it all the time, after hearing it on TV. When the Swedes are winning, it's fun to watch their TV. I got goose bumps when Björn Ferry won a gold in biathlon or when the Swedish men won the cross country relay.

The Germans always take the high road, no matter what; they are almost neutral observers. When the German team speed skaters almost lost the semi final - a skater fell and glided on her stomach across the finish line, but the still qualified - the German announcer said something akin to "why, tally ho, there is something you don't see every day".

Denmark, you ask? I think the highest placed individual athlete was a woman - in skier cross. Our greatest cross country skier finished dead last in the 50K on Sunday. The curling women were actually tipped to win a medal. Instead, they posed topless and got tons of attention but no medals.

The best Danes can do is pretend to be Swedish or Norwegian during the Olympics

Kids

2010-02-21T09:25:00.000-08:00

We had a romantic weekend. Okay, a romantic 24 hours (I work all day today, Sunday). Indian food Friday night, stayed at a cool hotel in the city and ran long together on Saturday. All possible because of the Girl's mom, who is visiting (and babysitting). Sometimes it's nice to get away from the kids a little, although we ended up calling them three times Friday night.

Sometimes I don't know about kids. I read somewhere that couples without kids were happier than couples with kids. Single people were, on average, the least happy. I don't know if they adjusted for age and other circumstances in the study. I often tell the Girl that it would be wonderful to be able to freeze the kids down so we only had them evey other week. But they had to be frozen; I wouldn't want them leading a life without us on those off weeks.

Everything changes once you have kids. This weekend, I must have thought about the kids a thousand times. The hotel we stayed at is in a big sporting complex. There is an impressive aquatic center and a spa. It was fun to experience this with the Girl; but I kept thinking: "what would Daughter think about this?". I know she would have loved the circular track-like pool. And would she have jumped into the cold water pool before going in the Turkish bath? Sometimes, seeing the world through her eyes is better than seeing them through my own.

Parents become addicted to their kids but not in a drig-addict kind of way. Certainly, there is no opioid rush when I cook dinner for two tired kids at night. Or when the Lorax spills a cup of chocolate milk on the floor - on purpose. Daughter can drain me with her 9-year old angst-filled energy. It's no rush to be with them - but if something happened to one of them, I would feel terrible.

Of course, there is my Son in La Crosse. It's been four months since I last saw him. Am I comfortably numb, you ask? I don't know. The human mind works wonders, and perhaps I have convinced myself that he is, indeed, frozen in time. I don't like to think about him living full days of school and friends and laughter and tears without me. Without even thinking about me; changing into someone I don't know. I'm seeing him in a month; I wonder how the dynamics between us will be.

On the running-front, all is going well. Because of the snow, I haven't been able to do intervals as much as I had planned. I haven't been able to run intervals at all, actually. Instead, I have told myself that working on a strong endurance base makes sense. We are lucky to have a nice, big forest in our backyard and I run long runs on the trails there. Over the last month, I have been doing generally three hard workouts. One is typically a long run (around 20 miles) and the other two are long tempos.

I feel good. The weight is around 65-66 in the morning, which is right where I want it.

In terms of goals, we are doing a 50K (Hell's Hills) in Texas in April. When I say "we", I mean "I". The Girl is running the 50 miler. I have persuaded myself to race from the gun and not go out as slowly as I usually do in ultras. With all the long runs, I should be able to pull it off. I hope.

On being a dad.

2010-02-04T06:35:00.000-08:00

Natali and the Girl are like sisters. They have fun like sisters and fight like sisters. Of course, the Girl has the role of (much) older sister but they are far from a mother-daughter relationship.

Lately, there have been a number of situations where my parenting-skills have been put to the test.

Daughter and I have always been very close. We share a sense of humor that we have perfected over the years to the point of everything being an inside joke between us. The Girl is sometimes annoyed with this, but she has gotten in on the joke for most part by now. But, lately, Natali has had issues in her life much beyond my control.

Issue 1: Simon. She has had multiple little crushes on boys. Off the top of my head, I can think of a Nolan (I always insisted on calling him Gnolan, and this is how we remember him) and a Christopher. Simon is her first Danish crush and she asked my advice on how to go about asking him to be her boyfriend. I didn't know what to tell her; when I was 8, I don't think I was interested in being someone's boyfriend. I expected him to say no, so I wanted the letdown to be as easy as possible. She ended up contacting him through the schools student intranet with this message:

Hi Simon. I like you. Skal vi være kærester? ("shall we be dearest?", ie. do you want to be my boyfriend). Twelve hours later, he responded "no thanks". Natali took it well, despite the fact that all the girls and boys in her class knew that she had been rejected.

So then the other day, I came to pick her up at her after school day care. She was playing foosball with Simon (I later realized it was Simon, but I didn't know it until halfway through our game). I challenged them to a 2-on-1 and crushed them. In the car on the way home, she told me "dad, that was really cool. How you didn't say anything to him about that". Ha! The little idiot thought I would start asking Simon why he didn't want to go out with her.

Issue 2: Friends. I never took a class on being the father of a tween, so there are things I just don't know how to do. The Girl and I have planned Natali's 9th birthday party. It will consist of birthday cake and a treasure hunt followed by a trip to the public pool. We scheduled it for next Friday. All was fine; the invitations were printed out and passed out in school. The next day, Natali told me sheepishly and close to tears, that she was afraid no one would come. Why? Because we had chosen the same day as the school's fastelavn party, a type of Danish Halloween. So we had to move the party back one day. I'm sure that has never happened to another kid in her class. But how do parents know these things?

Issue 3: Anew step-dad? My Ex-wife is now dating a guy. The rare longtime follower of this blog will know that this brings an extra y chromosome into the mix. Natali has never seen him and she knows almost nothing about him (as is the case for me). Yet, he is in her mom's and brother's life and I know she thinks about that more than she lets on. Last weekend, she asked my Ex-wife on Skype whether the guy had moved into the house yet. We are going back for two weeks over Easter, so it will be interesting to see how she reacts to everything.

Issue 4: Our apartment. We live in a cheap apartment, which is subsidized through the hospital. I love it. There is nothing to worry about; the rent is less than half of market value. But Natali doesn't like living in an apartment. Her school is in an affluent neighborhood; she is the only girl, who lives in an apartment. Her best friend lives in a big house right by the school. We live a mile away and Natali has to walk all the way across the hospital grounds to get home after school. A lot of the girls live close to each other and visit each other constantly. Natali's biggest wish is to move in on Ahornvej (Maple Lane?), where her friend lives. It's part of a wish to settle down and go to the same school with the same kids, instead of constantly moving from country to country. It's something I can't give her; we have so many forces in our lives pulling us in different directions and Ahornvej will have to wait. At least for now.

Winter thoughts

2010-01-26T01:23:00.000-08:00

I'm in a strange place in life right now; I have a constant sense of an impending change. I don't know what to call it; restlessness? Boredom? Mid-life crisis?

Like so many other people in the world, I am not really sure what I want out of life. Some days, we talk about buying a house and settling down; some days, we talk about signing up for Doctor Without Borders. Most days, we aren't sure where in the world we will be in a few years.

Something big happened the other day. Out of nowhere, my Ex-wife told me that we could have Natali for another year. I had been worried sick about what she would say, and suddenly she made up her mind. I should have been happier than I was. Natali getting a chance to experience Denmark, is the best thing about being here. I was happy, sure, but at the same time it represented the fact that we are staying here for, at least, another school year.

There is nothing wrong with staying here; we both have good, interesting jobs. The kids are thriving. The Lorax takes gymnastics and music classes, where all the parents arrive in their matching cars and dress their kids in expensive, organic clothes. Natali has friends over, who all think the same beautiful open-minded thoughts, while silently expressing "you better act like us, or else".

Life is uniformly safe and predictable. Denmark is a perfect, intensely boring paradise.

Don't think I haven't thought about why I am feeling this minor dysthymia. It's odd that I was an overworked resident, whose wife left him, and still felt okay. So many people were worried about me, but those days almost felt like an adventure. I had a glorious sense of no one has ever done this before. Which of course was nonsense, but that's what it felt like. On paper, that life sucked. I had no money; I worked all the time. I had zero wiggle room, even compared to now. So why am I feeling trapped now, in this life with plenty of money, lots of spare time, with a great wife and kids?

There are a few theories, that I would like to share:

1) Leaving my son. I don't think about him constantly, but there is an undeniable sense that my life isn't complete here without him. Sometimes, it feels like my present life is an interlude, and that I will soon get back to seeing him every day. Even as I am writing this, it is difficult for me to accept that there is no day in sight, when I will be living with him, or even near him, on a permanent basis.

2. Death all around me. Working with critically ill patients may be harder on me than I think. When I meet a patient for the first time, it usually involves me delivering bad news. It bothers me more and more how much pain and humiliation these people go through in the hospital. I think we give too much chemo and too little comfort. Every day, I think about the fact that I, the Girl, the kids or someone else, could get sick and transform into one of those poor unfortunate souls with cancer.

3. We have no 5-year plan. My whole life, I have lived by 5-year plans. Do this; get through this. Work hard, and it will all work out. The question now beckons, have I arrived? Good job? Check. Beautiful fantasy wife? Check. Economic safety? Check.

Satisfied? Not so sure.

Kalundborg Winter Marathon Report

2010-01-12T01:23:00.000-08:00

The opening 10K or so went exactly accoding to plan. I went out painstakingly slowly, simply by sticking with a group of 3 other guys. My plan was to open up with a 22 minute 5K, and I actually ran the first 5K in 22:40. Came through 10K in about 45 minutes, feeling good.

At this point, the wind was very strong and I was feeling the itch to start racing. There was snow and ice on this part of the course, and the group I had run with started to disintegrate. I'm not sure when I started going "race pace" but it was somewhere around 12K. Drafting became really important in the wind, and I had fun leap-frogging from group to group. THe last 5K of the 13M loop had less wind and good traction and this is where I turned on the music and started going fast.

I wondered where in the field I was, coming into the stadium after the half marathon. By looking at the bib numbers, I knew I had passed several marathoners but didn't know what place I was in. Up ahead, I noticed Kim Hammerich; he took second place in the 6-hour race we did in October. He is on the 100K national team and has an 8:07 100K PR (!). In the 6-hour race, I briefly caught and passed him around halfway, only to crash and nearly drop out. Kim ended up running 76K that day, compared to my 66.

I caught Kim and we chatted a little bit. He told me that the marathon would cap off a 200K week for him. 200k! I have run 109K in a single week once, and it felt like I was going to die. Okay, that's not counting Transalpine, but we didn't really run all the time there, either. He is training for the next 100K World Cup race.

He told me he would try to hold on as long as he could, and I was fine with that. He flies through aid station, whereas I take my time to drink and eat. I also stopped to pee once, so over the next 5K I either caught back up to Kim, or had him draft off of me. Going through the half marathon, we were told that we were third and fourth.

Going over the hills, through the snow, in the wind, felt very lonely. Kim had let go and was nowhere to be seen. The next guy up was too far ahead to see. Or was he? Once in a while, I could see him on the next hilltop. Slowly, he got closer and closer. When we finally got out of the snowy section, he was maybe 60 seconds ahead of me and I figured I should be able to catch him. At the 32K aid station, I drank two big cups of coke and ate a GU. I wanted to run the last 10K in 40 minutes, so I planned to run right through the 36K aid station.

There is a section on the last bit of the course where it's a slight downhill, the wind was coming from the back. I had an extreme sense of runner's high. The music was good; the legs were turning over quickly, without any fatigue or pain. At 3 or 4K to go, I caught up to the guy in second place. This was Poul Petersen, who is another fast ultra-marathoner. I overheard him tell someone at the start that he ran 50 miles in recent 6-hour race. That's amazing; think about it: it's two marathons in 3:06, approximately. He may have been at the end of a long training week, too, or maybe he was having a bad day. Coming up on him, I had hoped he wouldn't latch on; I would hate to sprint at the end of a marathon. But as I got close, I could tell how much faster I was going and it turned out to be a "clean pass".

My time was 3:02. Not bad, given the conditions! I don't think the slow start cost me all that much in the end. I felt good and could have kept going for a while. All in all, it gives me confidence for the 50K at Hell's Hills in Texas in April. We are also planning on doing the Copenhagen Marathon in May where I think 2:40-ish is a realistic goal. In short, I am psyched for what's to come.

The Girl ran a 3:37 (2 minute PR). Again, in those conditions, it's a very good time. If she is healthy for Copenhagen, she should be able to run in less than 3:20. My training plan for her is paying off, almost moreso that I expected. Her weight is the same as last year, when she ran slower in much better conditions, so her theory of "ligther is faster" doesn't hold water anymore. Even her running form has changed over just a few months; it just looks more composed and fluent, because she is used to a fater pace in pratice.

Fewer women run competitively here, so she lacks competition. She enjoys running with the men, but doesn't really get fired up the same way she does when she races other women. I think it would be a good move to get her into some fast shorter races in the spring.

Next up: next round of the cross country series on February 6th.

Marathon Preview

2010-01-07T08:41:00.000-08:00

We have a marathon coming up this Sunday. The Girl ran it last year, improving what must be her softest PR to 3:39. I ran the half marathon with the Lorax in the jogging stroller. I think my time was 1:26 and, by coincidence, I ran and chatted a little with the eventual men's marathon winner. I think his time was 2:57.

I'm using this solely as a long training run, or at least that's the plan. I don't recall ever using the race as training so I am not sure how it's going to pan out. I figure I can run the first half in 1:30 to 1:35 and then start racing. The route is hilly and there will likely be snow on the ground so these times are perhaps a little ambitious.

My marathon PR is actually 3:08, set when I was 22. Hopefully, I will get below that. Let's call sub-3 a loose goal, but it depends on the conditions. There is decent prize money so winning was a consideration. That is, until a 2:30 marathoner told me last week that he was running. He may just "jog" it, too, but his jogging will certainly be faster than mine.

I don't know if I can run the first half without "trying to keep up". I told myself that I wouldn't taper but, honestly, I have tapered plenty this week. We'll see.

As defending champion, the Girl wants to really race this one. Begrudingly, she agrees that she has gotten faster while following my training plan. I don't think she has a specific time in mind, although she wants to get under 3:39 (ie. her PR). Her other race PRs predict a 3:12 marathon (perfect conditions, perpect race, of course), so 3:39 is actually a pretty easy effort for her.

2009 in Review

2009-12-29T03:19:00.001-08:00

What a strange year it has been. My life now is unrecognizable from a few years ago, in so many ways. I may write about this later.

This is my 2009 Running Review.

The winter and spring saw me do the first focused training I have done in years. I basically found my old routine from medical school, of running hard several nights a week. It paid off generously, with fast legs in late spring. The highlight was a 16:15 5K on a rainy, windy track. I had the legs to go under 16, but didn't hit the right race.

Then I think I pushed it a little too much and crammed in some long hard runs to prepare for a half marathon PR (1:13.54). I did a training run the week before the race, indicating that I was right on PR pace. On race day, I found myself alone in front, facing a stiff headwind. It turned out to be a disappointing 1:16.xx.

Then it was time for some fun. We did a triathlon in June and Voyageur 50 miles in July.

Late summer and fall lacked focused training. I ran a lot, and ran hard. I think the highlights would be a 16:30 5K and a win in a fairly big cross country race in October.

These last two months of 2009 have been good. I am running on the same plan as last year. Goals for 2010:

5K 16:00 flat (under 16 would be too much pressure)
Age group national champion in the 5000
10K Under-34
Half Under 1:15
Win an ultra

My Coaching Frustrations

2009-12-18T09:46:00.001-08:00

I coach one single athlete, and she is frustrating the hell out of me.

Her stats are pretty good: 5'6, 114 pounds, long legs. You could not ask for a better build for a top runner.

She suffers from what would be called an unspecified eating disorder. This has led her to run long, slow runs for years, without much purpose other than to lose weight. Over the last two years, she has gotten increasingly interested in getting fast. Her motivation to work hard is impeccable.

Her personal bests are good, but not great. Her best times have come in the 5K and 10K, where her times are approximately 20 and 41 minutes. These are decent times that allow her to win about half her races, but they are hardly elite. I am sure I could get her much faster, if only I could get her to train right.

Problem is, she is an idiot.

I tell her: "Do three hard sessions a week, preferably one interval, one tempo and one long run. Do this all winter and you will be fast as hell in the spring". I tell her to use the other days as recovery days, although, at one point, she may be allowed to run two long runs on the weekend, a la SQUITRAP. But getting up to four hard sessions is tough and won't happen for a while.

Repeatedly, she runs too long on easy days, leading to subpar hard days. It's her main mistake. She even sneaks in extra running on the easy days, without telling me. I repeat, "easy on easy days, hard on hard days. You're supposed to feel better after a recovery run than before it. It's not supposed to serve an actual training purpose." She pouts and says, "but I feel better after running three hours. Why can't I run three hours on my recovery days." I use profanity and tell her she is not Anton Krupicka.

Then when she does her hard days, I tell her to measure out a route, say 6x1 mile or an 8 mile tempo. I tell her to make it reproducible, so she can do it over and over again. Instead, she runs with her Garmin, telling me that it was weird: "I ran what felt like an even pace, but my actual pace went from 8:30 miles to 5:30 miles on the Garmin." I tell her not to use the Garmin for pace, only for measuring out the course. Then, instead of running all six intervals, she tries to run the first 3 extra hard "to beat her record". She then has to miss the last two, because her legs get too tired.

Then my athlete doesn't trust me. She says, "how do you know 4 intervals don't work better than 6? Maybe it's better". I say, she has to trust me. I have never coached anyone, but I have had good coaches, myself, and I enjoy reading fast people's training plans. I tell her to trust me, but then she says "maybe I'll be fast, but I will be fat, too. I have to run long every day, or I will gain weight."

We keep at it. She wants to drop the whole plan and go back to jogging exactly 2 hours every day. If she comes back after 1:59.34, she runs circles in the parking lot to get the full 2:00.00 in. It frustrates me to no end.

My main psychologic tool is to casually mention how some top runners use speed in their training. My athlete thinks that to run a marathon fast, she should run long runs as often as possible. Preferable a marathon 3 times a week. I tell her that Kara Goucher and Paula Radcliffe do tons of speed work and probably rarely, if ever, run farther than a marathon in pratice. Mentioning Paula Radcliffe always helps a little, because she is the only woman in the world, who ran more than my athlete during pregnancy. Actually, Paula ran harder, and my athlere ran longer. But still.

I generalize: "every fast runner in the world does speed work. If they don't, they either do it anyway, but don't call it speed work; or they could get much faster by doing it." This rarely works. She just doesn't trust me and tells me some tale about Helen Lavin only running long runs and doing naked heat yoga.

Sometimes I bring up cute training concepts, like Yassos, basically to disguise my plans to get her to run intervals. Slyly, I tell her that she is one of one tenth of one percent of the world's population who can use the word "fartlek" in their native language. And it works. Sometimes. The other day, I ordered her to run fartleks: "go do three street lights hard, two easy. Keep doing it until you get sore". She came back, having misunderstood my instructions. She thought I meant stoplights and went over 4 miles fast before stopping! The idiot. The next time I sent her out in subzero temperatures, braless, just so she could learn to obey her coach.

Once in a while, I make the mistake of using myself as an example: "look at me, I have no time to train. I run only 20 miles a week; I run only 3 days a week and yet I am able to call myself the fastest guy in town." Then she wails something about me being lucky there are no fast guys in town, and that she has a gazelle for her teammate (Mette) that she will never be able to beat.

I tell her to trust me: "keep doing what I am telling you and you will get fast". Again, she doesn't trust me. I tell her she is only using me for sex and I am done being her coach.

DGI Cross Round 2 - report

2009-12-13T07:27:00.000-08:00

This race was humbling.

I have felt great in practice, running increasingly faster intervals and losing weight fairly easily. I'll admit I thought I would be able to challenge for the win in the long course (8.5K).

When we showed up to the race, we were prompty informed by teammates Mette, Rasmus and Peter that last month's route was nothing compared to this one. We jogged most of the 3K loop and found two lung-busting climbs tracked arbitrarily into the hills. There were corresponding downhills, one of which ended in a sharp right-hand turn and a field of deep mud.

The course proved too technical for me, unfortunately. The guys around me, most of whom were young and fearless, bombed down these hills, gapping me by 30 yards each time. There were a few strethes that resembled runnable trails and on those I was able to benefit from the speed I have built up over the last two months.

In the long course race, I finished third, with top two out of sight. The eventual fourth and fifth place finishers started out yo-yo'ing around me. The younger of the two, Lasse, got the aforementioned 30 yards on me on three downhills per loop. What was worse was that the uphills were very slippery and I was the only top runner without spikes. So even though a non-technical guy like me ought to do well on the uphills, I ended up dreading especially one very muddy hill.

On the short course, a lot of juniors shot out in front. A lot of them hadn't run the long course, so they had fresh legs. I was in tenth spot after the first half mile, despite sprinting to get to the front. The trail was so muddy that everyone wanted to be in front, but I had to give in to these young speedster. Thankfully, they all lost steam and I was able to fight my way up to third, with Lasse, the monster dowhhiller behind me. On a steep downhill, he passed me and got a good gap. With a half mile to go, I caught back up, considering the horrible possibility of a sprint up the last 50 meter hill. He had spikes and I didn't, I kept telling myself, and I was willing to just let him stay ahead. Then, of course, on the hill with all the spectators screaming at us, we started sprinting. I was able to pull even but he responded with a wild dash over the last 10 yards.

All in all, a fun race but I didn't perform quite like I was hoping for.

With all the hills, especially downhills, I feared for how the Girl would fare. She must have learned a thing or two from Transalpine, where the downhills killed us, because she did really well yesterday. It's hard to compare races, because there are very few fast women running cross country. She took second last month and she took second yesterday. Compared to Mette, our teammate and fastest woman in Southern Zealand, the gap was much less than in their last two races. I think she was fairly satisfied with everything.

8.2K trail race - report

2009-12-05T06:59:00.000-08:00

We did this same little race last year, because it's close to where I grew up and - sadly - because there was a tiny bit of money awarded to the winners. And I mean a tiny bit. I think the sign-up fee was $10 and the first prize was either $20 or $30.

The route is really cool, however, with lots of steep hills so we decided to run it at 90% as a tempo run. I had told myself repeatedly that no matter what happened, I would stay with other runners. I have told myself this same thing multiple times before but it never works. 200 meters into the race, I took the lead gingerly, trying not to gap the 2nd place guy. He passed me on a muddy, technical downhill and I caught him shortly afterwards.

For some reason, I accelerated a little and gapped him and because we were in a headwind, I convinced myself that I shouldn't let him get back "on my wheel" so I accelerated some more. The problem was that this guy was going almost my pace, so he stayed maybe 50 yards back for much of the race. I ran scared and completely blew the 90% effort plan. While it wasn't exactly all out, I went way above 90%. Hopefully, this won't ruin tomorrow's planned long run.

I am on a roll, though. My intervals are faster than this time last year. I am significantly lighter (weighing in at 65.2kg Friday morning) and - knock wood - completely uninjured. Or at least as uninjured as one can be when doing 2 fast interval sessions, a tempo and a long run a week.

My time was 30:06, 11 seconds faster than last year, which was also a near-100% effort.

Next weekend brings the second race in the cross country series. Should be fun.

The Girl won the women's race without much competition. Her time was a few seconds slower than last year, but she has been training really hard and didn't taper at all. She is on her third intense week; she has done an interval and a tempo every week - in addition to her multiple "anorexic long runs" and 3-4 miles of swimming a week.

The beauty of building up form - a 2010 season preview

2009-11-25T08:57:00.001-08:00

Last night, I did my first set of intervals of the season. I run them on the same course as last year, so it's very easy to compare times. I'm about a minute faster over 6 x 1 mile than this time last year, but almost two minutes slower than I was in May, at my peak.

Until February, I do two speed sessions a week. Two interval days, if my legs hold up; one interval and one fartlek day, if the legs are tired or near-injured. On the weekend, I do one or two long runs, a la Steve Quick's Training/Racing Plan (The SQUITRAP; can't find the Amazon link). I will race every third weekend. The races mess up the schedule but serve as great motivation.

I love the predictable progression towards faster intervals. I usually shave off time in small increments thoughout the winter. Occasionally, a day can be slower than the previous session, but overall the trend is usually clear.

In March, maybe late March, I will start cutting down one of the interval days to 8 x 800 on the track. I will keep doing the 6x1 mile, mostly to keep checking the progress.

Then the racing begins for real. This year, I will keep doing the intervals through the spring, evetually doing 400s. I haven't done speed like that in years, and it will be interesting to see if the legs hold up. This year, I did my 16:15 5000 after which I bailed out and started doing triathlons and ultras.

Not in 2010, and I will tell you why. I am turning 35 next year and, as such, am suddenly a national age-group player. I will have to look into it, but I think I would be able to win or medal at several distances. Of course, some very fast runners are over 35 but they still run in the open races. I have never won an individual medal at the national level and ,who knows, maybe it's too late in a few years.

It's exciting to think about. I still have mixed feelings about being in Denmark. I miss my son and the way medicine is practiced in the US. But the running scene is just so much better here, for traditional long distance races, anyway. The masters track and cross country races this year have been so much fun. When it comes to trail ultras in Denmark, though, there is really not much going on. And, come to think of it, maybe I would prefer beautiful trail ultras to track meets.

DGI Cross Round 1 Report

2009-11-15T02:50:00.000-08:00

What a fun race! It's been a long time since I ran a course like this one. Or, at least, a long time since I ran such a course fast. At the gun, a young guy went out in front and I settled into a group of four. The other three seemed pretty young and I assumed that they would burn out. The first mile or so was on a regular trail, so it I tried to concentrate on running as easily as possible. Then we turned onto some pretty technical terrain. On a steep downhill, our little group broke up. One of the guys really knew how to run the downhills and must have gapped me by 20-30 yards.

It seemed like the race was suddenly on. For a short while, three of us got back together before we hit the first of two big hills. On the first one, I felt like I was a little stronger than the others, but didn't push the pace, mostly because of the downhill on the other side. The last hill on the loop was long and steep and I figured this was my chance to take off. The two guys, who were teammates, stayed just 50 yards behind me for a long time, which was unnerving but, finally, they fell back. The last two miles, I was all on my own, with only the front guy ahead. It turned out that he was starting to fade a little, too. I wasn't close enough to catch him, although he looked back nervously several times.

The course was what made this race cool. A few sections were completely off-trail with just some white banners showing the way through the woods. There was even a pile of fallen logs we had to jump/climb over. On the first lap (of two), the trails were okay but on the second lap, the mud was getting deep. It was the kind that could easily have sucked off a shoe. Speaking of shoes, most of the front guys wore spikes, but I opted for my Salomon shoes I bought in the Alps this summer. They were probably a little heavy but had decent traction.

My second place gave me 6 points toward the overall series. There are three more races in the series, followed by the season finale, which is actually held on trails not too far from where we live. All the races are within an hours drive. It's definitely something to look forward to this winter.

The Girl's race was less than perfect. Her first loop, she was close to the eventual women's winner, our teammate Mette. But then her GI virus acted up and she had to produce some quick diarrhea. Twice. She still took second but wasn't happy with the race. There were very few women running, maybe because the women tended to run the short course. Her last three races have been disappointing and her training isn't going well. I think it's the stress of that PhD project, and I think she would agree.

The race was followed by showers and a dinner at a decent Indian restaurant in Copenhagen. The dinner was followed by more diarrhea, but that's another story.

Cross Country Race Preview

2009-11-13T12:39:00.000-08:00

Another week is over. Time seems to move quickly; the days are busy. The Girl is under a lot of stress, trying to set up her PhD project. It seems weird to blog about it, but if it takes off, it will be the largest ophthalmologic population study ever. It's very common here for junior doctors to undertake some similar major project during their specialization. In the US, docs typically specialize first and then start working on the projects that define their careers.

This project is a lot bigger than anything the Girl had ever wanted to get involved in. She needs to raise a little more than $1,000,000 to buy equipment and hire nurses. At this moment, on a Friday night, she is working on two applications, each one asking for a couple of hundred thousand from some, I believe, private foundations.

In other news, I rolled my ankle very badly last weekend. I have rolled both ankles countless times but this time may have been the worst. I was going fast down a hill on what seemed like flat ground. Suddenly, the left ankle rolled outward so far the lateral malleolus may have touched the ground (the bone on the outside of the ankle). I was actually able to run back to the car with some pain and I didn't think it was going to be that bad. However, that same night, the whole foot was swollen and, more ominously, there were signs of bleeding several places around the forefoot.

Over the week, it has gotten better but not perfect. It has certainly robbed me of some days of training. Also, tomorrow we are running the first race in a cross country series over the winter. I had been looking forward to this for a long time. several years ago, I ran several cross country races and always had fun. Back then, I ran in the top national division and, at best, finished in the middle of the pack. But tomorrow is a less competitive league where I assume I will place well. With the ankle, we shall see, of course.

Cross country in Europe is different than in the US, by the way. My one year of college cross country in the US was great for a number of reasons, but the courses were exceedingly boring. Most of the races were held on golf courses. Here, cross country is held in forests and the courses follow muddy, twisty steep trails, of they follow trails at all. The rule is that you fall down at least a couple of times. Most people run in spikes for better traction and I used to do the same. Should I do this, with a left foot that is still blue from all the internal bleeding from 5 days ago? Probably not. On the other hand, it's been raining for a couple of days so there will likely be mud everywhere.

The format is a little weird. It's a 9K followed by a 3K. Most people run both but only take one of them seriously. I will take the 9K seriously and hobble around during the 3K, I imagine.

The Girl has been sick with the flu for a few days. Not the swine flu, but that generic word for flu that isn't really influenza.

Yeah, the H1N1 flu strain is now coming to Denmark. If it's going to sweep across the country, like some people predict, the vaccine has hit the shelves too late. Only a few percnt of my patients have gotten it so far. Ad far as planning for the flu, we are not changing any chemo plans for anyone. No one knows if the shot "takes" if you get it right after chemo, actually. It hit Norway over the last two weeks and killed 125 people, which has scared people here. It will be interesting to see what happens here.

Vomit

2009-11-06T11:57:00.000-08:00

A stomach bug is ruining my Friday. Shortly after midnight, the Lorax produced a small lake of puke onto his sheets and onto the floor. He had to stay home from day care, of course. Daughter came home from school, reporting abdominal pain. We had fajitas for dinner; her choice and her favorite, and yet she ate almost none of it.

Surprisingly, the Girl started throwing up first. She came back from swimming, just as dinner was getting done on the stove. The wind and rain still in her hair, it looked like we would settle in for a cozy family evening. Instead, she curled up in a fetal position and threw up some liquid stomach contents. A little later, up came enough oatmeal to fill the Tupperware container she always eats out of.

The Girl went to bed and Daughter and I were watching a movie. She went quiet for a while before she started vomiting, too. Over a mattress and onto the floor. Then she went to bed.

The Lorax has been feverish and crabby all day, so I was relieved when he finally fell asleep in my arms. At this point, I had cleaned floors, mattresses and clothes, set up buckets and held back hair for a few hours. I snuck out to the kitchen and filled a little cup with some new type of Reese's balls that look like M&Ms. My Ex sent them over to Daughter for Halloween and I figured this was a good time to steal them. Life was good.

Suddenly the Girl walks in, looking like she is sleep-walking. She proceeds to sit down on the couch, crushing the sleeping Lorax's leg and waking him up. He starts screaming and the Girl then decided to throw up another bulldog-sized quantity of oatmeal! How much oatmeal can a tiny woman like the Girl hold?

So I am sitting here, watching the BFD, as we call, him mess up our apartment. BFD? Yeah, Baby-Faced Destroyer. Named after Tirunesh Dibaba, but I am the only who knows that. Everyone in our extended family calls him that when he goes on a baby rampage and I have never told them it alludes to an Ethiopian with a strong kick.

Daughter just threw up for the 5th time and is now lying behind me watching a movie. I rate my own chances of getting the same syndrome at about 50/50.

Copenhagen 6 hour race report

2009-10-25T12:51:00.000-07:00

The Girl and I joined 60 other crazy runners for a 6 hour run around Tueholm Sø near Copenhagen yesterday. This was the frist time they have held this race, and I must admit I figured it would be only mildly competitive. As it turned out, it was quite competetive and the male winner set a new Danish Racord for the 6 hour run 82.5K (just shy of 52 miles).

My strategy was to run with the Girl for 60 to 90 minutes and then speed up. What would happen after that was uncertain, but I had a vague idea that I would run with her for a while every time I lapped her.

The Girl started out fast and settled in the top third of the field as first woman. Another woman was trying to keep up but fell back. The guys quickly spread out over the whole loop, but several women stayed close to each other. This certainly made the Girl go a little faster than usual. I probably didn't do a good job of holding her back. I was getting a little restless, seeing the top men drift away, and probably even encouraged her to go a little faster than she should have.

After 6 loops I took off. I handed my wind breaker to a guy at the aid station and turned my music on. The next hour and a half was great. The top two guys had already lapped us at this point and my goal was to run de-lap them as quickly as possible and maybe stick with the top guy (one lap behind him, of course). But the legs were so damn good I had a hard time holding back and blew right through the pack. I didn't know who was where in the race, except the top two, who had just lapped us, so it was a little confusing. I assume most of the top runners thought I was lapping them, when in fact I was just passing them.

When I got up to the top guy, I considered running with him, but I was going considerably faster than him at the time and ran past him. In retrospect, it was probably a little unsportsmanlike to pass a guy who was on his way to setting a national record and not tell him that he had already lapped me. I had taken off my warm-up pants and windbreaker and was in no way recognizable. On the other hand, it may have motivated him a little to have someone to chase.

As this point, I had lapped the Girl twice and had figured I would take it easy for a while with her and base my plan around how the top 2 guys were running. When I lapped her, she has a large gap on Maibritt and I actually thought she was starting to pull away for good. She wasn't in the mood to talk and told me to run on. This was probably a mistake, but I pressed on. I ran on, passing people going at various speeds, lapping some people and, probably, passing some people for the first time. After a while, I lapped the Girl again, and this time I was in need of slowing down. Again, she didn't want company.

So I devised a bonehead plan. I had a sense that I was about to catch the second-place guy and a sense that he was slowing down. This was not true; he was slowing down a little, compared to the top guy, but not compared to anyone else. I caught him, feeling pretty dead. This was at three hours. Only halfway!

We talked for a while. He was a nice guy; I immediately told him that I had dead legs and he told me that he felt the same way. Then again, he had just run a quadruple marathon the week before. What?!? Over a 100 miles, and he was doing this well? This sort of told me that he was not the kind of man to slow down dramatically over the next three hours. We ran together for maybe 20 minutes, chatting a little about the race. He basically told me I could draft as much as I pleased, which I did.

At 3.5 hours, I thought it wholly unrealistic to stick with the second-place guy. I really didn't know what to do. I stopped at the aid station and ate and drank as much as I could. Running on was not very appealing, not knowing who was coming from behind to catch me. If I had known how safe my third place was at the time - and I imagine I was over a lap ahead of the next guy - I may have pushed on.

Looking back, I think I had mentally dropped out of the race. I saw the Girl coming up towards me and walked backwards toward her. Remembering now how I felt when I walked against the current of the runners, ready to drop out, I am surprised at how good the rest of the run went.

My luck was that the Girl was also crashing. We ran together for a while; she was still in first place. At the aid station, she stopped and informed me that she was miserable and couldn't go on. We walked for a while and then jogged for a while and the 15-minute break this process offered me gave me a second wind. We ran together from then on. It felt like the Transalpine, with me encouraging her along. Only this time, it was "Come on, just 50 more minutes!" and not "come on, you can see the village down there!".

The last 10 minutes, she set me free and I ran the last bit surprisingly fast. Who knew I could have legs like that after almost 6 hours of running! I think I was going at sub-6 minute miles the last 2K.

At the end, my race was good enough for 66K and 7th place. What a strange race it was. If I had run the last, say, 90 minutes on my own, I could probably have gotten up to around 70K but not knowing where I was in the race made running alone very unappealing. Also, to be honest, running with the Girl was such a nice martyr-like copout.

The Girl ended in fourth. As is usually the case in ultras, the women all ran well in the end. The Girl even got passed by some of the lower-placed women, even though she ran almost the whole time. The truth is she started out way too fast. Her half-marathon was 1:45, ie. well below her marathon PR pace. Her marathon was around 3:43, close to her PR. She is not in peak shape, either, so the pace was way too optimistic.

All in all, the level was much higher than I had imagined. That the Girl could finish outside the top 3 in a race with just 13 women hadn't even crossed my mind. I had imagined a top 5, possibly top 3, for myself.

The Girl hated the race but I may want to race it next year. If I had been running with the leaders in the beginning, knowing who the top 5 was, I think I would have run the race very differently.

How do I run a 6 hour race?

2009-10-22T11:38:00.000-07:00

We have the Copenhagen 6H Race coming up on Saturday.

I have never raced a timed race, of course. The route is a mostly paved, flat 2.2K loop around a lake. How do I race? My two 50 milers took over 7 and 9 hours, respectively, but I started out jogging for the first two hours and walked for the last bit in both races. If I do it just right, I imagine I can do the first hour to 90 minutes at a relaxed pace and then run decently until the finish.

I'm considering simply running with the Girl for the first, say, 90 minutes. I don't know if she would be okay with that, as she plans to run an even pace and may not want to talk to me.

Another crazy thought is starting out fairly slowly, wait to get lapped by the leaders and then run with them. Denmark is a windy place and drafting a little may be a wise idea.

In short, I don't have a clue how to race this one. I don't know how competitve the race is or how far I am supposed to run. I am loosely thinking 65K to 70K. I believe my six hour split at North Country 50 was around 70K, but I was in better shape then. then again, this route is flat.

We shall see.

The Girl is running to win. I know she has aspirations of making the Danish national team, although I wonder if she would be eligible. There is woman there, Maibritt, who is one of the faster ladies on the Danish ultra team. The Girl will probably try to stay close to this woman, although it's a bit of a tall order. Maibritt has a 67K 6H PR, which may be a bit much for the Girl. Come to think of it, it may be a bit much for me...

My first-born son

2009-10-11T08:08:00.001-07:00

I'm sitting in a hotel room with my son. Not the Lorax, but my son from my first marriage. I have spent 48 a couplf of days with him and won't see him again for at least a couple of months.

I never imagined it would come to this when I saw him as a little baby 6 years ago. On his first night, I looked over into the little incubator and thought he looked like he was dead. So I got up and looked closer; suddenly, he startled with a huge moro reflex. I remember feeling so happy that he was alive.

Six years later, I know him peripherally. I webcam him frequently but I don't know his day-to-day worries and joys. When I see him, I spoil him, hoping that he will like me and think of me when I am gone. I don't know what he thinks of me; I doubt he misses me.

I don't know what will happen over time. I hope he can spend a year with us one day (in whatever country we live in then). Right now, I hope we can find a way for him to come visit us in Denmark. He hasn't been there since he was 3, so he has no memory of Denmark. He vaguely knows that he has ties to some foreign place, mostly because his sister lives there now, but I don't have a good feeling for how sees the situation. He speaks only a few words of Danish, even though he was fluent when he was a toddler. My parents have made a point of coming to see him a few times a year and he absolutely loves them. He hears them speak Danish; I wonder what he thinks of it all.

I miss him every day. And, perhaps more so, I feel infinitely guilty for leaving him. I tell myself I had no choice. Or rather, there was a choice, but I had to choose to leave. One daym when he is old enough, I will have to explain everything. It's not ideal, that's for sure.

Full circles

2009-10-03T07:59:00.000-07:00

Patients die almost every day in our inpatient unit. Some of them have been my patients but, up until these last few weeks, they have been patients handed down from the previous fellow or one of the attendings. Suddenly, two of my "full circles" just died; patients I had known from their diagnoses till their deaths.

One lady had breast cancer and didn't want conventional chemotherapy. I don't know what to say about her choice. Hopefully, it wouldn't have made a difference. When I first saw her, she didn't look sick, except a big belly from cancerous fluid. She had 4 very good months and two not so good. She wanted to go to hospice but died before we could get that far. When she died, it struck me how much more striking the death of a "full circle" patient is.

The other one was an old man who I only saw a few times. He had a lymphoma that killed him surprisingly fast. I was telling him one week that he looked strong and that he would probably do okay with the chemo and would, perhaps, be cured. He didn't and wasn't. He changed so much from the time of diagnosis until before his death that it was hard to imagine it was the same person.

Speaking of full circles, we have been here almost a year. The long days are long gone. A few months ago, our long runs in the woods would finish in daylight at 11. Now, it's getting dark at 7. In a few months, it will get dark at 3.

My running season is almost over and it's time to build a base for next year. I came out of Transalpine in great shape but there is no time to start building up to a big race or a PR attempt. I actually look forward to getting into a training rhythm, hopefully as good as last winter.

I had a good season. My 16:15 5000m in the rain and wind was probably the high point. I know I could have PRd if I had had competition and no wind. I won a lot of races but got no PRs, despite hitting some very good form in the spring. The summer and fall were dedicated to "for fun" races, most notably Voyageur and Transalpine. I wasn't really injured all year. If next year is as good, I'll be more than happy.

We are planning the race schedule for next year.

Transalpine Race Report

2009-09-14T09:49:00.000-07:00

It's over. And would I ever do it again? To every single regular reader (all 10 of you) and every person who stumbles upon this blog through googling "Transalpine", let me say that I would - and will - definitely do it again.

I almost only run races where I have some chance of winning, or placing or getting a PR. But this one, this most beautiful race in the world, I would - and will - do again. Maybe just to sit at the pasta party listening to German techno with 500 cool runners, or listening to 10 different languages as you stand on the top of a mountain after climbing 6000 feet. What a wonderful race it is. What a wonderful, terrible race.

We came as, perhaps, the most naive runners of all. Dangerously used to winning almost every small race we enter, we thought of this as a competition. Training and racing in Denmark and the Midwest, where trails are soft, more interesting variants of roads, we had no idea what to expect. Day One was a great example of this; we were doing well, running just behind the mixed team that would take third for the day. And then, the real climbing began. We did tolerably on the uphills, only impeded by our lack of poles. Most - though, interestingly, not all - of the runners had poles, and the most experienced would move as though they had four legs. It was the downhills that killed us. We would watch a scary passage, as some might watch a rattle snake, while people simply jumped right through it. There were places that took us several minutes; others did it in 20 seconds. This isn't quite like running on the track:

After day One, we walked like we had just run a race, whereas others looked like they were still just warming up.

One day Two, it became fun. We had reached our zenith of the day, near the sponsored teams, when we had to cross our third "fixed rope" section, which caused a full-blown panic attack in the Girl. Thankfully, Kimberley Gimenez was there to talk some sense into the Girl and get her onto a safe ledge. And then, as the teams all passed us, we decided to just have fun with the race and try to enjoy the experience. The very best day, in my mind, was day Three, when we were very close to being dead last, coming down from a long, technical descent. It was warm and we were getting tired and dehydrated. We made it up to the top of the next mountain, both thinking we would get pulled out of the race. Instead "Wolfie", the RD, smiled and said "no, you are still in!". I pulled the girl with my poles as often as the trail would allow it and together we made it in, in almost 9 hours.

The Girl got injured and we missed stages 4 and 6. Stage 5 was a mountain sprint, which we did as a train, ie. me towing the hell out of the Girl. It was a time trial, with the slow teams starting first. As we were third from last, and we were decidedly pushing it all the way up, we were able to set a strong early time. It lasted almost for the rest of the race, until the leaders all came in and killed our time. I don't think the words "Team Lorax is still in the lead followed by..." has ever been uttered so many times (if it ever has).

There was a guy there, who had taken third at the European Mountain Running Championships. I don't know if he was actually part of a team (if he was, he must have had a slow partner). He may have just shown up for the stage. But anyway, that guy crawled up those hills like a bug with his poles; he was impressively fast.

I would love to get good at using poles. We bought some after day One, which made it a lot more fun. If you are reading this, and you are unsure whether you should buy poles before the Transalpine, do get some, and practice with them before you go. THe last two stages weren't technical enough for poles, probably, but just having them along made it more fun. Some store them outside their packs until the technical sections, some run with them in their hands from the start. Some put rubber tips on for the road sections, some don't. It's a science I know nothing about. I didn't even know how long they were supposed to be so I just went with somewhere between downhill and cross country poles.

We are back home. I feel great, having gotten in a week of awesome training runs. The Girl has an ankle that is about twice as thick as it should be, from a combination of stupidity and guts. Speaking of, if I were medical director of this race, I would have pulled several runners out. Like the Austrian guy who sounded like he was going to pass out every time he stepped down on his severely injured knee. The medical tent put a heavy-duty knee brace on him and let him run on.

The Competition

There are some strong runners there. The very top runners are full-time pros, the most notable being Angela Mudge, who is probably the best mountain runner in the world. Even the middle of the pack are serious, competitive runners, who probably win everything they enter in their local races. People are much more competitive than in US races. Not everyone will step off the trail to let you pass, and this did cause some scenes out there. At one long bottle-neck section, where everyone had to go single file, a German woman squeezed past me, in between me and the Girl, interrupting our conversation. Everyone was walking, obviously just waiting out the congestion, but this woman just wanted to get ahead. She pushed on, annoying people several pairs ahead of us. A pair of Finnish ladies were particularly annoying, always seeming to take short cuts and cut in front of people. So, yeah, it's a very competitive spirit, even in the middle third of the field. In the back, of course, everyone is very laidback.

I did not like this competitive feel. If I had been in a guy-guy team, really pushing it, I would have been freaked out by some people's attitude. Of course, I can't speak for the really fast teams, as I never saw them race. The camaraderie may have been better up there.

Speaking of camaraderie, we mostly hung out with the American and Danes. It felt good having two groups of "our people". The Danes included a guy named Lars, who obviously knew what he was doing. I asked whether he was the Lars I had heard so much about, alluding to a Lars, who took second at the Spartathlon in 2008 and was in second place for most of 24 Hour Worlds. He said that, yes, it was probably him that I had heard of. I was a little star struck, but it turned out that it was actually a different Lars. This one has raced some crazy adventure races but is not as accomplshed as the other Lars. Three teams of younger Danes came as a big, fun partying group. They were fun to meet, even though they made me feel old. One of the teams had a Norwegian girl, who got admitted to the hospital for presumed cellulitis, and we went to visit her in the Swiss hospital.

The American group had some cool people, all of whom were there to enjoy the trek. Especially the aforementioned Gimenez is a fountain of ultra knowledge and helpfullness. A pretty loud un-PC fountain, but that's cool.

It will take a while to get back to normal life after a trip like that.

A Super Taper

2009-08-23T05:59:00.000-07:00

The last few weeks have been hectic. Daughter has started school with mixed success; She is learning Danish at a decent pace and has made friends in school. The way she was born here but grew up in America makes her a little exotic, which helps. I have instructed the girls to tell her to speak Danish, whenever she uses English words. When I pick her up in the afternoon, two or three girls come up to tell me how much English she has spoken.

On the flip side, she fell off a slide and broke her front tooth. Stupidly, I forgot to pack her gym clothes last week; I had forgotten how even second graders take showers here. That was just one of maybe ten little things that showed her that we are not super-parents.

This weekend, we had two races. Saturday, we had a 4x5K relay. We have been running much less than normally this last month. I didn't know what to expect, but fared quite well. I got low 16s and the Girl got high 18s. The race was a little short, though. I got to run the first leg and probably took it a little too easy. I was way in front and cruising when I saw the 4K sign and realized it was almost over.

Our team got beaten by ten seconds! The winning team opened with one of their slower runners but slowly caught back up. The Girl, running the third leg, got passed 200 yards before the finish by their third guy. It turned out he handed off to a woman, which meant that not only had we lost our overall lead; we had lost the lead in the mixed division. There were nice money prizes, so this was a little depressing. Our fourth guy caught the woman, passed her, and she hung on. She ended up leaving him with a few K to go. Oh well, we had a good time. Maybe next year.

Then today, we ran a 14K trail race. It was probably the most beautiful course I have ever run on. I ran in a group of 4, holding back a little bit as I didn't know how the back-to-back races would treat me. The legs got really good with 5 miles to go and I decided to go it alone. I got 52 minutes, which I am happy with on that course.

The Girl got beaten pretty badly, however. There was one other woman there, who looked like she could remotely beat her and it turned out she was very fast. She ran it in 55 minutes, beating the Girl by 4 minutes. Still, the Girl's time was good, especially after the race yesterday, where she solidly PRd, even taking into account the short course.

We are looking good for Transalpine. Once in a while, the delusion that we can compete for the win enters my mind. The Girl is in great shape and, of course, she is the key factor. But I feel pretty good, too, and I will be the one pushing her, encouraging her, running ahead to fill up bottles etc. It definitely will be fun.

Goods and Bads of being back home

2009-08-02T03:36:00.000-07:00

The Girl has been hinting that some of her excitement over being here is waning. We have almost daily discussions about going moving back to the US. I would certainly have burned every bridge back to a career in Denmark if I drop out of this fellowship; the Girl would have to apply all over again for residency in the US, probably unsure of which specialty to choose. So moving back is not ideal, either.

We have talked about working in Greenland or Norway, followed by a stint of international medicine. As of now, the Girl is starting in ophthalmology, something she used to be excited about. Now, she seems to talk more about OBGYN, a far cry from looking at old people with cataracts, which she will be doing all day tomorrow.

All in all, work isn't very exciting for either of us right now.

We've been back a week now, which, after two weeks vacation in Wisconsin, is always a shocker.

GOOOD: Daughter is here. She now essentially understands all Danish but she refuses to speak it. Tomorrow is her first day of school, so I expect her Danish to take off from there. She had a great couple of days with my parents. Yesterday, we hiked in the woods and told stories. She pretended to be too cool for it but, at the end, she asked if we could do that every Saturday. Today, we are playing tennis and going biking.

BAD: A guy with his daughter passed Daughter and me. I said hi and he looked at me with surprise and suspicion. I forgot we are back in Denmark, where one does not greet strangers spontaneously.

GOOD: One of the receptionists told me that a lot of patients had been disappointed that I was gone and had been leery of seeing one of the attendings instead of me.

BAD: I got paid for my ER moonlighting here. One can't help compare my moonlighting here to moonlighting in the US. Here, it's a very busy ER, where I work almost non-stop. There, it's a slow ER, where I have ample time to chat with nurses, watch movies and eat Hot Pockets. The pay, after taxes, is almost twice as high in the US.

GOOD: My legs are back on. I ran last night, through the dusky woods, and felt very fast. There are still pains here and there but, overall, I feel fine. The motivation is there to train for something, say a fast half marathon in October.

Getting my ass kicked at Voyageur 50 Miles

2009-07-30T06:45:00.000-07:00

As the Girl and I started running out of Carlton, the morning seemed surreal, to say the least. We had woken up 26 minutes earlier, arrived 20 minutes late to the start and were discussing things, like "hey, did you grab my wallet?". Running a race with the Girl turned out to be fun; the firs few miles of the course were gorgeous and we were able to look at the absurdity of our morning.

The Girl seemed to start out too fast. I probably started out where I wanted, taking several walking breaks on the hills but she was a little panicky, trying to catch up to people. She was a little more aggresive in passing the trains but, overall, we kept up the same pace. People quickly figured out that we had started late and thought that was pretty funny. One woman told the Girl that she would surely have won, had she started with everyone else. That woman probably changed her mind, though, when she saw Helen Lavin coming back on her way to a new course record. In fact, now that I am on that topic, I was amazed by how fast the front runners were all going.

I yo-yo'ed around the wife, always walking and eating more that her, but finally bid her adieu at the power lines. The Power Lines. They seemed so easy on the way out, maybe because I was still having to go the pace of whoever was ahead of me. After the power lines, I turned on the iPod and started running fast. Boy, did that feel good.

Suddenly, appearing like Jesus, or Bob from Twin Peaks, was none other than Steve Quick. I was passing him, saw him, and almost fell into a creek while saying hi to him. One may expect Steve Quick to be cynical, wry and prone to call me something like a Scandihoovian (he is Minnesotan, afterall). He is well-known for being an angry man on the trail, especially when he is tired, it's hot and the power lines are muddy.

But no. I would describe him more like a gentle Michael Jackson, only with a better tan and worse moves. I assumed he wanted peace, but was hoping to talk to him after the race (which, unfortunately, didn't happen) and ran on. The girl did talk to him longer than me and found him to be as funny and smart as he is in electronic life.

At the turn-around, I had the usual naive feeling of greatness. On the way back, I kept passing people steadily, until the power lines. At first, it seemed like a good time to take a break, hiking up the hills, but those things are steep. My legs started to cramp and the sun was making me woozy. On one of the last hills, I was 10 feet from the top and cramped simultaneously in both legs. I stood there, almost able to look over the crest, for a good 30 seconds before moving on.

From there, life began to suck. I got a little speed back in me and passed a few more people (nearly all of whom would eventually pass me back). I ran with Chris Hanson for a while; he seemed like a nice guy and would eventually pull away from me by almost a half hour over the last 8 miles. The last 5 miles were complete torture. I walked most of it, but even fast walking induced violent cramps. I got passed left and right, of course. It sucked; I vowed never to run a 50 miler ever again.

After the finish, I cramped up some more and then some more.

The Girl was only 13 minutes behind. She probably started out a little too fast and had a hard time over the last few miles. If you subtract her 20 minute late start, she was running in third place for most of the race and, probably, in second place for some of it. But over those last miles, she faded to fifth (her eventual place, with or without the 20 minutes). She was too panicky in the beginning, but who can blame her?

Personally, I didn't train enough miles this year. I was faster this spring than I have been in years, and close to the fastest I have ever been. But fast won't cut it at ultras, unfortunately. Up next is the TransAlpine race and then we'll see whether I'll start training for something long or something short. Picking a middle-of-the-road distance, like a trail marathon or 50K may be a good idea.

The Girl, on the other hand, is looking up how to get into the Western States lottery as I am writing this. If she got in, I sure would love to crew for her.

Thinking about Voyageur 50 miles

2009-07-13T08:45:00.000-07:00

We had our last long run this Saturday. A little more then 4 hours, which I think meant just above a marathon for me. The legs felt good; I had a good snack in the middle of it and ran really well in that third hour. Towards the end, I was getting stiff and tired.

All in all, I think I have four good hours in me at Voyageur. I hear the course is rough, so 4 hours may translate into something like 25 miles. The rest of the course will be mere survival.

I plan to go out exceptionally slowly, enjoy the scenery and talk to other runners. I am sure I will see a bunch of people, whose blogs I have followed over the last few years. I may even meet my former brother-in-law, who took up ultras about the time I left the family. I think he is racing, but I am not sure.

I'll go slow for two hours. I don't know how far two slow hours will carry me; maybe 12 miles? That would be a 10-minute mile, which sounds slow, but of course I will walk every hill. So let's say 12 miles.

Then I will turn on the iPod and start cruising. I hope to run those middle four hours fast, passing as much of the field as I can. Of course, it's an out-and-back course, which will give me a sense of who is up ahead. In my only other 50 miler, I went from 50th to 3rd based on this strategy.

The problem is the last bit. The other 50 miler was plenty hilly, but not very technical. In that race, I only had an hour's worth of slowing down on painfully dead quads before it was over. This time, whatever comes after the "4 good hours" may be two or three hours, or even more. The thought scares me. In the other 50 miler, the field was so spread out that I didn't get passed by anyone in the last hour, despite walking most of it. I don't think I can walk/waddle at the end of Voyageur and not get passed by several people.

I have gained a little weight over the last few weeks but I am still light. I have trained too much speed and too little distance over the spring and summer. But, overall, I feel ready to do this.

The Girl is a similar story. Speed-wise she is faster than ever but, compared to me, she has loads of natural endurance. She has, probably, 10 "good hours" in her; the truth is, she has never maxed out her amount of good hours. At the end of her 50 miler, she felt like she could have kept going (so she said, maybe to make me feel bad). I know she is thinking about going out somewhat hard, which would be interesting to see. If that happens, she may actually start faster than me, or we could even run together for a while. She needs to remind herself to eat enough, and I will be sure to tell her a million times to eat, eat, eat.

Thinking about this race is a nice distraction; what is really on my mind is Daughter moving here. I feel the weight and responsibility of parenthood settling on me. My ex-wife told me that Daughter is starting to "freak out". I didn't know that was the case; every time I talk to her, she seems excited to move. It's only natural that she is nervous about this. She speaks Danish only haltingly and, really, she has no idea what to expect here.

What I do know is that she loves me. She is very grown up for her 8 years. Almost to the point of being able to bluff people with her tough attitude. We were talking on the phone and she told me, in so many words, that it wasn't a big deal that I was coming. But then she caved and showed her true colors: "Dad, you're still coming on the 15th, right? I just wanted to say that when you pick me up at day care, you should park at the back parking lot. You know, over by the playground, because that's where the school agers are playing. So I'll see you faster that way..." It almost made me cry.

Everything in my life, I think of in light of how she will look at it. I look at our apartment with her eyes, at our town, at the stores and the library. I look at the different spices in the kitchen and imagine what she will say when we are cooking together.

It sounds so simple; that I have endured six months away from the kids and now I get Daughter. I should be thrilled, but I am mostly scared. I will have to step up and be the main parent. The Girl is a great step-mom, but she is Daughter's friend first of all. I just hope I can do it, because, as it is, I feel stressed out about everything. Every day, there is some patient to worry about or some scan I forgot to call someone about. And there are small laughable things, like buying a present for someone or paying the rent on time. Normal life stuff that still has a way of burdening me more that it should. All the things that are now my main worries in life will have to become minor, secondary considerations when Daughter moves here.

I remember when she was born, though. I felt like there was no way I could continue with medical school and running competitively and be a good dad. But it worked out. My grades became stellar and I became faster than ever. It was like I found an extra gear in life. I'm hoping she will have the same effect on me this time. Maybe starting with Voyageur?

Triathlon race report

2009-07-05T04:49:00.000-07:00

This was my (our) third triathlon. I am beginning to learn about the different distances, especially how well suited to runners each distance is. Our first triathlon was at a sprint distance, which means comparatively little swimming comåared to running. And not only that, the bike route in that triathlon was very hilly, which tends to suit most runners. After two minutes in the swim, I thought I was about to drown and I was in second-to-last place. I breast-stroked the whole way. But then on the bike, I began catching people and on the run I really began cathcing people. I took 6th overall and the Girl did pretty well, too, as I recall.

Today's distance was the Olympic distance. The swimming is 1500m, almost 4 times that of a sprint tri. The running is only a 10K, compared to a 5K in the sprint tri. To compare, the swimming in a half ironman is only marginally longer but the running is a half marathon. So obviously the Olympic distance is rough on runners.

There were 70 people signed up, mostly from serious triathlon clubs. It was a little intimidating to see all the expensive time trial bikes with aero bars and plate wheels. The swimming is in the harbor of Næstved, where the river sort of widens before it flows into the ocean a few miles downstream. We got our wetsuits on and warmed up a little; the water was very nice and warm. It didn't taste salty so far upstream so no extra bouyancy to be had there.

The start went and people took off like orca whales. The Girl and I were near the very back of the field. After 30 seconds, I got a small panic attack. The suit felt too tight and I didn't feel like I could move my arms or breathe properly. I treaded water for a few seconds and got my act together. The first half of the swim went very well. I worked my way up the field slowly, passing a few people. Rounding the halfway buoy felt good. The next guy up was wearing a white swim cap and I figured I would pass him on the right, as I breathe to the left. I don't know what happened next but I must have lost my focus for a few minutes. The swimming felt good, my body was rhythmically rolling back and forth - until suddenly my hand slammed into concrete. I was 50 meters off course, looking up at a rusty steel and concrete dock. There was an aging Lithuanian vessel docked maybe 50 yards away. Boy, did I feel small. 50 meters away, the race was going on with its safety in numbers but where I was at felt like an insane place to be out for a swim.

Well, I started working my way back to white cap guy. Believe it or not, I was hit by the trance again; this time, I didn't hit the dock but "felt" it towering over me. After this, I started "spotting", which is something stronger swimmers do when they take stock of the race situation. For me, it meant a few seconds of doggy paddle every minute or so. I eventually caught wtite cap guy and used him as my guide.

Back on land, I was so incredibly dizzy. It took me over a minute to get my wet suit off and I almost fell down twice. On the bike, I started off by eating a Twix bar. Got onto the tri bar and into a nice rhythm. Most of the field today was elite or sub-elite, so they biked faster than me. There was no drafting allowed, of course. The winner, Rasmus Petraeus, who is on the national team, blew by be at a pace I couldn't hold for more than ten seconds. This was when he lapped me, of course. I wouls say I got passed (lapped) by 20 people and passed 5. At my first triathlon, the numbers were probably 2 and 40, which says more about the field today than my biking.

And then, the run. Ah, the run. Even the triathlete studs, who had ridden $5000 bikes, were getting passed on the run by me. Of course, the speedsters that I passed were a full 5K ahead of me, but it was still fun to pass (or de-lap) them. I don't know yet where I finished in the pack but it was probably somewhere in the middle.

The Girl did really well on the bike. the course was multiple out-and-backs so I saw her almost ten times. She did very well on the run, too, almost catching the woman who had been slightly ahead of her all day. Her form was good, coming in:

Up next must be a half ironman. We are never going to be good enough swimmers to do well at an Olympic distance tri. I kept imagining, during the run, how many people I would have caught, had I had another 11 kilometers to work with. Of course, the bike is longer, too, but I feel like I could get much better on the bike if I worked on it.

Half marathon race report

2009-06-20T23:28:00.000-07:00

We woke up to find out there was a strong wind coming from the west. The dreaded "Return of the Westerlies". We looked at the route to figure out which part would go into the wind. The route is shaped like a big circle, with two twisty diverticula going into the circle; like Mickey Mouse's outline, except the ears point inward. The wind would be in our faces going up to the top of Mickey's head and in our backs in the way back.

My advice for the Girl was solid: find a group of guys and draft like your life depends on it. The last 5 miles, if you have any energy left, should be super fast.

The start went and a little group formed in the front. First, we were five, then four, then two. The other guy was leading into the wind, and I pulled up and told him we should try to work together. We did for a few kilometers, but every time I was drafting, it felt too slow, and every time I would lead, he hd a hard time holding on. Then he dropped off, and it was me and the lead-out bike.

The first K was 3:26 in the headwind. That's a 5:29 mile, so faster than PR pace. It felt very easy. The next few Ks were just around 3:30, right on pace for a PR. 5K in 17:36, just 6 seconds off PR pace. At this point, I was convinced I was heading for a big PR. The legs felt great, and the backwind was still ahead.

Then, the legs started getting a little heavy. The next kilometers included Mickey's ear. One K was pure backwind and yet the split was over 3:30. I tried to accelerate to get the legs to turn over faster, but they didn't oblige. I went through 10K in 35:35, ie. 35 seconds off PR pace. I still felt a PR was possible, if I had the legs on tat last windy stretch. Then came Mickey's second ear with lots of turns, including some near-180 degree turns. My legs were getting stiff; it wasn't fun anymore and I was slowing down noticably.

I came through 15K in 54:20 (or thereabout), ie. almost two full minutes above PR pace. I was so tired I thought about walking up a couple of the small hills (of which there were very few). At this point, I had the strong wind in my back and was beginning to pass the back of the 10Kers. What I had told the Girl was terribly true; a strong backwind is only worth-while if you have the legs for it. I couldn't make mine turn over nearly fast enough. It felt like running downhill with stiff legs. I came in in 1:16:xx (xx meaning something high but I am not sure how high).

Look at me here; it's hard to tell that I have lost weight lately. The legs look chunky. My form is crap; the shoulders are slouching. The photo was taken with 4 miles left. I did win, though, which was a big plus. I even won a 200 dollar gift certificate to an upscale running shoe store.

Then came what I enjoy the most at these races. I jogged to the car and got into some warmer clothes; got the Girl's stuff ready and found the camera. Drank water and ate some energy bars from the tables.while waiting for her. The first woman came in 1:28 and the next 10 seconds later. The Girl got third and a PR with a 1:33:40. Not quite what she was hoping for, but everyone agreed that the wind had made the race very hard.

She had started out with the eventual winner, going through 5K in 20:30 (!!) and 10K in 42:20. So her race was a lot like mine; she started out too fast in the headwind. This is her with 4 miles to go, looking tired but stronger than her husband.

Here is a priceless facial expression:

All in all, it was a fun race and good ending to the "fast" part of our season. Now it's time for a triathlon, a 50 mile race and the Transalpine in the fall. Maybe we can squeeze in a few shorter runs here and there.

Half marathon tomorrow

2009-06-19T06:54:00.000-07:00

I've been riding a wave of good shape over the last month, and the race tomorrow will be the last fast race of that wave. After the race, we have an olympic distance triathlon and then we are off to America for vacation and Voyageur 50 Miles. The triathlon will be fun. My swimming is going from drowning dog to being able to crawl for a mile very slowly, especially with my wet suit on. The 50 mile race I will run like I ran my only other 50 mile race: from the back. I plan to be in 50th spot after 10 miles and then see how far up the field I can get. Both races are unknown quantities, of course.

The half marathon tomorrow is flat and fast and there will be competition running around my pace. I have thought about a possible PR, if the stars align. My speed is a little above what it was two years ago, when I set my PR, but I haven't been doing as many long runs.

I plan on going out in 35 minutes for the first 10K, which will put on pace exactly for a PR. Then we will see what happens. It's also a money race, where I will probably end up somewhere 2nd to 4th (top 3 gets money).

The Girl will be sorely disappointed if she doesn't PR. She will go out in 4:15 per K pace, which leads to a 1:28 finish time. I am guessing she will get somewhere around 1:27. The Girl's running is interesting in that she sees herself as a slow-twitch ultra runner type. I essentially agree with her, and I think her greatest races will come in marathons and above. However, she has never had that breakthrough in a long race. Her 19:41 for a 5K is very impressive, more than her 41:45 10K and much more than her 1:34 half marathon PR (which, in turn, is better than her 3:39 marathon PR). She has 8:49 for 50 miles, which I can't really compare to other times.

And the thing is, she has been running long slow runs forever and only recently started doing speed work. That will definitely help her shorter races more. Who knows, maybe I have a track queen on my hands.

Conversely, my half marathon PR of 1:13:54 is my strongest PR and I consider myself quite fast-twitch. I don't have a marathon time in recent years (3:08, when I was 21, doesn't count). Who knows where I will end up running my fastest (age group) races?

Wow, I love being married to a runner.

2009-06-13T07:38:00.000-07:00

Ran 800s with the Girl today. 8x800m with 2.5 minutes rest. My times were slower than last week, in the range of 1:22 to 1:28. The 5000m from Thursday was still in the legs.

The track that we run on is not at the club we recently joined. Rather, there is an old boarding school near our apartment that dates back to the 12th century. The grounds are beautiful; everything exudes old charm and style. In the back, there is a sports complex that looks like it's close to 100 years old. One can see the track, paritally, on the right side of this photograph.

Here is the Girl getting ready for her 3rd 800 today (there is no finish line, so I set up a cone instead):

The surface is black dirt and it's shaped like a square with soft corners. I had to use my Garmin to make sure it's 400 meters. That's where we run our intervals. We warm up until the Lorax falls asleep in the baby jogger and then park him up against an old thatched-roof shack. I love it.

Also on the grounds today, we saw a baby swan. A prospective student and his father were being shown around and a weel-dressed employee from the school told us that it was likely born in the last 24 hours. We took pictures of the swan (aka the cygnet or swanling) but they didn't turn out well. However, here is one of the Girl, the wanting-out Lorax and the aforementioned prospective student, his well-heeled father and the school official.

There are times it's not so bad to live here. It's no Wisconsin, but it's not all bad either.