I’m declaring a do-over for this second week of training. It’s not that I didn’t accomplish anything useful— on the contrary, once again I hit my week’s running goal on the second day. It’s just that things kind of fell apart physically and mentally due to the heat wave, and now that the weather’s starting to recover I’m starting to recover as well and would like the chance to prove that I can do my second week of training the right way. I’m starting to get used to the pressure of training in the summer, and after taking today (my day off) to re-focus I think I can put in a really solid week over the next seven days, regardless of whatever punishment the sun dishes out.

Of the entire week, Monday was the real eye-opener. When it came time to do my half-hour run I happened to be near a sandy beach, so I decided to run along the beach barefoot. Wow, what a difference. Running in sand is a completely different game to running on a road. And a half-hour run is a lot longer than a 15-minute run. “Twice as long” doesn’t even begin to cover it. It’s hard to explain, but the difference was exponential. The next day my calves ached (sand works different muscles than pavement) and I ended up having to take my mid-week day off a day early. Having said that, I’m proud of my Monday beach run, and I’m seriously considering doing it again this coming week. Also, it was tremendously exhilarating to run with the Mediterranean washing over your toes, looking out onto the horizon of the water and thinking, Africa is over there if I just swam far enough. Great stuff to keep your mind off the running.

No weight loss this week, partially due to the fact that I backed off cross-training (the heat turned me into a sissy-girl), and partially because we have house guests who have stuffed us with food to the point that we’re bursting at the seams. Seriously, I’ve never eaten so much in my life.

The Chemical Brothers are still doing it for me with their new disc, so I’m not going to make any changes at all to my running music this week.

Other than that, I’ve got nothing to report. I wouldn’t say I’m thrilled with my progress this week, but on the other hand I learned a lot about where my self-pity line is (heat over 115°F makes me a big red sweaty crybaby), and I’ve had a stern talk with myself about what is acceptable and what is not as regards cutting myself slack. I’m not going to beat myself up for not cross-training in hell-like temperatures, but what I am suggesting is that rather than backing off completely perhaps I should choose something like swimming that would kill two birds with one stone— fighting heat whilst fighting inertia. I’m also going to find out what people who train in really hot climates (e.g. central Africa) do when the summer gets unbearable. I know they don’t just stop training.

And neither will I. 35 weeks to go.

I found another t-shirt in the same style as the Nagoya Dragons one, but this one was from a different vendor, and supports a different team. Is this kanji as nonsensical as the one from last week? And does that team exist? I’ll rely on our friends in Japan to help us out here.

I suspect this one is real Japanese. I don’t know why, I just do. I looked up the BC Brewing Company and couldn’t find anything but breweries in British Columbia, but still, I’m thinking this is something authentically Japanese. Can anyone verify?

While browsing around for something unrelated today I ran across this Flickr stream from the Beastie Boys, covering candid shots from their latest tour. Much to my surprise, the most recent photos (dated June 21) are taken in Istanbul! I particularly love the one of Fredo in the Kapalı Çarşı, but all the photos are good, even the ones not taken in Turkey. I’m definitely going to follow this stream as it progresses; I wish more bands we’ve heard of and care about would do this. Link

The heat wave continues unabated— I had to wait until the sun started going down to venture out of the house. I still made it to the bazaar in time, though, don’t you worry.

[click on each image to see a larger version]

It all started back with a little number called “Shout”…

Now this I can’t explain. I think maybe it could be about… er… no, I got nothin’.

So I guess I’m going to have to rethink that training plan of sitting completely still all day, since moving is physiologically essential, apparently.

This is something we actually have in our house— it’s so common in supermarkets that I’d pretty much forgotten it was funny. This is only the Extra Krep toilet paper; they also make Ultra Krep toilet paper, for the morning after those five-alarm spicy meals… go ahead and stick a roll in the freezer.

I just kept giggling like a school child at this one.

There are about a million copulation jokes here, but I’ll leave you to write your own.

Story: “once upon the time was a wonderful ummer wud f of flowers, oummer men the head so butteerflys two had a lot o work.” Got it? It’s almost Welsh in places.

I like swim, too, but generally I choose water more than a centimetre deep, and I put my whole body in. But to each her own.

If you want to see more of these, the bazaar archive is here, and don’t forget that the online bazaar shop is coming very very soon! I’m hoping to have it open this weekend. Stay tuned.

Here’s something I saw at last week’s bazaar but forgot to mention— I’m not familiar with any of these kanji, so I can’t comment on whether the message on these briefs makes any sense… can one of our Japanese-speaking friends fill us in, please?

I’ve been seeing these shirts a lot over the past few weeks— again, I’m not sure if the kanji matches what the English says… and can anyone tell us anything about this team (assuming it’s a team), the Nagoya Dragons?

Oh look, a photo of Antalya in late June! Seriously, I know I was strangely absent yesterday from everywhere, but it simply couldn’t be helped. It got up to 46 here yesterday (115 in old money); friends up the road in Side reported a local high of 50 (122F). Today I only showed a high of 44, but the same friends in Side said that it topped out at 51 there.

Basically the situation we’ve got here is that even inside the house, it has become too hot to run electronics for any length of time. Today when the sun was out I was able to have the computer on for about five minutes at a time before things started acting… not happy. Pointing the fan directly at the machine doesn’t help much, because at the moment sitting in front of that fan is akin to sitting in front of a hair dryer. Now that the sun has gone down, though, I thought I’d take a chance and let you know I’m still alive. Melting, but still alive.

We’re thinking that if this keeps up for any length of time, we might have to break down and get an air conditioner for our bedroom. I’ve been looking at 15-day forecasts for this area, and although the predictions are that this unbearable heat is temporary (as is everything else), I trust weather forecasts about as far as I can throw them. I think the plan is to wait a few days and see. I’ve priced up a few budget air conditioning units, and they’re not so expensive. The real problem is the electricity. The power in our neighbourhood went out no fewer than seven times today, no doubt due to the fact that more and more people are using air conditioners, and the power required is too much for the grid to handle. So do we want to add to that problem? And do we want sky-high electricity bills?

On the other hand, do I want to end up in the hospital from heat exaustion? I already had some problems with delirium today, trying to nap while drifting between dreams and consciousness and confusing the two. At one point a dream spilled over into real life and through the waves of heat I woke up and thought one of my housemates was some guy the police department had sent around to install an air conditioner for us. That’s how bad it’s getting. I’ve brought my blood sugar up a bit since then, though, and I’m feeling much more coherent now. A couple of ice-cold showers have helped, too.

I kind of preferred the part where I thought we were getting air conditioning, though. It was the one time today I was happy.

We got a delivery menu through the mail today for a local sandwich shop, which in itself isn’t so special (happens all the time), but check out their mascot/logo/whatever you want to call it: a photoshop of a literal deep-fried turtle sandwich (at least, one assumes it’s photoshopped). I had to laugh, because I’m pretty sure this is an image that would never, ever end up on menu in the United States (or do I have Romantic Memory Syndrome?). Anyway, I thought I’d share. Incidentally, we ordered some sandwiches from this place for lunch, and they were great. Nothing turtley about them. In fact, we were speculating as to why they’d choose a turtle for their logo, and we got nothin’. I thought maybe there was a Turkish play on words that I wasn’t getting, something about “turtle” and “sandwich” sounding alike in Turkish or something, but Emirhan says no, he can’t think of any language trick that would explain this. So there you go— the mysteries of life.

Since tomorrow is my full rest day, today pretty much marks the end of my first training week (still have one yoga class to do, but it’ll have to wait until after sunset when the temperature is more tolerable). I don’t want to do one of these training logs every day, because that would bore both of us, but since there will be a brand new routine on Sunday, I thought I’d talk about my current state and review what has happened during the week.

At the moment I’m running for time rather than distance, and the goal this week was to work up to the point where I could run 15 minutes non-stop. As I mentioned before, the hanging-out-and-labeling technique pretty much saved the day. By using that I was able to hit my 15-minute goal in the second training session, and kept that consistent through the three subsequent runs. I hadn’t pre-measured how long my running distance was, because I’m not yet at the point where running for distance makes any sense, but just to give myself an idea of how much I should increase my time next week, I made a point of remembering my route this morning, and when I got home I measured it out on Google. The verdict: in 15 minutes I ran 1770 metres, or 1.1 miles. In other words, I can run about a third of a 5k in a quarter of an hour. That’s pretty slow, but considering it’s my first training week it’s not too bad.

Most of the training programs I’m constructing my regime from are between 25 and 30 weeks long, and require the runner to be able to run a 5k before starting the program. I now have a little over 36 weeks before the race date, so I still have some time to build myself up to a decent 5k pace, which at the rate I’m going should take 40 - 45 minutes. So the goal this week is to gradually build up from 15 minutes to 30 minutes. I don’t need to stagger long runs with short runs yet because even my long runs are still shorter than what would be considered to be a marathon trainee’s short run. Right now I just need to build, build, build. Given my progress in this first week, I’m feeling confident.

Now that the blister on my foot has healed (yay!), by far my worst enemy is the weather. Even at 4:50 in the morning when I run, the temperature is still in the high 20’s and I come home 15 minutes later red and overheated. Next week I’m going to set the alarm ten minutes earlier and spend some extra time drinking water before I go out. Luckily yesterday marked the shortest night of the year, so the darkness will inch forward over time and give me some extra breathing room in terms of trying to stay ahead of the sunrise. Of course, my runs will also be getting longer, so I don’t think a later sunrise means I’ll be able to start sleeping in. Such is the nature of commitment, though, and I keep telling myself that it isn’t forever. When winter comes, I can run in the afternoon if I want.

The biggest change I’ve noticed so far is that I’m constantly hungry— according to my food journal I’m eating about twice what I normally do, and yet I lost two pounds this week (which is good, I need to take this extra weight off). One of my marathon-running friends says that this is just the beginning, that it’ll get to the point where I’m eating pretty much all the time on non-rest days, including during runs. I truly enjoy eating, so I’m looking forward to that.

Note to fellow runners: if you run with music (the community seems to be strongly divided on this), I’d like to recommend the latest release from The Chemical Brothers, We Are The Night. Four of the songs from the CD made up the entirety of this week’s soundtrack, and the songs I didn’t use this week will form almost all of next week’s playlist, as well. I like to run with music that has vocals but no real “lyrics,” if you know what I mean. One or two repeated lines in a song is perfect for me, and this release fits the bill.

So, to recap:

Total running time this week: 75 minutes (1.25 hours)
Approximate distance covered: 8.85 km (5.5 miles)
Weight: down .9kg (2lbs)
Physical issues: one blister that healed without incident
Mental issues: none, feeling great

Next week is probably going to be the hardest, because it’s the only time in my entire program that I’ll have to run double what I ran in the previous week, even though that’s not a huge increase in raw distance. I’ve got a lovely rest day planned for tomorrow, though (hamam and pedicure), so hopefully with the massage and everything I’ll be well-prepared.

36 weeks to go.

The bazaar is strangely quiet today— the people are still packed in shoulder-to-shoulder, but they’re all oddly silent, including the usually noisy vendors. I think it’s the heat. It’s not quite as bad as yesterday, but it’s still 35 outside, and that’s nothing to laugh at… apparently. Hopefully today’s bazaar finds will lighten things up a bit, especially since there’s even more of a sexual theme going on than usual.

Slight warning this week: though all the photos are safe for work and kids, a couple of the descriptions are such that you might not want to have to explain them to small children, if you get my drift. With that said, let’s carry on.

[click on each image to see a larger version]

But you know, sluttiness just sort of happens sometimes, can’t do anything about it.

I wonder which part of her isn’t made for loving you… probably not the paradise part.

First mission: You! It says something at the bottom about superior position, yeah yeah. We get it.

Bukkake with standards.

Yeah, I think this would be the first time in automotive history that Oldsmobile was referred to as “Love Car” … I totally dig the stolen Coca-Cola font.

Damn it, I can’t believe you did this to me— if we’re supposed to be not lovers you should have said something earlier.

Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much.

By the way, that word on the right is “time,” so now you can see… that it still doesn’t make any sense.

No, I said “time,” as in “time o’clock.”

It’s time o’clock for a nap now— If you want to see more of these, the bazaar archive is here, and don’t forget that the online bazaar shop is coming very very soon! Stay out of the sun, folks.

Back in May I made public the formula for TurboCoffeeWOOWOOWOO, my homemade rocket-in-a-cup recipe for getting yourself launched during bouts of overwhelming laziness. Problem is, summer is here now, and I don’t care how much the Turks argue that hot drinks are refreshing in this weather, there’s no way I’m going to sit here in the 38-degree heat and drink a cup of boiling anything. That’s just insane, and it’s not gonna happen. We need cold drinks, people— stuff with lots of ice in it! Caffeine the volume of which would fall under “intent to distribute” probably wouldn’t hurt, either.

So without further ado, I bring you TurboCoffeeICEICEICE:

• Got a cocktail shaker? Yeah, I thought you might.
• Start by spooning a single serving amount (or double, what the hell) of some sort of iced coffee or chocolatey drink powder into the shaker. I personally use Nescafé Ice, but I’m vaguely aware that this may not be available in your area unless your area is here. I’m sure you can find some substitute— they must have these sorts of things everywhere. If necessary you can use Nesquik or even pre-mixed bottled cold coffee drinks. Be creative, think of something.
• Add three heaping spoonfuls of instant coffee (the kind you would normally use for instant hot coffee, Nescafé works fine but there are dozens of others)
• Scoop in as much sugar as you dare (for me, this means about eight sugars). If you’re using sugar cubes, you might want to dissolve them in cup first with a tablespoon of hot water and then pour the solution into the shaker.
• Fill the shaker to the top with cold milk (not necessary if you started with a pre-mixed coffee drink, obviously), shake vigorously for about a minute, and pour over copious amounts of ice.

This makes a nice (albeit bracing) summery drink that will get you going no matter how terminally sluggish you are. As usual, I’m keen to hear and see your remixing efforts, so please feel free to share your favourite variations with the group. I’ve been known to throw the whole mix in the blender with a banana, but I’m crazy like that. Enjoy!