Oh hey internet!

So it's been awhile, eh? I bet y'all thought I'd quit, a'cause of the title of this blog and stuff. Faked you out pretty good, didn't I?
Okay, I jest. I was having a conversation with a friend the other night and we were talking about blogging and I said "Yeah, I used to have a blog about how I quit everything and then I quit writing in it".
Once those words came out of my mouth (and everyone laughed at them because hey, they're funny) I realized how silly that was and so here I am!
I've also been terrible about reading your blogs, but I'll try to be better about that as well. For awhile, I was really trying to avoid internetting at work but it hasn't seemed to up my productivity much, so I'm onto other avenues.

I will be honest, I did kind of quit running for a bit after Falmouth. It's dang cold here in Boston, and I am an unrepentant klutz and fall down enough just walking on ice. So I switched to primarily weightlifting, and I feel pretty darn good about it. In six weeks, I've increased my squat from 50 to 85 pounds and my deadlift from 75 to 115. I feel energized and my clothes fit better and my posture is awesome. I've been following the program from this book, and I love it. The nutrition advice, not so much, but it's really hard to eat that much and get all that protein!
However, I have been itching for another challenge, and courtesy of my friend M, I think I've found it - a wacky 12-person relay race. Timewise, it fits really well with the training plan for the Run to Remember half-marathon, which my friends J & A are planning on running. I ran it last year, and made a pretty poor showing due to major ITB, and that's not going to happen again this year.
Despite how dejected I get at my unshakable slowness, I kind of like collecting those race numbers and sticking them on my wall, dangit.

In addition to all that, I'm taking a ballet class at the L Street Gym on Tuesdays. It's been a long time since I danced, and let me tell you, you think you're in shape from doing one thing and then three minutes of tondues and bourres kick your butt. I did get upgraded from the Beginner class to the Intermediate class after my first Beginner session, but we'll see how that goes. I took ballet for over 8 years and could never figure out what to do with my arms.

My non-fitness related pursuits include banditing grad school for one more semester (11 memoirs in 12 weeks, 11 3-page papers, 1 45-minute presentation, 1 20 page research paper, 1 big "what have I gotten myself into?"), my recent guitar purchase (I used to play and then, big surprise, quit) and mandolin aquisition (it came free with the guitar), and decision to Julie & Julia my way through this cookbook.

Hope you'll join me in my quest to not quit any of these things in the coming year, or quit this blog.

all in good time

I have again been very remiss in blog posting, and blog reading! Thank you for the comments on my last post - they meant a lot. I've really been wanting to catch up with your blogs, but I have not had internet at home for a couple weeks and I've been trying not to blogread at work (despite the fact that it is 10am and I am most definitely blogwriting at work).

Let's keep it short & sweet & bulletpointed.
-I may be the only woman in America who loses eight pounds because the gym is closed for a week. I had to go to the doctor for something, and they put me on the scale as usual, and did not seem nearly as concerned as I was about this rapid weight drop. The assistant who weighed me, in fact, said "That's good, isn't it?" and if I hadn't been so exhausted and depressed from the previous two weeks and hearing the door open and close at 6am as my roommate D left forever, I would have given her a choice piece of my mind. It's attitudes like this that make me want to kick society in the butt really hard with pointy shoes.
-To add injury to insult, I fell down pretty hard on the sidewalk last Friday, which left me with a painful and kinda gross hand injury that pretty much prevents me from lifting weights (hence the weight loss, I'm assuming). I miss the iron. Wah. I was getting really good too - right before this happened, I was regularly lifting 60lbs over my head. Now I'm going to have to go back down to 40. This is going to be a slow healer.
-My slackage on running makes me worry if I'm going to be able to finish Falmouth this weekend. Luckily, my friend Megan is joining me and she hasn't run more that 3 miles, so I can run with her and pretend I'm being nice.
-My friend Amy has just about convinced me to run another half marathon. In 9 weeks. It might not be the best idea ever, but I may just be crazy enough to do it.

Non-fitness bulletpoints
-A long friendship ended last week, the same day my roommate left. I know it's over because I'm not necessarily as angry as I could be - just done. In a way, I'm almost glad it's over - kind of like the situation with my roommate. The relationship just wasn't healthy for me anymore. It's been sad, and a lot to deal with, but a week later and a nice 5-mile tempo last night and I'm calm as the nighttime ocean again.
-I finally got my act together and wrote an e-mail to the program director of the program I applied for last winter and was waitlisted for. No reply yet, but at least I did it. Better late than never.
-When one door closes, another completely unrelated door opens. My cousin and her awesome boyfriend just got engaged. And a close friend of mine is pregnant. Excitement and newness all around.

I wish race photos of me did not exist

Being photogenic is not one of my strong suits. Never has been. And when you add in sweat, pain, ill-fitting tshirts, and a hot sunny day? Very unpleasant.
I'm always so excited to get look at my race photos, because I continue to keep up hope that one day I will be one of those delightful looking people who can look lovely and spry midrace, maybe with a dapper little wave or thumbs up at the photographer. Maybe when I'm older, and closer to the demographic of people who can be called "spry", this will happen. Until then, I must resign myself to being caught mid-breath in an ill-fitting t-shirt and sweat-soaked pigtails under my Trot Nixonated Sox cap.
One upside to race photos is that it gives me a chance to critique my stride and running form, which is always a good time. My stride is always terrible. Either the camera always catches me in the moment where I look like a duck, or I just have a terrible stride and run only from the knees down.


Exhibit A

Anyway, in this one I actually look like a runner, though I still have T-Rex hands.


Make. It. Stop.


And of course, the best part of race photos is looking at the crowd around you. See below. I'm just about to run out of the frame, but get a load of the chick in the back of the pack in this one. She's on her phone. During a half-marathon.

You have got to be kidding me

I fear for the future of the world.

Race Report : Boston's Run to Remember half-marathon

The good news : Finished. Didn't collapse.
The bad news : 2:22:32

A loud thunderclap woke me up at 6am yesterday. Then the lightning came. I got grumpy and slept too late. By the time I rushed out the door, it was actually quite nice out, and during the race it was clear, warm, and sunny. A little too much so at times.

I started off at a 8:15/mile pace for the first two miles, according to the mile splits. Once I realized that, I slowed way down, but the damage had already been done. I haven't run a mile that fast since the 7th grade. Around mile 9 I started walking. Ugh. Most walk breaks I kept to 10 seconds or so, but I walked across the entire Longfellow bridge. My brain just quit on me. I'd be giving myself these great peptalks to keep going, and then my legs would just stop running! I was all "Dude! Legs! WTF!" but they just weren't listening. Neither was my stomach or my lungs. They were all like "Nope. We're donecakes. Mind over nothing."

I'll try and give myself credit since I haven't been able to walk without a limp until about a week and a half ago, and trained through ITBS (dumb), but it's still frustrating.

On the upside, I felt a lot better after this one than after the first. I managed to take a shower and have brunch with my friends and go to a BBQ and not take any naps! Maybe that's an endurance event in itself.

I hate resting.

Today I finally go to the doctor about my hip, after almost two months of pain/annoyance/still running on it even though I know it's a bad idea. My doctor will probably tell me to rest it, ice it, not run on it, and I will ignore her. Ignoring sage advice from a medical professional counts more than ignoring advice from WebMD and all your friends, right?
No, I won't really ignore her. But I'm going to keep my fingers crossed and hope "resting" isn't the only answer to this problem. I don't want to rest. The annoying thing about resting is that when I come back to running, it's like starting all over again. Since this quasi-injury, I haven't been able to consistently maintain a sub-10 minute mile pace for any distance. It's frustrating. My goal this summer is to start consistently running 9-minute miles, but it seems like such an unreachable goal at this point. My legs feel like lead.
On the upside, I shouldn't consider this "the summer" just because it's suddenly 90 degrees outside. That's a fluke. I'm getting ahead of myself.
The Run to Remember is in less than a month. Tomorrow, I am going to get up at 6am and run repeats at the track. Yes, I am. I have never done this before but I am going to give it the old college try.
Unless the doctor tells me to rest. In which case, I'll start resting on Thursday.

Back to reality

The much-anticipated Jamaica trip zoomed by so quickly, and now I'm back to the regular grind. All-inclusive is the best thing since Guinness and cupcakes, and I spent a beautiful, sunny, relaxing five days sitting by the cliffs and soaking up the sun's rays through a thick coat of SPF 45. I stumbled back into Boston and right into visiting friends, sightseeing, and then a rather debaucherous St. Patrick's Day weekend in Southie (it's everything you'd imagine and more).
Needless to say, I didn't get much (if any) training and exercise in until yesterday, when I hit the gym with a vengeance. Half-marathon training is back on full force, and I couldn't be happier. Yesterday and did a 25 minute kettlebell circuit, and then when I got home after my evening stint at the Ronald McD House, I decided it would be the perfect bad-decision cherry on top of a bad-decision sundae to run around Southie in the dark. I'm alive, and well, and that four miles put me on top of the world.
Tonight is my first track speed workout! Hopefully I'll be able to get access to the local track. I'm looking forward to it.

TiaRT: Burning questions

This week's TiaRT is turning the tables and letting us and ask questions of our fellow running bloggers. Since you guys have unknowingly bestowed upon me such invaluable running wisdom during my almost daily lurks on your blogs, it is kind of appropriate that I want to pose a question about running buddies.

Last night, I met up with New Friend Natalie, who I am running a half-marathon with in May. It will be the second for both of us, though she has also run a marathon. It will be my 12th road race, and the first one I've ever trained for with someone else.
Over dinner, we chatted about speed workouts and long runs and race shwag, and it was all very exciting to think about. However, now I am starting to get a little nervous. My first year of running was entirely solo, save for races and the one time I ran with my brother for about a mile until his IT band acted up.
So many of you talk about your running pals and support groups, and it all sounds so great, but what happens when one pal is significantly faster than the other? Is it a hindrance to the faster pal, or a painful annoyance to the slower?
My question to you, oh wise running bloggers, is how do you make your running relationships work?
Signed,
Commitmentshy

Dreaming of springtime

Long time, no blog!
Also, kind of long time, no run.
I haven't really managed more than 2 or 3 miles lately. I am hanging my head in shame. I've still been on a pretty decent regular exercise kick, including high-intensity cardio (albeit in short bursts) and lifting/swinging around relatively heavy things.
The other day I switched up my 30 minute kettlebell routine by subbing jumprope for the usual jumping jacks. It way ramped up the intensity, and I much prefer the rope to the jacks, since JJs make my right knee feel funny. I left the gym dripping sweat.
The next day, it wwarmed up over 33 degrees, so I thought a jog around the bay would be a great idea. I started nice and slow, and was clipping along at a good pace, but suddenly around mile 2 my legs just QUIT. Below both knees, my entire shin/calf/ankle/foot area was on fire. The pain seemed to undulate between muscular and skeletal, sometimes numbing random portions of my foot and causing my right leg to literally collapse out from under me. For awhile, I tried to keep running. Stupid, right? I know. Anyway, after I finally came to my senses and stopped running, I limped around the causeway and back home. So much for the six miles I was planning.
I spent the next day and my roomie's New Orleans party limping around the house and drinking medicinal bloody marys. After some thought, I realized it might have been the jumping rope that did me in. That's a lot of pressure to be bouncing off the balls of one's feet for that long.
I did some stretching and backed off on the exercise for a couple days. Today I got back on the treadmill, and felt okay, but the legs still hurt a bit. I'll have to take it one day at a time.
While I know googling ailments is a terrible idea and slippery slope, my symptoms do sound an awful lot like compartment syndrome. I suppose it couldn't hurt to talk to, you know, an actual medical professional (as in no Dr. Internet) about it.

Becaaaaause, I have decided to run another half-marathon in May before running my first marathon in September! That's right, I decided on a marathon.
May - Boston's Run to Remember. I'm going to do this one with my friend Natalie, and am interested to see how training goes with a buddy!
September - The Rochester Marathon! This decision was pretty easy, seeing as right after I was musing on it, two of my old college roomies got in touch with my through the wonder that is Facebook, and one of them lives in Rochester (as does my best friend, our third roomie). The fourth one said that if she can, she'll be there too, and we can all have a reunion on marathon weekend! It would mean so much to me to have them there. So, I'm excited.

Hopefully my legs won't fall off!

Race Report : Manchester City Half Marathon

I wish I could go back in time and tell my 4 years ago self, or even my 1 year ago self, that I would one day run a 13.1 mile race. Past self would have thought that was SUCH a funny joke.
I remember when my loftiest goal was to run a 5k. When I spent the summer of 2004 struggling half a mile around the lake before a stubborn side stitch always sent me home. It was a goal so seemingly unattainable at the time. So I always quit running, over and over again.

Yet here I was, on Sunday, running the Manchester City Half Marathon
Having no race-day pickup actually worked out pretty well. I went to the expo on Saturday to get my number and chip and race shirt. Unfortunately, they were out of all but Large and XL shirt, which would have been fine if the shirts weren't nice, but they were really nice long-sleeved half-zip tech shirts with a subtle logo. I ended up giving mine to my brother, even though he never comes to see me run because that would mean he had to get up in the morning.

Yesterday I woke up rested at 6am (thank you, Standard Time), had some oatmeal, and put on way too many layers. I always make this mistake, but I suppose I'm still a beginner. Anyway, I dressed head to toe in brown spandex, ensuring that I looked like a giant poop. Great. I also had a stocking cap, gloves, and my awesome new Nathan fannypack thingo to carry my Gu and iPod (not for listening, just for timing since I don't have a fancy watch).
After guzzling down a cup of coffee and several bottles of water, I was quite concerned to see the shortage of portapotties and the long lines 15 minutes before race start. Still, runners are nothing if not fast, even in the bathroom, so we all managed to make it to the start and the race started on time at 8:50.
The lack of shirts in my size and the toilet sitch made me slightly worried that this would be disorganized disaster of a race, but I was very wrong. The volunteers and police officers were AWESOME, especially as the course was not closed to traffic and they had to maintain the delicate balance of letting the runners pass unfettered while keeping the fine drivers of ManchVegas from running any of us over in a fit of road rage. Excellent job to all.

Anyway, the course. It was scenic, both urban & suburban, and J.C. of A., they were NOT KIDDING about the hills. OW.
I was surprised at the section of the course that was entirely trails, in Livingston park. That was unexpected. We veered off through the woods and around a small lake for several minutes near mile 6. The pack had dispersed enough that nobody was on anyone else's heels and while I spent most of the time making sure I didn't trip over an unearthed tree root and biff it, I enjoyed the break from pavement.

I started to struggle around mile 9, and by 10 I was running entirely on autopilot. There was a giant, sloping, winding hill right around mile 8 and it pretty much zapped me. I shuffled through mile 9 and when I saw the marker for 10 I knew I was in uncharted territory and started to make some sort of lame Star Trek joke about boldly going where I hadn't gone before, and then giggling to myself, and then realizing I was starting to lose my mind. There were a couple short hills and then by mile 11 it was pretty much all straight or downhill from there. After I passed marker 11, I felt like I had a vast desert to cross before the end, but before I knew it I was passing marker 12, and realized that I was going to finish this thing, and started to cry a little.
I kicked it up a tiny bit near the finish, but the truth is, I had nothing left. I didn't cross the finish line shuffling, but I didn't cross it sprinting either.
My mom was there with her camera, and she gave me a high five. I ripped my chip off my shoe and shuffled over to get my medal (!).
I posted a 2:15ish gun time. I don't know if they're going to post chip times, but mine was definitely faster. Even with the gun time, I managed to average 10:20 per mile, despite all the uphills and the trail portion, so I'm okay with that. I didn't stop running.

Results

After some free chili, a warm bath, and a nap, I headed back to Manch to meet up with the bro at the Strangebrew. His best friend was having an engagement party and it was $2.50 beer night. Gotta love a place that will just pour you an entire pint of 8% Russian Imperial Stout (that just happens to be brewed in your small hometown) for $2.50, and also has free popcorn. Ah, the land of the free.
I also got to overhear my brother tell everyone in earshot that his sister had run a half marathon, which was neat.

Looking forward (as I started to do around mile 7), I don't think a full marathon is in the cards for me, at least not yet. I'd do another half, for sure. I think I'm going to spend the winter trying to get faster and stronger and see how much better I can come out on the other side.

For the love of food

I have a secret. I'm not very good at secrets, so I've managed to keep it for a whole week. Sort of. I mean, I told my friend McG and she told everyone we know because she's kind of like a proud mama, so I guess it's not really a secret any more. But I digress.
Anyway, here it is, for the whole internet to witness.
I'm training for a half marathon.
That does not necessarily mean I am going to ACTUALLY RUN a half marathon. That is Crazy Talk. I am however following a training plan (the Hal Higdon Novice plan) at the end of which I will suppooooossedly be able to run 13.1 miles straight. We'll see about that. I mean, the last day of the plan does just happen to coincide with the Manchester City Marathon & Half Marathon, and I do happen to be a stone's throw away from good ol' ManchVegas. But that's just a coincidence.

Anyway, the point of this is that in order to step up my running and general fitness level, I have to step up my eating habits as well and I just don't know how to do that. I've noticed that since I started running more, I have been absolutely RAVENOUS. I don't generally have a huge appetite (especially in the summer), and I use most of that appetite eating tasty things that aren't good for me, so this newfound hungryness is kind of hard to deal with.
Yesterday was my "long run" day, and I ate a bag of butter lovers popcorn and half a pan of brownies for my after-dinner snack.
Now, I'm not sure if this is related, but this morning when I got to work and started sucking down my iced coffee as per usual, I started to feel so incredibly ill I almost didn't make it through the day. After a lunch of Pepto and saltines (reason #467 to love self-checkout) I started feeling better, but I still had to come home and take a nap.
I need sustenance. I need healthy sustenance and enough of it that I don't run out of all the healthy stuff in the house and start digging into the sour patch kids at 4pm on any given weekday. That is not going to make me feel good. At all. I'm starting to think that frankly, I can't eat vast amounts of candy any more or my blood sugar level is going to plummet, leaving my gasping for breath and dragging my feet halfway through a four mile run. And that will just not do.
I'm also wondering if I should try and give up caffeine. Just for a bit. The thought of that turns my blood to ice, but I can probably do it for a whole week. Next week. Or maybe the week after.
Also beer. But only crap beer, which I shouldn't be drinking anyway, because it is gross and I hate it. I refuse to give up Guinness. Guinness is good for me.
This should be interesting.