Oh no, I didn't!

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

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.

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

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

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

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?"

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!