Hitting Double Digits and Other Random Things

The time comes in every person's marathon training when one has to start tackling the double digit distances. As first it seems intimidating, because let's be honest, 10 miles just sounds so far to go on foot. I mean, didn't people domesticate the horse and invent the car to avoid doing such a thing? It's at this point that you start to think of those 3 mile runs as "cute" and the adjective "only" precedes the phrase "have 5 miles to run".

This year my first double-digit run happened to take place during our local half marathon weekend. The running store I work at is the title sponsor of the Fleet Feet We Care Twin Cities Half Marathon Weekend. During the weekend you can choose from a 5K, a 10K, a half marathon or a combination of some of these. I have a half marathon scheduled for the following weekend so I was supposed to run 10 miles this weekend. But I wanted to take part in the well-loved local race weekend. The half marathon distance was a little too far and the 10K was a bit too short. So I decided to sign up for the 10K and add some additional miles.

Race morning came and once again I got out of bed while it was still dark. This was becoming a regular occurrence and I'm not thrilled about it. In any event, I headed to the race site to get in 2 miles before the race started. As someone who never does a warm up, it was kind of a nice change of pace to do a little running before the running (to my non-running friends - I realize this sounds odd, and I would agree).

Soon the race was ready to start and I took off. Faster than I had planned. Way faster than I had planned. But I felt pretty good, so I tried to calm down into a race pace that I could sustain but that was still faster than I had been running. This was a 'green' race so there were no paper cups or other things that cause trash. So during mile 4 when I decided to eat a gel, I didn't want to litter. My guilt caused me to come to a full stop, down the gel and wait until I was done so I could throw it in the trash. So there is one mile that is significantly slower than the others. All in all, I was happy with my race.

I love this picture because I actually look like I'm ahead of people.

See? Happy.

 I felt a bit of a familiar twinge in my hip that worried me so I headed to the physical therapy tent to get a massage. After the treatment, I limped off the table and headed out for a much more leisurely final 2 miles. The cool part of this was I got to see a lot of the half marathoners coming in. By the time I got back from my run I was starting to look for my friend Meta to come in. Meta was running her first half marathon and it was a big accomplishment for her. I was so excited for her and I wanted to be sure to see her finish. Once I saw her coming down the road, I went out to meet her and run her in. Before I knew it a bunch of people from her training program had come too and we all were able to run with her for the final part of her race. It was so awesome to see her accomplish her goal!

My favorite part of the morning - running Meta (in orange) in to finish her first half marathon.

So now that the race was over it was time to focus on the important things. Namely ice cream and trying to walk.

I convinced headache victim Jill of the healing properties of ice cream.

Another development from the weekend. I'm really trying to increase my water intake. What better way to do this than to go shopping? I bought myself this super cute water bottle hoping that the cheerful colors would cause me to want to carry it around and therefore drink more water.

The magic water bottle that will force me to drink more water.

So far it's worked. On a related note, I've gone to the bathroom today approximately 532 times.

Who Are You and What Have You Done with Raegan?

 

I am not a morning person. Not in the least bit. At the various jobs I've held in my life, everyone at the office knew not to speak to me before 9:00 and expect a verbal response. At one college I worked at, even the guys in the facilities plant were familiar with my reputation of being basically mute first thing in the morning. Even in Kindergarten, back in the days when you only went half a day, my mom purposely chose afternoon for me because she knew things wouldn't go well for the teacher otherwise. 

This is all to say that I do not like mornings. And by extension, I don't like early mornings. If I don't set an alarm, I will likely sleep until 10:00 or later. So needless to say, waking up at o'dark thirty is not something I prefer to do. Getting up at some crazy hour to RUN is sure as heck not something that sounds like fun.

During Dopey training, I've had to make a few concessions. With my crazy work schedule and the crazy amount of miles I need to run, it was obvious pretty early on that I'd need to do at least 1 or 2 early morning runs a week to fit it all in. I started this in the summer and found it wasn't so bad because it was already light out and that made it so much easier to fool my body into thinking it was later than it really was. But gradually it started getting later and later until the sun came up and my runs got longer and longer, which meant I was getting up earlier and earlier, meaning I was getting up while it was dark. 

But you know what? It wasn't all that bad. I discovered I could do 1 morning a week of this. Then on nights that I didn't work 2 jobs, I could keep doing my evenings runs and sleep in. Except, I didn't keep doing my evening runs. It was too easy for other, more fun, plans to come up throughout the day. Or maybe I was just tired. Or maybe it was too hot. Or maybe probably I was just being lazy. In any event, evening runs were being skipped too often. And the evening runs that weren't being skipped were not very good. 

Soon, I found myself getting up to run early in the morning even on days I didn't have to work my 2nd job. And....gasp...I found out I like it better. The runs went better. My day started off on a good note and I was more efficient in getting stuff done. 

Could it be? Was I becoming a morning person? In a phrase....oh hell no. BUT I was becoming someone who liked to get her run in and out of the way first thing in the morning before life got in the way, her back started to hurt and excuses were easily made. 

So, at least for now, I am doing the morning run thing. We'll see if I can keep this up for the next 3 1/2 months. Pretty soon early mornings are going to start getting cold. I don't even want to think about that just yet. 

But at the moment, I feel like I need to come to terms with who I've become. 

"Hi. My name is Raegan and I'm an early morning runner."

They Can't All Be Gems

From time to time you will have a bad run. Runners know this. Intellectually, runners know this. In actuality, they think they'll never run well again and their running life as they know it is over.

I had such a run tonight. It was only short-ish run but it hurt from step one. I joined a Fleet Feet Power Hour where you can run as little or as far as you want but have to be done in an hour. My training plan called for 5 miles so I would be going further than a lot of participants. It was not fun.

Here are some of the thoughts I had while running:

• Man, it's warmer than I thought it was going to be.
• How are my legs still sore from Sunday's hills? That was 4 days ago.
• I wish I would have brought some music. 
• How far have I gone? Only .78? Seriously?
• I should have worn something sleeveless.
• How much further till the water fountain?
• Water!! Yes!
• The longer I drink at this fountain, the longer until I have to start running again. *slurp, slurp*
• Ok - my turnaround has to be coming soon, right?
• Ugh....too much water....side stitch
• Where is that $@#&* turnaround?
• Seriously, it is hot.
• Everyone else in the world is turning around now. I want to turn around too. 
• Only .25 until the turnaround
• Yes! I don't have to go any further. 
• Crap. I still have to go back.
• Water fountain again. Yay! 
• Oh look at that couple sitting there on the bench. I want to sit on the bench with them. That would be weird. But comfortable. 
• My car is still 2 miles from where I am.
• This is the longest hour of my life.
• I'm sweating a lot.
• Ugh...uphill. Why wasn't it easier when I ran down that section?
• Ok - I think I might be getting into a groove now. Maybe I just needed a couple miles to warm up.
• Nope. This still sucks.
• Another hill. Screw it - I'm walking up that bad boy.
• Just one mile left. I can do that. 
• Oh - there's my friend up ahead. Maybe I can run with her for a little while.
• Well that was a less excruciating 2 steps. 
• Half mile left. 
• I'll miss being able to walk up stairs.
• Done! 
• I'm not sure I can walk the 20 feet to my car.
• Please send help.

Spoiler: I did make it to my car and made it home, where I enjoyed some quality time with my foam roller.

You Lose Some, You Win Some

It's been an interesting last week or so of training.

The heat finally broke so running has been more pleasant. Having to get up before dawn on a holiday weekend to get a run in while it was semi-tolerable was not my idea of a good time, so despite mourning the loss of summer, I have welcomed the cooler mornings.

With the cooler weather, we also started to see some rain. The effect on my training last week was two-fold. 1) It caused me to skip my Thursday evening Recess Run  sponsored by Fleet Feet. I wanted to avoid slipping and sliding in wet grass as I am hyper aware of anything that could cause injury. 2) Instead of my Thursday night run, I decided to join the monthly early morning Fleet Feet Friday run. I set up my alarm for 5:20 am (ugh), got up, got dressed, rolled my calves a bit and headed out the front door only to discover it was raining. I stood in the doorway for a moment trying to decide what to do. Normally, rain in the pre-dawn hours is my get-out-running-free card but I was already awake (sort of), dressed and ready to go so I went. That might not have been the best idea.

Only 4 of us showed up to run Friday morning in the rain.The first half mile went well.The section of sidewalk we were running on has several spots that are pretty badly broken. We know this and look out for them. This particular morning the rain caused these spots to hold deep puddles. I spotted one particularly deep puddle, shouted a warning to the folks behind me, and then proceed to catch my toe on the broken slab of concrete and go down. Hard. Right in the very puddle I was trying to sidestep. I got up and and turned down offers to go back to the store and wash up. I figured I was already awake, running and dirty - might as well finish the run. I had no idea how hard I went down until I got back to the store and could barely raise my right arm and this picture was shown to me. So much for avoiding situations that could cause bodily damage.

Running - 1, Raegan - 0

Sunday I competed as part of a triathlon relay in Litchfield. Our all-female relay team, Mid-pack Attack, decided to do the Olympic distance option, mostly because I needed to get a 10K run in for my training. Sorry Ashley and Jenny for making you do the long course!

Sidenote: we stayed at a local hotel in Litchfield. When you travel for a triathlon, you have a lot of stuff you need to have with you: bikes, bike pumps, wetsuits, running shoes, etc. Jenny's car was loaded down with all of this - a lot of which we needed to carry up to our room so I wanted to make this as easy as possible. When the front desk employee gave us our room number, I asked him where we should park given where our room was located. This was was our conversation:

Clueless Front Desk Guy: Here you go. You're in room 222.
Me: Great. Thanks. So where should we park then?
CFDG: (blank look) In the parking lot.
Me: Ok - let me rephrase. Given where our room is and the door we should use, where would be the best place to enter?
CFDG: Uh, the front door is right there.
Jenny: Aren't there doors at either end of the hotel too?
CFDG: Yes - one on either end.
Me: (thinking at this point, he'd show us a map of the hallway and where our room was) Ok. Good, then in WHAT PART of the hotel is our room?
Ashley: (Visibly frustrated) There's the sign with the room numbers, looks like we are to the right. Let's go!

In any event, we got to our room and were all in bed with the lights off by 9:05. Wild and crazy ladies on a Saturday night.

You know what? Litchfield is hilly. My flatlander legs did not appreciate that. But I will say it was beautiful down near Lake Lou Yager, near which the triathlon took place. Ashley swam a kick butt .9 mile course and Jenny hit an impressive mph on the 24 mile bike. I anchored the relay for the run and got to see those hills close up. There may have been some walking on a couple of the more obnoxious uphill sections. In any event, Mid-Pack Attack won the female Olympic distance race. It's very possible we were the only female team in that event.

We've decided to still claim pride in our win because we're assume the other female teams were too scared to do the long distance.

 

 Our awards were water bottles, which none of us were too excited about because each of us has a kitchen full of water bottles. But the they did put a nice little finishing touch on them. And I am trying to be better about drinking more water during the day so this might be a good reminder to do that.

 

Raegan - 1, Crazy hilly 6 miles - 0 

In other news, my friend Jennie got a sticker maker last week. It's her new favorite toy and I'm her new favorite recipient of stickers. She made me several "Pain-O-Meter" stickers featuring The Oatmeal. She said she thought I needed them to track how much my training runs hurt. I must say, it is one of the most unusual training gifts I have received. I'd probably put the run at Litchfield at about a 7 - tears, but no blood coming out of my eyes.

 

 

But What Am I Going to Wear?

Anyone who is familiar with runDisney races knows they are full of people running in costume. When I first heard of this, I thought it was crazy. I mean, running for multiple hours starting before dawn is hard enough. Then you want to go and make it even more challenging by running in costume? These people were nuts, I thought. But then I ran my first runDisney race and saw how much fun people were having and how they weren't taking themselves seriously at all. Something about that appealed to me. I had spent plenty of years running when being the fastest was the most important thing, and a lot of times no matter how fast I ran, I wasn't having a lot of fun. So when I my friend suggested we run the Princess Half Marathon together, I agreed to run in a sparkly skirt and tiara. It was actually kind of fun. And I learned that my head was made for a tiara.

Now I find myself training for another runDisney race weekend and the the subject of what I will be wearing has already come up (Jennie - I'm looking at you!). So here's what I thought. The idea of running all the races that make up the Dopey Challenge is crazy enough. Why not make it even crazier by running one of them in a costume? Being a big Mickey fan, I thought a Mickey Mouse costume would be my style. Then Jennie happened. She decided that one race costume was not enough. So currently I find myself preparing 3 costumes. They are currently in various states of completion. 

Costume #1 is the aforementioned Mickey Mouse. This one is actually pretty simple to put together. I already have a black running shirt and tights. I also have a couple pairs of Mickey ears, because who doesn't? All I needed was something to pull it together. Enter Etsy. This is the piece I needed, in its almost-done state:

Costume #2 was going to be the hardest. My favorite Disney Princess is Jasmine from the movie Aladdin. When I saw the movie as a kid back in the 1990s I loved how independent she was. She refused to be married off just because she was the "right" age and she was determined to live her life her way. Even at a young age, that resonated with me. Unfortunately, Jasmine is not one of the more popular princesses and finding pieces to make this costume has proven to be a challenge. Thankfully I have Pinterest, Jennie and a mother who is a kickass seamstress. I have found a couple of headbands that will fit in with the costume and this weekend mom and I found material we think will make the perfect pair of Jasmine pants. I just hope they are not too uncomfortable to run in. So now I have about half of what I need for my Jasmine costume. Here's a sneak peek:

This was where I was going to stop, because A) this was getting expensive, and B) I'm not crazy*. But Jennie would have none of that. Luckily for her, costume #3 just kind of fell together. I happened to find a great Ariel t-shirt on clearance and a pair of mermaid-looking tights at TJ Maxx. Check another costume off the list. 

*This is apparently up for debate.

Now that I have ideas for 3 costumes (sorry Jennie - that's all I got), I just need to wait for mom to finish some sewing. Of course, then I'll have do do a test run in each of them to make sure there are no issues. So if you see me running on the Constitution Trail dressed as a princess, a mermaid or a beloved mouse, wave and say hi. I'm guessing I'll be hard to miss.

Progress Report - Month 1

I'm just about a month into Dopey training and I think I'm starting to get into a groove. Unfortunately, it's a slow groove - like a 33 record when I want to run like a 45 (I totally had to look up those numbers - I'm too young to know about record playing speeds!). But it's a groove nonetheless and I'm thankful for it. So here's what's going on with training.

More miles, same speed. I have been adding miles fairly regularly. I'm now up to 4 1/2 miles for mid-week runs and I have an 8 mile "long" run planned for this weekend. I've noticed something about myself in regards to mileage. I can seemingly add mile after mile to my runs and yet my pace stays pretty much the same. I don't get any faster when I do shorter distances. So 6 miles or 16 - I'm pretty much at the same pace. I know a lot of this is due to the fact I refuse to do speed work, but still.

Rolling, rolling, rolling....Most people probably think running is what takes the most time when you're training for a race like this. I think it's all the stuff you have to do BECAUSE of the running. I talked about the laundry already (seriously - it never ends!) but the other thing taking a lot of my time is foam rolling. My muscles, especially in my calves, get really tight when I'm doing all the this running so I have to roll at least twice a day. It's gotten to the point that I have to multi-task in order to get stuff done.

Physical therapy I've been in PT since the beginning of training because I was coming off a hip injury. I just recently graduated from 2x/week to once a week. Progress! I've improved in a lot of ways but some things never change. During my time in PT, I've gone from not being able run at all to doing 7 miles, but I'm still only at 20 seconds for planks. Planking is my kryptonite. I'm seriously thinking my demise might be death by planking.

Early mornings suck. I am not a morning person. If you're reading this and you know me personally, this is not a surprise. But having working several evenings a week, paired with the hot and humid conditions lately, I've had to give in to the early morning workout. The picture below (me in the middle) shows how happy I am about that...

I will admit that getting my workout done early makes for a pleasant rest of the day. But getting up while it's still dark outside is not cool. My body is confused about why I'm asking it to things when clearly it's still the middle of the night. Luckily, I have people to run with from time to time, like my neighbor Lauri. Lauri is a morning person (I know, right? But I like her anyway.) and she's always more than willing to wake up at oh-hell-no-o'clock to run or bike or swim. Many times getting up to work out with her looks something like this:

Sleep....and the lack thereof. So early morning workout have become a necessity. Ugh. But I've been surprisingly effective at getting this done in recent weeks. That leads me to the sleep situation. I'm not getting enough of it. I have gradually worked my way to getting to sleep earlier at night. This was made possible by both Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert leaving their respective late night shows. I'm going to try to keep this up, but Colbert is coming back to the late night airwaves next week so....

Fails. I've had a few of these. A particularly nasty run during which I got suddenly sick after mile 2 and was a mile from the nearest unlocked restroom comes to mind, but we won't discuss that further. The other thing I've been particularly bad about is my hydration. I'm not a big water drinker. I know, I know. With the extra running, and accompanying profuse sweating, I know I need to take in more water. I have replaced my shower beers with shower nuuns so that's something. The electrolyte replacement drink is a good start but I know I need more good ole'  H2O.

I'm 1 month in and have 4 more months to go. I can do this! I think....