Life in Limbo

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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.