sick.

I woke up Thursday with a sore throat that slowly but surely progressed into full-on sickness, bad enough that I texted my father this morning to ask if he thought I should go to the doctor. My dad works in healthcare but is in no way a medical professional so I'm not sure why I insist on plaguing him with my questions, particularly when his advice is always, "It's probably a virus." (Except for the one time about five years ago when it was strep and his response was, "You are 26, who gets strep when they're 26?!") I didn't have a fever and then I found DayQuil under my bathroom sink which pleased me to no end because it's basically like crack. Anyway the sickness sort of made me happy in a strange way because it's textbook for me. Every time I start running again, for real, when I am excited about it and have a training plan, I come down with an annoying and drawn-out sickness. I like to think it is my body's way of accepting the fact that it won't have a chance to be idle for awhile and thus getting all illness out of the way early on. In an odd way it's like the final seal of approval on what I've been feeling lately, which is just that I want to be out there running.

But instead I spent my days off coughing, napping, sneezing, popping gel tabs and making simultaneously good and bad decisions. And watching terrible DVR'd TV. And writing lists and making plans, some related to running (I still don't know when the damn NYC Marathon lottery is, beyond "some time after April 23") and some not (I am so definitely not eating any more pizza until this summer, thanks to a severely un-tasty Domino's experience this weekend). And some more vague, including this message written on my kitchen chalkboard:



Working on that too lately. Open heart, fingers crossed.

Life has been more an exercise in ridiculous than in running for the past few months, but I finally went for a run yesterday and I finally feel excited to go again which for me is like 97 percent of the battle.

I'm going to start blogging again (I made this Very Important Decision on my run), but it is probably going to be less just-running and more life-and-running. There are several reasons for the shift:

1. Running bloggers are annoying. Sorry if you are a running blogger reading this, but when I was training for Chicago I was super obsessed with a handful of running blogs and by the end of my training cycle they all made my brain hurt. Except for Ali on the Run. Ali I always love. (Confession: I still read some of them just so I can complain about them. Probably I need to stop doing that but it's haaaaaaaard. Because they are crazy.)

2. I am not currently training for anything. This probably won't last too long because I feel like I want to do speedwork and progressive runs and track workouts and hill repeats and all that good stuff and it's sort of pointless to do that long-term without any race aspirations. But I am woefully out of shape at the moment so for right now, I am just running to run. Even typing that is thrilling. It's a very happy place to be for the time being.

3. I am in the lottery for the NYC Marathon so we'll see what happens there. I think it's next month. You can tell I'm way on top of things.

4. I like writing about my life and haven't had an internet place to do that in awhile.

5. I also like to post my photos and I haven't really had an internet place to share those in awhile either.

The end for now! Welcome to my new cheese-and-vodka-life-is-ridiculous-and-sometimes-I-go-running blog. Here, have a picture of my bunny:


taken on Christmas Eve. you can tell the holiday spirit really moved him.

projectile.

I went for my second run of the year this morning. Here it is, Garmin-style. (You will have to click to make it bigger if you want to look at it, because I am new to the Garmin and have no idea why it is so small.)



Looks easy! Not strenuous! Note the super-positive splits!

And then I got home and vomited on the sidewalk.



(Sorry. I know that's gross. But it is also accurate. Except that I was by myself.)

I've been running for more than half of my life and have NEVER thrown up after a run or a workout or a race. Needless to say I was surprised that it happened to me for the first time after a 9:30-pace, 2.5-mile run. Wtf, body. No idea.

I did a little Dr. Google after I showered and ate and I think the barfing was probably due to my total lack of hydrating before I went. I just had coffee. That coffee is gone now. It is on the sidewalk. This run felt gross. I bet you are surprised to hear that.

Oh well. On to the next!



Haha, if only.

2012.

I am resurrecting the blog! Everyone get excited!

I made a bunch of running resolutions for 2012. Interestingly none of them specifically involved blogging, but it is something I am going to make more of an effort to do regularly. It will probably not be quite so running-centric, mostly because I am not currently training for anything specific. I'm just running to run, to be in shape, to push myself and see where I can go. I do want to start racing again, but for now I am content letting that be about smaller, cheaper, local races - 5Ks, 10Ks, relays, that sort of thing. Although I did today enter the lottery for the NYC Marathon.

To that end, I went for my first 2012 run today and also my first run since Thanksgiving. My dad gave me a Garmin for Christmas so I took it outside today for the first time and it's fairly awesome. I liked having a sense of exactly how fast I was running (though even today, in my first run in a month, it stressed me out when I started to slow down), but more than anything I loved having the freedom to just go wherever I wanted and knowing that I didn't have to try to remember street names or where I turned in order to map it out later to know how far I went. IT WAS KIND OF AMAZING. This also means that when I get lost on future runs I will never have to worry about knowing how many miles I did, so I can focus 100 percent of my mental energy on finding my way back home. So basically one run in, I am super in love with the Garmin. I know. Remember when I was all superior about my super low-tech running? Baha.

The only downer about the Garmin was that it took a while for it to locate satellites. By "a while" I mean "idk maybe a minute or two," because I am an impatient person and also because I spent that minute or two standing in front of my house just kind of staring aimlessly down the street waiting for the watch to be ready. That was awkward. Also, it is ginormous, but that didn't bother me as much as I was worried it would. Yay for high-tech running! (Although I did run in a cotton T-shirt so obviously I am still the same person.)

I will leave you with my (many) running goals for 2012!

1. Run my second marathon. There is a lot more to this goal (train the right way, have a really solid base before I start thinking about it, maybe try to break four hours) but for now, that's all it is. Just run a second marathon.

2. Run 1,000 miles. For some reference, last year I did 453 miles and took about six months off entirely (three for a tailbone injury, three for "marathon recovery" because in case you didn't know, marathon recovery takes three entire months).

3. PR across the board. 5K. 10K. Half-marathon. Marathon. Booyah. It sounds like a super-scary goal, but it's not, because I have only raced most of these distances a handful of times. I've done one 10K, two half-marathons and one marathon. I'm honestly not sure how many 5Ks I've done, and I am also not sure what my PR for the distance is. I have a vague memory of running a 22:10 once when I was in high school, so maybe I'll just try to match that time. My most recent 5K PR is, I think, around 25:09. I think training to PR in multiple distances will be a really good way to keep running interesting and motivating.

The end! It should be a good year. I hope it is a good year. I hope all of you have good years, too. 2012 > 2011, I think it just has to be a fact.

that one time I had a blog

In case the crickets on my running blog haven't clued you in, there hasn't been a whole lot of running happening in my world.

There HAS been a whole lot of: cooking (I can cook, who the hell knew?!), eating Papa John's, watching Toddlers & Tiaras and feeling sort of generally restless and unsatisfied but not really being able to do anything about it.

I get sort of stuck in these ruts sometimes...I think part of this was standard post-marathon-ing, where you work toward a goal forever and then it's over and that's a letdown, but I think more of it was just me and my general inability to deal with things sometimes. This probably sounds confusing and I don't think I can explain it any better than that; it's just a pattern of inactivity and unproductive-ness that I tend to fall into and a tendency I don't like about myself, really.

Anyway, so my running coach was all, "You can totally do a March or April marathon! Here are my long and detailed thoughts about the races you are considering, which I took time out of my busy life to send you because I'm amazing! Let me know what you think!" I read the email, went running twice and then retired to the couch for more Papa John's and DVR'd programming. YOU KNOW. PRIORITIES.

It's too late now to register for any of the races I was considering. I don't have enough time and because I've only run a tiny bit since Chicago, I'm starting from square one again. But I think about the marathon pretty much daily. I want to do another one. It's probably time to just bite the bullet and do it.

In order to make this work, here are some things I am going to have to accept:

1. I'm going to have to learn to be a morning runner. The weather here is perfect for training - the coldest it's gotten so far is 40s, which to this Wisconsin girl is still pretty balmy - but it still gets dark super-early so I can't run after work unless I do it on a treadmill. And no. No thank you.

2. I am going to have to up my mental toughness and run when I don't feel like running. I struggled with this a lot in my last training cycle; I was mentally weak and while it didn't ultimately affect my race performance much, it stressed me out brutally during my training. I don't want to do that again. I want to do this correctly.

3. I am going to need to cross-train. I am an injury-prone runner (well, let's be honest, I am an injury-prone human, and I can't run daily. Depending on the day, it's difficult for my body sometimes to run two days in a row. I think that's okay - it worked fine for me in Chicago - but cross-training on the off days will obviously help my fitness immeasurably. I think it'll also help prevent training burnout.

So I'm perusing marathons again. (Okay. I never really stopped.) I don't want to do another fall marathon because I have no interest in trying to train through a North Carolina summer, which as far as I can tell starts in May. Also while I would LOVE to do a destination marathon, it's just not feasible for me financially right now (Forever Alone, no one to split a hotel room with!), so it's a matter of finding something in a city where I have peeps. Yes. I just said peeps.

I'll step up my game - both running and blogging - soon, hopefully. But for the meantime, enjoy this mostly uninteresting update of my thought process. :)

Lull

Post-marathon I have been a bit of a sloth. Most of that is justified, I think, but it's been a week and a day, my legs feel fine and I have yet to strap on my Mizunos and head out the door for a run. I got the sad guilt-trip email from dailymile today that says, "Your friends miss your training :(." I mean, probably they don't, really, but I kind of miss my training, so now I am pondering my next move.

I'd like to do a second marathon and I would like to do it properly. I would like to have a Training Plan and maybe some potential training partners so when I'm all "ugh, why would anyone ever want to go run 17 miles on a weekend?" I can know that someone's counting on me to get my butt out the door. I would like to actually complete those weekend training runs by waking up early and getting it done than by waking up whenever I wake up, having breakfast, digesting and then going outside finally at maybe 11 or 1 or 3 or whatever and then it's HOT and I've been SITTING AROUND and WHATEVER, I WILL JUST DO IT TOMORROW.

Properly, is what I am saying to you now.

For this purpose, I have been eying this guy:



It's on St. Patrick's Day in DC. Because I have a mondo huge base built up at the moment I think the timing would be good; I could ease back into full-on training mode in about two weeks and be ready to go. And I have bffs in DC who would be happy to let me crash and also be happy to come support me, possibly while drinking out of flasks. (I mean it is St. Patrick's Day.) Importantly, this means that I can do DC on the cheap. I get the impression that other running bloggers make bank, because y'all are always planning trips to run races in fun places (New York, Vegas, even Chicago), but I, sadly, do not. I am a journalist. I get paid crap. So supporting my racing habit is an exercise in financial wizardry.



I never read Harry Potter but I'm pretty sure this is what wizards do. Anyway, so I'm about 60 percent ready to commit to registering, I am just waiting for an email from my running coach confirming that he is willing to work with me on a training plan (aka willing to deal with my ridiculous and frequent emails that involve me panicking about various things, only some of which are related to running). Until then I'm going to remain here on the couch, eating Papa John's and watching DVR'd Project Runway. It's season one. Things are ugly.

Chicago Marathon recap (of sorts)

Oh hey. I'm a marathoner now. No big deal.



Just kidding. It's a ginormous huge deal and I am still, five days later, riding a bit of a high from it. After all the months of training (and all the weeks of not training), the moving to North Carolina, the heat and humidity, the semi-injuries, the foam-rolling and twisted ankles and quality time with ice packs, it's all over in 26.2 miles and 4 hours, 36 minutes and 32 seconds.

I can't remember when I first decided that I wanted to run a marathon. I think it was something I always knew I would do, from the moment I first put on racing shoes and ran in my first cross-country meet when I was 16. I put it on my "do before I'm 30" list and then slipped on ice in January and bruised my tailbone and couldn't run for three months. I was living in Wisconsin at the time after quitting my job in Virginia to move to California with my boyfriend, only to be there for a grand total of two days before breaking up - painfully, and messily, and horribly. I was supposed to spend that winter in the desert with palm trees and sunshine and love; I was not supposed to be walking on black ice at 6 am in the dark by myself, falling so quickly it took my breath away. In retrospect, it was a fitting metaphor for my life at the time. I limped back to my mother's house. I waited for my tailbone to feel better. I watched it snow and snow and snow. And then I decided it was time to stop waiting, and I registered for the Chicago Marathon.

I picked Chicago for no reason other than geographic location. Chicago was within driving distance of Madison, where I was living at the time; I knew my family could easily make the trip down to see me race, and I also knew that if PLEASE, GOD, PLEASE I found a job and got the F out of Wisconsin, I could easily fly back into Chicago with no hassle. I knew almost nothing else about the race when I clicked that register button. I didn't know it was one of the big five. I didn't know that 45,000 people would line up with me behind the starting line. I just knew it made sense for where I was at the time.

In the weeks leading up to race day, I was extremely nervous. My training, as I have written countless times before, didn't go as planned, for a lot of reasons but mostly because I didn't dedicate myself to it as fully as I wanted to. I did my one and only 20-mile run 12 days before the race. My left hamstring and my right IT band were bothering me right up until I walked to Grant Park on race morning. I knew I could do the race, sort of, but I also really didn't know that I could do it. People say, "trust your training." I didn't trust my training because I hadn't fully done my training. My father said, "It's okay to walk." My stepmother said, "All you have to do is finish, and you can do that." My friends signed up en masse to track my race progress via text message and told me they knew I could do it. But I wasn't so sure. All I knew is that I would try.



I ironed my name onto my tank top the night before the race so that people would cheer for me. On race day, I woke up at 4:45, got coffee, got dressed, popped ibuprofen and walked to Grant Park. Because I raced with a charity, I had the option of checking my bag at the Team PAWS tent, which was great because it allowed me to avoid the lines at the general gear check. It was not so great because the Team PAWS tent was about a 15-minute walk from the corrals. I trekked over, dropped off my bag, stopped in two Port-a-Potty lines, and finally got back to the corrals minutes before the gun went off. I couldn't find the entryway, so I made friends with a group of runners hanging out by the fence and we all jumped it together. One of the guys sort of caught me - I warned them that I was clumsy and would probably die if I tried to do it alone - and he stumbled and fell off the curb and I had a moment of panic where I worried that I had injured him and he wouldn't be able to run. He was fine. Also, awesome.

And from there it's kind of a blur. I stood in the open corral telling the people around me that I was nervous. Then the gun went off and I crossed the starting line and for about the first 10 miles the only thing I could think was, "I. Am Running. A MARATHON." I couldn't stop smiling. Spectators screamed my name and I waved at them and laughed and high-fived kids with their arms outstretched. Shortly after the two-mile mark, we ran over a bridge and I saw my dad. My heart kind of exploded with happiness as we waved and shouted at each other. He snapped this, the only non-official photo of me racing. It's early in the race, but this is what I looked like pretty much the entire time.



I saw him, with my stepmom, again at mile 10; she said later, "I couldn't believe how happy you looked!"

Honestly, I know this will make me sound like an asshole, but I had the greatest time ever running that race. My legs started to hurt around mile 12 and I just told them to shut up and kept going. The race didn't feel great - and I went out conservatively and was running at about a 10:30 pace, which for me is really really slow and really really comfortable - but I did. I kept thinking in my head, "My legs are unhappy but I'm not." I broke the race down into five five-mile sections, but when I got to mile 20 I got to switch to my plan of dedicating each of the last six miles to someone in my life and honestly, it's the best thing ever. Because instead of focusing on the pain and how far I had to go, I got to spend each of those miles thinking about someone amazing in my life and how much I love them.

I never hit a wall, per se. My legs hurt, and I was ready to stop when the race was over, but there was no wall; no feeling like I couldn't go on. After mile 20 I walked a little, but not much at all. I kept telling myself to walk for one song and run for two, but I'd walk for maybe half of one and then run for 10 or 12 or 15 minutes. And before I knew it, I was turning the corner to go to the finish line. And just like that, I crossed it, they put a medal around my neck and now I've run a marathon.

When I got back to my phone it was full of text messages from people who had tracked me; people I had no idea cared. Coworkers. People who donated to my charity that I haven't spoken to since I moved. My mom. My bff. Then I collected my things and met my dad, stepmom and stepsister and that was the end of my marathon day.

It was one of the happiest and best things I've ever, ever done. It was the perfect way to end the crappiest year of my life. And I can't wait to do it again.

P.S. I did not fall down even once!