Vancouver Marathon Training: Week 4

For what it's worth, another week of running and training is in the books. As with last week, things didn't go quite according to plan, but I did manage to log most of the miles I was supposed to.

Winter blues and greys

Monday - scheduled yoga. Actual yoga. I just did a short 20 minute gentle flow podcast from Yoga Journal.  It was exactly what I needed after the end of what felt like a very long work day.

Tuesday - scheduled 4 miles easy. Actual 5 by the 5th Virtual 5K on the treadmill in 30:36. You can read more about it in its own post below.

Wednesday - scheduled timed mile. Actual rest. Since I ran fast (for me) the previous day, I decided to put off the timed mile for a few days.

Thursday - scheduled 3 miles easy. Actual 4 miles easy. I hopped on the treadmill to watch some Netflix and log a few easy miles. The pace averaged out to 10:55 min/miles.

Friday - scheduled 4 miles easy. Actual rest. I had some things to attend to for a couple of service obligations and it made for a strange day.

Saturday - scheduled belly dance. Actual 3 miles easy. I decided that I really didn't enjoy belly dance all that much. I'm sure it would have been good for my tight and inflexible shoulders and upper body, but I would much rather run, bike, or do yoga instead. So I gave myself permission. I headed out the door for a few miles on a stunningly beautiful winter day. It was icy and a bit windy in more exposed areas, but it was good for the soul. My average pace was 11:31. I followed it up with some push ups, crunches, and a short yoga session on my mat.

Sunday - scheduled 7 miles LSD. Actual 7 miles LSD on the treadmill at an average pace of 11:17. I felt physically okay, but this run was hard mentally and emotionally. I had received some troubling news from a loved one earlier that morning, and the first part of February has, since college, been an emotionally low time for me in general as it marks the anniversary of my father's passing. (Today is the actual calendar date.) I got through the run, but I'm not ashamed to admit that I spent an hour sobbing uncontrollably afterwards.

Total scheduled miles: 19.
Actual miles: 17.12.
Cross training workouts: 2.

I miss my father frequently but I feel it most terribly this time of year, but I'm so grateful that he instilled in me a love of learning, curiosity, intellectual integrity, the habit of keeping some sort of journal, a love of opera, football, Monty Python, and swearing, and even eventually an ability to accept that I am a giant dork and that's just fine. Thanks for indulging me, readers, with a bit of a descent into the maudlin here.

Streak, Interrupted

So, you remember how I decided to participate in the Runner's World Holiday Running Streak and how I foolishly bragged about how I had no intention of ending my yoga streak after I finished a month of daily yoga practices? Well, it turns out that I had a mild case of victory disease and probably should have hired someone to walk around behind me muttering "momento mori." (See? I suffer from narcissism even when not suffering from victory disease.) Maybe someone will buy me the Wendy B. skull necklace so I can remember not to get overconfident from some minor victories.

Pride Goeth Before the (Roman Funerary Statue's Head) Fall(s Off)

While I wasn't quite crushed for hubris, I got smacked down with a very nasty cold. There were three days last week that I neither ran nor did any yoga. When I wasn't on campus, I could be found on the couch in a pair of pajamas watching reruns of Scrubs or grading or in bed. I thought I was on the mend, and I restarted both streaks on Friday. Most of my runs since then have been 1 milers logged at a very slow pace that still felt relatively hard. Although I feel better now generally, I have essentially lost my voice. As of Sunday afternoon, all that seems to come out when I talk is a barely audible croaking that sounds like a dying frog. Maybe -- if I still can't speak without hoarseness and pain on Wednesday -- that would be the appropriate time for me to try to go an entire day without talking.

In other news, I accidentally deleted my About Me page last night when I was simply trying to remove a picture from it. I gave it a quick rewrite, so I'd love it if you'd pop over there and let me know what you think.

If you're currently streaking, how's it been going for you? When was the last time you were so hoarse that you lost your voice?

Travels: Mount Rushmore

When I was in elementary school one of my pen pals sent me a postcard from her family vacation to Mount Rushmore. As I was already rather obsessed with the past, I was envious of her visit to this historical site. I wanted to go to Mount Rushmore this summer while it was still just a few hours of driving away and convinced my Canadian that it would be a fun mini-break as we couldn't swing a real vacation this summer due to my research trips and the move. 

On Wednesday morning we hit the road to Rapid City to stay the night and to spend a few hours at Mount Rushmore. We did stop at Wall Drug on our way, but I really can't talk about that, as I'm still having nightmares about the place where kitsch and chotchkies went to die....

As an adult and a professional historian, Rushmore proved to be both fascinating and disappointing. The site itself is awe-inspiring and I won't deny that it looked really spectacular when lit up at night. However, the devil is in the details. The informational plaques that visitors can read as they walk the trail and gain different vantage points of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln were truly odd. The quotes were ill-chosen and some of the information listed on them was rather misleading. For example, the Roosevelt plaque claimed that he was the first president to travel outside the US. While it was true that he was the first to travel outside the US as president, he was not the first to have foreign experience as an ambassador, etc. The Jefferson plaque made no mention of him as the author of the Declaration of Independence. Issues of slave-owning were entirely omitted. 

M. and I stayed for the evening lighting ceremony, during which we were treated to a 20 minute film proclaiming that America stands for freedom and democracy and has become the ideal republic. On the one hand, the film was narrated by Captain Sisko Avery Brooks, so that was good, and it did at least play lip service to the fact that there had been some struggles for freedom and liberties to reach the common man and non-whites. On the other hand, the film suggested that these struggles for equal rights and liberties finished playing out long ago. This is hardly true, and we need to have the integrity to admit this and to continue to work to achieve that ideal republic. America cannot be the land of the free and the home of the brave when it refuses to acknowledge the darker parts of its history or that many of its citizens still face discrimination. 

Some might think that kids need to be spared the complexities of their nation's past until they are older or that families don't need to be made uncomfortable by having to think about injustices while on their vacation, but I would argue that we could stand a bit more critical thinking and empathy and more rigorous history lessons if we want future generations of Americans to be aware of the benefits and obligations of living in a representative democracy - not to mention for them to be competitive in a global setting.

Nostalgia: Two Year Anniversary of My First Marathon

Two years ago I ran my first marathon. It didn't go perfectly. It wasn't fast, and it wasn't always fun, but it changed my life. I became a marathoner. Before that I had run a couple of 5Ks for fun, and I had run a 10K and a half-marathon as part of my training for that 26.2. But nothing could compare to the feeling of elation that I experienced when I crossed the finish line of the Columbus Marathon in 2009. It is still my proudest running moment and I still consider it one of my greatest accomplishments.

My TNT Group

It was a chilly morning, and I cut off the bottoms from a pair of tube socks to wear them as discardable arm warmers with my TNT singlet. I ended up never taking them off. I finished getting ready and headed down to the Hyatt in downtown Columbus to meet up with my group from Team in Training to have a bit of breakfast and some coffee and snap some photos. I used the bathroom a couple of times, but (TMI warning) I was too nervous to poo. Before long it was time to head out to the start line. I lined up with the 5 hour pace group and we were off.  The pacer's name was Larry and most of the people running in the group were women, so someone started referring to our group as Larry's Ladies. It was such a fun group with both first-timers, like me, and veterans. I ran the first 14 miles with them and was feeling pretty good. At around mile 13, a friend who was also running the marathon decided to DNF, which was hard for me to handle emotionally. At mile 14, I stopped to use a biffy, and I lost my group. That was also a momentum killer for me, and I started to struggle a few miles after that. But I continued to put one foot in front of the other, running some, walking some, and I made it to the finish. And when I did, I knew that I wanted to do it again. I knew that I was strong, tough, and would endure. I was a marathoner and had accomplished one of my life goals.

About to cross the finish line

I know that someday here before too long, I will run a third marathon. But for today remembering my first one is enough.

Nostalgia: Couch to 5K in Madrid

During the summer of 2007 I was out of shape and a smoker.  Most Americans lose weight when they spend some time in Europe because overall the European lifestyle tends to be healthier - more walking, smaller portion sizes, and so forth. But being the contrarian that I am, I gained 30 pounds during the first 9 months that I lived in Madrid. I was doing lots of walking, but I wasn't going to the gym 5-6 days a week and biking about an hour on a daily basis like I did before my move across the Atlantic. While I absolutely loved Madrid, I was also going through an emotional low point in my personal life and I took solace in patatas bravas, manchego cheese, and cañas (small glasses of beer).

During the previous year I had tried to go for a couple of short runs. Running in Madrid was always sort of surreal to me. If I took to the streets in my neighborhood, I would often draw the side eye from ladies in heels and furs. Plus, unless it was incredibly early in the morning, there was so much pedestrian traffic that it got annoying quickly to have to constantly play frogger. But there weren't that many runners in the parks either, and the ones I saw were all of the fast and furious type.

Even so at the beginning of the summer I decided that I wanted to get to where I could run a 5K again, and I googled the Couch to 5K program. Knowing that it was less than ideal to run on the sidewalks, I took my work outs to Retiro Park. As I ran and walked my intervals, I dreamed of being able to consider myself a runner. Over the course of those next couple of months I built up from running 60 seconds to running for 30 minutes. During the day I would go to the archives and in the evenings before going out with friends for dinner or drinks I would either do yoga in the tiny living room of my flat or go for a run in the park. As the summer progressed, I lost some of the weight that I had gained, but much more importantly I rekindled my love of running.  Although I didn't start really running many miles for another year, I had become active again and wanting to get better at running (among other things) prompted me to try to quit smoking and eventually to succeed at dropping that nasty habit.

The sunset at the lake at Retiro Park

I don't miss a lot of things about my life in 2006 and 2007, but I do miss Madrid. And I miss running in Retiro Park - even though I rarely saw other runners there and those that I did see tended to be male and super serious.

Boats on the Lake

One of the things that I love about America is the flourishing communities of runners that you can find in just about any town. I like being part of that, but Madrid will always be an important part of my running history.

My Seven Links

A couple of weeks ago the talented and lovely Rose-Anne of Life, Love, and Food tagged me to do the Seven Links meme that has been going around. As some of my readers know, this blog wasn't my primary one until April of this year, so I don't have tons of rich archival material to draw on for my links, but here goes.

My most beautiful post: I think my series of posts from my travels to Italy are quite lovely, but it's hard not to create a beautiful post when all you have to do is upload a photo of Brunelleschi's Dome or San Marco. Looking back through these, though, I realized that I never posted about Rome or Siena. So many ideas, so little time to type them up....

My most popular post: I really am not sure why it's my most popular post, but my Race Report for the St. Peter Halloween Fun Run last October has received the most page views of any of my posts by far. It didn't get all that many comments, but apparently a lot of people read it.

My most controversial post: I have mostly shied away from controversial topics on this blog because until a few months ago it was largely just a space for me to reflect on my running, my writing, and my goals about running and writing. These goal-oriented kinds of themes don't lend themselves to generating a whole lot of debate. Maybe my future post in which I ponder why the blogging running community seems to be so white and so heteronormative (where are the other queer runners?!?!) or my future post about how running gives me wicked cases of crotch rot will be a tad more controversial.

My most helpful post: I think my most helpful post is the one in which I discussed my first session with a sports psychologist. While I could say that my recipe posts or the product review for my treadmill are also helpful, I think Sports Psychology and Mental Toughness has a lot to offer those who are runners and especially ones who think they might want to look into getting professional assistance with the mental component of our sport.

A post that's success surprised me: I was in awe of all the support I received from readers when I decided last year to downgrade from the full marathon to the half in San Antonio. Admitting how overwhelmed I was in Coming to Terms with Tough Decisions wasn't easy, but the blogging community was so kind and helped me to put things in perspective.

A post I didn't feel got the attention it deserved: My post Marvelous Bodies generated heated debate actually when I cross-posted it on a different site, but here it didn't receive many views or comments.

The post I'm most proud of: Hmmm.  I'm not proud of posts the way I am articles or conference papers or chapters, but I will say that my Race Report: Team Ortho Minneapolis Marathon has a lot going for it.

Doing this has made me think of the posts that I have wanted to write or the ones that have remained half-finished because I ran out of time or my creative juices stopped flowing. I hope this blog can become a little bit more richly textured in the near future.

I'm also supposed to tag others to do this, but I think that this one has pretty much gone the rounds. If you haven't done a 7 links post yet, and want to consider yourself tagged.  If you blog, tell me why you think some posts get lots of attention and others don't. For that matter, why you think some blogs are wildly successful, but others that seem to be just as beautifully written and full of good stuff don't get much recognition at all? I'd love to know what you think!