***if you are new here, and have no idea what this is going to be about you have two intelligent choices:
a) Leave Now.
b) Start here, then work your way back, m'kay?
In my highly overrated, and largely ignored opinion, there are essentially two kinds of people in the world...those that give some sort of credence to astrology and those that believe it is hokum. As for me...well, there's something to it. I am a Virgo. No, wait, let me say that differently. I am a VIRGO.
I am picky.
I am analytical.
I am a perfectionist.
I am a fuss budget.
I am a worry wort.
I can be extremely rigid.
I am more than a little stubborn.
And God help you, don't make me be late.
Starting in May of 2012 I was also in possession of a plan.
Which anyone that believes in the powers and characteristics of the Zodiac can tell you is one hell of a heady combination.
Suddenly, instead of having a vague goal and a hazy idea of how to achieve said goal, I had a concrete! structured! blueprint for getting there.
Rules! Schedules! Requirements!
To a Virgo? this is the equivalent of SHINY!!! to a crow. Or cake to a fat girl. (I kid...but still, you get my point.)
Not even remotely surprisingly, I latched onto this training program with a hearty gusto and heaved a gigantic psychic sigh of relief...
...until I looked at it a little bit more closely. And realized that, rather than running 5 or 6 days a week, I would only be running 3, maybe 4. The other days were either allocated to cross training or, the shock, the horror, premeditated REST days. I immediately panicked.
It had been more than a month since I had gone for more than a single day without running. I hadn't managed to increase my mileage appreciably. How on earth was I going to do it if I cut back on my running?
The twin sides of my nature began an epic battle.
The rule follower said "But the plan says its OK!!! Follow the plan!!"
The worry wart said "We're all going to die!!!! There is no way this will ever work!!! Gloom...Doom..."
So the rule follower started the plan, and the worry wart cheated, by adding in small "fun runs" on the mornings that were supposed to be cross training days.
According to the plan, I was to run 40 minutes on Monday morning. This was a longer time than I had ever tried to run on a school day. My 2 mile course was taking me about 20 minutes or so, so this would be almost double. I was a little skeptical, buuuut...the plan said so.
I obediently set my alarm on Sunday night, and rolled out of bed and out the door, giving myself enough time to run 40 minutes. It occurred to me early on that, I had no idea where to run. I mean, should I just run the same route I had been running...twice? That morning, I turned left at the end of the street, instead of right. And I just ran.
And this is how I continued for a good long while...I would run first 40, then 45, then 50 and finally 60 minutes on Monday. Cross train on Tuesday. Run between 40 and 60 minutes on Wednesday. Cross train on Thursday. Run 20-30 minutes on Friday, and then do my "endurance" run on Saturday. This ranged from 5 miles, the first week, up to 20 miles in week 17. Around week 12, some tempo runs were sprinkled in to the training as well.
The first couple of weeks, I continued to "cheat" on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Slowly though, I gave that up. I realized that, I was running longer and longer distances in the morning, and at a faster and faster pace. On those off days? My body kind of needed the break.
The first couple of weeks, I also tended to psych myself out pretty badly, by looking too far ahead in the plan. I would come back, exhausted from an 8 mile run, and panic that, in a month, I would be expected to run 12! 12 miles! That's a whole 50% longer!!!! How would I ever be able to pull that off??? (Fire! Brimstone! Apocalypse!)
I remember the day that I crossed the double digit threshold. I ran 10 miles. It was July 18th and I was 8 weeks into the plan. I came home, exhausted, but proud. This was a major milestone. I was impressed with myself, but totally convinced that there was not a chance in the world that I could go further.
10 weeks later, I had begun the taper. I had a 10 mile run scheduled. It was September 22. My husband and I were discussing it, as he had by this point, started a 1/2 marathon training program of his own. I remember saying to him "Yeah, but I only have to run 10 miles tomorrow...its not a big deal."
Only 10 miles. What a difference time and a little fanatical adherence to a plan had made.
Before I knew what happened, it was October 4th and we were boarding a plane for Minnesota. Three days later, I would run my first marathon.
But that? Is a story for another day.
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Baby Steps
***if you are new here, and have no idea what this is going to be about you have two intelligent choices:
a) Leave Now.
b) Start here, then work your way back, m'kay?
I now had a goal, a deadline and a party to hold me accountable. Sure that date was a looong way off and the person tasked with holding me accountable was less than enthusiastic about actually running the race, but still, this was enough to convince me that it was time to hunker down and get serious about this running stuff…as soon as the holidays were over. And it warmed up a little. And…
Excuses are so incredibly easy to come by. If you can’t find one, it takes next to no time at all to craft one. And I? Am an artisan.
Knowing this about myself, I braced for impact and let that nature butt heads with the other side of me: the stubborn one. I knew that, given the chance to wrestle it out, the stubborn side stood a fighting chance.
In early spring, I started doing something that shocked no one so much as myself…I changed my alarm clock to start waking me up at 5AM (ha! Take that 7AM!!) and stopped allowing myself to press snooze. I started getting out of bed, bundling up, and heading out my door to run. Every morning. In the beginning, it was a roughly 2 mile trot. Slowly but surely, I found ways to add a little distance here, a little distance there. So 5 days a week, I dragged myself out of bed, at the o’dark thirty, and ran around my neighborhood. On the weekends, I would go to the local rails to trails and run a longer run, roughly 5 miles. I was proud, but concerned…I wasn’t even clocking 15 miles a week at this point. How was I ever going to get to 26.2 miles in a single outing?
A little later that spring, business required me to start traveling to KY for a week out of each month. Much as I hated to leave my family, it occurred to me that it might be novel to run in a city, and seeing as I was to be staying in downtown Louisville, I knew I was about to get my big chance. The first morning that we were there, I awoke before the sun, pulled on my pants and headed out of the hotel. I had no idea where I was going, and what were the “good” and “bad” parts of town. Now…a quick note for those of you that may not realize this…I come equipped with my own form of GPS…that is Ghetto Positioning System. If there is a bad part of town? I will wind up there. So this? Not one of my more well thought out plans to be sure.
Anyway… I decided to just go. I quickly devised the ad hoc plan to just run to each intersection and let the lights dictate my route. Whichever crossing had the walk sign, that was the way I would turn. I carried on this way for a couple of miles, without incident. I ran through a little neighborhood of tidy looking brownstone type buildings, when I saw an SUV, stopped in the middle of the street, with its lights on and doors open. Something seemed a little dodgy about this to me, so I deemed this just as good a time to turn around and head back as any. As I did, I looked up and noticed that the building I had opted to stop and reverse directions in front of? The homeless shelter. Of course it was. Because I? Am never more than two turns away from being lost in the ghetto.
Later that morning, I told the story to my boss and coworkers. My local colleagues? Urged me NEVER to do that again. And I was instructed to run inside. On the treadmill. Suffice it to say that I did that one morning and then spent the rest of the trip with my running shoes in the closet.
Soon after I returned, my partner in crime came out to visit from MN, and we went for a run together. I almost broke him, and really worried that he was going to back out. (He didn’t.) It was at this point, that my husband (and kids) decided that they too would like to start running. To say that this shocked and amazed me would be something far shy of an understatement. My husband, up until this point had always stated that he only ran when being chased or chasing something. Apparently he had decided that perhaps it would be fun to chase me. I'm so glad that he did. But that is another whole blog post in and of itself.
The next month, when I returned to Louisville, one of my local colleagues had taken the time to find me a safe route to run…which I did, every morning. But before I left for Louisville...the morning before I left, to be exact, I ran another 5K, the Cumberland Valley Rails To Trails Race, Ride and Ramble...this time with my husband and son. I PR'd by almost 3 minutes, coming in at 28:03, and finishing second for my age division.
When I returned from that trip, I picked up right where I had left off, still running 5 days a week, now 2 times a day on soccer practice days plus one weekend run. Though I had a fantastic frequency going, I still didn’t seem to be able to break that distance threshold. I was already getting up at the crack of dawn, to run my paltry 2 miles…how on earth was I ever going to get my distance any further, without getting up even earlier?? I really started to fret.
Before too long, it would be time to head back to KY. I knew I already had one “safe” route in my pocket, but I really kind of had a hankering to find some other courses. A little Googling and I found an app and website, called WalkJogRun. You plugged in where you were, and it would spit out any local route that other runners had saved. Perfect! I quickly downloaded the app and started looking. Before long, I noticed that it also had a number of training plans available. I found one for a first time marathon, loaded it, and almost immediately had a gigantic sense of relief. It was May. The program was 20 weeks long. I had 20 weeks until the marathon. I could do this!
And so I began really training for my very first marathon.
a) Leave Now.
b) Start here, then work your way back, m'kay?
I now had a goal, a deadline and a party to hold me accountable. Sure that date was a looong way off and the person tasked with holding me accountable was less than enthusiastic about actually running the race, but still, this was enough to convince me that it was time to hunker down and get serious about this running stuff…as soon as the holidays were over. And it warmed up a little. And…
Excuses are so incredibly easy to come by. If you can’t find one, it takes next to no time at all to craft one. And I? Am an artisan.
Knowing this about myself, I braced for impact and let that nature butt heads with the other side of me: the stubborn one. I knew that, given the chance to wrestle it out, the stubborn side stood a fighting chance.
In early spring, I started doing something that shocked no one so much as myself…I changed my alarm clock to start waking me up at 5AM (ha! Take that 7AM!!) and stopped allowing myself to press snooze. I started getting out of bed, bundling up, and heading out my door to run. Every morning. In the beginning, it was a roughly 2 mile trot. Slowly but surely, I found ways to add a little distance here, a little distance there. So 5 days a week, I dragged myself out of bed, at the o’dark thirty, and ran around my neighborhood. On the weekends, I would go to the local rails to trails and run a longer run, roughly 5 miles. I was proud, but concerned…I wasn’t even clocking 15 miles a week at this point. How was I ever going to get to 26.2 miles in a single outing?
A little later that spring, business required me to start traveling to KY for a week out of each month. Much as I hated to leave my family, it occurred to me that it might be novel to run in a city, and seeing as I was to be staying in downtown Louisville, I knew I was about to get my big chance. The first morning that we were there, I awoke before the sun, pulled on my pants and headed out of the hotel. I had no idea where I was going, and what were the “good” and “bad” parts of town. Now…a quick note for those of you that may not realize this…I come equipped with my own form of GPS…that is Ghetto Positioning System. If there is a bad part of town? I will wind up there. So this? Not one of my more well thought out plans to be sure.
Anyway… I decided to just go. I quickly devised the ad hoc plan to just run to each intersection and let the lights dictate my route. Whichever crossing had the walk sign, that was the way I would turn. I carried on this way for a couple of miles, without incident. I ran through a little neighborhood of tidy looking brownstone type buildings, when I saw an SUV, stopped in the middle of the street, with its lights on and doors open. Something seemed a little dodgy about this to me, so I deemed this just as good a time to turn around and head back as any. As I did, I looked up and noticed that the building I had opted to stop and reverse directions in front of? The homeless shelter. Of course it was. Because I? Am never more than two turns away from being lost in the ghetto.
Later that morning, I told the story to my boss and coworkers. My local colleagues? Urged me NEVER to do that again. And I was instructed to run inside. On the treadmill. Suffice it to say that I did that one morning and then spent the rest of the trip with my running shoes in the closet.
Soon after I returned, my partner in crime came out to visit from MN, and we went for a run together. I almost broke him, and really worried that he was going to back out. (He didn’t.) It was at this point, that my husband (and kids) decided that they too would like to start running. To say that this shocked and amazed me would be something far shy of an understatement. My husband, up until this point had always stated that he only ran when being chased or chasing something. Apparently he had decided that perhaps it would be fun to chase me. I'm so glad that he did. But that is another whole blog post in and of itself.
The next month, when I returned to Louisville, one of my local colleagues had taken the time to find me a safe route to run…which I did, every morning. But before I left for Louisville...the morning before I left, to be exact, I ran another 5K, the Cumberland Valley Rails To Trails Race, Ride and Ramble...this time with my husband and son. I PR'd by almost 3 minutes, coming in at 28:03, and finishing second for my age division.
When I returned from that trip, I picked up right where I had left off, still running 5 days a week, now 2 times a day on soccer practice days plus one weekend run. Though I had a fantastic frequency going, I still didn’t seem to be able to break that distance threshold. I was already getting up at the crack of dawn, to run my paltry 2 miles…how on earth was I ever going to get my distance any further, without getting up even earlier?? I really started to fret.
Before too long, it would be time to head back to KY. I knew I already had one “safe” route in my pocket, but I really kind of had a hankering to find some other courses. A little Googling and I found an app and website, called WalkJogRun. You plugged in where you were, and it would spit out any local route that other runners had saved. Perfect! I quickly downloaded the app and started looking. Before long, I noticed that it also had a number of training plans available. I found one for a first time marathon, loaded it, and almost immediately had a gigantic sense of relief. It was May. The program was 20 weeks long. I had 20 weeks until the marathon. I could do this!
And so I began really training for my very first marathon.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Taking The Next Step
***if you are new here, and have no idea what this is going to be about you have two intelligent choices:
a) Leave Now.
b) Start here, then work your way back, m'kay?
the thing about platitudes is that, while they sound pretty catchy, in general, they don't really tell you anything you didn't already know...however, sometimes you just need to hear them anyway. This? Was one of those times...and thankfully, there is no shortage of running axioms, with which to bolster one's spirits. At the end of the day, they pretty much all boil down to one simple fact...anyone who runs? Is a runner.
This would become my mantra, post blister.
As summer turned to fall, and school and sports started back up, I recommitted myself to running. The boy child had twice weekly soccer practice, at a field that was an almost perfect 3 mile distance away. Starting in September, on the nights that he had practice, I would come home from work, get changed, and run to his practice. Some nights, if I was feeling especially ambitious, I would run a few laps around the walking trail that lines the park as well. It felt good to get into a routine, and I enjoyed trying to better my time with each outing. I even added slightly longer runs into my weekends here and there and really, truly started to feel like an actual RUNNER.
Fall slowly turned the corner towards winter though, and soccer season came to an end. Without the scheduled regularity of practice, it was suddenly eleventy billion more times difficult to carve out time to run...what had been 3 times a week suddenly dwindled down to once weekly runs...I was crestfallen, and had no idea how to get my groove back. Where and how would I find the time to run?
It was right around this timeframe that I had expressed my desire to eventually run a marathon to one of my best friends, and had explained that I just didn't know which race I wanted to aspire to. It was at that point that he started trying to sell me on his company sponsored marathon, The Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon .
"Sure" I said..."Sure, I'll come to Minnesota. In October. Right-o..." A short haggling period ensued, and we finally came to the agreement that I would come out and run this marathon if and only if...
a) He ran it with me. (**updated for clarity's sake: This was *my* condition...)
b) He paid for the registration fee. (**this was not so much a condition, but the offer he made to convince me to do it)
...now, in all honesty, I would have done it regardless, but I figured, if he paid the fee, he would be less likely to not do it. I also figured, if he was training for it as well, I would have less temptation to give up...I would owe it to not only myself to follow through, but to him as well...come heck or highwater, this. was. happening.
a) Leave Now.
b) Start here, then work your way back, m'kay?
the thing about platitudes is that, while they sound pretty catchy, in general, they don't really tell you anything you didn't already know...however, sometimes you just need to hear them anyway. This? Was one of those times...and thankfully, there is no shortage of running axioms, with which to bolster one's spirits. At the end of the day, they pretty much all boil down to one simple fact...anyone who runs? Is a runner.
This would become my mantra, post blister.
As summer turned to fall, and school and sports started back up, I recommitted myself to running. The boy child had twice weekly soccer practice, at a field that was an almost perfect 3 mile distance away. Starting in September, on the nights that he had practice, I would come home from work, get changed, and run to his practice. Some nights, if I was feeling especially ambitious, I would run a few laps around the walking trail that lines the park as well. It felt good to get into a routine, and I enjoyed trying to better my time with each outing. I even added slightly longer runs into my weekends here and there and really, truly started to feel like an actual RUNNER.
Fall slowly turned the corner towards winter though, and soccer season came to an end. Without the scheduled regularity of practice, it was suddenly eleventy billion more times difficult to carve out time to run...what had been 3 times a week suddenly dwindled down to once weekly runs...I was crestfallen, and had no idea how to get my groove back. Where and how would I find the time to run?
It was right around this timeframe that I had expressed my desire to eventually run a marathon to one of my best friends, and had explained that I just didn't know which race I wanted to aspire to. It was at that point that he started trying to sell me on his company sponsored marathon, The Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon .
"Sure" I said..."Sure, I'll come to Minnesota. In October. Right-o..." A short haggling period ensued, and we finally came to the agreement that I would come out and run this marathon if and only if...
a) He ran it with me. (**updated for clarity's sake: This was *my* condition...)
b) He paid for the registration fee. (**this was not so much a condition, but the offer he made to convince me to do it)
...now, in all honesty, I would have done it regardless, but I figured, if he paid the fee, he would be less likely to not do it. I also figured, if he was training for it as well, I would have less temptation to give up...I would owe it to not only myself to follow through, but to him as well...come heck or highwater, this. was. happening.
Monday, October 22, 2012
Getting Off On the Wrong Foot
***if you are new here, and have no idea what this is going to be about you have two intelligent choices:
a) Leave Now.
b) Start here, then work your way back, m'kay?
…and now, the exciting conclusion of The Great Blister Disaster. As I mentioned yesterday…ok, ok, you caught me…not really yesterday. It’s a couple days later. But from a business perspective, it’s the next business day…so can we just go with that? …like you had a choice anyway.
What was I saying? Oh, yes, blisters.
So, the misguided, misdirected run in TX left me with two things. A new personal record for the longest distance run and a big honking blister, square on the ball of my foot. I spent the rest of the vacation largely ignoring it, and hoping it would just go away, but blisters aren’t fond of giving up their claim, if you don’t stay off of them. A few days after we returned from vacation, some friends of ours, who live roughly 3 miles away, were leaving on their own vacation. They asked if we could look in on their pooches, and I thought “Hey, perfect excuse to run…3 miles there, have a drink, feed the dogs, then get back out on the road, and run 3 miles back. What could possibly go wrong???”
So, early on Saturday morning – or at least what I thought of as early back then – around 7 AM, I strapped on my trusty Newtons and headed out the door. The sun was already up, the air was already still and it was already pretty darned warm. Not TX warm, mind you, but definitely mid-July in PA warm. Off I ran, towards their house, with all the best of intentions. The first mile went pretty smoothly, with some gentle inclines and declines. The second mile smacked me in the face with a pretty obnoxious hill, but I made it up the whole thing, without stopping to walk, no matter how badly I wanted to. I was rewarded for making it up this “monster” of a hill with a swift downhill, that really set my blister to rubbing. Hmmm. Hadn’t thought about that…
The end of the second mile brought me to a hill I had forgotten all about, despite having driven it hundreds of times, on my way to their house. I looked at it, panicked a bit, and then gave myself permission to walk…at the next mailbox. I managed to squeeze about 5 more “next mailboxes” out, before finally giving in, and walking the rest of the way up. As is so often the case, I was again rewarded with a downhill, which led straight to their house.
I scurried inside, in hot pursuit of air conditioning and a cold drink.
A good long(ish) while later, and I was faced with the harsh reality that I was going to have to go back. Suffice it to say that the trip home, was less successful than the trip there. It was hotter, sunnier, steamier and I was already tired, sweaty and cursing my blister.
By the time I got home, I was red in the face, out of breath and basically, downright miserable. I made the executive decision, then and there, that I was not going to take another step in running shoes, until that blister was gone. And I stuck to that. It’d be weeks before I ran again…and even then, I was hesitant, and unsure whether I even had the right to call myself a runner…
a) Leave Now.
b) Start here, then work your way back, m'kay?
…and now, the exciting conclusion of The Great Blister Disaster. As I mentioned yesterday…ok, ok, you caught me…not really yesterday. It’s a couple days later. But from a business perspective, it’s the next business day…so can we just go with that? …like you had a choice anyway.
What was I saying? Oh, yes, blisters.
So, the misguided, misdirected run in TX left me with two things. A new personal record for the longest distance run and a big honking blister, square on the ball of my foot. I spent the rest of the vacation largely ignoring it, and hoping it would just go away, but blisters aren’t fond of giving up their claim, if you don’t stay off of them. A few days after we returned from vacation, some friends of ours, who live roughly 3 miles away, were leaving on their own vacation. They asked if we could look in on their pooches, and I thought “Hey, perfect excuse to run…3 miles there, have a drink, feed the dogs, then get back out on the road, and run 3 miles back. What could possibly go wrong???”
So, early on Saturday morning – or at least what I thought of as early back then – around 7 AM, I strapped on my trusty Newtons and headed out the door. The sun was already up, the air was already still and it was already pretty darned warm. Not TX warm, mind you, but definitely mid-July in PA warm. Off I ran, towards their house, with all the best of intentions. The first mile went pretty smoothly, with some gentle inclines and declines. The second mile smacked me in the face with a pretty obnoxious hill, but I made it up the whole thing, without stopping to walk, no matter how badly I wanted to. I was rewarded for making it up this “monster” of a hill with a swift downhill, that really set my blister to rubbing. Hmmm. Hadn’t thought about that…
The end of the second mile brought me to a hill I had forgotten all about, despite having driven it hundreds of times, on my way to their house. I looked at it, panicked a bit, and then gave myself permission to walk…at the next mailbox. I managed to squeeze about 5 more “next mailboxes” out, before finally giving in, and walking the rest of the way up. As is so often the case, I was again rewarded with a downhill, which led straight to their house.
I scurried inside, in hot pursuit of air conditioning and a cold drink.
A good long(ish) while later, and I was faced with the harsh reality that I was going to have to go back. Suffice it to say that the trip home, was less successful than the trip there. It was hotter, sunnier, steamier and I was already tired, sweaty and cursing my blister.
By the time I got home, I was red in the face, out of breath and basically, downright miserable. I made the executive decision, then and there, that I was not going to take another step in running shoes, until that blister was gone. And I stuck to that. It’d be weeks before I ran again…and even then, I was hesitant, and unsure whether I even had the right to call myself a runner…
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