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.