Dark Knight Cannoli Smuggling and Weekend Training Schedule 08/03 - 08/05

Another week is gone and another two days without having to sit at my desk are just a few tedious short hours away. I have no desire to work on the project(s) that sit before me, so I'll write this instead and kill some time. See? Positive thinking!...

Anyway!

It'll be a busy weekend, both running-wise (hoping!) and otherwise. I had meant to finally get back to my weekly interval training at the gym I pay to not go to, but staying up late to watch the Olympics on Tuesday night killed that ambition. So, I rescheduled my return to the treadmill for tomorrow, after a volunteer orientation at the Maryland SPCA in the morning. I'll start out modestly, maybe going for four or five 400m repeats and seeing how I feel. Then I should be able to get up early on Sunday and get a five-mile "long" run done, as we have no commitments to speak of.

"But wait," you say. "Interval training and a long run on back to back days? Is that wise?"

Well, maybe not. But hear me out. First, neither training session is going to be particularly grueling. I mean, 4X400 is very meager in the grand scheme of interval sessions. Second, a five mile run is not going to wear me out. Third, I do what I want. Taken together, this means it'll be fine.

Outside of running, we'll be going to see The Dark Knight Rises tomorrow night. I'm really excited to see this movie, as my previous comments about Batman will demonstrate. I've heard mostly good reviews and the bad reviews have generally gone with the "the movie is just too unrealistic." To which I say, it's Batman...a guy who dresses up like a bat and fights crime. If you want realistic, I'm sure there's an independent movie theatre showing some French documentary on dissident Algerian poets nearby. If you pay to see a movie based on a comic book, well, you should try harder to suspend your disbelief, is all I'm saying. Nonetheless, I'm excited.

Even more exciting will be our theatre fare. We go to a theatre down in the Harbor East neighborhood of Baltimore, which is the super yuppified part of town. As in, you can buy Hagen Daaz for $10 and then go buy "designer" flip flops for $100 next door before buying a $35 "designer" T-shirt next to that. But the movie theatre is awesome! The seats are large and comfortable and because it's in a part of town made up mostly of young couples or old empty nesters, you get very few obnoxious people (i.e. kids and teenagers) messing up the movie. Plus they have a decently-enforced no cell phones and no texting policy. They throw you out if they catch you. And the tickets are just as expensive ($10) as any other theatre. So, win.

The theatre is also near the Little Italy neighborhood, so we're going to try to buy some cannoli to smuggle in to the theatre to enjoy. I think the "hiding in plain sight" tactic might work: get the cannoli and cookies in a nice box and put them in a shopping bag and just walk in the theatre. It might work.

Sing in Me Muse...

Sorry for the posting hiatus; the weekend was hectic and not very run-filled, and this week my running blog muse has gone on vacay, leaving me with little in the way of inspiration.

A quick recap of my weekend to explain: Friday we took Tedster in to the vet for a deep dental cleaning. His teeth were kind of a mess when we got him from the rescue organization back in December 2010, but this was a product of his original owners, whoever they were, not caring for him at all. His breath had gotten worse as of late, so we decided to pony up and have the deep cleaning done. They ended up extracting four of his top teeth, which were rotted, in addition to the cleaning, so they gave him some pain meds and we took him home Friday evening. But later that night, his breathing became very shallow and the vet said to bring him back, so we ended up back at the vet that night (it's a 24 hour animal hospital). THey agreed to keep him overnight for observation (no charge). But that meant I had to get up and go get him Saturday morning, which meant no Saturday morning run.

My mother-in-law flew in later that day to visit us and my wife's sister in DC. Unfortunately, she stepped on an uneven piece of sidewalk in DC and (we found out later) fractured her foot in two places. So, she stayed with us Saturday night but we got up and drove her to National airport the next morning so she could catch an early flight back. Thus, Sunday's run was also nixed.

So, as you can tell, the weekend training really didn't happen, unfortunately. But not for lack of trying! I've been more successful this week in getting out the door and some short runs completed. Pretty standard stuff, which also explains the lack of posting. I'm trying to avoid "junk posts" just as you would try to avoid junk miles during training. And while I have plenty of non-running ideas floating in my head, I want to limit them as well since this is supposed to be primarily a running blog.

In closing, I'll try and get some running posts up here shortly. Just as soon as my muse returns from her holiday.

Weekend Training Schedule & Friday Links

Just a quick end of week post this time around, as the week was mostly a loss to work time demands and other things that made for a lackluster training week. This weekend we won't be going anywhere, so I'll be able to get in a decent run tomorrow morning and then a proper longer run Sunday morning. My mother-in-law is coming to visit this weekend and to see A in her performance as part of the Capital Fringe Festival down in DC. But, I get along very well with my in-laws, and we haven't seen any of them since the holidays, so I can honestly say it'll be nice to see her this weekend.

I'm also hopeful I'll have some time to work on a cross training regimen that will complement my running. I need to get beyond just running and into exercising on my rest days as well...so that's a project for this weekend.

And now, a few links for this Friday.

With the Olympics beginning this evening in London, I'm including some links to running-related Olympics sites. See? Running. Olympics. Theme. Nice.

Sir Roger Bannister is rumored to be the person who will light the Olympic Torch tonight. That would be awesome.

Here's a preview and predictions for every Track & Field event, courtesy of Runner's World. Includes the marathon, decathlon and everyone's favorite event, steeplechase.

So how do you warm up for running in the freaking Olympics? Now you know. From Runner's World.

Apparently, NBC will produce more than 5500 hours of programming over the next 17 days. That's insane. More insane is that you can see just about all of it through some medium (TV, computer, mobile, psychic link with the Hive Mind, etc). So, here's a TV viewing guide from Sports Illustrated.

And finally, the Hive Mind itself: NBC's Olympics homepage. You can plug in directly and become one with the Olympics. Plus watch events online and do 1.4 million other things that will sap your productivity at work.

I'll be heading to Alliance Comics for my bi-weekly comics run tomorrow. I've got Justice League #11 and Manhattan Projects #5 to pick up.

However, as I've said before, I've never really gotten into any Marvel books. I'm not sure why. I guess it was hard to drop into a book like "Avengers vs. X-Men" or "Invincible Iron Man" after years or sometimes decades of issues. Not being familiar with past crossovers or plots means I'm spending most of my time playing catch up, or just missing things, which is no fun. And really, beyond the headliner series like Avengers, Iron Man, Thor, etc, I've never really been enthused about the rest of the Marvel line up. For example, "Avengers Academy" holds no appeal for me.

All this explains, in a way, why I'm looking forward to the relaunching of several key Marvel titles in December and early 2013. Marvel is rebooting "Avengers" and "Uncanny Avengers" (I think that's the title...please correct me if I get these wrong). I believe they're also going to reboot Thor and Iron Man, as Marvel announced earlier that those books would be coming to an end in the Fall. I'm most interested in checking out the new Avengers book, which will be written by Jonathan Hickman. At the very least, it'll provide a good opportunity to get in on the ground floor of potentially interesting Marvel titles.

Which brings me to my final link. Brian Hibbs, staff writer at CBR and comic book store owner, has a new column out wherein he talks about the economics of the Marvel NOW! reboot, and why it isn't all rainbows and butterflies for store owners. Very interesting meshing of my day job and hobby. Check it out.

B'more Stinks! Literally.

So it was a sparse posting week, but work was hectic earlier in the week and, as you can tell from my training log, I got a little off track over the weekend. And the stress at work made it even tougher to get out of bed in the morning and on the road.

And it figures that the earlier part of the week saw some decent weather, temperature and humidity wise. And that now that I'm back out on the road, the heat and humidity has returned with a vengeance. 

Anyway, the run this morning was a pretty typical three-miler. Luckily, the humidity hadn't really cranked up yet, so it was pretty comfortable. The one thing I noticed this morning was the summer Baltimore stink was more pronounced. As anyone who lives and runs in a city knows, the summer heat brings out the various smells and odors of an urban environment that you just don't get in January. This morning, I was treated to the following smells. 

1. Stewed garbage from a city garbage truck. I shudder to think about the awful brew that ferments in those trucks in the 100 degree heat.
2. The smell of a new adhesive bandage, amplified by 100 times. I don't know what caused it, but it was strong. 
3. The distinct, and deeply unpleasant smell of crap. Not dog crap. Person crap. Again, I didn't see any immediate cause (I think we all know what I'm talking about here), but the smell was unmistakable. It was right around an Irish pub on my route, but usually one gets the typical odors of stale beer, old cigarettes, and the occasional urine or vomit. You know, your run-of-the-mill eau-de-frat house. Crap is aggressive, even for this bar. 

Actually, because I ran an out and back route today, rather than a loop, I got to enjoy all these smells twice. Wonderful. October can't roll around quickly enough.

ArtScape Escape Weekend Review

We made it back yesterday without any trouble after our weekend away from the hipster insanity of ArtScape. We found a parking spot in the neighborhood without much trouble, although we took the first spot we found. It was 10 minutes from our apartment, but better than looking around for 30 minutes. Our street was still teeming with people and the streets were pretty gross, so we were glad we got out of town.

My intention was to do a three-mile run on Saturday and a 4 or 5 mile run on Sunday. Below is the route I had intended to run:

Unfortunately, I ran a hybrid of the three-mile route above and the longer route I had mapped out for Sunday. Instead of turning down Constitution Ave and back towards my sister-in-law's apartment, I ran around the Capitol, as I had planned for Sunday. Running back up Capitol Hill and past the Library of Congress, I thought I was on Independence Ave SE, but a moment later realized I was in fact running down Pennsylvania Ave SE. Not a huge deal, but as you can see from the map below, by the time I figured out where the hell I was going, I had added an entire extra mile on to my route.

Not a big deal, but then I ended up walking about another 4 miles that afternoon going to the Folger Library and then down to the Air & Space Museum. And that's not counting walking through the museum, which, as anyone who's been can attest, is enormous. So, call it 5 miles of walking total. By the time my wife picked me up (she had gone to two performances as part of the Capital Fringe Festival instead), my legs were cooked. And they were still tired when I woke up on Sunday, so I bagged my planned long run and took the dog for a leisurely walk instead.

So, it was not the most successful of training weekends, but I got a decent amount of exercise in for my legs, even if it wasn't all running. And I got to see some exhibits I hadn't seen in a long time at Air & Space and a very cool special exhibit at the Folger. But tomorrow, it's back to the schedule to be ready for the Blue Moon Run at the end of August.



Weekend Training Schedule: July 20-22, 2012

This week's weekend training post is going up a bit early, as I'm taking today off and heading down to Washington for the weekend. This weekend is ArtScape here in Baltimore, wherein ~350K people descend on our neighborhood for the largest free arts festival in the country (I think). Basically, it's three days of art exhibits, performances, food, music, etc. Which is wonderful for the city, but it's terrible for neighborhood residents. We live a block from the festival, and the last few years the whole weekend has been total loss. Roads get blocked off starting the Monday before and going until the Tuesday after; illegal street vendors set up their tents in front of our building and hawk their wares while blocking the sidewalk (a call to BPD usually puts an end to that, yet they return year after year); traffic along our street is jammed for a week, basically; we have to park our car and not move it, otherwise we'll never get a spot. Nevermind the trash and unpleasant people the festival brings in (a small minority of festival-goers, of course, but still it makes things nasty if they decide to hassle you).

So, last year we decided to pack up and get out of town for the weekend to avoid the awfulness. My sister-in-law lives in DC, so we're packing up, taking the dog and spending the weekend down there. I took today off so we can get out before the festival begins at noon.

I was going to run this morning before we left, but just didn't feel like it. I'll get 3 miles in tomorrow, and I've mapped out a nice loop in DC that will take me around Capitol Hill on Sunday morning, which should be lovely. Come Monday, I'll post that route.

In between, we're going to be tourists, of a sort. Having been born in DC and having grown up 90 minutes from the city, I spent a lot of time at the museums, monuments and other attractions in the city as a kid. It's been a good number of years since either of us spent time in the Smithsonians. So, we're going to hit up the tourist circuit in DC. I want to see an exhibit on the history of London at the Folger Shakespeare Library as well and I'd like to pay a visit to the National Archives, which I haven't visited since literally elementary school.

We'll also go to brunch on Sunday at a restaurant in DC with a patio so we can take The Bear. They even have a Pooch Menu, which includes non-alcoholic dog beer in addition to entrees like a raw bone or dog-friendly meatballs in gravy with rice. We'll stick with water and the meatballs...dog beer is a bit much even for this dog person.

New Comic Wednesday (No Running...Sorry)

As some of the nerdier of you may know, this past weekend was San Diego Comic-Con, alternatively known as Comic-Con International (CCI) or just plain Comic-Con. The last of these titles is actually a misnomer, as there are many comic conventions across this great land of ours (as well as around this pale blue dot we call Earth), all of which can be called "comic-con". But certainly, CCI is the biggest, taking over the entire San Diego convention center and selling 125K tickets within hours of offering them to the geeked out masses.

As you may also know, Wednesday is when new comics are released, although different comics come out throughout each month.

Since it's Wednesday, and I don't have anything particularly interesting to post where running is concerned, I thought I would drop a post about my own New Comics Wednesday. It's a bit long, so if you're looking for running stuff, it won't be in the paragraphs that follow. Sorry. it was a rest day.

Comic books are a deceptive hobby, because each book by itself is relatively low-cost at around $3.00 or $4.00 each. Some longer running and/or less well-known books can be even cheaper, at around $2.50. So it's very easy to get into a dozen books and end up spending $50 a month or more on new books alone. Then you have additional expenses if you collect other memorabilia associated with your favorite books like action figures, posters, clothing, toys, and trade paperbacks or graphic novels. This is where The Big Two (Marvel and DC Comics) make a lot of money, in addition to proceeds from their movies. Big franchises like Batman, Superman, etc are prime areas for this money suck.

So, I have a self-imposed maximum of five books on my "pull list" at any given time, with two or three additional slots for impulse buys. A pull list is simply a list of books which you buy every month, and is typically maintained by your local comic store. In my case, my local store, Alliance Comics in the Federal Hill neighborhood of Baltimore, pulls my books and I stop in once every other week to get them. Right now, my pull list only has four books on it; I have one non-subscription book I'm trying out as well:

• Batman (DC Comics): My personal favorite superhero since I was a kid. I've really liked the New 52 reboot of the series with the recently-concluded Court of Owls story arc. The book is darker and more similar to the Christopher Nolan movies than the campier or more cartoonish earlier movies in the franchise (e.g. the Val Kilmer and George Clooney films). The writing is strong and the art is also very good. The Batman presented here is not perfect, and has become more conflicted about his place in Gotham over the last few issues. Now, with the Court of Owls done, DC announced at CCI that the new story arc beginning in the fall will bring back The Joker, which will be fantastic. Some of the ideas Scott Snyder, the writer for Batman (and who will be at Baltimore Comic-Con in Sept), has talked about for The Joker, are very compelling. A solid monthly pick up.





Cover from Batman #1, source: DC Comics



• Justice League (DC Comics): The second of my two Big Two superhero selections, and the most recent addition to my pull list. I have not been an historical JL fan, but the New 52 offered me a nice jumping on point and I've been pleased with the writing thus far. I've particularly liked the recent Journey of the Villain arc over the last two issues (the arc wraps up with the latest issue #11, which is out today). I prefer JL to Avengers for reasons I don't really know. I've yet to really get into reading a Marvel book, but that could change; I have an open mind. I'm sure Batman's presence on the JL team has something to do with my affinity. But I also enjoy the other characters and think the writers have done a good job of making them individual characters. The next few issues going into the end of 2012 are supposed to tackle how the JL goes from a bunch of individual heroes to a cohesive team that can oppose the new villain Graves. And Aquaman leads the way in this issue, I hear! Good stuff!



Cover from Justice League #1, source DC Comics







• The Walking Dead (Image): Arguably my favorite book for a litany of reasons. Up until two years ago, I had never heard of TWD, but ended up loving the AMC TV show. I was surprised to learn about the comic, and once I checked it out, I was hooked. The local library had all of the past issues, so I consumed those to catch up in the book. Last week issue #100 came out right before CCI to great fanfare. I read it this weekend and loved it. TWD is consistently great, both from a story and artistic standpoint. The story is of course a zombie apocalypse, but after 100 issues, creator Robert Kirkman has gone way beyond that to explore these survivors' lives, such as they are. The book is not for young children; there's lots of gore (even though the book is drawn in black and white, it's still messy) lots of f-bombs and other adult language/situations. But it's a wonderful read each month and I can't wait to see how Rick and the survivors make it out of the latest horror show they found themselves in at the end of issue 100.



Variant Cover from Walking Dead #100, source Image Comics



• Manhattan Projects (Image): This is the most surprising member of my pull list, as it came out of nowhere and is now one of my favorites. Like TWD, this is a creator-owned comic, in that the creator retains the rights to the intellectual property in contrast to Marvel and DC, where creators usually at least share ownership with the company. That's another post for another day, but suffice to say this model begets a lot more "out there" books and MP is no different. The premise is simple: what if the Manhattan Project had actually been a front for a government operation where the best minds in the world could work on projects even crazier than an atom bomb? We're talking contact with aliens, different dimensions, etc. The characters are all familiar: Robert Oppenheimer, Einstein, Richard Feynman, Enrico Fermi, etc. But nearly everything has a twist. Oppenheimer, the director of the projects, has multiple personalities (not all of which are good); Einstein is actually from a parallel universe and may not be a good guy; Feynman is actually quite normal actually; Fermi is actually a supergenius, super-old alien. Oh, and when FDR suffers an aneurysm (the book takes place in 1945), they put his consciousness into the first AI supercomputer environment. So, not your typical comic! But it's addictive for an amateur science nerd like me. And I got in with issue #1, so I hope it continues for a long time a la TWD.



Cover from Manhattan Projects #1, source: Image Comics



The fifth slot on my pull list remains empty for now. New books are released or announced all the time, so I won't suffer from a lack of contenders. At CCI, for instance, Image announced a dozen new books under development for release in the next several months; Dark Horse announced a new Star Wars comic book coming in January 2013; DC talked more about the next wave of New 52 series that will start to come out this fall and the New 52 "zero issues" coming out in October; and Marvel talked up its Marvel NOW! project, which is an end for several key series including Thor and The Incredible Iron Man, and the beginning of several new titles utilizing the X-Men and Avengers, among other characters. And obviously, new Thor and Iron Man books will come out in 2013, given all the hype around the movies, etc. So, plenty of material coming.

Finally, the one book I'm reading that's on a month-to-month basis is The Massive, from Dark Horse Comics. It's a story about an environmentalist group led by a former mercenary, who are on a ship, The Kapital, searching for its sister ship, The Massive, after a series of huge natural disasters have ravaged the planet. It's only on issue #2, but it's been OK thus far. A little slow, as the book goes back and forth between the present (in the story) and the past to explain the characters, the disasters, etc. I really like the art and colors in The Massive, so I hope it picks up in issue #3.



Cover from The Massive #1, source: Dark Horse Comics