I don’t know about you, but I’m a huge Hunter S. Thompson fan. I read everything he had ever written (yes even The Curse of Lono) while I was in college. Fear and Loathing is definitely the best known, brought to the mainstream via a major motion picture handled ably by Johnny Depp and Bencio Del Toro. I ran across something today that would appeal to any fan – a board game to help recreate Fear and Loathing. I know what you’re thinking. Hasbro made some plastic piece of sh*t? Not exactly. For $3,500, you too can own this!
Three months of head scratching, knuckle scraping and endless hours spent with shop manuals has almost come to fruition. My 1974 Moto Guzzi Eldorado police is nearly back on the road and ready for a Summer chock full of roadtrips. This past weekend I managed to rebuild the carbs and install a GPS. Just a few more projects and it’s time to put her back together and get it fired up! Just in time for Summer…
Two items I never thought I would write about a year ago are the recession and Copper River Salmon. Well this year I am in Seattle and Copper River Salmon is front page news here. Check out the picture below of the fish coming off the plane.
Copper River Salmon arrives May 15th each year and is known around the world as the best wild salmon available. Something about the cold water and length of the Copper River in Alaska make it delicious, which I am sure you can research if you care to find out the details.
The recession part of this has to do with price. Back in NYC, this salmon usually cost upwards of $40 a pound and in restaurants was a $50+ dish. Well this year due to a recession and a great catch prices are around $30 elsewhere and $20 here in Seattle.
I bought a beautiful 3/4 pound piece this afternoon and this is without a doubt the most delicious salmon I have ever had. This fish is a deep red and melts in your mouth. None of that nuclear orange with the painted white lines you normally see.
I am not sure how long this fish lasts, maybe 30-45 days, so if you see it in our local store, spend the extra $$$ and pick up Copper River Salmon. You will not regret it
Whoever staged this photo should win some type of award, perhaps become Poet Laureate. The best.
Another reason we’ve been holed up is the Dukes of Flatbush have been competing in a Winter / Spring bowling league at Gutter in Brooklyn, NY.
Although we excel in all manner of blue collar sports, I can’t say we started the season with high expectations. Well, that has all changed. We managed to hold onto the #1 spot for a long while, only recently ceding it to our nemesis “006″ and our co-conspirators “Wild Turkeys”. This past week we managed to reclaim the #2 spot. We have one more week of league play and think we’re rolling in the semis. Needless to say, we’re focusing our inner Lebowski and drinking plenty of White Russians to get ready for the ultimate showdown. One man, one ball and 10 pins. We’ll keep you posted, but you can check the standings here.
The Dukes of Flatbush roll in style and are always up for a challenge. For some time, we’ve been meaning to join the Iron Butt Association – a distance riding group. You must ride (and carefully document) a trip that covers at least 1,000 miles in 24 hours to gain entry. A good friend and fellow Duke is getting married this summer in Wisconsin. The distance from NY to the wedding? 1,139 miles. A plan is born!
I haven’t written in a few months because I’ve been holed up in my barn working on my 1974 Moto Guzzi Eldorado Police. Doing the Iron Butt is no small challenge, but doing it on a motorcycle that is 35 years old poses additional issues. You need to make sure everything is in perfect order and carry all the spare parts that are otherwise impossible to find. Although I’m a huge motorcycle enthusiast, I’ve never spent much time wrenching so I’ve had a steep learning curve. It’s going well though. I’ll show everyone how it turns out once I’m done…
Sorry it has been so long since we have been updated the blog, I guess the winter season has been tough on everyone with work and winter activities.
My winter activities have been exclusively on skiing the Pacific Northwest, where I have been skiing, Crystal, Mount Baker and Stevens Pass. All places are around a 2 hour drive from Seattle and are so good for being so close to a metropolitan area.
The one item of gear I picked up in the beginning of the season is a ski helmet. I have never skied with a helmet before but after hearing of all the injuries that occur I decided my noggin was worth the $$$ for a new ski helmet. I settled on the Giro G10 which I am happy to say is an excellent purchase. It is light, has vents and keeps my head extremely warm, and had vents when I need to cool off. And once on the mountain I noticed that a majority of skiers and boarders wear helmets now, not just the little kids.
The reason I was called to action today to write this post is reading the news that Natasha Richardson, the actress was apparently injured in a tragic ski accident and suffered a traumatic brain injury. It is horrible news and hope she is fine and that this does not happen to anybody out there, and the two best methods to avoid this are to ski safely and wear a helmet.
As I have already mentioned many times here i am a huge fan of the Garmin 405 but am beginning to really dislike Garmin the company. Here is why:
In early April of 2008, when I first purchased my 405, the people at Garmin stated that the software, Garmin Connect, for the 405 was not ready yet for Mac OSX users and would be ready soon. This message quickly changed to Fall of 2008. I was a little confused that Garmin would not make software compatible with a Mac but figured they could do it in 6 months, how hard could this be. Well, Fall of 2008 came and went and still no software for Mac users.
I was hoping that maybe the New Year would bring some good news, and looked at the dedicated Garmin page for Mac and saw a note, “Coming January 2009″. I was starting to get hopeful again until I saw another notice a few days later “Coming Q1 2009″. Are you serious?????
For anyone from Garmin reading this, why are you abandoning your Mac users? A full year, probably more, to make Garmin Connect compatible with Mac’s in not acceptable. Step up and take care of this already. If you are not planning on it then let us know, and if there are delays let us know why?
For a company that states “Garmin is founded on the principles of innovation, convenience, performance, value, and service” you have not lived up to your values.
As a runner I have always had problems with my shoelaces becoming untied during a run. I finally learned how to tie a proper knot, a reef knot, that will keep your shoelaces tied on those long runs.
I wrote a little how to on eHow.com, one of my favorite sites.
Check it out here – How to tie a shoe for runners
My favorite method lacing up a shoe is below, but I do not recommend for running
I know it has been awhile since we have communicated, I guess the December holiday season has been crushing everyone.
In the absence of original ideas and thoughts, I thought I would link to some of the genius ideas I have seen recently.
As always we will begin with Bacon, this being the bacon roll. I hope to attempt to execute this myself in the next few weeks after a little R&R
Now that Winter is solidly upon us, I can only think of Spring and the garden. I’m going to plan an entirely different vegetable garden next year. This past year I had 29 different pepper plants and way too many tomatoes. Thinking about a garden centered around my favorite recipes and canning. Perfect time to figure it out. You should too – even if it’s just some herbs on the fire escape. It’s madly addictive…
before
after
For those of you who may not have noticed we are in a little bit of a lull here as we are just getting over the NYC Marathon and the Taste of Fall (pictures and post coming soon).
I myself am taking the time to escape to Key Biscayne and Miami. Here are some pics from 12th floor of the Ritz Carlton Key Biscayne where I am ensconced for the week. This weekend I will be heading to the ultra luxurious Sike Spa in Miami. For those of you who have not heard of it, sorry, it must remain a secret
Well, with the Ibuprofen count officially under 4 a day, and the nightly icing rituals melted away, I thought it about darn time I relayed my NYC marathon story.
Let me first start by saying, how amazing all of the Dukes of Flatbush, particularly that guy I call my Husband, was through this whole process. A very sincere thanks to everyone for all of their well wishes, advice and encouragement along the way. And a particular shout out to the lady on First Ave and 96th St who was the ONLY person I didn’t know to call out my name- you will never know how much that helped. THANK-YOU!
I’ve taken a bit of time to write this for a lot of reasons. Partly because I needed to digest what exactly happened in those hours between 5 am and 6 pm on November 2nd, 2008, and partly because I really needed to get some rest! As I mentioned in my pre-marathon post, I was really looking forward to the two-week taper. My body, particularly my right knee and calf, were really giving me hell, and I was in an almost constant state of pain. I sought out the services of an acupuncturist, which helped tremendously, but even still I did not go into Marathon day in top form.
I’ll get this negative stuff out of the way, because as the administrator of this noble blog said- “It’ll be cathartic”. I’ll admit, I was pretty disappointed about not being in top shape on Marathon Day. After 2 + months of training, to be feeling rather questionable about your ability to perform is a bit of a lousy feeling. I didn’t play many team sports as a kid, so maybe this is something everyone else is used to by 32- I am not. I didn’t play through an ankle sprain and kick the winning goal. I didn’t get the MVP for getting two teeth knocked out and staying in the game to score four 3 pointers. I was a cheerleader- I broke my elbow doing a high kick and sat out the rest of the season out. Simply put, I’ve never played through the pain, it’s just not what I do.
OK, that feels better.
So there I was on the Saturday before Marathon Day, with perfect weather (crisp and partly cloudy with high of 50F) to look forward to, and I was a nervous friggin’ wreck about my knee. I went out for a long walk when a friend and fellow Marathoner called to ask how I was feeling. I described myself as the Owner of a Best in Show Contender at the Westminster Dog Show who had to leave Madison Square garden to go get a hotdog because they were too nervous to watch. This training process had done a lot of strange things to my mind, but this was getting out of hand. I was now simultaneously the Best in Breed, the trainer and the Owner. This had to stop!
What was the worst that could happen? “You could do real damage to your knee and wind up in serious trouble, Idiot,” I told myself. OK, fair enough, but really what are we talking about? Collapse in Williamsburg? Ambo in Central Park? I told myself that I could walk if I needed to, and in all honesty, that was fine. “There are plenty of people that walk, it’s not about the time. More importantly, it’s about finishing and raising funds for Jack’s Fund I reminded myself. Well, either the Viszla inside developed language skills or I was being to make sense. Either way, I was calm enough to go home and start the process of unwinding- 5 am does come early.
Per usual, I didn’t sleep much. It was a cold morning, but the spirit of the day most certainly got me out the door and onto the Subway Platform by 6 am. If your listening Mr or Mrs NYC Marathon Logistics Manager Man or Woman, I have to admit, I don’t think the Wave Start plan worked as well as you hoped. There were many, many runners that were in the 10:20 am start that had 5:30 am ferry or 4:30 am bus times. Doesn’t seem that it was the best use of staggered starts to then have people crowding the Staten Island Ferry terminal to stay warm before heading out into the sub 40 degree temp. But, I’m just saying. As I mentioned before, I consider myself a wimp. I know everyone talks about how amazing the Marathon Village is before the race, and how much fun it is to walk around and such, but I was freezing, so I stayed in the Ferry terminal till 8:30 before hoping on the bus to Fort Wadsworth.
Once there, I realized that there was a whole flurry of activity going on, and I clearly was not the only one that was a bag of nerves! People were literally walking in circles, too anxious and cold to sit, but too sore from months of training to move too fast! 9:30 am marked the end of Bag Check and in those few moments before I saw every type of salve, cream, gel you could imagine being applied to any and all body parts. Without shame, I too, joined the Vaseline’d Masses and got myself prepped for the race.
Before I knew it, we were lined up and stripping away our “give away” warm up gear. Without realizing it was really happening we were moving en masse up the platform up to the start line at the base of the bridge. Of course, Bruce Springstein’s Born To Run was playing on the speakers as I crossed over the start line. I chuckled to myself and smiled as I took off up the Verranzano Bridge and looked out over to Manhattan in the distance. I overheard someone say, “Doesn’t it look so far away?”. And strangely to me, it didn’t.
Coming into Brooklyn, I felt great. There was a dull pain in my knee, but it felt manageable. The tightness in my calf had subsided, I felt well rested, my digestive tract co-operated earlier and in all honesty, I felt like I was about to have the run of my life. Once on Fourth Avenue, I could see the Williamsburg Saving and Loan Building in the distance. 
I live in Fort Greene, which is just past that at mile 8 so I settled in for an easy cruise up Fourth Ave, knowing that I would get a Dukes Welcome at the end of my block.
And there they were, my Bloody Mary’ed Cheering Section!
Luckily, my Husband brought out the Stick to the end of the road for a bit of mile 8 ITB release.
By this point, I was starting to question that “run of my life” comment. My knee was starting to feel very tight and tender, and each time I flexed my knee back after taking a step, it hurt even more. I slowed down from my 9 minute mile pace to a 9:30 for the next two miles to see where I was at. By mile 10 on Bedford Avenue, I stopped for a few moments to stretch out to see if I could loosen the ITB- it was beginning to feel like a rubber band being snagged on the outside of my knee with each step. No such luck. I stopped at the next Medical Tent to see if they had a Stick- for some reason this made sense to me, but of course they didn’t.
I was only 10 miles in, and here I was contemplating that I might have to serious consider walking for a bit. But walking on my right knee didn’t feel any better. The way I thought about it, it would just take longer and therefore hurt for longer. So I took off on my left leg, and just gently used my right foot to balance myself out. With that first step, I set my mind to running the remaining 16 miles on my left leg. Now I know this sounds insane, and of course it is. But it’s basically what happened. I stopped at two medical tents to have them tape up my knee to keep it from bending too far back, and I went about the business of getting through it.
Just passed seeing another group of friends at mile 14 in Long Island City, the pain was so bad that I stopped, folded over and started to cry. I don’t know if it was the pain, the frustration at my 11 minute pace or what, but I was pissed. All of this training, the resting, the icing, the balanced friggin’ nutrition, the Tetolling- I couldn’t believe it was coming to this. I think I even let out a bit of a Blue Streak- sorry to any kids that may have been nearby. After I few minutes, I got myself back together and got back to the business of the left sided shuffle. If it took me 7 hrs, I was gonna finish this thing.
I had been warned about the 59th St Bridge. With no crowds on either side, and the vibration of the runners pounding the expanse, it can be both daunting and exhilarating I was told.
As I made it up the incline, I got into a bit of a rhythm with the my new left sided gait and I was starting to settle in a bit. Just as I crested the bridge I realized that it truly “all down hill from here”. Not exactly the best thing for someone experiencing ITB pain, but you get the metaphor.
First Ave was pretty unbelievable.
Looking up those 50 or blocks and seeing a river of runners moving up the canyon of skyscrapers is a pretty remarkable site. There are so many spectators at this point too; never before have I felt greeted with such welcome arms to Manhattan. That said; I basically put my head down and wobbled my way up the Avenue, knowing that my Dukes Cheering Section was just 4 miles away.
By the time I got to mile 18, I realized that stopping to stretch was not a good idea; it became increasingly difficult to get started again and was more painful each time. It was also at that point that I realized that despite my difficulties, I was still within shot of my goal of sub 4:30. To do so, I would have to shave about 30 seconds off of my mile pace. One thing that has always been true during my training is that I tend to speed up after I get over the hump and enter the last 3rd of a run. Would that be true this time was the question.
I’ll spare you the grunting, wincing, cursing blow by blow of the last 8 miles, but they were the most intense of my life. The crowds down 5 Avenue and in Central Park were amazing. To each of the crazy spectators with the large “Beer” signs, thank-you for the laughs.
But I think this sign had to be the best-
With one last glance at my husband at the 26 mile mark, I ran those last .2 miles with tears in my eyes and a fullness in my heart that I will hold with me for the rest of my life.
At 4:28: 53, I can now say I know what it feels like to have made my own goal, banged up knee and all.
A week plus later, and I am not quite ready to tackle the pavement just yet. I might go back to Pilates for a bit, maybe even consider taking a Yoga class. I’m waiting for all of the swelling to go down to figure out what to do about my knee. I figure it makes sense to see what is just a result of all that training, and what may or may not be a lasting result before going to see a Doctor. To be honest I don’t want to know yet, I’d rather just bask in the glory for a bit longer.
A few weeks ago the nice folks at Tech4o, dropped a Mens Accelerator Running Watch in my mailbox for a review. Since its arrival I have been putting it through the Dukes of Flatbush torture tests and am ready to report. For the rest of this post I will refer to the watch as the Accelerator, because it is shorter and sounds kind of cool. 
For me the gold standard of running watches is the Garmin 405 , and was my baseline for comparison and testing for the Accelerator. The first impressions of the watch are that it is a nice fit and of course much smaller than the Garmin. It sits nicely on the wrist and the display is just OK. It could be a little sharper and is probably a level below a Timex Ironman and without the Indiglo feature, so a little tough to read at night, but adequate.
Now lets get to the fuctionality of the Accelerator. My main test of this watch was to see the accuracy of the distance measured against the Garmin 405. For most runners, any watch can tell time and do laps, but the distance measured is the key feature we are looking for. Let me begin by stating I did not really read the manual too well so not sure if I needed to calibrate the watch, but to tell you the truth it did not really matter.
My first run was an easy 4 miler, that wound around Volunteer Park in Seattle. The results were Garmin 4.01 miles, Accelerator 3.98 miles. Not too bad. The second event was a walk around Vancouver BC and the Accelerator and Google Maps both were within 5% of each other. Since I am never sure how accurate Google Maps are, I consider this a win in terms of accuracy. The third and fourth runs were 5 mile runs around Seattle and both times the results were the same. Garmin 5.02 miles, Accelerator 4.97 miles.
So in terms of accuracy, I can say that the Accelerator worked and for a runner that is looking for a general range of distance and is not obsessed like your truly, it is an excellent lower cost alternative to a Garmin. I think the Accelerator is around $70, so compared to $350 for the Garmin, so a pretty good value. The Accelerator has a bunch of other features such as steps, calories burned, dual time and a countdown timer, but I cannot account for how accurate the calories burned works and a timer is a timer and there was no chance I was counting steps.
I will keep the Tech4o in my watch rotation along with the Garmin 405 and a couple of Timex Ironmans
Every day feeling like a race lately? Make your arrival at home the feeling of Victory you deserve!
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