I blame Thena

Jackie helped me again!! We ran 8 miles this past Saturday and only stopped 3 times (once at the "water cooler" w/ no coach Ken around to chase us away with his car roaring up behind us--that man manages to be everywhere we try to stop or even slow down). Finishing the last mile, Jackie said I had improved since the last Saturday because "You sounded like that the entire run last time!!" I was in bad shape that last mile but, again, made her promise to not let me stop. That crazy gasping sound means that I will be able to run 8 miles easier next time. So, w/ this victory, I planned to be really, really good. But, darn it!
Here is where my Sunday a.m. plans to run went:


Too much dancing means not enough running. Wonder if I can dance my way across the Bayshore finish line??


Went to Luna's w/ Thena and all my resolve Sunday a.m left me and then Monday, nope. Now Tuesday a.m. and did not run before work
Must run tonight after grading. 3 miles, wed. 4, Thursday 8, Friday: nope, Saturday 11. Jeez, almost time to taper--must kick it up even w/ PT conferences coming up and grades and everything

Martian 10 K in Dearborn

Me n the Purple Alien after I got my race packet.





This is the second mile of the Dearborn Martian 10K and I'm in the left corner with the white TNT hat on trying to hug the curb so I can get the the finish line faster-- I always have these little tricks-- like thinking if I run on the inside of any turn I'm going to shave off at least five minutes from my finish.

I had another running angel that day and he was in his mid seventies with a wrap around his knee doing a walk/run. He forced me, like my zoo angel, to turn off my I-Pod and talked to him/pick up my pace with him and he told me stories the whole way to keep my mind off any pain.

Race was last Saturday and I finish in about 1 hour and 10 minutes. Last year finished 1 hour 20 minutes. So I am improving a teeny bit. This guy had some great stories-- he met Bill Rogers--who used to smoke up a storm! and someone asked him why he didn't try out for track in high school and I guess Bill said, "I'm too slow". The guy, even though he was a crazy chain smoker, ran a 5.4 minute mile around the track and he thought that was "too slow"!! So these were some of the tales this wonderful man told me while we ran, "our foot race" as he called it.

Told me that I should enjoy my foot races while I can cause it gets really hard when you get old like him. Yeah, this guy could walk circles around me while I try to run. Really, you can see in the photos that when my feet are about a foot or two in the air and arms pumping he seems to be taking a brisk walk. Okay, some of that does have to do with my short legs and his long ones. But seriously, the following is probably one of the more embarassing race photos to date:



I think I am a little faster already since the Martian. Ran 8 miles tonight and only stopped twice-- stretched after a mile and stopped to talk to friends on Main near Lincoln at about 4.5 miles. Could have gone a few miles longer but wanted to get some grading done. Felt really awesome and ran faster than last run. averaged 13 minute miles even with the stops--felt faster than that though.
Robbie seriously needs to get shape. Here's his usual daily activity:

It's weird but he's alot like me-- first two or three miles I have to cajole and drag him to keep up with me and sometimes when I don't feel that tug and I am running free as free can be I realize I am running with a leash and no dog cause he has figured out how to slip the thing from his neck to off his nose. But the last three or so miles he was kickin butt! He ran with or ahead of me and man was that easier than dragging him--it really inspired me and is maybe why I felt like I could go a few more miles.

Okay so, now, well now the knees are killing me. I stretched alot after the run but just too lazy at that point to put ice on. Up and down stairs hurts the most.

This is what I get out of it

I took this picture last July while we were in the UP after I ran the Grand Island trail race. I love taking pictures out of moving cars. This is what I see and feel sometimes when I run. Like I'm in a car with the music blaring and I seriously get that twinge of nerves when I run by a cop car in Royal Oak, like I'm in a car doing something so fun it's wrong.
I took this at the Butterfyl house at the zoo-- also reminds me of why I run. Pushing myself while loving everything I see.

Mark always asks me what I get out of running, and I think about it, really try to articulate it, but always fail to really explain it. But a lot of runners can probably sympathize with this. How do you explain to someone who HATES running why you do it so often? It’s a feeling, a zone, mental and physical place, that is really hard to articulate and it’s not always fun but even then you know you love it and will again.

So, last night, after an easy, high inducing four mile fast (for me) run, I stretched in the kitchen while Mark stood at the stove, making delicious ribs. After I stretched, I got out two cups of Styrofoam ice and iced both sides of each swollen knee. Mark gaped at me and said, “See! That’s why I don’t get it and that’s why I will never run. I just don’t get why you would keep doing something where you’re always icing something after. It’s not for me.” He shook his head and went on and on about how many doctors have told him running is bad for your back, for joints, for your bones, for your skin, your toe nails, for your ability to write Haiku, etc., etc. He said he would just go to the gym, peddle the “old man bike” as he likes to call it, lift weights and then be out of there. He also doesn’t get why I would want to keep doing a form of exercise that takes so much time. “I don’t have time for some hour yoga class and then an hour or more running. That’s insane!!” He was on a roll, but I’ve heard this before.
The timing was perfect because, having just had a tremendous run, I was able to articulate it better than I ever have and so I write this here to remind myself when I’m feeling down on myself for going on, say, a two month hiatus and then thinking: “ Oh my lord, why, why can I only go .25 of a mile without my lungs getting into a wrestling match when I used to be able to run 13 miles easy? Maybe I lost my ability to run!”
(I actually told coach Al that three weeks ago. “I don’t think I can run anymore”
“Why! What happened?” He was really concerned.
“No. Nothing like that. I just think I lost the ability. I go half a mile and I’m heaving and out of breath. I just can’t go and go like I could. It’s like I just don’t know how to run anymore.”
He said that maybe I had a cold or excersize induced pnemona where your lungs get so muscular that they squeeze and then you get out of breath easier. An evil little paradox of getting stronger making you weaker. I thought about that. Even thought about puffing on an inhaler before I ran. Well, it just took running to be able to run and not nearly as long as I thought it would when I could only go .25 miles before heartattack zone. Each time I ran I could go farther and longer and faster.

So here’s what I told Mark as I very happily iced my knees (or at least a paraphrase of what I remember):

Running is an etch-a-sketch. It’s like shaking myself clean. No matter what I was obsessing about, no matter what happened at work, no matter how blasé, anxious, existentially perplexed or down I may feel before a run, running is wiping the slate clean. (I wanted him to understand so badly that I wiped my hand across the kitchen wall to show him wiping something away).
I think its chemical, the endorphins that kick out, but I also think it’s something else. It is like a drug but not like any I know. You can drink, but there are places it doesn’t reach. Running reaches to the bone—it gets right to where you need it, right to the source and just lifts you up. I guess it’s really more mental therapy for me, but which is also physical. I think and feel best when I am moving. It gets me in the now. Pragmatically, when I’m running w/ Robbie through the city, every minute or so, I have to be in the now because I have to be keenly aware of my surroundings: make sure that car doesn’t run me over, make sure Robbie doesn’t scare that family walking towards us, watch that chunk of cement jutting up where they are doing construction. Then when I am inside myself, I am thinking “don’t let my arms swing across my middle or my feet with follow, am I standing too straight am I bending too much, how is my stride? This is an awesome song!! Wow, I think I can just surge, fartelek style for as long as this song is going and then maybe I’ll just put it on repeat and keep surging. That sunset, just over the houses, oh my—thank you so much God for that sunset. That’s the most beautiful thing you have ever given me and I’m so thankful that I decided to get out of the house just at the perfect time so that I would see that sunset as I ran up this hill on Gardenia and it’s so golden now, so Goosebumps making, esp. with this clean smell of the air. I love the spring breeze as it blows across my arms. How are my arms, put them closer to my torso, swing them faster, what does the Garmen say? Oh, sweet! 9 minute mile! That’s awesome. I could run forever. I love this feeling of turning the corner at the Frenz and Son’s Hardware, running around their long brick building onto main—feels like running to a new world—like coming out of the wardrobe in the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. from the curving, hilly, clean, tree lined, neighborhood to a strait-away down main-- the lights and cars and stores and smells and eclectic mix of people. Love that my dog is in rhythm next to me. My dog is so awesome. I look down and he seems to be smiling as he jogs, jerking his head toward my legs every now and then to make sure he doesn’t knock into my legs or run too far from them. He’s such a good dog. He gets right behind me whenever we must weave in and out of people down busy Main. Who else has an awesome dog like this? I swear we knew each other in a past life. Ah, nice. I have now completely forgotten about my legs and arms except to remember that I have forgotten them, but I am flowing, they are flowing me down main street doing their thing while I just feel this awesome metronome feeling, like I am myself simply a flowing rhythm going down the street with my beloved dog and the night gets cooler as the sun is gone. How wonderful to feel the night around me as I run into and through it.

Okay—so those were just some of my perceptions while running. Sounds like someone on some serious THC, right? Well, just water, running, dog, and blaring music. It’s an un-drug (like the “undead”) that just gets right down in there and fixes things, puts it all in perspective. Forces me to live in the moment. And when I come back, it’s like what they hoped electro-shock therapy could do. Shocks me out of any irritation, mulling over my “need to do” list or “didn’t get done list” “or why can’t life just be” whine—all there is is me and moments and I’m refreshed (stinky, yeah, probably pretty stinky) but re-baptized to not be such a worrier and to just feel everything is in balance and what it should be.
Mark said, “So you feel like that for an hour and a little after, so what? At the end you still have your to do list, you still have stress. What about the 23 other hours of the day when you are limping around cause you sprained your ankle, or fractured your femur, or get your knees swollen? “
I thought about that too. Well, the first thing I thought to say was that you can live in an hour—that even if it’s just an hour, you are still living in that hour. “Why not spend that hour doing something that gives you such a high, that for nearly an entire hour, helps you to live right in the now and not in a selfish way but just in a this is it and this is all I need to be right now. And, I think the more I do it, the longer that deep down good feeling lasts even when I am not running.”
Mark said if it’s like drugs then it does the same thing as drugs do just masking something else in your life.
But it isn’t like that. It is healthy—unlike drugs, this may actually help me live longer and want to. It is an end. Not a means.
Yeah, with a broken back and fractured femur.
He will never let me forget that I fractured my femur just by running too much too soon.

I guess some people hate it. Some people think it’s a waste of time. Some people don’t mind it. Some people just do it to lose weight or get toned. Some people love it. Some people need it.
I think I am the last two. That’s just the way it is.
(If I wanted to lose weight I would go back to my college days and drink boat loads of de-caf coffee and smoke tons of cigarettes—I was skinnier when that was my lifestyle than I am now that I am running consistently and have these muscles on my legs)

Want to move beyond slowing my way around

Found my stats at athlinks and added it to my page elements. Need to be more consistent with my training as I've really learned that runnig is really all about running. You don't just get it and keep it cause you had it once.

Here is my long term goal: to complete my bayshore half-marathon at an average of 10 minute miles, to complete the 10K trail race at an average of 9 minute miles at Grand Island this summer.

So short term training goals:
I’m doing a tempo run tonight. I did it!!! went to yoga for an hour and then ran 2.87 without stopping and without feeling too out of breath
Long run Tuesday. nope-- read a book a student gave me instead: "Bloody Sunday" about the Irish revolution in 1916-1920's
Speed work Wed. Nope. Did my Tuesday run-- four miles felt awesome--could have gone more but knew Mark made dinner.
Long run Thursday w/TNR-- nope. Kris, good friend who moved to Las Vegas in town for one night. I am about to go meet her tonight (it is now April 10)
Yoga Friday. Plan to! Nope-- met up with friends instead--saw some of my old roommates from Ireland
super long run—11 miler on Saturday at Stoney. This is a definite, but saw on the schedule that I only have to do 10 miles. Nope, slept in till 9 or so. Spent the day doing errands and cleaning the house like mad

Think will squeeze in the requisite sports massage in there sometime—probably after my super long run on Saturday. Nope

Sunday (April 13) : Went 8 miles today-- only stopped twice