Tracking My Obsession - Part 1 - Telephone Poles and Trails

I realize that to many of my friends, my obsession with running may have come as a surprise. And even looking over the first few entries from last spring, I see that I show no sign of the single-mindedness that was about to spring forth.

But I have been running for 14 years now, since 1996, and fell in love with it immediately.

I don’t know why I started, though it was probably to lose weight and because I didn’t have easy access to a gym nor money for a bike. I started by running to one telephone pole, then walking to the next, then running again, and so on, until I could string a decent number of telephone poles together. And then there was no stopping me, especially once I realized that I could possibly run forever if I ran slowly enough.

I had two favorite routes, one on the road heading out of town where I could run on the broad shoulder with little fear of traffic, passing farmland. I loved to run this at night and in the winter, with the moon and stars above me, watching my breath in the dark.

In the day, and when the trails weren't made treacherous by ice, I ran into the woods and along old train tracks, passing the backs of farms with a view of the nearby hills, golden in the sun.

Most of my running was completely solitary, with no one around, and never any other runners. I didn't think of myself as part of the running community, being too slow and too fat, and not interested in road races. But even then, I dreamed of running long distances, of being a "real runner," of doing marathons and maybe even an ultra someday.

After a year or so of this I moved to my old college town where I had access to the track and cross-country trails at my alma mater. More rolling hills through farmland, more tree-shaded paths. Glorious. And now too, more runners - sometimes from the college, sometimes from the town - and even occasionally a local cross-country race, with wiry old men in singlets and young women in shorts and middle school kids all mixed in together, dogs barking furiously from the sidelines.

I still didn't think of myself as a runner, though I seriously considered training for a marathon through the Team in Training program. I even went to an information session for it, but in the end the fundraising involved scared me too much, as did the prospect of hours spent slogging around the track. No, my racing days were still to come.

Wrigley Start Early 10K 2010 Race Report

Good grief, this has taken entirely too long to write.

It did take me about a week to be nice to myself when I thought about it. In the end I realized that most of my difficulties were in my head, not my feet.

Here's what went well:

1. It was a beautiful day.
2. And a scenic course.
3. I ran it with good friends! Thanks, Allison! Thanks, Kim!
4. It was for a good cause, child abuse prevention.
5. And it was good practice - both in what do I need to do differently in races from now on, and in handling disappointment.
6. I met my first goal (sub-10:00 miles) - a final result of 1:01:21, an average pace of 9:54 per mile.

Here's what I want to do differently in the future.

1. Be honest about my goals to myself.
   
2. Then know beforehand what mile splits I need to hit to reach those goals.
3. And know where the mile markers are!
   
4. Find ways to focus myself and be present when things get hard, for my legs or for my head.
   

In the end my actual accomplishment was all I could have asked for. Yes, I went out too fast at the beginning, but I was able to stay steady for most of the rest of the way, to gut it out when it got really hard, and to kick it up a wee little bit at the end.

Thanks to good training, I've gotten better. I've gotten faster. So now I want to see that better and faster in my races. But that means pushing myself in new ways, and that means I need to make friends with discomfort. Because it isn't comfortable to run fast for long periods of time. But it would have been a LOT easier this past Saturday if I hadn't been going through all my unnecessary mental gymnastics at the same time.*

And now it's gotten especially important for me to learn this since I've gone ahead and signed up to do the Chicago Marathon on October 10. And of course, being me, I'd like to do more than "just finish."

But this has also confirmed something important for me to know - in the face of disappointment and frustration, my first instinct was to figure out what I could do better, and then look for the opportunity to put that into practice.

(I'll practice first on another 10K at the end of May, though, not on the marathon. I'm not that foolhardy.)

And now I am finally done with this race report. I can go back to writing about the important things in life, such as the newfound realization that the skin around my knees has seriously lost its elasticity - I think it's time to embrace running capris.

*Such as, uncertainty around where the mile markers were and how fast I was going, frustration when I knew for certain I had gone out too fast and for too long, and disappointment when I thought I had really missed my mark. Which really impaired my ability to enjoy the race for what it was - a glorious spring day on which I was running faster, for longer, than I ever have before.

Here We Go!

Wrigley Start Early 10K today. My training has been going well - better than expected in fact - but the last two weeks have been rough personally and I'm feeling a bit depleted. So my first goal for today is to keep a 10:05 pace - while my "cross-the-fingers" goal is to finish in under an hour.

I'll have to write more later - right now I need to feed myself and the kid and get myself dressed and ready to go in under an hour. Oh yes, and teach Buddy how to make his singing horse sing on his own so I don't have to keep doing it.

Keep your fingers crossed!

It's On!

I have mailed in my registration for the Wrigley Start Early 10K run on Saturday, April 10. This will be my third time running this event, the second time at this distance (they have both a 10K and a 5K).

I have good memories with this event. The first time I ran the 10K, in 2007, it was the first race I ran where I felt comfortable with the distance. I had already run that far a few times in training and wasn't scared of the distance - I knew I could run that far and so I could look at improving my performance, not just getting through it. (I know this is how I should have done all of my previous races, but oh well). I remember feeling that I had done a good job and run it smartly.

Then last year I ran the 5K (here's the race report). It was my first race since the 10K two years ago, and I was glad to be running it at all. And especially glad that I felt I ran it well.

Since then I have logged many more runs, both longer and faster. I've been careful with my training this last month since my ankle is still tender (but slowly getting better), but after the last couple of weeks I feel I can not only do this distance, but in fact run it as a race, so I'm excited about that.

What makes one run a run and another one a race? For me, it's not only about running faster than I usually do at that distance, but about really pushing myself to do more than I have before. Hoping that the careful mix, over time, of long runs, tempo runs, and speed intervals, plus race day adrenaline of course, will combine into the ability to push myself farther than I can do so otherwise.

This year I'm heading up a group from church as part of our Child Abuse Prevention Awareness Month outreach. We'll likely be a small group - but we will be full of heart! I'm looking forward to it all.

Ode To My Training Log

Oh Training Log, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways...

1. You show me that last year's "long swim" is now shorter than my routine one.
2. That over time I run consistently stronger/faster/longer even if from week to week (or even month to month in busy times) it doesn't feel that way.
3. That I weigh less than I have in four years.
4. That, whereas I now consistently run or swim 5x a week, previously I struggled to do more than 3 sessions of aerobic exercise in a week's time (including walking).
5. That I have been more consistent with my yoga practice over the years than I remember.

I have kept an unbroken training log for over three years now, marking down my weight, workouts, migraines, and menstrual cycle, along with notes about how illness, travel, weather, holidays or work kept me from working out (those don't stop migraines or my period, sadly). At various points I have also kept track of my attempts at regular meditation or efforts to cut back on sweets (both mostly failed), along with various other things that now I can't remember, my notes being too cryptic to decipher. Maybe caffeine consumption?

My log shows me when I was first pregnant, when I first thought there was something wrong with that pregnancy, and when I had that fear confirmed. It also shows me when I was pregnant again, when pre-labor started, and then, a week later, proper labor, and then two days later, finally, Buddy.

I've experimented with format, I've tinkered with the size, and who knows if the current form of my log will continue to meet my recording needs. No matter. I'll come up with something new and continue to be grateful.

"I love thee to the depth and breadth and height / My soul can reach..." (Elizabeth Barrett Browning).

Yoga for Lent

Well, it's Lent, and this year my Lenten observation is to practice yoga everyday. It's pretty much the only regular time in my life that I set aside for quiet and meditation, so when I was thinking about how to observe Lent, it just made the most sense to do so through deepening my yoga practice.

So, even if it's only for 5 minutes in a given day, I will take some time each day to practice, and I may use the opportunity to try some of the more meditative practices that I don't usually take time for. I'm curious to see what the effect will be in my life. "Surrender" is the word that keeps coming to me.

Some passages from "The Athlete's Guide to Yoga" by Sage Rountree, the reference I use most often.

"The philosophy of awareness is what makes "doing yoga" more than merely stretching or gymnastics. Just as workouts become training sessions when you are working toward a goal race, practicing poses or sitting still becomes yoga when you are doing it with a purpose." (p.12)

"Hatha yoga uses the tantric approach, which focuses on accessing the universal consciousness through the body. Instead of being something to be denied and transcended, the body is the vehicle for self-realization. Thus the self-improvements that are a secondary benefit of yoga and of endurance sports help bring us toward the ultimate goal of connection with the [divine]. (p.13)

So far, I'm four for four. Forty-two days to go.

Maybe Not This Year

So, just in case you were wondering, it seems that toddlers make museum guards very nervous. We went to the Art Institute yesterday with Buddy to check out their new Modern wing but didn't end up staying long... at least once in every room we had a guard say something to us, always something way obvious like, "Don't let him touch the art." You think? And we weren't allowed to carry him on our shoulders, either, not even in the hallways where there wasn't any art, which just didn't make any sense to me. You'd think he (and the art) would be safest with him on our shoulders.

It was a real shame, too, because Buddy was clearly digging what he was seeing, pointing and saying "dis?" which is what he says when he's interested in something, and chattering away unintelligibly when a particular piece meant something more to him. So it hurt to see how unwelcome we were. I'm sure it would have been fine with them if he were in the stroller but he wouldn't have enjoyed it or been able to see the art which is of course hung at grown-up levels. And we weren't all that impressed with the "family" areas.

So I guess we'll just look for other opportunities to get him cultured, and try coming back in a few years. At least at home he can touch my paintings as much as he wants.