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: Eating, Training Runs | Tags: apparel, half marathon, injuries, nerves, nutrition, races, running, winter
…I just a bar. An ENTIRE bar. I think that’s over 400 calories of sugar and fat. Good thing I am about to run five miles. The chocolate will be as if it had never existed. So I like to tell myself.
This is my last short run before the Hyannis Half Marathon on Sunday, which I am slightly nervous about. My heels have been hurting again, a bearable, slightly duller pain than usual, but nevertheless there.
I do sometimes wish I could suppress the urge to eat more when I’m exercising a lot. I consume far more calories a day than most people I know, and although I’m not gaining weight, I’m not losing it, either. If I hadn’t had that chocolate bar, say, then I’d have actually run off 500 calories, and felt a little better about how my rear looks in my running tights.
Speaking of which, I’m tired of the tights. Yep. Boston, it’s time to get warm. I’m tired of the layers, the tights, the hats, and the gloves. Shorts, a sports bra, and a loose, cool T-shirt….yeah, that’s what I’m talking about.
Filed under: Longest Run Ever | Tags: beginners, fight, FIRST plan, half marathon, long run, marathon, races, running, running routes, struggle, Team
Today I ran fifteen miles.
This is very significant. It’s the longest run I’ve ever done. It also really hit home that I am training for a marathon. A MARATHON. It’s interesting, when you think about it. Running is becoming increasingly popular. Thousands of people run races, and many of them run marathons. You should have seen the number of people at Disney. It was as if the population of a small city was running down the road, decked out in thermal tights, hats, jackets, and that look that I’m finding is unique to the serious runner: something in the lines of the face, in the sinew of the calves, some strange determination in the eyes – and something else. A stubbornness, a doggedness. Maybe even a degree of mild insanity.
Fifteen miles is a little more than half of a full marathon. Supposedly, I will be able to run the twenty-six-point-two miles necessary to cross the finish line in thirteen weeks. My college girlfriends have bought plane tickets to see me. I have a hotel room booked in Cincinnati. Fifteen miles, according to the plan, will be peanuts in May.
Today, fifteen miles was really, really hard.
I mapped out a there-and-back route to downtown Wellesley. I prepared the way one would prepare for a race: ate pasta the night before, laid out my clothes, drank a lot of water, slept as long as I could. I filled a small water bottle with Gatorade, set my watch to zero, put my Craft hat on my head, took a deep breath, and went out the door.
There were a couple of long, steady hills, the worst of them at the end of mile 14, but nothing backbreaking. I kept my pace slow, about 11:23 minutes per mile. I stopped only for traffic lights, and there weren’t even too many of those.
The thing that surprised me, really, was just how long I had to run. Even with the Gatorade, I realized that I was getting profoundly fatigued. It was at mile 12 that I began to long for it to just be over, which I suppose makes sense, as my body has only trained to run 13.1 miles. It wasn’t pain, it wasn’t breathing, it was just…weariness. I was tired. I was thirsty. I wanted to lie down and take a nap, drink a gallon of chocolate milk, sit on a chair. Time seemed to be slowing down each time I looked at my watch. But still my feet went on, my forefoot striking the pavement, my calf flexing, my knee lifting, circling, again, again, again.
When I reached the top of the final hill and began the descent home, I felt vaguely like crying – not because I was emotional, but because crying seemed like it would be a soothing, relaxing thing to do. I didn’t cry, though, because there was the corner of my street in front of me. And look: there’s that old Asian man who collects bottles and cans every Sunday when the recycling is put out! There he is with his shopping cart full of junk! Smiling, miming my jogging, clapping! Holy crap, I have a fan at the finish line! I hit the lap button on my watch and slow to a walk, and he shakes my hand.
I go into the house, drag myself up the stairs. Chug two glasses of chocolate milk, oh sweet chocolate milk! Turn on the shower until it’s barely warm, get undressed, step in, turn the faucet slowly until the water is cold, cold as ice. No one is home so I shriek madly, letting the frigid water run over my muscles for as long as I can stand it. I get dressed, stretch, take a ten minute nap. Get back in the shower, this time to wash my hair. I let it get hot. Revel in the steam. Dry off, get dressed again.
Next week I am scheduled for the usual: a short tempo, a long tempo, and a long run. The long run is supposed to be seventeen miles. I am worried I won’t be able to do it. This is hard. This is really hard, folks.
I do remember one thing, though. I was training for my very first big race, a half marathon in my old city. I was running with the Team. We were going nine miles on a hot July day. I had never run nine miles before, and I was struggling. One of my friends on the Team ran with me for the last three or so miles. I had to stop to walk a couple of times, and I couldn’t seem to get control of the respiratory element of the run. I was hot and I felt like throwing up. It was awful.
After that, though, everything got easier. It was like 9 miles was some sort of wall that I had to break through. Ten miles was easy, eleven miles was easy. The race was difficult, but nothing like that 9 miler. I’ll never forget that run.
I have twenty-six-point-two miles to go. I’m not giving up now.
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: Training Runs | Tags: FIRST plan, good day, half marathon, long run, running, running routes, winter
Yesterday morning brought yet another snowstorm on the day of my long run. The high was 28 degrees with a wind chill of 2. There have been times I haven’t wanted to run, times I just felt lazy, but yesterday I really didn’t want to get out there. The choice between freezing and running on the treadmill for two hours was just downright awful. I spent most of the day procrastinating.
The snow finally stopped coming down at 2, and I sucked it up and left the house near four o’clock, wearing thermal tights, a tank top, my Craft base layer, a half zip from EMS, a tube scarf, a headband, and a hat. I borrowed a pair of knit gloves from my roommate and jogged off.
I have to admit that I’m starting to really like the FIRST plan. The last time I ran eleven miles, I had to stop at mile 5 with a hurt ankle. My previous long runs had been terrible, and I ended up skipping the half marathon. Yesterday, the only unpleasant thing that happened was that I was cold, and I wasn’t even that cold. The good thing about running is that you only shiver for about five minutes. If your gear is good, you heat up fast and the cold becomes pleasant. My hands started burning a little bit around mile eight when the wind kicked up, and there were a couple of snowy surfaces that required some interesting footwork, but – dare I say – the rest was cake.
This weekend is the Disney World Half! I’ll be running it at marathon pace + 30 seconds per mile. In other words, this will be one slooow half marathon. I’ll have to be careful not to let the race adrenaline take over. This is not the time to risk a usage injury.
