The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

Ah, it's Marathon Monday, also known as Patriots Day in these parts. The last few weeks I had a lot of people asking me if I was running the Boston Marathon this year, which of course led me into the whole explanation of my foot injuries and PT and all that. For the most part, I'm glad I'm not running it, but I did get a little wistful for the heady days of '02 and '03 when I was watching all the marathon coverage this morning. Even if I was in condition to run, I had planned to run in Vermont next month instead of Boston. Now I'm hoping to get picked in the lottery for the NYC Marathon in November. And I'm feeling pretty good. I ran 5 miles last Friday for the first time since October, and ran another five this morning at an even faster clip with no pain.

It was another warm marathon, although not as bad as last year's 85-degree nightmare. Temps were in the 70s, much like they were when I ran it two years; I ended up severely dehydrated and cramping for the last six miles of the race. I had a couple of friends running today and took the day off from work, but I ended up spending it at home with Deb and the girls, who are home for April vacation. I followed my friends' progress online through the marathon's athlete tracking feature. Everybody finished, but it looked like the heat and possibly injuries may have slowed them down a bit.

In other news...

• Hannah's 3rd birthday bash was held Saturday, even though her actual birthday isn't for two more weeks. The party had a princess theme and everyone seemed to have a blast. Especially Lily, who did her best to keep up with the other kids.
• We upgraded our cell phones today to sweet new Samsung flip phones with camera, text messaging, and all that other cool crap I never had on my old phone. Not that I ever use my phone that much, but it's nice to have, I guess.
• Tough times at the Boston Herald, where they're in the middle of some serious job cuts. I've got a few friends over there who I think are safe for now, but the paper has already seen some big names, including columnist Mike Barnicle, either leave or cut back their positions. I've been reading both the Globe and Herald nearly every day for the last 16 years or so, since I was a young newspaper reporter at the Peabody Times (R.I.P.). I always liked the Herald as a brash tabloid counterpoint to the Globe's stodgier broadsheet. In recent months, the Herald has grown trashier, focusing less on the hard news it used to consistently break before the Globe and turning to gossip and sensational stories to sell papers. Obviously, it's not working well enough to save a bunch of jobs. Of course, the Globe has other things to deal with, like freelancers fabricating stories. Ouch.
• So after a few weeks sans MP3s, I gots my shiz together and have some rock for ya. I'm reaching back to my Canuck roots for this band, the weird and wacky Max Webster. The band (no member was actually named Max Webster) got its start in Toronto in the mid-70s, led by skinny singer and guitar master Kim Mitchell, who had a penchant for unitards, lightning-quick solos, and onstage rock leaps. The band played a wild mix of hard rock, bizarre time changes, symphonic synth-driven mid-tempo stuff and the occasional ballad; kind of like a combo of Rush, Zappa, and Steely Dan. Throw in the off-kilter musings of lyricist Pye Dubois (who later co-wrote "Tom Sawyer," among other things, for Rush) and the band's reportedly crazy live show (I was too young to ever see them), and you've got a left-of center band. They opened for Rush on several tours in the U.S. and elsewhere, but never made much of an impact on the charts. The band released five studio albums and a live album between 1975-81 (all are available as imports through Amazon); they broke up while on tour in the U.S. in 1981. Apparently, Mitchell had had enough and just called it quits. A year later, he launched a fairly successful (and much more mainstream sounding) solo career in Canada that included a few FM radio hits in the U.S.: 1985' s Go for Soda (which was used by Mothers Against Drunk Driving in its campaigns, even though the same album included a song extolling the virtues of Lager and Ale) and 1989's Rock and Roll Duty. They briefly reunited for a few gigs in Canada in 1996 and were rumored to be recording a new album, but nothing ever came of it. Anyhoo, here's a double shot for ya: an early classic from their first album called Here Among the Cats and an awesome blast of rock power from the Universal Juveniles album on which they teamed with Rush for a band vs. band monster called Battle Scar. I really dug these guys and still do; I only wish I'd gotten to see them live.