Chicago Here I Come

This semester has been inexplicably busy, and I've hardly had time to catch my breath since it started. As a result I haven't posted in weeks and I'm just a few days away from the Chicago Marathon. In fact, I leave on my trip this evening because I'll be giving an invited lecture at another university on Thursday, visiting colleagues and friends in Madison on Friday, and then heading back to Chicago for race weekend.

My only goal for Chicago is to finish. After Seattle, I briefly entertained the idea that I might be able to PR a second time this year since Chicago is flat, and it will undoubtedly be an energetic course. Since then, I slogged through training while traveling. After I got back home, things looked promising for a week or two and then I started dealing with some niggling IT band issues again. While the problem thankfully isn't as severe as the similar injury I had back in 2011 when I DNS'ed Chicago, I have had to dial things back a bit. This hasn't been the worst thing as I've been expending a lot of energy on work these past few weeks.

You never know how things might feel on race day. Things could magically come together, and I'm not discounting that possibility. However, I will toe the line with no time goal in mind and just focus on having an amazing experience whatever that means that day. One of my dear friends from college whom I haven't seen in several years is going to be in the same corral as me so we are going to try to see each other at the start of the race. She's been training like a bad ass in Texas heat so she'll probably leave me in the dust pretty quickly, but it will be good to see her even if it's just for a few minutes before the fun begins. I think most people on my Team are in corrals ahead and the corral behind me, but hopefully I'll make some friends to chat with along the course. I have miles dedicated to amazing friends and family members who have supported me on this fundraising and training journey.

Now I just have to pack, prep my talk, and pick up a few doses of Emergen-C.

August 2016 in Review

It's been a few weeks since I've had a chance to post here. The rest of my trip was a whirlwind of research, seeing friends, playing tourist, frenetic writing, and an academic conference. My itinerary took me from Valladolid back to Madrid and then on to Paris, Leiden, Bruges, Gent, Cologne, and Frankfurt before I headed home. One of the major highlights was going to Moulin Rouge, Versailles, and out for a night on the town in Paris with my friend Adeeb, whom I met a decade ago in Mexico City but whom I hadn't seen in person in almost as many years. While in Paris, I got in a somewhat bewildering 9 mile run that took me through my neighborhood, along the Seine, and around the Eiffel Tower. The addition of Leiden into my itinerary was a bit last minute, but it enabled me to see another friend after far too long and to ride a bike along a Dutch canal.

My academic conference was productive and intellectually stimulating. Plus, it took place in Bruges, where I'd never been. In between papers, I explored some of its streets and churches and ate my weight in waffles, frites, and chocolate. And the beer was more than amazing! It was also lovely to see professional friends. I roomed with my friend John, and we were able to get in a short run together and take a quick trip to Gent for some more church and castle exploring before I made my way to Germany and after two days there back to my corner of the Arctic.

Once I got back home, I had to immediately begin to prepare for the start of the semester since classes commenced on Monday. I also have a big deadline looming so I've been working toward that. I have managed to eek out a little bit of progress toward my goals.

I'm eking closer to my mileage goal for the year, but am likely going to fall short of this one, and that's probably okay. In August I ran 64.3 miles. Of course with my traveling schedule I encountered some challenges in fitting in all my scheduled training runs. However, I only missed one long run on the trip and usually managed to run at least two short runs a week. The same can not be said of this week since I've had a nasty cold and haven't run at all.

Like July, August was quite research focused. I finished up my archival work for the summer and wrote and presented a conference paper. I would like to continue the positive momentum and continue carving out an hour here and there to work on my new book project. I also recently received a revise and resubmit for a journal article that I submitted in the spring and will need to find some time over the coming months to deal with revisions.

Because I rarely had an internet connection for my last week in Madrid and then couldn't get my phone to connect to the wifi in my Paris hotel, I kind of fell off the wagon with my gratitude app. I'm hoping to use it more consistently in September. The bright side of not having internet access meant that I didn't waste time reading way too many comments on the internet so that likely contributed to my over all health and well-being in August.

Also because I was on the go, I didn't have much sustained energy or time for other types of writing. However, I did have a piece of non-academic writing accepted for a publication by a local literary journal! Their fall issue will be publishing a poem that I wrote over the summer.

If you're going back to school, how has the start of your term been? What was one of the highlights of the last full month of summer?

Chicago is Not For Me

Before you freak out (or more likely shrug in bemusement) at the title of this post, let me assure you that I still plan to run the Chicago Marathon. But after a week of absolutely horrible workouts I needed to throw myself a bit of a pity party and then cowgirl up and remind myself of why I'm doing this.

First a little background, two weekends ago I decided to move my long run to Sunday so that I could go to Cuenca on Saturday and play tourist. This would have been an ok plan except for a couple of things. One: my phone battery died during the night so my alarm didn't go off nor could I receive the texts from my husband (oops! he forgot to send his, but at the time he got a pass) and from my running buddy Christy urging me out the door.  Two: after I got home from walking around Cuenca all day on a scorchingly hot day, I then went out to dinner at a friend's house where an inordinate amount of cava and white wine was consumed (considering the planned long run for the next day). When I finally made it out the door on Sunday morning it was already in the 80s and my route along the river just does not have much shade at all. Every minute felt like an eternity. By the time I finished logging my run, I was sunburnt and hating my life choices. Why wasn't I sleeping off the cava fugue and then doing something touristy instead of roasting myself on the pavement. Why could I do nothing all afternoon except lay in front of a fan feeling completely zapped of energy? I mean, I could have been at the Mercado de San Miguel eating olives and cheese and drinking wine.

That long run left a bad taste in my mouth so I didn't run again until I had been in Valladolid for a day or two Because the archive I was using is not in the city itself but rather in a small village about 7 or 8 miles away, I was having to get up early to take the bus so as to arrive not too long after the archives opened. Since they close at 2:30pm, it didn't make sense to dawdle, and a morning run seemed out of the question if I wanted to get to the archives early. So I ran in the evening. It was still above 85 or 90 degrees. It was dusty. When I got a mile out, the area where I was running along the river started to seem a little sketchy and isolated, so I decided to turn around and call it a day. I couldn't push the pace at all. My breathing and heart rate were erratic. Why was I doing this when I could have been sitting on a nice terazza drinking a tinto de verano?

The next day I thought it over and decided to skip running in the evening in favor of a morning run. It was something of an indulgence but I opted to take a cab to the archives. This allowed me to log a few miles in the morning and still get to the AGS in a timely enough manner. Although this run did not suck, I have to honestly say that it wasn't great either, especially the first mile. It was disheartening to see how slow my watch said I was moving even though the temps were cooler. Finally, about halfway through the run, I was able to mentally, if not to physically, shift gears. I finally remembered that Chicago is not for me. I didn't sign up for Chicago without knowing how tough it would be to train over this part of the summer. I signed up because of Bryant's story and Team Deere. And while nothing is set in stone, my only real goals for Chicago were/are to fundraise and to finish the marathon. I needed to get over myself. So I did (mostly) (sort of).

Since then running has not been easy - I've been having some hip issues, and the night before and after my 15 miler this past weekend I woke multiple times with cramps in my calves - but it's been easier. This morning I was even able to pick up the pace a little bit and run a couple of faster intervals.

I have two weeks left of this trip. My training goals are pretty simple for the rest of the time I'm abroad. I want to run one more time here in Madrid, once in Paris (a long run), at least once in Belgium, and once in Germany before I head back to Anchorage and hurtle toward the start of a semester.

More on the Running/Writing Parallel

I’ve blogged in the past about how running long distancesand marathon training and academic research and writing have a lot of parallels. I’ve been thinking about that quite a bit lately because of where I’m at in my current training cycle and where I’m at in my academic career as a researcher and writer. For the first time in a long time my pipeline is essentially empty. Articles based on my dissertation or side research project are out or under review. The critical edition I co-authored came out two years ago. My book Treating the Public is in the hands of my editor and the press production team.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about what it means to have written a book that is at least partially about the spaces charity, alms, and good works created for performance in the early modern period and what it means to perform charity today. They are very different beasts, but both are subjects I'm passionate about. Over the past several months I’ve dedicated numerous runs to those of you who have so generously sponsored me -- if I were a better actress I'd come perform monologues from early modern Spanish plays for you. I’ve given time, sweat, tears, and my own funds to training for the Rock and Roll Seattle Marathon, which is now just four weeks away.

Once again running and writing – or at least the mindset needed for them – seem to coextend and synchronize. Although there are still some things to be done for Treating the Public (and miles to be logged for Seattle) I am finally really embarking on another reserach project, which will hopefully grow into another book. It is daunting to have so few documents fully read and transcribed, such a limited sense of the shape the project will take, to have no idea if my next trip to the archives will be boom or bust (it’s usually never really bust, but I may not find things that answer the research questions I’m asking now). But it’s good to remember that I have the skills to do this; I’ve done this before; I can do this again. Like all big projects it will requre discipline and the investment of time and energy. I’m also beginning another training and fundraising cycle with Team in Training. Our Fall Team meets for the first time tomorrow to begin training. Another investment of myself that I know I'm capable of but that will require mental and emotional effort, especially once I leave on a research trip and have to run on my own in Madrid. 

My new research project is more about corruption and political intrigue than charity and is perhaps a fitting metaphor for running Chicago in October. I would love to have you sponsor me for Chicago (no amount is too small)! I promise not to embezzle your funds like a corrupt politician from the seventeenth or the twenty-first century! If you donate by the end of May, you will be entered into a raffle for a $25 amazon gift card. (You get one entry for every $10 donated to my fundraising efforts to Seattle or Chicago.) I will dedicate one of my training runs to anyone who donates and one of my marathon miles to you if you donate $50 or more.  You can donate by following this link: http://pages.teamintraining.org/wa/chicago16/rballn

And with that I'm off to finish transcribing some seventeenth-century documents I have digitized. Wish me luck! 

Do you see any parallels between your work/vocation and your hobbies? Do you have any big projects or races coming up on the horizon?