FRNY Track Meet, NYC Half, and a Long Bike Ride

Lots of running this past weekend.  Friday was the 11th Annual Front Runners New York Track Meet, held at the Armory.  I've always enjoyed the FRNY Track Meet because it brings together a bunch of gay runners with some serious, really, really fast non-gay track athletes who otherwise wouldn't ever run together.  It's also one of the few times I ever get to actually race on the track.  I was disappointed last year when the club canceled the meet (I think due to low membership turnout in past meets, but I was always impressed by the number of FRs who were willing to race on the unfamiliar territory of the track).  But this year was by far the best meet yet for FRNY.  We had around 50 FRs compete, and probably 100 or so non-FRs.  It was a great event, with gift certificates to Urban Athletics as prizes, medals to all age group winners, and lots of fun relays.

Because fast running aggravates my butt condition more than anything else, I was mostly just a spectator, except for one event.  Anthony, Da, Tsing and I (four of the club "gaysians"...aptly named Team Joy Luck Club!) did the "Distance Medley Relay."  I had never even heard of a DMR before, but it's a fun event, consisting of four legs of varying distances (1200m, 400m, 800m, 1600m).  I was assigned to do the 1200.  I hated the fact that the 1200 was first, because I was planning to take it easy, and it would mean that everyone would see that I was last, haha.  (I can be insecure like that.)  Things turned even worse when, lining up for the start, I realized that Dane was also doing the 1200 for his team.  I KNEW Dane would never let me hear the end of it if he beat me in the 1200, so I was forced to make a decision...turn this into a real "race" and end up further aggravating my butt (and possibly jeopardizing my performance in the NYC Half-Marathon less than 36 hours later), or face Dane's ridicule and taunting.  The choice was clear.

When the gun started, the faster people in the heat (Kelsey, Peter Macari, Chris Stoia) took off and were quickly way up front.  Then it was Dane and me.  I decided to tuck in right behind him and let him set the pace.  I knew if I were leading, I'd want to pace off the fast group, and there was no way I'd be able to sustain that for 1200m.  So for four laps, I stayed one foot behind Dane, giving him the job of dictating how fast we were going and cutting through the stale Armory air.  I felt like I could go a little faster, but I was happy to hang back, for a while.  I could tell I was psyching him out a little bit because in that fourth lap, he looked back twice to see if I was still behind him.

On the fifth lap, I decided to make my move.  Starting on the straightaway on the far side of the track (where there was a nice audience of other FRs watching, haha), I moved over to the outside lane and kicked it up a gear.  Dane groaned when I passed him, and I knew he didn't have enough gas to keep up.  Even so, I ran that last lap and a half as hard as I could, not giving him any opportunity to breach the gap.  I never looked back, and I ended up beating him by a comfortable margin (sorry, Dane!).  Stupidly, I forgot to stop my watch as I handed off the baton to Tsing, but I think I did the 1200 in about 4:08 or so.  I was very pleased.

After that run, though, I was completely wiped out.  My butt was aching, and I couldn't stop coughing because the air in the Armory is just so nasty.  Funny how 3/4 of a mile could be so physically draining.

I did end up doing one more event that night, but it was more of a fun run.  Because the half-marathon was on Sunday, Koach Kelsey had a special run at the end of all the normal track events.  For this one run, the clocks were turned off and we had to take off our watches.  We were all supposed to predict our pace (could be anything but most people picked their half-marathon goal pace) and the person who ran a mile closest to that pace was the winner.  I picked 7:15, although that was a little faster than what I expected to do in the half.

This was hard!  A 7:15 pace meant 54-55 second 200s, which is slower than anything I've ever run on the track before.  When we started, I just started running at a comfortable pace, having no idea whether I was going anywhere near 7:15.  Eventually, I knew I was going too fast, but it was so hard to get myself to slow down once I had settled on the pace I was going.  I did cheat a little, too...  I was about to pass Josh (who was not going anywhere near his half-marathon pace) when he whispered to me that he trying to run a 6:57.  That made me slow down dramatically.

In the end, though, I was still way off my goal pace, finishing the mile in 6:51.  I've never run a half that fast in my life!  (Although I'd love to, and be able to finally break 1:30.)  29 seconds off of my goal.  I had mixed emotions...  I was way off my goal pace, but at least I felt good doing it, and it reminded me that in the real half, I'd have to start off much, much slower.

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Sunday morning was the New York City Half.  It started at 7:35, on E. 95th Street.  I overslept, and woke up at 6:55, on W. 14th Street.  My first reaction was: "SHIIIIIIIIIT!!!"

My second reaction was to throw on my race clothes (which, luckily, I had organized on the floor before I went to bed) and run out the door.  No breakfast, no usual pre-race bathroom routine.  I was so, so annoyed.

I ran across 14th Street to 7th Avenue to get a taxi.  There were no taxis around.  So I ran to 6th Avenue.  Still no taxis.  5th Avenue, no taxis.  But I did see this girl in her racing outfit and approached her, hoping to split the next taxi or gypsy cab that came by.  She told me that her mom was on her way to pick her up and bring her to the start.  Less than a minute later, her mom pulls up, and I get in the car.  I think her mom was a little confused, but she was really nice, and we had a very smooth and fast ride up to E. 97th Street.  I still had my bag to check, so I ran up to the late baggage van, all the way up at 102nd Street, and back down to the blue corral at 95th Street.  Fortunately, they let me into the corral without a problem, and I was there, all warmed up, at 7:33, with two minutes to spare.

I was so relieved that actually made it to the start on time that it almost didn't even matter to me how I did in the race.  And, I just knew that sometime during the race, I would have to make a bathroom stop since I didn't get to go in the morning (and Dane and I had a big carby dinner at Cola's the night before).  This might be too much detail, but I almost went to the porta-potty at around mile 6, but at the last second decided to wait one more mile, but then quickly regretted not going, but then the feeling went away and I didn't have to go for the rest of the race.  Ah, the unpredictability of a runner's GI system.

As for the race itself, I pretty much stuck to the plan I outlined in my last post, meaning I did about 7:30s in the park, and ramped it up once I got outside.  Here are my splits:

            Mile 1: 7:26
            Mile 2: 7:28
            Mile 3: 7:30
            Mile 4: 7:37 (rolling hills b/t 80th and 96th on the West side)
            Mile 5: 7:25
            Mile 6: 7:41 (going up Harlem Hill)
            Mile 7: 7:29
            Mile 8: 7:35 (last mile in the park, seem to have slowed down a bit)
            Mile 9-10: 14:48 (forgot to press lap; sped up and ran with IJ for a bit along 42nd Street)
            Mile 11: 7:20 (the band playing "Eye of the Tiger" on the Westside Highway @ mile 10 got me pumped up)
            Mile 12: 7:10
            Mile 13: 6:52 (felt good for the finishing kick)
            Mile .1: 0:41

In the end, I got a 1:37:06, which was one of my slower halves.  But it was my first NYRR race since the marathon, I stuck with my game plan, and I was strong at the finish, so overall I am very pleased with my performance.  Thanks to everyone who I saw cheering along the way:  Matt, Paul, Fred, Todd, Bernd, Tyler, Gabby, Rob, Kelsey (although you almost missed me!) and AJ.  You guys helped push me to the end!

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After the Half, Mike Terry convinced me that a long bike ride would be a good way to recover my legs.  Easy for him to say, he didn't run the half!  But it was a beautiful day on Sunday, so I agreed.  We ended up going about 30 miles, meeting on the WSH at 14th Street, going across the GW Bridge, and spending some time on Route 9W (the beginning of the route that many people take to bike out to Nyack, a ride that I've been wanting to do for awhile).

The 30 mile bike ride was, I think, the 3rd longest I've ever biked in my life (the longest was my Half-Ironman relay with Dane and Ryan [56 miles], and then my 36-mile Thanksgiving ride with my brother).  It was a lot of fun, and since we weren't going too fast, I felt really good afterwards.  Hopefully, if the weather is good this weekend, I might do the full trip from the GWB to Nyack.

On Saturday, though, I'm planning on doing the Wurtsboro Mountain 30k, held in Wurtsboro, NY by the Sullivan Striders.  It's a really tough race, with the first four miles rising about 1000' in vertical gain.  Two years ago, I finished in 2:17:08 (7:21 pace).  It's going to be a "fun run" this year, though...  maybe around 8:00 miles or something.  But I'm excited!

5 Weeks Till Boston; 6 Weeks Without a Kitchen

I've been cautiously trying to ramp up my running as I near the peak of my training for Boston, which is now less than five weeks away.  I usually try to peak at around 45-50 miles a week when training for a marathon, but this time I think my highest weeks are going to be closer to 35 miles.  I'm hoping, though, that my cross-training (swimming, biking, yoga) will make up for some of my lost miles.

One thing I've decided not to do anymore is speed workouts.  Two weeks ago, I went to my first speed workout since November.  I had been running pretty consistently, and figured that if I didn't push myself too hard, I would be able to get a good workout without further injuring myself.  The workout that night was 5 x 1mile (first 1000m @ 10k pace, last 600m faster), with a 3 minute rest / 1 lap jog between sets.

I ran the first set at 4:10 (1st 1000) / 6:30 (total).  It was the fastest mile I had run since probably September or October.  It felt exhilarating--every time I run on the track I feel like I am pushing myself to go as fast as I could go, and with each step, I feel like I want to go faster and faster.  That was a mistake.  By the end of the mile, I felt like I wanted to die.  I had forgotten how nasty and stale the air was inside the armory.  More significantly, I had forgotten that pretty much all of my running over the past several months had been in the 7:45 minute pace or slower.  The fast boys doing the workout (Mikey B, Stephan, Peter Macari, Timmy and Matt) sucked me into their vortex.  But I couldn't keep up with them, and I felt like I was killing myself trying.  Although my butt felt fine, I didn't think there was any way I could maintain that pace for the other four sets.

So for the next set, I decided to let the boys do their own thing while I paced off of Kerstin, who said she was doing 7 minute miles.  It felt much better running with her.  At first, I felt like I was holding myself back, but I quickly settled into her pace, and figured that this would leave me with enough juice to be able to do the last 600 faster.  About the third or fourth lap, she ended up pulling off because of a shoelace issue or something, and all of a sudden I was left without a pacer.  And I suck at pacing myself.  I ended up running the rest of that set way too fast (4:17 / 6:42), felt like crap, and had to sit the next set out to catch my breath.  Ugh.

The last two sets I ended up, again, pushing myself harder than I should have: 4:09/6:33, and 4:10/6:30.  Of course, at the time, I was very pleased that my last set was the exact same time as my first set.  But for the next FOUR DAYS, I couldn't walk without limping, and I couldn't sit without feeling the intense pain in my butt.  I decided then and there that I wasn't going to do another speed workout.

It's funny, though... the four miles of fast running made my butt feel so bad, but four days after that, I did a twenty miler, and I ended up feeling fine afterwards.  The 20-mile run itself, though, was bruuutal.  The plan was to go from Chris's house in Washington Heights, across the GW Bridge, and into the Palisades Park in NJ.  It's a really pretty run, but there's no water, and the hills make Harlem Hill seem puny in comparison.  On the day of our run, though, everything but the very Southernmost portion of the park was closed due to all of the trees that had fallen into the road from Snowpocalypse the week before.  Even the part that wasn't closed was icy and littered with fallen trees. 

We ended up all turning back at around mile 5.5.  Most of the group went to do loops around Fort Tryon Park, but Mikey had a good idea of running North on the Hudson River Greenway, into the Bronx, turning around at the Tortoise and Hare Statue.  I had never done that route before, so I was excited.  Although not as bad as the Palisades Park, this route was pretty hilly too.  And my legs were just about worn out after the heavy climbs and steep descents of the park, even though we only ran about 6 miles in it.  But one of the lighter moments of the run came when, shortly after Mikey and I crossed the bridge into the Bronx, a teenage girl saw us in our skimpy running clothes and shouted out to us: "Work it, Girls!"  Haha, I love the Bronx.

Mikey said that run took us 3 hours and 1 minute, which works out to about 20 miles at 9 minutes per mile.  Considering that six months ago I ran 26 miles in 3:09, I was a little disappointed with our run.  But the good thing about the run was that it made me realize I need to do a lot more hill training before Boston.  Because of the weather this winter, most of our long runs have along the Hudson River or Eastside Greenways, which are both pretty much pancake flat.  But if I'm going to avoid crashing and burning at Boston, I'm gonna need to better train for Heartbreak Hill.

I felt pretty good the day after the 20-miler, although, when I woke up, I was sore, tired, and lazy, and ended up deciding to skip the Coogan's 5k.  I felt bad, since this was the first points race of the year.  It would not have been a pretty run, though.  And I did end up making it to the FRNY brunch at Patrick and Johnny's house afterwards.  :-)

The following days, I felt really good.  So I decided I would give the Armory workout another try.  It was another 5 x 1mile workout, this time with 800 @ 10k pace, and 800 faster.  I paced off of Cenk for most of the sets, except the 3rd (which I sat out because of stomach issues) and the 5th (when he made me go in front).  This time, I felt much better cardiovascularly, and was really happy with my times and how I felt afterwards.  However, starting from my second set, I could feel my hamstring/butt issue acting up, and I knew that wasn't a good sign.  Nevertheless, I completed the workout, which I admit was probably not the best idea.  Here are the splits:
1:  3:22 (1st 800) / 6:22 (total)
2:  3:20 / 6:30
3:  um, quick trip to the men's room.
4:  3:21 / 6:24
5:  3:07 / 6:14
So with my fifth set, when Cenk made me go in front, I didn't have anyone to pace off of, and ended up going out way too fast, and I couldn't go "faster" for the last 800.  Nevertheless, I was happy that I had it in me to do a 6:14.

The next few days meant more limping and more butt pain.  Not good.  So, after that workout, I REALLY decided that I'm not doing any more Armory workouts.  Tonight, though, is the FRNY Track Meet, at the Armory.  I'm only planning on doing one event, the Distance Medley Relay, with Anthony, Da and Tsing (the four gaysians...  we're team "Joy Luck Club").  The DMR is a four-person relay with a 1200, 800, 400 and mile.  I'm doing the 1200...and I'm a little nervous, but I'm not going to push it too hard.

Sunday is the New York City Half Marathon, which I'm signed up for.  I really like this race because you get to run through Times Square, which is closed off to traffic.  And although the first half is in Central Park, the second half is down the Westside Highway, which is flat and fast.  My PR is on this course 2 years ago, although at the time I was a little disappointed with my performance...  I got a 1:31:30, way off my goal of sub-1:30.  I KNOW that I have it in me to do a sub 1:30 sometime; I just have to get back in shape and wait for this damn butt issue to go away.  But for Sunday, I'll be satisfied with a 7:30 pace (1:38:19) if I feel good afterwards.  I'm thinking maybe I'll start there and ramp it if I can, once I get out of the park.  I'll be delighted if I can get a bit faster than that, we'll have to see what happens.

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I got another MRI a few weeks ago, this time on my hip and pelvic region.  The results show that I have a "small superior right hip labral tear," "mild bilateral intertrochanteric bursitis," and a "mild stress reaction" at the "pubic symphysis." 

Seeing these results, Dr. Babiy referred me to Dr. Srino Bharam, a hip specialist.  Dr. Bharam stretched my leg in a bunch of different directions to put pressure on my hip joint, asking me if I felt any pain.  I did feel a little bit of a pinch in the joint when he put me in a certain position, which confirmed the MRI report's diagnosis of a small labral tear.  Dr. Bharam said he thinks that the the hamstring/butt issue that I have is related to the labral tear because of the way my running mechanics are changed as a result of it.  He said that ideally, I should stop running for a while.  But short of that, I should just be careful not to overtrain, and after Boston, he recommended that I take some time off of running.

To be quite honest, though, I think Dr. Bharam is just plain wrong.  My research online shows that labral tears occur in sports with twisting/pivoting motions, like golf or softball, or contact sports like football or hockey...  nothing about how it's a running injury.  The most common symptom of a labral tear is a clicking or catching sensation in the hip joint, which I don't have.

Dr. Degis thinks (and I tend to agree) that I have a tear/strain in my hamstring up by the tendons that attach the hamstring muscles to the sit bones of the pelvis (the "ischial tuberosity").  Because tendons receive less blood flow than muscles, it takes a long time for them to heal.  And because the tear is where it is, the pain occurs mostly when I am sitting, which stretches the tendon out and puts pressure on the exact spot where that tendon attaches to my pelvis.

If you do a Google search for "running ischial tuberosity," the very first result is a Runner's World forum discussion on ischial tuberosity pain syndrome, a discussion which has lasted 4 years with 142 responses.  The postings all sound like exactly my symptoms (pain while sitting/driving, no pain while running, pain while bending over, etc).  Virtually all of the postings make the outlook sound extremely bleak (suffering from the pain for 2, 5, 7 years; getting surgery that doesn't work; cortisone injections that don't do anything; running careers that ended, etc).  Dr. Degis, though, said he knows this condition very well, and he says that he is confident it will eventually go away.  I am currently just seeing him once a week.  He knows that I have the marathon coming up, and my sessions are mostly just to keep myself loose so my injury doesn't become worse.  After the marathon, he thinks I should cut down on my running, and go in 2-3 times a week to aggressively break down the scar tissue and rebuild my muscles in the area.  So that's the plan...after Boston, the running will be minimal, and I will do what I have to do to get rid of this pain in the butt.

Dr. Bharam, the hip specialist, also mentioned mention a treatment that I've been reading a lot about, platelet-rich plasma therapy.  Some of you might recall that Dr. Gallina, the ankle specialist, said this was a possible course of treatment to take if my ankle tendinitis didn't heal.  The New York Times says the following about PRP:

The method, which is strikingly straightforward and easy to perform, centers on injecting portions of a patient’s blood directly into the injured area, which catalyzes the body’s instincts to repair muscle, bone and other tissue. Most enticing, many doctors said, is that the technique appears to help regenerate ligament and tendon fibers, which could shorten rehabilitation time and possibly obviate surgery.

The problem with PRP is it that because it's still in the experimental stages, it isn't covered by insurance, and costs about two thousand dollars.  Still, it sounds promising, and if it means I can run without pain, maybe it's worth it.

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As a way to cut down on my running, I've decided that this summer is going to be the summer of triathlons.  So far I'm registered for the following races:

5/16: Jersey Shore Sprint Triathlon

7/18: Metroman Tri (Intermediate) -- This was the race where I had my disastrous ocean swim last year.  Hopefully this year will be better.

10/2: Mightyman Half -- This will be my first Half Ironman...I'm excited and nervous!

I'm looking to do a couple more... maybe the Mighty Montauk in June, and something in August / September.

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A few weeks ago, the Front Runners had its First Friday happy hour at RF Lounge, a swanky lesbian bar in the former, less fancy Rubyfruit Bar and Grill.  Afterwards, some of us went to Grand Sichuan Seventh Avenue in the Village.  I had a few drinks at RF Lounge, so I don't remember everything we ordered, but I did snap this photo of the whole fish with chili sauce.  It was very good.

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I'm still working on renovating my kitchen.  It's been about six weeks, and it's starting to feel like the project that will never end.  Fortunately, I think I'm closing in on the finish.  These past couple of weeks, I've installed the oven and microwave, got an electrician to put in some new circuits, had the countertop put in, and did most of the plumbing except for the drain.

The electrician put in two new 20 amp circuits and carried the lines into my kitchen, where there will be two new outlets: one for the microwave/hood, and one under my sink for the disposal and instant hot water dispenser.  I was originally planning on doing the electrical work by myself, but then I got nervous and ended up calling for help.  But when I saw the electrician do it, I was kicking myself after seeing how easy it was...  All he did was run the wire through the five feet of wall between the kitchen and the breaker box, connect it to a breaker, and plug it into the box.  I had to patch up the holes in the wall myself.

With the electricity in, it meant I could install the microwave hood.  This, I really should have gotten help with.  I ended up having to lift the microwave, which weighed like 100 pounds, by myself, hold it up with one hand and a shoulder against a brace on the wall, and screw it in with the other hand into the top cabinet.  If I dropped it, it would have crushed my feet, and I would have said goodbye to my new microwave.  Luckily, it went up without incident. 

The most exciting thing about the microwave is that I installed a duct so that it would vent out the exhaust instead of recirculating it back to me.  I've always thought it was pointless for range hoods to spit the exhaust back into your face, but I think that's what most NYC apartments have.  Fortunately, I already have a vent in my kitchen, which wasn't really serving any purpose.  So I just got some ductwork to hook up and spit out all the exhaust into that vent.  Hopefully, it's not going to spit it out into someone else's apartment...

Then came the granite countertop.  I ordered the countertop from E Stone, Inc. in Brooklyn, which I highly recommended since it was about a third cheaper than Home Depot or even Ikea, and also quite a bit faster (less than 1 week turnaround versus 2-3 weeks) since they did all of the cutting on the premises.  Here's the guys installing the countertop:

And here's the final product:

What do you guys think about the faucet?  I love the commercial kitchen look to it, but it's a little big for the space.  I think the sprayer is going to hit up against the bottom of the wall cabinet every time I use it, which could be annoying.  On the other hand, I think it looks kinda sexy.

With the countertop in, I turned to installing the stove.  This ended up being a really annoying project.  In order for the stove to sit flush up against the back wall, there's a little recessed area in the back of the stove where the gas line coming out of the wall is supposed to fit into.  Unfortunately, my gas pipe missed the recess by about 6 inches, so the stove ended up sitting away from the back wall by about two inches (the depth of the gas pipe).  To fix this, I ended up having to cut a hole in the back panel of the stove to accommodate the gas pipe, and then thread the gas connector through the inside of the stove.  It's hard to explain, but there are electrical wires in the area where I threaded the gas connector, so I don't think there's any risk of that area getting too hot for the gas line.

Anyway, here's a picture of the cutout I made into the back panel:

And here's me connecting the gas line:

But after all that, I actually got the stove to work!  And all without a gas or electrical explosion, haha!

Next up: connecting the dishwasher and putting in a new drain for the double-basin sink.  Then I just have the moldings and trim left....  almost there!

Cherry Tree Relay, Chinese New Year, Cookie Cups, and My Lack of a Kitchen

I've been delinquent in my postings.  Partly because my butt issue hasn't really improved, and I've only been running twice a week, and, honestly, how exciting could that be to blog about?  And partly because I am in the process of renovating my kitchen, so my cooking hasn't really been that exciting either.  But here are some of the highlights of the last few weeks.

My biggest running news is that this past weekend I ran the Cherry Tree Relay in Prospect Park.  It's a 10-miler that's three loops around the park, with each member of relay running one loop.  It's hosted by the Prospect Park Track Club.  This is one of the most popular events of the year for Front Runners, and this year we sent 23 relay teams and 22 individual runners who did the full 10 miles.  It was particularly exciting for me since it was my first race since the NYC marathon.  And even though I knew I wasn't going to be setting any records with my run, it was good to finally participate in a race with the club.

I did the 10-miler for the past two years, but this year I decided to do the relay because there was no way I'm in shape to run a 10 mile race right now.  Well, the 3.33 miles that I ran were not easy either.  The second mile included the big, brutal hill that Prospect Park is known for.  I run in Prospect Park so rarely that every time I hit this hill, it just seems like it never ends.  I felt like I was going soooo slowly.  Matt passed me somewhere in the second mile, and I felt like I got passed by a jet engine...one second he was there and the next second I couldn't see him anymore.

So it was a little bit disappointing.  I ended up running slower than a 7 minute mile, which means about 15 seconds slower than my 10-mile pace last year.  Of course, I wasn't really pushing myself, but still.  In any event, I had a great time at the race, and it was a lot of fun to cheer on all of the other teams.  Front Runners took first, second AND third in the relay!!!  It was really amazing seeing all of speedsters out there.

Here's a picture of me coming into the transition area to hand off to Timmy.

And here's team FRNY Guys Gone Wild:

Many of the FRNY relays made fun, Photoshopped pictures of their team.  This one was ours.  (Ryan (in the middle) ended up bailing on us so we got Mark instead, but I didn't get a chance to update the picture)

Afterwards, all of the Front Runners went to Sandi's house to have brunch.  And because it was with Front Runners, of course there was a lot of booze, including bloody marys and jello shots, haha.  What a great way to end a race! 

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Chinese New Year was on February 14th this year.  So for New Year's Eve, I got a bunch of Front Runners and friends together for my annual Chinese banquet dinner in Chinatown.  This year we went to Chatham Square Restaurant, which I like because they let you BYOB.  And of course, we like to drink.

For a big group, it's easiest to get one of the restaurant's set menus.  They have menus ranging from $268 to $568 a table.  We got two sets of the cheapest one, which included:

• Cold cut combination platter (which included marinated jellyfish salad and other fun stuff)
• Fried jumbo shrimp with walnuts and mayonnaise (it sounds like a weird combination but it was delicious)
• Sauteed cuttlefish and scallops with vegetables (we got them to substitute this with Beijing style pork chops because some people thought the menu was too seafood-heavy)
• Dried bamboo pith and shitake mushrooms with bok choy (bamboo pith is a type of mushroom that grows in bamboo thickets.  I forgot the dish had bamboo pith in it and originally thought it was fish bladder, which has a very similar look and texture.  I probably shouldn't have told people it was fish bladder...I think it made some people afraid to try the dish.)
• Sauteed lobsters with ginger and scallion (YUMMM!!!)
• Fried chicken with garlic scallion sauce
• Deep fried whole flounder
• Young Chow fried rice
• Braised e-fu noodles
• Cantonese sweet soup
• Some other dessert (I forget what it was; I think I had had too much wine by this point).

The food was good, but it was better to be among good friends.  It took a bit of wrangling, but we were able to get the management of the restuarant to push together three tables of so we could all sit in a big group.  It was a tasty and fun way to ring in the Year of the Tiger!

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Speaking of runners and food, my Front Runner fried Tyler has started a cookie business called Cups NYC!  Just like a cupcake is an excellent frosting-delivery-system, Tyler and Matt's cookies are baked into little cups in order to showcase their delicious fillings.  As of now, they have four different flavors:

• Sugar-Oated (oatmeal cookie with brown sugar and cinnamon center)
• Lunchbox (peanut butter cookie with grape jelly center)
• Red Velour (red velvet cookie with a cream cheese frosting center...my favorite!)
• Campfire (graham cookie with marshmallow center, topped with chocolate)

You can get all of the same cookie, or do what I did and get a variety pack.  They deliver anywhere in Manhattan below 110th Street, and they make a perfect gift!

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So as I said above, my cooking as of late has been seriously restricted as I'm in the process of remodeling my kitchen.  And since I'm doing most of the work myself (except for the demolition), it's taking a looooong time.  (The demo people came on January 29....hopefully I'll be done by the end of March).  In the meantime, I'm not completely without a kitchen, though.  I've moved my refrigerator, microwave and hotpot induction cooker into my living room, so I've been trying to make do.  Here are some pics of the process:

Before. (Yes, I know it's a mess and it's gross)

My new "kitchen" in the living room:

The demolition.  While this was happening, I briefly went into a panic... "What the hell am I doing...I'm destroying my apartment!!!"

Putting in new slate floors.  (OK, I'm not doing the whole thing by myself...  There's J. helping me with the floors because I'm not good at making straight lines).  At first, we were going to do a standard grid:

But I decided to go with the brick pattern to show off our handiwork and make the kitchen seem a little wider.

  

  

Grouting:

And putting in the new cabinets:

Hopefully in the next week or so I'll finish with the cabinets and move my new appliances in place (which have been sitting in their boxes in my living room for the past couple of weeks).  Then my new countertop and sink get installed...  Is anyone handy with plumbing work?

Awards Night, Hot Pot, Intensive Butt Stretches, and a 13-miler.

Lots of big developments this past week.  The biggest news, I think, was that on Saturday I attended the Front Runners New York Annual Awards Night Dinner.  Awards Night is one of the highlights of the year.  It's the club's chance to dress up and recognize the runners who have had a great year, both in terms of running and in service to the club.  We give out points awards for the various age groups, and also for middle and long distance runners, triathlete, newcomer, most improved (which I won in 2007), volunteer of the year, the lifetime award and Front Runner of the Year.  As one of the Race Captains this year, Awards Night was especially exciting for me because I've spent the past year following the entire membership's racing performance and seeing how people have developed as runners.

Well, I am thrilled and honored to report that I was one of the five nominees for Front Runner of the Year!!!  This was so, so exciting for me.  This award goes to the member who has contributed the most to the club and has had the biggest positive impact on the club in the last calendar year, considering athletic achievement and performance as a runner first and also weighing in team spirit, camaraderie and volunteerism.  I was pretty much in tears when they announced me as a nominee, and as my good friend Dane (the FRNY Men's VP) read about my performance this past year.  It was especially moving since the award is based in large part on athletic achievement, and this year I've been dogged by my fair share of disappointments--such as my still-continuing butt injury, and my 3:59:07 Virginia Beach Marathon when I was trying for a 3:10.  But I've realized that in running, there are good days and bad days, but the successes and achievements will always overshadow the disappointments.

It was even more of an honor to have been included among a group of such great athletes.  Here's the little blurb from the special Front Runner Gram announcing the award winners.

We had five fabulous final nominees for Front Runner of the Year in 2009: Steve Vizena, who ran 14 NYRR races with 13 above the illustrious 80% age-graded percentile denoting national-level athlete; Dave Lin, who was not only a RTB ultra captain and Boston Marathon Qualifier but also race captain extraordinaire and election official; Sandi Rowe, who combined volunteerism, team enthusiasm and athletic determination throughout the year and also PR-ed all over the place; Rich, who won the award by capturing his fourth of the top ten all-time NYC marathon finishes by a club member as well as the top overall finish for any Front Runner at a NYRR race last year by coming in second out of more than 3500 racers at the 18-Mile Tune-Up for the NYC Marathon; and Tim Guscott, who raced in 28 NYRR races, competed abroad in an array of marathons, and achieved many PRs while supporting his teammates along the way. 

It should be noted that Rich, who won the award, ran the NYC Marathon in 2:41:50!!!  That's a 6:11 pace--in other words, faster than my 5k pace!  Holy crap.  Here's a picture of four of the five nominees (Steve couldn't make it).  What a great looking group--and don't you just love how Sandi and I are wearing coordinating colors?

Oh, as this is a running and eating blog, here's a picture of the buffet.  The main entree was a chicken dish served with polenta.  It was very tasty.

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I've been making a lot of progress in my injury recovery, I think.  I've have four sessions so far with Dr. Degis, the Strength Conditioning Specialist.  My meetings with him are like everything that I think physical therapy should be (but wasn't with my previous PT).  I see him three times a week for 45 minutes.  Each visit is about half really, really intense stretching.  I will just lay there, and he'll put my legs in different positions and stretch them in different directions.  We'll also do resistance exercises/stretches, where he'll stretch my leg in one direction as I push in the other direction.  The result is deeper stretches than I could possibly do on my own, and it feels really good.

The second half of my sessions are exercises that I do in order to strengthen my hip/hamstring/butt muscles.  He says that the reason I developed this injury is because I have an imbalance in my muscle mechanics.  So the exercises I'm doing are all focused on gaining stability/balance and core strengthening.  One exercise involves standing on one foot on a wobble board while swinging my arms.  It's really hard!  The board can wobble front-and-back, left-and-right, and anywhere in between.  And swinging my arms deliberately throws it off-balance, so I have to use my hips and core to keep from falling off.  I'm still trying to get the hang of it.

I have a good feeling about my sessions with Dr. Degis, and I'm already starting to feel an improvement.  Hopefully with a few more weeks of therapy, I'll be back to normal.

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In the meantime, I am running just twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays.  Wednesdays I do 6 miles, and Saturdays I do a long run (less than 12 weeks to Boston!).  I'm hoping to increase it to three times a week in the next week or two, and then by the end of February to be in full-on marathon training mode.

This past Saturday, I did about 13.5 miles, from Rutgers Church (where FRNY meets on W. 73rd Street) to the base of the GW Bridge and back.  Compared to the 14-miler last week down to Battery Park, this one felt much better.  I ran with Mikey B, Mike Terry, Peter and Matt, and cardiovascularly, I felt like I could go on for a few more miles.  And coming back, we were more than four minutes faster than going out!  We even decided to run the hills of Riverside Park for our last mile instead of the flat path next the the water.  That was fun!

My legs also felt pretty good afterwards.  We had a speaker at the FRNY Bagel Breakfast right after the run, which meant a lot of sitting on the floor, so I had to do quite a bit of stretch and adjusting while listening to the speaker.  But for the rest of the day I felt pretty good.  Hopefully this is a sign of good things to come.

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This past week has also meant a lot of good cross-training for me.  I've been going to the Monday night spinning classes that Front Runners is organizing in Long Island City, and the Tuesday night swim clinics that Tritons (the N.Y. gay triathlon club that used to be part of FRNY but is now its own club) organizes in Roosevelt Island.  The spinning classes are really good for me, since the bike is my hardest part of the triathlon (it's also the longest part of the tri), I really don't like biking by myself, and even if I did, I wouldn't be able to bike outside in the cold.  It's an intimate group (about 10-12 of us), but we all get along and are all really enjoying the workouts. 

I also think my swimming form is vastly improving with the Tritons workouts.  So much of swimming depends on having the right form--there's a right way to rotate the body, the entry of the hand has to be at the right angle, you can't turn your head too much when you breathe, you need to glide with each stroke but not for too long, kick with the hips not the knees, reach with your stroke, head down legs up--it's so complicated!  But it's great that our Coaches Les and Claudia are there to make sure we're doing everything right.

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Winter is the time of year when I break out the induction cooker and hold my infamous Chinese hotpot dinner parties.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with hotpot, it basically involves a bunch of people sitting around a table with a pot of boiling soup in the middle, into which various meats, veggies, tofu and seafood products are dunked in to cook briefly, then fished out by the eater and dipped into a tasty sauce.  It's the same idea as Japanese shabu shabu.

Hotpot is believed to have originated in Sichuan province in China.  Sichuan is a landlocked province that has hot, humid summers and chilly, foggy winters.  Hotpot, like the spicy food that Sichuan is known for, has a way of warming the body on cool days, and cooling it on hot days.

I like my hotpot SPICY.  I usually just buy a packet of "mala" (numbing and spicy) hotpot concentrate from Chinatown, which is full of Sichuan peppercorns and chili peppers (and a healthy dose of oil so the spiciness adheres to the food).  I have a "yin yang" hotpot, which includes a divider so I can make half the hotpot spicy and half non-spicy.

For the stuff to go into the hotpot, I got my usual list of favorites.  A variety of sliced meats including beef, pork, and chicken.  Veggies included taro root, nappa cabbage, snow pea shoots, and oyster and enoki mushrooms.  Tofu in a million different stages of refinement: fresh tofu, frozen tofu (which becomes spongy and soaks up all the delicious soup), fried tofu (differently sponged), and tofu skin.  Dumplings and wontons of different kinds (chicken, pork, veggie).  And my favorite: a million different seafoods and seafood products.  For some reason, processed seafood products (fish cakes, fish balls, imitation crab and the like) go really well in hotpot, and you can get all sorts of fun shapes, colors and sizes in Chinatown.

At my hotpot parties, people make their own dipping sauces.  I'm a purist, so I just use shacha sauce, which is made from ground up garlic, shallots, chilies and dried shrimp (although I think the real purists mix in a raw egg so it coats the dipped food better).  But people get creative with their sauces, mixing in korean bulgogi sauce, soy sauce, ponzu (a Japanese citrus-flavored soy sauce), mirin, rice wine, sriracha, and whatever else I have in my cupboard.

Here are some pics from the dinner.  Hotpot is one of those meals where I pass on the Franzia and go instead for a nice cold beer.   Delicious!

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One of the readers of this blog (yes, there actually ARE readers!)  commented on my post about the Under Armour run that I didn't post any pictures of the free jersey that we got.  I was so sad that I didn't have my camera that day, since it was such a cool sight to see 60-something Front Runners wearing their bright blue jerseys running en masse through Central Park.  I did manage to have my Blackberry handy at a subsequent Wednesday night fun run, though, where Mikey B and Jeff both happened to be wearing their new jerseys.  They were kind enough to model them for me.

Sunset Park to Hudson River Park

Fatai, Roberto and I went on a little bit of an adventure on Friday.  We decided to go to Sunset Park to check out Brooklyn's Chinatown.  Believe it or not, even though we frequently go to the Chinatown in Flushing, Queens, neither Fatai nor I have ever been to Sunset Park, which is a lot closer to Manhattan (just four stops into Brooklyn on the N line).

My primary reason for wanting to go to Sunset Park was to pay a visit to the Yun Nan Flavour Snack, which I noticed in the past month in both the New York Times and New York Magazine.  I don't know anything about Yunnanese food, other than the fact that the Yunnan province is bordered by Sichuan province to the north, and the Vietnam, Laos and Burma to the south.  So I had a feeling that it would be a tasty mix of the spiciness of Sichuan with the tanginess of Southeast Asia.

The Flavour Snack is a tiny little place, with no tables and just a few seats lining the counter which wrapped the room.  The menu was equally minuscule, consisting of only noodle soup, with a choice of three different noodles and six different toppings.  Our plan was just to get a "snack" here, in order to try out the famed noodle soup before going somewhere else in the neighborhood for a slightly more upscale dinner.  So the three of us shared a bowl of the rice noodle with crispy meat sauce.  Ooooh, sooo goood!  It was a delicious mix of gently-cooked sliced pork, tender slices of pork intestine and crunchy fried pork skin, in a richly flavored broth heavy on the cilantro, chili peppers, and fried shallots (not to mention a healthy dose of MSG). 

I would have been happy ordering another bowl of noodles all to myself, but the three of us eyed a cute Sichuan place around the corner, Metro Cafe (menu here), which we wanted to stop into.  Apparently just opened in March, the Metro Cafe combines an authentic Sichuan menu with some fun Japanese and Taiwanese dishes.  We mostly stayed on the Sichuan side.  One of my favorite Sichuan appetizers is fuqi feipain, which literally translates as "Husband and Wife Lung Slices"--it's a cold dish with beef tripe, tongue and tendon, marinated in a spicy mala sauce.  The fuqi feipian was delicious here, definitely better than at Grand Sichuan.  It was more "ma" and less "la" than than Grand Sichuan (i.e., less chili-oil hot, and more Sichuan peppercorn spicy), and it left my mouth and tongue with a great tingly/numbing feeling.

The other highlights of the night were the braised fish with hot bean sauce (dou ban yu) and the twice cooked pork (hui guo rou).  The fish was a giant piece of (I think) buffalo carp belly.  It came with so much hot bean sauce that it was served in a deep pyrex baking dish!  When we ordered the twice cooked pork, I naively asked whether it was made with pork belly or lean pork.  The response, in Chinese, was: "This is an authentic Sichuan restaurant.  We don't serve lean pork!"  It was delicious.  :-)

The next morning, I joined Mikey, Matt and Peter on a 14 miler from Rutgers to the South Street Seaport and back.  I don't know why, but it seems like every time I do a long run, I end up eating crazy spicy food the night before--usually either Sichuan or Thai--which invariably unsettles my stomach the next day.  Without getting into too many details, it took me four attemps Saturday morning to rid my body of the mala-fest and begin my run.  Even so, I had to make everyone wait at the Christopher Street facilities around mile three for a quick pitstop.  But after that, I felt fresh and about two pounds lighter, haha.

The run felt pretty good most of the way.  After my pitstop, Mikey and I slowed down a tiny bit while Matt and Peter stepped it up.  They got to the turnaround about a minute before us and waited for us to finish.  (Of course, that meant they got a minute break and we didn't!  By that point, I really would not have minded a break...).

On our way back, the run started getting a bit more difficult.  Since I'm just running about 2 or 3 times a week because of my continuing butt issue, I felt like 14 miles was definitely pushing the limits of my fitness level.  Then, around mile 11, I felt my right hamstring tighten up.  This was similar to the feeling I got around the last eight miles of the NYC marathon.  I knew this wasn't a good sign, but I pushed on.  The last couple of miles were not easy.  And the last mile, from 53rd Street to 72nd Street, always seems like it goes on forever.

In the end, though, I finished, without too much pain, just a few second behind Mikey, and about 3-4 minutes faster in the second half than in the first half.  I was pretty pleased, considering everything.

The rest of the day, though, was kind of a mess.  I went to get brunch after the fun run, and had to get up twice in the middle of eating to stretch my legs because my butt/hamstring was so uncomfortable.  Later, I went to the Museum of the City of New York, where they show a 25-minute film on the history of the City.  Halfway through the movie, I had to get up from my seat and stand against the wall.  I'm feeling much better today, and am looking forward to the Tritons swim workout tonight--my first swim workout in a very long time.  Also, tomorrow I'm going to see Dr. Eric Degis, the guy who Chris Stoia saw for his butt problem, who, apparently, was able to work wonders on it.  I'll keep you posted.

Under Armour Sushi

It's been six days since I got my MRI results saying that I had two herniated disks.  I met with Dr. Babiy today and got her reading of the result.  I'll get to those below.

But first, this week has been quite a big running week for me, the most I've run since the NYC Marathon.  I ended up doing a longish run on Saturday with Mikey B.  He had originally planned on doing a 12-miler, and I wanted to do 10, so we compromised at 11.  Matt also joined us on the first loop, which initially made me a little nervous since I didn't want to push too hard on my first longish run.  But in the end, I think we ran at a good, comfortable pace, and I didn't feel like I overdid it.  I barely even noticed any ankle problem at all.  My butt and hamstring, on the other hand, did have some noticeable discomfort towards the end of the run, but overall, I finished the run with a good feeling.

I felt so good, in fact, that I ran five miles the next day.  I'll be the first to admit that this probably was not the brightest idea.  It was so hard to resist, though.  More than 65 Front Runners had signed up to run the special fun run sponsored by the Under Armour, which has a new pop-up store on 57th and 5th.  If we showed up, we got a free technical Under Armour / FRNY jersey.  And I'm a sucker for swag.

Well, it might have been a combination of the 11-miler the day before, and my late night on Saturday, but I immediately settled in towards the back of the pack.  Even then, it seemed like an ordeal to even finish the loop, which Dane thought was at a 10-minute pace.  Anthony and I thought it was closer to 9, but either way, it was not speedy.  I was so happy to be done.

And so I spent the next two days paying for this run, as I limped around the city, feeling the pain of my hamstring and butt area.  (I've discovered a newer region where I feel the strain, but I feel like I can't reveal it in too much detail, both because it will be overly graphic and because people will make it the "butt" of their jokes).  Because of this, I've decided now that I won't do another run the day after a long run, at last for the next several weeks.

Monday evening I went to a spinning workout that the newly formed FRNY Multisport arm is running (led by Rachel C.).  The plan is to have spinning and swimming workouts alternating every Monday at the Long Island City YMCA.  I'm really happy the club is doing these workouts, particularly since it gives me something else to do while I should be keeping my running to a low level.  Also, I guess I should learn how to bike and swim since I'm signed up now for at least two kinda-scary triathlons this year (Metroman and the Mighty Man Half Iron).  Between these workouts on Mondays, the Tritons swim clinics on Tuesday and Thursday (which I hope to start next week), and Yoga to the People, I think I can manage running just two or three times a week without going crazy.

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So today I went back to Dr. Babiy to discuss my MRI results.  First off, I admitted to her that I've been running (although I didn't exactly say how much).  She said I shouldn't be running, and she also had that "I knew you would do it anyway" look on her face.

After taking a look at my slides and the MRI report, Dr. Babiy concluded that my two herniated disks were small and not likely to be the cause of my butt pain.  She believed that the pain was "localized" (ie, did not originate from the spine), and that it was likely a muscle/tendon strain or tear, which is pretty much what she thought all along.  She told me that I should get "aggressive" with my PT on my hamstring and butt.  If it didn't get better in 3 more weeks, I should return to get localized imaging on the area. 

I pressed her on whether it could be a stress fracture, and she said she didn't think so.  She said that if it was a stress fracture, I would feel the pain while running or putting pressure on it.  Instead, I can stand on one leg, run, and jump up and down without any pain--it's only after running and sitting down that really bothers me.  Still, she said if I wanted I could get a butt x-ray just to be safe.  Her reasoning seemed pretty sound, and I already got a butt x-ray when I was seeing Dr. Metzl, so I'm in no rush to get another.  But still, I may go again next week if I have nothing better to do.

She ended the session by saying that I shouldn't run for three more weeks, but that I am free to do non-impact activities like biking, swimming, elliptical, and yoga.  I think I will keep taking it easy the next three weeks, BUT Boston is less than 14 weeks away, and I promised Mikey B another longish run this weekend...

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Mike Terry got John some sushi supplies for Christmas, and I was able to get them to throw a sushi-making party for some of the runners this past weekend.  I was so excited for this, as (1) I love sushi, (2) I love audience-participatory dinner parties (e.g., hot pot and dumpling fests), and (3) one of my two food-related New Year's resolutions this year is to eat more omega-3 fatty fish, which includes both tuna and salmon.  (My other food-related resolution, to eat fewer refined grains and more whole grains, does not fare so well in a sushi fest).

Mike and John did most of the heavy lifting--I did most of the heavy eating, haha.  We had so many tasty things to fill the sushi with.  Shrimp, sauteed shiitake mushrooms and sauteed spinach, an omelet made with mirin and dashi, cucumbers, super creamy ripe avocados, and tuna and salmon.  Here are the boys at work:

Our biggest surprise discovery of the night came when we wanted to make spicy salmon and tuna rolls, but realized that we didn't have (or know how to make) the spicy sauce that makes it so delicious.  So we improvised with mayo and sriracha ("Cock") sauce.  OMG, it was soooooo perfect!!!  Better than anything I've had in a restaurant.  So creamy, tangy, spicy and delicious!  I'm still thinking about how good it was now.

Here are some more pics from the night:

Eventually, I decided it was time for me to take a crack at it.  My parents had a sushi mat when I was growing up, but it was one of those things that was always sitting in the back of the drawer that no one knew how to use properly.  Besides, it had been about 20 years or so since I last touched it.  My first attempt at real sushi was a spicy tuna avocado roll.  It tasted good, which I guess is the most important thing, but it definitely wasn't much to look at.  Somehow my fillings were all off-center, and my cutting job was atrocious. 

My next attempt was slightly more successful--a spicy salmon cucumber roll.  I miscounted when cutting, though, and made only six pieces instead of eight, so each piece was a mouthful.  I didn't mind, though--they were tasty!

The only unsuccessful dish of the night was one of my two side dishes.  The first one, a tofu salad, people liked (at least those people who ate tofu).  I wish I took a picture, but it's really easy to make.  I just took two one-pound blocks of tofu which I diced, poured some soy sauce and sesame oil on top, and sprinkled with loads of chopped scallions, red pepper flakes, fried shallots, sesame seeds and bonito flakes.

The other dish, I had a feeling I'd be the only one eating--my spicy mini anchovies.  I just took a bag of dried anchovies (about two cups, available in any store in Chinatown), and sauteed it with some garlic and ginger, red pepper flakes, and fermented black beans.  My dad would always make sure there was a ready supply of these when I was growing up, as they provide a fun salty/spicy/fishiness to any meal.  They weren't so popular with the crowd that night though.  I suppose they're an acquired taste...