Filed under: Inspiration, races | Tags: endorphins, good day, half marathon, hills, Inspiration, marathon, nerves, races, running, slow
I love what happens after a race, after a hot shower and a good meal, how the body and the mind wilt into beautiful relaxation, for once in harmony with one another, basking in accomplishment. I’m back home from Hyannis, in scrubs and an old college sweatshirt, barefoot, lying back on my soft bed as I type this. I pushed myself today, and it paid off.
Everyone was expecting a windy, rainy day, but the weather was just fine, clear and cold and even a little sunny. The course was pleasant, filled with rolling hills and the salt smell of the ocean. I kept a steady ten-minute-mile pace through the whole race, which is slow for most but a pretty big deal for me.
As with Disney, I’ll list a few memorable things below:
- Nerves. Nerves like whoah. I was running with a bunch of people from work, all of whom are very fast. Though I love working at a running store, it has given me a slight speed complex. A sub-two-hour half marathon is peanuts to most of them, and I struggled to crank out a 2:10 (edit: coolrunning says 2:11.41 – rats) today. I’m proud of my race time, and they don’t judge me, but it did make me a bit self conscious at the race start.
- The view of the sea. I loved the salt air, swinging into my face as I rounded a curve. If I ever doubt God, the sea squelches that doubt. It is alive, frightening, beautiful, peaceful.
- The new runners. I stuck around in the cold (it was absolutely frigid, honestly – when you’ve finished a big race, your body temperature plummets like a stone) to see some of the other finishers. I saw two people grab each others’ hands as they crossed the finish line. There was an overweight man who, as he crossed the finish, had such a look of fierce, proud determination on his face that it gave me chills. Two girls did cartwheels as they finished.
- My friend Mandy, who woke up before 6 AM and rode in the car for 1.5 hours each way, just to cheer for me and her friend. Soon I need to devote an entry to how amazing my friends are.
Now begins the steady grind to May. The Flying Pig is nine weeks away. We kick up the miles and the intensity starting this week. I’ve got one more 5K before the marathon, but from now on, it’s go-time.
Filed under: Dealing, Inspiration, Uncategorized | Tags: dreams, endorphins, good day, half marathon, healing, Inspiration, long run, races, running, winter
Well, it wasn’t as warm as I would have liked in Florida, and I didn’t go as slow as I would have liked. I did, however, have a great time and a strong finish, about 2 hours and 12 minutes. Instead of writing a long-winded play-by-play, let me regale you with a list of memorable moments:
- I met a lot of other runners in the Orlando airport. My day job allows me to talk to runners all the time, but I’m continually gratified by the connection everyone has to one another. We might have been “racing,” but one got a sense that we were all in it together. I imagine that it might be different for the elite runners, just as an undertone of competition often runs through the friendships of some professional musicians, but I enjoyed the continuity and the shared sense of accomplishment.
- My friend’s family got a large hotel suite at one of the Disney World resorts. We cooked ourselves a nice big pasta dinner the night before the race, went to bed at 8 PM, and woke up at 3 AM for an early, frigid start.
- I don’t think I’ve ever been so cold in my life as I was before and after that race. That includes all the time I’ve spent in upstate New York and Boston. Instead of getting warm, tropical Florida, we got sleet that poured down on us all day. I may be used to running in the cold, but I’m certainly not used to standing in it, when all I’m wearing is a pair of thermal tights and a couple of top layers. Let me tell you, those things are only effective when you’re actually running. Even wrapped in a mylar blanket post-race, the cold and wet penetrated my bones so deeply that I couldn’t get rid of the chill until the next morning.
- The cold does make you run faster. Even doing 10:10 minute miles, I could have run faster – or farther.
- I wasn’t quite prepared for all the public urination. There must’ve been scores of porta-johns, but people were standing at the woodside practically every twenty feet before the start. Also notable was the unfortunate soul who gave everyone a full frontal underneath a street lamp in his haste to, erm, relieve himself. I guess it was an emergency.
- There were some great costumes, but two deserve acknowledgment: A)The woman who braved the twenty-degree weather, wind, and sleet in a tiny little Wonder Woman outfit, and B)The man with the custom CWX compression pants, the $200 kind, made with American Flag-patterned tech fabric.
- The race itself really was awesome. My friend said the cold might have driven away some spectators, but I didn’t notice. There were certainly plenty of people cheering, plenty of high school marching bands playing, and more than enough Disney characters to go around. Running through the parks in the dark was by far one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. To my surprise, I almost started crying when the fireworks burst into the sky to signify the start of the race. I couldn’t explain why, but I knew, as the wind and sleet whipped into my face, as I pulled my hat low over my ears, as the people around me began to walk faster, then to jog, and then to run, that I was doing something good and right, that I was privileged, that I had been given some great and wonderful gift.
I slept like a log that night. After seeing my friend off for the marathon, I dropped back to sleep for a couple of hours before the flight home, and then I had a dream.
I dreamed I was in a large house, a house I’d been before. In fact, I knew I had dreamed of this house more than once, perhaps multiple times. I walked in, and a friend of mine – at first it was the friend who was running with me, but then I wasn’t sure – had moved into a new room in the house. I walked in and it was enormous. It was painted a deep olive green, and it was full of angles decorated with thick ebony beams. White patterns were stenciled onto the walls. The room was old and lush. I exclaimed at its beauty and its size, as it seemed to keep going and going as I explored it. I would turn a corner and there would be more of it. There were multiple beds of all sizes, some small enough for children. I went into a bathroom, and it was strangely set up and not very clean. The toilet was behind a curtain in what looked like a bathtub. The bathtub itself was the size of a hot tub, a deep tank that you couldn’t get into unless you climbed down a ladder. I had memories of that tub from previous dreams of house.
I remembered that the last time I had been in this place, I had found a secret passageway that led up to an attic, and that part of the path led to the basement. I had explored these parts of the house in previous dreams. The attic was a little girl’s room, I remembered, small and unused, with a little bed and a doll. The basement was a series of long wooden steps that led into a catacomb of old stairs and tunnels and concrete. I decided to find the passageways again. I didn’t want to go to the basement, but I did want to see that attic room again.
The passages were closed. They had been built over with marble. I think it was a shower stall. I felt along it with my hands, knocking, hoping I could pull it apart, but I couldn’t. The surface was cold, and the marble was thick and strong. I knew I would never get to that little girl’s room again.
Filed under: Rest Days, Training Runs | Tags: apparel, days off, endorphins, gross, injuries, running, shoes, winter
I went for a run in my FREE (!!!) new Craft base layer yesterday. It was 40 degrees out and I was positively hot. Working at a running store sure has its perks, and I’m not as afraid of winter running as I was a couple of months ago. Did I mention that the shirt is purple?
I love running into people I know on runs. (That was a slightly strange sentence grammatically, but I’m going to keep it.) On the way to a friend’s, I met a guy I went to school with, who seemed shocked out of his mind to see me. I guess I haven’t really told everyone I’m back yet. And the other day, I ran into a coworker who was just starting her twelve-miler.
I still have some slight heel pain, probably from running in my year-old Asics. Hopefully my dog-doo-free Veronas will fix that problem within the week. It’s kind of sad that I was SO lazy that I risked injury instead of cleaning the shoes. On the other hand, the dog doo was REALLY gross!
I will definitely have to be careful during the next couple of weeks. I’m ridiculously happy to be out again, and I tend to get overexcited and do too much when that happens. We’ll keep it at fours and fives for now, and then…the real training will begin!
Filed under: Inspiration, Training Runs | Tags: dreams, endorphins, good day, healing, Inspiration, running, sadness, struggle, Team
I can feel the endorphins fading as the dusk comes in, so I’d better hurry up and write about this before I start getting mopey again. Today was the first of my five mile short runs. The weather wasn’t bad: warm with a slight breeze, sunny but not brazenly so. The team started off as usual, and I ran as usual. I don’t think I did anything different.
But as I settled into my stride, I began to feel something strange. Something that came bubbling up from a warm place in my heart, a rush of –
Everyday I wake up and drag myself back from the dreams. I have come to expect the sadness and helplessness, dragging at me in waves over the course of the day. Even during the better times, when I’m distracted by something, or doing an enjoyable activity, it’s been there. He’s gone, he’s gone, he’s gone, says a small voice, always there, always unfair.
- and I didn’t recognize it at first. It’s been so long. But there it was, unexpectedly, a gift from God, and I felt Him with me suddenly, inside, outside, in the rays of the setting sun that flashed out from behind the trees and glowed against my eyelids. Joy. Joy. And I wanted to shout, to laugh out loud, to sing, to praise, and of course I didn’t do any of those things because I was surrounded by a hundred Team members, so instead I let it carry me, let it well up in my heart and coarse through my arms and legs, and I ran that whole five miles smiling and laughing inside.
I tried to keep it with me. It lasted for a little while, but I have to admit that it’s going away with the day. And the sad small voice is still there, saying what it’s saying. But maybe if I felt it tonight, I can feel it again. Maybe I’m doing the right thing. I’m searching. I’m seeking. I’m running. I’m hoping.
Filed under: Training Runs | Tags: days off, endorphins, good day, long run, running, struggle, Team
I should mention that I’m not starting at the beginning, here. One should not simply wake up one day and run six miles, unless you’re a superhero or my friend Neil, who, I believe, flitted through a seven-mile run at a random point last year because he “felt like it.” Anyway, I started my training with a 3-miler, running with a local team. It was awful. I was completely out of shape, and I think I spent half of it walking and wondering what the hell I was thinking. Since then, I’ve done two short runs and one long run per week, sometimes with the Team and sometimes alone. I got stronger quickly, more quickly than I thought. Last year, it took me almost a month to get through a run without walking. This year, I barely walk at all. I am, however, quite slow. My long runs have me going at a pace just under 11 minutes per mile, which I think classifies me as a “penguin.” This is ok by me.
All that being said, I was extremely nervous about this morning’s run. The past week was a little off-kilter, both physically and emotionally. My uncle bought me a plane ticket to come see some family on the west coast, so I packed my bags and escaped for a little while. It was fantastic, for the most part, except the crying in the airports (airports remind me of him), and I got in most of my runs and crosstraining. There are so many tempting mountains to climb out there, however, that I put running aside for a short while in favor of hiking (it was worth it). After five running-free days, I arrived home and attempted a four-miler. A nasty cough, paired with crushing humidity and a blazing hot sun, schooled me at once. I think I walked more than I ran, and I spent the rest of the day in low spirits, missing him more than I had in a month.
The good news is – I know, get to the point already – this morning’s run went well. I took it very easy, ran the whole thing super slow, even scaled a fairly decent hill. It helped that the Team was giving out freezy pops at the top. I was breathing like an asthmatic as I reached the finish, but reach it I did, and rewarded myself by taking off my shoes and washing my feet in the cool fountain that splashed conveniently by the side of the road. A lot of runners were congregating there, taking advantage of the cool water, and I spent a long time luxuriating in the morning sun, having conversations with other Team members.
I’m still cherishing my endorphins, and a couple of blisters. That’s ok. It’s way better than being sad all the time.
