Brew Review: Rhizing Bines

Last night, I came home from work, made a turkey sandwich, watched Sunday's episode of The Newsroom (OMG if you aren't watching this show you're an idiot and also possibly a terrorist), and drank this:

Rhizing Bines is a collaboration between Dogfish Head and Sierra Nevada, though everything on the label is in that Dogfish Head font they make all their labels in, so I didn't know that until after the fact. 

Anyway, I've tried a lot of Dogfish Head beers in the past couple of years, and the experience has been super hit-or-miss for me.  I still stand by their 60 Min IPA as one of the most drinkable IPAs out there, and still stand by their 120 Min IPA as one of the least.  Some of my more unpleasant beer drinking experiences has come out of drinking cloying and/or fruity beers (the 120 Min is like syrup, in my opinion, and I also think their Olde School Barleywine can die a slow death, but that's more barleywine's fault than Dogfish Head's), so when I took a quick glance at this bottle, I was concerned: those look suspiciously like grape vines to me.  Upon further examination, I can see they're conical hops, and using ye olde Google machine, I have determined that a "bine" is:

Thanks, thefreedictionary.com.  

However, I knew none of these things before I drank this beer, and was somewhat concerned about what I was about to consume.

I poured this sucker (well, half of it anyway; it came to me in a 1 pint, 9 oz bottle) into a pint glass and took a whiff.  It was very fruity, almost tropical.  My concern deepened.  I took a sip.

Imagine my pleasant surprise to discover that this is a largely unremarkable IPA!  My first impression was of piney, resin-y hops, which quickly warmed to a smooth finish.  There was almost no fruity taste to speak of.  But for making a big show of having two types of hops, any potential for those big, bitter flavors quickly gave way to a caramel malt.  Isn't this a Double IPA?  Shouldn't I be blown away by dominant, flavorful hops?  Alas, I was not.  This was, as I said, largely unremarkable.  Perfectly fine to drink, but I think it doesn't know what it's trying to be, and as an experimental IPA, misses its mark.  The only aspect of this beer that spoke to its Double IPA nature was the fact that I got pretty drunk.

And speaking of which, very early this morning - just a few short hours after my beer tasting session - I woke up and went to the track for 800s, where I did this:

I'm telling you: I'm onto something with this whole beer-before-running thing.

The Final Push

If you're paying attention, you may have read the title of the post and thought to yourself, "Wait a minute; I thought her race wasn't until September 28th. What's this final push business?"  You are indeed correct - I still have five weeks to go before race day.  

But I also have two weeks of travel that will take me from New York to Connecticut to Maine to Philadelphia (apparently you can't fly directly from Portland to LA, even though I'm sure that's a highly desirable route) to LA and back to New York.  In order to make sure I'm managing to log critical miles and workouts in the midst of that cross country and back nightmare, I had to do some serious rejiggering of the workout schedule.  And while I didn't exactly reinvent the wheel or anything, because of when I'm traveling and when I'd be able to get workouts in, I ended up with two intense weeks ahead of me.  The final push before the taper.

I suspect this is too small to read. Click to enlarge if you care (no pressure)

Some lowlights: 

• 800s tomorrow morning.  800s are the worst.
• 22 miles on Saturday after driving to Maine the Friday evening before Labor Day weekend, which I'm sure will be a short and painless trip and which will definitely not result in my sister and me calling each other ugly/stupid/fat, because we're adults now (my Brother-in-Law is very much looking forward to this trip)
• 800s again next Tuesday morning on the local high school track in Maine.  It's super depressing to be so old that high school boys no longer cat call me.
• 22 miles again next Wednesday, the day after 800s.
• Traveling literally the further possible distance in the contiguous United States: Maine to LA, by way of Philadelphia.
• 3 days of treadmill runs or smog runs in LA on a work trip. Fielder's choice.
• Taking the red eye home. 

So, if at any point in the near future, you're wondering why I haven't responded to your email/Tweeted about the Giants abysmal preseason performances/updated my blog, there's your answer.  Your patience is appreciated.  (Not yours, Eli Manning.  Stop wasting time in the pocket).

Oh, one last thing worth noting: when I realized my upcoming travel was going to be pretty tough on my body and psyche, I decided to ease up this past week (what was I saying about always doing all my runs?...).  So last night, after I mapped this all out while drinking a beer and watching Hard Knocks and getting super fired up about athleticism and crushing things, I went for an easy run.

I'm not saying having a beer beforehand helped my pace.
But I'm not NOT saying that either.

The Schedule Shuffle

Here is something I've alluded to, but I don't think I've ever said explicitly: despite paying TrainingPeaks for a marathon training schedule, I almost never stick to the schedule as written.

I know, right? Our hero has a tragic flaw.

Just kidding (about the flaw, not about being a hero). To be clear, with rare exception I complete each of the workouts I'm assigned. Each week, I have one long run, 1-2 days of speed work, and 2-3 easy runs, and each week, that's what I do (I also spin once a week, and catch up on my DVR once a week). In addition, I run these workouts as they're prescribed: if I'm meant to run 20 miles, I don't say "actually, 10 is enough of a long run this week," and much as I absolutely hate that TrainingPeaks has declared my tempo pace to be 7:00/mile, I don't decide "8:30/mile sounds like tempo to me."



(I do the workouts so I can eat the hotdogs and drink the beers, FYI)

What I seldom do, though, is run any of these workouts in the order they're assigned, nor on the proper day. I understand they're assigned in this order on these days for a reason: your long run comes at the end of the week so you get used to running on tired legs, and since 9 times out of 10, your marathon is on a Sunday, that's when your long run is scheduled (mine's actually not. Suck it, TrainingPeaks!). But as I mentioned in my post about training and work travel, sometimes things like "obligations for which I am paid and can therefore continue to live in my tiny apartment with my cat friend" and "obligations for which I am not paid but would so much rather do on a Saturday evening than go to bed at 8:00pm to prepare for a run" crop up and I must work around them.

Thanks to trial and error over the last 6 years, I've mostly figured out what works. For example, if I know I have a work dinner that will keep me out until 11pm one night, I won't head to the track for speed work the next morning, unless I'm in the mood to feel extremely sorry for myself. If I'm going to a wedding with 300 of my closest friends (you think I can drink...), I'm not going to commit to 22 miles the next day.

The past few days have been a test of this schedule shuffle. I was traveling for work on Saturday, and while I wasn't leaving until the afternoon, the prospect of driving 3 hours to the Hamptons with 20 miles on my legs wasn't very appealing. So I opted to knock out 10 miles at GMP Saturday morning before I left. Of course, this meant I had to get through 20 miles on Sunday, after having stayed out until 1:00am, but the combination of cooler weather and being the designated driver meant I could both sleep in a bit and not be a wretched, hungover, sad panda when I woke up. While 20 miles a day after a speed workout wasn't ideal, both workouts got done.

This week got trickier. With a Saturday wedding, I knew I didn't want to run long either day this weekend, since I'd rather catch up with my friends on the dance floor until 2am than.... Do anything else, ever. So I slotted this week's 22 miles for Friday morning, when I'm taking the day off. That left me with two easy 6 milers, an easy 10 miler, Yasso 800s, and a day of spinning. And a work dinner Monday night. And a very early meeting Wednesday. Are you following all of this?

Monday, I spun in the morning. Tuesday, I ran 800s in the evening. By the time I set out for 6 easy miles this evening, I was wondering why in the hell I was so sore. Until I realized that all this schedule shuffling had resulted in a long run, two days of speed, and a hard spin in 4 days. There is a reason no one pays me $29.95 to write training plans.

Sometime between now and Sunday, I'll figure out how to slot those last three workouts in with the requisite dance floor antics, late night room service, and champagne hangovers. Wish me luck.

On Technological Glitches

This was going to be a post about speed work.

Speed work is front of mind for me tonight, because after I left the office, I dragged myself to the gym, where I was tasked with a tempo run. Specifically, the plan called for 2 mi w/u, 3 mi @ tempo, 2 mi c/d. The plan (which, it bears repeating, is tailored for those looking to break 3:15, which I am not, but they don't make a break 3:20 plan) went on to specify what that tempo pace should be. It was 7:00/mi. I was alarmed.

Begrudgingly and not without difficulty, I accomplished this workout as prescribed. However, I spent those three tempo miles thinking two things:
1. No way in hell I'm doing all three of these (I did, but only by lying to myself and saying I'd stop at 2), and 
2. In the epic battle over which sucks worse, the long run or speed work, speed work wins in my book, without question (ask me again after I run 20 miles then sit in a car for 2 and a half hours to travel to a work event on Saturday).

So I finished my tempo run with these thoughts in my head, and decided I should write a blog post about how I hate speed work, and how I don't even bother racing distances shorter than 26.2 miles anymore because I dislike the discomfort of running fast so much. But, since I was walking home from the gym and am not looking for additional ways to be nearly run down by vehicular traffic, I decided I would dictate this blog post to my phone.

I began thusly: "There is a reason I only race very long distances, and that reason is that I hate running fast."

My dictation app transcribed this:





Not only is this not at all what I said, nor even tangentially related to speed work, but it's factually inaccurate. I love cats.