I was talking to someone the other day about plans after work. I mentioned that I needed to get a run in before they’d pick me up to go out. I explained that I have a marathon coming up at the end of may and need to run as much as possible when I’m home to balance that with my travel schedule for work.
The comment made went something like this: No offense, but you really don’t have the build for Marathons, you’re a bigger guy (I’m 6′, weigh about 185lbs, and consider myself in good shape, exercising 5-6 days a week). Have you ever seen how skinny and small marathoners are?
I did take a bit of offense. My response to this is, yes the people that win marathons generally aren’t that tall and are extremely skinny. This is the body type that will help you win a marathon; however, marathon competitors have all sorts of body types (and sometimes even ridiculous costumes).
I’m not trying to win the race. I just want to run the 26.2 miles and do well. My ideal goal would be to qualify for the Boston Marathon (which would require pacing a 7:15ish mile), but that might not be possible with the amount of travel that I have to do for work. I’ll be okay with finishing within a decent time – I can pace an 8 minute mile in my sleep.
What I’m trying to do requires discipline and the right state of mind, not worrying about whether I have the correct body type.
I think the philosophy of this extends to life in general: yes, there will be limitations to what you can do, but how do you deal with them or overcome them?
Filed under: Running, life, madison, myself | Tags: cycling, grilling, madison, Wisconsin
I managed to do only a couple things, but I was very content with this past weekend.
I did get some grilling in now that the weather is getting nicer. I made chicken/veggie skewers with a honey marinade and ate it with a spinach, walnut, onion, and blue cheese salad. It went pretty well with a Pinot Grigio. The coals were still hot, so I grilled the rest of the chicken and vegetables that I had stocked away in the freezer. It makes a good quick dinner after work and my long runs.
On that note, I’m slowly trying to increase my distance even more. I’m doing multiple days of 12+ miles, interspersed with days of water polo, and shorter, faster runs. Sunday, it was too nice and my housemate had just purchased a bike, which inspired me to clean, oil, and prep my bike. I took it out for a two hour ride which was really lovely, it’s refreshing to A. have bike trails that take you through places you’ve never been before and B. see people out and about. It was a bit chilly when I rode by Lake Mendota -it still has a thin layer of ice, but at least no one still trying to ice fish.
Filed under: life, madison, myself | Tags: madison, Madison Marathon, Marathon, Running, Wisconsin
So I’ve decided to run the Mad City Marathon this upcoming May. I think that this will not be a big stretch for me. I’ve been running pretty consistently for the last 3 years, except for breaks during the winter when I was swimming with my college team (as a distance swimmer) and a couple months when I fractured a bone in my foot. At a more intense period in this time, I was running twice a day. I would do a long run in the morning and then a shorter run in the afternoon. Normally, I run about 20 to 30 miles a week. Recently, it’s been lower distances, but with more intense paces and intervals.
Today I ran 8.5 miles and felt pretty good, so I’m confident that I will be able reach my goals: to finish the race, preferably with no or little stopping, and to avoid injury.
I have about six months until the race in late may and I look forward to it. My challenges will include: increasing my mileage as the temperature drops outside in frigid Wisconsin, completing long distance runs while I’m traveling for my job, and making sure I avoid leg injury.
I will update this blog with news about my training, mileage counts, the types of (very basic) equipment that I will use, food that I will eat, routes, and pictures. Stay tuned!
Filed under: life, madison, myself | Tags: madison, stuff white people like, Wisconsin, wisconsin book festival
I went to a reading/talk by the author of the blog and site entitled “Stuff White People Like” as a part of the Wisconsin Book Festival. It was interesting to have him put the blog into a self-analytical light and have it seem like an anthropological satire of upper-middle class hipsters.
I went through the full list and figured out which ones apply to me. I qualify for about 75%. I guess I already knew I fell into this category. #80: The Idea of Soccer is one of my personal favorites and one to which I plead guilty.
Filed under: art, life, myself | Tags: eggplant parmesan, louise bourgeouise, rummage sales
My mom sent me a recipe for eggplant parmesan derived from the one at the William Sonoma website. I had been extolling the virtues of the vegetables at the farmer’s market and about how good the eggplant looked. Her reaction: “Well, you’ll love this.” It’s eggplant, cheese, tomatoes, a bit of garlic, and lots of olive oil. It’s quite good. It does take some time… and you’re using the oven and boiling down tomatoes while it’s hot out side. I think it’s worth it.
eggplant by Pat Jordan on Zooomr
In other news, this month’s ARTNews magazine reviewed a Louise Bourgeois exhibition in New York (I need to live there to have easy access to these things). This reminded me that about two weeks ago I went to a garage sale that was housed inside a basketball court. Over the top of the metal cages there was a giant blue tarp. The man running the show with the long beard and ragged old wallet full of bills called it “The Danger Zone.” This man also said he was a national-caliber Scrabble competitor. Inside the Danger Zone there were tables covered with old dusty junk with price tags, mirrors, and books. Wooden chairs hung from the cage’s walls and from poles in the center. It bore striking resemblance to Louise Bourgeois’s Passage Dangereux (see below) which simply translates to “Dangerous Passage.” A weird coincidence with the name (somewhat), but I guess there’s the possibility that it’s intentional.
Louis Bourgeois is a wonderful artist. She’s in her late nineties and still as sharp and as productive as ever. She was a surrealist associated with Léger and now she has become personally renowned for her sculpture and installation works.
Louise Bourgeois, Passage Dangereux, 1997. Taken from the book Themes in Contemporary Art by Gill Perry and Paul Wood
I would have considered myself a nerd in high school. I knew how to program. I owned (and still have) the Star Trek encyclopedia, and I loved science fiction. Although I pursued other interests in college (Poli Sci, Spanish Language, Art History, and Creative Writing) I believe myself to be quite technologically literate. I currently work for a software company (although in a less directly technical role, but still).
It never ceases to amaze me how the hit/smack is often effective with fixing computers and/or their peripherals. Often times this just doesn’t make sense, hitting a computer can be the death sentence for a hard drive, especially if it’s running.
My printer was not working. Ink levels were full, the connection with my computer was fine, yet it wouldn’t respond to print requests and wouldn’t finish preliminary check ups. I wasn’t even able to perform the software controlled maintenance. I even received an extremely helpful error message that said something to the extent of: “there has been an error, eliminate the source of the error and then proceed.” Really?
It was dusty so I blew inside the enclosure. Nothing.
I smacked it from both sides. My document printed. Now I don’t have to transcribe my mom’s recipe for eggplant parmesan from my screen.
In other news, the liquor store about two miles from my townhouse had a beer that I drank in Argentina and was difficult to find there. You could only find Otro Mundo at about three bars in Buenos Aires, yet here it is in tiny liquor store outside Madison, WI.
Otro Mundo by Pat Jordan on Zooomr
Taste of Madison was not too bad. I had some jerk chicken and a falafel sandwich. It was really sunny and hot out. It doesn’t make sense to me to include places like Little Caesar’s and Chili’s in something like that. I feel that’s more appropriate for “Taste of Stripmall America.”
Filed under: art, life, madison, myself | Tags: Farmer's Market, Fresco, Harvest, madison, MMoCA, Restaurant Week, TL Solien, Wisconsin
As a recently new member of the Madison, Wisconsin community, I’m just beginning to explore what the town has to offer.
Last Saturday I went to the Farmer’s Market and was able to get my vegetables. The market surrounds the capitol building’s square and offers anything from flowers, to venison, to cheese, to fresh basil. I picked up plenty of basil, red onions, garlic cheddar, spinach, basil, and sweet corn all at good prices and all organic. I also made sure to pick up a whole-wheat chocolate chip scone. In addition, this farmer’s market was packed with people including Obama campaigners on each corner and a religious groups singing on one. Women with giant tattoos ran a flower stand while amish men with large beards and black hats sold vegetables. It was diverse, it had free samples, and was wonderful.
The next stop was the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (MMoCA). It’s just off of the square on State Street in beautiful glass-paneled building. The museum itself is very small, but offers interesting exhibitions and is free to the public. I’m personally excited to have a Contemporary Art Museum nearby, Milwaukee cannot claim this -the closest three are in Madison, Sheboygan, and Chicago. The featured exhibition was that of TL Solien, a Madison native, entitled “Myths and Monsters.” It was comprised of many very expressive paintings from the 1980s on of cartoonish characters melded into backgrounds, objects, and each other, often using specific styles of paper or mixed media. One series was based on the story of Moby Dick. One could group it into the Neo-Expressionist “movement” of the 1980s in that it is painting and holds visual similarities to Jean-Michel Basquiat and Julian Schnabel (both use paint and have an “expressive” style), but it clearly addresses different themes and appropriates very different images. It also appeared that they were conducting some sort of installation in a lower gallery that included long colored plastic strips. These also were in the stairwell as seen above.
The MMoCA’s rooftop houses the restaurant, Fresco, which I will be trying out later this week. This week is “restaurant week” in Madison, meaning that many fine places are offering set three-course menus for a $25 fixed price. Tonight I went to Harvest and had a grilled squid appetizer (okay), a skirt steak with patatas bravas and a salsa (really good), and a slice of chocolate cake (also very good). Needless to say, I’m enjoying the promotion for these restaurants ($25 is how much many of the entrées would normally cost). I’m interested in the pork loin with coconut risotto.
I really haven’t posted in quite some time. This is due to a couple things: finals, papers, graduation, and a trip to Ireland. School was hectic, fun, and sad. I’ll miss the place quite a bit, especially when fall rolls around again next year. Ireland was simply gorgeous and… rainy. They predict that it will rain the entire summer. The postman in a family friend’s town, Youghal, told us “welcome to our miserable little country.”
In the meantime I’ve come across two musical groups that have simply stuck out to me. The first is from Brooklyn and they’re called A Place to Bury Strangers. I came across their song “To Fix The Gash in Your Head” on the Nine Inch Nails’ tour sampler. It blew me away. It combines My Bloody Valentinesque drum beats and Jesus and Mary Chain distortion with modern intensity. It feels as though the distortion and effects pedals would make one’s ears bleed in the best way possible. I need to see these guys live, preferably in a smaller venue.
The other group lies at the much more subtle end of the noise spectrum: Bon Iver. It’s a guy that hails from northern Wisconsin (Wisco pride!). It’s very heartfelt folk with hints of noise and, at certain points, anarchic (see end of The Wolves). This music, to me, is pregnant with fall, winter, and Wisconsin imagery. Luckily, I get to see him perform at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago in a couple weeks.
Enjoy.
A Place to Bury Stranger’s – To Fix the Gash in Your Head:
Bon Iver – The Wolves (Act I and II):
It snowed up in Door County this past weekend, although it’s clear into April. I spent the weekend walking and getting lost between the trees and the snow. I also managed to read In the City of the Disappeared by Tom Hazuka. It was about a Peace Corps volunteer teaching baseball to kids in Santiago, Chile during the Pinochet era. I enjoyed it quite a bit, especially the tension between the Peace Corps volunteers and the overall environment.
On a different note, Charles Baxter, a well-known short story author, is coming to Lawrence this week to talk and read from his latest novel (interestingly enough). We read A Relative Stranger for Creative Writing, and I enjoyed his portrayals of suburban life. I ordered a first edition of The Feast of Love, which has won some prestigious awards, and am getting it signed. It should be a good week, save trying to fill out JET stuff for being an Alternate and putting together my Spanish major portfolio.
