Quest, Derailed

Yes, it’s been a year.

When I started this quest, I had planned to work on my blog every Sunday, then I met a cute guy and then we started doing Sunday Funday and then it was harder and harder to find time to do the blogs and….

But I was still running.  I was still improving, still moving towards the goal of the six marathons.  The blog was just to keep me accountable, and since I was progressing, there was no need to dedicate serious time for the blog, a good thing because it seemed that I didn’t have a lot of time and energy for it.

I was helping a friend (and working on my time) by helping a friend train for a marathon.  I worked out with the Libertyville Running Club and ended up running a 7:35 mile at the final time trial.  I entered both the Toyko and London marathon lotteries (but didn’t get in) and helped out on my charity team’s committee, hoping I can get a charity bib into New York.  The quest was progressing forward, and I didn’t need to be held accountable.

At the same time, there were subtle dynamics going on around me that I couldn’t ignore.  While everyone was super-nice with the run club, it did feel like a closer circle was forming, and typical of my life, I didn’t know what I did or didn’t do to be excluded from this circle.  I couldn’t be that upset, since 1.  I couldn’t afford to keep up with them because I have to save money for the marathons 2. My life was full and busy without them and 3. I was too shy to put any effort into connections.  However, the change in the energy affected my enthusiasm for the club. 

Then we had a little election.  For 99% of the country, they are armchair politicos, watching on news and posting on social media, but really have not invested any effort to impact the outcome.  However, my boyfriend and I work in the political field, so our lives can be dramatically affected by the vote.  In a Presidential year, it’s especially nerve wracking because so many voters chose their President and vote downticket that our lives are impacted by people who don’t even know what they are doing.

This election was contentious and emotional and angry, and in the end, the national election was the complete opposite of our local results.  While you can’t make politics personal—we are professionals, after all—there is a letdown, almost a grieving process, after an election.  Usually, most people go back their jobs, their lives, just as they are, pre-election, except for that 1%, like my boyfriend and I, whose lives were dramatically changed by the results.

This year, however, was different.  Many people were upset about the election results, including many in the run club.  Not only did I represent the other side, but I couldn’t help but wonder how many helped to turn my life upside down because they didn't see below the top of the ticket.  I was already feeling a little out of place before this happened, but now I felt isolated and unwelcome, to the point that I questioned why we were even doing this quest.

It was an extremely generous gift to have found my friend Christy, then.  She saw me through all this difficulty, running mile after mile and understanding my feelings.  And at my lowest point, she gave me a very special gift—a birthday marathon in New Orleans, LA.  It brought me back to running—and eventually, back to my run club.  However, my life is still very much in flux, to the point that I can’t make major financial decisions.  Consider it a setback in my quest.  We’ll be up and running and fighting again, but for now, it’s all about qualifying for Boston and writing blog posts, because that’s all I can afford to do.

#KiloMay

My running club, the Libertyville Running Club, is never dull.  It is full of fun, creative people, which leads to a lot of silly inside jokes and crazy spontaneous events.

(For starters, Jill and Trisha write these entertaining blogs about running and life.  I call this my Serious Journal in contrast.)

When our leader went out of town to run a marathon (again), he left the club in the hands of one of his friends and regular runners.  Jeremy was left to do the map…and accidentally ended up writing it in kilometers instead of miles.  He corrected the map, but after he posted it on the Facebook group—and several people, including our fearless leader, noticed.  With it being the last day of April, at a point where most of the club was between marathon training plans, KiloMay, the celebration of kilometers in the month of May, was born.

(He’s left me in charge a couple of times to lead runs.  The first time, it started to thunder, and I just said, “don’t get hit by lightning.”  Why he trusts me to do anything, I have no idea.) 

Of course, the next step was to switch our Strava accounts to kilometers.  It’s been an interesting adventure to try to keep clicking the seconds off the mileage pace when you have to convert your mileage to…kilometerage?  Kilos? 

Another aspect of running a bit blind is that I’ve been tracking how I’ve been doing with 2016 miles in 2016 using a calendar.  6 miles a day is about 10 kilos, but how does this translate?  How many miles have I done this month?  Am I on pace or have I fallen behind? 

Okay, yes, I'm woefully beyond pace...but I marathon train in the summer.

It has been a fun change of pace, as well as keeping myself from overdoing things.  You can’t stress about pace or mileage when you are running a bit blind.  However, let me say how glad I am that it is June, that I’m back to mileage, and pushing forward towards my 2016 miles in 2016…

Mind Games Part 2: Attitude Adjustment

Of course, just one recovery run isn’t enough to erase doubt and boredom.  The next Saturday, I missed the club run, so I had to go out later in the day to run. 

I do think the end of winter running season is the hardest time of year to get motivated.  You’re sick of the cold, sick of the ice, and sick of doing laundry of all those layers.  I decided to take the opportunity and run in an area I hadn’t been in a long while, to distract me from how much time this run was going to take.  It’s a town that has a plethora of bike trails connecting the subdivisions, and part of the fun is getting lost within the various backyard trails.  However, it was Easter Weekend, so my mind was wishing I was enjoying the fun of family and celebration rather than running.

The start didn’t bode well, as I ended up back near the start on the first trail and a dead end at the second.  Soon, I was at one of my favorite forest preserves and decided that running the trail around it, then heading back to the car, was good enough.

While doing that loop, I had an epiphany.  According to our club leader’s training plan, these long runs weren’t about logging miles as much as pushing them at a pace, something I wasn’t doing.  I decided right there and then that I needed to pick up the pace on the Saturday runs so that Sunday’s runs were true recovery, where I was going to be tired from Saturday’s effort. 

I picked up the pace and ran back to the car.  Of course, when I stopped my Strava, I noticed that it had paused about right when I started going faster.  Well my legs would remember what my phone neglected to record.  The important part, to pick up the pace and really work on mentally pushing myself, had happened.

What has surprised me, more than anything, is how much faster I am running just by having a positive attitude.  By keeping myself focused on the task at hand and having a can-do attitude has taken serious time off the clock.  (Of course, so has running all the miles I’ve been doing.)  I’m now thinking that anything is possible again.

Think It’s Easier for Those 7 Min Pacers? Think again…

One of my favorite runs with my club is Tamarack 800s.  We have a street in town that not only is exactly 800 meters, but is shaped like a semi-circle, so it is around 400 meters to get back to the start.  Perfect to do repeat 800 meter intervals.  We do them in winter, at night, so it’s often dark and chilly and snowy.  Of course, the street is a mile from a bar, so that’s our warmup and cool down.

There was a blizzard south of Chicago a few weeks ago, so a lot of people were expecting bad weather and decided not to show up.  As usual, that meant that I was the slowest runner who did. 

For a lot of people who can’t easily do a sub-10 min mile, watching someone who can run a mile under 6 minutes cruise by can feel discouraging.  On the Tamarack run, I’m often lapped by our faster runners, since my full speed is slower than their easy jog pace.  It’s not discouraging to me, however, because I can see they are working just as hard as I am, and it’s the effort, not the pace, that makes us a “real runner.”

One of the first lessons I learned in running is:  “fast” and “slow” are relative.  My first year of high school cross country, our top runner qualified for state.  My junior year, the top seven qualified for state.  I was nowhere near qualifying for state, but I had a different focus:  my personal best.  It’s something that has carried me through many, many tough workouts, getting lost, and being lapped.  I compete against the clock and my Strava account, not what everyone else is doing. 

It didn’t matter that I was slower than everyone else.  A couple of people decided to skip the speedwork and run Tamarack Street backwards, so I never felt alone or unsafe.  I enjoyed the beauty of the evening and the comradery of everyone pushing themselves to their limits.  I had fun!  When I came back to the bar, I was treated like a runner, not a has-been.  But….going out and running, regardless of pace, is going to make me faster than sitting at home.

So don’t feel discouraged if you aren’t super-fast.  You’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.  Runners are welcoming and generous and encouraging.  We’ve all had those runs where we’ve gotten lost, where it’s taken much longer than we expected, where our heads are faster than our legs.  We admire the runners who take 6, 7, or 17 hours to finish a marathon just as much as we admire the ones who can do it in less than 3 hours.  Focus on your own improvement, train hard, and have fun.