Running is selling out, redux

March 23, 2009

Public Relations
Avery Brewing
5763 Arapahoe Ave.
Boulder, CO 80303

To the gentle folk at Avery Brewing,

Hello from the sagebrush-choked neon Babylon of Reno, Nevada! My name is Cameron, a beer and running enthusiast and Colorado native, currently writing you in exile as a procrastinating graduate student at the University of Nevada. As much as I long to shake the dust from my sandals and return to the celadon river waters, skin-flaying ultraviolet radiation, and eye-bugging topography of my home state, or at least some place closer to it, I’ve still got two months left in my tenure here before earning my degree. This presents two significant problems: my geographical location and financial wherewithal (which, as a grad student on a TA, loosely approximates that of a Dickensian ratcatcher) make it impossible for me for easily get ahold of your brews. This is significant, as Avery’s are among the very very few microbrews for which I’ll cough up the dough when given an opportunity. Frankly, I miss ambling down 17th, barefoot most of the way, to Liquor Mart and pick up a six of White Rascal, as I used to do when I lived in the Goss/Grove hamlet as an undergraduate at CU. Instead, I live in a place that not only is bereft of beer anywhere near as gut-satisfying as White Rascal; but where the prevailing political climate is one that encourages people in these parts to hike while armed with concealed handguns, wearing helmets in anticipation of the Rapture. Guys, it’s like Highlands Ranch, only worse and with craps tables.

I’m writing you today for two reasons. The first is to commend one of your employees’ behavior at last summer’s La Sportiva Eldora 10K Trail Race in early August, for which you provided post-race refreshments. The race ended up being a bit of wash, as its labyrinthine course was poorly marked, leading to disputes over race timing. At around mile 5 or so, a guy who I now refer to as the “hypercompetitive dick software engineer with shaved calves and a bowling ball-sized GPS watch” (there are millions of these guys in the greater Boulder area, as I don’t have to tell you), passed me and wheezed, “you cut the course, asshole.” That he made this allegation was, to say the least, surprising. First of all, I was just following the lead of the pack, Payton Batliner (who ended up winning the race), who, to the best of my knowledge, did not cut anything, except perhaps mincing his competition in order to later Hibachi them. Anyway, I don’t think the course itself even knew where the hell it was supposed to go. Furthermore, I’m not exactly sure what “official” course the guy who grumbled at me must’ve been following, considering that he erupted from the pine forest covered in needles, sweating like a fever-stricken grizzly just before passing me. It was almost as if he were lying in wait in the brambles, foaming at the mouth at the prospect of Chernobyl’ing my nervous system as he discharged yourself mightily from the bowels of the forest. And he further evidenced his unsavory character when, after finishing, he kvetched at the race director’s tent with all the other Type-A semi-professional runners for the next thirty minutes about the “unacceptable” course.

Meanwhile, the avuncular guy at the race to rep Avery Brewing, who also ran the race in a respective time and was wearing an intimidating singlet, was over at the finishing line cheering in half-dead, near-comatose middle-of-the-packers. Watching him, I felt my heart nearly double in size.  Here, I thought, is a guy who knows what’s what. In the weeks following the race, I proudly purchased and consumed several of your brewery’s offerings, happy to support a small company that understands the populist, grass-roots heart of the running community—one whose integrity is under constant corporate duress, as Runner’s World has become a glorified self-help rag featuring softcore-porn-like collages of vacuous models who probably spend more time on elliptical machines reading Dean Koontz novels than actually running outside. Thanks, in short, for not selling out.

The second reason I’m writing you today is to ask a favor. Sort of. Some time ago, I wrote a letter (appended to this one for your records) to Miller-Coors to mention how much I appreciate Hamms as a reasonably palatable post-run, pre-nap beer, and to attempt to solicit their sartorial support for my marathon training. Miller-Coors did not write back, and each day of cold, bureaucratic silence from them has settled thick and ominous around me like oily snowdrifts. Avery, I hope you know just how sorry I am that I wrote what I did. (Although I’m still pretty proud of the bit in the letter concerning Pauly Shore). Look, I’ll still drink Hamms if there’s nothing else liquid in the house but dishwasher detergent. But as the wrinkles in my face have deepened over the past year and I’ve attained some small mete of wisdom, I’ve realized that drinking something made mostly of rice that tastes like sugared-up raccoon piss just isn’t worth it.

You can read the Hamms letter for yourself to garner more of a sense of why I think beer and running constitute the Mobius strip running through the core of my life philosophy. Lately, I’ve made the decision to attempt a one-year running streak of at least two miles a day, one that will probably include another couple marathons. I’ll be living in Reno until May, then moving to Austin, Texas. If an Avery t-shirt (due to my willowy, bookish figure, I’m usually a medium size-wearer) somehow wiggles its way into my possession, I will wear it for every single calf-lacerating one of those runs. I will wear it in every race I enter. I will wear it until it is so sweat-stained, bedraggled, its thread count so traumatized that I have to ashamedly consult Martha Stewart Living in order to figure out how to salvage it and transport your logo onto the tabula rasa of a fresh, new t-shirt. I will, of course, provide appropriate photographic evidence of said t-shirt-wearing by posting narcissistic pictures of myself daily on my blog. If it can say something across the back like, “This guy’s running streak is powered by the beer company in Colorado that made him ashamed to drink PBR and Hamms,” that would be stellar.

Thank you for your time, and for your love and production of honest ales.

Best wishes,

http://waffleghost.wordpress.com

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Days streaked: 2

Total Miles: 10.2

Today’s contribution to my impending tinnitus while running: cold, crystalline desert silence.

Running is gross

I lost a blackened toenail earlier this week. It came off in the shower. The one on my left index toe. Traumatized during October’s Denver Marathon, it took a full four months for a new nail to incubate underneath it and finally shove the old, damaged guy out. If this is making a column of pre-puke arise in your throat, you can bail on this entry, guys. I’ll understand. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about toenails lately, though: those thin shells of pearlescence that protect your little pigges and mine from hamboned line dance partners and malevolent coffee table legs. 

Here’s what’s up with black toenails. Our feet often swell during physical activity and get compressed by your socks and shoes. That pressure, combined with the jackhammering impact of running, can pulverize your toenail beds, or create a blister under the toenail itself. (eww!) When this happens, the extra blood and fluid cause your toenail to separate from the toenail bed, from which your toenail emerges on an ongoing basis. The dried blood colors the toenail black. Kind of like stained glass, but grodier.

Much like the soul-quickening experience of your first snotcicle on a cold winter run, your first post-race dry heave in front of a concerned race volunteer in the finishing chute, and your first time smearing Vaseline on your areolas, the first black toenail is an inexorable runner’s rite of passage. Padre Cactus can recall with startling accuracy the number of toenails he’s lost over almost four decades of running and backpacking. (The majority because of late-70s Colorado Plateau canyon descents, his toes at the mercy of sketchy Army Surplus boots and a totally un-fucking-ergonomic Kelty external frame). My mother, who avoids thinking about feet in general, makes him wear his vaguely Euro sock-shoes in the house whenever he’s got one going on.

Like scars, tattoos, hair styles, birthmarks, piercings, scarrings, sad-tonsils-floating-in-ominously-lit-jars-on-the-shelving, bindings, piercings, stretchings, pearlings, pubic hair-weavings, tone, dyes, and a legion of other bodywork, the blackened toenail is a sign of both the limits of bodily identity, and the ways in which bodies serve as a record to what has happened to them. I like the idea of the black toenail. It exists, but is always passing. Always being replaced by the new nail. Dead matter that can’t be gotten rid of, an unsightly result of the run. Good luck wearing Birkenstocks to your church potlock with one. It shows that running creates a body-in-process–a mark that, like a race, serves a reminder of something that happened in space and time. It unnaturally lingers to remind us of where we have been, and of things we have chosen to write onto our flesh (and of those things that insist on writing on us). 

To run the risk of totally alienating you with the limits of the metaphor, the dead toenail somewhat resembles an ink stain. Whether purposeful or accidental in nature, I dunno. Hopefully (alert: precious metaphor collapse ahead) you can find someone who reads and appreciates it. 

If anybody takes this into racial allegory territory, I’m going to need another beer.

(pictured: unrelated fishblimp)

The last paragraph is–like most overwrought, self-indulgent things in the world–really Michel Foucault’s fault, who describes the body as

a surface on which events are inscribed (whereas language marks events and ideas dissolve them), place where the Me is dissociated (a Me to which it tries to lend the illusion of a substantial unity), it is a volume perpetually crumbling away. Genealogy, as an analysis of where things come from is thus situated at the point of articulation of the body and history. Its task is to show a body totally imprinted with history, and history destroying the body.

-Michel Foucault. (1991) [1971]. ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History’. . In Paul Rabinow, (ed.), The Foucault Reader. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, p. 83.

Hopefully I’ll get a couple more during spring training. I’d like to sit out in a lawn chair in Texas this June stretching out my naked dogs ahead of me, sucking down a cold one, until a nervous neighbor (or G) comes by to drape a modesty cloth over my feet.

Oh, and the Antlers’ Hospice is a good album, at least judging from the sounds they’ve put out in advance of the official release in March.

Running is sense of place, spirit of place

Please pardon any egregious typographical errors in the postings for the next couple days. My cat/animal life partner is sitting directly in front of the monitor giving me a blank, inscrutable look, so I might make more typing errors than usual. It’s clear he wants to communicate something, though, as he refuses to budge from his position, and I’m instead met with the unreadable, existential silence of Waffles the Cat. I feel a bit like I’m in a Beckett play. Or at least the kind of play I’d imagine Beckett might’ve written if he’d spent more time with Hugh Lofting. I think he’s justifiably upset with me for ditching him at chez Turner for the past couple months. I don’t even write regularly. So I’m not surprised that he didn’t greet me at the door with a tuna casserole.

Anyway, I’m home. The plane ride was a nerve-rattling affair towards the end, but beyond that the trip was superb. I got some grading done. I watched the episode of The Office where Holly is tricked into thinking Kevin is a “special needs” employee, which I had not previously seen since I’ve been unplugged from anything resembling popular American culture for the last two months, thanks to school. I got to watch the sunset over the Great Basin from 39,000 feet. The guy next to me asked me if he could have a piece of my gum. It was great. And that reminds me.

Have I told you guys how much I love airports?

I love airports. For more than the usual pleasures of peoplewatching, free cans of ginger ale, and the spare, vaguely Nordic beauty of airport washrooms. I like airports because I can put on Brian Eno and watch the light. The quality of daylight in airports–and I imagine it has something to do with those gigantic, tinted bay windows they put in–carries an almost unearthly graininess and sharp, cosmopolitan lines. As a result, everyone in an airport (especially Reno-Tahoe “International”) looks like Edward Hopper painted them.

And I went for a spectacular run this evening along the Boulder Creek path under a waning moon. I watched mighty brains of cumulus clouds silver the green-black fabric of a sky that seemed to grow directly up from the mountain crests, and fold over the valley like a parachute, close to the ground.

Every time I come home to Colorado, and especially when I go for runs, I feel something akin to the sensation when you dig through piles of junk in your room to discover a novel you’d forgotten you were reading months ago, with a bookmark jammed a third of the way in or so, and you pick it up, page squinty-eyed through its leaves, and suddenly you’re in it again.

The official (or at least as official as this thing ever gets) race preview Sunday’s Denver Marathon is coming tomorrow on the Belfry. Stay tuned.

Oh, and lest I forget: big ups to my grrrl Glam-Grizzly for the best. gift. ever. received. by me. And I probably would include my mother giving me the gift of life at the moment of my birth in that statement. At some point I’ll have to stage an elaborate press photo for this blog using it. And everyone wish Simon, and also Buffy’s Mom and Dad the best of runnerly luck in Sunday’s race, too. (No blog link to the latter that I’m aware of. Hey Liz, does your mom blog? I’ll bet she blogs. All night long. Ohhh yeeaaah.) I’d like to stage a bomb high-five right as we all cross the line simultaneously at 2:31, and Iron Maiden arena-show quality fireworks go off, if that’s at all possible.

___________________________

Most recent run and atmospheric conditions: see above.

Workout/whether or not my innards gave way : three miles easy, plus some strides. Nowhere near intestinal meltdown this time.

Total Mileage to Date: 608 (hooray taper week!)

Days remaining to Denver: 3


(pictured: me, sunday. post-race expo beer truck is off-camera to the left)

Running is collected pensées: a review of the Georgetown to Idaho Springs Half Marathon, 8/9/08

Contrary to the colloquialism that inevitably follows any mention of the race in certain Colorado running/social circles, the Georgetown to Idaho Springs Half Marathon is not, in fact, the “slacker’s half marathon.” Be tricked not, wise running coyote children!

(before I go on, results are available here)

It is true that the course’s net elevation loss over its length is roughly 1,000 feet (it roughly follows Clear Creek all the way from Georgetown’s lofty aerie at 8,500 down to Idaho Springs at 7,500). While driving, bleary-eyed, up I-70 to the race at 5:30 in the morning, I couldn’t help but think the race was going to be a bit of a cakewalk in sneakers. The running equivalent to spending a Saturday morning with my butt osmosing into a Barcalounger, downing mimosas and perusing the Times, with Ravi Shankar ragas dripping from the speakers while assorted woodland creatures wax and shammy my car outside in the drive. So I was a little surprised when I discovered hills that went up on the course. And there were a lot of them. Given, the majority of the race is on a gentle downgrade. But there are enough hills–mostly where the I-70 frontage road veers up to meet the highway–to make the course much harder than I thought it’d be.

That said, I also set a PR and got tons of free foodstuffs at the end of the race, so I’m not going to kvetch. Although, now having consumed approximately 14 free containers of Joint Juice (it’s the booth lady’s fault for suggesting that I should “take as much as you want!”), I’ve decided that I’m through putting shit in my body that tastes vaguely like chalk.

Overall, the half marathon was expertly conducted, measured, supported, started, and advertised. Mile splits were well-marked. The chip timing worked with precision and accuracy. There were ample aid stations with water and virulently blue Powerade, crewed by extremely (perhaps offsettingly) enthusiastic members of the Clear Creek School District, who the race benefits every year. There were flotillas of surprisingly hygienic johns at the start and finish, although the wait time for them was longer than anticipated at Georgetown. The weather was cool and sunny throughout the race–a welcome change from an overbaked Front Range. The race is almost entirely on pavement, with a nice dirt road section for a couple miles in Downieville, about halfway through the race, to stave off exploding knees. The first few miles were especially pleasant, as the sun had yet to rise into the canyon and the vermilion-cheeked good people of Georgetown came out en masse to watch the race and cheer.

The awards were some of the coolest race schwag I’ve seen–big ups to the race organizers for paying homage to Colorado’s mining history by using gold pans instead of plaques.

The parking situation, as the race website took great care to mention, is more than a little squirrelly. I had a friend drop me off in Georgetown and pick me up in Idaho Springs. If you can manage to press gang a friend or family member to do the same and feign interest in your running career, I’d highly recommend doing the same. Otherwise, you’re going to have to either: a) get up ludicrously early, park in Idaho Springs, and take a shuttle bus up to the start surrounded by cranky endurance athletes with bladders about to reach critical mass; or b) park in Georgetown and hitch/bike/walk/run/whatever the 13.1 miles back up there after the race. Good luck with that.

I have but a few minor, totally subjective gripes that could be addressed in next year’s race. Trifles and opinionated murmers, really, if the organizers feel like catering to this particular runner’s tastes:

1) If I have to listen to more egregiously optimistic, White People-pleasing, adult alternative music before, during, or after a running race in Colorado, I’ma flip out and tip over an aid station table onto a bunch of middle schoolers. Friends don’t let friends listen to KBCO. This means no Blues Traveler, Dave Matthews Band, and Yello’s “Oh Yeah.” The lattermost of which I cannot even *believe* was the last song I listened to before I started the race. If they played something like this instead, I’d probably go sub-5:15:

and my friend Liz would probably start doing her patented pointed-fingers-out-from-the-hips-while-swiveling dance at the startline. Which would make every runner’s day a little brighter. That’s a promise.
2) Comic sans, shadowboxes, and clip art, when combined, do not make for a particularly aesthetically groundbreaking race t-shirt.
3) O’Douls? Seriously? The greatest part about running races is that they sociologically legitimate a 10:30 AM beer buzz. And t he fact that race expo’s beer tent dishes out a macrobrewed, corn-based non-alcoholic beer produced by an out-of-state brewer is bewildering, considering that Colorado is the halcyon land of microbrewed wünderbiers, from Avery to Twisted Pine to New Belgium to Flying Dog. Many of whom sponsor races.

Other than this small litany of complaints, the race was superb and I’ll definitely hoof it again next year. Great jorrrrb!

(cross-posted from RunColo–thanks a million, once again, to Simon. I owe you a long run and a beer when I’m back in the Mile High City.)

_______________________________

In other news, I’ve been lighting hosts of votives and doing the Pepper Seed every thirty minutes to send massive doses of good luck to Fam and JBarr, both running the Steeplechase finals in Beijing. You should too. Wish them luck, that is. (Unless you’re rapido enough to compete, in which case I don’t understand why you’re reading the Belfry instead of getting warmed up.) Go’merica!

________________________________

Most recent run and atmospheric conditions: 5 mile loop from the Mordhaus down through UNR’s campus to the Quaker house and back. Lonesome night run, punctuated only by the unexpected sight of a bunch of fire fighters playing shirtless hoops at 10:00 PM out in front of the station on Ralston. And yes, you’re more than welcome to use that image in your steamy romance novel.

Workout/whether or not I rolfed: Still readjusting to running in Reno’s climate, so it was a pokey sort of crawl last night. No stomach issues, but I’ve somehow developed a sore throat over the past couple days. Don’t think it’s any kind of disease–just the climate. The high desert isn’t anywhere as luxurious and accommodating as how Sting makes it out to be:

How to get there if you’re in Reno: start at the top of Rancho San Rafael regional park (just off of Coleman). Run south on Coleman to 12th and follow the neighborhoods east to UNR and across campus. Watch out for potholes and guys in bathrobes hosing down their driveways late in the evening.

Total Mileage to Date: 318

Days remaining to Denver: 62

Running is selling out

July 6, 2008

Norman J. Adami
President and CEO
Miller Brewing Company
3939 West Highland Blvd
Milwaukee, WI 53201-2866

Dear Mr. Adami,

I write you this evening from a sultry, overwarm cabin near Grand Lake, Colorado, freshly returned from an eight-mile trail run into Rocky Mountain National Park at twilight. It was a beautiful evening (even though, as I mentioned, it has been a titch too warm for my liking) and running in July in the High Country is always nice in July, although I contracted a tremendous side-stitch during the second half of my run and at one point had to stop to combat a seemingly feral Cocker Spaniel with my sneakers and iPod cord.

This is the sort of temperate summer evening where I normally pry open a Hamm’s an hour or two after coming in for a run, put on some inoffensive background jazz, and rub the sweaty pink bottoms of my feet to get the blood moving and repair damage. So you can imagine my disappointment earlier this evening when I rolled into Grand Lake, Natalie Imbruglia’s dulcet pipes pouring from my Civic’s speakers like hot molasses, only to discover that it is impossible to purchase a twelve of Hamm’s anywhere in town. The well here, so to speak, has run drier than Joan Rivers’ esophagus lining.

Having spent expensive time residing in both Nevada and Colorado, I’ve marked the slow fade of Hamm’s presence in liquor and drug stores with increasing alarm. My only regular supply in Reno (where I attend graduate school) is a decidedly shabby-looking Longs Drugs on Virginia Street frequented by the worst kind of desert scum and meth tweakers imaginable. Despite lingering fears of getting a butterfly knife through my gall bladder, I still patronize Longs because it is the only place within bicycling distance of my house that carries Hamm’s.

I am in the process of training for the Denver Marathon on October 19th, 2008, running through metropolitan areas of Denver and Boulder, Colorado approximately five days a week. I enjoy running’s cornucopia of health, spiritual, and psychological benefits. However, I have returned to long-distance running in the past couple years primarily because tipping back a stein brimming with Hamm’s after a lengthy, hot run is, in this man’s humble opinion, the most rewarding thing one can do that doesn’t require removing clothing, several years of intense seated meditation in a freezing Kyoto shrine, or receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Pauly Shore’s attorney.

Why Hamm’s? Quite simply, it’s the most refreshing beer a poverty-line-hovering grad student like me can afford on a weekly basis without compromising on taste. While most twenty-somethings I know swear by cases of irritatingly hip and self-aware Pabst, it’s clear that one sip of beer from the Land of Sky Blue Waters makes PBR taste like liquefied underpants. I like the fact that Hamm’s goes down clean. I like the simple, classic can design that hasn’t tried to make itself trendy in recent years. I like the beer’s history and the fact that it has the catchiest jingle ever penned. I often sing it in the shower when conditioning my hair. I like the beer’s Minnesotan roots, its workingman’s cachet, and how a can of Hamm’s looks with its head poking out of a coozy. (A bit like a flattish prairie dog.)

So here is what I propose: I humbly ask for your sponsorship as I continue my running career. As I am concerned about Hamm’s continually declining market share among domestic brews, and decreasing availability in stores, I am more than willing to sacrifice my freedom in running apparel. Should your company see fit to honor my idea and defray my very meager expenses, I will:

• Have a white custom running singlet printed that features the distinctive calligraphic “Hamm’s” logo emblazoned across the front. On the back, I propose the following in large, black, block letters: “This Runner Powered by the Beer Refreshing.” I am, of course, open to other sartorial input from your public relations staff. While it is not entirely necessary, I would also enjoy having a similar t-shirt made for bar-hopping in Boulder, Denver, and Reno.

• I agree to wear the above singlet, or any other apparel of your company’s choosing, during all of my training runs/bar visits from now (July) through October in Boulder and Denver, Colorado, as well as in Reno, Nevada when I return to school in mid-August.

• Furthermore, I will wear Hamm’s apparel in all amateur and professional races that I enter in upcoming months as I prepare for the Denver Marathon, as well as wearing it in the Marathon itself. As of this writing, I have registered for two races: the Evergreen Town Race in early August in Colorado, and a 10 kilometer race in Sacramento, California in September. While not a world-class athlete, I believe that I am rapid enough to catch eyes when I finish in the top part of the field in these races (as of this writing, my personal records are 4:52 for the mile and 16:47 for a 5 kilometer race).

• At your request, I agree to furnish your company with appropriate photographic evidence for these required runs.

• I have also taken the liberty of plumbing interest among close friends of mine who run (we informally call ourselves the “Thoreauvian Thundercats Track and Social Club”) and who also enjoy Hamm’s, and three other athletes have expressed similar interest in wearing Hamm’s apparel while racing and running.

To reiterate, your company would not be responsible for any costs other than providing Hamm’s running apparel for me (or the rest of the small cadre of TT team members, should you desire). My initial estimate for a custom running singlet, provided by soark.com, is roughly $24.00 each.

I hope that, as someone who frequents what one can, with some degree of resignation, call “hipster” bars and running races (both of which are frequented by beer lovers), my grassroots marketing could help Hamm’s gain some market share in the places I call home. Hamm’s is a runner’s beer. In addition to being a musician’s beer, an excellent dinner beer, a superb beer for to accompany hot dogs/quesadillas while camping, and a great conversation beer. Hamm’s has a retro chic appeal that is positively dying to be tapped (if you’ll pardon the pun). Please consider helping me spread the word on the streets and trails. Do it for the True, Unbroken Spirit of running, and for the Hamm’s tradition of great, affordable beer. Don’t let the long-burning gaslight of the run-beer fade sadly into the dark night of the new millennium.

Sincerely yours,

CJT, 22 years of age
University of Nevada, Reno
Long-Distance Runner, Social Critic, and Hamm’s Lover

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Most recent run and atmospheric conditions: just shy of 9 miles in cold twilight in the northern Rockies.

Workout/whether or not I heaved: long, slow distance at elevation along the Colorado River stock trail on the west side of Rocky Mountain National Park near Grand Lake.

Total Mileage to Date: 166

Days remaining to Denver: 103