Munich 1/2 Marathon 2016 Race Report

I don't think any of us imagined that it would happen, but here it is: the Munich 1/2 Marathon 2016 Race Report. Also: two blogs in one night. If you were able to get through the previous one (actually, given how "blog posts" show up in general, and since I'm doing this post like literally right after writing the other one, this one will show up "first" (i.e. ahead of the other one from tonight) and so maybe you're actually reading this one first and maybe don't even know about the other one yet), you might have (spoiler alert: maybe read the other one first if what I just described happened to you) noticed some kind of underlying theme of "you never know what might happen" and here's proof: two blogs in one night.

It turns out that everything we thought we knew about training was wrong. Nearly two months ago, on Sunday October 9th, 2016, I ran in the Munich 1/2 Marathon. Poor Sandi and I were once at the pinnacle of our sport. We had crafted a sort of aura of a reputation or personality or whatever as sports-people that were always off running or sports-doing and being in shape and all that stuff. We worked hard to develop such a persona and it felt good and it was nice to have that as a part of my identity. But life happens, man, and you not only have a kid which is already way out there but further your kid is also in some ways German or Bavarian or whatever. I mean, obviously she's Canadian and will speak English but she'll always have been born in Munich in this mansion in the English Garden and actually that's pretty cool in my personal opinion. But all that is totally beside the point and if I were one to edit my posts to try to make them succinct then the total number of words published on this site would in all likelihood be about 90% (at least) less. However, as you no doubt are well aware, I'm often more going for volume -- and really, is there anything wrong with that? Anyways, the real point was that we stopped having time to work out and we got fat.

But I did something very clever. Now, normally I'm a humble man (somewhat embarrassing but required clarification-based side note here: when you go to verify all of the claims that are made in this post, you'll inevitably end up at this URL: http://muenchen.r.mikatiming.de/2016/?content=detail&fpid=search&pid=search&idp=9999991020521D0000147AC2&lang=EN&event=MHM&search%5Bname%5D=Darling&search%5Bnation%5D=%25&search_sort=name&search_event=MHM [and so I might as well just share it with you here to save you the effort] and you'll probably notice that my participant name is "Dr. William Darling" and then you'll say to yourself [out loud] "well that's not very humble at all. In fact, he seems a bit of a smug asshole and I bet he's one of those people who when the pilot announces 'is anyone on this plane a doctor?' that he buzzes the stewardess to let them know he's here and he's ready to help" and I guess that would be fair [prima facie]. However, when you fill these things out in Germany [at least I think it's a German thing] it tells you to choose what your title is and according to my work colleague [who come to think of it might have made the whole thing up to cover up his particular arrogance] told me that you're lying if you don't choose Dr if by definition you have the god damn doctoral degree. Let's just forget the whole thing, shall we?), but in this case I think you'll have to agree that it was clever. I knew that the whole running and cycling and swimming and all that would completely and utterly just totally fall apart and crash with the arrival of our Bavarian baby. I knew it. And so to make sure that we could somehow eventually start to break out of it, I signed Sandi up for a race. You probably remember (at least I think I remember writing about it) that she did the Tegernseelauf in September and she was registered for said race because I registered her.

So, since she did the Tegernsee, it only made sense that I would do a race too. Once you're registered for something, you're kind of bound to make good on participating in said race and when it's some minimum distance long enough, then you're forced to put in a little bit of training if you want any chance of completing it (registering for a 10 K wouldn't do because anyone could do that without training, you're just apt to be slow and be in a lot of pain [cf. this year's Oktoberfestlauf]). Put all this together and you see that I registered for the Munich 1/2 (like I did in 2015 just before Hannah's arrival and as we both [we being me and Sandi] did just after arriving in Munich way back in 2013). But, though the plan worked to get us running a little bit, I still only ended up running starting a few weeks before the race, and not that much, and not that fast.

And here's where we get to the point of discovering that everything we thought we knew about running training being wrong. You see, the conventional wisdom goes that you need to run a lot and you need to run fast to properly prepare for a race (i.e. to do well in it). But here I did my least preparation ever and had the least amount of running (and cycling and swimming) in the year before the race and... I did my best ever. How about that.

Let's hope that same principle applies for Ironman because I sure don't think I'll be able to be doing any training any time soon.........

Hallelujah

Ah Fukuyama. Ah 1992. Post hoc ergo propter hoc. But just when we think things are turning out one way they go the other. Why, just the other day I calculated that for 370 out of 370 days in a row baby Helga had never once taken a single step and I was thus convinced that she would crawl for the rest of her natural life. Imagine my shock, then, when, after literally hundreds of days of enforcing the proof that it would never happen, she shocked everyone and decided to take some steps (while pushing a table for now, but we all know exactly where this is headed). Last night I fêted our American brethren's Thanksgiving sans family due to Helga's latest Krippe-backed illness and I weeped not just for the turkey's loss of life, but for the psychological pain that was inflicted upon him as each day that the farmer fed him he became more and more convinced that he was his friend. No one could have predicted that, on the day where he had been more sure than ever that the farmer was his friend, he would pick that day to behead him and send him to our Thanksgiving table. What a world it sometimes is.

Advent begins this weekend. Our fourth in Germany. I've written of the Christmas Markets here in Munich, most notably in two highly contrasting posts. The first, unsurprisingly (unsurprisingly only in the context of the bad viewpoint being first, i.e. not unsurprisingly at a broader level like I would be saying "obviously such a thing would be met with this reaction"), met them with derision ("contemptuous mockery", if you will), while the more recent described them in a more shining light. It likely all comes down to the fact that you can get used to nearly anything. One could probably even come to like Toronto if you were forced to live there for long enough (though there must be limits to this particular psychological phenomenon).

"William, need easy appies [sic] for a party?". Such was the subject-line of an e-mail I just received. Sometimes the world is very depressing.

Almost anything can become normal. Living in Germany (of all places), for instance. Drinking coffee. Having pain. Talking to a computer. Taking care of a baby. Advertising referring to frozen processed food as "appies". All kinds of things, is what I'm saying. But I guess you already knew that. Unless you're very young. And that's not impossible because even very young people now can read anything they want. It's actually more exceptional for a twelve year old child to not have a smartphone than the other way around. As LC might say, I've seen the future baby, it is murder.

And so I leave you with the immortal (German) words of LC. Stay crazy, friends.

Ich tat mein Bestes, es war nicht viel
ich konnte nicht fuehlen, also versuchte ich zu beruehren
Ich hab die Wahrheit gesagt, bin nicht gekommen, um dir was vorzumachen
Und obwohl
alles schief lief
werde ich vor dem Herrn des Liedes stehen
mit nichts auf meinen Lippen als einem Hallelujah

Anyone still out there?

If my calculations are correct, it's now been nine million, four hundred and twelve thousand, seven hundred and eleven days since the last update to this blog. It makes sense though, because there used to be things to write about (more or less) but for the last bazillion years approximately, not much has happened. Today is little Helga's first birthday which is pretty crazy, but in all those days since she was born I've only slept a total of seven minutes. That could help to partially explain any discrepancies between what's written here and reality. So, since the number of posts this year is down six thousand percent, here is a recap of the main things that have happened around here lately in the off-chance that you feel left out of the loop, as it were. Note that if it's on the list, it happened a minimum 400 times:

1. Helga cried a whole bunch
2. I got balder
3. I slept less than the night before
4. I was stressed at work
5. We spent all of our extra money on some baby product scam
6. Helga got sick
7. I bought a book but then didn't have time to read it
8. It rained
9. There was some situation that took place in German and I pretended to understand but had no clue what was going on in the hopes that it couldn't have been that important to actually understand and then much later on something bad happened that was directly related to me not understanding what happened during that original situation
10. We thought we might have a lead on a new apartment but then it didn't work out
11. We ran out of coffee beans at the worst possible time
12. Kevin broke something of ours
13. Our landlord came up with a new fee, rent increase, tax, or other mechanism by which we lost more money to him
14. I had a nightmare about clowns
15. I got a lower back injury
16. Joelle mentioned that we need to clean the house or run some errand
17. Helga narrowly missed electrocution while chewing on a cable
18. We made plans to go out with the neighbours that eventually fell through
19. My colleagues and I planned a Friday wine-tasting afternoon that was their idea and then they cancelled for some reason at the last minute (remember each of these items has happened multiple times)
20. We took Helga to the doctor

I guess that's about it for the standard stuff. Other one-time things did happen like the Munich Half-Marathon that I'll have to write a "race report" about some time (ya right) and we went to the Schliersee in the Alps for the weekend a few weeks ago which is about when I wrecked my back (ok, so that didn't happen multiple times but the pain from it has presented itself so to speak multiple times -- i.e. every day since then, so that's what I meant by its inclusion on the above list) but besides that it was a nice trip.