Category Archives: Running

I had to leave Craftcation early to come home and do something the opposite of fun:  another half marathon.

It was pretty fail and I’m still feeling rather ho-hummish about it.  Trying to let it go and focus on getting better for next time.

[Next time? Why not just focus on not running at all?  So many "I don't know!"]

I finished in 2:56:56, which you can write an essay about and compare and contrast to my other times here.  (Are you on Athlinks?)

It’s about the same time as my last half in December. For which I was under-trained and walked a good chunk of.  I did get my training in this time, but those were slow, too.  So my performance wasn’t unexpected.

Ah, well.  Nothing I can do about now.

Despite the boo-hiss nature, there were actually quite a few positives from the race:

a.  I did it.
b.  I didn’t die.
c.  Michelle, came to stay with us and also ran it.  And she tied her PR, which is pretty excellent.
d.  My work husband came out to watch and I saw him just before Mile 10.
e.  It was an insanely beautiful perfect day.
f.  The spectators, bands, djs and cheer stations were awesome. The church congregation in their Sunday best cheering from their front steps, the woman yelling “You’re beautiful, you’re amazing!” from her balcony, the dude channeling a clothed thunder-down-under attitude while standing atop his flaming, Burning Man contraption, the little kids giving out high fives.

So there you go.  My 3rd Oakland Running Festival = done.  An event that I can’t help but loathe and love.

This was half marathon #6, which seems like frequently enough now that I shouldn’t even bother writing about them anymore.

But if my mission is just to blog about my cats and my running, then by all means, Margaret!  Tell us about the running!

Despite a lot of moaning and groaning about it, I did complete a 10 mile run with no walking the weekend prior.

This was the San Jose Rock n Roll, known for being particular flat.  Hoot.

The universe bestowed a heaping of awesome on me when I met Michelle on the other side of the country last month.
She:
a)  lives in my neck of the woods
b)  was also signed up for San Jose
c)  runs just a little bit faster than me
d)  has fun levels comparable to puppies on a trampoline

In short, I was going into this run prepared, flat, and partnered up.

I really really wanted to break a 2 hour 30 minute time.

And lo, so I did!

Of all the pictures that were taken on the course, this is the only one that actually has both of us in it.
At least that girl in the middle back there is in focus.

And here’s one that shows me with both feet not touching the ground!  Did you know that running is technically defined as a gait in which both feet are off the ground at regular intervals?  A speedwalker (or any sort of walker) always has one foot touching at all times.  I don’t think I’ve seen a picture of myself  with no feet touching before, so I feel rather peachy about this, even if it is out of focus.

This was somewhere in the half way vicinity.  Some lady with a boom box was playing Living on a Prayer (we’re half way there.)  Clever.

More both-feet-off-the-ground!  Now with sunglasses!

I confess:  almost as soon as it was over, I was conniving that I could have been faster and plotting for how long it would take me to break through the next milestone.

But am trying to give myself a bit of credit for doing it and doing it better than I ever have before.  I do love that I did it.  2:26:34, 11:11 min/mile pace.

I completed my fifth half marathon on Saturday.

But don’t worry. I’m still that girl who hates running.

I think maybe I hate being bad at stuff more. The other half-marathons I did this year left me feeling a bit defeated. I did ‘em, yes. But I didn’t prepare as much as I should have and I didn’t do them well.

Hence “Operation: Just Keep Signing Up For More Half Marathons”

This time around, I was moderately prepared. I made it up to a 9 mile training run the weekend before, which went surprisingly well.

Not surprising: the half marathon really started to tank after the 9 mile mark. Go figure.

So I didn’t break 2 hours 30 minutes, which I had been optimistically hopeful about. And I didn’t beat my best time to date of 2:34:15. But it was pretty darned close to that.

We got there a bit late, so started 15 minutes late with the 10K runners, which means that it was a long lonely time after I passed the 10K turnaround point. But I did start to catch up to and pass loads of the half marathoners.

So, until next time (on October 7)…

Run it up, you hate-runner! Run it up!

The San Francisco Marathon was on Sunday and my friend, Megan, was running, her first time with the 26.2.
Since it’s such a monumental accomplishment, we got up at 6:30 am to drive into the city and cheer her on.

We wanted to be in Golden Gate Park because we knew that that was a really lonely and endless part of the course (I did the 2nd half and David did the full last year.)

After some tomfoolery trying to get to where we needed to be while avoiding road closures, we scurried into the park, saw the runners and then we stood there.  With signs!

People were loving David’s sign, “Run, total stranger, Run.” So may runners saw it and said “That’s me!” It was totally fun.

We knew Megan was going to be wearing a pink shirt and a white hat. We had a half an hour window in which she should be passing by us, around her Mile 15.

So we looked for Megan and we cheered for the total strangers. I teared up watching them go by.

After a bit, I noticed that most people had their names printed on their bibs. A bit too small to read easily, but you could pick them out if you looked. David got a total kick out of calling people out by name. I just wept and tried to pretend I wasn’t.

I started to wonder if all the people passing by seemed like they were probably slower runners than Megan, who’s roughly a 10 minute miler.

But who knows with all the different waves and the half marathon people mixed in with the full.

And then later, I noticed that all the people had green markers on their bibs saying “2nd Half,” for the second half marathon.
And they ALL said that.

What? Where are the marathoners? What’s going on?

So you see this little course map? The dark blue line is the marathon course and the lighter blue is the half. Most of the time, their course is the same.
But they take this extra little out and back extension here. The yellow arrows point to where we were standing. If we had been standing in the path, we would have actually seen the rest of the race course, just a bit further on.

So we didn’t see Megan around Mile 15 like we said we would. And I was preaching the gospel that “It’s hard doesn’t mean I can’t” to the half-marathoners before they had even hit the 2 mile mark.

For MONTHS, the interwebs have been abuzz with fanfare for The Color Run.

Races were selling out like crazy – I think Seattle was closed within 3 hours.

I caught a whiff of the excitement and spread it around.  A group of my coworkers and I had alarms set for the day and time that registration opened, and we signed up real good.

Blah blah.  Time passes.  Things that are not The Color Run occurred.

And then.  It happened!

You know that kid? The one on a bike in The Incredibles who is all agog and then says “That was totally wicked!”

Color Run was like that.

If you’re signed up for one in your town, here’s some stuff you might want to know:

There were about a million more people than I expected.  Mostly teen and twenty something girls.  Or I don’t know.  I can’t tell the difference between a teen and a twenty something any more.

It was not a run.  We did our best jogging effort, but most people were walking and it was hard to get through them.  If you’re worried about the running aspect, DON’T BE!

The color is dyed corn starch.  It does get cloudy and in your nose and mouth, but it’s not too unpleasant.  The powder will mix with sweat and form crusty chunks.  It doesn’t hurt when it gets in your eyes.

You can open the packet of color you get with registration at any time.  You don’t have to wait until the end.

The volunteers won’t douse you in color at a station unless you go up to them and present yourself for dousing.  You definitely can’t run through the stations and still get good and colored on.

Definitely a fun event for kids.  There were even people with babies/toddlers in strollers.

I had my iPhone in a ziploc, but ended up taking it out quite a bit to take pictures.  It got pretty covered in the colored dust, but that all wiped off and it seems fine.  Was also wearing my Garmin, which I wiped off and also was fine.

People are throwing color every which way at the end.  So if you made it through the race course unscathed, you can still get plenty of decoration just puttering around in the crowd afterwards.

I washed all of our clothes in a separate load.  The Color Run t-shirts seem to be ever so slightly stained still and everything else came out clean.  I haven’t washed our sneakers, so they are still grody, but wearable.

The pink color does not come off your skin right away.

before

after

my fourth half-marathon happened two weekends ago.

yes, hello?  four?  that’s right.  four.  in the span of about 15 months, i have done this four times.  on purpose.  voluntarily.

and this time, i took some others down with me.  mwah fucking hah.

the david and i flew to seattle for the rock n roll half marathon to run with my lady friends virginia and alysha, and then alysha slurped in her friends yari and chris.  you see how these thing spiral out of control.  a very slow, plodding out of control.

anyway, i sucked at training for it, as per usual, and was not planning to try very hard.  but ended up staying with virginia for all of 8 miles before i crapped out and told her to take her appropriately trained tuchis to the finish while i moped along, rueing the ridiculous choices i make.

it didn’t rain.

i didn’t die.

i finished in 2:52 which is far from my best, but it’s also not my worst of the four.

and then, sweet baby james, i agreed to and actually signed up for the vegas rock n roll in december, with this same entourage of folks.

please don’t ask me what is the matter with me because i’ll be damned if i know.

xoxo!

bootleg screenshot of me and v holding hands

I needed to force myself to log some damn miles. So I signed up for a 10K and then on Saturday, I did it.
There was mention of some hills in the course description.
What actually presented itself was a mountain.  Elevation gain close to 2,000 feet.

Within 5 minutes of the start, I was no longer running, but walking.  And very quickly, even the walking was a torment.

It took me about an hour to get through the first 2 miles.

As you may already know, I am never loving the running while it is happening to me.  But this was the first time that I almost started cursing out loud (or in my head, for that matter) because of the high degree of suckage.

Things definitely got better once it started going downhill, but even then I was treading carefully… since I was in the woods on a narrow path, with rocks and woodland surprises.  All told, it took 2 and a half hours.  Which is about how long it has taken me to do a half marathon in the past.  It was so slow, it was like a miracle 10K.

Also, I fell, at a steep slidey downhill bit.  And I got a bloody hand.  Bloody and dirty.  And still like a million miles to go.

It was definitely the hardest race I’ve done.  But whatever else there is to say about it, the most important bit is that it got done.

Here are some pictures of me being slow:

So I blah blah blah’ed yesterday about how participating in a marathon relay is just a really long and lonely way to run 5 miles.

And I stand by that assertion.  I fully intend to write some sternly worded letter to somebody who doesn’t care about just how clusterfucky that experience was.

But, truth be told there was something pretty awesome about my five miles.

Nina, my best friend from college is a Runner.  She lives in New York and will occasionally throw out suggestions for meeting up with her to do some sort of running thing.  Usually, I’m all full of the running-loathe and oh-hells-no, I’m not going to fly to Bamboozle just so I can loathe over there.  But when she’s turning up in my backyard to do it, I’ve got to, right?

Turns out her sister, Andrea, was the original source for this Big Sur marathon relay plan and she coerced Nina into creating her own team.  So in the end, there were two teams, loosely connected by the sisters.

This was Andrea’s first time racing ever, she hadn’t been working on running for very long, and was planning to run it at a 15 minute/mile pace.  Given the sketchiness of my own running endeavors as of late, I figured we’d be a pretty good running pair and agreed to do the first leg with her – me for my team and she for hers.

Which means that even though I had to leave my own team mates behind, I had a pal for the whole experience.

sad and tired on the middle-of-the-night bus ride to the start

She reaped the benefits of my incessant questioning… “Where are we going?!” and “Why is it so dark out there?”
Probably also “Are we there yet?”
I couldn’t help it.  That bus ride was an HOUR.  In the dark.  And I pretty much had no idea what was going to happen when we got there.

on your mark get set

We navigated the shanty town of runners huddled together and camped out on the ground everywhere at the start, like a third world country of privilege.  In our efforts to make it to a porta-potty, we picked our way through the sitting-on-the-ground people, following another woman, while a trail of people followed us, pressing ever forward.  Taking this path of least resistance, we were funneled to a wall of porta-potties, where we discovered that we had not actually gotten into a pre-existing line, but formed a new one.  A new line of 30 people, with no way to turn around and go back.  The line next to us, which was using two porta-potties, started throwing dagger death rays at us as they discovered the interloping on their turf.  The woman who we’d followed fled the scene.  Leaving us to try and make a case for sanity.  Lacking previous experience in what you do when other people get all aggro and decree that they are going to forbid us from using their porta-potty, we also left eventually, to seek out yet another line of epic slow going.  I really wish that I’d thought to just have a squat right then for those people, leaving them my special good-luck tidings of pee and pre-race poo.  Instead, we just left them with a long line of people behind us so that they could, presumably, have the same psychotic argument over and over again.

Bonded by confrontation and the need to pee, we joined the throngs at the starting mob and got ready to run.

And I discovered the best possible motivator:  running with someone who’s newer to it than you are.  It was not an easy 5 miles and it was hard for her.  Which isn’t to say that it was a yawn for me – it wasn’t – but helping Andrea to do it made me do it.  Made me keep going when I might have otherwise just gotten into a little grump and start walking.  Made me find a milestone to which we would walk to (on the few breaks we took) and deem that we would start to jog again at that point.  Made me sing, terribly and loudly, and with all the wrong words.  Made me point out the obvious, regularly… like “we’re almost to the top of this hill!”  and “look!  another nice long downhill again!”  Made me tell her stories of lunacy about how I birthed a child directly into the Indian ocean in Bora Bora in a house on stilts with a floor that opened to the water below.  It made me tell her that lots of people think that they can’t do this.  But that it’s not about can’t.  It’s just hard.
Trying to motivate someone else was the best possible motivator for me and those 5 miles just melted away.

AND.

This bonded and motivational running caper also resulted in fancy photos of me, the likes of which have never existed before.

point a camera at me

pretending to run sideways in front of a mile marker.