I Liked It Better When It Was Just Freezing

Today for my long run, I was treated to a light layer of slush over the packed snow (yuck - plus hard work to run on), and then wicked wind on the lakefront (also hard to run in).

I was close to cutting things short, and did end up cutting back off of the lake to the Lincoln Park / Gold Coast neighborhoods. But I made a pit stop, found clear sidewalks, and got away from the wind, thereby getting my second (or third, or fourth) wind, and so was able to finish out my full mileage.

And now I'm ravenous and about to take my second break to get more food. The first round was salt. This round will be sugar. Rawr.

Very Far and Very Cold

I ran to work this morning. Well, it's more accurate to say that I went for a run this morning, and then I ran to work. I'm not going to say how far I ran because

1. It is kind of a ridiculous distance, that makes sense only in the context of marathon or ultra training;
2. At some point, if you make a habit of running long, the distance becomes kind of meaningless. I don't think about "how many miles do I have left", I think about what part of the run am I on and what will I be doing next;
3. A certain person I live with doesn't tremendously like that I run so long or that I run in the cold, and really doesn't like it when I combine the two. No need to provoke him with an actual number.

As for the cold... it was -1F when I left and 5F when I reached my destination. Not as windy as I'd feared, thank goodness. I was snug as a bug in my layers and had greased up my face to prevent windburn. The only issue I had with the cold was that my water bottles froze and towards the end I was reduced to just sucking on the ice. So I need to figure something out there. Oh, and frozen gels are gross. But I've pretty much moved away from gels anyway and have been sticking with "real" food - in my case dried fruit, pretzels, and jellybeans. The dried fruit and jellybeans get hard when it's that cold but a moment or so of chewing takes care of that.

And my reward (aside from the whole running bit) was in seeing, once I hit the lakefront, a quiet, snowy, icy world with almost no one else around. Listening to one of my favorite jazz pianists and just floating in white. Ahhh.

Blissfully,
Annie

Watching Myself - With Love

I'll admit, it's been interesting to watch how I react to this withdrawing from some aspects of social media. If I do a long run, but don't put it up on DailyMile or write about it in one of my Facebook running groups, did it really happen? I notice I sometimes experience a certain anxiety about not sharing my workout information.

At the same time, I'm also experiencing a sense of freedom in my day. No more rushing to the computer right after a run to log it. If I don't announce a particular goal, then I am accountable only to myself about it, and can change it if I like. And never mind the sheer amount of time that's been freed up for me. I truly could never have realized just how much time I lost online until I made a deliberate attempt to curtail it.

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I do have some ideas about my training for the next months, and for the year. I'm not going to call them goals - I have concrete goals for myself this year but none of them are running-related. One is financial (to reduce my credit card debt by a third). One is practical (to get my drivers' license again). One is my ongoing effort to eat in a healthy, mindful, and joyful way. All are about increasing freedom in my life, so I can live in ways that better serve myself and those I love.

My initial training ideas are quite audacious, so I will wait to write about them until I have a better sense of whether I'll be able to fulfill them. I will say that so far, so good. And that I am enjoying both my running and my gym time.

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One article I wanted to share: Nutrition, from iRunFar. Here's the quote that best sums up the article, and nicely articulates what I've been thinking about recently (but only vaguely):

To me, the healthiest diet has nothing to do with never eating specific ‘bad’ foods, but instead with eating the foods that provide us with the most overall health in the given situation.

For me that includes taking "health" in the broadest possible context, to include my social and emotional health.

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It's been a bit of rough start to the year, between the weather and the challenge of my youngest moving into the "terrible twos". I love him dearly, but he is a frequent, ah, opportunity to practice personal growth. The good news is that we can see the fruit of our labor with him as he develops, so that is a blessing and encouragement in our efforts. The other good news is that, by him being the second child, I know from experience and in my bones that all things change, and that what may seem interminable in the moment is truly just a heartbeat of time. We are truly so blessed in both our children.

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And to brag on my oldest - he's currently in thrall to Harry Potter! (He's not reading on his own yet, The Dude reads it to him before bed. We're already on the second book.) This is several steps up in complexity from what we were reading to him before. I am amazed at his ability to visualize what he hears (I'm not very good at that) - the next day he draws out what we read about the night before. When he's not designing helicopters for a building unit at preschool, that is. Truly, my kids amaze me.

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With hope and gratitude -
Annie

Baby, It's COLD Outside

On Monday I went to the gym based on a forecast of ice drizzle that never materialized. I had a pretty hard dreadmill experience (I'll just say that it was an exercise in mental fortitude), and it would have been a perfect day to run outside. Nice fresh snow, sunny, quite cold but not horribly so. I was determined not to make that mistake again. My new winter mantra: when in doubt, run out!

So today I bundled up. Today, it was 1 degree when I left the house. Yes, 1 degree above zero. Fahrenheit. And not sunny. Oh, and windy.

One kid dropoff, 8 miles, and two hours later, it was a balmy 6 degrees. Still pretty windy. A little sun.

Here's what I wore:

Regular trouser socks underneath my regular, year-round ankle-height running socks. I have some thin wool running socks on order but they haven't arrived yet, and my old winter running socks bit the dust last year. At least the trouser socks were acrylic, not cotton.

Long underwear under my lightweight running pants.

A short-sleeve thin running shirt, long enough to cover my butt. This is an ugly shirt from a race I'm not wild about, but it's a perfect underlayer, so I've kept it.

A thin long-sleeve overshirt. Again, another shirt I'm not wild about, but it's good as an overlayer, especially since the sleeves are long (this became important).

My Hot Chocolate 15K tech hoodie from last year. This is a great cold weather top.

The baby has claimed my neck gaiter and my replacement one hasn't come in yet, so a wide acrylic scarf, wrapped around my face and neck several times.

A tech running beanie hat.

Chapstick smeared liberally all over my face as a wind break. You laugh, but it works!

The hood of my hoodie kept all my head and neck gear in place.

Running gloves. These on their own were definitely not enough. All the way to daycare my hands were freezing and I was thinking that this would be the weak link in my outfit, the one that had the potential to spoil my long-run plans. Luckily, just before I was about to raid the kids' clothing boxes for extra socks I remembered my shirt has really long sleeves, and I was able to pull them out and cover up my hands in the gloves. Perfect!

Once my feet warmed up I was pretty good for the whole run. The wind was an issue and impacted my choice of route - I had wanted to run along the lakefront but that just wasn't an option for me today. When I started I really didn't know if I would be able to complete my intended eight miles, but figured that at the very least this would be an information-gathering exercise in what kind of gear I might need to keep running outside this winter. I will say that it is unusually cold for Chicago, we get testy when it dips into the teens, let alone the single digits. And most winters I've been sidelined by injury and haven't tried to do regular long runs outside. So I really don't have a "winter running gear" selection, just some odds and ends that I throw together for the few times I have gone out. But apparently that works! I will be happy to get those wool socks, though.

I could use some hot chocolate right now...

Not yet warmed up -
Annie

November Randomness (How Is It Already November 18?!)

Thursday was an absolutely beautiful day for a long run, simply gorgeous, the best I'm likely to have until spring.

Too bad I got the kids' cold and it worked itself into my chest. No long run for me. Tea and restorative yoga instead.

I would be more sanguine about it if I hadn't had this run on the books for a couple of weeks now, and if I weren't doing a virtual half in ten days time. Well... oh well. I can trust that I can pull 13.1 miles out of me next Saturday (slowly) IF I respect where I am now and don't try to do too much. Regardless of how beautiful the weather is. Grumble, grumble, grouse.

(Written three days ago now, the cold is mostly gone. Plus it should be sunny - though COLD - for my half on Saturday.)

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Awesome workout this morning, the kind that makes me feel like a rock star all day. Triple punch at the gym: rowing, cycling, and running. Felt great, wanted to do more (I had kept the times really short). I love those days.

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But it's a sunny day today, and so I'm doing good. This time of year (October - December) is really hard for me. And it always takes me a while to put two and two together as to why I'm feeling low. Or rather, why my lows feel so very low.

Thankfully I think I figured it out a bit earlier this year and can start on the self-care: making sure I get some exercise every day, making sure I get some drawing/painting time every day too, being careful around sweets and alcohol. Being gentle with myself (most important). And indulging myself in anything that gives me pleasure: novels, movies, music, relaxing with my kids.

That's probably part of why Scary Movie Month means so much to me each year (movies, extra time with my husband, yummy treats, fun stuff with the kids). Something to keep in mind for the future.

Forty-one years old and still learning about myself.

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I had noticed that my reading had shifted, from my usual art theory/history and theology, to novels and memoirs and running books. A good one I just finished: The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern. And I'm currently reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz and Blasphemy by Sherman Alexie (short stories). And there are plenty around the house to keep me busy through the winter, plus the ones requested through the library.

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Any good books you'd recommend? Any good movies?

Yours in quiet exuberance,
Annie

Scary Movie Month - The End

Yes! We did it. Ten years since the show came to its network conclusion (as opposed to its ongoing life in graphic novels), and five years since we started watching it, we finally managed to finish Buffy Vampire Slayer. Now to knock Angel out...

Frankenweenie (Tim Burton - 2012)
If you've watched a lot of Tim Burton, as we have, then there's a lot about this movie that is awfully familiar, almost a bit too familiar. But we liked it anyway. I was really taken by how lovingly and carefully the dog was depicted, in all its very dogginess. And then we enjoyed all the shoutouts to different monster movies from the past. Not one for the boy though, not yet, anyway. (He's been busy watching "The Nightmare Before Christmas" as often as he can get us to let him.)

Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Another classic, but this one is a goodie as well as an oldie. Creepy and interesting and moving. Perhaps the best of all the Universal monster movies (though I still need to see "Creature from the Black Lagoon").

And then finally...

Halloween (John Carpenter - 1978)
One of his best. A perfect way to go out. (Aside from watching "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" with the kidlets.)

And we are done. So done. We had contemplated seeing some others over the next weeks, but not anymore. Time to get caught up on some other movies, time to get caught up on sleep.

Yours sleepily,
Annie

Scary Movie Month - Part 2

And then after the marathon was over we could really settle ourselves down and get in some serious viewing...

Bubba Ho-Tep (2002 with Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis)
This may be one of my favorite movies ever. Elvis in a nursing home, a soul-sucking mummy, and JFK somehow put into the body of a black man, now elderly as well. And yet it is one of the most moving films I've ever seen about aging, regrets, family, and what makes a life well lived. Plus some kick-assery by the elderly Elvis and JFK, working as a team.

Dark Star (John Carpenter & Dan O'Bannon - 1974)
Not scary, but the first effort by two men who went on to make horrifically scary movies, so we watched out of historic interest. I was falling asleep so I missed the last twenty minutes but I wish I'd managed to stay up for it all. Atmospheric and interesting, if perhaps not as funny as they'd hoped.

The Hand (1981 with Michael Caine)
Caine was good in this, but then I felt the ending threw all that good work away. We did get some good conversation throughout about the characters, though, so the experience of watching it was fun, even if in the end it was disappointing.

The Wolf Man (1941 with Claude Rains, Bela Lugosi, and Lon Chaney)
A classic. And it's a sign of how much Scary Movie Month has become part of my life that I actually watched this one on my own. I've seen the beginning of this at least three times (and then fallen asleep), so I was determined to make it through this time. I dozed off a little here and there but made it to the end! And then realized that I hadn't missed all that much of it before - it's just a short movie, and the end, when it comes, happens pretty quickly. So this was more about filling in my monster movie gaps than being particularly engaged with it. A good choice for solo viewing.

The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock - 1963)
Oh, fantastic. A pleasure to watch, to think about, to wonder at, and then to be scared by. No false notes here.

Gojira (1954)
Another one I watched on my own, but this time because I really like it. A movie to be savored, thought about, and listened to (the music and the sound effects are well worth paying close attention to). I had forgotten enough about how it was structured to be surprised, especially once Gojira is on the streets attacking the city. So much to think about with this one. What would it have been like to see this in 1950s Japan? How very different from the bowlderized American version that was made.

In the Mouth of Madness (John Carpenter - 1994)
Oh, I wanted this to be better than it was. It had such promise at the beginning. What I would change? The actress, the ending.

And then heading into the last weekend, and determined to finish out Buffy...