Oh What Fun, It is to Run

Dashing through the snow


In my Brooks shoes colored gray


Over the hills we go


Huffing all the way. (Huff huff huff)


iPod earbuds ring


Making spirits bright


What fun it is to run and sing


A running song tonight.

Oh blister hells, Oh crap, I fell!
 Chafing all the way!


Oh what fun 
it is to run and sing
 in Brooks shoes colored gray, Hey!


Ankle swells, God I smell,
 Sweating all the way!


Oh what joy it is to run 
in my Brooks shoes colored gray

A day or two ago,
 I took my trainers for a ride


And soon The Usain Bolt
 was striding by my side


The guy was lean and lank


Fortuned seemed his lot


We got into a heated race


And I? – I lost upshot.

Oh blister hells, Oh crap, I fell! 
Chafing all the way!


Oh what fun 
it is to run and sing in 
Brooks shoes colored gray, Hey!


Ankle swells, God I smell,
 Sweating all the way!


Oh what joy it is to run
 in my Brooks shoes colored gray

A day of two ago


The story I must tell


I went out on a run


And on my butt I fell;


A guy was running by


Was too hot – must be gay


He laughed at me, a-sprawling lie


But quickly ran away

Oh blister hells, Oh crap, I fell! 
Chafing all the way!


Oh what fun 
it is to run and sing
 in Brooks shoes colored gray, Hey!


Ankle swells, God I smell, 
Sweating all the way!


Oh what joy it is to run
 in my Brooks shoes colored gray

Now the temps are low


Go it while you can


Take it nice and slow


And sing this running jam


If you’re still quite cold


It’s warmer when you speed


Pick up that pace and hold


And crack you'll take the lead

Oh blister hells, Oh crap, I fell!
 Chafing all the way!


Oh what fun 
it is to run and sing 
in Brooks shoes colored gray, Hey!


Ankle swells, God I smell,
 Sweating all the way!


Oh what joy it is to run 
in my Brooks shoes colored gray

Oh what joy it is to run
 in my Brooks shoes colored gray

Boston Week Three Miles: 21 (Cross-training:  1.5 hours of pool running and 3 yoga sessions)

This Week's Beer Choice:  Anchor Brewing's Our Special Ale 2013 (A Christmas Ale)

Just Don’t Google It

They say Google is decreasing our cognitive ability to recall information – If you don’t remember Nicholas Carr’s article “Is Google Making Us Stoopid?” just Google it.  Lately, though, I have fallen victim to another kind of Google danger – paranoia brought on by sports injury search results.

It all started innocently enough – I wanted to find some information on how long it takes a sprained ankle to heal.  The problem is that every horror story of any kind of injury, medical mishap, surgery gone wrong, you name it, is on the Internet and Google has an uncanny ability to find those stories and place them at the top of your results page.

Before I knew it, I was reading about people who were never able to run again, and runners who thought they had a sprained ankle but it turned out to be a stress fracture or some other more serious injury. 

Like a medical student who turns in to a hypochondriac and thinks she has every disease in the book, I started fearing that I fit the symptoms of every ankle horror story out there.  Before I knew it, I was on the phone scheduling an appointment with a sports chiropractor (I read one girl’s post who said that she only wished she had seen her chiropractor sooner.)

But before my scheduled appointment with the chiropractor, I went to see a nurse at the CVS Minute Clinic first.  You see, when I got a bad cold last week, I also starting Googling my “sore throat, runny nose, and ear pressure” symptoms.  Convinced by my research the I had a double ear infection, I paid the full price of a visit to the nurse on my high-deductible plan, just to find out that I all I needed was an over-the-counter decongestant. 

Maybe the worst-case scenario isn’t always the most likely.  Maybe I’m not dying.  And maybe I’m going to be just fine if I don’t freak out about every sign of discomfort and every scary story on the Internet. 

With this glass-half-full approach, I took my cold diagnosis (or rather lack of an infection diagnosis) as a sign that maybe I have been overly sensitive to my healing ankle – or at least these past few weeks I have.  And while I will always believe that it is better to give an injury more time to recover rather than not enough, I have decided to slowly get back a few miles under my eager legs.  I can certainly tell that my right ankle is weaker, but I am happy to say that so far my short, easy runs have been pain-free.

Things don’t always go as expected and when we have an injury, or a heartbreak, or even just a bad day, we sometimes don’t bounce back as quickly as we would like.  But worrying about it rarely helps.  Instead, do your strengthening exercises and hope for the best, and definitely think twice before Googling it.

Boston Week Two Miles: 10 (And about 2 hours of pool running)

This Week's Beer Choice:  NoDa Brewing Company's Santa Baby

Here We Go Again

In addition to this past week being the first week in the busy, holiday month of December, it was also the first week of Boston 2014 training.  I am using the same training plan as I did with the Marine Corps Marathon – a plan created by coach Brad Hudson and published in his book Run Faster from the 5K to the Marathon.

While most marathon training plans are around 16 weeks long, Hudson’s plan is 20 weeks.  During MCM training, I was glad the plan was so long because the first month gave me a good fitness base for training.  However, the plan may be too long for Boston given that I just completed a long training streak leading up to the 38^th MCM that was held on October 27^th.  At least – it gives me comfort to think that the plan may be too long given that the first week of training was less than desirable.

For starters, I am still running in the pool rather than on the pavement.  I am doing my best to mimic the workouts in my training schedule while in the water.   For example, instead of six easy miles with two eight-second hill sprints, I aqua jogged for about 55 minutes with two eight-second “sprints” where I tried to turn my legs over as quickly as I could against the resistance of the water.

I had solid runs in the not-so-solid pool on Sunday, Tuesday (Monday was rest day – aka Yoga Day), Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.  I had planned to do a long, easy aqua jog on Saturday and a short, easy one on Sunday, but a cold that I had been fighting off all week finally took me down Friday night.

When you can’t run and you can’t even swim because you feel like your head is already filled with water, add in a few pieces of cake or a holiday treat, and it doesn’t take long before you feel lazier than your eight-year old golden retriever.

The holidays are always a hard time to stay fit – partly because there are so many yummy temptations out there but also partly because it tends to be a busy time of year and often a workout is the first thing that goes when we don’t have time for everything.  And I know more than anyone that when you don’t get your exercise, it is harder to say “No” to that decadent dessert – We forget so quickly how hard we worked for our current fitness.

I thought 20 weeks may be too long or rather December 1^st may have been too soon to get back in to marathon training, but I also knew that without real running and with all the tasty goodies of the season, I needed a plan to keep me on track and away from the dessert bar. 

Boston Week One Miles: None (A little over 6 hours of pool running)

This Week's Beer Choice - Scratch That - Drink Choice:  Cold Medicine (You know I really feel bad when I don't run and I don't drink beer)

“While Visions of Sugar-plums Danced in Their Heads” – Clement Clark Moore

I must have been around age seven or so when I decided that I was going to become an Olympic swimmer specializing in my favorite stroke from the neighborhood, summer swim team – the breaststroke. 

Never mind that with a small frame and scrawny little legs and arms, I was not built to be a swimmer.  I was a kid, and I had no clue that it takes a 6’ 1”, 165-pound body like that of Missy Franklin to dive in to an Olympic pool.  I just believed that if I trained every day that I would make it there. 

So, I got up each morning and hit the pool early to get in my Olympic training.  I am not sure how long I kept up the daily laps, but it was long enough to earn an end-of-swim season paper plate award that stated something along the lines of “Paula Pridgen, 2000 Olympics Gold Medalist in 100M Breaststroke.”

While during a recent aqua jog at the local aquatic center, this memory came to mind.  Hopefully the lifeguards weren’t watching me too closely or else they probably thought it was strange when I randomly gave a little laugh.  It humored me that here I was at age 27, probably 20 years after I thought I was going to become an Olympic swimmer, and I am back in the pool training again but in hopes of making it to the Olympic Marathon Trials.

Because of my still-healing sprained ankle, I have been spending several days a week at the pool aqua jogging alongside local kids participating in swim team practice.  Watching the youths, I am reminded a lot of my childhood spent in the pool all summer long.  By the time August rolled around, my blonde hair would have turned green from all the chlorine, but I didn’t care.

On My Dad's Back During a 4th of July Pool Game

Maybe it should seem a little silly to be a grown woman and still spending so much time at the pool.  Or maybe it is silly to think just because I am all grown up by most standards, I am supposed to give up on dreams and let go of the fun in life.

In my undergrad Organizational Behavior class at UNC’s Kenan Flagler Business School, I learned that children are sometimes the best problem solvers.  Why?  Because they don’t mind trying a whole bunch of different things and they don’t mind failing.  While adults would waste time sitting around strategizing the best way to solve the puzzle, kids just try one thing after another until they succeed, often doing so long before the adults.

As adults, our values and priorities change.  Instead of letting our imaginations run wild, we promote thinking reasonably and rationally.  Instead of taking chances, we minimize risks.  Instead of running, we walk. 

And as any kid knows, the adults aren’t always right.  While failure is always a possibility, success is never a possibility unless you try.

This holiday season as little ones’ dreams are filled with flying Santas, elves, winter wonderlands, and far-away magical places (I’m still waiting on my ticket to Hogwarts.), I am giving myself permission to occasionally take a break from all the grown-up responsibilities of this month and allow myself to experience the joy and excitement of this time with boundless possibilities, as if I were still seven years old.

Weekly Miles:  One Again….Along with 3.5 hours of aqua jogging. 

This Week’s Beer Choice: Stone Brewing Co.'s Oaked Arrogant Bastard Ale  (Being a grown-up has its perks)

Thanks for the Miles

Every runner training for a marathon has probably studied the course map and elevation changes of her target marathon and can tell you in detail where all the tough spots will be along the course – the steep hill up to the finish line (why do they like to do that to us?), the boring, deserted miles along the wide highway, and the long, never-ending steady incline that seems to only level off when you hit the point that your body can’t run uphill another yard.

Training for my first marathon, The Thunder Road Marathon in Charlotte, NC, I struggled with a hilly, challenging course that had an overall climb of 1,168 feet and a total elevation change of 2,349 feet.  It was easy to complain about each hill that I hit, but one thought that kept my feet moving uphill was the decline coming around the turn – or even the relatively flat mile that I would eventually get to. 

Instead of breaking up the marathon by all the hard spots and tackling those, I tried to change my thinking and make note of all the miles that weren’t so difficult – mostly downhill on Queens Road, flat throughout South End with a downhill bonus on Tryon Street, and a slight decline along The Plaza.

My mantra during that marathon and its training was “Be thankful for the easy miles.”  On race day, those words ran through my mind countless times and helped me to complete my first marathon in 3:16:11.

It’s always easier to focus on the problem areas of a course or of one’s life, and rarely do we appreciate it when things are actually going well.  Instead, our small problems during the “easy” part of life just become larger to take the place of the bigger problems that we have passed or have yet to conquer. 

This Thanksgiving, I am grateful for so many things.  I am thankful that, while it may not always seem like it, life really is pretty easy – or at the very least, it could be much, much worse.  And I am thankful for the hard miles that I have covered because I know that they have only made me stronger.  And whether it be a marathon or year 2013, if you focus on being thankful for when things go right, the course just seems a little bit easier.

Weekly Miles:  One! 

I went for a very short, easy run around the neighborhood, but I still felt some discomfort in my left ankle.  The injury is definitely getting better, but I’m not sure if it has fully recovered yet.  I am still doing some aqua jogging at the local aquatic center, but I am looking forward to hopefully getting back on the roads soon!  Boston 2014 will be here before we know it!!

This Week's Beer Choice:  New Belgium Brewery's Rampant Imperial India Pale Ale

2013 Thunder Road – My Most Fun Marathon Ever

On Saturday morning, my alarm went off at 5:15 am.  It was race day.  The Thunder Road Marathon was beginning in less than three hours, and I had work to do.

I hit the pavement at 6:00 am, but I was not wearing running shoes – instead I had on an old pair of sneakers, and I was not planning on doing any running that day.  I was preparing to take on a new challenge as a marathon spectator and to help throw the best, damn race party in Charlotte!

Every year my neighborhood hosts the funkiest marathon cheering station in the whole Queen City, and they have the awards to prove it!!  It has become infamous for handing out beer and bloody marys to runners as well as putting up the “Wall” obstacle for marathoners to run through around mile 20 on the course when typically runners’ glycogen stores have been depleted.

While I’m sure the planning had begun months in advance, I began helping out the morning of the race when I met a few of my fellow neighbors to practice our artistic skills and add some colorful, legal (I hope!) graffiti to our streets.  By the time we finished, it looked as if our neighborhood was hosting a color run instead of a marathon!

A painted arrow pointed the way to the party.

My dog also got in on the action and showed her support of the runners by dressing up as one herself!  (Ok, she had some help, and yes, I do realize she puts up with a lot from her mom.)

With my best running friend, a motivational sign, and a cooler of mimosas and beer, I set up camp on the course around 9:30 am. 

It wasn’t long before the race vehicles came down our streets, followed by our first runner, who finished in a little over two and a half hours (Burt Rodriguez – 2:33:37).

Our NoDa Cheering Party

While it was certainly neat to see the first runner pass by, I found myself almost getting emotional when the first female came charging down our streets looking strong and grinning from ear to ear.  She was literally so happy.  I’m not sure I’ve ever seen so much joy on someone’s face.  I was touched because I could understand a little bit of what she was feeling, and it was truly a beautiful thing.  (Alice Rogers –  2:56:12)

I don’t know if it was the music, the booze, or the crowd of energetic NoDa neighbors and friends, but watching the Thunder Road Marathon may have been the most fun I’ve ever had at a marathon.  It was truly stress-free, and while the runners were out there working hard mile after mile, I got to drink beer!  It almost made me wonder if I should just give up the running thing and travel around cheering at various marathons around the country.  Almost made me wonder….Almost.

Weekly Miles:  None!  (But a little over four hours of pool running)

This Week’s Beer Choice:  Ska Brewing’s Modus Hoperandi India Pale Ale  (If you’re going to cheer on marathoners, you gotta drink out of a can.) 

I am a Runner Because…

I used to feel timid about claiming that I am a runner – Runner?  Who me?  Well, I enjoy jogging sometimes. 

I would feel even stranger when someone referred to me as an athlete – An athlete is someone who gets a scholarship to college!  I’m not an athlete!  I don’t belong in the roped-off  “Athletes Only” section of this race.  People will be like “Who does she think she is?!”

I absolutely believe that this negative thinking is part of what held me back from running all these years.  I signed up for my first marathon on a total whim!  I would never have consciously thought out to do one because I believed “real runners” signed up for marathons and half-marathons, and I was not in the “real runner” category.

But now, almost a year and a half after I signed up for my first marathon, I will giddily tell total strangers “I am a runner!” as if I were getting married or having my first baby.

What changed?  Well, naturally you would think that maybe it was logging almost 80 miles a week during training or qualifying for Boston or maybe completing a sub-three-hours marathon on a sprained ankle that gave me the courage to confidently claim from the mountaintops that I am a runner, but I realize that it is so much more than that. 

The first Lululemon shirt I ever bought had cute, little sayings printed on the inside seam like “Life is too short for the treadmill,” but my favorite has always been “I am a runner because I run.”  I love the quote because there are no justifications or qualifications necessary to be a runner.  It’s like the old joke about what do you call the kid that graduates last in his med school class – Doctor.  Well, the person who finishes last in a race is still every bit a runner as the person who comes in first.

While I still love and can identify with the Lululemon quote, I now find myself at a time when I cannot run – After running the Marine Corps Marathon on a sprained ankle, I am doing well to limp a bit around my house without a crutch.  Which begs the question – If I am not running, am I still a runner?  You bet!

Last Friday night, I hobbled into the Mecklenburg Aquatic Center on one crutch prepared to swim some laps.  The attendant at the front desk inquired if I came to the center often.  I’m not sure if it was a pick-up line or if he was curious if I was going to gush “Oh no!  I just started coming in hopes to see Ryan Lochte after I found out he was training here!”  However, my response was “No, I’m actually a runner!  But I can’t run because I have a sprained ankle.” 

The attendant then asked if I was going to do water running.  The truth was that I had read about aqua jogging and was aware of the benefits, but I honestly had no idea how to do it!   It was something that I had planned to research more before Boston training.  So, I swallowed my pride and told the guy that I was clueless, and about five minutes later I found myself with a buoyancy belt strapped around my waist and my legs turning over in their old, familiar stride as I glided through the water.

Because my feet did not touch the bottom of the pool, there was no impact on my sprained ankle.  The buoyancy belt kept my head dry as I stood tall while running.  Even though I was not swimming, I would make some slow progress down my lane.  It took about two minutes to go from one end of the pool to the other while maintaining an easy pace. 

That first night that I returned to running at the aquatic center, I kept my pace slow and easy, but during my second weekend run on Sunday afternoon, I found that the pool is a great place to do a fartlek run.  I played around with increasing my pace just until I got to the end of the pool or from backstroke flags to backstroke flags.

I have no doubts that learning how to deep-water run this past weekend will help me to maintain fitness and recover more quickly from my injury.  But perhaps more important, aqua running has allowed me to return to something that I love and that I thought I was unable to do. 

I am a runner for many reasons, but primarily, I am a runner because I love running, even when I can’t get out there and hit the pavement.  And even though it took me a while, I am so thankful that I eventually pushed past my comfort zone and started down a path that has taken me to the runner I am today and hopefully will take me further to the runner that I will become tomorrow.  I have realized that it is ok to not be the fastest in your age group or have all the knowledge of a seasoned marathoner….Runners are a good pack of people are there are plenty of them out there who are more than happy to pace you to the finish line or put you in a buoyancy belt at the aquatic center.

Weekly Miles:  None!  (But two hours of pool running)

This Week’s Beer Choice:  Palmetto Pale Ale  (Yup!  A repeat – I went on another Charleston beer run)

MCM: Mission Accomplished

It was not the race I wanted, but I set out at the beginning of MCM training to run a sub-three-hour marathon, and a sub-three-hour marathon I did run.

The night before I tossed and turned and paced the halls of the Holiday Inn (The whole weekend I kept finding myself singing “I’m at the hotel, motel, Holiday Inn,” which reminded me so much of my mother who loves to say things like “Paula!  I went to the Harris Teeter this morning and it was like ‘Who let the dogs out?!’)  Even with the rest I had given my ankle, I knew something was not quite right.  While I walked around D.C. pain-free for most of the day Saturday, I immediately felt discomfort when I did an easy jog Saturday evening.  I had doubts in my head whether I should even run on Sunday, but I decided to just keep my fingers crossed and if worse comes to worst I could always pull out of the race if the pain became too severe.

Crossing my fingers that my ankle will hold - Morning of MCM

Whether from ignorance or stupidity, I did watch the sun come up on Sunday morning while standing just a few feet from the starting line in front of a little over 23,000 runners in Arlington, VA.  The day was beautiful – cool and partly cloudy.  And as the Star Spangled Banner played, active and retired military vets floated down from the sky while American flags trailed behind them.

After a slight false start when some runners accidently began with the wheelchair crowd, around 7:55 am, the race was underway.  Even though I started only a few people deep, during the first mile or so, the pack was thick and it was slow-moving uphill.  Randomly I did run in to (not quite literally) a guy that I chatted with a few weeks back during the Marine Corps Half Marathon in Camp Lejeune.  In his Where’s Waldo-striped cap, the tall, jolly kid excitedly told other new friends around us, “Hey – I ran with this girl at the Marine Corps Half a few weeks ago.”  I later passed by my friend, who pulled away early in the race, around mile 18.  He was in pain and could barely speak.  I felt sorry for him, but little did I know at that point that I would soon be taken down by the marathon as well.

Before I even made it to mile three of the marathon, my right ankle was already throbbing, but the pain was bearable.  Thus, I kept marching on.

While some of the marathon has become a blur, I remember countless times throughout the course thinking, “Wow – That’s beautiful” as I passed woods colored with autumn leaves, sparkling waters with monuments in the backgrounds, and under old, arched bridges. 

I also remember the people of the marathon – I chatted with several runners throughout the course (my “I run better than the Gov’t” singlet was a good conversation starter), and all the Marines were so helpful, friendly, and polite! (Love all the ‘ma’ams’ I received as well as the soup and hot chocolate I enjoyed in the medical tent after the race!)  I was also so thankful for all the supporters who came out and lined the streets early in the morning to cheer us on.  My mother popped up a few times along the course, and I was excited to see my friends around mile 25 near the Pentagon holding the cutest signs that I ran past all day.

My sweet friends Becky (left) and Jane (right) on the MCM Course near the Pentagon

I moved along well through the first 21-22 miles of the race.  I had planned on running between 6:30 – 6:40 minutes per mile, but my body felt strong enough that I was covering some miles closer to a 6-minute mark (The 5K between the 25K and the 30K, I ran at an average pace of 6:11 per mile.) 

Rolling through some marathon miles

However, with only a few miles left in the marathon, I realized that I had begun limping.  If it had happened at mile 13, I certainly would have pulled out of the race, but when I was so close to reaching my goal and had so many solid, fast miles behind me, I just couldn’t quit.

With my bum leg, my pace quickly slowed from 6:30-minute miles to 7:00-minute miles, to 8:00-minute miles.  I’m not sure I even bothered to look down at my watch the last mile or so.  I was only focused on continuing to cover ground.

I’ve seen the pictures, and they are not pretty, but I shuffled my way across the finish line in 2:56:05 – about four minutes under my 3:00 hour goal that I set at the beginning of training.  Overall, I was the 9^th Place Woman of about 10,000.  In the 25-29 year-old female group, I came in 2^nd – behind the overall female winner, which probably means the award that I get in the mail will be first place for my age group (Generally the top three overall winners are taken out of age group awards.)

Even though the marathon was a success in many lights, I cannot help but still feel some level of disappointment and frustration.  Like a detective solving a murder mystery, I have gone over and over my last steps of marathon training to figure out what may have caused the ankle pain that left me limping across the finish line and still unable to walk four days later as I write this post.  Fortunately, after spending hours and who knows how much money at a local Urgent Care, I did learn from an x-ray that my injury is not attributable to a broken bone or stress fracture.

While I think it is certainly possible that the only cause could be overuse, I am now thinking with 99% certainty that the injury is a result of my dog yanking me out of my triangle pose while I was stretching over my right leg before last Tuesday’s night run in order to chase after a neighborhood cat.  Needless to say, Sugar is getting only walks from now on.

As I close the 2013 MCM chapter, I turn my attention from marathon training to healing my ankle.  I am still waiting to take those first few without my crutches.  I have had a slight glimpse in to how it must feel to be handicapped, and it is more difficult than you can imagine.  I’ve had to re-learn how to do things – like how to get a cup of coffee to my desk, or an apple.

Carrying my apple at work.

I am not sure when I will be able to walk again, but I know that this injury will eventually pass.  And after I begin walking, it will only be a matter of time before I return to running.  And once I begin running, the racing will come.  In fact, I got a little, present from Boston yesterday…I’m thinking Spring sounds like a good time to try to break a 2:50:00.

2014 Boston Marathon:  Confirmation of Acceptance

MCM Training Week Twenty (Final Week!):  14 Miles Before Marathon

   

This Week’s Beer Choice: Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA – Marathon Eve at Il Canale in Georgetown (Spaghetti for Dinner – No Surprise There)

60 Minute IPA at Il Canale - Eve of MCM