The Lockdown

Yesterday feels as though it can't have really happened. The short version of the story is that I was at a physical therapy appointment at the University of Colorado when a man wielding a machete burst in. Fortunately, everyone on my floor--and in the whole building, as it turns out--was able to lock themselves in until the police came and shot the man. Despite its fortunate outcome, it was a pretty unbelievable experience.

The Champions Center, where everything happened, is on the northeast corner of campus. My surgeon sees patients there a few times a week, and there are lots of facilities for athletes to get physical therapy and do all sorts of performance tests. The university's football program and athletics administrations are housed there, and there's a cafeteria for student athletes and a store to buy Buffs fan apparel. The building backs up against the football stadium. From the parking lot, one goes through glass doors to enter a vestibule with an elevator and access to a stairwell. (All of this description is important - read on!) There's really nothing else on the first floor. On the second floor is a waiting area and a reception desk (below). On one side of the elevator is a hallway, with exam rooms on either side, that opens up to the physical therapy area beyond. On the other side is a hallway that leads outside. I didn't know about this one until after the fact.

The elevator is along the blue wall to the right. Beyond that wall is a hallway, where the stairwell is. The man with the machete would have come in from there, on the right side of this photo, toward the reception desk.

I was there for my third week of physical therapy following a hip surgery in early September. The appointment started at 8:30. Usually, it takes about 45 minutes, and then I stay for another 20 to ride the stationary bike. After my session, which usually involves some "massage" and exercises, I crutched across the room to get on the bike. The physical therapy room is a very large space. There are about twelve therapy tables, lots of weight machines, racks of weights and lots of other equipment along the walls, with open space in the middle to leave room for exercises. I'd guess that it's at least 75 yards long, possibly even longer. Along one wall are two treadmills and two stationary bikes. The other end of the room opens into an area that I'd often seen therapists go into and out of. I'd never been back there.

(Random photo from the internet) On the left side of this picture, you can see one of the bikes against the window. The room extends behind the cameraman's back and is about four times as long as the section shown here.

I'd been on the bike for a few minutes and had written a few emails on my phone. I was about to untangle some earbuds so that I could listen to an audiobook when a sharp voice caught my attention. A blonde trainer, someone I'd seen before but never spoken to, was yelling, "Get off the bike!" Looking up, I noticed that everyone else was moving quickly to the opposite side of the large room. I was the only person left on my half of the room. She was looking at me, which confused me for a second because I didn't know who she was and wasn't sure she was talking to me - why would she be? But it was clear she did mean me because she made eye contact, then resumed shepherding everyone else. (Plus there was no one else there for her to talk to.) I heard the word "lockdown." Oh great, I thought, a drill. What a pain. I glanced down at the control panel on the bike. It had gone to sleep because I'd stopped pedaling and, figuring it would all be over pretty soon and I'd want to finish my allotted time, I pedaled a few more times to wake it up while I put my keys, phone, and earbuds into my pockets. The timer read 4:17. Satisfied that I could go now, I lowered myself off the seat carefully and reached for my crutches behind me.

As I started to make my way across the room, I saw that there was only one person left. He was an employee whose name, I learned later, was Tim. I crutched toward him, going more quickly than usual because I was a little embarrassed about being the only one who hadn't "evacuated" yet. As I approached him, Tim pointed down the hallway just behind us, toward the reception area. "There's a guy with a machete about this long" (he held his hands about 30 inches apart) "right out there," he said in a low voice, moving quickly beside me as we continued to cross the room. I felt an flush of something I can't identify now as heat or cold. I immediately started shaking. For some reason, I said, "You're kidding," and he said something along the lines of, "No, I'm not."

We were moving in the direction that everyone else had gone, when he held up his hand to stop me and looked back in the direction I'd come from. I got even more scared at that point. There is a bathroom off the PT room in that direction, and although I didn't really process the thought completely at the time, I somehow realized that he was worried that there wasn't time for us to get from where we were to where the others had gone and was considering hiding us in another place. This was a terrifying idea. Where was this guy? How close was he? Would he come running at us at any moment? "Where should I go?" I asked, instinctively looking to him for direction. He seemed to know what was going on and I didn't know the space or the protocol. He must have decided that we should make a break for it because we ended up following everyone else--I've never crutched so fast in my life--and ended up going into the area on the other side of the physical therapy room where I'd never been before. We joined a group of about twenty people in a room and closed the door.

There, I learned that Tim, who I assume is a physical therapist because of his clothes, had encountered the man near the reception desk. No one else on the second floor seemed to have seen him. (I learned why later.) The man had brandished the machete and said something along the lines of, "You don't want none of this." At that, Tim must have turned to go down the hall and into the PT room, which is where he waited, unbelievably, to help me get to safety. He didn't seem to have seen which way the man went, and we didn't know where he was.

After a short time in that room, the staff moved us out into the hallway. We started to go toward a door marked "Exit," but then, abruptly, someone decided we shouldn't and we were moved, instead, to another room. It was large room, situated between the hallway and the MRI equipment. A few other people had joined us, one of whom was a man in his sixties who had come out of the therapy pool. He was drenched and wearing only a speedo and goggles. After a while, someone tossed him a hospital gown from a pile on a table, but he still shivered as he dripped on the floor. One of the employees thought to ask if anyone had a pacemaker, which, fortunately, no one did. Apparently you don't want to be near an MRI machine if you have one.

I was dismayed that we were still inside the building. After the shootings in Paris, I read about ways to increase your odds of survival during a terrorist attack. The best thing to do is to get out of the area as quickly as possible. Barricading in a safe place was second on the list, and fighting back--unimaginable--was the third. One thing I read over and over again is that one should always look for secondary exits. If the attacker comes through the main entrance (as ours did), it's best to know another way to get out. I made a habit of doing this scan for a while, but I had no idea how to get out of this rabbit warren of exam rooms, imaging equipment, and hallways. And anyway, it was too late now.

In retrospect, the staff must have moved us to that room for several reasons. One is that the door, unlike many other doors in the building, locked from the inside. Another is that I imagine the walls and door were especially sturdy and possibly reinforced because of the magnetic power of the MRI machine. We stood inside, waiting. Some people cracked jokes, which annoyed me. There were several calls to turn cell phones off so that they wouldn't make noise and alert the man to our presence. (I had done this several minutes before. At least three phones rang during the time that we were in the room, however.)

Trapped in the room, we had no idea what was happening outside, though an authoritative woman who seemed to be in charge assured everyone that the police were there. One guy was determined to find information online and was combing through news websites, which, of course, provided nothing helpful since the event had started only minutes before. He said that he had a police scanner app on his phone but that it wasn't working. Every now and then, there was a knock at the door. The authoritative woman asked each person on the other side to identify themselves, then opened the door to let people in when she recognized their voices. One woman who came in was a doctor. Another was my friend Matt, who works there. I later learned that he and a colleague had locked themselves in a bathroom at first, then poked their heads out to see a policeman with a drawn gun inching down the hallway. He told them that the hall was clear and told them, I assume, to join us. I was very glad to see him, and he checked in with me periodically during the rest of the ordeal.

Later, when I told Ed this part of the story, he was surprised to hear that we opened the door for anyone. He's right; I'd completely forgotten that I learned during school lockdown trainings that you're never supposed to open a door during a lockdown no matter who is on the other side. The attacker could be holding a gun to the person's head, having ordered them to request entry to the room and act as though nothing is amiss. You just never know what's happening on the other side of the door and so it's best to just leave it closed, hard as that might be.

I finally texted Ed, "We are in lockdown. There's a man with a machete on the floor. They don't know where he is. The police are here. I'm in a room with Matt." I heard my phone vibrate several times but I ignored it; I wanted to be alert and not miss anything important. I learned later that Ed, who was at the dog park, tried to call me and then immediately drove toward CU. The parking lot for the Champions Center was blocked off by now, of course, so he parked as close as he could and ran along a bike path until he was denied entry by a security guard who'd been instructed not to let anyone pass. I hadn't answered his call or replied to his texts, which had made him pretty nervous, but there wasn't anything he could do.

The last person who came into the room, another employee, said urgently that shots had been fired on the fourth floor. I figured the police were the ones doing the shooting; no one had seen the man with a gun. That was two floors away, but we all sat on the floor anyway to be as low as possible, just in case. I went toward the back of the room where the space and turned into a short hallway that ended in a doorway, figuring that the extra walls would provide more protection against bullets. Even the joking ceased (thank goodness) while everyone strained to listen. Someone suggested that we move the table in front of the door to make it harder to get open, but it was pointed out that the door was already locked.

Finally, one of the front desk employees, looking at his phone, said that the police had the man in custody. Several other people, also on their phones, repeated this. I texted Ed an update. We stayed seated and relatively quiet. Eventually, the authoritative woman announced that the suspect was definitely in custody--it turned out that he'd actually been killed--and the the upper floors had been given the all-clear, but that we would wait until police arrived. We all agreed with this, and we sat for a few minutes more. Then, someone with authority to make decisions decided that we would open the door. We ventured out, then someone in front decided that was a bad idea after all and we trooped back into the room again. The man with the malfunctioning police scanner app had found an article on the Daily Camera's website (our local paper) and he read it aloud. It said that police had shot the man in a stairwell between the fourth and fifth floors and that no one else had been hurt. It was a short article with little other information. Several minutes later, we were back out. We waited near an administrative desk for a while, then, finally, it was announced that we were allowed to go back into the PT room but that no one could leave the floor or the building until the police had been through.

It was good to get back into that open, sunlit room. I finally called Ed, who told me that he still couldn't get very close to the building. I told him that he should probably just go home; I didn't know how long we were going to be kept there and the emergency seemed to be over. Staff members clustered together, and patients typed or talked into cell phones. I went back to the Daily Camera article to see if there was any new information and was astonished to see that the only person quoted so far in the story was Ed! He told me later that he'd been stopped by a reporter when he tried to get to the Champions Center and that the reporter wanted to talk to me and had given Ed his card. Eventually, I decided I might as well finish my time on the stationary bike. I crutched back to where I'd been when all this had started and my physical therapist followed me to help adjust the seat. She said that she, too, had assumed this was a drill because they were due for one.

I have no idea what kind of gun this is, but it's what most of the policemen who came to check out our floor were carrying when they came through. It was a pretty dramatic sight.

From my seat on the bike, I looked over my shoulder into the bit of the parking lot I could see through the window. It was choked with emergency vehicles and beribboned with police tape. A few minutes later, heavily armed policemen walked through the floor to make sure everything was clear. They were careful about going around corners, pointing their guns into blind spots before they went around themselves, and sort of wished they'd done this kind of sweep before letting us out of that room. It seemed that the danger was past, but geez... I finished biking and sat around some more. At last, we were told that we were allowed to leave but that we would leave as a group. A few more minutes passed and then we walked together out of the PT room, through the waiting area, past the stairwell where the suspect had died two floors up, and out a back entrance that I didn't know existed. Another hallway I had not investigated. It smelled, inexplicably, like french fries. I expressed surprise to the student receptionist who was walking next to me and she shrugged. "Maybe that's what gunpowder smells like," she said.

I took this on the way out of the Champions Center. It's tough to appreciate how many emergency vehicles there were because most of the ones in the frame are in the shadow to the right. They extended about 150 yards along the entryway all the way to the street. On the left of the screen, just behind the red tape, is poor Hester, who had to spend the night in the parking lot. Happily, she was unscathed.

One of the trainers helped me get under a ribbon of police tape. Once in front of the building, I had more waiting to do, however, because the police wanted to collect everyone's contact information and find out whether we had heard or seen anything. I was glad I hadn't because those who had were told to go down the hill to board one of two buses that was waiting to take them to the station for further questioning. Even people who had simply heard the gunshots but nothing more had to go. I waited in line for about ten minutes before being interviewed by a bald, beefy plainclothes cop who actually wrote my information down in one of those flippable notebooks detectives use on TV. My car was parked behind a line of tape and I was told I couldn't drive it out (I don't know how I'd have gotten past all the police vans and squad cars anyway) or even get my wallet out of the console. I crutched down the hill to the nearest intersection where Ed picked me a up a few minutes later.

Once home, I called the reporter, figuring that by then he'd have interviewed quite a few other people with more solid information and would no longer be interested in my statement. On the contrary, he said he hadn't talked to anyone inside the building and was eager to interview me. He asked me a few questions and I could hear him typing furiously in the background as I answered them.

Pieces of the story began to fall into place in the hours that followed, some from the newspaper but mostly from Matt. Apparently the man with the machete had been in the parking lot writing "sinner" on cars. (I'm not sure what he was writing with.) A patient who had arrived for an appointment saw him and confronted him about it, and the man brandished the machete at him. The patient fled into the nearest building, which was the Champions Center, and ran up the stairs to the second floor since the Champion Center doesn't have any personnel or facilities on the first floor - just empty space in front of the elevator. He yelled that someone should call 911 because there was a man in the parking lot with a machete. One of the students at the front desk called, but the line just rang. Another used her cell phone to call and was able to get through. Meanwhile, the staff was gathering all the people in the waiting area and moving them toward the back of the floor. The man must have followed the patient, because he showed up on the second floor but no one was there to see him except Tim. After the confrontation, Tim must have come down the hallway back to the PT room, which is where I saw him and he helped me get back to where everyone else was. I don't know if the man with the machete was right down the hall from as I crutched across the PT room or whether he'd gone back toward the stairwell to try other floors. There's every reason to think that he didn't wait around, but it's also entirely possible that if I'd turned my head to the right to look down the hallway as I passed it I'd have seen him at the other end. I'm very glad I didn't.

Someone (it hasn't been disclosed who) heard him muttering about "finding sinners" and quoting the Ten Commandments. The only information released about him is that he was white and may have been an ex-Marine. It doesn't appear that he was targeting a specific person or the Champions Center; if I had to guess, I'd say that he started where he did is because the building is right on the edge of campus, and that the only reason he came into that particular building and not any of the others he might have entered is that he was following the patient who confronted him in the parking lot. Who knows where he would have gone or what would have happened if no one had confronted him there? He could easily have wandered elsewhere and I wouldn't have been involved in this at all.

The 911 call was placed at 9:15. By 9:28, the man was dead. I was astonished to learn that the entire event lasted less than 15 minutes (though, of course, we weren't allowed to leave for another hour).

The Daily Camera article, which has continued to evolve, still quotes both Ed and me, as well as one of my MRI roommates who I suspect was the guy who was searching the internet for information. I'm not sure how they found him to interview him, but they were probably glad they did because they got some colorful stuff. He told the reporter that he was relieved the guy had only a machete because he was confident he could handle a machete blow and still defend his son, who was also in the room. I, too, was glad he had a machete instead of a gun, though I felt, and still feel, much less cavalier about the effects of a machete blow. Luckily, no one had to learn firsthand how that would have turned out.

People who experience these kinds of events often say that the whole thing was surreal. I feel differently. While it was happening, it was very, very real. I was keenly aware that this was the first time I'd been in such a potentially dangerous situation and was interested in sort of a detached way to note that I didn't freeze, as some people do. I tried to be very aware of my surroundings and responses and to remember the things I'd learned about surviving a situation like this. Some things I was pleased about, like my instinct to look for an exit, to turn off my phone's ringer, and shelter in the most protected part of the room. Others I'm ashamed to admit I didn't think of. It didn't occur to me to barricade the door (even though it was locked, I still should have thought of it), to sit down when we heard that there were shots (though I did go toward a more protected area), or to protest when the door was opened again and again. I thought about Orlando and wondered if this was how people hiding in the bathroom must have felt in the minutes before the shooter came in. My mind felt pretty clear, surprisingly, and the only time I got teary was when I texted Ed. Oddly, though, parts of my memory are really fuzzy only about 24 hours later. I can't remember exactly what was said to me when the room was being evacuated, and I can't picture the first room we hid in at all. I don't think I'd recognize it if I were to go back there again.

It's difficult to believe that all of that actually happened to me, of all people. This stuff happens in other places and I can accept that without stretching my credibility in the least, but the "surreal" part of this kicks in when I remind myself that I was there this time. I retrieved my car (which, to my relief, did not have "sinner" scratched into the paint) this morning and everything is completely normal again. The surreal feeling didn't happen during the actual event, but it settled in nearly the moment I got home. I'll never know how close I was to actually being hurt by this guy, but I think we are all profoundly lucky that things happened the way they did.

Late Spring Update

I'm back in Boulder, and a lot is happening! Instead of typing thousands of words, I'll let these pictures tell some of the story: 

It's spring! This time of year, I can't think of a better place to be than Boulder. Thanks to all the rain we've had, everything is green and there are blooms everywhere you look. 

I bought some beautiful, healthy tomato plants from the sale at the community garden, just down the street. Today they went into pots, and I can't wait to start enjoying fresh, vine-ripened tomatoes. 

Work on our house design is going very well, and we're having lots of fun going over the plans and working with our team.

It's popsicle season, and I'm excited about my new rocket-shaped molds. I can't wait until these bad boys are frozen enough to eat. 

Ed took second place in a very competitive field at his first triathlon of the year!

He was cheered on by two special guests: his mother, and Mischa. Here, both ladies enjoy the lake while waiting for him to return from the bike segment of the race. Mischa had a wonderful time chasing the waves. 

"Ed Seems to Be OK, but..."

I've been starting off a lot of conversations with that preamble lately, because when you tell someone that your husband was hit by a car on a recent bike ride, they tend to think the worst. If I'd gotten the news from a third party rather than from Ed himself, I certainly would have. As it is, we've both spent the last few days wondering how we managed to get so lucky.

On Saturday, I'd set my phone to vibrate and was monitoring it, something I don't usually do when
hanging around with friends. I was waiting for Ed to let me know he was on his way and expected to hear an update at any time. Finally, as expected, a buzz indicated a text from him. I did not, however, expect the text to inform me that he'd been hit by a car. He didn't answer when I called him, but called me himself a minute or two later. He said that he thought he was fine but that his bike had been damaged. The driver had stuck around, thank goodness, and there were plenty of people with him. To my surprise, he'd even accepted a ride home from one of them and insisted that I didn't need to come get him, despite my insistence that I was on the way. He had to hang up to give a statement to the police and be checked out by paramedics, but he called me back a few times when he had spare moments and I eventually got the full story.

It was clear and sunny at 1:00 P.M. on Saturday and Ed was riding south on 73rd St. in Niwot, a small town north of Boulder, and the end of a three-hour bike ride. Ahead, he saw a sedan stop at a stop sign at an upcoming intersection. Ed did not have a stop sign and so kept riding, figuring the driver saw him and would wait at the stop sign. He hadn't, and he didn't. After pausing at the sign, the car pulled onto 73rd, right in front of Ed, who slammed into the passenger side of the car, handlebars first. The lens of Ed's camera phone was broken in the crash, so he wasn't able to take any pictures (the police did), but he said he left a big dent in the side of the car from the first point of impact, then a smaller one next to it as his bike rotated around and hit that, too. He's not sure exactly how he fell--it happened too fast--but he ended up lying on the pavement on his back. (Technically Ed hit the car and not the other way around, but saying that makes it sound as though Ed was at fault, which he was not.)

For Christmas, I gave Ed a small camera that mounts under his bike seat. The idea is that if he's hit from behind or harassed by a motorist, which cyclists sometimes are, he'll have footage of the incident. Saturday was the first time since he received the camera that Ed didn't have it with him; it had been charging upstairs, and he considered going to get it but decided to just get going instead. The camera wouldn't have captured all the action in this accident, but Ed was sorry he didn't have it anyway. It would have recorded the 25-foot streak of rubber being laid out behind him as he braked, and a very long, drawn-out expletive that he apparently hollered as he hurtled toward the car.

It may have captured the following expletives, too, with which Ed colored the air as he lay on his back, waiting to determine what damage had been done. He'd passed a group of cyclists a few minutes before the accident, and they were on the scene almost immediately, as were several drivers who witnessed the crash. (One of these drove him home.) Ed said he was pretty sure someone had called 911 before he'd even hit the ground. He said he lay, swearing a blue streak, in the middle of a circle of concerned citizens all asking over and over if he was OK. He felt sure that if they'd stop asking him for a second and let him do a quick self-assessment that he would have the answer.

Eventually, he got to his feet. The driver, who'd been taking his son home from a Little League game, said he simply didn't see Ed (which is easy to do when you're not paying attention). He was, Ed says, apologetic and assumed all the fault for the accident. The police agreed. Everyone gave statements and Ed got some paperwork that he will use to obtain his own copy of the report. The driver was cited for failure to yield. Ed declined to be taken to the ER at the time. He's been talking with lawyers and insurance agents to understand how compensation will work. He needs to get a scan done to be sure that his back is OK--even though it feels fine just now, sometimes a back injury takes a while to manifest itself--and our local bike shop has declared his poor bike unsafe to ride, so he'll need a replacement. Fortunately for us, the driver's insurance will cover all of these expenses.

In addition to sympathy from Ed's fellow athletes around Boulder and beyond, stories about their own accidents have been flooding in. It's really amazing that so many people we know are still alive. More amazing still is that Ed's heroic bike seems to have absorbed the brunt of the impact. It's frame is cracked and the handlebars ended up at a wonky angle, having been wrenched sideways from the impact. I'll reserve full gratitude until his scan comes back clean, of course, but so far it seems as though he may walk away from this unscathed. It certainly helps that he was able to brake a bit before hitting the car, but he was still going about 21 MPH when he did.

The data from his GPS watch, which was not damaged in the accident, is quite interesting. The pin on the map shows where the crash happened. (He appears to finish the ride at the same place he started, but that's because he forgot to turn the watch off and it captured his car ride home.)

On the graph below the map, the yellow, pink, and green lines and dark gray section show speed, elevation, etc., which all come to a screeching halt at the moment of impact. The red line shows Ed's heart rate, which surges right after he hits the car when he must have been flooded with adrenaline. I think it's fascinating to see the crash mapped out like this.

There is no map of how this felt for both of us, however. Because I heard about the accident from Ed himself, I learned the news and was reassured about its implications simultaneously. Ed eventually did come to meet my friends and me that Saturday, and he was walking around and acting so normally that I was further comforted. Later, though, we split up when I went straight home and Ed went to collect Mischa from the kennel where we'd dropped her off to play for the day. I pulled up to an empty house and sat in the driveway for a moment, the gravity of the possible, and more likely, outcomes of the crash suddenly slamming into me. I always feel a little anxious when Ed is out on his bike, and this ride ended with the kind of news I've always worried I'd hear. It seemed to have turned out OK, but how easily it might not have. I could be pulling up to an empty house under very different circumstances. Ed and Mischa arrived a few minutes later, of course, but the feeling of unease remained, accompanied by a fierce surge of love. I try, as often as I can, to be aware of how lucky I am to have Ed in my life. His accident has been a loud reminder of how important that awareness is.

Making Mischa Mind

Mischa was generally well behaved as far as dogs go when we first got her. But though she didn't chew our things or have accidents in the house (as long as we took her out regularly) she pulled on the leash when we walked her, chased the cats, barked at people, and didn't know any fun tricks. She also tended to lose all control when she saw another dog, lunging desperately toward it with frantic friendliness. This did not bode well for Ed's dreams of letting her run alongside us off leash someday.

We discovered Jamie, owner of a company called Training Wheels, through a kennel that had no room to board Mischa. The man on the phone said that she boards dogs at her home, and, desperate to find a place for Mischa to stay during a weekend when we'd be away, I called her. All three of us loved her, and we were delighted when she mentioned that she offers in-home training sessions. When we got her, Mischa was too old for puppy training classes (her lack of composure around other dogs made us suspect she wouldn't be all that attentive anyway), and an in-home session seemed like just the thing to help Mischa become accustomed to the cats.

Showing off "down" (though she did this when I said "sit"...)

Ed and I both did a lot of reading and research on dog training before getting Mischa, but despite all of that we wouldn't have made a fraction of the progress we have now without Jamie's help. She came about once a week for four or five weeks in a row, and now we call her on an as-needed basis. In between sessions, she gives us homework and we practice with Mischa, who, as it turns out, is quite sharp. With Jamie's help, Mischa knows how to come, sit, lie down, and go into her crate at bedtime. She makes eye contact with us when we say her name (very important, because if we can't get her attention we can't get her to do anything - more on that later), and can even resist taking treats off the floor when she's not supposed to, provided we are watching and she knows she will get one in exchange for good behavior, that is. She still pulls occasionally on the leash, but this has gotten much, much better. Currently, we are working on two additional skills: ringing a bell hung from the doorknob when she needs to go out, and going to her "spot," her bed downstairs, when we tell her to. 

Pressing the metal tab in the middle makes the click.

Jamie and I both have the same educational philosophy, as it turns out. We both believe that learners internalize lessons best when they figure things out for themselves, with as little guidance from the instructor as possible. For dogs, this is called shaping. It takes a little longer initially, but Jamie feels that dogs retain what they learn much better when they work out what they're supposed to do instead of being shown how or forced into it. Key to this is using a clicker, something I initially thought was silly and have now come to view as indispensable. The clicker, as you may have guessed, makes a clicking sound when it is pressed. First, we taught Mischa to associate the clicking sound with food by giving her a treat each time we clicked. Now, each time she does something we like during a training session, she gets a click for immediate feedback, which is great because sometimes it takes a second to dig a treat out. 

To teach Mischa to lie on her bed when she hears "go to your spot," Jamie positioned herself on the other side of the bed from Mischa with treats and the clicker. Mischa, of course, came toward her in hopes of getting a treat, and each time Mischa's paws hit the bed, Jamie clicked and rewarded her with a treat. First, Mischa had to get only her front paws on the bed for a click. Once she had that down, Jamie upped the ante by withholding clicks/treats until Mischa had all four paws on the bed. Then Jamie moved, standing on the same side of the bed as Mischa but very near the it with the clicker in hand. Mischa knows that when she sees a person watching her expectantly with the clicker and treats, she will be rewarded if she does the right thing. She just has to figure out what that is. She tried everything she could think of to get the treat: sitting, lying down, making eye contact, whining. Finally, she sat on the bed accidentally and Jamie clicked and gave her a bunch of treats. This happened again and agin - the hesitation and random attempts until Mischa accidentally came into contact with the bed - until suddenly she started to make the connection between the first drill and the second one. She started to go to the bed more and more regularly. When she'd gotten that down, Jamie withheld treats until Mischa sat on the bed. Then she had to lie on it.

In her spotted spot

This morning, Ed and I started adding the command to the behavior, and Ed moved farther and farther from the bed. Mischa was doing great until he was giving the command from out of the room, and then it got a little too hard. So, as we have learned to do, we made it much easier (Ed came back into the room and stood nearer to the bed) so that Mischa would succeed and we could end the session on a high note. Jamie says this is important, and I can understand why.

It will be wonderful when Mischa has learned to go to her "spot" on command. She is often anxious when she sees people on the sidewalk outside and drives us nuts with her barking. This will be a way for us to communicate to her that everything is OK and to remove her from the scary sight simultaneously. It will also be useful when she goes after one of the cats, though it's going to take a lot of repetition to get her to follow the command when she is excited or nervous. Fortunately, Mischa loves training and we find it fun as well. 

The tricky thing about huskies, of course, is that they have pretty selective attention spans. Currently, Mischa sometimes prefers, particularly when we are outside, to pay attention to everything but us, meaning that she doesn't do anything we ask her to because she genuinely can't hear us. I've tried giving the leash little yanks, calling her name, poking her shoulder, and squatting down so that I am in her field of vision, and she ignores me and looks right over my shoulder. Ed and I aren't sure whether she'll gradually learn that she's supposed to listen to us or whether this is so ingrained in her because of her breed that we're fighting a losing battle. I suppose we'll find out. In the meantime, though, we'll keep plugging away.

Training Update

It's difficult to believe that I've already completed four weeks of my training plan! It feels as though I've just started, which is probably a good sign.

As with most changes, there are things I like a lot and things that aren't so great about this new lifestyle, but I'm very, very happy overall and have no plans to stop.

I'm very much enjoying the variety of the plan. Simply doing long and/or slow jogs nearly every day gets old fast, so it's great to have a variety of speedwork in the mix. I do regular interval runs and tempo runs, but there are also other workouts thrown in that I've never done before. For example, last week I ran four miles with four 30-second sprints thrown in, then a three-minute tempo segment toward the end. It's tough to get bored with all of this stuff on the to-do list. I'm sure I must be getting faster, so I suppose that should go on the list of positives, but I don't have a way to measure, really. My most recent long run certainly felt easier than the one before it, and I went considerably faster, but there are so many possible explanations (better sleep, better hydration, more complete recovery from the nasty cold I had two weeks ago, etc.) that I'm hesitant to say that better fitness is definitely the cause.

While I was able to anticipate some downsides to following the plan, like time expenditure, several frustrations have surprised me. One is that the cumulative effect of all of these workouts is more draining than I'd expected. I've never run so many days in a row, so hard before (I ran every day in high school, but it felt easier then, possibly because the workouts were easier, or--ahem--I was half the age I am now...). Even though I have an "easy" run every other day to break up the hard, fast, or long ones, a slow five- or six-mile run is not as rejuvenating as a day off would be. It's great that I'm building so much endurance from all of this, but I'm still getting used to having tired legs nearly all the time.

I've had my Garmin GPS watch for about five years and thought I understood pretty well how to operate it, but figuring out how to use my watch to measure all of this has been more difficult than I imagined it would be. In the past, when I did simpler workouts, hitting "start" and "stop" was about as complicated as my watch use got. Now I want to collect all kinds of data about speed sets in the middle of runs, and I want to see that data while I'm running so that I can reconfigure my efforts as necessary. Analyzing everything after I get home to my computer won't cut it. The Garmin and Training Peaks websites are both quite complicated--at least, I think so; Ed doesn't--and I'm still learning how to use my watch to collect the information that I need in the most seamless way possible.

And I am already tired of all of the clean-up that this requires. I generate far more laundry than before, and I take about twice as many showers as I used to. There was a time when I enjoyed taking showers, but I'm starting to feel like Sisyphus.

One challenge I did foresee was working in runs with friends. Most of the women I run with aren't particularly competitive, and I have to do even my slower, long runs a little faster than most of them want to go. The best solution I've come up with so far is to show up for runs that involve hangout time after. I start with my friends, take off and do my own workout, then join back up with them at a coffee shop or restaurant to chat afterward. It's actually very motivating when I have a very tough slog because it gives me something to look forward to.

Jeff and I plan to go over my progress at the end of this week and make adjustments if necessary. I'm interested to hear what he will say about my work thus far.

How the Other 98% Live*

“The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.” - John Updike

"Whoever is born in New York is ill-equipped to deal with any other city: all other cities seem, at best, a mistake, and at worst, a fraud." - James Baldwin

I was not born in New York. Far from it. I lived there for five years that passed in the blink of an eye and have since moved on to a place that I love. But quotes like the ones above give me a deep sense of comfort because my short time in that brutal and magical city has ruined me, perhaps forever, for at least some aspects of life elsewhere. Two recent experiences, both involving stages, made this starkly clear, and it has been a dismal realization.

On Tuesday night, Ed and I met some friends to go to a performance put on by an organization called Truth Be Told. Anyone who is familiar with The Moth will recognize the format: Truth Be Told is a storytelling event. On ordinary nights, spectators can put their names into a hat and, if selected, take the stage to tell a five-minute true story to the audience that connects in some way with the night's theme. They usually take place at Shine, a local brewery. I've never been to one of those; instead, we started with the creme de la creme (so to speak): a grand slam event featuring only winners from the regular events. (I was a little confused about this because one of the emcees alluded to more than one winner from one particular show.) The theme was "Thwarted."

I was quite looking forward to the show, but I left the theater nearly three hours later feeling deflated. The stories themselves were fine; in fact, some of them were quite good. Ed and I attended a few Moth events in New York, and some of these storytellers would have been, if not on par, very close on the coattails of some of the performers we saw. But I was taken aback by my reaction to the hosts of the event, two local women who introduced each storyteller and performed in grating musical interludes sprinkled throughout the evening. I had no idea I'd become such a snob.

It's not that they were bad at what they did, per se. But there was an amateurish quality about every aspect of the show that I couldn't seem to ignore, and I felt deeply resentful about it. Some of the best performers in the world make their way to New York, so that even community theater productions are of excellent quality. I've seen dancers in subway cars that have taken my breath away. New York is overflowing with talented people, and I'd come to take it for granted. Still, if you'd have asked me two years ago, on the cusp of our move, whether I expected that the rest of the world would be the same way, I'd have scoffed and said that I knew it wouldn't be. What I didn't realize was how little I'd internalized that reality. It was a lonely feeling to scan the sea of mesmerized faces all around me and feel as though I was the only one who noticed that the emperor wasn't wearing any clothes. I left the theater, called (I'm not kidding) the Dairy Center for the Arts, with the dismal realization that any show I saw in Boulder was likely to leave a bad taste in my mouth. I missed New York suddenly and fiercely. 

Denver, I was sure, would be different. While driving 45 minutes to see a show was not a prospect I relished, I figured it would be worth it to see good theater. You can't expect too much of a town of 100,000 people, after all, but a big city like Denver would surely be different. Last night I joined some friends to see a show I'd seen and absolutely adored in New York, A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder. It was one of the funniest shows I'd ever seen, and I looked forward to reliving the experience with my friends.

The experience was...fine. The show was amusing. But where I'd nearly fallen out of my seat for laughing in New York (without help from any of my fellow theatergoers, who were too busy nearly falling out of their own seats to offer a steady hand), I found myself simply chuckling here and there in Denver. The show was the same, but the actors, alas, just fell short. It was a lukewarm performance, I felt, and even superb writing could only go so far.

I was astonished, therefore, to hear glowing praise in the stairwell as we made our way to the exits after the curtain call. The audience, it seemed, had loved the show. Of course they hadn't seen the original cast perform it, as I had. But would I have been as laudatory as those around me even if this were my first time? I doubt it.

I suppose I must resign myself to setting lower expectations for "local" performances (though Gentleman's Guide was the national tour, not some backwater adaptation), or to holding off on theater when I'm not visiting New York. Who'd have thought that so many wonderful experiences in New York audiences would have translated to disappointed experiences elsewhere?  

*2% of Americans live in New York City.

Ready to Run One Fast

I'm nervous and excited to launch into a new running adventure, and ready or not, here it comes. I felt pretty encouraged after running a PR (personal record) at my last half-marathon after a rather embarrassingly lax training regimen. I was curious to see how fast I could go if I really put work into it, given that I was able to perform pretty well with only lukewarm preparation. As luck would have it, I attended the Boulder Tri Club's holiday party with Ed a few weeks after the race and got talking to his friend Jeff.

Jeff is a formidable runner who has actually given up triathlon to focus on running. I always enjoy chatting with fellow distance enthusiasts, and we talked about routes around town we like (and don't), Jeff's current goals (which involve breaking the sound barrier, I think), and my recent half-marathon. Jeff kept interrupting to ask who my coach was until finally it occurred to me that he was hinting at something. It turns out that Jeff, who is an admirably geeky runner, loves nothing more than making up training plans for people. In fact, in his free time he operates a small coaching company called Run1Fast for this very purpose. If I were ever interested, he told me, he'd be happy to make a training plan for me. (And he'd happily do one for anyone else, by the way, so please visit his site or ask me for his contact information if you're interested in working with him. He works with runners of all levels, from total beginners to seasoned cheetahs. If you're stuck on a treadmill, Jeff is also starting a series of videos to guide you through your workout and make it more tolerable.)

I thought the matter over for a long time. On the one hand, I'm in the prime of my running career in terms of age. Unlike participants in most sports, endurance athletes tend to run their best races in their 30s and even later, so signs were certainly pointing to "yes" on that front. Additionally, my work schedule is about as flexible as it's ever likely to get, so this is an excellent time to devote plenty of daylight hours to running.

On the other hand, I was squeamish about the commitment. I've been enjoying cross country skiing, snowshoeing, trips to the climbing gym, etc., and much of that would probably go out the window if I took on this challenge because I'd be too tired from training (or reluctant to wear myself out for an upcoming training day) to spend much time doing anything else.

At the end of the day, however, I decided to bite the bullet and go for it. I have the rest of my life to enjoy a variety of activities, after all, and I figured that I'd always wonder how fast I could have been if I'd invested effort and time into it.

I received my 12-week training plan today. The overall timeline involves a May 1st half-marathon as a tune-up race, then two more serious races afterward, one in early fall and one in either late fall or early winter. Here is a snippet of my plan, which is quite complex and involves running different distances at different paces and some cross training days as well.

Jeff is a pretty hands-off "coach" (which explains his absurdly reasonable rates), so although we will probably chat about how things are going when we see each other socially, he won't be following my progress. Instead, I'm supposed to use color-coded highlighting after I complete each workout to record how it went: green means it felt easy, yellow means it was pretty tiring, and red means I was unable to finish. Since I have two more races after my first one of the season, keeping records of this kind will help both of us use spring as a guide for deciding how to plan for the fall and winter.

I've only just started to digest all of this, but I can already tell that there are some gimme workouts and some that may be out of reach. It's all a little intimidating, but I'm excited to get going and see how fast I can be!

Putting Ed to the Test

Ed's coach Eric, owner and mastermind of EK Endurance, has helped Ed become a force to be reckoned with in triathlon. Ed has known Eric from when they rowed together in Boston more years ago than either of them would probably care to calculate, and it's a stroke of luck that we happened to move into Eric's neck of the woods. (He coaches athletes remotely, too, and if you're interested in finding someone to help with any fitness goals I recommend him highly.) Now that Ed is working toward a full Ironman race in August, his nutrition needs will be more complicated than ever since he will be going through so many calories during the nine-ish hours that he'll be on the course. So to help Ed come up with a plan for this, Eric suggested that Ed go to the CU Athletic Center for VO2 max and lactate threshold* tests. Obviously, I tagged along.

*What the heck does that mean? Read on.

Nice, right? Well it was freezing and snowy the day we went. 

The enormous building sits next to the stadium and smells like footballs. We took an elevator to the second floor, a well-lit, immaculately clean space filled with two types of people: formidable-looking athletes and overweight men in mesh shorts. The center provides resources for student athletes, of course, but many people from the community also come in for physical therapy and tests, like Ed's.

Eventually we were led down the hallway by our tech, Kevin, to a large room that looked out over the stadium and the mountains beyond. Not bad. The room contained two stationary bikes and a treadmill hooked up to a complicated system of monitors. On the walls were framed, signed jerseys that said things like, "Thanks for finding me some extra power!" and oversized printouts of studies with titles such as Skeletal Muscle Glycogen Content in University Football Players Before and After a Game.

Kevin, a wiry man in his mid-40s, asked Ed a lot about his history, training, goals, and nutrition, then explained a bit about the test. Ed would run on a treadmill breathing into and out of a mask that would measure his oxygen intake. Every five minutes, Kevin would accelerate the treadmill belt. Two-and-a-half minutes after that, Kevin would stick Ed's finger with a small needle and test his blood to determine how many calories he was burning at that effort level and what he was using for fuel (lactate, fat, or carbohydrates). Ed would then indicate how difficult he found the current pace on a scale of 1-10 by pointing at a page with the numbers and descriptions listed. The whole time, Ed's heart rate would be monitored via a chest strap.

The first step was to strap on the mask.

Ed warmed up for a while, and after about ten minutes, he said he felt ready to go and the test began. Kevin said that the testing times vary and that fitter people tend to take longer. Ed's test lasted about 20 minutes, which is about as long as they ever last, according to Kevin. He was very busy the whole time, either making notes on a spiral-bound notepad, monitoring the screen in front of him, or attending to either Ed or the treadmill. He was also very encouraging and kept saying things like, "Very nice, man," and "Good numbers."

To calculate VO2 max, one has to run at a maximum effort (hence the "max"), and Ed didn't get that far. After 20 minutes and five jabs at Ed's finger, Kevin said he thought he had what he needed. I've spent a lot of time watching Ed running, and I was pretty sure he was nowhere near fatigue. Sure enough, on the final segment he indicated that he found the effort level to be a 6. He was panting and sweaty when he came off the treadmill and was grateful to drink some water (something he wasn't able to do while masked), but his heart rate had stayed pretty low the whole time, and he recovered quickly. Although Kevin had assured him before the test that the mask would not restrict his air intake, Ed said he was pretty sure it had. Other than that, the finger pricks apparently didn't hurt and the whole thing wasn't nearly as uncomfortable as he'd feared it would be.

After a few minutes, Kevin tucked a laptop under his arm and led us into a small room where we sat on a couch. A PowerPoint presentation appeared on a large screen on the wall, and he took us through key slides first, explaining some important terminology. Then he brought up Ed's results, arranged into tables and on a graph.

Kevin's work station in the testing room

In short, the news is good. As Kevin put it, Ed's "engine puts out a lot of power," and he's in excellent cardiovascular shape, as evidenced by his low heart rate, even while exerting himself. His VO2 is high, meaning his lungs are able to process a lot of oxygen for his size. This is very good news because VO2 is mostly genetic and couldn't really be improved if the numbers were low.

However, although he is a reasonably efficient runner, Ed still burns a tremendous number of calories when running (and, we assume, biking and swimming, though we can't say for sure because he wasn't tested for those two activities). This isn't great, because it means he has to be careful to consume enough during races. The good news, though, is that he tends to burn fat more readily than carbohydrates. Even though Ed's body fat percentage is low, he still stores plenty of fat--as do all people, no matter how fit or thin--to get through a physical ordeal like a long race, provided he has some nutritional supplements here and there. Our bodies are able to store much more fat than carbs, so his physiology helps him a lot: his tendency to use fat for fuel efficiently means he has a lot more available fuel than if he were reliant on carbs, which have to be replenished often. Apparently one's body can get better at burning fat as opposed to carbs with the right kind of training, but there's a lot of debate about what "the right kind of training" actually is.

The testing was quite interesting, and I think Ed is glad he went. All of the information will be helpful to him as he works with Eric to tailor his training and nutrition plans to make the most out of his physiology. My friend Mary Ann, formerly an elite marathoner, participated in an aging study run by CU last year and had the same test done. In the course of her marathon career, she was tested about 25 years ago and so was able to compare those results to her more recent ones. Now in her 60s, she said her VO2 results over the span of years were almost identical and that decline over time is typically pretty minimal for just about everyone. This means Ed's results, some of them anyway, will be a reliable guide for him for years to come, for more triathlon madness or whatever other athletic endeavors he pursues.

Just a Little Dusting

Ed and I agree that this is the most accumulation we have seen since we moved to Boulder. This morning, my neighbor sunk a yardstick 14 inches into his driveway! The weather has actually been fairly mild, with no strong winds or even guests really, but the snow just kept falling for more than 24 hours. It seems to mostly be done now, but warmer weather isn't forecast for a few more days, so we've got a lot of unmelted snow to look forward to. Here are some pictures from our new home in the Arctic:

Our cozy house, with Mischa's tracks in the front yard

I actually cleared off the top of our mailbox last night...

Check out that layer on the railing! It's at least 10" tall in this picture. It eventually got so high it toppled over.

Poor Hester

We used to have steps. Now we have a slide.

Another angle, to give you a sense of the depth

Mischa loves wading through the snow, even when it is chest-deep. She also races back and forth, pounces onto (we think) imaginary critters under the surface, and crunches on mouthfuls of it. 

What does when do in the weather this snowy? Well, after one has recovered from shoveling the driveway and the sidewalk (and the elderly neighbor's driveway, and the one's own driveway a second time when all the snow that used to be on top of one's car is brushed onto said driveway after it has already been shoveled once...), one meets up with intrepid friends for a snowshoeing adventure in the lovely and nearby Chataqua Park.

Western Morning, Southern Afternoon

While the East Coast got pounded by record-breaking blizzards, we were enjoying an absolutely blissful weekend here in Boulder. It was sunny and clear, and although the mercury topped out in the mid-50s, it felt much warmer than that when one was in the sun. It was a perfect day for a hike, so I packed Mischa into the car and joined some friends at a trailhead a mere eight minutes' drive from our house. The park is called Chataqua and it's criss-crossed with trails that lead up to the nearby Flatiron Mountains. Here is Mischa, posed and ready for hour hike.

Most of the pictures I took ended up looking more like this, so I was pleased with the shot above:

Although the day was warm, the trail was very, very icy, but fortunately everyone in our group had the good sense to bring spikes. This is a product I didn't know even existed for most of my life, but in Boulder it's indispensable. I actually own two different types, one like the picture to the left and the other with smaller spikes under the ball of my foot and springs to dig into the snow that run under my heel. They're great because they're light enough to carry easily if you don't need them, but they make it possible to walk up slick surfaces that would be nearly impossible otherwise. We cruised by lots of hikers who were slipping and sliding along the trails and turning back early. Perhaps that is why the area wasn't as crowded as it ought to have been, considering the wonderful weather. We had a great time.

Mischa, who had no spikes, did an excellent job anyway. Ed and I had taken her up Mt. Sanitas, another nearby trail, earlier in the week, so this wasn't her first rodeo. Sanitas involves lots of scrambling over small boulders, and we were pleased that Mischa, who had never done anything like that as far as we knew, had little trouble picking out and executing a path over the rocks. She seemed to have a great time, and she was cheerful on our Saturday hike, too (which had no boulders to climb over and so was easier going). She hardly pulled on her leash at all, which is an improvement, was serene instead of anxious when passers-by attempted to pet her, and even did a fair job of ignoring many dogs we passed. (We still have a lot of work to do on this front.) She ended up muddy, tired, and happy.

Having worked up an appetite on the trails, several of our friends and I made a bar in South Boulder our next stop because they were hosting a crawfish boil. They do this a few times a year, apparently, and I will most definitely be back for the next one. Crawfish came in one-pound baskets or three-pound buckets, accompanied by corn on the cob (a little overdone) and boiled potatoes. I dispatched my own basket and part of a friend's, then helped Ed with a three-pound bucket. They were delicious and fun to eat. The only place I'd ever eaten crawfish before was a New Orleans-themed restaurant in Manhattan, so I have yet to rack up an "authentic" experience, but I'm not complaining.

Our bucket

I will be on the road quite a bit for the next few weeks, but I couldn't have asked for a higher note to go out on.

The Furminator

As far as huskies go, Mischa doesn't shed all that much. But she's still a long haired dog, and between her and the cats we have several anti-fur weapons in our arsenal. There are sticky rollers all over the house, and I even have one in my car. But one very important tool is this magic brush: the Furminator. 

The advertisements say that one brushing session each week can reduce shedding up to 90%. I can't attest to that; I can say, however, that the fur in this pile will not end up all over our house. 

Frosty, Misty Run

Ed's training schedule called for an easy 40-minute run first thing this morning (to be followed by a 3-hour bike ride, lest you get the wrong impression about the intensity of his regimen), and Mischa and I opted to keep him company. Mischa does best when running with a "pack" - one-on-one, she pulls on the leash a lot, but when I take her with a group she trots along at the pace set by everyone else. This was our first attempt at running with her as a duo, and to our relief she did very well and hardly pulled at all. Our mini-pack was apparently just big enough.

This was good, because there is snow and some ice on the roads and sidewalks, and a lunging dog would certainly have toppled whichever of us happened to be holding the leash. We ran carefully. The morning was a lovely one despite the cold (something like 16 degrees). Mischa was in heaven; as a husky, she thrives in cold weather and loves nothing more than to dash back and forth in the snow and pounce on snowbanks. The air up here tends to be quite dry, but we had an unusual phenomenon today: mist. As we ran, the droplets collected on just about every surface and froze. Ed and I both ended up with frosted eyelashes, and the few small hairs that escaped his hat sported winter coats, too. Bits of fuzz on my vest showed up white. Mischa became increasingly icy as we ran, beginning with her face and working back to her ears and ruff.

We knew we had to get a picture of this rare happening, and since I was less icy (and therefore less interesting) than Ed, I dashed inside when we got home--melting my eyelashes in an instant--to grab a camera.

Look closely at Ed and you can see his white eyelashes and a few frosted hairs under the brim of his hat. It's not nearly as hard to see Mischa's frostiness.