Desperation Breeds Creativity

The plan was to drop my mom at the airport and go directly to the park to do my final 11 mile long run. All went according to plan until I went to put my gear on and discovered that although I thought I had my interval timer, I did not.

On the walk to the port-a-potty I mulled my options. I remembered that my garmin will do intervals, but also remembered that the reason I have not used this function in all the time I have had it is because it beeps to time the intervals. I prefer my timer because it vibrates, allowing me to listen to my ipod as loudly as I wish and still time my intervals.

So, I figured out how to do this on my garmin and figured I would try it out and see what happened. It did beep and it was really low, there was no way I would hear it with my ipod on. But then it occurred to me that I could just put one of my earbuds in, leaving the ear closest to the garmin uncovered, thus allowing me to both time my intervals and listen to my music, although softer than I usually would.

This worked for the whole 11 miles, which was slow. I am blaming the slow on how soft the music was.

Final Push

So, last week was just a terrible running week. I only went once, before going out for a ten mile run on Saturday which was so awful I couldn't even bear to write about it.

This week has been better. I've gone every day except Wednesday, which was a scheduled rest day. I'm taking my second rest day tomorrow (an unprecedented Saturday rest day!) and I'll get my last long training run of 11 miles in on Sunday, after dropping my mom at the airport. It will be early and cold, but at least it will be flat.

9

"I have to go run nine miles now. It has started snowing here and I forgot my ipod, so it is shaping up to be the worst run ever." - text I sent my sister before setting off to run 9 miles at City Park.

I had indeed forgotten my Ipod and it was snowing. It snowed for the first six miles of the run, and was pretty damn cold for all of it! I wore two pairs of pants, two tops and my green stripey hat (which thank god I had, thanks Sandy!). I was thinking that I would be the only crazy one out there running in that weather, but I was far from it. There was a 10K going on at the park, as well as numerous runners, some of them in shorts, just going out for their daily runs. At first I was amazed, but then I realized this is Denver, and it is training season. I have yet to see a little crappy snow keep anyone from exercising here.

Which made me think about how much moving here has done for my running and I pondered where my running would be if we didn't live here. (I pondered many things, since I didn't have my Ipod.) Culture is huge, and moving here from where I was, it has always been downright striking to me how much exercise is encouraged in the culture here. Everyone does something. They walk, they run, they ride bikes. The city and suburbs are set up to encourage this, there are very few places that do not have safe sidewalks and bike lanes and many places have other open space with hiking trails that are maintained.

Anyway, three weeks to Vegas! I don't think it is going to be my greatest race, but I'm looking forward to it all the same.

Words With Wall Street

After running 8 miles on Saturday, Sunday was determined to be an easy day at the gym. I haven't made many appearances there lately, mainly due to some setbacks with running and the need to train for the Vegas half outside. So anyways, I get to the gym and wall street guy smiles at me, and I smile back. He goes "I haven't seen you lately!" and I go "oh, well I'm training for my next half marathon, so spending a lot of time running outside." And he goes "oh my god, you are unbelieveable! I have no excuse.."* and we both laughed and I moved on to my elliptical. Where, even though I had planned to do only three easy miles, I did four instead. Because I'm unbelievable.

Today while doing my 3.1 outside in the crisp 32 degree weather, I saw a deer. He ran up nemesis hill on the other side of the street (he beat me, in case you are wondering), and then went up the hill and disappeared. It was nice, although I spent a few worried moments thinking he was going to run into the road and get clobbered by some poor commuter. 

I'm due for a rest day, but since I am leaving for Texas for a work thing for the next three days, I am trying to be more pro-active since when I get together with my peers, debauchery always seems to ensue, which interferes with my running. So I went this morning in an effort to ensure  that the debauchery (and the election coverage, which I will surely stay up until 2AM watching if I can manage it) won't totally ruin my week. Wish me luck on that.

*I was thinking about this on this morning's jog, because it is not unusual for me to get rather defensive or bitchy when people talk to me at the gym, but this incident made me realize that I just know good and well the difference between genuine admiration and camaraderie (which is what was being expressed by wall street guy) and amused condescension, disbelieving chit chat, or "let's all admire the fat girl exercising" talk making me their teachable moment, which is what passes for much other gym conversation I have, which is what leads to the defensiveness. So, I am hereby ditching any self doubt about other people's motivations or being hard on myself for being bitchy or defensive. I KNOW THE DIFFERENCE and when people are being nice to me, I am in return perfectly nice and pleasant to them.

A Few Triumphs

I had to travel for two days for work recently. I did not run (even though I had packed my stuff and had every intention of doing so) and instead stayed up late drinking with co-workers. My food was prepared for me for the entire two days and I had extremely limited choices. As frustrating as that was, I have been thinking today that I really have had some triumphant things go on recently, so I thought I would share.

1. On Wednesday night, the dinner that was provided was pizza, yucky looking salad, appetizers of fried chicken fingers and mozarella sticks. None of it was food that I would eat at home by choice and none of it looked good. I had eaten heartily of the lunch fajitas (and cookies), so I just decided I would skip the dinner food. And honestly, it felt very healthy. I did not want what was being served, I was not all that hungry and I knew I would regret eating any of it, so I didn't. Nobody really said anything other than one person and I simply replied that I didn't want pizza. Thinking about it today, it was just really a healthy moment in my relationship with food, it really was! There was no "oooh, I really want that, but that would be bad bad bad", nor was there any "wow, how great am I that I am surrounded by people eating pizza, but I am being good and not eating pizza", there was none of it! There was only me, Marianne, taking care of my own needs and not eating food I did not want.

2. This morning, getting dressed, I was struck by the fact that everything in my closet are things that I have been able to wear for two years or more. This means that I have been at roughly the same weight for a LONG time! This is a huge win for me. Even though certainly I would like for those sizes to be even smaller than they are, the fact that I have sweaters that I am now pulling out for the third consecutive Winter and they still fit.... well, that is nothing but a good thing, and frankly something that I have never really experienced before in my life. I like it!

3. Today, after getting back from traveling, my body is telling me things. It wants to run. It wants to eat healthy food prepared at home and not that much of it. It wants to recover from two days of crappy food and some deliberate debauchery. And the triumph is..... I'm listening.

On Listening

White knuckles and sweaty palms from hanging on too tight
Clenched shut jaw, I've got another headache again tonight
Eyes on fire, eyes on fire, and they burn from all the tears
I've been crying, I've been crying, I've been dying over you
Tie a knot in the rope, tryin' to hold, tryin' to hold,
But there's nothing to grasp so I let go

I think I've finally had enough, I think I maybe think too much
I think this might be it for us (blow me one last kiss)
You think I'm just too serious, I think you're full of shit
My head is spinning so (blow me one last kiss)

Just when it can't get worse, I've had a shit day 
I think that life's too short for this, I want back my ignorance and bliss
I think I've had enough of this, blow me one last kiss.

Pink




You know you are having a good run when you are more focused on the latest trauma inflicted by and on your family than on how miserable you are. Today was a good run. I am behind my training schedule now, so I did six miles and I did them at 3R/1W.

The thing is, I was comfortable. This pace is comfortable and I can't shake the feeling that over the past weeks my body is plainly and simply telling me that I was pushing too hard. I have little choice but to listen to it. I may never go much faster than a 12 minute mile, and that just has to be okay. And it is okay.

The point is to keep on keeping on, right? Right.

3.1

For the first time this week, got out and ran. It was awful. I am still really sick and now I am going to be really late to work since I have to spend an hour coughing and I really didn't build that into my schedule in advance.