Posts Tagged by Running
Goofy
| January 14, 2011 | Filled under Blog |
The half-marathon is in two weeks and two days. Tomorrow I am getting up in the morning and will run the entire half-marathon route with my friend Lydia. It’ll be my last long run before the race. Afterwards we’re going to gorge ourselves at The Black Lab, especially taking advantage of their brunch cocktails. It’s a motivation trick we picked up last year. Incidentally, when we pre-ran the route last year it was so cold my sweat was forming frost on my headband/earwarmer thingy, and the wind was blowing at about 20 mph. I kept telling myself, if I can make it through this today, I’ll be able to handle anything come race day.
I originally signed up for the full marathon this year, but in November I started having trouble with me IT band. I’ve only ever had one other running injury, tendinitis in my knees, and I learned enough about training and self-care then to make sure it never came back. I used the same techniques to get over my IT band issues, but I also lost about three weeks worth of training, and since it was getting so close to crunch time I eventually decided to just drop down.
Since the Houston Marathon has switched to the lottery system this year, that decision was a hard one to make. I really want the Houston Marathon to be my first, and there’s no guarantee I’ll get in next year unless I pay to join a running club with reserved spots. But in the long run it’s probably for the better. I’ve only done one half so far, and moving from that straight into a marathon might not have been the best plan. After January 30th I’ll have two half under my belt, and depending how I feel after this one, I’m thinking of running the brand new Galveston Mardi Gras half marathon February 20th. I may be totally burned out, but it’s the first marathon (and half) on Galveston Island since the ’90s and it sounds like a lot of fun. A week after that is the Rodeo Run 10K, the very first race I ever ran and a race I will run every year no matter what else I do. Then in March I’m running the Race Against Violence on Team Walk the Walk for the Houston Area Women’s Shelter. Normally I am a person who runs just for myself, but this will be the first race I’ve ever run for charity and I’ve super excited to do it.
Aaaaaaaanyway. The point of this whole post was to point you to this race report from a guy who ran the Disney Half Marathon last weekend with his mom, a 20-year cancer survivor and a novice runner who just started running in September. If you have ever thought that running 26 miles, or 13 miles, or 6 miles or 3 miles or even one mile was crazy or impossible, I want you to read that story and I DARE YOU not to get a little bit choked up. What’s crazy is that next day the guy went out and ran the Disney full marathon.
Why hello there
| January 11, 2011 | Filled under Blog, Photo Album |
Time to say a proper farewell to 2010, a year that kicked my ass, mostly in good ways. I spent a lot of time thinking about it over New Years. Christopher and I went to Hot Springs, Ark., a place I’ve wanted to visit since I was a teenager, and exactly the kind of slow and quiet town that makes introspection easy.
Hot Springs is beautiful and we spent a lot of time sleeping in, staying up late, and walking all over town. Bathhouse Row is pretty damn amazing, but there are other awesome middle-America aspects to the town that I’ll talk about in a future post. We were so lazy we didn’t even go hiking, and going to some pace outdoorsy was one of the main goals. Oh well. Just gives me something to do next time, and believe me, in fell enough in love with the town that there will be a next time.
The whole time we were there I kept thinking about where I was and what I was doing the year before. We have to travel so much to see family during the holidays (this year it was Oklahoma for Thanksgiving and Florida for Christmas) that New Year’s is usually our own holiday together. After all the stress and buildup of the previous months we usually like to get away to some place secluded. In 2008 it was Robber’s Cave, Oklahoma. Last year it was a week through west Texas, culminating with a camping trip in Big Bend.
2009 had been a pretty shit year for me. I won’t go into details but I will say that two major events sent me spiraling into a well of hate and depression. I’m not really much of a metaphysical person, but on New Year’s Eve, just outside of Big Bend, I decided to do something I’d never done before: I wrote down all my heartbreaks and regrets on a piece of paper, and I threw it into the fire at La Kiva in Terlingua.
It didn’t matter if it worked or not. It made me feel better. Then I got waaaay too drunk on champagne and puked in the National Park the next day.*
What’s crazy is, it seems like it *did* work. 2010 was one of my most amazing years in memory. I started it off by running my first half-marathon. In March I went to SXSW for the first time. In May I found out my portfolio was accepted into the creative writing program at UH. In June CLH and I went to Sweden for a month, spending July 4th weekend in Stockholm.
Just before our trip to Sweden, I’d been asked to fill in for my music editor at work. I was flattered by the responsibility. On my last day, I found out about a job opening there. Not just any job opening… and opening for my dream job. But, it had been years since I’d worked full time, and I agonized and agonized over applying. After applying, I agonized over whether I’d take the job if offered. Then I agonized over not hearing anything about it for the month I was in Sweden. I actually did my job interview from the kitchen of our apartment via Skype, miles and hours away from my interviewee. And then, a few days after we got back to the US, I was offered the job.
Life since then has been hectic and happy. Believe me when I say I am literally working at my dream job, the kind of place I wanted to work at when I decided to study journalism. But it is a 24-hour position and has left little room in my life for other pursuits, like all my crafting projects, blogging and the thing I miss most from my former life — travel. But I am working to balance things out and hat is one of the goals for 2011.
But the awesome year didn’t stop there. Probably the most amazing thing I did this year was jump out of a plane. In November a large group from my running club got together to do the scariest thing I can possibly imagine doing. I hate heights, I hate the feeling of not having something underneath me (like when you’re standing on a ledge) and I hate airplanes. But skydiving is probably the most amazing and formative experience I’ve ever had in my life. There is no way to describe the freedom you feel, freedom of movement and freedom from fear, as you are falling 120 mph toward earth. It was so peaceful. I can’t wait to do it again.
Just look at the grins on our faces there. That is life well-lived. I also kind of feel like I’ve done the scariest thing I can possibly imagine, and it was awesome, so what do I ever have to be afraid of again?
So what will 2011 hold for me? In three weeks I’m running my second half-marathon and I may run a third at the end of February. Other than that, I have really no idea. I have a lot of goals for work, for my personal life and for my creative endeavors, but if this year is half as challenging and rewarding as the last one was, I’ll be happy. Bring it on, Elevensies.
* Didn’t think about it until now, but might this have been some kind of purging of negative energy? God, listen to me.
30
| May 16, 2010 | Filled under Photo Album |
It’s a tradition in my running club that you buy the club a keg of beer for Happy Hour, to be consumed at Memorial Park, when you have reason to celebrate. I bought a keg of Left Hand Milk Stout and neither rain nor lightening could prevent some hardy friends from consuming (most of) it. At around 8 p.m. it had been raining — pouring — for two hours when a photographer for the Chronicle showed up to take pictures of the crazy runners in the park drinking beer in the rain.
Adventure is but a collection of detours
| March 4, 2010 | Filled under Blog |
My favorite class this semester is called Travel Literature and in spite of the fact that one of the assigned books was Eat, Pray, Love the rest of the class is fun, stimulating and interesting.
Right now I am in the middle of a book called Catfish and Mandala. It’s a travel memoir by Andrew X. Pham, a Vietnamese-American man whose parents immigrate to the US in 1977. He is ten years old at the time.
Twenty years later, after his finance leaves him and his sister commits suicide, he bicycles his way back to Vietnam.
It’s the best book I’ve read since The Road. Pham’s writing is intensely lyrical and moving, especially his passages about learning to travel by bike. Before the trip he was not a “cyclist” and he makes the passage on a used $200 clunker.
I’m not a “cyclist” either, but as a person who participates in endurance sports I particularly liked the following passages (emphasis mine).
His initial departure — Page 30
Thin strokes of clouds score a sky as blue as a blessing. A brisk wind washes across the bridge. I wobble through the throngs of pedestrians and cyclists with a ready grin for everyone I pass. A light-headedness buoys me as if ambrosia courses in my veins. I am intoxicated with a feeling of rightness, a psychological snapping together of mating parts, a lucid moment of geometrical perfection. A liberating bliss.
“Yes!” I shout over and over as I race away from San Francisco.
The euphoria lasts until I crank up the cliffs of Highway 1. I’m not a cyclist. The bike is heavy. My precious enthusiasm dissipates with every incline. My map shows an inland road meandering some way from the coast rejoining Highway 1 at Stinson Beach. Confident that it will spare me grueling coastal hills, I huff up the grade, too exhausted to venture a guess why this stretch of blacktop was named Panoramic Road. It steadliy get steeper without a sign of leveling out. I inch up the mountain, pulling over to breathe at every half mile.
Endurance euphoria — Page 34
Alon the Pacific Coast, I meet cyclists who lick their chops at the challenge of a six-percent grade or an eighty-mile ride. I am a distracted rider, the sort that thrives on flat roads without wind. I haven’t encountered a mountain I like — from the front side. The only mountains I like are the ones I’ve summited. And there are no mountains finer than the ones I’m coasting down. On the road, I find myself vacillating between elation and abject misery, my senses narrowed to the hundred yards immediately before me. Beyond this, I am solely concerned with my next meal and my next campsite.
I learn it all the hard way. From San Francisco, I curse my way up the California coast. Every fiber in my body balks aggainst the strain of propelling two hundred pounds uphill mile after mile. The second day out, I heel over again, this time halfway up another mountain. My loaded bike topples like a wildebeest felled by one well-aimed bullet. I crawl out from under the bike and try to stand, but my legs give out.
I roll onto my belly, my legs locked rigid — a pair of two-by-fours jackknifed by a stampede of charley horses. I bite my knuckles, tears welling in my eyes. High school kids in a red Jeep roar by, laughing. I begin to suspect the authors I’d read weren’t entirely forthcoming about the physical ordeals of bicycle adventures… Every muscle groans and complains with each movement. My back aches. I am so stuff I can barely tie my shoelaces. What was I thinking? My Baja trip could hardly be called cycling. I had dragged that bike through the desert like a crucifix.
Milestones — Page 35
The day my odometer registers 500 miles, just before coming into Eureka, I feel invincible. I’ve fixed plenty of flat tires, warped rims, loose breaks and broken spokes. Somehow through the torment, I have developed a taste for bicycle touring. Every time I top a big mountain, I dismount and dance a little victory jig around the bike, not caring who might see me. The coast is gorgeous. I cannot swallow, breathe, soak it up fast enough. At least once a day, there is a moment of absolute perfection when my muscles sing with power, full of vigor, raw and very alive — the air sweet with grass and pine, the whirling chain and the humming tires but extensions of me.
For more good vibes, please see Web-Goddess’ post of inspirational running videos.
Negative split
| February 28, 2010 | Filled under Blog |
On a whim Friday I went to my local running store and registered for Saturday’s Rodeo Run 10, the one-year anniversary of the first race I’d ever run. CLH is out of town, I had no arrangements to meet friends at the start or finish line, and I hadn’t even really trained for it, having slacked a bit on my running since the half marathon, but it’s a fun race, starting at a breezy 9:30 a.m., and the weather was perfect yesterday. I even got a bit of a sunburn.
A month ago I signed up for Kenyan Way so I could discipline myself into working on my speed and endurance. Mostly speed. My goal n the race this year was to beat my time from last year, but my real goal, my secret goal, was to come in in under an hour. That didn’t happen. Here’s what did:
I never don’t get emotional at the start of a race. I never don’t cry at the end. I have a hard time starting off slow — the tendency is to flow with everyone around you, to keep pace when people are trying to pass you. One of the key rules of Kenyan Way is the negative split — start off slow, reserve your energy for the last few miles of the race. EVERY RUN, whether it’s two miles or ten, should be a negative split. I was conservative. I went to the very back of the pack, the 11-minute milers, so I wouldn’t feel the pressure of people passing me. And when I crossed the starting line, I had to go slow, sluggishly slow, because I made up my mind I was not going to stop. I was not going to walk.
Two miles into the race, the route goes over a long, sloping bridge called the Elysian Viaduct. In the middle, the viaduct sags where the columns hold it up over Buffalo Bayou. So the viaduct is two hills, one large and one small. Four miles into the race, at the north end of the viaduct, the route turnes around, and crosses the viaduct again, in the other direction. Four hills, the hardest one the last.
At that turnaround point I stopped for my first water break, four miles into a six mile run, and I walked a few feet while hydrating, and after that point, I was on. I ascended that final hill, WHOOO HOOOED as loud as I could, and hit the gas. My final mile was my fastest, less than nine minutes. I crossed the finish line at 1:03:46, three minutes and ten seconds faster than my time last year.
Writing :: running
| January 26, 2010 | Filled under Blog |
From Writing Down the Bones:
Some days you don’t want to run and you resist every step of the three miles, but you do it anyway. You practice whether you want to or not. You don’t wait around for inspiration and a deep desire to run. It’ll never happen, especially if you are out of shape and have been avoiding it. But if you run regularly, you train your mind to cut through or ignore your resistance. You just do it. And in the middle of the run, you love it. When you come to the end, you never want to stop. And you stop, hungry for the next time.
Okay. Now replace every instance of the word run above with the word write. Nail? Meet hammer.
I have never been a fan of writing how-to books. Mostly because I’ve always *known* that in order to be a good writer, you must first be a regular writer, and I don’t need a book to tell me that writing is work, meaning you must do it every day even when you don’t feel like it. But apparently I DID need a book to tell me that, because in all the times I’ve read that exact advice it has never hit home as much as the paragraph above did.
Maybe that’s because I just finished more than two months of training for a half marathon. I couldn’t have woken up last week, not having prepared in advance, and run that 13.1 miles. Just like I won’t be able to wake up tomorrow morning and write a novel from beginning to end. And on days when it’s 20 degrees outside and the dog is warming my lap and I’m halfway through a good book, I still go out and run. But on the days I don’t feel like writing, I don’t write, and I sit around waiting for something revolutionary to happen, some muse to swoop down on golden wings and lead me to the Big Idea.
It’s time to start training.
Bib #33799
| January 18, 2010 | Filled under Video |
My finish in the Aramco Houston Half Marathon at 2:27:30, under my goal of 2:30 with room to spare, and right at 50% compared to the other runners. It was my first half marathon, and my second race ever. It was hard but I know I could have pushed myself harder. It’s still a PR!
You can see me throw up my hands as I cross the line. I am wearing a black shirt with a white bib and black tights. I’m in the middle left. A funny thing about this video — the hoopla guy at the finish like keeps yelling my name, but my name was not on the bib. Another girl who finished right in front of me was named Brittany.
I wrote up my emotional experience for the Houston Press. I’ve basically been tweeting and bragging about it constantly. But I am going to keep gloating until the buzz wears off. So get over it.
Chili for chilly weather
| January 10, 2010 | Filled under Blog |
When I did my run yesterday morning it was 20º outside, which might not seem too cold if you’re from, say Chicago, but Houston is having its coldest winter in something like 17 years and it feels downright apocalyptic.
I came home, took the hottest shower I could handle, then spent the rest of the day bundled up in bed trying to figure out why my face felt so hot. I left the house only to see a truly horrible concert, then came home again and crawled right back under the covers.
The day before the cold front hit CLH made a huge pot of our friend’s award-winning vegetarian chili and I can swear to you it is the best chili I have ever eaten. It’s been getting us through this cold front better than My Antonia and Eastern Promises consumed in front of a space heater ever could.
When I eat vegetarian, I don’t normally eat fake meats, usually just eat veggie-only meals. But the fakemeat crumbles in this chili give it a more authentic texture. I’m not crazy about canned veggies, but I do like to use Kroger’s organic brand for the canned tomatoes and beans. But that doesn’t help you if you don’t live near a Korger, now does it. Sorry. I also substitute hominy for the corn because I can’t stand canned yellow corn. This chili is easy to make, quick, and one pot will last you for days. Recipe below: (more…)
Run Lola Run
| January 9, 2010 | Filled under Blog |
I am getting ready to leave the house to run the Houston half-marathon. The half isn’t actually until next week, Sunday the 17th, but I am running the course today, taking my time to do the whole thing, as my final long-run before the actual race.
I keep blowing my own mind when I think that less than a year ago I was training just to get through six miles. I remember thinking then, Hey, this is half of a half marathon.
Running’s been all in my head lately too. I was reading the wiki entry on Haruki Murakami and discovered that he is an ultra-marathoner, but that he didn’t start running until he was 33. Other people I recently found out were runners include Peter Sagal and Kai Ryssdal.
For Christmas last year CLH bought me a Garmin Forerunner 205. I’ve since graduated to a 305 (with heart rate monitor) and the toy has been amazing because it’s allowed me to nerd out by turning running into a numbers game. I’m all about the data. During hard runs I have to concentrate in order to prevent myself from looking at the watch every 30 seconds. But it’s also been a great motivator. In 2009, I ran 392.88 total miles, and that’s even taking six weeks off for tendinitis around May and also being pretty lazy in general about training.
