Winning at Life and being a Galactic Badass

A Mother Runner’s Guide to Winning at Life and being a Galactic Badass

Aka

Sh*t I just came up with on the fly.

I was chatting with another working mom the other day and she asked my opinion on training for a fall marathon.  She has twin babies, a job, a husband, and all the responsibilities that go with the above.  Oh, and most importantly, before kids she was a badass mother runner of marathons.

So what did I tell her?

You grew a human being out of two cells; you can f*cking do anything you want in life. Including train for and run a marathon while being the proud owner of babies, a job, a husband, and all that rot. Avoid putting limits on what you can do. The example you will set for your children when you do this is extraordinary. I speak from experience. My kids are a trio of galactic badasses.

When you start drinking alone before the sun comes up, people worry; this will also apply to running. Get used to it. If you’re going to do a fall marathon and juggle life, it’s going to take some pre-dawn running.

Respect the distance. You didn't grow the baby in three weeks. Your fitness isn't going to return in three weeks. Savor the work you put in, and on the days that suck, on the days where if feels like you will never get there from here, look at that hard work and see how far you've come.

Your stroller is a rolling sag wagon. Use this fact to bribe or beg your friends to run with you. You can carry the water, gu, babies, snacks, TV, kitchen sink, and extra body glide. The best way to run with a BOB is to have buddies who have no strollers of their own who are wiling to share your load. Consider it a public service to your friends. Their training will be greatly improved by the resistance. It’s like running on hills... all the fecking time. Amiright?  With additional help pushing, the over all pace of the group will be faster, and everyone will be happier, including the babies.

Face it; you’re not the only one. Moms run. They train. There is a community of support out there.  Find your people. Maybe you need physical runners to join you – great – find a running club and join a group run. Perhaps you thrive in an online community of thousands of women who support each other. Perfect, find the Another Mother Runner Facebook group. Just whatever you do, find your people.

You will never be good enough. You will always work harder than you ever worked before babies, because you will always be striving for better and more. Maybe this is because you have these babies that you want to instill your values into, or maybe this is just because mothers are all pretty badass, but whatever it is, your standards for yourself will be different from now on. Goals that seemed impossible before will be broken, and rewritten to reflect new “unreachable” goals. You’ll realize that it never gets easier, you just get faster.  Or stronger. Or more.

~savor the run~

Another Freaking bestdayEVER

Everything is easier when you are happy.

Whether it's losing weight, pushing through the hard 20 miles on the back of a 50 mile bike ride, running further than you've run in this training cycle... Everything is easier when you're happy.

It is easier to forgive myself for yesterday's mistakes, or embracing tomorrow's adventures... both are lightened by the lightness I feel in my heart.

Yes, sad things happen, and in those moments it's odd... I guess I still feel happy at my core. Even when tears are falling, there isn't a hopelessness blanketed over me.

What I've learned this week... month... the last 12 months... is that when I am happy with myself I am able to forgive myself. I am able to capture today as the most important day, to live with joy, to savor the run...

I'm able to respect the distance and appreciate how FREAKING FAR I've come.

I remember what it means to live with the FISH philosophy.  I remember that it's easy to make someone else's day when you wake up and feel that your day is made. It's a pleasant experience to look around and think, if today was "it" and I never had anything else, I could be happy with "this".

There are no "if only" regrets clogging my heart today because today is the bestdayever.

And that probably makes me a really f*cking irritating companion to hang with...

But that's Okay too.

~ respect the distance ~

Fear Less

For every second of a mountain bike video where there is a cyclist perched on the edge of a cliff, there is a MTB chic like me.

A babe on a bike who’s scared and sweaty; gripping the handlebars with white knuckles under purple gloves even as she gears down so she can chase her badass Fear-less friend through the forest trails. 

That girl?  You know the one? 

That girl, who is so totally focused on not crashing that she sometimes she forgets she is having fun?  The one who is concentrating on every single root, bump, rock, dust mote and mole hole as she negotiates her way through the trails? 

That girl is me.

And you know what?

I don’t even mind being that girl.

I’m not particularly good at the sport, but every time I go out and do it, I love it.  I find it to be invigorating and so unlike anything I’ve ever done before in my life.  

Even though it’s just like riding a bike, and I used to race BMX as a kid, this is not like riding a bike.

It’s dangerous feeling, but it’s empowering too.  It’s dirty and sweaty and all the things that we are taught that girls shouldn’t be.  There are cuss words and giggles, at the same time.

My tires pop and crunch on the roots and rocks.  They slip on loose gravel when I don’t expect it, and when that happens on a hill, it feels like the back end of the bike is vanishing from under me.  At least two or three times today I caught a root and it caused my front wheel to turn in a direction I wasn’t expecting.  That was a little frightening.

I could hit a tree.

I could wreck.

I could trust myself.

I could fear less.

And that’s what I did today. 

I hate being scared as much as the next girl, but I must love it too because I had to try to do everything I came upon today.  Every obstacle vanished behind a giggle or a muttered curse word.  Even better, I successfully “didn’t die” while trying to put it together into something that looked and felt an awful lot like FUN.

I’m sure that there was a wrinkle in my brow for a lot of today’s ride.  I know I was so focused on what was in front of my tire that I likely missed much of the beauty of today’s adventure. 

I am just as certain that I was smiling throughout the ride, even when I had to put my foot down so I could just keep going.

~savor~

The Year of the 5K: Day 1

I love data.  I love it.  I like to look at metrics and trends.  Of course, the ONLY way to look at trends is to A) Set a baseline for comparison.  B) Collect data.

Today I ran my first 5K of my Year of the 5K.  It’s been a LONG time since I’ve raced a 5K.  I figured the best way to launch my Year of the 5K was to just run one cold to see where I am.

5K's hurt. But let's not skip ahead.

I selected a Richmond Road Runners Contract Race that benefited a local YMCA charity.  I like running the club or contract races because I feel like they’re well organized.  Also, the course is one I’ve run a few times, so I am familiar with it and knew the topography.

Since it was less than two weeks since Steamtown Marathon, I wore my marathon race shirt.  I figured that way, if I was slow, I was at least wearing a shirt that proved I’m a badass.

I arrive early, registered, and ran about a mile warm up with some high knees and butt kick drills, as well as a few pick ups.

I decided to run without a watch today and just go on effort.  The goal was to run at “Max” effort for as long as I could.  I lined up a little off the start line because I knew I wasn’t going out to win it.

It wasn’t awful.  It was miserable.  It hurt like a ‘mo-fo’, or a 5K, whichever actually hurts worse.  I had a good time.  I chased down a guy ahead of me, dropped the girl tailing me, and in all ran about what I expected.  Ok... ok, I ran 1+ minutes faster than I expected.  Pulled out a 26:15, thought I would run around a 28:ish. 

5^th female overall, 2^nd in AG.  It was a small race, but I’ll take it.

My IT band is still a bit sore as it turns out.  Who knew?

Anyways.  I’ve now got a baseline upon which to set my standard.  The goal is a 5K about every month or so.  

Also, have I mentioned that 5K’s hurt?

~savor the run~

PROOF

Runners are weird.

I’ve said it before.

Freaking WEIRD.

I. am. a. runner.

Runners like pain.  We must.  Why else would we do this?  I’ve run 26.2 miles before.  I know what this kind of distance means.  I know what running does to my body.  I know that my quads will lock up at mile 24, my gut will twist into a painful rope, my arms will cry for release, my feet will dread the next step because they know there will be a knife from below, and I will keep running.

I know that there will be a photograph from the finish-line area where all the pain of the day will be etched on my face.

It is PROOF that I was in pain.

Knowing all that, I will do it again.  The memory doesn’t even have to fade before I start thinking about my next run.  I will wake up, probably someday soon, and look around for an opportunity for pain.

Maybe I won’t sign up for a marathon right away, but I will go out and run again.  I will run to the edge of death.  I will make my body hurt.  Some part of me will wonder what in the heckfireandshoot I was thinking when I signed up to race, and the other side of me will tell that part to STFU.

While the marathon is particularly painful, it’s important to remember that the 5K is too.  Even for marathon runners.  Maybe more so because the explosive nature of the shorter distance is not the same as the long ache that creeps upon the distance runner.

I kept saying during the training miles of this year that next year I would commit myself to a return to the short distances.  I need to regain my speed.  I have the base I want, now it’s time to go fast again.

This means, in theory, I should have more time to give my loved ones.  I will still be able to enjoy group runs, but if I miss a mid week ten miler, it won’t be the end of the world.  I am ready to cut back and savor the run.

But I know that there will still be the ache and burn that comes with my run.  I know it will mean the taste of blood in my breath in the moment and sore quads the next day. And yet, I will keep running.

~savor the run~

Steamtown Race Report

I owe you all a race report.

This should read something like, OMG I just ran SteamTOWN!  The course is AMAZING.  Downhill for 23 miles, up for 3... sort of.  It's more like "mostly" down for 23, and 3 solid climbs in the last 3 miles.  I should be screaming in joy about running a sensible and thoughtful marathon.

But instead my life is a little dim right now and I am having trouble celebrating the moment.  I can't seem to embrace that I just accomplished a marathon sized race.  I DID EPIC SH*T.  and yeah.  It's not there.

We did have a great weekend.  Me and The Pixie Chix arrived in Scranton on Friday afternoon.  ROADTRIPPIN'

I did run 26.2 miles.

I did not run a PR, but I am not mortified by my finish time either.

What instead comes back to me is that I finally had a great race.  I started out at a controlled pace.  I ran the first 16 miles with TMB.  It was great.  We were so smart to hang together.  Neither of us got crazy, we both maintained our sanity.  We had decided at mile 16 we would run our own races.

I laugh as I look back because I realize TMB has never run a marathon with me.  She maybe didn't know how I get through a marathon is by cheering for the spectators.

"YOU ROCK #765!!!" They yell.... and I yell back, "YOU ROCK SPECTATOR!!!"
or
"Go NIKKI's SPECTATORS!"
or
"Hey - CUTE HAT!"
or
"I need a HIGH FIVE FROM SUPERMAN" at the little kid dressed in his halloween costume holding out a hand for the runners.

AND that is how I've been doing it for years.  It's way more fun that just running by people quietly holding signs for Nikki or Jeff.

At mile 16 I just let my legs pick it up a little.

At mile 17 I let them hold the pace and settled in... and I was running alone.

Miles 18 - 23 were a blur of FREAKING AWESOME.

I was running well at mile 23.  What went through my head was something like "but, this is insane, I'm never running well at mile 23"...

I took this after the tears stopped.

I stopped, tied my shoe at mile 23, started running again and STILL ran a 9:25.

I picked up a runner who was racing for a PR and ran her to the end.  Every time we would roll into a crowd I'd yell, "HEY, THIS IS MY FRIEND ERIN!" and the crowd would cheer for her.  She got a nice 6+ minute PR by the way.

Between mile 16 and 23 I lived big.  I felt like a runner.  I embraced the suck and ran through it.  I thought, if I can hold race pace for these miles I will run Richmond for a goal time.

I pushed Erin from 23-26.  I walked a little with her.  I walked a little with me when my legs fatigued on a hill.  I could *maybe* have taken a few seconds off my run if I'd kept going hard but WHY?  I wasn't getting a PR, but Erin might... so why not push her down the road?

So.

The answer to the big question:  I will not run Richmond for a goal.  I did hold race pace, and I did it really well, but I don't want to run 26.2 miles again right now.  Right now, I can't imagine wanting to run anything.

Post Race

My heart isn't in it.  And if I've learned anything about the marathon in the last 5 years it's that you better really WANT IT when you toe the line.  There's not room for wishy-washy.

Steamtown is a great race.  If I ever do another out of town marathon in October, I would go back in a hot minute.  It's small, organized, and simple.  Don't go looking for fancy swag or big rock bands.  Go run Steamtown for the personal touch, for the race director's handshake, for the quiet trails canopied by gold, orange and red leaves, for the smiles of the volunteers, for every single person on the mile 24 hill who spoke to me - and there were a lot of people on mile 24 to run for...  It was a race worth running.

~savor~

Running in Reality

Realism and Running don’t always go hand in hand.

It’s a funny thing really.  Especially when it comes to marathons.  Every runner I know has a story about a race where their race-day expectations were radically unmet. 

I find that setting a realistic pace goal for race day is challenging where the marathon is concerned.  This is partly because I always set a marathon size goal, though I think it’s also because there are very few athletes who run 26.2 miles as part of their preparation for the event.  The pace calculators that say, “If you race a X:XX Half Marathon, you can run a X:XX marathon” are rarely accurate for me.

I understand how I should do it though.  To run a certain pace at the marathon, a runner needs to train for that goal. 

The engagement has to happen early in the training.  There are months of preparing for the big day, and then early in the race the runner makes a commitment to GO for it. 

It is pretty easy to find oneself in a bad relationship with goal race pace at mile 20 of a marathon with six long miles stretching out ahead.  Breaking up is hard to do after that amount of work, but sometimes the marathon leaves us no matter how hard we try to make it last.

Lately as I log my training runs into Daily Mile or brag about the long miles on Facebook I’ve been pretty careful not to post specific splits.  For one thing, I run without a watch about 50% of the time.  For another, the actual splits aren’t generally noteworthy.  I have been depressingly slow compared to my 2012 PRs.  My friends cheerfully claim, “you’re going to crush that marathon!” in the comment boxes, not realizing that at this point crushing the marathon is far from the goal.

This time the goal is more visceral and less metric.

As part of my preparation for this marathon, I saw my physician in early spring.  I had been having lung issues for over a year and it just seemed to me I ought to be recovered by then.  She cheerfully informed me that the scar tissue in my lungs would make running “very difficult”, and that it might be time for me to “find a new hobby”.  I am very proud of how I handled the situation and subsequently I was not arrested that day.

I also chose not to follow her suggestion, and in early April I signed up for Steamtown Marathon in Scranton PA.

I resumed running, found new old friends to run with, and rebooted myself.  When I decided to train for my marathon, I based my “at registration goal” on where I thought I should be in 6 months, assuming a healthy pair of lungs.

I set out to train for the illusive Sub 4 that I have been admiring from afar.  Lofty as it sounds, the whispering siren call beckons me, and my Half Marathon PR, a sexy 1:52 I ran with little prep-work and even less training, suggests that this was at some point a realistic goal.  Up through early August, I was well on my way to a 9:09 pace run, and actually smashed my 18 miler with 4 sub 9:09 miles between 13-17.

As race day approaches, it becomes obvious that my race will not be a sub 4.  Nor will it be a PR.

No running injuries have struck me down; instead, I am plagued with injured lungs that have been insulted by the same respiratory virus that is making headlines across the United States.  I caught it in early August.  For three weeks I coughed endlessly.  I took 10 days off from training.  I rested.  I drank water.  I stayed home from work for a day and lounged on my couch with hot tea. 

I attempted to jump back into training.  I attempted on the next run as well.  At one point, 15 days after I started running again, I found myself sitting in the middle of the street coughing while my two companions stood guard over me. 

Each time I run, even if it’s only three or four miles, I fully realize how far behind I am with my training.  The goal pace is too fast.  Way too fast.

It seems that The Sub 4 has escaped again, only this time it happened before race day had arrived.  My 20-mile runs are pointing at a solid 4:20 marathon.

 As much as I want to be disappointed, and I guess I am on some level, I cannot be too upset.  I think back to my Doctors appointment.  To the words that were spoken between me and my physician.

“Woe is me, I will have to go run a marathon without achieving a predefined goal I set 6 months ago” should truly be replaced with, “I’m so lucky that I can breathe well enough to go run a marathon at all”, “That Doctor can suck it”, and “She may as well have thrown a steel plated gauntlet down at my feet, because the fastest way to get me signed up for a marathon is to tell me not to sign up for a marathon.”

I get to run a marathon in three weeks.

I GET TO, and even though the goal is not to achieve a predefined TIME, the experience of going out to run a marathon without any expectations is just as defining.

~savor the run~

Off the Cuff

We were silent at that particular moment.  Rare for us.  Usually when we run there is a stream of conversation that accompanies the steady cadence of our feet.  Maybe we were quiet because we were climbing, or maybe it was because we were enjoying the breathtaking views.  Riverside drive, just south of the James River, is one of the more beautiful and hilly runs you will find in RVA.  Tree limbs stretch over the road in a green canopy as it twists and curves and climbs and rolls like the river it parallels.

I guess we both realized we were listening to the runners ahead of us at the same time, because we both chuckled at something that was said, and I turned to T and said, "We've had that exact conversation."  She agreed.  The runners were stressing about pre-run fueling and recovery fueling and listening to them I'd have to say the one girl is probably starving herself unnecessarily.

What made me chuckle wasn't that she was starving herself, but instead it was that the topic these girls were obsessing over was a topic I have obsessed on, chewed on, rolled around, and rehashed.  I worried over it the way a child pulls the thread dangling from the hem of a sweater, picking and playing until the cuff is opened.  In this case, I finally concluded that running requires calories to prevent injury.  High protein calories are better than cake, but regardless, in my opinion if you run a pile of miles, you better be eating something.

photo credit - TMB

And we were running a pile of miles on Saturday.  T & I had overlapped our twenty miles this past week with Sportsbackers Marathon Training Team's Novice 10 miler.  It wasn't entirely planned, actually.  We just ran a few miles before MTT, and then followed "a route" until we met back up on the MTT route.  And when we got back to the stadium, we refilled our water bottles at the car, and kept running a completely on the fly route.  In fact, the entire run was constructed off the cuff, because we knew about how far certain roads would take us.

We finished 20 miles exactly where we started, without any intentional planning at all.  Certainly our on the run routing system included "There's water along here at X point if we need it", so we weren't running without attention to detail.  We were just enjoying a stress free - route free run.  I would guess that the less seasoned "me" would have never done that.  I would have planned until I was blue in the face, needlessly fretting around trivial details.

This week we were worry free.  The twenty miles vanished under our feet.  We ran negative splits, even with the hills of Bryant Park tossed in for the last miles.

Today I reflected that I am so glad that I am a more seasoned runner, and I know when, and when not, to stress about a training run.  The 20 we finished this weekend was completely relaxed, and color me not surprised, faster than I was anticipating running.  It goes to show that when you listen to your body instead of your worries, amazing things can happen.

~savor the run~

Today was a GOOD day

Yesterday I ran my long run for the week with Sports Backers Marathon Training Team.

HELLZ TO THE YEAH!  

I haven't RUN MTT in a long time.  Wow.  A long time.  I forgot how cool it feels to join a pack and run with 890 other like minded people.  I forgot how fun it is to listen to the people around you talk about running.  To see 100 familiar faces.  To search through a thousand and miss one.  To yell at Those People.

And yesterday I remembered what it feels like to borrow the collective energy of a thousand people to run through the streets.

I ran with TMB, SpeeDee, and Amy.  T & I share a brain.  We run in step.  If one of us pulls away, the other knows they'll be back.  If one of us walks, the other walks without comment usually because we are thankful to be walking for a few steps.  And there were a few walk breaks - thank god.

The air was thick yesterday.

We had some course discussions and such.  We made new friends... sort of...  In fact, some DUDE offered to give me ADVICE on cutting THIRTY MINUTES OFF MY MARATHON PR. (insert laughing here)
He said this without asking my current PR.
He said this knowing nothing about me or my running history.
Maybe I should have given him my number... I guess, I mean, after all, who wouldn't want to get a BQ in October... also, there will be a follow up post for the men folk who read this blog on "how not to pick up a runner at marathon training team".

Moving forward, I'm not 100% sure I'm convinced that my SATURDAY TEAM is the RIGHT TEAM for me, but I'm going to give it a try for a few weeks.  I intentionally chose a team that is training to race SLOWER than my original GOAL.

Why
would 
you 
do 
that?

Well.  When I decided to race a marathon in 2014 I didn't realize I wasn't going to get "better".  I had some idea that I was chasing a SUB 4:00 GOAL.  Right now I am chasing a FINISH WITHOUT HATING YOURSELF FOR RUNNING A MARATHON GOAL.

I don't know what I can and can't do with my lungs in this condition, and being left behind by the pack week after week while gasping for air is scary, disheartening and depressing.  Or is it defeating?  Regardless, I'm not going to be d'anything'd when I have the power to make new friends and run a touch slower on my long runs each week as needed.

Sometimes when you put 80 people who run in a group, everyone spends their long runs RACING each other.  I'm not even kidding.  I love MTT, but this is a truth of Marathon Training Team.  I chose my team because I have a prayer of keeping up with Team En Feugo, and I don't want to be sucking wind on my long runs trying catch up to people who are determined to leave me.  A slower team will ensure that I am running my long pace runs at a slower pace.

In theory.  Yesterday around mile 5 I had a break away where I maybe got a little ahead of myself.  whoops.  By mile 6 I was sad...

So yesterday I ran 9 miles on my road to my October marathon.  I struggled a little, but my chest never hurt.  It wasn't the best run ever, but it was a good run because it was with people I love.  It was "The Previously stated Goal" MRP + 50 seconds.  Not bad, considering the walk breaks sprinkled in.

Today I couldn't sleep.  I'm studying for boards and I woke up really early.  I thought, I know what to do with this energy.  I hopped in my car and headed downtown to meet the SUNDAY teams of MTT for 6 miles.

And here is why today was SO VERY VERY GOOD:
I ran hard, and didn't have any kind of breathing trauma or crisis afterwards.  NONE.  I didn't feel like I was straining beyond the stretch of a hard run.  I didn't feel like an asthmatic.  I didn't feel my airway collapsing or narrowing.

I felt like a runner!

I averaged an (insert pace here) for 6 miles!!!  I ran in the (insert pace here)'s for the first 3 miles with a fast friend, and then I backed off and ran the rest with a new friend, Not Clinton, who said, "Yay!  You can run with me next week!"  She was supportive, unbothered by my loud breathing, and likes dogs - which since I have a new puppy - works for me.  It was Original Goal MRP - 29 seconds.

Part of me is like, I can't wait for next week, to hop on the MTT train and ride the wave.  But the other part, the part that knows today was special, says, make sure you savor what it felt like today.

And I do.

~Savor the Run~