Steeplechasing away from the past and into the future

Things have worked out in the past month that my opportunities to race have been more limited than I would have liked. But I did get to see some great racing action at the Larry Ellis Invitational a few weeks ago. Also, I'm glad to say, everyone I know who was up in Boston for the marathon was safe, I'll be figuring out how to shift myself back into marathon training in the late fall. I've run Boston 3 times, and like many other competitive runners I'm emotionally struck by recent events...I'll be in Boston in April 2014.

For now, shorter speed workouts have been going well. I'm running faster intervals than ever before, excited, pleased, but never satisfied. Answering the question of, "How fast can I go?" a couple times a week is still fun for me.
And in other news: I started a group run at the Westfield Running Company. 
Group Run info on Fb.  I love love love running on grass and gravel. So, come join me and others if you are nearby and looking for a Thursday Run option! We go for Frozen Yogurt afterwards too!

Now that I'm done plugging a work related thing...
Once again, my brain goes into its time machine: The last time I competed at the College of NJ, was the Spring of 2004, my last season of Collegiate running. I ran a1500 in 4:30.22 that day, and 6 days prior in the CTC Championship(at DeSales University)  I'd run my Collegiate best steeple of 10:41.While I have the memories still fairly fresh in my mind, it often feels like a distant memory of a past life. 21yr old Mike owes 31yr old Mike, but we all know the debt can never be repaid. As we forgive others' we must forgive ourselves and know we can make life(and running) better. But I'm leaving that guy in the dust and recesses of my memory, he's not training hard enough.

Back then, I revered the TCNJ meet as a high quality meet, one that I felt almost unqualified to run in. Hiding out in the 5th or 6th heat of 1500m was fine by me on that day. Being at meets like this made me both nervous and inspired.  Now, like then, I'm just damn glad to be at a track meet, toeing the line with other athletes and seeing who is the better man.  Incredible to think, nearly 10yrs later, I've cut almost a full minute off of my 3k steeple time. That's right kids, I got another PR! Training is going fairly well, but someone please remind me when you see me, to do some hip and glute strength exercises. The lower back scenario isn't improving, grrr, grumble. Anyway, Take a look at the fun photos below

When you aren't fast enough for the Larry Ellis Invitational at Princeton Univ., you go and watch anyway. Filming 800's and 1500's for GSTC, and hangin' with, Dharan, Pete, and Pete's friend

Here we go! TCNJ Lion's Invitational this past Saturday 4/26

Early on I was a bit too quick, but still finished in 9:52.85, a new pr by about 2seconds.

Somewhere in the last 1000m, "Wisconsin Pete" Bolgert...surging away from me. 
Bolgert-1  Anis-0

NOTE: I do NOT own this song as it was copyrighted by WMG. Steeple...Jump! Get it? Happy Tuesday!

Qualifying for the Track and Field Club National Championship

Recently, I wrote about getting the sub 4:30 mile.  The chips didn't fall where I had hoped for this indoor season. Will there be other chances? Maybe. Will I have to arrange some crazy set-up to make it happen? Perhaps.
But putting it on the back burner for now, there are others goals. The big one is qualifying for the Track and Field Club National Championship on June 28th and 29th at Icahn Stadium on Randall's Island in NYC.Mission accomplished.  This was nearly a 13 second chop off the ol' PR of 10:07.63, which I set at Club Nat's in 2011(placed 5th!)  So, first time under 10mins, feel pretty good!  Although I led the race from the starting gun until about 2860m...it's a 3000m race.  Billy Howell torched me like a pack of angry villagers chasing a horrible monster, catching me with about 140m to go and unleashing a nasty kick as I was running out of gas. Kudos to that young buck!  Also, I was on pace to crack the GSTC club record in the steeple through 2k, maybe next time...

 

listen at 3:08, if you were there, you would have felt the raw power of Paziora and Howell!

All in all, a great day, I spent some time chatting with the student athlete Roadrunners and went for a warmup and cooldown with a few of them, hit up the old stomping grounds in the Ramapo Reservation. We had a blast joking about the old team records, chatting about trail racing, other alums we know, and about how Tim Paziora has Creed stuck in his head lately. Thus, Tim and Billy broke into a lightly embellished duet parody sampling of Six Feet from the Edge . I was wildly amused. I felt very welcomed and was glad to have raced at my Alma mater.  If running doesn't work out for them, they might have a career, er um, hobby, lined up in putting together a Creed tribute band!

Ramapo Northeast Challenge
3/30/13	Ramapo

Men 3000m Steeplechase

Finals:
Place	Overall	Name	Year	Team	Time	Score
1	1	Howell, Billy	SO-2	Ramapo	9:50.47	-
2	2	Anis, Mike		GSTC	9:54.76	-
3	3	Broderick, Brian	SR-4	NYU	10:01.88	-
4	4	Paziora, Tim	SR-4	Ramapo	10:13.47	-
5	5	Geurds, Joe	JR-3	Springfield	10:19.42	-
6	6	Black, Jason	FR-1	USMMA	10:41.91	-
7	7	Dittmer, Michael	FR-1	USMMA	10:52.49	-
8	8	Fonseca, Mason	SR-4	USMMA	10:53.82	-
9	9	Hamel, Corey	SR-4	Springfield	10:59.68	-
10	10	McGowan, David	SO-2	USMMA	11:08.48	-
11	11	Konecni, Anthony	SO-2	USMMA	11:25.04	-
12	12	Barrett, Daniel		Farmingdale St.	11:35.89	-
13	13	DiMaria, Patick		Farmingdale St.	12:00.78

Discount on road race entry, code: MANIS

If you didn't see it in the title of this post: Discount Code: MANIS, gets you 10% off for both of these events! I'll be at the Oktoberfest for sure!

March Mustachio Madness, the 800lb Gorilla, and Ben Stiller's devious doppleganging

Every few months, it seems one, two, or even three new studs just pop up out of...well, seemingly nowhere and just join GSTC. I'll often liken this to a stable where I'm just another horse. But I think we've gone past the point of saying things like "We've got some studs in our stable". So, as usual, as fit as I ever may get, a killer 22-23yr old just rolls up and crushes me like it's his part time job, at least it keeps me honest out there.
After Sunday's Miles for Music 20k, where two of our best guy's(both 800/mile types) were not entered and yet we still put 10 in the top 11 and 13 in the top 20 for the men, and on the women's side 6 of the top 10.
It is apparent that GSTC is "The 800lb Gorilla in NJ", to quote 20+yr veteran of the roads, Elliott Frieder, who holds a 2:26 marathon pr.  Elliott and his twin brother Jonathan chatted with Club President/Coach/Athlete-Chuck "Slash" Schneekloth and I about the race we'd all just finished and the general state of road racing in NJ.
So, this was a great effort for March, I'm feeling alright a couple days later, happy to be essentially just as fit as I was one yr ago and not on the verge of an achilles injury again. So, the upcoming spring track season should be exciting when I get a chance to run the 3k steeple!

I run with Gorilla's. Really fast ones.

 And now, some other recent fastness and fun:

Racing the Mile at the NYC Armory, finished 4:36.5 according to the half-assed hand timing they do there. But as you can see I ran so fast I bent the time space continuum. So 4:36.5 is most assuredly incorrect. Had to be at least 3:42, just sayin'. It's probably true. Photo compliments of Ted Shalack.

The Bearded Cat Ninja's exchanging the baton at Road Relays III, it was a lot like Rocky III, except there were no silly bro hugs on the beach like this:

While it is well known that beards are a source of power and have been known to bring their keepers massive clutch PRs, I decided to dedicate March...to the Mustachio! Yeah, I look like Ben Stiller,So, of course, no pr on this day for me. But fear not, the beard shall rise again! April 1st=beard revival!

Differences between Ben Stiller and me: 1) I don't have a mullet 2) I don't shave my chest 3) I'm not into nipple shock therapy. And that's it, otherwise we are one and the same.  Thinking about it now, we might be twins, and I was accidentally placed into a time machine at birth, shuttled 16yrs into the future to 1981 where I was handed over to an unsuspecting couple in Queens, NYC.  Think about it's possible, we were both born in NYC. Have you seen back to the Future? Anyway, I take the bull by the horns, all day every day...

Like the time that I killed the Robot King! This actually happened, robot children everywhere powered down with oil leaking from their ocular receptors(robot tears of sorrow)

XC Regionals 1999 and My Father the Truck Driver

I just had a chat with one of my Coaches from College, Mark Haug.  He took notice of my recent 5000m track race.  So we reminisced about the "old days". Mark was Coach for seven yrs or more before he handed the reins over to his assistant James McCusker. Mark and James were teammates in their own College days at Ramapo.  They were terrific guys, both of them.  They motivated me, and made our team feel like it was a band of warriors.  Tonight, Mark referred to us as "The Bad News Bears of the NJAC", and I can say that was fairly true.  We had crappy uniforms, no real warmups, old busted vans with no team insignia, and an old tattered bag that carried our first aid and spike kit. Mark called it..."Red Bag". As we boarded one of the anonymous white or grey 15 passenger vans that Ramapo had in it's stable of vehicles for its Athletic teams, Mark would shout "Who's got Red Bag?!" Just like that.  Not the Red Bag...just, Red Bag.  Mark would make us do 10 pushups if he heard us cursing.

I liked these things, strange stuff like the importance of a team member grabbing a Red Bag named, Red Bag, Punishment Pushups, just quirky stuff that was unique to our team.
 Workouts were rough, and while some may argue that it is not a best practice to keep your athletes in the dark, he wouldn't tell us what the workout was going to be.  On two occasions I made the error of asking "So, what's the workout today?" My teammates would sharply object, "Are you kidding? You don't ask what the workout is! Now it's going to be more!"  Again, if this was true, we could say...bad coaching.  But I think the point was, that Mark would enjoy toying with our minds a bit.  Keeping us on our toes, to keep ourselves ready for workouts, and not prejudge how your were feeling about the effort you were going to give.  Just that you were going to run your guts out.  As you all may have gathered by now, I enjoy the trial by fire method.  The Fall of 1999 through the Spring of 2000 were trying times in my life, and most of what mattered to me was fighting the good fight on Tuesday, Thursday, and most of all Saturdays...Race day!

Letchworth! The Grand Canyon of the East!

I had some breakthrough moments during that Cross Country season and a couple during the track season as well.  Perhaps the best moment in all of the mayhem that was my Freshman yr of collegiate running, was the Regional Championship at Letchworth State Park in Upstate New York.
 I'd been fighting cold/flu syptoms for a few days, but it wasn't bad enough that I would have bowed out on the trip. So, naturally, I was nervous that I would run poorly.

The drive up there was long, riding in a Coach USA bus, we watched Orgazmo on VHS(for real), still one of the funniest movies I've ever seen.  Back in the day before cell phones, we used calling cards.  I called my Mother before leaving Campus and told her where and when I was racing.  It just so happened that my Father, the truck driver, was possibly going to be in the area the morning of the race.  I dismissed this as a non-factor.  I mean, what is the likelihood that a 48' foot tractor-trailer is going to drive into a State Park to see a Collegiate DIII XC race?!  But he did it!  One of the biggest surprise of my lifetime!  My father pulled that truck in there, and made well in time to see the race! 

My Father, George Anis, the Line Haul Driver

Maybe this is 53ft? Well, you get the point, Dad drives these.

Much credit to my Dad, a guy who isn't a runner or all that much into sports, and most often was so exhausted from his work, wasn't too energetic about seeing me run races.  He went along  to see me run a few times in the last couple yrs of HS, and I recall the previous yr, he and My Mother came to a race in Delaware, he missed the entire race, standing on a line to use a Port-a-John...brilliant!  We butt heads, and generally have a rough time, "getting along".
But there he was, and I actually saw him before the race, we chatted for a couple minutes, he may have joked that he had plenty of time to hit the head this time! Most of the rest of it all was a bit of a blur in all honesty, but I recall hearing my Father's voice several times as I ran by. And it made all the difference on that day. I ran a PR by more than 30 seconds, my time of 29:34 for 8k felt impossibly fast for me then! I finished as the team's 5th man!

Dad congratulated me afterward, paid me some compliments of which details have long since been lost in my memory.  My teammates' parents had come to meets that were nearer to home, but my Dad somehow timed it just right, and managed to see us run in the biggest meet of the season hundreds of mile from home!
 The details of that weekend will remain in my memory for the rest of my days.  Mark shouting through the walls from one room to the next, "Anis, that's ten pushups!", after catching me cursing the crappy TV; the weird bus driver(let's just say he was weird), Orgazmo, and my crazy teammates...bunch of whacko's! And my Dad, and his New England Motor Freight truck rolling into the park, how surprised I was. He knows, that I appreciated this, and I'll be sure to tell him again the next time I see him.  People can redeem themselves, so be ready to be glad when they do.  I'll always remember all of this.

Past 30 and looking to go sub 4:30

I've been running for a long time, more than 1/2 my life, if you count the soccer I used to play, then near 90%.  Something incredible about it all is that as you reach you physical peak, you learn that PR's are less frequent, and when they come, they are by much smaller margins(and thus, a greater reward).  But one thing that increases, is your knowledge of training method's and your own body's reactions to them.  Hopefully, if you're smart, you'll pay attention to nutrition/diet and rest/recovery to get the most out of yourself.
And for the sake of tossing about metaphors; Running isn't fast food, you can't just order some crap off the dollar menu and get er' done.  It's a meal! You have to be a farmer for it. You need it to nourish and sustain you, not poison and kill you.
You have to sow the soil and plant the seeds; tend to it and grow it, reap it, then prepare it, and finally you can sit down to eat and enjoy it.  You work to live, and so you live and work to keep living.  Running is the same way, it needs constant attention, you need to plant the seeds yourself, and you need to get out in the fields and do the work.   I think I like this idea better than the idea of "building the foundation" or "base" as so many runner's refer to the early stages in training cycles.  There will be times for the fields to lay fallow when you take a break after a series of hard races.  As cyclical as life is, so is running.

This is my mental image of my 1 mile PR growing

Running needs to be kept in balance.  Or else, things break down, failure is just around the corner.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not taking the pessimist's perspective here. I'm saying, you have to respect what your current ability is, and what your needs are.  Equally, success is just around the corner.  Another thing I've learned in all this trotting about, is that you can never count yourself out, if you do, then you may as well not get out of bed tomorrow morning.
Perhaps it's a blessing to be not the fastest or #1 from the early days of your competitive running.  I mean, if you just win, win and win some more, nothing feels like a challenge or worth striving for.  I like knowing that my training counts because there is always a next step towards something, I like it either way, but it's a bonus for it to have a high ceiling.
So, I keep this all in perspective, I try not to let this all wander too far from my conscious state.
I'm preparing the soil and looking forward to the planting time, and carrying through the whole process in 2013.  To achieve some long sought after goals, it's going to take prioritizing, sacrifice, and a new volume of pain that I've never known.
I'm on the wrong side of 30, and I have yet to run a mile under 4:30.  There are a lot of times I've never hit, and meets I've never been fast enough to enter.   Can I now? Go ahead, just tell me I can't, see if that stops me from trying!  You probably just don't want to be reminded of how you packed it in and let your dream die on the vine.  I'll be on the roads, track, and trails; tending to mine.

Sunday is Runday

Something that was expressed to me in a humorous email struck a chord of thought. It was another stitch that brings closer together the seams in the fabric of my mind's inner workings.

My friend said, "Enjoy your Runday".  Which immediately made me think about Sunday-Funday. I like a Sunday-Funday, and who doesn't? But more importantly...Sunday is Runday!  It's LONG run day! It's the most important run of the week! It's like the breakfast of long distance training!

I move to vote on renaming Sunday, to Runday.  Because, in my estimation, that is what Sunday should be reserved for, there should be no other pain in the ass obligations that interfere with running as far as I want to with my friends!  Once running is done, I say eat(get to the diner), drink, and be merry(beers and ha-ha's).

There are only 52 Sunday Funday's each yr, don't squander them! Run far and drink hard

Call me a dreamer, but I think the week should start with Runday, and we just don't have to talk about the one that starts with an M...