Frustration Sets In

Theodore Roosevelt said that comparison is the thief of joy. I have heard this phrase many times of course. I always assumed that the comparison referred to was the comparing of yourself to someone else. Maybe that is what Teddy meant. Maybe not. What I have discovered in my recent training is that comparison is also the thief of joy when the comparing you're doing is between reality and your expectations.

Training has been going well lately. I've actually been looking forward to my runs, even though it requires me to wake well before dawn. I'm ready to start my day with a nice lung-clearing run. I've reached the point where a 5-mile run is nothing and is considered "short". In addition to all that, I've been feeling good on my runs.

But despite all this, I find myself rather disappointed.

Because despite all the work I've been doing and how good I feel and how much distance I can add, I'm not getting faster. For the last year I've been in "comeback" mode. I've been coming back from injury, from illness and from major abdominal surgery. As much as I see progress on many fronts, the clock won't budge much at all. And it's starting to get to me.

I know, I know...it shouldn't matter. The Dopey Challenge, after all, is about endurance, not speed. It's about time on your feet and the ability to go and go and go with little recovery. It shouldn't be about speed. But I know I'm capable of so much more. And I just can't get it out of myself.

I'll still be out there in the dark early morning stillness putting in my miles. I'll do it because I need to and because I can. I just hope someday soon I'll be happier with the numbers on my watch when I'm done.

I had a Plan

Well, this is a first.

Having lived in the Midwest my entire life, I can honestly say I have never had a half marathon cancelled due to a hurricane. Until now.

Remember that plan I had? That year-long prep work I had planned out in advance of the Dopey Challenge? The one where I was supposed to do a half marathon every couple of months to keep my mileage base up and have some options to submit proof of time for the challenge? Yeah - that all went down the toilet.

A little refresher...

1. I signed up for the Cincinnati Flying Pig Half Marathon during the first week of May. A week and a half before the race, my hip suddenly hurt so bad that I could barely get out of my car. I was determined to finish the race and ran-walked it to a record slow time. 
2. I signed up for the Chicago Rock N Roll Half Marathon to be run mid-July. Previously-mentioned hip injury will not go away, doctors are perplexed, not one step is run in preparation for the half marathon. Heat wave/high humidity strikes. I did the race anyway and got a new record slow time. 
3. Hip gets better, sign up for Carolina Beach Half Marathon to be run on October 4th, 2 days prior to the proof of time cutoff for Dopey. Training is going well. Times are finally starting to come down. I'm ready to race. Which brings us to...

Hurricane Joaquin.

Less than 12 hours before my flight was to take off for North Carolina, a major storm heading for the East Coast gets upgraded to a category 4 hurricane and is headed straight for Carolina Beach. Race directors cancel the race.

So on Wednesday night I found myself with a cancelled race, a flight in a matter of hours and non-refundable plane tickets. After much thought, a beer, and a consultation with a friend, I decided to still go to North Carolina and try my luck.Thankfully the hurricane didn't make landfall in the US but the area I traveled to experienced record rainfall and flooding.

Even though it wasn't the vacation I was planning - running a race, touring the city, hitting the beach - I could still visit my friend and eat some seafood. Which I did. In the rain. Every day.

Every. Single. Day.

Sometimes it rained hard.

Sometimes it rained less hard.

But it seemed never ending. 

At least it was obvious that the race directors made the right call, as evidenced by the photo in Monday's paper of where the race would have taken place.

So now I'm back from North Carolina and I have no last-chance race to submit proof of time. I do have a time submitted but it was from a race a week before I had surgery to remove a 12.5 inch, 10 pound cyst from my abdomen so, yeah, it's not my fastest time. Unfortunately it is the fastest time I have in the allowable time frame. It's not the end of the world. I shouldn't be in the last corrals. But I had a plan...

Oh...and the day after I get back from North Carolina it looks like this there:

Sigh...

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.