I ran in a hail storm today. A HAIL STORM.
Not on purpose, of course, but if this doesn’t make me a “real runner,” I don’t know what does.
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: Rest Days | Tags: apparel, days off, good advice, injuries, long run, nerves, Rest Days, running, winter
URD stands for Unscheduled Rest Day, which is what today is. While most of the aches and pains from the 17-miler quickly dissipated, my heel flared up in a fury and did not cease hurting until today. I took it easy this week, though I did do the scheduled track intervals on Wednesday. I cross-trained hard on Tuesday and Friday, did an easy 6.5-miler on the treadmill on Thursday, and took yesterday as my scheduled rest day. This morning, my heel felt blessedly fine, and it still feels fine even after a full work day. The plan was to run for about two and a half hours tonight, not watching the miles, just getting in the time at an easy pace. It was Mandy’s suggestion, and I think it was a good one.
I actually feel really good about taking off today, though. I’ve been pushing myself extremely hard, and to be honest, I’ve been quite frightened this week that I overdid it already. Today is the first day I’ve felt good and rested in quite a while, so I’m going to take advantage of that, catch up on a few chores, and wake up fresh tomorrow.
I also bit the bullet and bought a running jacket. With the weather in the single digits, even two base layers and a pullover aren’t cutting it. It kinda hurt my wallet, but at least I’ll have no excuse to press the snooze button tomorrow morning.
Filed under: Longest Run Ever, Training Runs | Tags: healing, injuries, off day, running, running routes, shoes, struggle, winter
Yesterday I ran seventeen miles, give or take. I think it might have been a bit too long – though it is also possible I ran more than seventeen miles, because I got a little lost, and my phone, on which I had installed a temporary GPS device, died at mile fourteen.
Sorry for the run-on sentence (hee). I feel quite accomplished that I even finished the seventeen-miler, and I’ve been told I shouldn’t be upset about a bad run, especially since, you know, most people DRIVE that distance to get where they need to go, and complain about the commute time.
The thing is…it hurt, and not a healthy, worn-out way. When I stopped running, my ankles, feet, toes, and knees were throbbing. Admittedly, this week had some variables – most of them my fault – that I hadn’t dealt with since starting my running plan: I didn’t cross-train the day before the run, it was twelve degrees outside, iced tea is NOT proper hydration, my shoes are due for a replacement, I worked six days last week, I finished the route by estimating the time it would take to run three miles on my watch, my paces were WAY out of wack, etcetera…I know, get the violins out for a weep.
Variables or not, though, I’m not risking actual injury by running next weekend’s twenty-miler. At the most, I’ll repeat this week and try to accomplish higher-quality runs. All too clearly do I remember the achilles injury that cost me six months of running in graduate school. Much as I wanted to, I wasn’t ready to run those 6.5 miles after three weeks of training, and I’m similarly not ready to run twenty miles right now.
I’m feeling much better today, though that blasted tendon still aches just a tad. Here’s to an easy week and a quick recovery.
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.
