I spent half of 2012 working my way back into some sort of shape. I entered some races. 2 5K’s (YWCA Race Against Hate and Turkey Trot), 1 10K (Geneva Trick or Trot) and an 8K (Run for Walk). With some good help and advice from my friend Brett, I was able to set consecutive PR’s in each event. In March 2013, I busted 27:30 @ the PyCon 5K.

I figured I was ready for this race. And then it all kind of went to shit. My training got all jacked up in April due to illness, travel and work. I really didn’t train much over the past two weeks. I really wasn’t feeling my best going into this thing and really I was a bit freaked out since a couple of people who had run the race told me point blank, “Yeah you’re fucked.”

Well, I survived. I’ll likely do the same race next year. Here’s what I learned. Here’s the course map.

1. Train, Train, Train and Train. You need some combination of distance and strength training. I knew I could hack the 12 miles, I knew that I would be screwed on the obstacles. It worked out that way pretty good. Distance wise I was fine, but the obstacles coupled with the running – not to mention the mud, the cold water – well, it messes you up. If my training didn’t get so messed up, I think I had the right idea of lifting weights for 60 minutes and running for 60 minutes in the same session. You really need to get used to being fatigued and lifting and then running or vice versa because that’s what it’s like out there.

2. Trail Running is Different Than Treadmill or Smooth Paved Road Running. When I’m in a good training mode, I rack up 20-25 miles per week over three different runs. It’s not a ton, but it’s a fair amount and I find that it’s just enough to keep me interested in running. The biggest thing about Tough Mudder is that it’s 12 miles over a trail based course. This is *way* different than running on a road, treadmill or track. Mentally, trail running is tougher and you need to participate more actively (e.g. “Don’t step in that hole. Watch those roots. Fuck, a rock! Dammit, mud, move to the side.”). And on top of that because you’re on uneven ground it’s way more taxing on your core, hips and back. If you have a chance to run trails for a run per week – do it.

3. It’s As Tough As Advertised; But Doable. I’m not going to lie, it’s hard. I think mentally all week leading up to it, I was pretty sure I was going to die. And even when we got there I was very unsure of myself. Oh and then on the *very* first ditch jump I landed all ice skater like on my left leg hip and groin tweaked *immediately* like .1 mile into the course. Anyway, it was hard. The mile markers laugh @ you. You lose track of how many obstacles you’ve done. You wonder how the hell people run through this shit. But it was doable. See next point.

4. Do It With a Team of People. My team, Sorry for Partying, had 16 people on it. We naturally divided into the fit people = 5 and everyone else. The 5 jumped out ahead of us, but the core 11 stayed together and gutted out the whole course together. I was there to help my teammates over obstacles, to stretch out cramps, to fist bump after knocking out an obstacle or to pull someone out of the water. Doing it with a team of people made it a heck of a lot more fun. I still owe Corey and Ron for pulling my arse up over Everest.

5. Hydrate, Eat and Hydrate. I was only gripped by fear a single time during the race. On the “Ladder to Hell” obstacle (p.s. the one that Pvt. Gomer Pyle can’t get over in “Full Metal Jacket”), I felt my left calf cramp up when I was 10 feet off of the ground. I had skipped a bunch of bananas between mile 2-3 which in retrospect was dumb. Hydrate, yes. But also consume calories. They had bananas and Cliff shot blocks (which I prefer over gels). Eat whenever you get a chance and drink a couple of glasses of water @ each stop.

6. If You Gotta Skip an Obstacle, Skip It. I skipped four obstacles in all. (a) Walk the Plank, (b) Hanging Tough, (c) Berlin Walls and (d) Underwater Tunnel. Each of these requires you to be a good swimmer. That, I ain’t. See next point.

7. Be a Strong Swimmer. All of the obstacles have some notion of water but the three I skipped have deep water. I’ve been taking swimming lessons for awhile now, but still aren’t balls confident I can get it done. That said while I did skip Hanging Tough, I did do the Funky Monkey and basically had to swim 25 yards across the obstacle.

8. Wear Light Shoes. I wore a pair of Asics Gel Neo 33′s that were over their mileage limit. They were broken in, comfortable, had been through 250+ miles of running. I knew this pair of shoes really well. Anyway, they were light and drained well. What I noticed is that your feet are covered, caked in mud and soaked. You want a pair of shoes with decent tread that drain well. Also, don’t get attached to them. I donated my pair of shoes after the race.

9. Wear As Tight Fitting Stuff As Your Comfortable With. My team got Under Armour compression shirts and as I donned my while en route I thought, “Man this is tight.” Well, the gear was perfect. The compression meant nothing got snagged on anything, water/sweat/mud all wicked and rubber away. Minimal chafing. I had a pair of CW-X compression shorts and some North Face Flash Dry running shorts as well. It all worked.

10. Gloves Might Work; They Didn’t Work For Me. I felt like gloves would be a good idea and I can say that I think the best thing they did was keep my hands clean.

11. Obstacle Guide. Here’s a rough guide to the obstacles and some tips, as best as I can remember them.

a. Arctic Enema – This is the trailer filled with ice. Don’t ponder the jump. Don’t ease in. JUMP! Jump as close as you can to the board. Go under. Get the hell out and start running.

b. Kiss of Mud – This is barbed wire above, mud below. Real simple, get on your belly, keep your butt down and start moving. Use your arms to pull you and your legs to push you. I was making jokes about how my High School football coaches would yell about people keeping their butt’s down when coming out of a three point stance during this one.

c. Electric Eel – This is electrical shocks above you, mud below. Same as kiss of mud, get on your belly and go. Do, however, give yourself some room with the person in front of you. And find as good a path through the wires as possible.

d. Glory Blades – 9 ft walls at inverted 60 degree angles. This one’s a pain. Have someone help boost you up, swing over and slide down.

e. Trench Warfare – These are long tunnels with left and right doglegs in them. Slide down and keep pushing forward. Little guys – smaller than 5′ 8″ – might be able to get into a crawling position, like I did, to move faster.

f. Walk the Plan – 15 ft dive into a muddy pond, plus a 25 yd swim. I skipped this one. But you dive and you swim. Make sure the area is clear below you.

g. Log Jamming – Over and under logs about 6x. This seems easier than you think, but then you realize that the lowest log is offset or set back from the top one. Basically, because it’s deeper than the top log you cling onto it’s way tougher to get over.

h. Wounded Warrior Carry – Carry a person 100 yards. Find someone roughly your size since you have to switch halfway through. Basically you’re giving someone a piggyback ride – which I think is the most effective. Get a grip on them, get steady and take short quick steps. Breathe. Joke. Don’t fall.

i. Hold Your Wood – Carry a large log about .5 miles. This is where having a team is key but pick people roughly the same height. Also find a suitable log. Don’t pick a big one, if you can help it. Switch shoulders and sides regularly.

j. Ladder to Hell – 30 ft ladder climb. Go SLOW! You’re about halfway through the obstacles now, and you’re almost halfway in mileage. This is where you start to really decline in performance and feel. One leg at a time. Hold on tight as you swing over. Descend slowly once you know your feet are set and situated.

k. Hanging Tough – Ring cross over 25 yards. I skipped this one. Basically you need to be American Ninja during this one. I can’t even comprehend how people make it across this one.

l. Fire Walker – Jump over some ripping hot burning coals and fire into a deep ass pool. Find a segment that isn’t muddy. Some people were slipping on the jump off points and got burned. Don’t do that – this is real fucking fire.

m. Dong Dangler – Rope suspended over cold ass water. Get as deep as you can, swing your legs over, lock them and use your hands to pull you across. I made it halfway before I ate it in the water. At that point, grab the rope/wire/whatever and start wading to shore.

n. Berlin Walls – Scale a 10 ft wall. I wasn’t up for this as I was cramping like crazy and had just run 1+ miles uphill in a fucking muddy hell that should have counted as an obstacle in it of itself. Basically, you need someone to help boost you up. Careful coming down.

o. Mud Mile – 300 yards + of mud trenches and mud hills. Look for the hills where previous people have dug in and made natural footholds. Slide down the hills into the trenches to save energy.

p. Dirty Ballerina – Jump over multiple deep ass trenches. Start running like Mario – not that run, the speed run! – and jump then don’t fucking stop until you get to the end. Some people in front of me were trying to Frogger this obstacle and because you have no momentum when you stop the islands don’t allow you any running start.

q. Underwater Tunnels – Bob under four sets of barrels in deep ass water. Skipped this one too. Deep water, not a good swimmer.

r. Twinke Toes – 50 ft balance beam with four steps in the middle over cold ass water. I fell three steps into my run, so I don’t know shit about this one. If you do get wet, go on the side of the beam that has a ladder, much easier to get out of the drink.

s. Boa Constrictor – Downward into water drainage pipe and then up. This was similar – for me – to trench warfare. For little people these obstacles are easier since you can get into a crawling-like position on the way up. My teammates who were 6′+ said that this was the worst obstacle on the course – going up was near impossible and all upper body pull.

t. Funky Monkey – Monkey bars going up and them monkey bars going down. Yeah, again, over cold ass water that’s deep. I think I kind of grabbed the first monkey bar and then ended up in the drink. Was able to swim – badly – across and not die. No advice on this. Basically, do pull ups and don’t use gloves.

u. Everest – Greased up half pipe that is easily 25 ft tall. Sprint, sprint, sprint and then jump up to the people helping you. Don’t stop, keep sprinting. This one, I failed the first time around. The second time, I only succeeded because two of my teammates pulled up my arm and grabbed my fucking leg.

v. Electroshock Therapy – Running through electrodes to the end. Let the person in front of you get ahead. Find a path, keeps your arms in front of you and keep fucking moving.

Gauge – “Thermos” / A Knights of Columbus show.

Sweater Weather – “Tuber”

Owls – “Everyone Is My Friend”

Heroic Doses – “Deep Marsh” / A 5ive Style cover.

Das Boton – “Bon Ham”

Dag Nasty – Under Your Influence (1986) / Basically tried to copy everything about this band.

Descendents – Cheer (1987) / 1987! St. Louis! Descendents fronted by Milo with a mullet.

Girls Against Boys – In Like Flynn / In 1994, I got to see GVSB @ Reckless records with a bunch of Western Suburban scenesters. While it isn’t Soulside, I still appreciated the raw workman vibe of these guys.

Music is an indirect force for change, because it provides an anchor against human tragedy. In this sense, it works towards a reconciled world. It can also be the direct experience of change. At certain points during some shows, the reconciled world is already here, at least in that second, at that place. Operation Ivy was very lucky to have experienced this. Those seconds reveal that the momentum that drives a subculture is more important than any particular band. The momentum is made of all the people who stay interested and keep their sense of urgency and hope.

- J.

I always liked that little quote. I liked it when I was 14 reading it for the first time and I still like it @ 36.

Friday – Day 1 of PyCon and I was already a little worn out. I was the session chair for the first three talks in the “testing” track by Michael Foord (Mock), Gary Bernhardt (Units Need Testing Too) and Kumar McMillan (Tox). I figured since I would be attending all three talks anyway plus all three guys are friends that session chairing would be easy. As expected, each of them gave great talks (all under time!) and had a question and answer session. I ended up hallway tracking it most of the remainder of the day.

Saturday – Day 2 of PyCon. I got to see Jason Huggins’ talk on Selenium 2 and Jcon Kaplan-Moss’ talk on writing great documentation. I caught the tail end of Alex Martelli’s talk on API Design Anti-Patterns. Mike Pirnat’s talk entitled “An Exhibition in Atrocity” was really my favorite talk of the day with Zed Shaw’s talk on ZeroMQ a very close second. I was also able to catch part’s of C. Titus Brown, Ned Batchelder and Augie Fackler talks.

TiP BoF – As the organizer “shit gets real” for me about 3:00 PM on Saturday. Given some of the issues that happened with the Chef and Scotch BoF’s the previous night, I officially declared this “alcohol free” (notice the quotes). Paul Hildebrandt and Disney provided the pizza, Titus Brown and Doug Hellmann did a soda run and here’s the list of lightning talks that we did.

Feihong Hsu – Stretching
Terry Peppers – Opening Remarks
Terry Peppers – Nagaconda
Alfredo Deza – Konira: A Testing Framework DSL
Augie Fackler – Mecurial’s Unified Test Suite
Marty Alchin – Lab Coat Test Framework … Thingy
Roman Lisagor – Freshen Your Code
Kumar McMillan – Fudging It With Mock Objects
Anthony Scopatz – Scientific Testing in Python, A Hell Of A Workflow!
Feihong Hsu – How My Comic Book Obsession Birthed a New Functional Testing Tool
Michael Foord – Shiny New Stuff in Mock 0.7.0
Alex Gaynor – Writing 5 Lines of Codes, 16 Tests And Speeding Stuff Up
Jason Huggins – How to Test Canvas Based Web Applications
Gary Bernhardt – Isolating Isn’t Magic
Armin Ronacher — Modern Approach to Monitoring
Brett Cannon – How to Pronounce PyPi: The Python Package Index
Mike Pirnat – Mock: It’s Not Just For Testing Any More
Brett Cannon – Why You Don’t Want to Get a Ph.D. in Comp Sci
Steve Holden – Ask the Chairman of the PSF
Jesse Noller – Ask a Board Member of the PSF
Tavvi Burns – Keeping Your Expected Files in Sync
Gary Bernhardt – Python Mock Library Comparison
Doug Napoleone – In Defense of Golden File Testing

A couple of more observations on TiP BoF. I think 2011 was clearly bigger than 2010. I also think having the additional space was a solid idea. All in all, everyone looks forward to the TiP BoF and it was rather amazing to see how many people were attending for the first time. I’m glad everyone turned out and made it a great open space. Hopefully we’ll be able to keep doing this year after year! I know people are working through photos, but there is a Flickr pool where you can post them (Testing in Python).

Sunday – Final day of PyCon never seems long enough. Chris McAvoy’s keynote about Threadless was great, and it was even better to see Luke Opperman mentioned as “the vanguard.” Peter Portante’s talk on Co-Routines really kind of blew my mind in a good way. I was able to catch Mark Ramm’s talk on scaling Python which was also good.

#1. Focal marrow edema in my ankle

#2. Chronic tears of anterior talofibular ligament (ATF)

The current writeup is that a prior injury has wiped out the ATF in my left foot. This is the most commonly sprained ankle ligament and while I still have one, it isn’t attached to one another which basically means that lateral movements are tougher for me to make – think Tennis. Since I don’t have this ligament, it’s making my Achilles work extra hard to stabilize my foot and somehow this has caused a bone edema.

I think this makes the most sense. An x-ray a month ago ruled out bone spurs, the location of the pain is too low to be achilles tendonitis. So really that leaves achilles bursitis or this focal marrow edema.

The good news is that this is mainly biomechanical in nature. I was casted for a pair of carbon-fiber orthotics a couple of weeks ago, and my doc thinks that once I have these I’ll be in better alignment and have better support – so eventually the pain will subside. The more good news is that I don’t need a walking boot or a cast.

The bad news is time. It’s going to take awhile to heal and really the only thing I can do is ice water therapy. The Flector patches and NSAIDS aren’t going to really reduce the swelling, they may help on extra bad days but long term usage isn’t going to help.

At least I can walk and continue to work out. That’s the important thing, I’ll just need to deal with the pain.

The Twilight Singers – On The Corner by subpop

Yeah, it isn’t Gentlemen but really what is?

Season 1

Time Enough At Last
The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street
A Stop at Willoughby
The After Hours

Season 2

A Thing About Machines
The Eye of the Beholder
Long Distance Call
The Silence
The Obsolete Man

Season 3

Five Characters In Search of An Exit
To Serve Man
The Dummy
I Sing the Body Electric

Season 5

Nightmare at 20,000 Feet
Living Doll
The Old Man in the Cave
The Masks

1. Four Tet – There Is Love In You
2. Male Bonding – Nothing Hurts
3. Jonsi – Go
4. Frightened Rabbit – The Winter of Mixed Drinks
5. The Tallest Man on Earth – The Wild Hunt

Albums of the Year Honorable Mentions

* Broken Social Scene – Forgiveness Rock Record
* The Black Keys – Brothers
* The Sword – Warp Riders
* The Tallest Man on Earth – Sometimes the Blues Is Just a Passing Bird (EP)
* Gauge – Mints (EP)

Top 5 Albums from Long Ago

1. Hoover – The Lurid Transversal of Route 7
2. Rush – Power Windows / Signals / Permanent Waves / 2112 / Hemispheres
3. The Dismemberment Plan – Emergency & I
4. Girls Against Boys – Venus Luxure No. 1
5. Rocket From the Crypt – Circa Now

Top 5 Films of the Year – The Kid Version

1. Toy Story 3
2. How To Train Your Dragon
3. Tangled
4. Shrek: Forever After
5. Anything That Will Keep Ian Still for 90 Minutes

Top 5 Family Memories

1. Seeing Ian jump into a pool all by himself
2. Potty training completed
3. Disney World
4. Flying kites on the beach with the Barrons
5. The tough ass day of surgery for Ian

Best Books I’ve Read This Year

* A Song of Ice and Fire Vol. 1 – 4 – George R.R. Martin
* The Name of the Wind – Patrick Rothfuss
* The Farseer Trilogy – Robin Hobb
* The Walking Dead – Robert Kirkman

Top 5 Things I’m Thankful For

1. A wonderful wife and an incredible son
2. The roof over our head, as small as it is
3. My steady as a rock family
4. The job I get to do every day
5. The team I get to work with

Top 5 Things for 2011

1. Keep the weight down and keep on working out
2. SERENTIY NOW! SERENTIY NOW! SERENTIY NOW!
3. Program more often
4. Read more
5. Figure out a tasty pizza dough recipe

Well, an x-ray and an exam later leaves me with dreaded Achilles Tendonitis. The plan for the next month:

* Cold Water Therapy – This is the brutal “submerse your entire foot and part of your ankle into a bucket of ice water.” Those screams you hear in the North? Those are me. 15 minutes in … 20 minutes out … 15 minutes in.

* Night Splint – It keeps my foot @ a < 90 degree angle so the tension on my Achilles is engage throughout the night. And yes, in answer to your question, it sucks sleeping in it. I end up taking it off somewhere in the middle of the night.

* Flector Patches – This is really the coolest thing that I got. Basically these are transdermal NSAID patches that I can apply to the area to help reduce the swelling. What I think is neat is that I don’t have to take a pill, but rather I can put a patch on the exact spot that is killing me and the meds get there.

4 more weeks of this.