Send Me A Story

I’ve written before about how I have found it harder in recent years to read for any extended stretch of time. This one is especially sad to me, because I have always loved to read. When I was a kid, my grandmother (my dad’s mom) always made reading sound like the most amazing adventure of all time. I can’t say I remember a great deal of my life before I started reading, but I distinctly remember my Grandma telling me on many different occasions that if you could read, you could go anywhere in the world you wanted. All you had to do was pick up a book and use your imagination.

This was obviously an extremely powerful image for me, and I remember being excited about starting school because it meant I would learn to read. My mom still likes to tell the story of how I came home from my first day of kindergarten and told her that I wasn’t going back because they weren’t teaching me how to read. Thus began my long career of working against the establishment.

But I digress.

My point here is that for most of my life, I have loved to read. My Grandma’s take on it was obviously a little simplistic (hey, I was 4), but it’s always stuck with me and I still think it’s true. And I still love reading, but I’ve just gotten out of the habit of spending more than a few minutes doing any single task.

I’m telling you all of this to tell you that I recently signed up for a service called Send Me A Story. The concept is pretty simple. You give them your email address, and once per week they send you an email with a long form non-fiction story. It’s usually a great piece of journalism, sometimes new but sometimes very old. This week, it wasn’t journalism at all, but an essay from E.B White called “Death Of A Pig”. All of the things they email you come from longform.org, an online repository of sorts for long pieces of non-fiction. All of this is connected with Instapaper, which I also can’t recommend enough. Instapaper lets you look through all of these long articles (or articles anywhere on the web) and click a button to “Read Later.” Instapaper saves it for you so you can find it again when you have a chunk of time to devote to the article.

There are so many things I like about this setup. First, I get one article per week to read, even if I take no further action. I don’t have to waste a ton of unfocused time browsing around the internet looking for interesting things to read. Second, if what I receive doesn’t interest me or I’ve read it already (that was the case this week), I can head over to longform.org and quickly sort through the articles there to find something I do like. In the email they send, they also link a few other articles as well, so it’s often really easy to find one that does appeal to you. Finally, I really love the “Read Later” button. I realize this is a great way to create yet another queue of items I’ll never get through (see: Netflix), but it also takes away the pressure to read something as soon as you’ve found it. I often see articles that I’d like to read when more pressing matters are calling for my attention. Rather than cursorily glance through them while performing my other task poorly (or just forgetting about it entirely), I can now save it for later and read it when I have spare time.

All of these things are really secondary though. The main thing is that I’m reading something longer than a Facebook status update or witty blog post. My hope is that this will translate to actual books as well, and I have been doing a bit better about consistently reading the books I start. If I can get back to a place where I can read for hours without feeling a pressing need to check my email or turn on the TV, I’ll be a happy camper.

And my Grandma would be proud.

Public Isolation Project

For the past few months, the first floor of our building has been hosting various art projects. They’ve all been interesting, but none quite as intriguing as the current installation, The Public Isolation Project.

The Public Isolation Project is a collaboration between Joshua-Jay Elliot and Cristin Norine, and the theme they are exploring is the impact of social media on our lives. The basic premise is that Cristin is living on our first floor, completely surrounded by glass, for the month of November. She can only communicate with people outside of her box via social media, including text messaging, instant messaging, video chat, Twitter, Facebook and the like. She can also gesture and yell at people through her glass walls, but she can’t make phone calls and she can’t have any physical or face to face interaction with anyone.  She’s blogging about her experience here, and it’s been interesting to see the progression.

Since we’re working in the same building as Cristin, we’ve quickly made friends with her and keep track of how things are going. She’s been a great neighbor, and we can’t wait until the 30th when we’ll get to have a drink with her in person. I’m writing about her because I think what she is doing is an interesting contrast to what I’m doing on this blog.

Cristin is essentially making social media her only form of communication, which means she’s inviting the chaos of the digital world to take the place of normal human interaction. She’s hoping to get an idea of how much of this we’ve already done (quite a bit I’d say) and how much of our lives just don’t translate to the internet (again, I hope it’s a lot!). Coincidentally, at the very same time, I’m trying to improve my ability to focus and concentrate, which so far has meant figuring out ways to limit my exposure to social media because it is so disruptive.

In her blog, Cristin has talked about how she feels constantly distracted in the past, but tonight she wrote a really great post about how multi-tasking isn’t working for her. It’s a strange overlap for my tiny project here, and I’m really excited to see if she’s able to uni-task while using social media in the way that she’s doing right now. My strategy so far has been to eliminate or limit streams, but her strategy will be to focus on one at a time. I don’t think that would work for me, so I’m hoping she can pull it off.

If you’re not already following the PIP, I encourage you to do so. She’s got about 10 more days in the room, and the blog entries and photos she’s posting are great (this is her best photo so far, obviously). I’m interested to find out if Cristin comes out of this experience more connected to the world through the internet, or whether she finds some of it distasteful after this.

Oh, and remember how I said I had culled my Facebook friends list down to 431? After a second pass, I’m down to 403. Hopefully I’ll be under 400 before long!

Un-friending

This has been a really great week in a lot of ways, but it has been absolutely exhausting too. I have definitely not been able to focus very much. We had a launch party for my office in Portland, and that meant we had quite a few people in from out of town and a lot of late nights. It was all an amazing time, but it’s good to be back to the blog.

In all of the hubbub, I completely missed National Unfriend Day (NUD for short), but fortunately, you can celebrate NUD whenever you like. The question really becomes, why should I delete these “friends?”

I think the more important question is, “why did I ever add these people at all?” Facebook has created an entirely new realm of social etiquette, and part of that etiquette appears to be that you should accept all friend requests unless they are from a stalker or a serial killer. I know I’ve been guilty of accepting a friend request and then immediately hiding that person from my feed. I’m sure someone out there has done that to me as well. Wouldn’t we all be better off if we just didn’t pretend to like each other in the first place?

What’s more, these people can end up being a source of stress in your life. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read a status update from someone I barely remember about politics or religion that really got under my skin. I usually spend a few minutes trying to decide if I should respond to whatever idiocy they’ve put out there, and then I remember that I don’t even know this person. I sat beside them in 3rd grade once, or we went to the same college, but that’s about it. It’s a ridiculous source of stress, and one that is completely caused by social media.

So, I took Jimmy Kimmel’s advice, and I’ve unfriended. It’s time for us to admit that if we don’t keep in touch with someone, there was a very good reason we parted ways. We are not part of each other’s peer group. We don’t like the same things or have the same goals. We are politically and philosophically different in many ways, and obviously didn’t get along well enough in real life to sustain our friendship. It’s nothing personal, but these people have to go.

I had 487 Facebook friends. That is a lot of people, but I justified that number by saying that I did indeed know all of these people in real life at some point. But most of them were blasts from the past, often people I never spoke to at all in high school and haven’t seen since. So after my first round of purging, I’m down to 431 friends. I know that doesn’t seem like a huge change, but that’s over 10% of my list gone. I would wager that everyone reading this could easily cut their Facebook friends list by 10% and not even notice the difference.

I will likely go back through this list a few more times and raise the friendship bar a little higher for folks to stay on my list. Did anyone else participate in NUD? If so, how many friends did you chop?

National UnFriend Day

At work this week, we’re having a big launch party for our office here in Portland. Now, we’ve had an office in Portland for almost 3 years, and we’ve been in this particular office for a little over a year, but the time is finally here for the big house warming party. It’s going to be a lot of fun, but it also means that there are lots of folks in town from Nashville. That leads to drinks after work, group dinners, and very little time for blogging. I’m hoping to write a more substantial post tomorrow, but for now, some brief points.

1. Lifehacker posted its winner of the best distraction free writing tool, and it’s not what I thought it would be. I’m sure Q10 is great, but as a Mac user, it’s not much good to me. I’m sticking by my earlier choice of WriteRoom if you’ve got some dollars to spend.
2. I read this great article today on early rising over at The 99%. It intrigues me, but I’m also more than willing to confess that I’m not turning back my clock just yet. I know that getting up early is a great thing, but I haven’t embraced it so far.
3. Tomorrow has been deemed National UnFriend Day by Jimmy Kimmel, a day where you Unfriend all of those people on Facebook that aren’t really your friends. I doubt I’ll be as strict as Jimmy would like, but I’m planning to participate and write about it here. Here’s Jimmy and William Shatner promoting this new holiday:

Tomorrow, I unfriend and tell the tale. If I’m not in a food coma from our dinner here, that is. If I am, it might be Thursday.

Filters

I talked in this entry about how technology has gone from “pull” services to “push” services, meaning that the internet now comes to you if that’s what you want. You can get everything from email to weather updates to traffic information and Facebook messages on your phone or in your inbox 24/7. As these technologies emerged, all of this seemed like a huge convenience, but all of these push notifications aren’t convenient at all. They are distracting and unnecessary, which makes them more trouble than they are worth.

While thinking about all of this, it occurred to me that this is really all about filtering. We use filters in every aspect of our life, and indeed we always have. When I was a kid (before the internet), the filter that kept me from knowing what all of my friends were doing at any given moment was the fact that I couldn’t see them all at once. That was the only way to really know what anyone was up to, you could either see them or you were talking them on a phone (that was connected to the wall! With a wire! I am old). Throughout my entire life, we have been working as hard as we possibly could to eliminate these filters.

First, we got an answering machine, which let folks leave a message to tell us what they were doing if we weren’t home. Then, we got call waiting, which let people call to tell us what they were doing even if we were on another call. Then we got cell phones, so people could call us no matter where we were. Then we got voicemail to replace the answering machines. Somewhere along the line we got email and websites, and then Myspace happened and now we have Facebook, the single most convenient and intrusive technology the world has ever seen. Facebook is the culmination of our filter elimination process (so far). At this point, if you don’t know exactly what a random person from your high school that never spoke to you while you were actually attending said school together is doing, then you’re not using Facebook right. All of the filters are gone.

Like I said, at first, this seemed like a good thing. We were getting so much information, and information is power, right? But at some point, I realized that information is only powerful if it’s relevant. I don’t need to know every intimate detail of a high school acquaintance’s social life. I don’t care if they wish me happy birthday. And I really don’t need all of that crap popping up on my phone at all hours of the day and night.

In the past, filters were there by default, sometimes because of technological boundaries, and sometimes because our technologies were just more polite than they are now. At this point in the technological revolution, we have to be responsible for creating our own filters, and creating filters is harder than it sounds. After all, it’s really affirming to get 354 happy birthday wishes. It satisfies the voyeur in us all to see random pictures of people from our distant past in their daily lives. And being “in the know” makes you cool, right?

But really, what’s the point of all of this?

I’m going to be making a lot of posts about filters. Some of those filters will be technological, some of them will be more practical. I’ve already listed some of these in this post before I even knew what I was doing. I’ve added a couple more that I’ll list here, and I’ll be experimenting with more as all of this continues. My new additions are:

1. SelfControl – This is a pretty nifty program that’s worth a try if you have trouble setting aside your internet addictions. Basically you create a blacklist of websites that distract you like Facebook, Gmail, and if you’re like me, ESPN. Then you set a timer and you click start. This program keeps your computer from visiting those sites for whatever amount of time you specify. It’s a simple and effective way to force some focus on you. It’s a free download, but one word of warning: there is no undoing this program. Even if you shut down your system or delete the program, you can’t turn it off once it has been started.
2. I’ve decided not to write in this blog over the weekends. As a matter of fact, I’ve decided not to do anything on my computers that is not a leisure activity over the weekends, and even those I will limit. If the high speed nature of the internet is causing this shrinking attention span, I’m going to step away from it as much as possible for a couple of days per week. Seems healthy to me. Please note, checking your fantasy football score is most definitely a leisure activity.
3. Moving forward, when I’m socializing with friends at a restaurant or a bar, my phone is staying either in the car or in my pocket at the very least. This is doubly true if that friend happens to be my wife. She is way hotter than my phone.

Okay, that’s it for now. I know that I picked on Facebook quite a bit here and then completely ignored it when it came to taking action, but don’t worry, Facebook is on my list. It’s just such a big problem to solve in terms of limiting the things you don’t want there and balancing that with getting the things that you do want. It’s a delicate balance, so that one might take a bit longer.

Some links

It’s been a great weekend here in Oregon, rainy and quiet. By April, I’ll be sick of rainy and quiet weekends, but it was perfect for now. I’m purposefully avoiding a ton of blogging on the weekends right now (more on that later this week), but I do have a couple of  links I wanted to share with you.

In what is truly a bizarre coincidence, Lifehacker has posted about the Five Best Distraction-Free Writing Tools. This is a series they do, and they’ll post again in a day or so letting us know which program the readers chose. As I said in a previous post, I’ve tried a few of these, and I’ll go ahead and say that WriteRoom is my favorite. That’s what I’m using right now, actually. However, I picked up WriteRoom from MacHeist when they were giving it away for free in exchange for promoting them on Facebook, so I didn’t pay for it. All of these are fairly similar, so if you’re interested in trying any of them, I’d say start with the free ones and see if they fit the bill. But really, I’d recommend WriteRoom to anyone. It blocks out everything on your screen and lets you focus, but it still has quite a few bells and whistles in terms of formatting and tweaking.

I’d also like to recommend a blog I’ve been reading that’s been a big help when it comes to thinking about simplicity and focus. It’s called zen habits, and I especially recommend the Start Here section. He’s also got a free book called Focus that you can download in PDF format here. Lots of great tips and tools to try here, it’s worth an add to your reader.

Okay, off to enjoy the rest of my Sunday night. I’ll post the Lifehacker winner when they announce. And don’t forget to change my feed in your reader if you don’t mind.

The Basics

Quick note: If you’re reading this blog in your feed reader, would you mind updating your feed for me? I just set up Feedburner for this blog, and it would just help me track how many folks are reading. You can just click here to re-add me to your reader, or you can edit your current feed and replace the address with this one:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheDudesStory

The old feed will continue to work, this is just a favor to me. Okay, back to your regularly scheduled blog.

I’ve been thinking about this idea of focusing and eliminating distractions for a few weeks now, and I’ve already done a few things to try and make a dent in the madness. But before I get to that list, let’s talk about the things that I used to be able to do regularly that I now have trouble doing.

1. Reading a book – I used to love reading books. I still do, but I find that I have a hard time reading more than a chapter or so at a time. The idea of reading for hours at a time seems daunting to me now, and I used to do this without even thinking about it.
2. Writing – As all of my few loyal readers will attest, I’m not terribly good at keeping up with this blog these days. But it’s not just blogging. I spent so many of my Nashville days staring at sheets of paper with a guitar in my hands, trying to craft the perfect lyric for whatever idea I had in my head. That just sounds boring to me now, but I loved it at the time.
3. Nothing – Remember when you used to do nothing? Literally, nothing at all. I can’t remember the last time I did nothing. These days I feel a need to be doing something at all times. If I’m sitting on my couch, my computer is open or the TV is on. When I head to bed, I usually read to put myself to sleep, either a magazine or book or something on my computer. When I drive my daily commute, I listen to podcasts. I really can’t think of the last time I just sat and did nothing.

That’s a short list, but the real issue is focusing on one thing (or nothing) for more than a few minutes at a time. I swear I didn’t used to be this way. I wasn’t like this in high school, and I wasn’t like this in college, and I wasn’t like this for a large part of my time in Nashville. I think it all began when the internet went from being essentially a “pull” technology to a “push” technology. Until fairly recently, if you wanted information from the internet, you had to go searching for it, either by visiting someone’s website or using a search engine. But with the emergence of technologies like smart phones, email notifications, Facebook and RSS feeds, it became very easy to have that information come to you. This seems like a great thing (and it is, in a lot of ways), but for me at least, it’s caused a crisis of attention span.

To that end, the first steps I’ve taken in my little quest here are to try and reverse that trend. I’m trying to revert these push technologies to pull technologies. Here’s the list of what I’m doing already:

1. I’ve turned off my email notifications on my phone. I thought this would be really difficult, and at first I felt like I was missing tons of important email. But you know what I realized? I don’t really get very much important email, and the little bit that I do get is rarely that time sensitive. Does this mean I never check my email on my phone? Of course not, I do it all the time. But I do it when I want to, not when a stupid noise plays.
2. I’ve set my work email program to check for new messages every hour. It used to be set to check once per minute. That means I potentially have an hour of work time that will be uninterrupted by an incoming email that distracts my attention. Now, I rarely actually go an hour without checking my work email (you can always click the button and check it manually), but I have the option to do so now if I wish. And again, I’ve been doing this for a month and not once have I missed something important and time sensitive. The true emergency is rare, and the fact is that people will find you and tell you if something is truly wrong. Not staring at your email non-stop isn’t going to bring about the end of the world.
3. When I’m focusing, I turn off Growl notifications. Growl is the program that throws up a little blue bubble on your computer telling you when you have a new IM message or a new group chat message. We use IM constantly at my job, and while it’s a great communication tool, it can be a real distraction when you need to focus. I use a program called Adium on my Mac (Pidgin is similar on PCs, I think), and Adium gives you the option to customize statuses. I now have one that’s an away status that says, “Busy uni-tasking, but leave me a message!” When that status is up, I don’t get any notifications about new messages, meaning I have no idea someone has messaged me until I actually flip over to my IM program. When I change the status, the alerts return. It’s a great way to carve out time to focus on something that requires that sort of attention.
4. I plan my day. I could do better at this for sure, but I’ve found that when I start my day with a list of tasks I need to accomplish, I have direction and purpose in what I’m doing and I get more done. I also goof off less, because I have a road map for what I’m supposed to do next.
5. When I’m writing (like right now, for instance), I’m experimenting with some writing programs that shut out other distractions. At this moment, I’m using FocusWriter, which I’m really loving. I’ve also tried OmmWriter, which is very cool. It will be a matter of personal preference in the end, but both of these programs are basically full screen word processors that hide everything else. There are no menus, no buttons, no formatting, just writing. This is what I’m seeing right now:

There are some other things I’m going to try moving forward, I’ll keep a list of them here. I’ll also add that in addition to all of this stuff, I do allow time in my day for just goofing off on the internet. I’m not against mindless internet surfing at all, I just want to do it on my own schedule instead of being lured into it by my distracted brain. Planned laziness and distraction are always welcome in my house.

Explaining the title of my last post

If you’re not familiar with the RZA or Terry Gross, you might not have understood the title of my last post. Terry Gross hosts Fresh Air, an NPR show that I alternately love and hate. I love it because she has some amazing guests on there. But I hate it because she asks some seriously dumb questions, and she’s just not always the right person to interview the subjects in question.

My favorite example of that is her interview with the RZA, former member of the Wu Tang Clan. He’s really sort of nuts himself, but the chasm between Terry and one of her guests has never been so pronounced and hilarious. In addition to the RZA talking about his focusness, there’s an awkward discussion about what “morbidity” means and a great section where he tells Terry that when he went to school, all he could think about was having sex with the teacher. You can give it a listen here.

Up until hearing this interview, the only thing I knew about the Wu Tang Clan was their reputation as a great hip hop group. That and their highly esteemed financial services company:

As the RZA would say, focusness

Hey blog, what’s up? It’s once again time to change directions a bit here. Here’s my latest endeavor.

When we moved out here, I unconsciously decided that my time in Oregon was going to be about self-improvement. I don’t think I made this decision before we moved, or even immediately after we arrived, but at some point I found my focus drifting to being “better.” Better is a pretty vague term, and I’m not sure what inspired this change. Maybe this is my early version of a mid-life crisis, or maybe being this far away from so many of my friends and family gave me some extra time to think about it. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m not writing music anymore, and that means I need another outlet for my creative energies. Whatever the cause, I’ve tried not to question it very much. Getting “better” in life, whatever that might mean, can only be a good thing, right?

I think part of this drive stems from the fact that I had always assumed I would be better at life than I actually am at this point. When I was a kid, I pictured myself as being a pretty together dude in my 30s. I’d make a lot of money, I’d have a nice house, I’d be the picture of health and happiness. I’d have a great job and perfect wife, and I’d just be successful. On second thought, success would be a by-product. I’d be respected, that was always the real goal. To be respected for my talents and abilities in a way that led to success.

In the real world of my 30s, it’s a mixed bag. I knocked it out of the park in the wife department, so I can check that off my list. I have a job that I love and that is challenging and rewarding. I feel like I am good at something there, I contribute in an important way on a regular basis, and yes, I do feel respected there. But the things I’m good at are not the things I thought I’d be good at way back when. I’m not writing songs or performing, and in fact, I’m not even in the music business at all. Oddly enough, this doesn’t bother me in the slightest, which would shock and disappoint this figurative version of me in the past. So I have a great wife, I have a good job that I enjoy, and I make enough money for us to be happy, although we’re not as rich and famous and I had planned. Overall, I’m completely happy with all of this, happier than I would have been if things had worked out exactly as I had planned.

But I realized at some point over the past couple of years that I was still lacking in a few key areas. Some of those are harder to change. I can’t easily change my strengths into something flashier or more lucrative, and we’re not in a position to buy a house just yet because of our transitory status. But the one place I felt like I could have quite a bit of control was my health. My kidney stone was the real catalyst for this, but the truth is that I had been thinking about it for quite a while. That kidney stone happened as a result of bad genetics and some very poor health decisions I’ve made for years in terms of what I eat and drink (or don’t drink, in this case). You can’t change your genes, but I’ve come to think of that as an excuse when it comes to stuff like kidney stones and chronic diseases that develop partially because of lifestyle. You can still avoid those things by changing your lifestyle, and that’s what I decided to do.

You’ve all read the results here so I won’t rehash, but to sum it all up, it worked. I started eating better and exercising, I lost weight and got in better shape, and I felt so much better. A good deal of that was about physically feeling better, but a significant part of it was mentally feeling better as well. Making a positive change in your life, no matter how big or small, is empowering because it makes you realize that you actually are in control of your own well-being. That’s not to say that things beyond our control couldn’t happen, but the fact is that we often let other people and our circumstances dictate our actions to us even when those actions are not beyond our control. Taking any of that control back is liberating, and it’s made for a really great year for me out here.

By no means do I have my health and diet completely under control at this point, but because of the progress there, I want to continue to add to my list of self-improvement projects. This particular project is less about physical health and more about mental strength, namely the ability to focus.

As I’ve gotten more and more involved with technology, both through my job and through my life in general, it seems that my ability to focus has decreased exponentially as my sources for information have increased. “Multi-tasking” has become quite the buzz word these days, and I know that many employers say they are looking for people who are good at multi-tasking. For a long time, I thought I was good at multi-tasking, but then I realized that no one is good at it. Multi-tasking just means that you’re doing many things poorly and it’s taking you much longer to do them.

What’s worse, with all of these new sources of information, it’s impossible to focus even when we’re trying. There’s always a fresh distraction ready to pull you in a new direction, and even if you shut them all off, your mind is still waiting for those distractions to occur. Our attention spans are swiftly approaching zero, and I don’t think that’s a good thing. And just so you know, I’m not making this up. Check out this great video of Clifford Nass talking about how multi-tasking is bad for us.

Now, time to confess. Did you glance at the video, see that it was 8 minutes long, and decide you couldn’t possibly watch something that long? Congratulations, you’re part of the problem. We are daunted by an 8 minute video! 8 minutes should not be an overwhelming commitment, but it felt like one to me when I first saw this video too.

So that’s what I’m out to change about myself next. I don’t even know exactly what that will entail yet, but it likely won’t be some sort of blogland spectacle like a food diary. I’ll record what I am doing here of course, and I will discuss what’s working and what’s not. My main goal is to write more regularly, because as you all know, writing requires focus. Some of the coming posts may be more personal in nature, some will be geared towards this “focus” topic. In other words, a mixed bag, but it will all circuitously be about eliminating distractions and learning to focus on what’s important.

Feels good to be back.

The Great Half Marathon Caper of 2010

So, last Sunday, I ran a half marathon.

Under normal circumstances, most folks would report on their half marathon training online, especially someone like me. After all, I am the guy that told you everything I ate for four months. So first of all, I apologize to you, my internet friends, for not sharing this information months ago when I began training. Believe me, I really wanted to tell all of you, but there were other considerations here. This half marathon was not only a huge milestone for me personally, it was also the biggest and most elaborate prank I’ve ever pulled, and because of that secrecy was necessary. This post will explain all of this, but first, the backstory.

I had a roommate in college named Mark, we’re actually still really great friends. Mark is one of those dudes that can’t really just sit still and relax for more than about 8 minutes per day. He always has “a plan,” and that plan usually includes climbing something tall, staring at something through binoculars, or running a very long way. Mark’s idea of a vacation usually involves canoeing to a deserted island, pooping in a bucket for the weekend and hunting birds (but only to look at them, not shoot them). For those of you that know me personally, you know that my idea of a vacation has more to do with fruity beverages, lying prostrate beside bodies of water and pooping in well maintained, super-fancy facilities where the towels are always folded into the shape of circus animals for you.

As you can imagine, this difference of opinion when it comes to leisure activities has often led to a ton of jokes at each others’ expense. I accuse Mark of working too hard, running even when he’s not being chased and not stopping to smell the roses (even though Mark has probably seen and smelled many more roses than me while he was busy staring at birds). Mark accuses me of being lazy, never exercising and generally being a slacker. This has gone on for years, and it’s especially fun when it involves Mark’s favorite hobby, running.

Anyway, Mark called me back in March and said that he and his wife Shelley wanted to come out in September to run the Oregon Wine Country Half Marathon. I was already a couple of weeks into the Couch to 5k plan, and I immediately thought, “wouldn’t it be hilarious if I trained for this half marathon and ran it with Mark? And wouldn’t it be even more awesome if he had no idea until he got here?”

So, that became the plan. I finished the Couch to 5k plan in late May, and I started Hal Higdon’s half marathon training on June 1st. That essentially gave me just enough time between then and Labor Day to finish the training and run the half. I’ll do some other posts this week offering more detail on all of this, but I made it! I totally ran a half marathon, and I never thought I’d be saying that.

Of course, that’s not the best part. The best part is that we completely pulled off this prank, and it wasn’t as easy as it sounds. First, I had to basically keep my mouth shut about this since March, which was torture to be honest. Second, after they got here, we had to go pick up our race packets, but I had to make sure that Mark didn’t see this happen. Celine had to pick up the packet while I ran interference by asking Mark about his favorite race goo. Did you know you’re supposed to eat goo during a long race? Pretty gross, but true.  Then we had to spend two entire days with Mark before telling him on the morning of the race, baiting him into picking on me about not running all the while. It was awesome, but not anywhere near as awesome as the actual reveal. Here it is in all its glory (fair warning, there are some awe-inspired curses sprinkled throughout):

I could watch that video about a million times.

After that, we drove to the race, and I actually ran the race. Photographic evidence:

The final mile!

Mark, always the good sport, came back and ran the last mile with me (he’d been done for quite a while). That was really nice of him, and almost made me feel bad about having these t-shirts made:

Suck it, McNeill!

Almost. Those shirts say, “Suck it, McNeill!” He didn’t see those until this moment, after the race was over. It was the perfect end to the perfect punk. After this, we drank wine and ate pizza and celebrated our race. By the way, Mark finished almost an hour before I did, so he technically gets the last laugh, right?

Nah, I’m just saying that to make him feel better. I totally owned this day! More posts soon to cover the training, how we did in the race, more pictures, etc. I think this is long enough at this point, don’t you?