Saturday 5K

What'd you do today?

Not much here.  Just woke up, decided to run the neighborhood 5K.

Took first place female overall.  I mean, if you're going to run...

Go big, or go home, right?

Wasn't a great race.  I was sort of miserable at some point with random left leg pain, but I figured it was a 5K.  They're supposed to hurt.

23:25

Evaporation

Wanted:  Personal Assistant


Must be able to record/document dictation while running a 8 - 9 minute pace.

Today I had one of those GENIUS thoughts while I was running.  It was just a thought that passed through my mind and now it's evaporated like the sweat off my skin.  I remember thinking at the time that it was going to be really important and that I NOT forget it...

So clearly that didn't work out for me.

At least I got my  3 miler 14 miler in though.

Oh yeah, it was a little like that today...  maybe that thought was just something like, "don't forget, you're galactically bada**."

Vanity run amok

Today was one of those days where we started out with the good intentions to run L.S.D. and ran intervals instead.

Vanity Intervals.


You know, where you're running at a pretty solid pace, and you spy a group of runners ahead.  So you suck it up and push a little bit harder, you run a little bit taller, you swing your arms, you check your form, you make sure your pace is SOLID and when you pass those runners you say a strong, "Good Morning."

That's right.

Vanity over rules good sense.

The best is that in the area we run in there are runners all over the place.  Vanity sprints become more like interval repeats.  "Good Morning".  Head nod.  Making sure that the impression of, "I've been doing this for miles and miles and I could do it for miles longer" is thoroughly passed along.

That's how we got through our run today.

"Good Morning."

Nod of the head, smile, pick it up, crush the hill, fly down the roads, and maybe even toss in a little wave...
or, maybe not...
... all depends on if we can pull it off without looking tired.

~savor the run~

Run Richmond '12

I took up running and blogging in the same week in 2008. 

It was the end of April and I remember it being a particularly warm spring.  The running was almost as happenstance as the blogging.  Neither was pre-planned.  I did one, and the other just happened as a way to brag about my 

EPIC ACCOMPLISHMENT also known as a 36ish minute 5K.

After the 5K I jumped up to a Half Marathon, and dropped 10 pounds.  I gained confidence with the weight loss, and found some women to run with on Saturdays.  

And somewhere in all this, I started to really love this sport to the point where I didn’t have to run with people all the time in order to knock back some bigger mileage.  I liked running alone.  I felt empowered by the solo 8 miler I ran every week while training for my first marathon.  Even now, thinking back on it, I can taste the pride like the remembered flavor of a syrupy fountain drawn cherry coke.  Some things stay with you forever.

At the same time, I was no fool.  I knew better than to run more than 12 or so miles alone.  I had a good friend who was training for RVA Marathon ‘09 who was almost the same pace as I was, and we ran every single long run together from August to Race Day.  Every single one. 

Together we ran and were stronger. 

Together we ran and got lost but at least we were together in the middle of Ashland. 

Together we ran out of water and had an epically bad 20 miler that bordered on dangerous.

My blog evolved as a way to share my run love, as well as these disastrous/brilliant stories.  I was a love sick crack-head and I lived to tell anyone who would listen that the marathon is not for wuss’s, and by the way, no one who reads my blog is a wuss.  

Anyone who believes they can do this, and is willing to put in the time, can do this.  

I am a marathoner, I would know.

The following year my running mate and I had different goals.  I had a second marathon to run in Richmond, and she no marathon ambitions.  We quickly realized our “train as a duo” plan was flawed if we weren’t lined up to do the same type of event.

And that is how I came to run with Sports Backers Marathon Training Team.  I needed a back up band, or at the very least a tambourine player, for my solo tour.

Since joining MTT I’ve grown as a runner in numerous ways.  If success was only measured in the number of minutes subtracted from my previous PR’s, I would be quick to point out that I’m almost an hour faster in the marathon. 

But for me, the real value of MTT has nothing to do with pace, speed, and number of marathon successes.  It’s measured in people.

People I trust, people I consider friends, and people I have never met but will run 20 miles with on any given Sunday in October.

We mix and we mingle, we sweat and we laugh, and we laugh at ourselves, and any number of private jokes. “CHICKEN BONE!”  Sometimes we are serious and wonder if today is that day where we’re going to have to give a fellow runner CPR, or we are all ears as we listen to our friend’s vent.  Most of the time we are light and conjure positive thoughts that we hope will carry us through the tough times on Race Day.  “This ain’t no Country Club... this is R.V.A.”

Even with all that positive run love MTT happiness in my heart, I knew that this year, 2012, was not going to be my year.  I had decided for a number of personal reasons not to run the Richmond Marathon. 

It's just, the more I thought about that crisp morning in November, and the city I love so much, the sadder I became.  

Where would I be standing on race day when runners stood huddled together in the start corral?  At home watching NBC12, at a water stop pouring a little water in every cup, or out on the road pressed shoulder to shoulder with those excited athletes while the brown leaves tumble among our feet?

Richmond Marathon is my hometown race.  How could I possibly not run my hometown race?  

I am a marathoner.

And so I’ve decided.

I’m going to Run Richmond. 

Maybe I race it.  Or maybe I run it.  Either way, on November 10, 2012, I know where I plan to be.

Come join me?  MTT starts in less than a month.

a.k.a. the one where I said to myself, "Self..."

Also, this post isn't so much about "running" as it is about "me".  Forgive me while I indulge a bit..

How self aware are you?

I like to call myself "pseudo-self-aware".

When things get tough, but are pretty, I cling to my friends and share and vent and giggle and pretty much make a nuisance of myself in the best possible way.  Like, when I'm stressed out because my GPA is ridiculously high and I've studied to the point of having an eye twitch but I'm slightly babbly due to exhaustion and I am so overwhelmed that I quote The Princess Bride ALL day long... that's when I tend to vent to my friends about my crAZy life.

"I've got my country's 500th anniversary to plan, my wedding to arrange, my wife to murder, and Guilder to frame for it... I'm swamped."

I KNOW everyone likes ~that~ girl.  She's hilarious, even when her eye is twitching.  Her favorite things to do are to mock herself and mock her eye twitch and mock ... well...  It's an easy target.

But when things are ugly I PUSH my friends away.  Sometimes I've been known to actually walk away from conversations.  I disconnect.  Literally.  Like, deactivate my FB account.  Then, if I don't actually pull away, I start reading between lines on e-mails and text messages.  Hmm, I think.  Maybe 'call any time' actually was code for 'you annoy the crap out of me I hope we never speak again'...  and then I say, "I don't want to bother you, I know you're busy" and "I'm okay" even when I'm not...  like, when my kid was diagnosed with Autism, or when our ENT told us my son's hearing was being permanently damaged by all the scarring on his tympanic membrane, or when....

One day I'll explain everything, but by then it will be old news and easier to write about in my usual self depreciating humor-filled style.  Suffice it to say, right now, I need my peeps.  And yet, I caught myself pushing back, and I said to myself, "Self...".  And this is where having a really great therapist comes in handy, and why I say I'm pseudo self aware..."You probably shouldn't push your friends away this time."

And so instead of continuing to push, I did something radical and, possibly, life altering.

I opened my mouth and told my posse about my self destructing tendencies.

And do you know what my posse, as a whole, said to me...?

"Thanks for letting us know Chica, but you're not going ANYWHERE.  C'mon, let's go for a run."

Aren't they the best?

Yup.  I'm all schmoopy.

like a hot knife into butter

I hurt.

I just do.

Even if it seems like I don’t, even if I’m putting on a good show for people...  I do.

I’m not cold and heartless, as has been suggested to me.  I’m practical.  But that said, I still hurt like any other human.  And I don’t think there’s a band aid big enough to cover this hurt.

It’s starting to show itself in my writing.  Which isn’t helping me one bit.

I have a deadline looming.  

So, I was going to write up a nice little piece for Miles & Minutes about my 10K PR and The Break Up.  Sort of a spin off piece of the blog post I wrote the other day.  It would touch on how much short races hurt in a completely different way when you compare them to longer distances. 

And then that’s where it went down hill.  I went on to write about how it hurts.   How the pain is different, and what came out was too graphic for Miles & Minutes.  It’s acute, like a scalpel slicing into flesh, parting skin into two identifiable pieces that can easily be stitched back together. 

See?  Not so much running related as emotionally tied.

And I keep coming back to being two women...   I am two women.

The housewife and the prostitute runner.

Breaking Up is Hard to Do

a.k.a. the blog post where 1/2 of my friends tune in to see if I really just wrote that...but I didn't.

I’m sure you’ve all had that moment.  

That moment where you go out to lunch or dinner, or even Starbucks for a iced coffee ~ light with Splenda ~ with someone.  The SOMEONE who you think is your ~person~ and the next thing you know, the harsh truth come into sharp relief.  

“I’m being dumped.”  

And with that you realize that the restaurant or public venue was carefully chosen to prevent a huge scene, but of course ... that doesn’t always help.  I’m sure plenty of big scenes occur out in the public arena.

Take, for example, my recent 10K.

I had my old PR, we went out for a run with 33,329 other people, and boom.  I broke up with that PR.  In public.  In a HUGE way.  

In a, “it’s not ME, it’s YOU” kind of way.

10K PR and I were quite a couple.  We’d been together since early 2010.  We’d run a few Half marathons together, and heckfireandshoot, even a few marathons together.  We were freaking tight.  I’m sure that 10K PR didn’t even see it coming.

Of course, like many relationships start, when I got the PR to begin with it really never occurred to me that we would be together for so long.  We started out on shaky ground, with several possible 10K’s looming in the immediate future.  Lots of opportunity to move on quickly.  As life happens though, it’s not what I chose to do.  I tucked 10KPR against my side and it became just a part of my life.  

Like an old familiar pair of shoes.  

It was very round too, 54:54.  Even and easy to remember.  No hanging :09's for that PR.  No sir indeed.  The old 10KPR was very balanced and level.  Still, I ~ahem~ don't really miss it.  

At all.

The New PR and I are just getting settled in together.  I'm finally used to looking at it.  I'm not sure it's a lasting relationship though.  I mean, while I like it a LOT, I keep wondering if there’s something better for me right around the corner.  This doesn't bode well for any budding relationship, true?

Registration is still open for our club 10K.  I guess I just need to decide if I should go, or not...  see if it's the right time of a break up.  Of course, then there's always the detail that sometimes the oldPR turns out to be a bit of a klingon...

Life's in the details. 

True?

~savor the run~